Sam's eyes were wide open. He faced the opposite way, and he could almost feel the presence of the strange man inside their shanty. Every huff of his breath, every sc.r.a.pe of his boot on the ground. The stink of him which Sam could smell from the other side of the room. All of it made Sam's back p.r.i.c.kle with goose b.u.mps as though the man was right there.

He felt wetness on his hand and looked down.

Lying beside him, Abby's chest heaved up and down. Her eyes were stretched wide, tears pouring out of them and touching Sam's hand, which was clamped over her mouth. He met her eyes and slowly pursed his lips, forming them to say "ssh" but never making the noise.

He closed his eyes very deliberately, then opened them again and hoped that Abby got the message. She apparently did, and she closed her own eyes and kept them that way, though she was squeezing them shut and it wouldn't fool anyone if they bent for a closer look. Her chest still rose up and down rapidly, and Sam could feel the hammering of her little heart against his arm. Almost twice as fast as his own. He could feel her nostrils flaring against his finger as she fought with herself to stop crying.

Moving so slowly that for a second he wondered if he was even moving at all, Sam began to slide his hand off of Abby's mouth, towards the edge of the blanket where every night he stashed his rifle.

Angela could tell where she was going. She could smell the distinct odor of the interior of the Camp Ryder building, and she could hear the clang of the metal steps under her feet, leading up to the office. The sack over her head was completely unnecessary. Maybe just being used as a scare tactic. She tried to think about this, tried to minimize it and bolster some courage out of herself. But she was terrified, and she could not deny it.

Three thoughts, bouncing around frantically: Jerry knows.

He's going to hurt me.

He's going to hurt Abby and Sam.

The thoughts continued incessantly, over and over. A perpetual motion machine.

She was shoved to her knees. Her fingers tingled painfully from lack of blood circulation. Her pulse was a heavy bam-bam-bam that seemed to shake her entire body. A hand grabbed the hood and ripped it from her head, taking a few strands of hair with it and causing her to cry out, the noise coming as a m.u.f.fled sound through the gag in her mouth.

She opened her eyes. It was the office, just as she suspected. Dimly lit by a single lantern sitting on the desk, and beside it, Jerry staring at her, his face all cold angles and sneers, arms clamped across his chest. His sawed-off shotgun laying on the desk next to him. Those two, big, 12-gauge bores staring at her like dead men's eyes.

Jerry looked right at her and smiled, a cruel look that scoured the edges of his face with wrinkles that seemed more severe because of the angle of the light. He looked at someone or something to her left. Angela followed, almost didn't want to, but couldn't help herself. There, against the back wall of the room, eyes red and face tear-stained, cheek swollen and red and beginning to bruise just under her eye, stood Jenny.

Angela tried to ask her what she was doing there, but the first word was just another incomprehensible murmur behind the salty rag stuffed into her mouth, and the rest of her question died halfway up her throat like someone had choked it off. Immediately the blank, faceless fear of the moment changed. It morphed into something else. Something more sinister.

Oh my G.o.d, all her organs flip-flopped over each other, her heart jumping into her throat, stomach sinking down, and everything else just squirming uncomfortably. She knew what this was about. No use denying it. No use acting like she didn't know exactly what had gone down, what had led her to this point.

G.o.dd.a.m.n you, Jenny!

She forced her face to be stony, eyes to stay blank.

I won't give Jerry anything. I won't give him anything.

Jenny was much worse. She opened her mouth, and her saliva was thick from weeping so that it strung between her parted lips like slime and made her look even more despicable. "I'm so sorry," she said breathily.

Angela looked at her sharply.

Jenny's eyes fell.

"She wanted to give us some half-truths, and a couple pieces of straight up bulls.h.i.t," Jerry said boredly. "So Arnie convinced her otherwise."

To Angela's left, she could see Arnie standing there out of the corner of her vision, smirking like he'd just heard an inside joke. He put a hand on the jiggling loose skin that flopped around his stomach. What used to be his beer gut. Was it funny to him? Was the situation humorous?

