Page 32 of Deadly Obsession

TWENTY-SIX

SERA

The figure grew smaller and smaller until it was gone altogether.

At the speed Danielle was driving, it wasn’t long before the cabin was back in view.

In fact, we were practically there and she wasn’t slowing down.

If anything, she was speeding up. When I looked up to Danielle, her face was frozen, her eyes locked on to the rearview mirror.

At first glance, I thought she was hyperfocused but I quickly realized she was in shock.

“Danielle!” I screamed at the same time Brian shouted something unintelligible from the back.

Danielle shook her head, coming out of her trance. “Oh, fuck, fuck, fuck!” She yanked the steering wheel to the side, nearly missing the light post in the front yard.

“No! Not that way!” Brian called out a little clearer, the truck jumping and rocking as it ran over something large.

The moment it was level again, Danielle slammed on the brakes, put the vehicle in park, dropped her forearms and head onto the steering wheel, and began to sob. “Fuck! What’re we going to do, guys?”

The answer was: I had no fucking clue . But we couldn’t sit in this truck and cry about it. We needed to let James loose. Surely the appearance of this other masked man while he was tied up in the closet would prove his innocence?

Reaching out a hand, I patted Danielle’s back. “First thing’s first, we need to get inside and get James out. He was in the military. I’m sure he can protect us.”

Her only response was a nod of her head as she opened the truck door and stepped outside. Following her lead, I did the same, sprinting towards her when I heard her scream again.

“What?” I asked. But I didn’t need her to answer me. My eyes landed on what had caused the truck to jump so abruptly. In front of the driver’s rear tire was Lola’s mostly-covered body. Her head now exposed and her face nearly unrecognizable.

Brian glanced down from the back of the truck and gagged. “Oh god, Lola!” He quickly turned away, bile spewing out of his mouth and onto the cab.

Snapping into action, I grabbed the blanket and recovered Lola’s face. “Guys, there’s nothing we can do for her anymore. She’s gone. She’s just a corpse now! But we aren’t. We still have a chance. Danielle, help me get Brian down, then get the gun and let’s get inside!”

Dropping the tailgate, I ushered Brian forward, and soon Danielle and I had him out of the truck and I was helping him up the stairs as best as I could with his arm slung over my shoulder. I could tell he was attempting to take on most of the weight with the way he was staggering.

The moment we stepped through the open front door, my eyes went to the pantry. James would know what to do .

Danielle and I helped Brian to the nearest couch, setting him down as gently as possible. “I’ll get James. He can help us move Jade somewhere for now.”

My shoulder was radiating with pain, but the bleeding wasn’t too bad. Although I knew I’d need to clean it and bandage it up soon. First, though, I needed to get to James. Without even waiting for Danielle’s response, I sprinted over to the pantry door and threw it open.

“James!” My heart fell.

He was gone, and all that was left was the rope that had bound him. I’d completely forgotten that I’d sneaked him the knife, and now I had to admit as much to my friends.

“Fuck! James, where are you?”

I took a deep breath and headed towards the living room, where the others were taking turns being hysterical and comforting each other.

I couldn’t bring myself to approach them just yet.

Instead, I made my way back outside to James’s truck.

Stepping over Lola without looking down at her, I opened the back door and began to rummage through the interior.

I had no idea if I truly knew who James was anymore, but I was certain that a man like him would have a few survival items hidden around.

“There we are,” I said out loud to myself when I pulled out a red medical bag from under the back seat. It was full of supplies I didn’t know all the uses for.

I eagerly grabbed the gauze, a big bandage, and the medical tape. Digging a little deeper into the bag, I randomly grasped a small white bottle with the bold letters VA on the cap.

“Oxycodone. Yes, please.” Returning the bag to the spot where I’d found it and shutting the door, I stepped back over Lola and headed inside.

“Where’s James?” Brian questioned the moment I entered the room.

“He’s gone,” I said quickly, then tried to change the topic. “But look! I found some really good painkillers. Here, take one. It’ll help.” I attempted to open the bottle but the pain in my shoulder spiked, making me drop it.

Luckily, Danielle was there to pick it up and open it, dispensing a pill and placing it in Brian’s palm before handing him the only drink in reach. A bottle of Fireball. “What do you mean he’s gone , Sera?” she said in a broken voice.

Brian swallowed the pill, chasing it with three gulps of the cinnamon-flavored whiskey. Danielle snatched it from him and took just as many.

“Right, I tied him up perfectly. He couldn’t have gotten loose,” Brian added.

Danielle placed a pill into my waiting hand, and I popped it into my mouth before grabbing the whiskey and taking a quick shot.

“I may have sneaked him a knife when I ran in there earlier.” I moved over to the sofa chair, carefully pulling my hoodie off till I was in just my black Sullen Art sports bra, and examined the wound. It really wasn’t as bad as it felt.

“You did what? So he isn’t innocent and that was him out there!” Brian yelled, and I flinched out of habit. Ever since Micheal, I couldn’t bear to be yelled at.

Thankfully, Danielle came to my rescue. “Brian, there’s no way that was him.

He’d have to be the Flash to beat us out there in the truck,” she said, but her tone told me she wasn’t so sure either.

“Sera, let me help you with that. I’m a vet tech back home.

Not the same as a nurse, but I know how to work a bandage. ”

So much for none of us knowing more than CPR. Then again, I didn’t know how much of a difference there was between animal patients and human patients.

It took Danielle a moment to walk over to the table of liquor and swipe up a bottle of vodka with a blank look on her face.

“What’s that? Fuck!” I hissed as she pulled off the top and poured the alcohol onto my open wound.

“That’s for setting James loose without telling either of us,” she said coldly without even looking at me.

Then she took the gauze and bandages from my lap and began working on my shoulder.

“It was just a small buckshot pellet. When we escape this place, you’ll have to have a doctor actually dig it out of you so you don’t get an infection.

” She spoke softly while working some of the gauze into the hole in my shoulder with her finger.

It hurt but the pain killer was already starting to kick in. I raised the whiskey bottle to my mouth and took another shot. A little more couldn’t hurt? I liked pain, but I think I’d found my line. Getting shot wasn’t going to become a new fetish for me.

“Look, we don’t know where James went. He could have run for help.

There’s a lake not far from here. He could be out there right now, trying to make it across to one of the other cabins and get us help,” I stated, my eyes shifting towards the sliding glass doors, imagining that I could see him right now, shoulder-deep in the icy water, attempting to save us all.

Once Danielle was done patching me up, the two of us went around and checked that all the entrances were shut, locked, and covered.

We’d all agreed that our best bet at this point was to bunker down and wait for help.

Attempting to pass the time, we engaged in a spontaneous game of “fuck, marry, and kill” but after the twentieth round, we fell silent.

Aside from the growling of our stomachs.

After we’d watched what happened to Jade when she ate the ice cream, none of us would dare consume anything, apart from the water straight from the tap, or the alcohol apparently.

An hour later, Brian limped over to the table, scanning the bottles of liquor, appearing to decide that if death was upon us, he didn’t wish to be coherent.

Danielle, on the other hand, was pacing the room. Shotgun in hand and eyes darting from the front door to where Jade still sat on the couch with a blanket over her, just like Lola.

I’d actually been about to dip off when the muffled sound of a distant gunshot broke the silence. Danielle rushed over to the window and peeked through the closed curtain, while Brian and I sat up and stared in her direction.