Survivor: 1 by J. F. Gonzalez Page A

unobtrusively watching
as tourists came and went, waiting for just the right people to come along. And then she and Brad had dropped
in. How did Mr. Smith pick them? Did he overhear a
scrap of conversation they might have had as they
walked to the restrooms together? Some bits of information that told him everything he needed to know? Did
that information-talking about their vacation plans this
long weekend-give him what he needed to know to
convince himself that he would have at least two days to
do what he needed to do before any alarm was raised
about her disappearance?

    The feeling of dread settled in her belly further. Now
she was more terrified than before. The story he'd told
the officer was bullshit. The thought of actually feeding
her to this guy he called the Animal for a snuff film, all for
the satisfaction of a faceless group of perverts, was more
frightening the more she thought about it. He didn't appear to be bothered by the fact that he was playing a key
role in her murder. He didn't seem to care when she told
him she was pregnant. All he had been concerned about
was the money he was being paid.
    There was no question about it. She had to get out of
here at any cost. She would run through the woods naked
if she had to. She didn't care. What mattered more than
anything was getting out alive. She didn't have just herself
to think about anymore-the life of her unborn baby was
at stake.
    A thought suddenly came to her as she remembered
being knocked out by Mr. Smith: Did the chloroform he
gave me yesterday ... did that hurt the baby?
    Oh God, please no, please let my baby be all right!
    The sound of Mr. Smith working outside became
background noise as she sat on the bed and thought about what to do. When Mr. Smith left later today, she
was going to have to do some roaming around the room
to see if she could find something to help her escape
with. She inspected the bed she was sitting on. Maybe
she could take a piece off of it, use it to batter down the
boards he had nailed over the window Surely if she was
able to do that and wriggle out the window she
wouldn't get very far because she was chained up, but if
she stood outside and yelled long enough, wouldn't
somebody hear her? Even if the closest cabin was a
mile away, surely somebody would hear her during the
day and-

    "Hey, Tim? Jeff? Anybody here?"
    Lisa's heart froze. For a moment she thought it was Mr.
Smith, but then she heard the sound of nails being hammered into the wood outside the room. Mr. Smith was still
outside boarding up the window. Which meant that-
    Footsteps clumped from the back of the cabin and
grew loser. "I was wondering when you would be coming back up. I saw your van and-" It was a woman's
voice, and now Lisa looked up just in time to see her stop
in the middle of the living room, silhouetted against the
rays of the sun that streamed in through the halfboarded-up window. The woman looked like she might
have stepped out of the pages of a fashion magazine. She
was tall, with dark hair that fell to her shoulders. She had
high cheekbones and a sharp nose, with full lips and
dark eyes. Now those lips were open in a round 0 of surprise, her eyes wide with shock as she looked through
the doorway at Lisa sitting naked on the bed, her ankles
and wrists shackled together. "Oh my God!" she said.
    Lisa was so stunned by the sudden intrusion that she
didn't know what to do. Her brain was frozen. She
thought the woman standing in front of her was an illu sion, a wishful thinking of her imagination. The woman
took a step closer, her face still frozen in that Fcan't-be-
lieve-I'm seeing-this expression, and said, "Are you okay?
What the hell is-"

    Mr. Smith suddenly appeared in the living room, grabbing the woman from behind, one arm locked around
her throat in a chokehold, the other around her waist.
The woman struggled, her eyes going wider, and Lisa
watched as Mr. Smith tried to wrestle the