Angela craned her neck to see behind her, and she could see Greg standing next to Arnie, regarding him with an expression that bordered on disgust. But it was an expression that lasted only for a moment, and then it was gone. Buried. Put wherever things go when you can't show them to others. He stared doggedly at the wall, his mouth tightened just slightly.

Jerry propelled himself off the desk and gestured to Jenny, contempt evident in his eyes. "Angela, your friend here has really been just...invaluable." His smile turned to a mock-surprised grin. "I mean, I didn't even know that Greg and her had a thing, until he came to me and told me that she gave him this...amazing bedroom confession." Jerry winked conspiratorially at Greg. "You know how it is. Pillow talk and all." Back to Angela, bent over slightly, like he wanted to project his voice into Angela's face. "Apparently they've been f.u.c.king each other this whole time! Who knew?"

He laughed. Ha ha. Just hilarious.

"Ah, well. It's a complicated situation, and who am I to mess with love, right? Do I feel like maybe Jenny has more to tell? Sure I do. But out of respect for Greg, I've decided to get that information from you, Angela." He waved a dismissive hand. "Jenny's just...a go-between. But you?" he wagged a finger. "You're the troublemaker, Angela. You're the lynchpin. You're the little cog that's turning all that clockwork behind my back." As he spoke, his face went deadpan, and then a vein began to bulge under his eye and suddenly he leaned into Angela's face again. "Behind my f.u.c.king back, Angela. Just like I asked you not to do."

He clenched a fist in Angela's face. "I'm trying to build something here. Why can't you understand that? I'm trying to take something broken and make it into something better than we've had before. Something better than we've experienced with Captain Harden, and all the warmongering bulls.h.i.t that came before him and which he insisted on propagating. But you..." he pinched his thumb and forefinger together fiercely, so the knuckles turned white and he spoke through clenched teeth. "...you just insist on f.u.c.king everything up for me! You seem to be determined to ruin everything that I'm trying to do here and you're quickly becoming a problem that I have very limited options to deal with."

He straightened. "And don't think for a G.o.dd.a.m.ned second that all of this is my fault. This is your fault, not mine." He took a step towards her. "I tried to reason with you, didn't I? And I was very forthright with you, wasn't I? And I explained to you exactly the situation as I saw it, and I laid out for you in no uncertain terms the circ.u.mstances under which I was willing to allow you to continue to live here at Camp Ryder. The circ.u.mstances under which I was willing to allow your kids to live in peace." He grabbed her by the chin, tilted her face up towards him and he towered over her, and she got the strange inclination that he intended to spit into her face. But he only spoke, his words calm enough, but belying the undertone of rage that simmered in his voice. "Didn't I, Angela? Didn't I explain it quite clearly?"

She squeezed her eyes shut.

Jerry s.n.a.t.c.hed a handful of her hair and yanked it back so her head was forced up towards him, then he ripped the gag from her mouth. "Answer me!" he screamed in her face, his skin instantly darkening into a b.l.o.o.d.y red. "Didn't I tell you how this was going to happen?!"

She groaned against the pain, looking up at him and feeling every ounce of her wish that she could kill him. There was no thought of getting away. No thought of what Greg or Arnie might do if she lunged for him. The only thought was that if her hands were free, she would kill him. Somehow. Some way.

Bite his carotid arteries out.

Shove thumbs through his eyeb.a.l.l.s.

Lee had not taught her any hand-to-hand combat, but he had offered her one piece of advice when it came to down to a fight. "Shooting is clean," he said. "It allows you to kill someone from a distance, and that affects you less emotionally. The more distance, the less real it feels. But with a knife...with a club...with your bare hands...it gets very real. And it's very scary. Most people won't do it, because they're just not like that. But if you're ever in a situation when it's life or death, Angela, you just remember that it doesn't matter how you kill someone. Dead is dead. They're just as dead when you shoot them from a hundred yards as they are when you shove a screw driver into their ear, or brain them with a rock. So you do what you gotta do-tooth and nail-to make sure that they die and you live. And there's never any shame in that, no matter how dirty you do it."

At the time, it turned her stomach.

But times had changed. She had changed. In a thousand ugly ways, she had changed. Or maybe it was just dormant in her, laid underneath layers and layers of civility, and gradually unearthed from the erosion of this savage new world. This ragged aggression, more animal than human. More mindless than logical.

