Dismember by Daniel Pyle Page A

anywhere else in this area either. Better to save his battery for when he could use it. Besides, he’d been awfully worried the phone would beep or squawk and give him away; there was no chance of that now.
    He returned the powered-down cell to his pocket and tried to put it out of his mind, at least for the time being.
    While he waited for something to happen, Zach noticed a patch of grass and weeds that had been beaten down almost to the dirt behind a row of nearby bushes. Maybe an animal had scratched out a place to sleep, or something or someone had been walking around the area over and over for a long period of time. He looked closer and saw a small pile of splintered wood partially hidden beneath one of the nearby bushes.
    Toothpicks. It took him a minute to see them for what they were, but they were toothpicks all right. Chewed up and spit out like sunflower seed shells or bits of fingernail from a nervous finger chewer.
    “Where are we?” Zach finally dared to ask, whispering like they were in a library or a graveyard. He rubbed at his head, which still hurt and now pounded a little, wondering when he’d have the chance to get his hands on some Tylenol.
    “Shh.” The man waved his arm backward, signaling the boy to keep his distance.
    Zach listened but heard nothing except the very faint barking of dogs, which might have been coming from a neighboring property or from a mile away. Sound carried up here in funny ways sometimes.
    He waited.
    The house wasn’t exactly a mansion, but Zach thought it might be a pretty comfy place to live. A deep, furniture-covered porch wrapped all the way around the place, its boards and railings looking well used but not abused. No fallen leaves or windblown tree limbs in sight, which meant the porch surely hadn’t gone more than a day or two without a good sweeping. In one of the back corners, Zach could just make out a small grill and a bag of charcoal beside it.
    At the porch’s other end, a pair of bikes leaned up against the side of the house. One big, the other small and with one of those rubber horns attached to the handlebars. Zach had owned a similar bike when he was younger, had ridden it until he got too big for it and had never gotten another.
    He took a quick look at his captor, who appeared lost in thought, the wrinkles on his forehead so deep and bunched that they looked almost fake, like a movie prop or a mask you wore on Halloween.
    Zach turned away.
    A small garage, set apart from the main structure, opened away from the two of them and onto a gravel driveway that curved around a stand of trees in the distance and disappeared. Zach wondered about that garage, about what kinds of things might be inside. Shovels, rakes, brooms, the same kinds of things Zach and his mom had in their own garage, probably, but maybe also something more useful. An ax, or (dare he hope?) a machete or even a shotgun. He knew lots of people in these parts kept guns around the house. The mountains had bears, mountain lions, wolves—you had to be prepared, or at least some people thought you had to. Whether or not Zach could have pointed a gun at anybody and pulled the trigger, he had no idea, but he guessed if there was ever a time to find out, this was it.
    He chewed his lower lip. If he could just get a look inside. Maybe he’d find nothing more helpful than a spare tire or a box of old clothes, but you never knew.
    He formed half a dozen plans in his head but eventually gave up on them all. Each required the ability to outrun the maniac, and Zach had already proved himself unable to do that on more than one occasion. He didn’t see any way around it; unless and until the situation changed, the garage was simply off limits. He’d have to wait.
    Davy made a grunting sound, and although it sounded like the kind of noise you made if you were upset about something, the look on the man’s face seemed more like confusion.
    What a weirdo.
    Zach didn’t exactly have telescopes for eyes,