Hide and seek, p.15
Hide and Seek, page 15
Every muscle in my body felt like a tightly wound spring, but I kept my voice calm. “Everything’s going to be okay, Jack. You have to believe me.” Now I was standing up. I felt the GPS shift slightly in my pocket. I put one foot behind me and took a step backwards.
Jack looked at me. The glow of the flashlight lit up his scared little face. “You’ll be right back?”
“Of course I will. I’ll be right back. I’m going to help you and Sam.” I inched my way out of the circle of light. If I could just get out of the light…
“You stay here and take care of Sam, okay?” Now I’d moved three or four feet away from him, stepping carefully backwards the whole time. “Promise me you’ll take care of him?” One step…two…three.
“I promise.”
“Okay, I’ll be right back.”
Every muscle in my body was tensed. I did a slow 180-degree turn, terrified to be turning my back on him. A spot between my shoulder blades prickled; what if he shot me now, in the back? I wanted to run, take off in a lightning sprint until I was out of rifle range. But I forced myself to walk slowly, calmly, quietly.
Rocks and hard-packed dirt crunched under my feet, but I crept along softly, trying not to make much noise. Just get far enough away. Ten feet. Twenty.
I wanted desperately to look over my shoulder, to see if Jack was sitting there in the glow of the flashlight with the rifle pointed at my back. But I didn’t dare.
Keep moving. Slow. Careful.
And then I was off. Racing through total blackness, feet pounding against dirt, arms pumping, heart pounding, head throbbing. I ran as fast as I possibly could, gasping to draw in breath, forcing myself to keep moving. I ran till my side was screaming in pain from lack of oxygen. I stumbled over a rock and my ankle buckled. I came so close to losing my balance. My arms flailed out in empty space to brace against the fall.
But I didn’t fall. I found my footing again and kept running. My hand reached down and felt the wonderful, heavy weight of the GPS bouncing around in my pocket. The thump of my feet against the ground was the sweetest sound I’d ever heard.
I got away! I got away!
Chapter 24
Iran in a straight line, in almost total darkness. I ran blindly, desperately. I ran till I thought my lungs would explode. I ran till I finally couldn’t run anymore. I sank to my knees, feeling gravel scrape against bare skin. I gasped and panted for breath, trying to fill up my aching lungs. My head pounded like a jackhammer.
Only then did I look behind me. Off in the black of the night, I could see a faint little glow. I couldn’t tell how far away it was. It was so hard to judge distance in the darkness. I still sat there on my knees, huffing like a racehorse. I knew I should get up and start running again as fast as I could. It was only a matter of time till Jack figured it out. Till he woke up his father. Till they came after me again.
And they’d be in the truck with the headlights shining on me. No matter how much I darted and ducked around trying to escape the headlights, they’d be faster, mowing me down, shooting at me with the rifle.
I rose to my feet and started running again, but this time I didn’t go far. I couldn’t let myself panic. Stay calm! Make a plan!
I stopped running and dug inside my pocket for my GPS. Thank God! My hands shook as I turned it on. But it didn’t go on. I pushed and pushed at the button, but nothing was happening! I realized I was pushing the wrong button.
“Stop it! You can’t panic!” I said out loud through gritted teeth.
I pushed the power button and the screen lit up, and as I waited for it to pick up the satellite signals, I caught my breath, glad for this dim little light in the surrounding darkness. Once the GPS was ready to navigate, the first thing I checked was the time. I couldn’t believe it; it was only 10:36 p.m.! I’d thought it was the middle of the night.
So I’d been missing for only a few hours. Enough to make Mom and Rick worry, though. Had they called the cops? I was sure they were totally frantic right now. The sooner I got to a phone and called them, the better.
I opened the map page to try to figure out where in the world I was. The icon pointed to a spot in the middle of a totally blank screen. No other landmarks were visible.
“Okay, great. I’m in the middle of nowhere,” I muttered out loud. “I already knew that much.” I zoomed out five hundred feet, .2 miles, .3 miles, .5 miles—and still nothing. Then when I’d zoomed out to a radius of two miles surrounding my location, a line appeared in the lower right corner of the screen. Finally! A road.
