Freeks(71)

This couldn’t last forever, no matter how desperately I wanted it to, so I just closed my eyes and tried to savor the feel of his arms around me and the sound of his heart beating.

But it only lasted a few moments before I heard Luka, screaming for dear life.





43. mend

“Mara, what are you doing?” Gabe demanded, his words pinched with fear.

I’d leapt out of bed and grabbed my dress from where it lay rumpled on the floor, and now I struggled to pull it on over my head.

“Something happened to Luka,” I told Gabe, and probably sensing that he wouldn’t be able to stop me, he grabbed his jeans and hurried to get them on. “I have to help.”

“Mara—” Gabe began, but I was already rushing toward the door. “Wait!”

I didn’t want him coming with me—I didn’t want him getting hurt or tangled up with whatever was happening around here. So instead of running out into the night, and possibly getting us both killed in a valiant but stupid attempt to protect Luka, I ran to the front of the Winnebago and looked out the windshield.

Roxie and Hutch were huddled in the doorway of Hutch and Luka’s trailer, and they appeared to have turned on every light, causing the warm yellow light to glow in the humidity around them.

They both stared off to their right, toward the sound of Luka’s screams, so I followed their gaze. For a long second, I saw nothing, and then the outline of two figures appeared in the darkness, coming out from the swamp behind the campsite—one taller and burly, the other smaller and limping. Luka and Gideon.

“What the hell happened to him?” Gabe asked, his voice in my ear as he leaned over to peer out the window.

I glanced back at him, taken off guard by his presence and the fact that he could see anything. It was too dark where they were for me to see much of anything, other than their general shapes.

“I don’t know,” I replied, and opened the door. Since Gideon was here, and Luka appeared to be walking some, I decided it was safe enough for me to venture outside.

As they walked into the campsite, the light from the streetlight finally hit them. Gideon had his shotgun over one shoulder and an arm around Luka, helping to keep him on his feet, and Luka was drenched in blood.

“Oh my god!” Roxie ran over and slipped her arm around his waist. “Are you okay?”

Roxie and Gideon led him over to the picnic table parked right up against his motorhome. He winced as they helped ease him down onto the bench. Roxie sat down beside him, while Gideon, Gabe, and I stood in a semicircle in front of Luka.

Up close, his injuries were still barely visible underneath his tattered, blood-soaked clothing, but I caught a glimpse of a few very nasty gashes. Luka held his arm across his stomach, and I suspected that he was helping to keep the organs inside until his body self-healed all the way.

“Do you need anything?” I asked.

“Just some towels to clean up,” Luka said, brushing off injuries that looked like they would’ve been fatal on anyone else. “I think I’ll be okay.”

“I’ll get some,” Hutch piped up, eager to be doing something besides wringing his hands in the doorway of his own trailer. He was still recuperating from his own injuries, which was probably why he hadn’t run out to lend a hand.

“Do you want me to call an ambulance or something?” Gabe asked in a faraway voice, and Luka looked up at him with a start.

“No, I’ll be fine,” Luka replied, and did his best to mask his pain. Like most everyone else in the camp, Luka tried to keep his extrasensory healing ability a secret from outsiders. It was easier than attempting to explain something that could not be explained.

“It’s worse than it looks,” Luka added with a weak smile, since Gabe didn’t look convinced.

“What happened?” I asked, trying to detract from the fact that Luka looked like he belonged in a morgue or an ER at the very least.

But from where I was standing, I could already see the laceration across his chest starting to heal—the edges of the wound slowly moved toward each other, as if magnetized, and within moments the flesh would all be fused together as if it had never been torn apart.

I moved, trying to block Gabe’s view in case he was looking, but his eyes were darting around everywhere, probably searching the campsite for signs of the creature that had attacked Luka.

“What the hell were you doing out here?” Gideon asked, like the world-weary parent he’d slowly become. “I told you all to stay in at night.”

“Hutch was in the bathroom, and I really had to take a piss,” Luka explained. “I only went out behind our trailer, and then that thing—attacked me.”

Hutch returned just in time to hand Luka a stack of old towels and ask, “Was it a bear?”

“For the hundredth time, Hutch, there are no bears around here,” Roxie reminded him, sounding more matter-of-fact than exasperated.

Luka shook his head as he pressed towels against his more egregious injuries. “I don’t know what it was. I didn’t really get a look at it. It was dark and it happened so fast. It grabbed me and dragged me out into the woods, and it was gonna kill me, until Gideon showed up with his shotgun and chased it off.”

“What about you?” Roxie asked, looking up at Gideon with her wide blue eyes. “Do you still think it was a coyote?”