Survival Instincts Read online

  The man had been temporarily stunned—either by the surprise of a body being hurled at him or perhaps some damage to his ribs after contact with the hard point of Anne’s chin. He sat on the ground, breathing hard, his knees up, his bare hands flat against the icy snow. Then he stood up and began to move fluidly toward them. Anne felt a trickle of air seep into her lungs and her body spasmed slightly. She looked from Thea to the man approaching her daughter from behind and back to Thea. She managed to croak out a pathetic, “Thea,” before Thea was flying away from her, the force of his hand into the back of her daughter’s head sending her sideways like a paper bag catching the wind. Thea’s head hit the ground with a dull thud and then she was still. “No,” again a weak croak. Anne got up on her hands and knees and started to crawl toward Thea, tunnel vision blurring out the man so that for a moment it was almost as if he had disappeared, his form melding in with the trees.

  “I would advise you to stop moving.” His voice came out flat and dull.

  Anne heard him but she didn’t hear him because there was her daughter, lying on her side on the cold, hard ground, not moving, her face turned away. The white furry hat had landed halfway between where Anne was and where Thea lay. She kept her eyes focused on the hat as she dragged her body forward. She had to see her child’s face. Her breaths came ragged but steady now. Somewhere in the depths of her mind, she recognized this state of calm, the numbness in her body, the blood going frozen in her veins, that occurred right before her brain understood that everything was about to change.

  “I didn’t want to do this,” the man was saying from far away. No, not far away, right above her. But she had to see Thea’s face; she needed to see Thea’s face and then she would know what to do next.

  “I didn’t want to do this. Goddammit,” the man said again. He sounded angry, like he wanted a response, so she said, “Ok,” as she inched forward. Now she was by the hat, halfway there. Thea’s hair, fine and stick-straight (the opposite of hers and Rose’s dark curly hair, so thick the stylist used a straight razor), pooled out of the collar of her jacket. Snow, falling steadily now, landed on the strands and melted. A scream of rage bubbled into Anne’s throat and she shoved it back down into the hollow of her stomach.

  A metallic sound came from right above her as Rose’s voice, loud and cheery, sailed through the air, “Anne, what are you guys doing?” Her mother’s tone, as if she was joining a big group dinner on a cruise ship, disoriented Anne and she stopped, perched on her elbows. The man must have been startled as well because she heard him mutter, “Fuck.”

  The four of them remained still for a moment—Anne hunched on the ground near Thea, Rose a few yards away, smiling, and the man standing, Anne assumed, right over her.

  Thea was almost within reach now. Anne sucked air into her body and started moving toward her daughter again. She needed to make sure Thea was breathing. Her fingernails dug into ice, snowy slush soaked through the knees of her jeans as she continued forward.

  “Anne!” Rose’s voice, this time straining just a bit, overlapped with the man’s command.

  “Stop. Fucking. Moving.”

  Anne could see the side of Thea’s face now—her daughter’s mouth gaped open slightly and Anne thought she could see her body moving ever so slightly with inhalations. She tore her eyes from Thea, suddenly aware of the closeness of the man and the sharpness of his tone. As her eyes lifted from Thea to the man, she realized what the metallic sound was from before. He pointed the gun straight at her head. “Oh,” she said. She was suddenly aware of the gushing river, the snow falling in big clumps, the glints of sun peeking through the trees, and the man with a gun who had knocked out her daughter during a hike. No. Not a hike. A walk. She thought, This is real. This is happening.

  The man walked around Anne and bent over Thea. He scooped her small body into his arms and placed the gun against the side of her head. The scream bubbled up again, but this time Anne swallowed it down quickly and carefully.

  “Follow me,” the man said. He turned and walked deeper into the reserve.

