C. Box - The Highway

“Jesus,” Gracie gasped, tears welling in her eyes. She turned to Danielle, horrified. Her sister would likely get the worst of it. But Danielle didn’t seem to understand the conversation.

“Danielle,” Gracie said, “Please talk to me?”

Her sister didn’t respond.

Krystyl said, “Maybe they’ll be nicer to you girls. You’re all young and tight and I guess they’d like that. Me, I’m a hag. I wasn’t always this bad but they made me worse. When you get treated like an animal you turn into one, and I’m no better than a fucking animal to them. Or to me.” Strangely, she cackled at that.

“How long have you been here?” Gracie asked.

“Fuck if I know,” Krystyl said, “Couple weeks, I guess. Longer, maybe.”

“Were there others?”

Krystyl cackled again. “Look at the walls, see the scratch marks? See the blood all over the walls and the floors? There have been plenty of others. I met one of ’em when I first got here. Her name was Bonnie. She was from Oregon somewhere, and she was a bitch on wheels. A real nutcase, but maybe she was because of what they done to her.”

Krystyl shook her head and coughed. “I think she was sort of getting used to them, kind of looking forward to them coming to get her. She acted kind of possessive toward me, like I was the other woman or something. Like I was here to break them up. They put us together once and it was a disaster, so they got rid of her.”

“What do you mean?” Gracie asked.

“One of ’em just took a gun and popped her in the back of the head. Right there in front of me. I ain’t never seen something like that before.

“Now I’ve been thinking they’re getting tired of me. They’d rather use me as a fuckin’ punching bag than anything else anymore. But I figured they might keep me around until they could get some fresh meat. And it looks like they did.”

Gracie found it hard to breathe, and she closed her eyes.

“The driver?” Gracie asked.

“Yeah, he’s one of ’em. He likes to be called the Lizard King. I don’t know his real name and I don’t want to know. And don’t ask me who the other two are, I don’t know. All I know is one is big and fat and the other ain’t. You better do whatever they say or they’ll fuck you up.”

“Where are we?” Gracie asked her. She knew the answer would include the word “fuck” since everything else did.

“Fuck if I know.”

“Are we in Montana?”

“It don’t matter, does it? We’re in fucking hell. That could be Montana.”

Gracie scooted herself toward Danielle on the blanket, as much to be closer to her sister as to feel more of the heat from the space heater Krystyl was blocking with her body.

“Where did they grab you?” Gracie asked. “The truck driver, I mean.”

“Outside Gillette, Wyoming,” Krystyl said. “I was workin’ the truck stop servicing drivers…”

And she suddenly stopped speaking and sucked in her breath. Her cheeks went hollow and her eyes bulged.

“What?” Danielle said in sudden terror, but Gracie shushed her. She’d heard it, too. Or felt it. A footfall or thump of some kind outside the room that vibrated through the concrete.

The three of them sat frozen for a moment. A rectangular metal panel slid back on the door revealing a dim wedge of yellow light. Then a pair of eyes filled the wedge for a moment. The man was looking in at them. The slider slammed shut and they heard a jangle of keys outside the solid wood door.

Danielle gasped Gracie by her arm and they scooted back along the floor, legs pumping. They didn’t stop until their backs were flat against the right corner of the room, the corner where Danielle hadn’t gotten sick.

Gracie watched as if in a dream. She was almost beyond terror at this point. The more sounds there were-jangling keys, the thunk of a bolt being thrown back, the aggressive squeak of rusted hinges-the more her mind seemed to check out. It was as if she’d stepped aside into another room to watch herself, like she wasn’t actually there.

The door swung open and someone filled it. Someone large and blocky, like the driver had been, but she was blinded by an intense flashlight beam in her eyes. Because there had been no real light in the room, the beam blinded her fully. She felt Danielle cower next to her, felt her sister pull up her legs and bury her head behind them, sitting in a tight fetal position.

Although she couldn’t see past the light, the man said, “And how are my two sweethearts doing?”

Gracie couldn’t speak and didn’t want to.

“You’ll get used to it,” the man said. Then Gracie could hear him sniffing.

“If you’re going to throw up, use that chemical toilet over against the wall. Don’t foul your own nest. I’ll bring you a mop and a bucket later to clean this place up.”

Gracie had seen the white plastic box but didn’t know what it was. The flashlight burned her face and she shut her eyes against it.

“Don’t act so damned scared,” the man said.

“Who are you?” Gracie asked.

“Your new best friend,” he said, and prodded the flashlight beam toward Danielle. “What-don’t she know how to talk?”

“She’s scared. We’re both scared.”

Then, turning and whipping his flashlight away from them toward Krystyl, “What kind of shit has she been feeding you girls, anyway?”

Neither answered. Gracie heard the scuffle of heavy shoes on the concrete floor, the voice no longer directed at them. She opened her eyes to see the beam of light still on Krystyl, who refused to look at it. The powerful light made hollows out of her eyes as it hit the side of her face.

“What have you been telling them, anyway? You been lying to them? Filling them with your shit?”

“No.” Krystyl’s voice was resigned, as if the lie was perfunctory.

“Come with me, gimp.”

Gracie couldn’t tell if there was more than one man at the door. She didn’t think so but there was no way of knowing it.

The man clicked off his flashlight and it was totally dark.

“I said”-and there was a heavy blow and a grunt of expelled air from Krystyl-“ come with me, gimp. ”

“I ain’t movin.”

“The hell you ain’t.”

And with that Gracie heard two more solid blows, the slap of flesh, and a pathetic scream that faded into a low moan.

“Here,” the man said to them, “Here’s something to eat.” She heard the sound of a paper bag hitting the floor and a second later something cold and cylindrical bumped against her foot. The sensation of it made her jump.

“See you girls later,” the man said, and Gracie blinked and looked up.

Through and around green spangles in her eyes from being blinded, she saw Krystyl’s body being dragged across the floor by her hair. The man was strong and pulled Krystyl through the door quickly. Then the door shut and the keys jangled and they were alone.

She looked down, still not quite there, and saw that the object that had rolled into her foot was a bottle of water. There were several other bottles on the floor as well, scattered when the bag broke open. It looked like convenience store food: packages of burritos and sandwiches and candy and nuts and a tin of Altoid mints.

Although it was impossible to determine if it came from outside the structure or simply from the other side of the door, she heard a scream, then a pop.

“Oh Jesus, we’ve got to get out of here,” Gracie said with urgency.

Danielle didn’t respond.

Gracie thought, We will escape. We will survive .

She would find a way. And it was up to her, and her alone.

6:25 A.M., Wednesday, November 21

Cassie Dewell was wired and tired. She sat fuming in the predawn in the county Ford Expedition last used by Cody Hoyt to plant evidence at the Tokely crime scene. It had been a bad morning so far and she couldn’t anticipate the day getting better. She’d parked in an alcove of skeletal aspen trees on the shoulder of the county road as the sky turned a rose color over the western mountains. An icy breeze rattled the dried leaves and sent them skittering down on the hood of the Ford and the asphalt of the road. Through her windshield, she surveyed the vast immensity of Sheriff Tubman’s frosted lawn and the magnificent home at the top of the hill flanked by tall Austrian pines.