Every Second

31

Somewhere in New York State

Lori and Billy watched the van door roll open.

Two men with military assault rifles stood before them.

Cutty and Thorne.

Both were still in coveralls, but they’d removed their masks, revealing two white men in their early twenties. Thorne had tousled hair, large eyes and a stubbled chin; Cutty, the big one, had a shaved head, a beard and a scar high on his left cheek.

She didn’t recognize either of the men, but a new realization dawned on her as she looked at them, fear twisting deep in the pit of her stomach.

They can’t let us live if we can identify them!

“Get out!” Cutty said.

Lori blinked as she adjusted to the sunlight after hours in the dark van.

They were somewhere in the mountains, atop a ridge overlooking vast sweeping forests stretching to the horizon in every direction. The air had cooled, now carrying the sweet scent of spruce and red cedar, woods so dense they looked impassable.

Where’s Dan? Have they brought him here?

Not another vehicle or person in sight.

“Get moving!”

The ridge was crowned with a natural path of twigs and leaves that meandered for some forty to fifty yards up a gentle rise to a cabin. Cutty and Thorne walked behind them, unconcerned that they’d removed the tape from their mouths and wrists. Only the plastic handcuffs bound their hands in front of them. The small red lights on the battery packs of their suicide vests continued blinking.

Lori couldn’t stop trembling, couldn’t stop the adrenaline coursing through her as she battled to stay ahead of her fear.

Use it. Use it to fight back. Use it to protect Billy.

She swallowed hard and tried to find the strength to not give up.

On her left she’d noticed a small outbuilding that was at the end of a path that led into the woods some distance from the cabin.

Are we in the Catskills or the Adirondacks?

They climbed the stairs of the cabin’s covered front deck, entering through the screen door. The interior was one large open area. One corner contained the kitchen, and there was a picnic table and a few Adirondack chairs set up near the middle.

Two large bunk beds occupied another corner.

An opened laptop and a backpack with a large half-eaten bag of potato chips and bottles of water were on the picnic table. Clothes spilled from duffel bags near the bunk beds. In the far empty corner, a camera mounted on a tripod was pointed to a blank wall.

Lori grew uneasy.

What’s that for?

Across from the bunk beds were two mattresses set side by side on the floor with sleeping bags and pillows. Two long, fine dog chains extended from steel hardware bolted to a wooden stud.

“Over there.” Cutty pointed his gun to the mattresses.

Lori and Billy took a few steps to their corner before she turned.

“We haven’t eaten and we need to go to the bathroom,” she said.

Cutty looked at Thorne, who nodded.

“The boy first. Let’s go.” Cutty pointed to the cabin’s rear screen door, which Lori could see opened to the path she’d noticed on her way in. He took Billy and she moved to go with him.

“Sit your ass down.” Cutty pointed his gun at Lori and she froze midstep. He kept the gun aimed at her for a moment before heading out alone with Billy.

Lori hesitated at the screen door, watching them.

“Sit down-” Thorne held up his phone “-or I dial a number and he’s gone.”

Lori sat.

When it was her turn, Cutty took her to the outhouse at the end of the path, about thirty yards from the cabin. He forced her to leave the door open, as he’d done with Billy, and relieve herself at gunpoint with her hands cuffed in plastic.

Necessity helped her endure the humiliation.

When they’d returned to the cabin, Lori saw that they’d locked a metal handcuff on Billy’s ankle, fastening him to the chain that hung from the wall. With several quick snaps, they did the same to her. The metal cuff was cold on her skin as she crawled to sit next to Billy on his mattress.

Cutty tossed the handcuff keys onto the table next to Thorne.

“You take them next time,” he said, then pulled out store-bought egg salad sandwiches and water from the backpack on the picnic table and handed them to Lori.

Their chains jingled softly as they ate.

Cutty stripped off his coveralls. Now he was wearing jeans and a black Led Zeppelin T-shirt with the words Hammer of the Gods on it. He dragged one of the chairs closer, placing it in front of the back door. He sat with his gun on his lap, watching them over his phone while he played a video game. Thorne had removed his coveralls, too. He was wearing khaki cargo pants and a military green T-shirt. He faced them from the picnic table where he watched them over his laptop as he worked with his gun next to him.

Soft beeping and clicking mingled with birdsong, breezes and the occasional swish of water as Billy drank from his bottle.

After they were done eating, Billy fell asleep.

In that surreal moment, as Lori struggled to understand what had befallen them, she wished Dan was by her side.

“Can I please talk to my husband again?”

Cutty ignored her. Thorne continued working on his laptop. The silence grew ominous.

“Why are you doing this to us?”

Thorne stopped his work and looked at her.

“Because you deserve it.”

She was baffled-what could she possibly have done to deserve this? “I don’t understand.”

“You will. You were chosen because of your crimes as nonbelievers.”

“Nonbelievers?”

“Let me show you what happens to nonbelievers.”

Thorne got up from the table with his laptop, holding it so Lori could see the video he played for her.

A woman in her thirties was on her knees in the desert. Her hands were tied behind her back.

Lori gasped. The familiar footage was from a recent news report she’d seen on TV. She remembered that the woman was an aid worker from England working in the Middle East before she’d been taken hostage by extremists. Lori had never seen the video in its entirety. It was too graphic for news networks to broadcast. Standing next to the woman was a man, clad head to toe in black. A black balaclava concealed his face. He held a large knife in one hand and was ranting to the camera before he yanked the woman’s hair back, exposing her throat and-the knife flashed-Lori turned away.

She knew what followed.

The woman had been beheaded.