Chapter 5: The Cabin Trap
The shore ran out.
I saw it before Ethan said anything, a black wall of rock where the bank narrowed and the treeline came down to meet the water. No trail along the edge. No way around unless we swam, and the lake was so cold it looked like it had never been warm in its life.
"Where's it go?" Maya asked. She was already standing at the end of it, hands on her knees, breathing hard.
Ethan walked past her and put one palm flat against the rock. Then he turned and looked back the way we'd come, and I watched him do the math. His shoulders dropped an inch. That was all.
"Nowhere," he said. "Dead end."
Behind us, back along the bank, the trees were still. Too still. I kept waiting for a shape to step out between the trunks, and the waiting was worse than the seeing.
Niko was crouched at the water's edge with his fingers in the mud, looking at something. Boot prints. Two sets, half-filled with water, coming down from the pines and not going back up.
"They walked this bank an hour ago," he said. "Maybe less."
"So they know it's a dead end too." Ethan pulled the knife out of its sheath, held it down along his thigh. "They'll figure we came here. They'd have to be stupid not to."
"Then we don't stay." I said it flat, because if I let anything into my voice it would shake. "We go back into the trees. The cabin. It's the only thing out here with walls."
Maya's head came up. "The cabin you two were in?"
"It's got a door. It's got windows we can watch. It's better than standing in the open waiting to get picked off." I looked at Ethan. "Narrow windows. That's a choke point. They can only come at us one at a time through a gap that size."
Ethan looked at me for a second too long. Something moved behind his eyes, some old machinery grinding into gear.
"Right," he said. "Go. Same order. I'll take the back."
We went. Not running, not yet, not while the trees could hear us. Then Ethan made a low sound and waved us on, and we ran. Mud flew off my heels. A branch raked across my ear and I didn't slow down. My lungs were full of cold, wet air and the smell of pine sap and rot, and I fixed my eyes on the back of Niko's jacket and let it pull me through.
The cabin came out of the gray the way it had the first time, sharper now, the sagging roofline and the crooked door and the windows like sockets. I hit the wall shoulder-first and pushed through the doorway, and the smell of cedar and old dust closed over me like a hand.
Niko got the door. Ethan got the bench.
There was a long bench under the window, warped and split but still one piece. The two of them dragged it across the floor, legs shrieking on the boards, and wedged it under the handle at an angle. Ethan put his boot on it, testing. The door shifted a quarter inch and stopped.
"That'll hold for a minute," he said. "Not ten."
Maya was already on her knees in the corner, pulling Ethan's pack open. I watched her unwind a spool of fishing line, thirty pound test, thin as spider silk. She found a bent nail in the wall and worked it loose with the blade of a screwdriver, then started tying line from the nail to the door hinge, low, ankle height.
"Thirty-six inches off the floor," she said, mostly to herself. "That's a shin. That's where a shin is."
I was pressed against the wall by the window, the one we'd shoved open in the dark an hour ago. My back was flat to the cedar planks. My hands were open at my sides. I could hear my own pulse in my ears and the sound of four people breathing in a small space.
Niko turned from the door. The floorboards creaked under him and he stopped, lifted his foot, put it down careful, then came across. He stopped in front of me, so close my chest brushed his.
His hand found my jaw. Rough palm, cold fingers. He tilted my face up and leaned in and kissed me, and neither of us said a word first.
It tasted like salt and fear and old copper where he'd bitten his tongue somewhere on the run. My hand closed in the front of his shirt and pulled, and he came with it, and his forehead dropped against mine, both of us breathing through our noses into each other's mouths.
Across the room the fishing line twanged. Maya, pulling it taut.
"Hey," Ethan said. Low. Not to us.
We broke apart. Niko stayed close, his thumb still on my jaw, and I let go of his shirt one finger at a time.
Ethan was at the front window with his head turned sideways, eye close to the gap where the shutter had warped away from the frame. His knife was up against his forearm.
"Something's in the trees," he said. "East side. It's not moving like it's lost."
He watched for a long moment. Then he stepped back from the window, the knife coming down to his side.
"Too far to be a problem. For now." He looked at Maya. "Tripwire done?"
