Page 22 of Creed (Rock Hard Mountain Men #3)

Kayden

The staircase wasn’t as tall as I thought. Every time I’d been brought up and down that staircase while blinded with a bag over my head, it had felt like we were deep underground.

Now that I could see, it turned out it was only a single flight of stairs. Just sixteen steps stood between us and the outside.

Well, sixteen steps and a guard.

Creed tapped my chest and pushed me against the wall. “Wait here.”

I stayed exactly where he left me, listening in the dark as he vanished from sight around the corner. A moment later there was a small gasp, and then a heavy thud.

“Creed?” I called out, torn between avoiding detection and needing to know that he was all right.

My one-word question earned an immediate response, and Creed popped his head back around the corner.

“It’s all right. Come here and help me with this.”

Looking around the corner for myself, I found him standing there holding the unconscious body of the guard up by its arms. Under Creed’s instruction, I grabbed the guard’s feet, and together we dragged the man back down the stairs to our makeshift prison and locked him inside.

“Hopefully, I’ve timed this right,” Creed said once we’d finished.

“They’ll notice something is wrong as soon as the guards change shifts, but based on the schedule Robyn told me, that shouldn’t be for a few hours.

It’s not as much time as I’d like, but it should be enough for us to make our getaway. ”

“Then let’s get moving.”

Grabbing onto Creed’s hand again, mostly for my own assurance that I wouldn’t lose him in the dark, we headed outside.

The village wasn’t just old-fashioned in its customs, it was also old-fashioned in its technology. There were very few outdoor lights, and the few that did exist were only used to illuminate the main path.

There was also very little natural light.

Luck was on our side, and the moon was a mere sliver in the sky, barely any better than a new moon.

This made the night even darker than usual.

I could barely see my hand in front of my own face.

So long as we avoided the center of the village, we could easily go unnoticed.

It was also eerily quiet. Even my own breathing felt like it echoed. I stepped as carefully as I could and leaned in to whisper directly into Creed’s ear whenever I had to speak.

“Where are we meeting Robyn?”

“He said to meet him at the abandoned schoolhouse. It’s near the edge of the village, but apparently, it’s been shut down for a while. Not enough kids to make it worthwhile.”

It was a comprehensive answer, but it didn’t really help me.

I had no idea where the schoolhouse was located, or even which direction to go to get to the outer edge of the village.

I was glad Creed seemed to know where he was going, because if I was left to navigate on my own, I’d probably have stumbled my way right into Chester Grieve’s bedroom.

Give me proper roads and street signs and I could navigate my way across any unfamiliar city. However, in places like this, where none of the streets had names and everything was described with a mere cardinal direction, I was completely lost.

It was only going to get worse when we left the village behind and headed out into the forest.

With this in mind, I clung tighter to Creed’s hand.

The old schoolhouse looked like something out of a picture book.

It was a single room building that had once been painted red, though most of the paint was flaking off now, and even had a little steeple with a bell on top.

I could easily imagine the idyllic setting it had once created, and almost understood how people were originally sucked into the cult.

Now, however, the building just looked sad.

Robyn waited for us just inside the schoolhouse door, angled so that he could see out without anyone else seeing him.

“You made it out,” he greeted us when we arrived. There were too many lines on this child’s face. He looked stressed beyond his years, but some of those worry lines flattened out when he saw us.

His posture was also unnaturally hunched. At first, I thought this was also a result of the stress he was under, until we got closer, and I saw that he was carrying his sister on his back.

Mavis was small, even for a six-year-old, but Robyn was only twelve and his sister was half his size. There was also a large backpack sitting at his feet, completely stuffed to the brim. The bag was nearly the same size as his sister, and I had no idea how he’d managed to carry both out here.

Creed knelt beside the kids and placed his hand on the girl’s forehead. “Is she still not feeling well?”

Mavis didn’t even stir under Creed’s touch, and Robyn shook his head sadly.

“It’s just a cold. She’ll be fine.”

Worry gripped my heart. Robyn had told us about his sister’s illness before, but I hadn’t considered what that would mean for us. We were headed out into the wilderness with little more than the clothes on our backs. Even a simple cold could be dangerous for a child in that kind of environment.

