I look around the room as the light from outside is shining bright. I was not wrong when I said the wind would knock this place down. Light shines in through the cracks around the two windows in the front. I walk over to the fridge, not even attempting to open it. "Try not to touch anything," Jacob says, and I turn to look at the room. The lone table in the middle has a bottle of booze sitting on it. I look over at the door as people enter. A black bag sits in the corner, but no one has noticed it.
"Are you okay?" Ethan looks at me, and I nod.
"Killed or be killed." I repeat what he used to say when he came back from the military. He doesn’t really tell me many stories about that time, and to be honest, I’m not one to ask. If he wants to share things with me, he will. If he doesn’t, then that’s okay, too.
"Did you see that?" I motion with my chin toward the bag. He looks at the bag as we both walk over to it.
"Should you touch that?" he asks as I squat, grabbing the bag. "Well, too late now." I’m reaching to unzip it when something white catches my eye from the side. Two people come in, making a commotion with the stretcher, and Ethan walks to them. Turning my head back around to the side, I stay here glued to the spot as my eyes take in what looks like a shoe right under the bed. Standing, I walk toward the rusty cast-iron bed. The lone mattress on there is covered with yellow stains.
I squat down and tilt my head to peer under it, and the first thing I see is black hair. My heart speeds up even more than it did before. Everything around me is suddenly quiet, or at least that’s how it seems to me.
Everything except the beating of my heart can be heard as I push the bed a little, and then I see her long black hair. "Oh my God." I move the bed to see the woman with her face turned away from me. "Ethan!" I shout over my shoulder at him and see him looking back at me.
His eyebrows press together. “I need to move the bed,” I say frantically, getting up. Everyone looks over at me, wondering what the hell has gotten into me. I lift the bed and flip it over on its side, and the sound of everyone’s gasps fills the room.
"Get the gun!" Jacob shouts to Ethan, but the only thing I can focus on is the woman lying there not moving. Her blue jeans are dirty and dusty, the flannel shirt on her torn in places. I push the bed against the wall as I take her in. I lean over, and I will never forget the sight of her face. If she wasn’t beaten so badly, she would look like a sleeping doll.
One eye is swollen shut, and a cut on her cheek left a dried streak of blood. I pick up one of her hands, and her body feels like ice. My hand goes to her wrist to confirm she’s alive. I feel the soft throb of her heartbeat ever so faint.
"There’s another body in here. She’s barely alive,” I say into the radio. Looking over, I see they’ve already loaded Mayson’s father onto the stretcher and draped a white sheet over him.
I slip one hand under her legs and another under her back, taking her in my arms.
Her head bobs like a rag doll as I turn to walk out of the cabin with her. As I approach the ambulance, I feel wetness hit my arm from her head. Looking down, I see her black hair is matted with blood.
"Oh my God." I hear my father say from beside me. “What the fuck?"
"She was under the bed," I say, my breath contracting in my chest as I step up in the ambulance and look at my father. “Get someone."
"The stretcher is inside," he says, and I see one of the EMTs running out.
"We need to transport the other guy,” he says, huffing at me.
"The other guy is fucking dead!" I shout at him. “She has a chance, so either you get your ass in that chair and drive”—I motion with my head to the front—“or someone else will.”
“I will,” Ethan says from behind him. “You stay here and wait for the other bus.”
“That isn’t how this works,” he says, and Ethan just looks past him as he closes one back door and then the other.
I hear the driver’s door open and then close, and then the passenger door follows. "Hurry up!" I shout at them and then look down at the woman in my arms. "Don’t give up,” I say softly. “Don’t you dare give up."