I know I start off every author's note with how wonderful all my reviewers are but it's really true. I had never expected that this story would be so popular yet I have at least three reviews for it every time I get online. Thanks so much! Make sure they don't stop. I'd also like to remind everyone that this story might be slightly shorter then some of the others I write because I'm planning a sequel to this one, that continues this story, so don't get too upset. Enjoy and review!

Chapter Eleven

Wreckage

Jessie hadn't even realized she had drifted to sleep until she was woken by Chris gently shaking her shoulder and whispering her name. Instantly, she felt horrible for allowing herself to sleep when her little sister was possibly dead, and forced herself awake quickly, taking in the sights around her quickly. The car was still, sitting upon a dirt road to the left of a slope that lead down to a dirt field with ashes and debris and the shells of melted cars the only things visible. Jessie recognized this place instantly.

"I didn't know where to go from here, since this was the only place that we knew of where they might have lived." Chris explained as he gazed past her and studied the house. He had caused the explosion that had burned the filthy, hellish cabin to the ground, yet he still felt eerily haunted by the way it looked.

Jessie was silent for a moment, as though she didn't know how to respond; she had known that the disfigured hillbillies' cabin was no longer standing, yet a part of her expected to find her sister there. Yet, this place was nothing but a pile of ashes and charred beams, there was nothing here. "I don't know what to do." She mumbled, feeling herself crumple again, though that made her feel weak and useless. What good was she to Sadie if she couldn't even hold herself together?

Chris ran his fingers along her cheek line gently, comfortingly. "We're going to find her, Jess and she's going to be fine." He assured her, wishing that he was as sure as he wanted to seem.

Jessie nodded silently, unable to think that there would be any other way that things would turn out. She locked eyes with him and managed a weak smile. "Where would I be without you?" She mumbled, to which Chris simply smiled.

"Lost in the woods." He meant it to seem like a joke, but at that moment it didn't seem so funny. Chris didn't like the look he saw in his girlfriend's eyes, the fear, the desperation, the helplessness. "I love you Jessie. And we will find her." This time, he sounded sure.

* * *

Sadie felt as though she had been walking for years by the time the sun had fully risen in beyond the trees. It was easier for her to see now, just where she was running, though she still didn't have a clue just where she was going but at least she wasn't tripping over logs and falling into thorn bushes. She believed that she looked much like a Middle Eastern refugee with her torn clothes and scratched face, arms and legs but at least she was alive. Sadie only hoped that Richard and the others were alive as well.

She had no idea where she was going or what she was going to do when she got there; if Jessie had indeed got her message and was coming to rescue her then how would they find each other? Could she even stay alive until then?

Of course you will, Sadie reminded herself sharply and firmly. She would keep walking until she found the others, or she found herself, or she found a town and someone with a phone.

Or she found the killer mountain men.

* * *

The cracked brush made it easy for them to track their foolish prey, yet that didn't take away from the thrill of the hunt. Every once in a while, they could get close enough to hear the three teenagers passing, their heavy feet breaking stones and the girl constantly whining. Whenever they got too close, they sometimes slowed their pace, never making a sound, trying to savor the moment. The small of the first girl's fallen blood was still fresh in their noses and minds, but that didn't over power the fun that came from a long chase, from their fear.

Yet, nothing would be as good as the kill.

* * *

Jessie and Chris abandoned their car where the dirt road seemed to disappear all together, where the disfigured monsters had once lived and headed into the woods, heading straight since the foliage ahead seemed to be broken and the tire marks in the mud looked almost recent. Jessie hoped that Sadie and her camping group had headed in this direction to find a camping spot and that would give them a place to start searching.

For the first few minutes, they walked in silence, with Jessie staring at her feet as she walked, lost in thought. Chris scanned the woods, looking for any sign that someone had been by recently; the ground was hard, so there were no tire marks to go by. He was about to give up searching for the time being when he saw something glinting in the woods a few yards to his right. Chris squinted his eyes, though he was certain of what he was seeing: the top of a car, glinting in the sunlight. "Jess, look." He pointed toward the car.

