The Bodies Left Behind

reached for the remote control. Upstairs, a door slammed.

    BRYNN AND MICHELLE were making their way through scruffy tangled forest about three hundred yards north of the Feldmans’ house. Here the trees were denser, mostly lush pine, spruce and fir. The view of the lake was cut off.
    The car alarm had been an unfortunate mistake. But, since it had happened, Brynn hoped that she’d turned it around to work to their advantage, making the men think that it was an intentional distraction and thatthe women were escaping by canoe to the far shore of the lake. In fact, though, they’d used the boat only to paddle downstream a short distance and cross to the opposite shore of the creek. They’d propped up life preservers to look like two huddling passengers and then shoved the canoe into the speedy current, which propelled the vessel into the lake.
    They’d then hurried as best they could, given Michelle’s ankle, away from the lake house enclave, north toward Marquette State Park.
    When the gunfire came, as Brynn expected, she was ready and let go a fierce, harrowing scream. Then abruptly stopped as if shot. She’d known the men would be half deafened and, with the confusing echoes from the hills, couldn’t tell that the scream had come from someplace else entirely. The trick might not fool them for long but she was sure she’d bought some time.
    “Can we stop now?” Michelle asked.
    “Why, does your ankle hurt?”
    “Well, sure it does. But I mean, let’s just wait here. They’ll be gone soon.” She was eating her snack crackers. Brynn looked at them. Michelle, reluctantly, it seemed, offered her some. She ate a handful hungrily.
    “We can’t stop. We have to keep going.”
    “Where?”
    “North.”
    “What does ‘north’ mean? Is there a cabin that way or something, or a phone?”
    “We’re getting as far away from them as we can. Into the park.”
    Michelle slowed. “Look at this place. It’s all a mess,it’s tangled and . . . well, a mess. There aren’t any paths. It’s freezing.”
    And you in that two-thousand-dollar coat . . . complaining, Brynn reflected.
    “There’s a ranger station maybe four, five miles from here.”
    “Five miles!”
    “Shhh.”
    “That’s bullshit. We can’t walk five miles through this.”
    “You’re in good shape. You run, right?”
    “On a treadmill at my health club. Not in places like this. And which way do we go? I’m already lost.”
    “I know the general direction.”
    “The woods? I can’t!”
    “We don’t have any choice.”
    “You don’t understand. . . . I’m afraid of snakes.”
    “They’re more afraid of you, believe me.”
    Michelle displayed the crackers. “This isn’t going to be enough food. Do you know about hypoglycemia? Everyone thinks it’s nothing. But I could faint.”
    Brynn said firmly, “Michelle, there are men out there who want to kill us. Snakes and your blood sugar really come pretty low on the scale of problems here.”
    “I can’t do it.” The woman reminded Brynn of Joey’s first day at elementary school: he’d planted his feet and refused to go. It took two days for her to persuade him to attend. In fact, Brynn now recognized similar signs of hysteria in Michelle’s face. The young woman stopped walking altogether. Her eyes were wide and she gestured broadly with twitchy hands. “I shop at WholeFoods. I buy coffee at Starbucks. This isn’t me, this isn’t my world. I can’t do it!”
    “Michelle,” Brynn said gently, “it’ll be okay. It’s only a state park. Thousands of people come through here every summer.”
    “On the paths, the trails.”
    “And we’re going to find one.”
    “But people get lost. I saw this thing on TV. This couple got lost and they froze to death and the animals ate their bodies.”
    “Michelle—”
    “No, I don’t want to go! Let’s hide here. We’ll find a place. Please. ” She looked as if she was going to cry.
    Brynn remembered that the poor woman had seen her friends shot down—and had nearly been killed herself. She tried to be patient. “No. That one man, at least, Hart, he’ll come after us as soon as he finds we tricked ’em with the boat. He won’t know for sure we came this way but he might guess.”
    Michelle looked back, her eyes zipping around in panic, her breath fast.
    “Okay?”
    Michelle ate another handful of crackers, not offering any to Brynn, and then shoved them back into her pocket. She gave a disgusted grimace.