Chapter 11: Murder Gone Viral by Stephen Simpson
They stay up all night, checking the view numbers every now and again.
When the night turns to day outside the cabin, Richard and Gareth are still staring at the screen in front of them incredulous. During the night, the views on their video channel grew to three million, seven hundred and eighty-six thousand.
Gareth whispers in awe. “It will take too long to count all these votes.”
Richard cannot move his eyes away from the numbers. Every time the page refreshes the number increases by a thousand.
Gareth nudges him roughly. “I said we cannot count all these votes. Who do you want to kill today? You have the final vote.”
Richard doubts he will be able to kill Emily if he is sober, and he still has a nauseated feeling from the night before last, when they stayed up until the early morning hours bulldozing through the supply of beers. He says without hesitation, “Sarah is my choice. I cannot stand her anyway. She and that Alex should have been voted off first.”
Gareth agrees, “So Sarah it is. Are we going to do it now? I do not want to leave everything as late as yesterday and I want to go and sleep for a few hours.”
“The quicker we do it, the faster we can move on to the semi-final round.”
“How are you going to do it today?”
“I think I should follow through on my threat of yesterday. See if I can knock her head clean off her shoulders with the baseball bat.”
Gareth laughs cruelly and then when he manages to take a breath of air, he asks, “Who shall we interview this afternoon?”
Richard thinks about it for a moment, and then he says, “Well, we have to put Alex up, it is his turn, and he will have to go up against Samantha or Emily. Both the girls have the sympathy votes, so I feel sorry for the self-appointed star of his very own melodrama.”
Grinning widely, Richard leaves a laughing Gareth in the lounge as he walks down the stairs into the dark, dank basement.
After he switches on the dim light, he walks over to her cubicle. “Told you your end will come today. Hope you had enough time to make peace with your maker.” He laughs loudly at his own wittiness.
He pulls her up off the floor cruelly and then he takes the empty handcuff, which he unlocked from the chain, and he cuffs her hands together in front of her. She will be dead soon, and he does not feel like going through the extra trouble of man-handling her onto the ground so he can cuff her hands together behind her back.
She walks in front of him, and he shoves her toward the door, and then out of the door until she is standing in the middle of the clearing.
Gareth leans against the Jeep, and he focuses the camera on her head.
Richard stands behind Sarah. He bends his knees slightly and lifts the bat over his head. He steps back and makes a few practice hits before he steps closer to her again.
“Fuck,” Gareth exclaims exasperated.
Richard lets the bat rest on his shoulder as he looks across the clearing toward Gareth. “What?”
“I forgot to charge the battery last night. Wait here while I quickly go inside to fetch the spare.” He runs across the dry, dusty clearing.
Sarah realizes this will be her one and only opportunity to escape. As she bunches her hands together tightly, she looks back across her shoulder until she can see Richard from the corner of her eye. He is staring intently at the door into which Gareth has disappeared. She notices he is standing close enough behind her. With lightning speed, she twirls around, and her hands connect loudly with his temple. The metal cuffs cut a gash across his cheek. She hit him in the precise soft spot on the side of his eye, and he falls onto his knees. For a moment, she panics when it looks as if he is struggling to get up again. She urges her legs to run.
Richard is standing on his hands and knees. The world is swirling in front of him in black and white concentric circles. He tries to get up, but his legs buckle under him. He takes a deep breath and shakes his head from side to side to try and clear the dizziness. He feels nauseous.
Sarah turns and runs into the trees surrounding the clearing. Bushes slap against her arms and face painfully. She stumbles over the foliage growing wild on the ground under her feet, but she continues to run as fast as she can.
When Gareth walks out of the cabin, he squints against the glaring bright sunlight. With shock, he sees Richard kneeling on his hands and knees, his head hanging between his arms.
He yells, “Which way did she go?”
Richard vomits loudly and spews bile onto the ground in front of him.
Panicked Gareth realizes Richard probably did not see in which direction she went. She could have run into the forest at a wide variety of angles, and he would not know which way to go to follow her. The main road is five miles away and circles around, so it does not matter which direction she chose, she will eventually get to the main road and depending how fast she is running and how fit she is, she could reach the road in as little as five hours—barely enough time for him to drive to the airport, to get his bags from the trunk of his car and to be on an airplane.
He runs back into the cabin hurriedly. He grabs the car keys hastily from the small table next to the door and then he dashes across the clearing to the Jeep. He gets in quickly and starts the engine. The car leaps and bounds under him as he drives around, across the rough patches of grass at the edge of the trees. He drives away from the cabin as fast as he can, the dust billowing up behind him.
From a distance, Sarah hears the engine of a car and scared she runs even faster. She continues running until her every breath rip from her lungs. She slows down and once her breath becomes more even and she does not have to wheeze for every mouthful of air, she hears the welcome music of car tires on tarmac. Not just one car, but many cars. She stumbles tired across fallen tree trunks, following the sound and then without warning, she stumbles out of the forest and onto the road. A car swerves wildly to avoid her and she lifts her shackled hands up in the air, waving down the next car.
The man in the next car looks at her shocked and Sarah turns to watch him as he drives past her, but then he swerves his car onto the side of the road as he slows down to a stop.
She stumbles to the stationary car, and when the strange man gets out of his car, she cries croaky, “Please help us.”
The man rushes to her and then he helps her to sit down on the side of the road. He pulls his cell phone from his pocket and then she hears the familiar sound of his fingers pressing the numbers 9-9-9.
Continue reading Chapter 12/12
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