  FIFTEEN MINUTES

  BEFORE THE CABIN

  ROSE

  Rose knew before Anne did. She watched her daughter and her granddaughter race down the white straightaway toward the man, toward danger. She tried to scream and warn them, for she realized right away, as soon as she saw the blur of the man up ahead, that he was trouble, but her voice melted into the air. Rose knew, in fact, or had a feeling at the very least, as soon as the man passed them on the trail. Anne would call that paranoia (and Rose had been wrong on occasion about people, but mostly she’d been right), and so she had shut her mouth into a thin line and swallowed down the bad feeling.

  Now, she watched her daughter collide with the man in slow motion. She sucked in a breath as Anne flew through the air and landed in a heap on the ground. Her eyes flicked from her daughter to Thea, who had landed a few feet away. The man, Anne, and Thea formed a triangle. The man at the top, Anne to the right, and Thea to the left. Get up, girls, Rose willed her daughter and granddaughter. What had she read recently? That in a kidnapping, you were much more likely to stay alive if you kicked up a fuss. Scream, punch, run. None of these things were happening.

  Rose felt in her coat pocket for her phone. Had she left it in the car? She dug into her left pocket, nothing. Right pocket, nothing except for chalky unwrapped gum. And then she remembered. She had placed it in an inside pocket of her jacket, one that zippered from top to bottom instead of side to side. She fumbled with her coat snaps, keeping her eyes glued up ahead, and once her coat was open, she pulled the zipper down, yanked the phone out. No service. It didn’t even read EXTENDED at the top like it did in the basement of the bakery. She dialed 9-1-1 and waited. Nothing. She was expecting this, as about halfway through the walk she had snapped a picture of Anne and Thea walking up ahead, heads bent together in conversation (Frame worthy, Rose had thought) and noticed that the one bar from the parking lot had disappeared.

  Rose watched Thea stagger over to Anne and then. No. She tried to scream again but this time she couldn’t even be sure she made a sound. The man had walked over and stood behind Thea for a moment, watching. For a split second, Rose had thought that maybe it had been an accident, them running into each other. Maybe she was being paranoid and the man was going to pull Anne up from the ground and apologize. And then, as if an afterthought, he reached back his hand and whacked Thea’s head so hard that Rose saw her entire body lift off the ground and then collapse onto itself on the snow. A memory flashed into Rose’s mind, an image really: the metro in Paris, the scuffed floor of the subway car, a door sliding shut, an automated voice speaking words she couldn’t understand, and a businessman burying his head into the newspaper. She had visited Anne during her junior year abroad in Paris. Anne had called home in tears a few weeks into her stay—she was homesick, she couldn’t understand anybody, and maybe she shouldn’t have broken up with her college boyfriend after all. Rose believed that a good dose of tough love was sometimes necessary, but her daughter had sounded truly . . . alone. Rose wanted to visit Paris anyway; she’d never been to Europe, never been outside of the Northeast, and the bakery was doing well enough. Sam stayed home to look after the dogs, and also to, as he said, “Give you two a little mother-daughter bonding time.” Rose knew her husband was secretly relieved to have the dogs as a reason to stay behind. Sam recognized his strengths as a parent and, the older Anne got, the more he left the emotional counseling to Rose.

  It was October, Anne had been there over a month and by that time her daughter knew her way around the 7th arrondissement, where she lived with her host family. Anne was ecstatic to see Rose, and it seemed that the security of having her mother there clicked everything into place. Her daughter introduced Rose to the local shopkeepers, they bought croissants and baguettes from the boulangerie around the corner and walked thirty minutes to the Place des Vosges park, where they dr
ank wine and ate cheese in the glint of the afternoon sun. Her daughter suddenly seemed extremely confident in her decision to break up with Chris, the college boyfriend: “He’s suuuuuch a good guy, you know? But this is my time to be free, you know?”