Like the infected...

But the rage of it gave her strength. Set her teeth. Flared her nostrils. Made the pain shuffle off into the background of her mind. She looked right into Jerry's eyes, and she spoke what boiled up in her. "I remember you saying that people would talk if you hurt me. People might turn against you."

His face quaked with a spasm of anger.

She strained against the fist pulling her hair, just to show him that the pain wasn't controlling her. "Is that why you s.n.a.t.c.hed me up in the middle of the night? Is that why you sent your little crew after me when everybody had gone to sleep, when no one was there to witness it? Is that why they put a knife to my throat and told me not to make a sound? Because you're scared, Jerry? Is that it? You're scared?" She stuck her chin out. "Because you know they'd drag you out into The Square and beat you to death."

He twisted her hair. "You c.u.n.t..."

"This isn't what they signed on for, Jerry!" she yelled. "You're all alone on this one, so you better keep this s.h.i.t quiet..."

"Shut the f.u.c.k up!"

"...Because you're gonna have to answer for what you did here, Jerry! You're gonna have to answer for it real soon, and you don't want too many witnesses lining up against you!"

Jerry reared back and slapped her hard across the face. Hard enough to topple her to the ground.

He stood over her, pointing a finger down into her face. "You think you got it all figured out, huh? You think Camp Ryder is just one step away from kicking me out and going back to business as usual? But we're not as dumb as you think we are, Angela. And you're no f.u.c.king genius. No you're not." He produced a piece of paper-the same piece of paper that had been ripped from Angela's grasp when they'd taken her. "Let's read, shall we?"

Despair flooded her veins, like an injection of lead, weighing everything down.

No, no, no!

He unfolded the paper, pulled his head back to focus on the words. "Oh my, Angela. This seems like...well...this seems like a plan to stage a little bit of a coup. Here, let me read it to you: 'Midnight tomorrow. Be ready. Secure The Square. We will take the building. First shot is GO'." He looked up from his reading. "You know what Angela? That really..." he shook his head disdainfully. "...that really just p.i.s.ses me off. That just sounds suspiciously like you're trying to take over Camp Ryder, Angela. Like you've been plotting against me, just like I asked you not to do. And now your chickens are coming home to roost. Just like I always said they would." He stepped over to her, his haughty composure regained for the time being, and he knelt down so he was at eye level with her. "Who wrote this to you Angela? Who's gonna help you take me out? Who are the other people in Camp Ryder that were gonna help you?"

Angela could only stare at the floor, feeling her pulse throbbing in her hands, and thinking, don't tell him anything. You can't tell him anything. He doesn't know about Lee, he doesn't know about Old Man Hughes, or Katie, or any of the others. You can't tell him anything.

Keep staring at the floor. The dirty concrete and c.r.a.ppy laminate tile-strange that she'd never noticed the tiling in this room. She'd always been big into flooring. Spent a lot of time and money putting custom floors into her old house where she lived in her old life where things like custom floors mattered. Hardwood floors in the living room. Large, stone tiles in the kitchen. Small, ceramic tiles in the bathrooms. So she always noticed floors, but she'd never noticed the dingy floors in this office. She found herself staring at them and wondering where the stain from Bus' blood had gone, and thought that it said something about Jerry that he would take the time and effort to erase that reminder from his floor.

Bus I'm so sorry! I couldn't take it. I couldn't do it.

I f.u.c.ked it up.

Jerry shook his head. "Aww...Angela...it's just absolutely heartbreaking to see you like this. Just so...shattered." He sighed. "But, we have work to do. And I made a promise, didn't I? I told you how we were going to deal with this problem. I gave you an abundantly clear warning about all of this, and you chose to ignore it. So, what kind of a man would I be if I went back on my word now?"

Panic.

She couldn't sound strong anymore. "Jerry, don't..."

He looked up at Greg and Arnie. "Go get the kids."

CHAPTER 34: THE KIDS.

Sam didn't know what was going on. He knew Angela had been taken, but he didn't know by who. He pictured Greg, because Greg had already threatened them, and it only made sense. Or maybe they were punishing Angela because Sam had told her about Mr. Keith. Maybe they were going to kill her just like they killed Mr. Keith...