The backlight went off and I turned it on again so I could see. This was the only light I had now. If only I’d grabbed that camping lantern that was sitting on the tailgate. If only I had my backpack with the flashlight inside. If only…a lot of things.
I panned the arrow down to the line at the bottom of the screen and “US 60” popped up. That’s where we were? US 60? I knew that highway. It was close to Phoenix! We’d driven all the way to Phoenix?
I pushed the find button and chose the cities option. Globe, Miami, and Claypool came up. Globe—that was a mining town halfway between Show Low and the eastern edge of the Phoenix Valley. The 60 ran right through it. There were two ways we’d go to visit my dad—most of the time we’d take the 260 all the way to Payson and then take the Beeline Highway into Phoenix. But another route was to take the 60 from Show Low down through all these little old mining towns. And that’s the way we’d come. Okay! I knew where I was!
I checked the distance from my current location to the 60, and it was 2.3 miles. I let out a long sigh of relief. I wasn’t right by a major highway, but at least it was a manageable walking distance. How far from here to Globe? That was only 4.2 miles! We were practically on the edge of town! That meant people, telephones, rescue!
The backlight went off again, leaving me in darkness. I looked around for any sign of a light, but there was nothing. Just total blackness with only the stars overhead. Which way was the pickup? I was kind of disoriented, not sure which way I’d come from and which way I’d been running.
I stood still, not moving, holding the dark GPS in my hand. I was still breathing hard from all that running, and I couldn’t make myself move. It was scary out here in the dark with no light to see by. I heard a clicking sound above me and I looked up. I couldn’t see a thing.
But I was pretty sure I knew what that sound was. Bats. There were probably dozens of them up there above me, flying around and scooping up insects by the hundreds, giving off their little sonar waves so they didn’t crash into rocks or trees. I wished I had sonar.
This was high desert, and it was dark. So dark I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. I couldn’t even see the bats that I knew were flying right over my head.
All of a sudden, I was too scared to move. What if I came across a coyote? What if I stepped on a scorpion? Or a rattle-snake!
I stood frozen in place, unable to take a step forward or even turn the backlight on again. I started shivering, even though it wasn’t really cold. I rocked back and forth a little, clutching my GPS.
I couldn’t calm myself down. Two miles? I didn’t want to hike two miles in the dark across desert terrain to get to the 60! Then what? I could maybe flag down a passing car, but what if it was a psycho killer who stopped to pick me up? I’d already escaped from one psycho tonight. I didn’t have it in me to get away from some new one.
“I wish my dog was here,” I said, and the sound of my small voice, whimpering and high-pitched, didn’t comfort me at all. I was starting to feel lightheaded. Maybe I had brain damage from that blow to the head. I’m going to lose consciousness and die out here all alone!
I pushed the backlight button on the GPS and stared at the screen. “You have to do this. It’s going to be okay. You can do this.” My voice sounded more normal now.
Calm down. Get a grip. And start walking.
With the backlight on, I moved to the navigation page. It could be so much worse. I could be out here right now in total darkness without a GPS unit in my hands.
I could do this. I could follow the arrow that would lead me the two miles to the highway. Coyotes would hear me walking and keep their distance. Snakes wouldn’t be lying out in the open at night. Scorpions—okay, scorpions would be out at night, but at least I was wearing shoes.
The navigation arrow pointed east. I started to walk.
Chapter 25
I’d only been walking about twenty minutes when I noticed the low battery warning. Keeping the backlight on was using up extra battery power. If only I had my backpack with me. I always kept a spare set of AAs with me for emergencies like this.
But then I remembered—I’d left the batteries in the geocache when I’d taken out the bandana and beads to give to Jack. It was weird, but that actually made me feel a little better, knowing that I wouldn’t have had extra batteries even if I’d had my backpack.