  The week was magic—Rose quickly understood why, as she walked along the cobblestone sidewalks arm in arm with her daughter, Paris was nicknamed the “City of Love.” On her last day, they decided to go to the famous antique market located at the top of Paris, about a half-hour metro ride from Rose’s small hotel. Les Puces, it was called: the Fleas, the largest flea market in the world, where, according to Rose’s guidebook to Paris, thousands of antique dealers set up shop selling everything from vintage clothing to dressers from the nineteenth century. On the train to the north of Paris, that afternoon, Rose spotted a man walking toward them from the opposite end of the subway car—Rose was positioned facing the man, whereas Anne had her back to him, gabbing to Rose about her French friend Marianne who was “So, so chic.” He was homeless, that much was evident from his tattered clothing and the stench that immediately permeated the air as he approached them. As he drew nearer, Rose could hear that he was muttering under his breath in French, something that sounded like “salad” (later, she’d asked around and come to the conclusion that he had been murmuring salope—slut. A nasty-sounding word, Rose thought, in both languages). Rose kept her attention on Anne, but that familiar mixture of pity and uneasiness churned in her stomach. As he moved closer and closer in her peripheral vision, she made eye contact with the businessman across from them. Suddenly, the vagrant was standing right in front of them, unbuckling his pants.

  “Mom?” Her nineteen-year-old daughter’s question was half confusion, half fear, and to Rose she sounded ten years old again.

  Rose looked again to the businessman, but he had the newspaper he’d been reading pulled up from his lap to his head, blocking his view completely of what was happening three feet away. Rose looked up at the homeless man and then slowly moved her eyes down to his hand holding his flaccid penis. He licked his lips and said the salad word once more and lurched toward Anne. Rose stood, before her brain registered what was happening, and put herself between Anne and the homeless man and screamed, “No!” She stepped toward him, inches from his member, and growled, “If you come any closer to my daughter, I will rip it off.” Whatever was lost in translation was made up for in Rose’s tone, stance, and expression. He pulled his pants up and ambled back the way he’d come. Later, she’d come to realize two truths from that incident: 1) she would do anything, anything, for her daughter, and 2) she could not count on others for help.

  That memory flashed into Rose’s mind as Thea’s body hit the icy ground. Rose would also do anything to keep her granddaughter safe. Though she’d never said this aloud, the moment Thea entered the world, Rose felt a love coursing through her body that was different from what she felt for her own child. A love without her own ego in the mix, a love stripped to its purest form. She had already done the unthinkable once to protect this love, and she was prepared to do it again, if need be.

  Rose stood very still. Although she understood it was the body’s natural predisposition to panic, to launch into fight or flight, she believed more in her own self-discipline and she told herself very sternly not to panic. She quickly came up with the most viable solution to this problem. She was at a good distance from her girls and the man. Enough of a distance that if she ran back toward the parking lot, he would either let her go, allowing her to reach the parking lot and call for help, or he would chase her, thus giving the girls enough of a head start to disappear into the woods, though she wasn’t sure how far Anne would make it carrying Thea . . . The plan wasn’t perfect but it would have to do. Maybe she would run into another hiker on the way back, someone who could get back to the parking lot faster or get to Anne and Thea before the man . . . Her brain spun on this thought. Focus, Rose, she told herself. She was about to turn on her heels when the man took out the gun and pointed it at the back of Anne’s head and the plan changed.

  Now she was running as fast as she could, which was a slow jog, toward the man and Anne and Thea. No one seemed to notice her, at least not Anne nor the man, until her voice broke the charged silence. Her lungs burned and she wanted to gasp for air but her tone had to be right.

  “Anne, what are you guys doing?” It worked. Rose kept her eyes on Anne, but she felt the man snap his head toward her, disoriented, knocked out of his rage by the casual cheer in her voice. Rose moved her eyes to Thea. Her granddaughter had the appearance of someone in a deep sleep; not the stillness that happened almost immediately when life left a body. She felt a rush of relief so strong that her knees almost buckled, but she forced herself to stay upright. She tried to communicate to Anne with her eyes. Thea will be ok. But we need to be smart. Rose’s eyes burned into Anne. The message was not received. Her daughter seemed to be in shock; Rose had seen Anne like this only once before. Rose wished she could shake Anne’s mind back into her body: We need all hands on deck right now, sweetheart. Anne began to creep toward Thea again, and again the man’s face filled with rage. He was going to do it, his finger was on the trigger. What would Sam do right now? Rose needed more time.