"Almost." She looped the line around the nail one final time and pulled it taught. "If someone comes through that door in the dark, they'll hit their shins on this and make enough noise to wake the dead."
"Good." Ethan crossed to the back window, the one we'd shoved open. He looked out at the gray trees for a moment, then turned back to us. "I'm going to check the perimeter. Make sure there's no other way in. Back in five."
"Alone?" Maya's voice was thin.
"It's daylight. They're not going to move in daylight." He didn't sound like he believed it. He was already at the door, lifting the bench aside. "Five minutes. Keep the line tight."
The door closed behind him. The bolt slid home with a dull thunk.
And then there were three of us in the cabin. The silence stretched, thick as the dust on the floor. Maya looked at me, then at Niko, and something passed between us. Relief that we were still here. Fear that Ethan had walked out into the trees. And something else. Something that had been building since the tent ripped open in the night.
I crossed the room and sank down against the wall beside Maya. Niko crouched in front of us. His hand found my knee, then hers, and the contact felt electric.
"We're alive." My voice came out rough. "For now, we're alive."
Maya let out a shaky laugh. "That's the fifth time you've said that."
"Because I keep not believing it."
She laughed again, and then she was crying, and then Niko pulled her into his chest and I wrapped my arms around both of them. We stayed like that, breathing together, until the crying stopped.
"Hey," Niko said, lifting her chin. "We're going to make it out of here. All four of us."
"Promise?"
"I promise."
And then he kissed her.
It was slow and gentle at first. Maya made a sound, soft and surprised, and her hands came up to his chest, not pushing, just resting. Then she kissed him back, and the sound she made deepened into something hungrier.
I watched them, my heart pounding. My hand was still on Maya's thigh, and she reached down and grabbed it, pulling me in. Her mouth found mine, salty with tears and warm, and I felt my whole body tighten.
"This is insane," I breathed against her lips.
"Everything about tonight is insane." Her hand slid up my side, under my shirt, and I shivered. "I don't want to think about tomorrow. I just want to feel something that isn't fear."
Niko's mouth found my neck, and I let my head fall back against the wall. His hand worked under my shirt, up to my breast, and I arched into him. Maya's fingers were at my jeans, working the button open.
The cabin filled with the sound of our breathing. I got Maya's shirt off, her breasts bare in the cold air, and I lowered my mouth to one nipple while Niko worked her jeans down over her hips. She was already wet, I could feel it through the fabric, and when I slid a finger inside her she cried out.
"Quiet," I breathed against her skin. "Ethan."
She nodded, biting her lip. Niko leaned in and kissed her again, swallowing her sounds, while I worked her in earnest. She came against my fingers, shaking, her mouth open against Niko's.
Then Niko turned to me. His hands found my jeans, and I lifted my hips and let him strip them off. He pressed me down onto the dusty floor, his weight on top of me, and I felt his cock hard against my thigh.
"Need you," I gasped.
He pushed inside me in one smooth stroke, and I bit down on my own fist. Maya knelt beside us, her hand sliding down Niko's back, then lower, finding where we were joined. She pressed a finger against my clit and I bucked.
He fucked me hard and fast, Mayas fingers working me, until I came with a sound I barely swallowed. He pulled out and turned to Maya, and she straddled him, sinking down onto him with a groan that was almost too loud. I watched, trembling, then moved behind her, my hands on her hips, my mouth on her spine.
Niko was close, I could feel it in the way his hips stuttered. Maya rode him until he came with a long, low groan, and I pressed my cunt against her as she came down, rubbing myself into her slick until we both shuddered together.
For a moment we were still. The dust settled. Boots sounded on the porch and the door rattled.
"Back," Ethan called.
By the time he pushed the door open, we were dressed. His eyes moved over us, but he said nothing.
We set to work. Niko wedged the bench back under the handle. Maya rigged a second tripwire across the back window. I found a loose plank and propped it against the broken latch. The cabin tightened around us like a fist.
"Nowhere else they can get in," Ethan said. "We hold here till nightfall."
I looked at my friends. Our eyes met, and a secret passed between us. And I found I didn't feel the fear the way I had.
We had walls now. We had a plan. And we had each other. There was nowhere to go but here, and we'd decided to stop running.