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I swung down off the table and pushed him over. He reached for his neck and I went for the key, ripping it right through his worn belt-loop.
Key in hand, I ran to Arlen, letting out a quick breath of relief when it easily fit into the padlock holding her chain on.
“Bill?” someone called from outside of the barn just as her chain hit the floor.
We froze and looked at one another. The person called out again, sounding a little closer. Bill stood up and stumbled forward, making an attempt to yell for help.
With the saw no longer wedged in his neck, blood flowed freely, spurting around meaty fingers.
“We need to go,” Arlen rushed out.
She grabbed my hand and pulled us closer to the wall, using shadows to cover us.
“Bill!” a woman screamed from just outside the barn’s doorway.
She barreled right past us and we wasted no time slipping out. I still heard her screaming as we took off through a field to the right of the depleted building. A screen door slammed shut shortly after.
“They went that way,” were the only clear words I understood over the loud commotion.
“Shit! How many of them are there?” I asked as we zigzagged our way through the tall grass.
“Five…four…” Arlen responded, before gasping out, “Woods!”
We made a break for it, hearing multiple male voices calling out behind us. My heart felt as if it were going to beat out of my damn chest. Adrenaline had my brain so focused on getting away I almost forgot about the bloody hole leaking down my side.
The drizzle had turned into a light rain and the ground was wet. I saw the steep embankment but Arlen didn’t. I managed to slide into a stop; she fell forward and grabbed for me, taking us down together.
A list of expletives flew from my mouth as my body rolled over hers and we tumbled like logs. Leaves and mud clung to me like Velcro. The pain in my side suddenly hit me like a hammer to a nail, slightly blurring my vision.
“Come on girl, we gotta move.” Arlen recovered first and grabbed my upper arm, practically dragging me until I was running beside her again—barely.
She was in pretty good shape for having not eaten the past two or three days. The ground was uneven and neither of us seemed to have a clue where we were—not that it mattered, because we sure as shit didn’t make it very far.
They had to have seen us long before we saw them. This time, there was no stopping. I slammed right into him, and it was as if he’d been waiting for me to do just that. His hands gripped my forearms to steady me, not push me away.
From my peripheral, I saw Arlen apprehended by a redhead and another dark-haired man with a beard. I attempted to turn my head to make sure she was okay, but I was stuck. I had never stepped in quicksand before, but I imagined the sensation was similar to this.
He had the darkest eyes I’d ever seen. I blinked, thinking the pain was affecting how I saw what was right in front of me.
Nope, I was still staring into two black holes with endless depth. I saw sorrow, pain, and so much anger sunken within them that it was almost like looking in a mirror—a shattered mirror with jagged edges.
I smiled. I was a bloody, muddy mess, but I smiled, and he smiled back. That alone would have knocked me right back on my ass if he wasn’t holding me up. It was like déjà vu; he felt so familiar to me.
Before I could open my mouth to speak, he had a hand tightly wrapped around my throat. He spun me around and pressed his brick chest against my back. I reached up to remove his damn hand when two men came sliding down the embankment much more gracefully than we just had.
“Those lags belong to us,” one of the men said as they approached, unmistakably kin to cannibal Bill.
“Do they?” Romero challenged lazily.
The deep timbre of his voice sent a chill straight down my spine.
“If she belongs to you, why is my hand wrapped around her throat?”
The other man opened his mouth to respond but was swiftly cut off.
“We don’t belong to no bottom feeders!” Arlen yelled, struggling to break away from the dark haired man that was now holding her in a chokehold.
“We don’t want any trouble, Romero. We just want the girls,” the more intelligible one conceded. There was a nervous hitch in his voice that reminded me of how well known the Savages were and how people purposely avoided them at all costs.
