Lost Cargo by Hollister Ann Grant, Gene Thomson Read Free Book Online

contorted, one leg underneath his body, one foot inside the floor. Blue light radiated over his furious face. “It has my foot,” he said. “And I think I broke my ankle. It hurts like hell.”
    Travis stared at him.
What if you can’t get his foot out
, chattered a terrible voice in his head, but he buried the thought. Lexie first, he told himself, then Burke, then get out of the booby-trapped wreck, and if Burke had broken his foot, they would deal with it outside. He cut the seams of her jacket a half inch at a time. The wool was thick and the scissors were dull. The blades gnawed into the fabric. Halfway up the sleeves, he ripped them with his hands and she managed to struggle out, rubbing her arms. The jacket looked as though a phantom stood in it with the outstretched sleeves still fending off the attack.
    Lexie hurried to her brother and knelt down by the grid. “I can’t see anything.”
    “I wouldn’t put your face that close to it,” Burke said.
    She stared at him and moved back.
    “We’ll pry it open,” Travis said. He climbed outside to find a branch to use as a crow bar and felt struck by their isolation. They had hiked far beyond shouting distance of any buildings and the dark woods seemed completely deserted. Anybody hiking down the trails would have gone home by sunset. He found a sharp stick and crawled back inside the bright triangle, keeping his thoughts to himself.
    “We’ll try this.” He knelt down with the stick. “It won’t go in… wait, there it goes. Now, if I can force the rest down, you should be able to pull your foot out.”
    Without warning, the floor rippled toward them, rose in a luminous wave, and yawned open with a flash of blue light. Then it swallowed the stick and pulled Burke’s foot down several more inches.
    Travis jerked his arm away. “Big mistake.”
    “Don’t do that,” Burke shouted. “If you do it again, it’s going to suck my whole leg down. It’s a trap. My trip is ruined and my ankle is broken and it was crazy to come out here. Crazy! Now we’re in some screwed-up situation, miles from civilization, and we can’t even make a phone call.”
    “Stop it,” Lexie said. “Stop screaming and listen to me. A cage is in the other room and handcuffs in the cabinet. It all has something to do with security. The floor has to be a security system. Maybe we can turn it off, if we can just use our heads instead of fighting with each other.”
    Burke opened his mouth to say something when a faint thud sounded behind one of the locked doors, followed by silence and more silence. They stared at each other. The calls of insects and the wind in the leaves filtered into the quiet.
    “What was that?” Lexie whispered.
    “It was in the woods,” Travis said.
    “No, it wasn’t,” she said. “It was behind that door.”
    “It was outside,” Travis insisted. “It was a deer.”
    She shook her head. “No, it wasn’t. It was in here.”
    Burke looked as though all the blood had drained from his face. “Those doors are locked?” he asked. When they nodded, he turned to his sister. “It had to be in the woods. I want you to go back to the city and call 911.”
    Lexie shook her head. “There’s no way we’re leaving you here.”
    “We have to face reality, Lexie. Get out of the park and call 911 and tell them I fell in the rocks. They’ll send the fire department.”
    “We’re not leaving you here,” she said again. “We’re just not doing it.”
    “You have to,” Burke said.
    Blue light shone on their faces.
    “There are three of us,” she argued. “Travis can stay and I’ll go back.”
    “It’s not safe for one person to go back,” Burke said. “It’s too dark and it’s too far. Who’s going to call 911 when you break your ankle?”
    Travis turned his face away while Lexie and her brother made their worried goodbyes. Then he crawled out of the black triangle, waited for her, and headed toward the creek. The blue light inside the hatch