I decided to turn the backlight off and just concentrate on walking straight ahead. I knew I was going in the direction of the highway. I could turn it on every so often to make sure I was still on course.
It was hard walking across this strange terrain in the dark, so I had to take it slow. The ground felt bumpy and uneven under my feet. Once something sharp brushed past my bare leg and I stopped dead still, afraid I was about to walk right into a cactus. I inched carefully around whatever it was until I didn’t feel anything else in my way.
Now I was totally over my little panic attack and it was embarrassing to even think that I’d almost had a breakdown back there. I could do this. Everything would be okay if I just kept calm and didn’t panic. Losing control was dangerous. I couldn’t afford to make any crazy mistakes right now. I tried to think about just getting through this. And then once this was all over, I’d have a great story to tell everyone.
Clods of dirt and rocks sometimes tripped me up, but I edged along, putting one foot in front of the other. My head still hurt, but now it was just a dull ache across my forehead that I was almost used to.
Then I heard it. The sound of a car motor. I turned around, and way off in the distance a pair of headlights was moving forward. The truck! Steven was coming for me!
Instinctively I ran not forward but sideways, feeling like I had to stay out of the beam of the headlights. Then I dropped to the ground in a crouch and looked back. The headlights were still moving straight forward, bouncing a little across the unpaved road. I was well out of their range. If I just stayed put, I’d be invisible here in the dark. Was it the white pickup? I couldn’t tell for sure. It was too dark and the vehicle was too far away. All I could see in the blackness were two beams of light shining on the ground in front of them.
As I lay crouching in the dirt, I watched the vehicle move farther away from me. Now I could see red taillights getting smaller and smaller until they were out of sight.
If that was Steven and the boys, I wondered if there’d been trouble when he woke up and found me gone. What had Jack told him? How was Sam now? All my crazy fears about them tracking me down and holding me hostage again or shooting me disappeared, but I still worried about the boys and what would happen to them.
Suddenly I felt bad for lying to Jack, for promising him I’d come back. But I had to save myself, didn’t I? And he’d pulled a gun on me. I knew it was because he was scared to death, but that didn’t make it any less dangerous.
Once I got out of this mess, got to safety, I could get help for Jack and Sam too. When the police heard the whole story, they’d track Steven down in that white pickup. Would the boys be okay with Steven until I could get help? I needed to keep moving.
I stood up and looked around me. Nothing but black night as far as I could see. I looked up at the sky and the millions and millions of stars. I’ve always loved looking at the night sky out where there aren’t any lights to mess up the view, but tonight looking at all those stars overhead made me feel like a tiny pinpoint in the universe. I didn’t really like that feeling, so to take my mind off how small and insignificant I was, I turned on the backlight of the GPS to check my course. I still had 1.8 miles to go to the highway. At this rate, it would take me hours.
I started walking again, turning the backlight off after I was certain about my direction. The low battery was making me nervous. If my battery died, then what?
I had to focus on the positive. For one thing, it wasn’t cold outside. Also, it was a good thing I’d only hurt my head. What if I’d broken a leg or something? And I had my GPS. And Steven had pulled off the highway just outside of a town, which was a really lucky thing. I thought about how desolate some of the stretches of the 60 were—miles and miles of nothing. Even if I had to walk all the way into town, I was still within four miles. It easily could have been twenty or thirty. Things could’ve been so much worse.
I walked along in the darkness trying to keep myself in a straight line, going in the direction that I felt was taking me closer and closer to the 60. I kept the light off as much as possible now. I’d only check it occasionally to make sure I was still heading in the right direction. I was really starting to feel okay.
Until—suddenly—the bottom dropped out from under me.
My feet touched nothing but air. I was tumbling through space.
I landed on my side with a thud. It took me a couple of seconds to figure out that I’d actually fallen. I lay there in the exact same position I’d landed in till my brain finally kicked into gear.
It all happened so fast. There must have been a ditch or an embankment or something that I’d fallen down. Just like that, suddenly there was nothing but air under my feet and I’d fallen.
