Voracious - Alice Henderson [125]
When they reached his blue Toyota, he looked up, his eyes haunted. “I’m fine,” he said robotically, as if the question had just registered in his brain. He fished out his keys.
She stared at him for several long minutes. He looked out of place there, her friend appearing in the midst of a nightmare. He was part of the world back home, where, as lonely as things were, they still made sense.
“George,” she said finally. “I don’t want you to come with me.”
He furrowed his brow. “What? Are you crazy? You can’t go against that thing alone.”
She shook her head. “That thing is practically unstoppable. I don’t want to be mean here, but it just wouldn’t matter if you were with me.”
George threw up his hands in exasperation. “It took both of us to throw it off the train!”
“Yeah, but there isn’t going to be a train up there. Just miles of desolate backcountry and a remote cabin to get killed in.”
“I could help get your friend out of there.”
“If he’s even still alive when I get there.”
“Well, you must believe he is, if you’re going to go through with this.”
She hoped he was alive, though the creature could still beat her there, loping through the woods on all fours in a direct route while she had to stick to the roads.
She sighed and took a minute to collect her thoughts. George simply couldn’t come, as much as she wanted him there for sheer comfort’s sake. In reality, she was likely heading up there to her own death. She didn’t want him to get killed, too. “George, please listen to me. That thing has killed hundreds of people, maybe more. I don’t want you to go.”
He crossed his arms defiantly. “I’m not going to let you go alone.”
Since the creature had shown up, Madeline had enlisted the help of numerous people. Steve could have been killed. George, too. The ranger in the backcountry station didn’t even have a chance to meet her before the creature killed him. Now Noah had gone to face it. She had a stake in this and had to go up there to do something. But she couldn’t live with herself if her only friend got killed in the process. This thing wanted her, and she was going to face it alone.
George didn’t belong here. He could die here.
Suddenly Madeline knew what she had to do. Lunging forward, she pushed George to the ground. He cried out in surprise, landing on his shoulder. Wrenching the keys from his hand, she fumbled with them quickly, located the car key, and inserted it into the lock.
“What are you doing?” he asked, suddenly come to life. He started to get up. She aimed a well-placed boot at his chest and knocked him back down, robbing him of his breath. Twisting the key in the lock, she unlocked the door and wrested it open.
George coughed, bringing his hands to his chest as she jumped in the driver’s seat and slammed the door behind herself. Her hand quickly snapped down the lock, sealing her within.
Staggering, George got to his feet and grabbed at the handle. His fists landed on the glass of the driver’s window. “Madeline! Don’t do this!”
She started the car up and pulled away slowly, being sure not to run over George or his feet. She gave him a sad look through the window. “I can’t be responsible for your death, George,” she yelled through the glass.
“And I don’t want to read about yours!” he shouted back as she drove away.
She placed her hand flat on the window, silently said good-bye to her friend, and roared out of the parking lot, heading toward the cabin.
Madeline didn’t know what she’d find as she closed the final mile to the cabin. Maybe the creature would already be there, gleaming spike driven deeply into Noah’s bubbling flesh. Maybe she’d beat the creature there and could talk Noah into leaving with her. Her hands felt slick on the wheel of George’s car, and she worried for her friend she’d left in the parking lot.
Ahead, lights came into