“We’ll have to carry the little one,” Creed said, automatically reaching for the girl.

Robyn was understandably hesitant to hand over his sister, but Creed remained patient despite our tight time limit.

“I promise I’m not going to run off with her.

We have a long distance to travel. You won’t be able to carry her that far, and you’re no help to her if you wear yourself out trying. ”

Biting his lip with indecision, Robyn eventually nodded and transferred his sister onto Creed’s back. Then he tried to pick up the backpack, but I beat him to it and grabbed it for myself.

“Don’t worry about this. Just focus on yourself.”

Robyn eyed me with suspicion. “Are you sure? It’s heavy.”

I withheld my urge to laugh through the insult. Creed and I were almost the same size, but his bulk mostly came from muscle that had been honed over decades of training. My size clearly came from a life of too much fine dining mixed with hours sitting at a desk.

“I’ll manage,” I assured him as I slung the bag onto my back. Oddly enough, although the bag was large, it wasn’t as heavy as the pack I’d been carrying for our original hiking trip. Even over just a couple of days Creed had already helped whip me into better shape.

Once everything was settled, Robyn showed us to the tall fence surrounding the entire village. It was at least eight feet high, made of solid wood, and only had a few entry and exit points.

The more I saw of this village, the more it seemed like a prison disguised as a home. This was not a place meant for people to live freely.

“Over here,” Robyn said, waving us toward one particular board in the fence. “This board broke during a storm a few months ago, and no one bothered to fix it. I dug out under it as much as I could.”

In the dark it was hard to tell, but on closer inspection I could see where Robyn had excavated some of the dirt out from under the fence.

Based on the marks in the ground, he seemed to have done it by hand.

It wasn’t very deep, but once the loose board was moved out of the way, there was a decent size gap left.

Decent sized for a child, at least. Creed and I were another matter.

“Are we going to fit through there?” I whispered to Creed.

“Only one way to find out,” he replied, equally quiet.

Robyn went first, easily shimmying under the fence.

His sister was then passed through next.

We had to wake the poor girl up so she could crawl on her own.

Blearily eyes looked around, clearly confused, but she was drawn to the sound of her brother’s voice on the other side of the fence and followed it without question, crawling on her hands and knees in the dirt.

Then only Creed and I remained.

We shared a look, and Creed shrugged. “Here goes nothing.”

He had to lie flat in the dirt to even have a chance of fitting through the gap.

He couldn’t even prop himself up on his elbows to army crawl.

Instead, he had to reach forward and drag himself purely by his arms like the world’s most uncoordinated snake.

His shoulders could only fit through one at a time, and his feet kicked in the dirt for more traction to help push himself forward, but once the majority of his chest was through the fence, the rest of him followed pretty easily.

Once he was free, I shoved the backpack through the hole after him. Then I was the last one still trapped on this side of the fence.

Taking a deep breath, I lowered myself down onto the ground. Once I was face to face with the opening, it looked even smaller than I thought. It was a miracle Creed had even fit, and I could see fibers from his shirt stuck to the wood planks where he’d scraped along the fence.

Creed’s face appeared on the other side of the hole, turned at an odd angle where he was crouching in order to see me.

“It’s all right. Just go slow. And if you get stuck, don’t panic. Tensing up will only made it harder to fit through.”

I followed Creed’s technique, keeping the rest of my body flat and relaxed, and gripping onto either side of the hole in order to pull myself with just my arms. I wasn’t as strong as him. Dragging my entire weight left my arms trembling from the strain.

My head and shoulders fit through easier than Creed’s had, and for a moment I had hope that everything would go smoothly.

Then, when the side planks of the fence touched my stomach, I came to a sudden stop.

“Fuck,” I sighed under my breath and let my forehead fall to the dirt.

It was as I’d feared.

Creed and I were both large men, but Creed’s broadest point was his shoulders, which could be maneuvered to fit through one at a time.

My broadest point was my stomach, which couldn’t be manipulated nearly as well.

“It’s okay,” Creed said above my head. “Just stay relaxed and give me your hands.”