Survivor: 1 by J. F. Gonzalez

she
didn't look that bad.
    She walked back into the room just as Mr. Smith was
replacing the mattress. The old pee-stained mattress was resting on its side against the bedroom wall. He patted
the new mattress. "Have a seat. I'll be outside nailing up
that window." He exited the room and she stood there for
a moment, her mind numb and reeling. After a few minutes, she sat down.

    She heard him clomp outside to his vehicle, then a
few minutes later she heard him at the side of the cabin
outside the bedroom window. She heard the sound of
pounding along with his mutters, and then he began putting the wood up, securing it over the window. She
sighed and tried to drown out the sounds of Mr. Smith
hammering nails in the wood that would secure it to the
windowsill. The room was dark from the boards already
blocking the sun from the inside. She looked up at the
ceiling, feeling her eyes grow heavy with tears again. The
sound of those boards going up over the window was
like nailing the lid of her coffin.
    She sat on the bed and tried not to cry as Mr. Smith
worked on boarding up the window to her prison. Her
mind retraced yesterday's nightmare quickly: leaving the
rest stop, the van's grille suddenly filling up the rearview
mirror, Brad's panicked voice as the van dogged their
every move for the next mile or so down the highway,
then the whirling lights and sirens of the Highway Patrol.
She had known the minute she saw those lights appear in
the rearview mirror that it had something to do with the
van, that the driver had pulled some kind of stunt. And
when that cop had pulled them over with his holier-thanthou attitude and told them it was Brad that was driving
around like an asshole, she'd felt an impending sense of
doom. She had felt a sense of disbelief as the officer told
her why he had pulled them over, and why he couldn't
really give a shit about them-after all, the law is the law,
and I'm only doing my job. And now as she sat naked on
a bare mattress in a small cabin somewhere in Big Bear in the San Bernardino mountains, her mind flashed on
something she had almost forgotten.

    They had still been at the rest stop. They had stopped
for bathroom breaks, and as usual Brad had finished
first. Lisa had exited the women's restroom and joined
Brad at a little scattering of picnic tables. There was a yellow sign with a blocky-looking drawing of a snake on it, a
warning to tourists that rattlesnakes were in the area this
time of year. Lisa had stood by the sign with a wild grin as
Brad snapped a photo of her, and it was then when she
had seen him walking by, casting his gaze on them.
    She closed her eyes and tried to remember, summoning the image in her mind. Yes, she was positive it had
been Mr. Smith. He had been wearing sunglasses, and
the more she thought about it, the more the picture
came to her mind. He had been standing by a large tree
that overlooked the rest stop. She didn't remember him
being there when they had pulled up, but she surely remembered glancing over at him when she left the ladies'
room. She had quickly dismissed him, figuring he was
just another tourist waiting for his wife or significant
other to exit the ladies' room. There had been four other
women in the restroom besides her, and she had dismissed it from her mind until she and Brad were shooting photos and horsing around, and then he had walked
past them slowly, casually, and then Brad had said something that distracted her and then they were laughing
over something and the guy was forgotten as they gathered their stuff together and headed toward the Lexus.
He was gone anyway, both physically and from her mind,
when they climbed into the Lexus and backed out of the
parking space to hit the Interstate.
    But hadn't there been a red van parked at the rest
stop? Now that she thought about it, she could have
sworn that there was. She could picture it now: him sit ting at the rest stop, carefully but