I sat up and—
It was gone! My hands were empty! The GPS—oh my God, where was the GPS? I patted the ground around me slowly at first, and then when I felt nothing but rocks and dirt and gravel, I moved my hands around in wider and wider circles.
Nothing! Where was it? Where was it?
I was on my knees, my arms stretched out to their full length, sweeping them along the invisible ground in front of me in a wide arc. It had to be here. It had to be. I leaned forward so that I could reach farther. Any second now I’d find it.
Now I was slowly crawling around on my knees. Little pebbles dug into my bare skin. I kept moving my hands over the area all around me. Maybe it was just out of my reach.
“Come on! This can’t be happening!” I yelled. My hand brushed against something smooth and cool, but when I got my fingers around it I could tell it was just an empty bottle. I tossed it out of range and kept desperately patting the ground around me.
Nothing! It wasn’t there! I stayed on my hands and knees, afraid to move too far from the spot where I’d fallen. I had to find it! It had to be here!
Being careful not to move too far from the spot where I landed, I crawled around on my hands and knees and felt around in the dark space. My eyes strained to see something in the blackness in front of me.
Maybe I spent ten minutes looking. Maybe it was ten hours.
At some point, I just snapped. “NOOOO!” I bellowed at the top of my lungs.
And then I burst into tears. I stayed there on my hands and knees and sobbed like a two-year-old. Loud, racking cries that shook my whole body. Tears streamed down my face and my nose ran so much I had to keep wiping the snot away with my sleeve.
I had not cried like that in a long time.
The whole time I sat there bawling my eyes out, there was a part of my brain that seemed detached from the rest of me, and it was wondering, how did this happen? How did everything take such a sudden turn?
How did I get here? How did I go from being in my own safe bedroom a few hours ago to being out here—all alone in the desert? How?
“Help! Somebody help me!” I screamed. “Help me! Help!” I screamed till my throat was raw. “HELP!”
There was nobody to hear me. Nobody to help me. Nobody out here in the dark night to come to my rescue.
I was all alone with nothing—no food, no water, no light. And now no GPS. I had nothing. Absolutely nothing.
I cried until I was all dried up, and then I lay there curled up on the ground, my chest having little spasms from all the crying I’d done. I closed my eyes and lay still. I could die out here tonight and I wouldn’t even care anymore. Let the coyotes and vultures feast on the leftovers.
Chapter 26
It was still dark when I woke up. I knew I’d been asleep, but I had no idea for how long. I lay there, flat on my back, staring up into the blackness.
Only now the black looked more gray. Was it my imagination or was the black not so black any more? I stared into it. It really did seem lighter. Maybe I was going crazy. Maybe it was an optical illusion.
I sat up. No, it wasn’t my imagination. I could actually make out a few things around me now. I looked in the direction of the horizon, and part of it definitely had a lighter color to it. I sat still and noticed the sound of a bird trilling off in the distance. Little by little, I watched my surroundings come into view.
I could make out some bluish-gray bushes nearby growing close to the ground. Sagebrush, I thought. About three feet away I could see the ground rise up steeply. That must have been where I stumbled. I stood up and stretched. My hand reached up to feel the bump on my head. It was still sore, but it didn’t feel quite as swollen as it had last night.
My throat was completely parched, and I tried to work up a little spit so I could swallow. What I wouldn’t give for an ice cold bottle of water right now. But at least I didn’t feel so foggy and confused. I felt semi-rested from having slept for a little while.
Now that I could see in front of me, I scanned the dark, coppery-colored ground for my GPS. I saw something round just inches away from me. I reached out for it. It was a rock. In the growing light, I could see that it wasn’t an ordinary rock. It had veins of some mineral running through it. I knew there were mines all over around here, and I wondered if this might actually be worth something. It looked really cool, like no rock I’d ever seen before. It was roundish—a bumpy, slightly misshapen ball, a little smaller than a golf ball. Its surface was kind of smooth with a few little cracks in it. It had a gray color to it, and the veins in it were an even darker gray. It felt nice and heavy in my hand.
