Through The Valley by Yates, B.D. (feel good books .txt) 📕

The meat locker behind the cabin, complete with an undead guard skewered to the ground outside. The room flickered with a dull orange glow and smelled strongly of woodsmoke. Emmit rolled and flopped awkwardly, following the light source to one of the rear corners, where a small stone fire pit had been built.  It looked like a miniature wishing well, only instead of mossy water and coins, it held a small fire that was fighting for its life.  Above him he could hear a spectral moan, and his clammy face and damp forehead were periodically kissed by a blessed cool breeze.  Roy hadn't taken the time to build a chimney for his meat locker, but there was at least a smoke hole in the roof.

  Good.  I won't suffocate before he gets the chance to finish me off.

  Emmit realized then that it wasn't the light haze of smoke in the tiny shed that was obscuring his vision.  It was his glasses, or rather, his lack of glasses.  The old familiar panic sensation began to throb in his midsection; the feeling of waking up late for work and then realizing you couldn't find your car keys or your wallet.  The feeling of the rent's due date coming and going without being paid.  The feeling you got when you dreamed about going to school and walking past all the pretty giggling girls, just to realize that you hadn't remembered to dress yourself and your bits and pieces were swinging freely for all to behold.  He was naked without his glasses.  He wasn't blind, not completely.  But he was damned close to it.  He'd have to rely on luck in the immediate future, and Emmit Mills always seemed to lack any kind of luck but bad.

  Alright, it's alright.  Now is not the time to panic.  You're not blind, you can still see enough to get out of here.  If you keep your damn head.

  "Nnnnnnn..." came a hoarse, nasally hum from somewhere in the dark behind him.  Emmit made a hushed chirping sound and jumped, jerking his head in all directions like an angry chicken.  The dim room seemed to be full of murky and hostile shapes, and he couldn't make any of them out.

  "Who is that?" he whispered, wriggling his fingers and rubbing his wrists together.  The ropes weren't budging.  They had probably been tied by Roy himself, with every ounce of angry strength he had.  He kicked his feet.  There was some wiggle room down there, but his ankle bones were still jammed together, interlocked like puzzle pieces.  He felt like a hogtied pig.

  Nothing but silence answered him.

  "Tim? Pup? Did he get one of you too?"

  Silence; and then another pitiful sounding "Nnnnnn..."

  Emmit was able to pinpoint the sound now that he was listening for it.  It was coming from a dark and indistinct mass leaning against the wall, just far enough out of the firelight to be hidden from his infinitesimal field of vision.

  Fuck, he took me and one of them.  Thanksgiving coming early, Roy?

  There was no helping whoever it was as long as he was tied up, and if Roy had left a fire burning, he probably meant to come back.  The death clock was ticking down.  Emmit needed to think fast.  He thrashed his limbs furiously, imagining himself snapping his bonds like a superhero and rising pompously from the floor as the firelight washed over his statuesque muscles... except he didn't have much muscle, not even after all the work he'd done for the camp.  The ropes didn't give him a single inch. 

  Need to cut them with something.  If this is where he carves us up, there must be knives in here.

  He decided he would roll like a log to each wall if he had to, maybe feel around on the floor for anything Roy might have dropped or a rough edge of wood that he could rub up against.  His body was begging for the pain to stop, but it would have to cope with the stresses just like his racing mind did.  There was nothing but pain to be had in this place.

  Emmit shifted his weight, pushing himself with his snake-like body, and thudded over onto his right side.  He immediately felt a sharp, stabbing pain bite into the flesh just above his elbow.  He cried out, then snapped his mouth shut.  The panic and angst in him were replaced with a sudden flash of shimmering hope, and if his hands had been free he might have slapped himself.

  The spearhead!

  He jiggled his arm around, and yes, it was still there, rattling against the inside of his sleeve like the ball in the bottom of a spray-paint can.  Apparently, Roy hadn't bothered to search him, and why would he?  He kept track of all the weapons in the camp, because he kept them all locked up in--

  Here!  They're all in here!

  Emmit grinned.  Things weren't looking the greatest for him presently, but they were at least looking up.  If he could just get his fucking hands free...

  "Nnnnahhhhh..." came the wheeze again, and Emmit heard the soft whisper of fabric dragging across the floor.  The voice sounded higher pitched than the Rev's, the throat less broken in, younger.  That meant it could only be one person.

  "Pup?" He said quietly, and was answered by a twitch from the mass leaning against the wall.

  "Pap... Papa?" Pup said feebly, his voice exhausted and thick from bouts of crying.  "You're... a... alive?"

  Emmit felt his heart fracture into pieces that sliced and cut inside him, but the aching sadness and pity that followed were soon overtaken by unbridled hatred.  Pup had lost the draw and had been nominated to be the next Provider-- even though Roy obviously intended to kill and eat Emmit too.  He didn't need to kill the kid.  But he was going to anyway.  Cruel, sick, sadistic bastard.  Plenty of meat to