Endurance - Jack Kilborn [98]
Don’t attack them, and they won’t bite.
It seemed like an eternity, but the rats eventually climbed off, continuing on their way. Except for the one tangled in her hair. Letti bit her lower lip and grabbed it behind the head. Then she gently pulled it free and tossed it into the darkness.
The cell phone light came back on, and Mal knelt next to her.
“Oh, shit.”
“I’ve got something in my foot,” Letti said.
He shined the phone’s screen at her legs, and Letti saw what she’d stepped on.
A skeletal hand. One of the finger bones is sticking through my arch.
“I got it,” Deb said. Without warning, she yanked the old bone free.
Letti bled like wine being poured.
“Can you make it?” Deb asked.
“Do I have a choice?”
“Bring the light over here, Mal.”
Mal came over, pointing his phone at the wall of suitcases.
But they weren’t suitcases anymore.
They were corpses. Stacked up everywhere. A wall of decaying human beings.
Letti flexed her toes, and winced. It felt like there was something still stuck in there. The thought that a fingernail, or part of a bone, was still in her foot was worse than being trampled by rats.
How strange the rodents just ran past like that. Almost as if something were chasing them…
Deb found an older body—a man dressed in a moldering suit—and began to untie the laces on his shoes. When she tried to pull off the shoe, the foot came with it.
Letti appreciated her efforts, but, yuck.
Deb managed to empty out the shoe and she threw it, and a holey, smelly sock, at Letti’s feet. Letti tied the sock around her wound. The old leather shoe was big enough to fit over the makeshift bandage, but when she tied it the laces broke off. She managed to make a good knot, and then Deb tossed her its partner.
“Come on,” Deb said.
She and Mal helped Letti up. When she took her first step, she felt like crying. It hurt worse than childbirth. Letti thought about telling them to go on ahead of her, but then remembered Kelly and willingly bore the pain.
“There’s a gate,” Mal said. “Right up ahead.”
Letti limped forward. A gate meant Kelly got out. Maybe she was nearby. Maybe she was—
“Oh, shit.”
That’s apparently Mal’s catch phrase.
“What is—?”
“Shh!” Mal hissed. “We need to go back. Fast.”
Letti shook her head. She wasn’t going back in that house, ever. She was going to find her daughter. Pushing past Mal, she shoved the wrought iron gate, welcoming the cool night air.
That’s when she saw it.
A mountain lion.
It was big, and in the moonlight Deb could see the blood on its face.
That must be what the rats were running from.
Letti backed up, but the lion had already noticed her. It dropped low to the ground, stalking forward, taking its time. Letti tried to close the gate, but it had no latch. The cat was going to get in and slaughter them all.
“Hold this” Mal said, handing Letti the cell and pushing her aside. Then he reached for something on his belt.
The plastic bag with his severed hand in it.
“Here, kitty kitty kitty,” Mal said. “I’ve got a treat for you.”
Then he threw the bag into the woods.
Incredibly, the cat bounded after it, vanishing into the underbrush.
“Well,” Mal said. “I guess that came in handy.”
Then the trio ran like crazy in the opposite direction, blending into the forest, dodging trees and rocks and bushes. Each step was agony for Letti. Pain, compounded by uncertainty for Kelly.
The cougar had blood on its face. Had it gotten my little girl?
They ran until Deb tripped, falling onto her suitcase. Letti helped her up.
“Can you make it?’ Letti asked.
“Do I have a choice?”
They trekked onward. Letti knew that she might be getting close to Kelly, or might be getting farther away from her. She had to know which.
“Hold up,” she told Mal and Deb. “I have to call for my daughter.”
“We’ll help,” Mal said.
Even though Letti was exhausted, frazzled, and in pain, the gesture touched her.
“If you do, it will give away our position.”
“Then we fight,” Deb said. “Your mother gave us a chance. The least we can do is