  “Anne!”

  “Stop. Fucking. Moving.”

  The urgency in her voice and the hollow calm in the man’s seemed to shake her daughter back to the present. Anne raised her face first to Rose and then to the man. Rose saw the recognition register on her daughter’s face when she saw the gun. She was no longer in control of this situation, not even a little bit. The man scooped Thea up as if she weighed nothing and placed the barrel of the gun against her granddaughter’s pink cheek.

  As they followed the man down the path, Rose began to plan.

  TEN MINUTES

  BEFORE THE CABIN

  ANNE

  They walked for only a short distance. The man held Thea, Anne walked right behind, her eyes glued to Thea’s legs and shoes, bouncing at each stride, and Rose rounded out the procession. The man took a sharp right off the main path, away from the river. At first she thought they were veering off into the middle of the woods, but a red arrow caught her eye and Anne realized they were still on a marked trail at least, though a “dangerous” one according to the maps. This trail was barely one person wide. Tree roots sprouted up out from the ground and branches snapped against their jackets. How will he hike an advanced trail carrying Thea? She pushed the thought out of her mind and focused on Thea’s feet. She had to get her daughter to a hospital. Most likely she had a concussion, but there could be internal bleeding. A brain bleed. The words popped into her head before she could stop them. Memories from the NICU and Boston Children’s Hospital flew through Anne’s head. Oh god. She didn’t notice that the man had stopped and she had to hitch herself back on her heels to avoid stepping on his boots. He turned his head to the left and then slowly to the right, as if he were looking for something. She tried to catch a glimpse of Thea’s face, but her daughter’s head was turned up to the sky and she could see only her chin. He wasn’t supporting Thea’s neck properly. She imagined lunging at him, knocking the gun from his hand and . . . then what? Before the sequence could go any further, the man started to move again. This time off the trail, into the woods. He walked quickly, weaving through the trees. Suddenly, Anne saw where he was going. At first just the dark roof and red clay chimney came into view through the trees. And then, as they crunched their way closer, the whole structure appeared. A small, squat log cabin, sitting peacefully in the woods.

  FIVE MINUTES

  BEFORE THE CABIN

  THE MAN

  The girl was lighter than he expected. Even bundled in her oversize winter coat and lace-up boots, he carried her easily on the short walk. The women trudged behind him, the mother right behind him, close on his heels, and the older one farther behind, struggling to keep up. The man had made a calculation to bring the women alon
g and he was pleased with his decision. Shooting the gun could have attracted stray hikers or the couple with the dog he’d seen in the parking lot. But more than that, he thought they might be useful, especially considering the girl was unconscious. He hoped she wasn’t hurt badly. As he led them into the woods, he glanced at the body in his arms every few minutes—he needed to reassure himself by checking the tiny spurts of white air coming out of her nose. Every time he saw her breath, his pulse slowed and a warm feeling grew in his stomach; she was alive. He had been alone his entire life and now he had her and everything would be different.

  He kept his eyes on the trail markings. The map plastered on the side of the welcome center had shown the hut, marked by a brown triangle sitting on a brown square, about a quarter mile after the start of the first red trail, set back a few hundred feet into the woods. The man grew agitated the longer they walked. They should have found it by now or at least seen signs. He wondered if the map was wrong—if the building had been torn down years ago or maybe he’d missed it somehow, maybe while he was looking at the girl. He cursed under his breath; this wouldn’t work without the cabin. He heard muffled whispers over the wind whipping his face. Someone was taunting him, telling him that he should have used the gun in the parking lot. He stopped abruptly and listened. He shut his eyes closed for one second, disgusted with himself. He had failed; he’d been given a gift and he had squandered it. I am calm. I feel nothing. The gun burned his hand. The man opened his eyes and they fell on a small square sign, posted to a tree only a few feet ahead. The sign showed a crudely drawn house and an arrow pointing to the right. Painted blue letters on the arrow spelled out WARMING HUT.