Ravenous

Chapter 6 There Goes Plan A

There Goes Plan A

RIPLEY

LOST IN SASKATCHEWAN

You’d think after all my years of growing up in the area, I’d learn not to drive through a place called Tornado Alley, but here I am, smack dab in the middle of it.

“A warning has been issued for Fox Valley and the surrounding areas. We advise that all residents take shelter immediately and do not make unnecessary journeys.”

Aside from the radio, all I can hear is the rain and hail pounding against the roof of my car like a barrage of bullets. It’s all I can do to grip the steering wheel, struggling to keep calm as I careen through the night.

Out of the corner of my eye I catch a bolt of lightning illuminating the sky.

“Well, that’s not good…”

Suddenly, a chunk of hail the size of a baseball smacks against the glass, shattering it. Oh God. I’m in the middle of fucking nowhere with the wind howling around me, and I swear the hail is getting bigger every minute. I’m gonna die out here.

I wrench the wheel to the right, pull the car over to the side of the road and kill the engine. Another bolt of lightning strikes, brightening the sky just enough to give me a distressingly good look at the funnel cloud looming in the distance.

Significantly less of a distance than the last time.

I have to find shelter. Now.

I grab the flashlight and climb out of the car, picking a random direction and start to run. I don’t even know enough about the area to make an educated guess, but someone has to live out here.

Right?

The wind howls as rocks of hail beat mercilessly against my body. I keep trying to hold my arms up to protect my face, but dropping them again every time I realize I need to be able to fucking see.

Suddenly, a sharp, searing pain slices right above my brow, and my vision immediately goes red in one eye.

Thunder roars like a lion, nearly shaking the earth and I’m struck in the head by another massive chunk of hail.

This time the hit is so hard I can feel my legs give out, and I land face first in the mud as my flashlight flies from my grip.

I can see it glowing in the muck while the rain and hail get even more intense, coming down in sheets.

“Fuck!”

I crawl toward the light, grunting and straining as the storm pelts my back.

My first day of freedom, and I’m gonna to die here?

Just outside a shithole town I never even meant to be in?

As I struggle to pick the flashlight up with slippery, trembling hands, another flash of lightning crashes through the clouds, drawing my gaze just in time to see a distant farmhouse illuminated in the night.

I’ve always considered myself an atheist, given everything I’ve been through, but I’ll be goddamned if this isn’t a sign from the big man himself.

I struggle through the field, using every last bit of strength in my body to make it across the long stretches of land and up to the front door, pounding on it for what feels like forever.

“Please…”

My voice is raspy and broken as I sink to my knees.

“Somebody—”

I barely manage to squeak the word out when I hear the roaring wind pick up close by, and I turn to see a funnel cloud brushing the ground like the finger of God, fully illuminated in the patchy moonlight. It’s surreal watching it swallow up everything in its path, almost beautiful in a way.

Until I see something recognizable get pulled into the air…

Something that looks a hell of a lot like my fucking car.

I scramble to my feet and start to pound on the door all over again.

“Help!” I scream. “Somebody! Please!”

But the only new sound I hear are dogs barking from inside, as the wind continues to roar like its own vicious beast.

Debris starts to pick up as the funnel gets closer, and I stumble down the steps, running around for the side of the house, desperate to try and find another way in. There’s got to be a window I can smash.

Something.

Anything.

I scan my surroundings, aiming the flashlight anywhere and everywhere, landing on nothing after nothing after nothing.

And then…

My heart nearly stops: a fucking storm cellar.

I rush for it, wrenching at the double-doors, but a padlock holds the two handles together with a link of chain. I yank on the lock itself in vain desperation, but to my surprise the damn thing clicks open almost immediately.

“There’s no fucking way…”

My doubt is dragged off into the sky as a plank of wood whips up off the ground, nearly clipping me as it flies straight past my head.

I pull the lock from the chains and unspool them from the door, throwing myself inside and tumbling down a small flight of stairs.

Sharp pain ricochets throughout my battered body, and all the air is sucked from my lungs as I land at the bottom, flat on my back.

It takes me a few moments to gather myself, every breath I take like someone stabbing a dagger into… well, everything.

I can hear the doors of the cellar slamming over and over, open and shut.

I don’t have the strength to climb up those stairs again, let alone to close them.

All I can do is drag myself into the far-corner and stare, begging the tornado not to touch down on the house, hoping beyond hope that it won’t reach me down here.

I slump against something cool and metal, my vision blurring from the head wounds as rain and hail continue to pound relentlessly outside.

I just need to close my eyes for a second.

Either way, this will all be over.

Whether I wake up or not.

“Christine Winter, this is the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Come out with your hands in the air.”

Blue and red lights flood the room.

“We have the property surrounded!”

No.

The cellar doors shake, and I struggle to get to my feet, stumbling over something and falling back to the floor as they try to get in.

As my vision adjusts, I see the blood on my hands.

And Gabriel’s headless, mutilated corpse at my feet.

No. I buried him. I got away.

They can’t do this to me.

I can hear the cellar doors explode inward, and I lurch up from the floor with a jolt, gasping for air and looking around the empty room.

It’s dead quiet.

No cops.

No lights.

Just me, and this fucking headache.

I reach up, feeling dried blood on my face and blindly pawing around to find the wound. It’s tender, but the cut isn’t as big as I thought.

It’s always the small ones that bleed the most.

I breathe through the pain as my body hums and throbs; the ache is so deep I swear I can feel it in my goddamn toenails.

It feels like my senses are cranked up to eleven, making me acutely aware of everything: My jeans digging into my waist, the tag on the back of my shirt like fingernails grazing my skin, and my puckered little raisin toes in my waterlogged shoes.