He couldn't stop thinking about it. The flavor of the fear became stale in his mouth, and eventually he grew numb to it as his hand crept closer to the rifle. And all the while he could still hear the tiny movements of the man that was in the shanty with them. The man that never said anything. But Sam could hear the air going in and out of his nostrils, he could hear the rustle of fabric when the man shifted positions.

Is he watching me? Sam thought. He wanted badly to turn and look. Maybe if the man faced the other way, not paying attention, then Sam could make a move for the rifle. But then if Sam was caught looking, he didn't know what he would do from there.

He probably doesn't think I have a rifle, Sam thought. No one expects a fourteen year old to have a rifle.

What am I going to do when I get the rifle?

I'm going to shoot him.

You're going to shoot him?

Sam pictured it. Painted the scene in vivid detail in his mind. Pulling out the rifle. Pointing it at the man. Pulling the trigger...he got as far as the big bang and then couldn't picture it after that. He'd never fired the rifle at anyone. Just squirrels and rabbits. Mr. Keith said that's all it was meant for-squirrels and rabbits. He said the bullet was too small. Just a .22 caliber.

What if it doesn't kill him? Sam was suddenly terrified by that prospect, and conveniently, his mind was quite capable of picturing his failure where moments before he'd drawn a blank. Now he pictured pulling the trigger, the little yellow blossom at the end of the barrel, the bullet hitting the man right in the chest...and doing nothing.

The man lifting his own gun, apparently unimpressed by Sam's squirrel and rabbit gun, and shooting him with bigger bullets. Bullets meant to kill larger animals than rodents. Bullets meant to kill people.

And then it suddenly became much more real.

Oh my G.o.d, I could die.

Someone opened the flap to the shanty, sending a spike of adrenaline like an electrical current down Sam's spine. A quiet voice, barely audible over the pounding of his heart.

"They still asleep?"

"Yeah."

He's distracted. Now's my chance. I have to do this now.

I can't do this. What if I get shot and die?

How does Captain Harden do it? I wish I had asked him how he did it...

"Wake 'em up and bring them to the office."

Hesitation. "Why?"

"How the f.u.c.k should I know why? Because Jerry said so."

Resignation. "Alright."

Footsteps in the gravel.

Now! Now! Now!

Sam lunged, screamed at the same time: "Abby run! Run! Run!" She sprang to life like a jolted cat, rolled and suddenly disappeared underneath the tarpaulin wall of the shanty. His hand closed around the grip of the rifle and it felt clumsy, unwieldy, like some strange alien weapon that he'd never touched before in his life. His entire body was so overpowered by the adrenaline surge, that he almost couldn't feel anything. His hands, his fingers, they felt like he wore oven mitts.

He rolled, pointing the rifle up. Still screaming, but now without words. Just terror.

The man, right there, stepping back, shocked and-was he scared?

Sam struggled to find the trigger, thinking, Where's the trigger? Where's the trigger? I've shot this thing a bazillion times! Why can't I find the trigger? And not once did he think about the man staring down at him. Who he was or how many times they'd pa.s.sed each other while they went about their business, or whether he had kids that played soccer with him and Abby. He didn't think about the deed, or the killing, or the consequences, or the fact that he was outgunned with his little .22 caliber rifle, or the fact that he had never killed anyone before. He didn't think about it mostly because he didn't have time.

He found the trigger.

Pulled.

Bang.

Pulled.

Bang.

The man jumped backwards, trying to get away from him. And like a dog when the rabbit runs, Sam couldn't stop. He jumped to his feet, and he just kept firing, still unthinking, unfeeling, almost elated now. Firing, firing, firing, and the man trying to get away, struggling, stumbling, clawing at the earth to get away, and then he started screaming too, and that was what got Sam.

The screaming. A man, screaming. High-pitched, like in the funny movies when the bad guy gets. .h.i.t in the crotch. But this wasn't a movie. The bad guys never died in the funny movies. They never got shot. This was real life, and he was really shooting this guy. He was shooting him, and he was killing him.

I'm killing him.

I'm killing him.