CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

 

MEG

 

THE STREAM HIT HIM IN the face so hard it drove him back a few steps. She made sure to keep her tank top pulled up over her face. Did her best to exhale and not draw any air in.

Silence at first. Inexplicable dead silence. Then a moan that seemed to come from the center of him. Then it started.

“Jesus! My eyes!” Jack was paddling on the floor, arms and legs moving like he was swimming, but he wasn’t. He wasn’t trying to crawl either. He was simply writhing in pain.

His hand came up to his eyes and cupped them, but that seemed to make it worse.

“My throat!” He was gargling and heaving. He turned his head and puked up his dinner.

The smell hit Meg and her stomach rolled.

She was eyeing her own tripwire, Jack, and his proximity to the bat.

She’d have to make a break for it soon before he got his wits about him.

He’d hunched back on his knees like he was attempting some impromptu yoga and moving into child’s pose. He cupped his eyes, thrust his hands out, cupped them again, repeating the motion over and over again. Because nothing was comfortable and nothing helped.

Her brain tuned back into his screaming.

“If I’m fucking blind I’m coming to kill you,” he bellowed. He turned his head, puked up some drool. His eyes streamed with tears, his throat worked with the effort to breathe.

Bear repellent. Who knew?

“So far you haven’t done so well with the killing me thing.” She said it softly to make sure he couldn’t pinpoint her very well. She wanted to get past him.

He sat up on his knees, eyes swollen to slits, red, weeping. He looked like some deranged prairie dog.

A wave of hysterical laughter rippled out of her mouth and he turned toward the sound, infuriated and clearly personally offended.

This made her laugh harder.

“Bitch,” he ground out. Gagged. Spit. Then vomited again.

Meg moved toward him, eyeing the rope she’d tied tight between the bench and the small RV sink.

She needed to clear him and her own booby trap. She’d pulled at the plywood in the back of the vehicle but it was glued down well despite its age and wouldn’t budge. She had to get past him to get out.

Another step and he froze, moving his head back and forth like an animal scenting the wind.

“Worried now, Meg? I’m blocking the exit.”

She thought to climb up on the table and possibly jump down over him and the rope but he somehow knew and grabbed the bat, waving it before him viciously. The RV was comfortable for traveling, but still a tight fit. No way would she escape a blow from the bat if she went that way.

She grabbed the bear repellent to hit him with another stream but the trigger jammed. She shook it, tried again, and still nothing.

“Uh-oh. No more fire juice to hide behind.”

Meg took a deep breath and backpedaled three steps. He moved to accommodate, trying to track her by sound.

The moment he turned slightly to the right, she barreled toward him on the left.

She pushed off hard to clear the taut rope and just as she approached it, he grabbed her and she was falling.

She went down hard, landing on that knee again. Of course. She screamed and he laughed.

His grip on her was hard. His fingers rigid like bone. The fumes of the bear spray came off him in nearly visible waves and she gagged from the closeness.

“Not pleasant, is it?” he snarled in her face. His face no longer the handsome, lanky boy next door. Now he looked like something out of a horror movie. Face blackened and open at the cheek, drool and blood and vomit leaking from his mouth, eyes swollen nearly shut. His hair was a mess, he smelled, he was so sweaty and slick with repellent it was like wrestling an eel.

She kneed him in the crotch and he went still, air escaping him. She allowed herself a breath. Which is why she didn’t see the punch coming. The uppercut rattled her brain and her teeth. Her ears erupted with a concerto of ringing.

She scrambled away from him and tried to move past him but he took the bat, choked up on it, and hit her in the bad knee.

Meg screamed and, on the inhale, got a snoot full of the pepper spray. She started to cough, scrambling on the floor, trying to get her knees under her, scratching and punching as much as she could.

She managed to get herself turned around and began to crawl to the door.

Jack had gotten up on his knees partway. He was swinging blindly, but in the confines of the walkway, he was landing his blows.

The bat came down against the back of her thighs and she screamed. She couldn’t help it.

“There it is. That’s what I like to hear,” he growled. “You have a lovely scream. I knew you would.” Then he retched again and she managed to get a few feet by soldier crawling.

He landed another blow along the back of her calves and she gritted her teeth, bit her tongue, whimpered, but refused to scream for him.

“Oh, don’t hold out on me,” he snarled. She moved forward a little more and he grabbed her by the ankle. Her legs throbbed from mid-thigh to ankle. She had no idea if he’d done any damage but it hurt.

He wouldn’t let go. The door was so much closer now. She could hear the crickets outside. The sound of freedom.

“Where are you going?” he asked. He was having fun now. Despite the pain in what looked like every part of him, he was enjoying this.

That pissed her off. She reared back, hooked her fingers, and dug her fingertips into the ruined mess of his cheek. She pushed hard into the raw meat of his face.

Jack bayed like a dying dog. He let loose like nothing she’d ever heard.

“I’m going out!” she said when he buckled under the pain she’d just inflicted. She moved as fast as she could on hands and questionable knees toward the door.

She was right on the lip when Jack’s body weight hit her. Her head was out the RV door, the rest of her trapped inside with him.