I try to stand, but the combination of the head-rush and the vicious pain causes me to immediately vomit. Everything twists and rips my nerve endings until I’m nothing but a collection of fraying, crackling wires.

At least I’m alive, even if I don’t deserve to be.

I manage to get to my feet, slowly this time, trying to plan my next move.

This is a temporary shelter, but whoever owns this property is probably going to be back soon, unless I hallucinated the sound of those dogs.

I need to find a way to patch myself up, maybe change the bandage on my hand, and get the hell out of dodge.

I glance around, my eyes still struggling to adjust to the light, or maybe my potential concussion. This place is chock full of tools, and enough self-labeled canned food for a small army. I pick through the cans of beans, soup, and even some chilli, not a store-bought brand in the pack.

“Maybe I’ll come back for you.”

I find some old tools caked in something rusty, parts for farm equipment, spooled-up barbed wire, and a little wooden box on a shelf off on its own.

“Well well well, what’re you hiding in here?”

I flip the lid, my brows knitting together as I rifle through it, hoping to find some money, but all that’s there are a pile of old IDs and some keys lining the bottom.

I pull out one of the cards: an old Saskatchewan driver’s license with some of the typeface worn off the front, making the man’s name nearly impossible to read.

Maybe a Zack, or a Mack? It’d be hard enough to tell in normal circumstances, and my eyesight is still extra-dogshit thanks to that goddamn hail.

I turn it over in my hand, frowning at the scrawled text on the back.

SIRLOIN

CHUCK

FILLET MIGNON

BOTTOM ROUND ROAST

I snatch up more IDs, checking them one by one.

They’re all men, and they all have that stuff written on them.

Types of meat?

I glance around the room again, eyes landing on a metal door I hadn’t noticed before. It looks like one of those walk-in refrigerators… with another giant fucking padlock on it.

Okay. Alright.

Nobody would leave this place abandoned, not with this shit lying around.

I have to get out of here.

Maybe there’s a car I can hot wire outside…

I spent months preparing to murder Gabriel.

Reading, researching, and trying to commit everything I could to memory.

The fantasy became all-consuming as I went over every detail, not wanting to leave any evidence that could implicate me.

My job was to be the perfect victim, all so that I could transform into something greater.

I snatch the flashlight, hobbling back to the rickety wooden staircase that leads to the open cellar doors. I slowly make my way up, stair by stair, until I can feel the rain dripping down onto me from the wood above.

I can’t have been out that long, even through the crack in the cellar doors I can tell it’s still dark.

I hesitate for a moment, a palpable sense of dread washing over me as I reach for the door, but I crush it back down and shove my way into the dark of the night.

It seems like I was worried for nothing, though, because the clouds have cleared, no funnel or lightning in sight.

I can even see the stars scattered all the way across the sky.

I start to shiver, wandering around the property, my flashlight trembling in my hand as I look for something to hotwire. Just my luck though, no cars, only debris the storm had kicked up. Pieces of wood, branches, and scattered leaves from a patch of forest around the back of the house.

“There goes plan A,” I mutter.

I spot a massive dilapidated barn at the edge of the property and limp toward it, wincing with every step. Mud squishes beneath my sneakers and I mutter curses under my breath. Why didn’t I check the fucking weather before I drove through this godforsaken province?

The barn doors are chained shut with a lock firmly in place, making that three for three.

“Shit.”

Maybe the safest thing for me to do is wait it out in the cellar for someone to come back.

Best case scenario is they head inside the house to check for damage, or on their dogs, and I can slip out and take whatever they arrived in.

Worst case… Well, at least there’s shit down there that I could use as a weapon.

All my plans are replaced with terror, however, as I spot distant headlights cutting through the darkness, floating straight for the house.

My stomach sinks and I can feel the sweat start to drip down the back of my neck.

There’s no way for me to get back to the storm cellar without seriously risking getting caught, it’s all the way on the other side of the property.

I quickly shut the flashlight off and limp as fast as I can toward the back of the barn, trying to make myself as invisible as possible as I crouch down and peer around the corner.

It’s less than a minute before the headlights slide into view again, and the large truck pulls to a stop.

I watch in silence as a man steps out into the cool air, the night seeming to swallow up every other sound save for the gravel grinding like teeth beneath his boots.

All I can see is his silhouette in the moonlight, but I can tell he’s got a sturdy frame, large and imposing, topped off with a wide-brimmed hat.

He walks around the truck, wrenching the passenger door open, and something large falls to the ground, wiggling like a worm in the dirt.

The big man puts his foot on the thing, and it lets out a whine.

“Please…”

Oh Jesus, it’s alive.

“I thought I told you to shut up.”

He picks up the man with ease, hauling him right over his shoulder and heading straight for the barn. I’m mesmerized by the fluidity of the movements; the body he’s carrying is seemingly weightless, like a prized kill slung over his shoulder.

But of course, he’s still heading straight for the barn.

Straight for me.

I try to make myself even smaller, pressing my body down into the mud and dirt, but still desperate to see what happens next. You know the curious idiot who hears a weird noise in a horror movie and goes to investigate?

Turns out that’s my role.

The big man unlocks the barn door and steps inside, the wood making a loud thunk that cuts through the eerie night as it closes.

This might be my best opportunity, but I’m frozen in place.

If I run now, he might hear me, but if I stay, who knows how long before I slip out of consciousness again.

It’s actually a pretty easy choice, when you put it like that.

I make a break for it, pushing through the pain and what are probably broken bones until I reach the truck, blindly fumbling around the cab for the keys, and finding a hell of a lot of nothing save for an empty Tim Horton’s cup.

In a moment of weakness, I press my head against the cool window, breathing hard as I keep myself from slipping away.

I have to come up with a plan.

And I think it’s gonna involve at least one more corpse.