One Was Lost(59)

Again, Mr. Walker calls our names, one after the next like he’s doing a roll call. He sounds desperate.

Lucas moves closer and looks up the steep mountainside and then back at me. Is he thinking of carrying me? Please. He’s sheet-white and soaked in sweat already.

Mr. Walker hollers again. “If you can hear me, stay where you are. I’m coming for you.”

I shudder and watch Lucas’s throat jump when he swallows. Funny he would use those words—rescuer words. Is he using them to lure us in? Lucas nods up at the mountain again, and I shake my head. My legs weigh two thousand pounds. Two million pounds. I am sinking into this forest floor, waiting for Mr. Walker to come for me.

“Sera, we have to keep going,” Lucas says.

“He’s going to get to the road first.” The whisper comes out of me on the edge of a sob. “He’ll cut us off. I can’t keep going.”

“Yes, you can,” he says, and then his hands are on my face, and he’s smiling at me like I’m chickening out on a ride at the fair. “It’s a big road. We’ll find another part of it. No option, right? The show must go on. Isn’t that what you people say?”

My fumbling step forward is my answer. It’s not easy going. We scrabble our way up, tree by tree, root by root. It’s so slow that it’s laughable, but the next time Mr. Walker calls, his voice is a distant echo to the north.

We reach a small clearing at the top, and Lucas waits, searching through the darkness for some indication that things are going right. I watch too, seeing nothing but a hazy white moon overhead and the veiled blinking of countless stars. The forest slopes down below us, and a cloud drifts away from the moon.

I see something. Something pale in the woods. I go very still, scanning the trees carefully. Nothing, nothing, and then I find it again. Pale and Twinkie-shaped and almost but not quite swallowed by the forest.

I clutch at Lucas’s shirt and point down the slope. He follows my line of vision, and I can see the moment he spots it. His wide shoulders tense, and a low breath comes out of him.

“What do you think that is?” I ask.

“I don’t think. I know.” His smile gleams a little bit wicked in the moonlight. “That’s a camper trailer.”

It has a broken window, cinder block steps, and a ripped God Bless America flag, and it is the most gorgeous thing in the world. Or it is until I see the half-tarp-covered four-wheeler parked beside it. Lucas tells me at least ten times to slow down, heading down that mountainside, but I don’t care. I run.

My feet thud to a sudden stop twenty feet or so from the front of the camper. It’s a once-silver cigar with rust and trash around the base and a few thornbushes draped over the front door. I don’t think anyone’s been home in a while.

My smile falters, but I force it to stay put. It doesn’t matter. We don’t need a person really. We just need to get that four-wheeler running so we can get the hell out of here.

I pull in a deep breath and move from the front of the camper to the four-wheeler. Lucas is already pulling the tarp loose, checking over the engine.

“Do you think it’s usable?” I ask.

“Battery would be my first worry.” He starts rummaging around the pile of wood and scraps around the quad. “No keys either.”

“Can you hotwire it?”

“You mean from my stint in Grand Theft Auto: The Reality Show?” He smirks up at me, holding something long and metal. “A few fights does not make me a car thief.”

“I’m sorry.” I bite my lip and look back at the camper. “Do you think they’d just leave it if it’s running? Is that…convenient?”

Lucas shrugs, leaning in. “I don’t know. I’ve got an uncle who lives about seventy miles from here. He leaves a dirt bike at his hunting shack sometimes.”

“Doesn’t he worry about someone stealing it?”

“He always says anyone who could find it would be riding something better. This thing is a rusted piece of junk, so I’m betting the same logic applies.”

He taps the heavy metal file he’s holding to something inside the engine area. There’s a crack and a sudden spark, flaring white and brilliant and brief in the darkness.

“Battery’s good,” he says, dropping the file. “We should check inside for keys.”

Looking at the camper sends spiderweb chills up my back. I don’t know if I want to go inside. “I still think it’s weird it’s out here.”

“Well, they didn’t leave the keys, and I’ll bet the camper is locked tight.”

My eyes drag back to the broken-down trailer, sticking on those long, draping branches, each one covered in thorns. I square my shoulders. Thorns are not going to stand in the way of me getting out of here.

Lucas heads for the steps, swearing before he even reaches for the first sticker branch.

I catch up and pluck at the shirt between his shoulder blades. “Let’s be smart here. We’ll use the file and sticks to push some of this crap away.”

He turns back, chuckling. “See? I knew that bossy side was still in there.”

“No sense in making an easy job hard.”

It’s not an easy job. By the time we uncover the door, we’re both covered in bleeding scratches, my bad hand is burning like I’ve doused it in gasoline and lit it on fire, and I’ve got thorns in my hair.