Jessie lifted her head and turned in the direction her boyfriend had indicated, her heart suddenly skipping a beat when she saw the car in the distance. "That's my dad's SUV." She mumbled, rushing through the foliage toward the car. She knew, in the back of her mind she knew that her sister wasn't going to be there and, if she was, she wasn't going to be alive. But that didn't stop Jessie from veering off the path and running threw the woods toward the campsite, leaving Chris behind, surprised.

The campsite was littered with broken glass, metal and shredded fabric, making the area looked like a war zone. All of the windows in the car had been shattered, the tires popped and torn and the passenger side door wrenched off and tossed aside. Jessie stopped short as soon as she saw the wreckage spread out before her, her breath catching in her throat; it was much worse then anything she would have imagined, the sheer disastrous nature of the whole scene.

Someone had destroyed everything that had once been whole and had even gone so far as to raid the inside of the SUV and empty all the suitcases into the dirt. Jessie was still standing on the edge, staring at the car when Chris arrived beside her, gently placing his hand upon her shoulder. They both knew who had wrecked the campsite.

Jessie stepped closer to the car, noticing the arrows embedded in the tires and the slash marks on the seats; at least she didn't see any blood and there were no bodies. She noticed a cell phone lying outside the right of the car and bent to pick it up, brushing the dust off the numbers. The dirt uncovered a open-winged, brightly colored butterfly, her sister's favorite cell phone cover.

Chris kept Jessie in the corner of his eye as he walked around the wrecked campsite, grimacing at the tattered tent, ripped sleeping bags and the dirt covered clothes tossed about the area. There were arrows embedded in the trees and in the ground, yet no sign of blood or struggle; it was as though the campsite had been abandoned when the inbred rednecks had ravaged it.

"There's no one here." Chris mumbled, not as much to state the obvious as to get rid of the silence that hung over the area. He picked up a stuffed turtle with two missing legs and pursed his lips, wondering just how the turtle belonged to.

Jessie turned to face Chris, still holding the cell phone tightly in her hand, as though it was proof that her sister was still alive. Her eyes fell to the object that her boyfriend was holding in his hand. "That's Sadie's turtle." She whispered, walking over to him and taking the stuffed animal from him. It was almost as though, up until that moment, she hadn't yet believed that her sister was in danger, that it might all be just a nightmare. But now, she was holding her sister's cell phone and her stuffed turtle, in the middle of the woods, with the disfigured lunatics still killing.

The woods were silent as Chris and Jessie stood in the middle of the trashed campsite, among the wreckage of things that had once been whole and normal; Jessie finally sighed and dropped her sister's things, not even bothering to glance down to see where they had fallen. "We have to find them, before those killers do." She mumbled, glancing out into the woods, wondering just where to start looking. They could be anywhere...they could be dead.

Chris nodded, glancing down at the objects Jessie had dropped so carelessly. "Those are your sister's things?" He questioned, wondering why his girlfriend had suddenly acted so uncharacteristically. Even when they were lost in the woods those months before, Jessie had remained stable and in control of herself, yet now she didn't even look as though she could stand on her own two feet.

Jessie nodded. "My sister loves butterflies, that's her favorite cell phone cover. Butterfly is her family nickname." She looked up at Chris with tears brimming in her eyes. "Oh Chris, I don't know what to do anymore...the woods are so big and they could be anywhere." She buried her face in her hands as tears began to snake down her cheeks.

Chris pulled her into his arms and held her tightly against his chest, stroking her hair gently. "It'll be okay, Jessie." He whispered soothingly. "We'll find Sadie and the others."

"And if we don't, it'll be my fault." Jessie whispered, almost inaudibly, her face still pressed against Chris' chest. "It's my fault in the first place, if I had told her the truth in the first place then she would have never agreed to go camping. It would have been easy for her to say no."

Chris didn't know just what to say to her words; Jessie was suffering from guilt and there was no way to simply console that away. They would have to find Sadie, otherwise Jessie's guilt, over both her sister and the death of her friends, would continue to eat her alive. Almost as deadly as the murderous mountain men.