Ashes, Ashes

16 - Deadfall

"Logan." 

"I know." 

"What are we going to do?" 

"I don't know." I leaned against the window frame, trying not to look at the body in the corner but finding it impossible not to let my gaze wander in that direction. 

Abby had a hand over her mouth, probably trying to block out the stench. 

I tried to think. The insistent pounding in my head had faded to more of a dull ache, but I didn't feel any sharper. I wondered how the others were doing. Without a phone or a car, we were sitting ducks. It was either walk miles out of here to the highway and hope to bump into somebody...or sit tight at the cabin and wait for someone to come looking for us. 

People knew we were missing. If we didn't come back by the end of the weekend, they'd send someone. 

We'd just have to wait...and be sure Parker didn't kill us first. 

"Get out of there," I said, sounding very tired even to my own ears. "Let's just...get out of there and regroup." 

"It looks like the door is just dead-bolted from the inside," Abby said, and I could tell she was trying real hard not to acknowledge the body on the floor. "I think I should be able to just open it up and walk out. So that's one perk." 

"Yeah," I agreed, trying to sound encouraging. "I'll meet you around the side." 

I pulled away from the window and slid sideways around the building to the door. I heard the click of the lock on the other side and tugged the door open. It pulled toward me with a low creak, and I thought I heard something else, some more distant click, and I frowned, feeling like something had happened but not yet understanding what. 

Abby stood on the other side of the door frame, and I glimpsed it over her shoulder, a split second, a flash of movement, and a wet sound like punching through the skin of a rotten pumpkin -- and then her expression changed to confusion, and we stared at each other wordless for a moment that stretched long in slow-motion horror. 

Her mouth hung open, pulled into a slack "o" of surprise, and her eyes went wide. Confusion flared, then her gaze hardened, went glassy and distant. Dark blood gurgled out from between her lips, and her knees went weak, collapsing out from under her. 

But she did not fall. Instead, she stayed in place, weightless now, suspended like a fish on the end of a hook. Her hands and feet jerked. 

All of this took just a few seconds, but it seemed to last forever. I reeled backward, stumbling away from her body in the door frame, and tripped backward on the snowy path. I landed hard on my ass, a jolt of pain traveling up the base of my spine, falling back on my elbows. Cold spread up my back, snow creeping under the waistband of my pants, numbing my bare arms. 

From the ground, it was easy to see how the trap had been laid. A deadfall rigged to the door. When the door opened, swinging outward, it triggered the pendulum free-fall of the weighted axe, the sharpened blade of which was now buried deep in the back of Abby's skull. 

If she hadn't been standing there, it would have kept swinging right into my face. It would have been me hanging there, impaled on the point of an axe, or else brained from the impact, gray stuff dripping out of my ears. 

My stomach rolled, and I thought I was going to throw up, but when I opened my mouth it was a scream that erupted. I just lay back on my elbows, unable to look away from Abby's body, and screamed and screamed. 

And then a shadow fell over me, the approaching footsteps crunching in the snow, and I cringed away and tried to find my feet but not before a hand caught my arm, fingers wrapping around my numb, bare wrist.