Sorry for the long delay, my loyal readers, I've been busy with school work and I've been recovering from some sort of flu-like illness. Regardless of all these things, here's the next chapter, thanks for the reviews. Enjoy!

Chapter Seven

Jessie headed back to the hospital room she had slept the day away in, moving much quicker this time, and searched around for her clothes and shoes, all the while dragging along the metal pole dangling her IV bag. She didn't know just how she was going to get rid of it, but she did know that she couldn't take it into the woods with her; so, for the time being, the pole was pushed along as she bustled about the room, searching for her things. Jessie finally found her clothes, washed and folded neatly, in the metal cabinet near the entrance of the room; her tennis shoes were sitting beside them, worn and dirt coated, just as they had been before she had arrived at the hospital.

Jessie gently pulled on her pants, deciding to start there since she had no idea how to get her shirt over and around her IV tubes, and bent down to pull on her tennis shoes. She was hopping around on one foot, hoping to balance herself, as she pulled on one shoe, stumbling and crashing to the ground, yanking on the needles in her arm in the process. She cried out sharply, eyes welling with tears, as she looked down at her arm, which had begun to bleed lightly from two torn puncture marks. Jessie pressed her arm against the stark white bedsheets in hopes of stopping the flow before it got too bad, and hoped that her cries hadn't roused any nurses.

She sat with her arm against the sheets, watching the door frame closely for at least ten minutes before she decided no one had thought much about her cry. Jessie figured people shouted out in hospitals all the time. Slowly, she finished dressing herself and tied the laces on her shoes, righting herself and checking her arm. Though the wound looked painful, it was no longer bleeding and Jessie figured that meant that it was nothing serious.

Jessie peaked out into the hallway, found it empty and headed out of the bedroom, with as much composure and calmness that she had when she was going to visit Chris; like earlier, no one gave her a second glance and she managed to make it to the waiting room and into the parking lot without being stopped once. However, now she was out of the hospital, she was faced with yet another problem, well two actually; first off, she didn't have any weapons to use against the rednecks and she didn't have a way to get back to the woods. Jessie had no idea how far she was from the woods but she guessed she was a couple of miles, something she wasn't looking forward to walking; yet she didn't have any money, any transportation, not even a cell phone.

Jessie wandered into the parking lot, arm and feet throbbing and thought about how she was going to carry out her plan. She was about to give up all together and wait until Chris was well enough to leave the hospital when she stopped, staring at a powder blue Cadillac sitting in the space closest to the door. Her older brother had had a Cadillac once upon a time and one day, during the summer when they were both waiting for school to start up again, he had shown her how to hot wire a car; Jessie had never questioned just why he knew how to do such a thing but she had watched and learned and still remembered which wires went where and how not to electrocute yourself and blow the car up.

And now, it seemed to her that hot wiring some stranger's car and using it to get to the woods was the only option that she had. Not that Jessie was too keen on committing grand theft auto but she was more interested in repaying the murderous mountain men for what they had done to her sister and friends. Glancing both ways, she slipped toward the Cadillac and managed to jimmy the door open, slipping inside and pulling it shut gently behind her; she slid down so that her back was resting against the back of the driver's seat and pulled off the plastic piece that held all the car's wires in place.

A gaggle of red, blue and yellow wires tumbled down in tangled and messy jumble that through Jessie for a loop for a moment and she worried that she really didn't remember how to hot wire a car after all. It's easier then it looks, she reminded herself, it's the only thing that actually is easy.

Picking up a red wire, she stripped the plastic coating off, exposing the copper wires underneath and did the same with a blue wire; Jessie tied the copper of the wires together and the engine gave a tiny rumble. The yellow wire was the remaining piece she would need, but it was the trickiest part, since there were more yellow wires then any other color flowing from the tangle. After hunting around for much longer then necessary, as far as she was concerned, Jessie finally located the wire that she figured was the one she was looking for and peeled the plastic from it. She touched the ends of the copper wire to the tied together wire and felt a pulse of relief when the car sparked to life. She tied the yellow wire to the other two and the car continued to rumble, idling as it waited to be put into gear.

Jessie lifted her head and sat up, pulling her seatbelt around her and putting the car in reverse, backing out of the space, heading out of the parking lot. She didn't allow herself to look back at the hospital, didn't want to think about leaving Chris but she didn't expect him to understand. This was something she had to do and she would be back, after all.

* * *

Jessie allowed herself to drive in complete silence for a good ten minutes before she began to think about the remaining part of her problem: getting a weapon to take against the disfigured rednecks. While idling at a red light, she rummaged through the Cadillac's glove box and was shocked to discover that the car belonged to an off-duty police officer who, by law, was required to carry his firearm with him at all times. The gun was in its leather holster, nearly a full round in the chambers, waiting for its registered owner to return.

Though Jessie was thankful for the strange sort of luck she was having, she also knew that, having stolen a police officer's car, she would be easier to track and now a felon. As if skipping out on the hospital bill wasn't enough...

Too late to turn back now, Jessie reminded herself, not that turning back had ever been an option. She continued the way the woman had taken when she had brought them to the hospital, the night deepening and leaving her with a strange sense of loneliness; there were almost no other cars on the road and the glowing lights of the stores open all day and night winked as she passed them. Jessie wished that Chris was with her now, just simply to be beside her and make her feel not as alone as she knew that was.

It was at that moment that she first began to have second thoughts about what she was doing, wondering if she was doing to the right thing, and if she would, indeed, make it back to see Chris like she had promised in her note. What if she couldn't get a shot off before the mountain men did? She had never fired a gun before, so that was quite possible. What if she really was walking into a suicide mission, what if she ended up as dead as Sadie, Carly and the others? Jessie didn't want to think about the possible answers to those haunting questions and she pushed them from her mind easy enough as she watched the neon signs pass behind her head, the area tapering off slowly, leading toward the highway.

Jessie turned on the radio, hoping that lack of silence would keep her from thinking the morbid, yet strangely true, thoughts that swirled around in her mind. She was almost startled when an 80's classic blared through the speakers, complete with pounding bass and screeching guitar rifts.

"I'm on a highway to Hell, highway to Hell. I'm on a...."

"Great." Jessie mumbled under her breath, changing the radio station.

* * *

The highway was more populated then the roads inside the city, with hundreds of head and tail lights blaring in the darkness. Jessie didn't know just how she was going to find the exact spot where she needed to pull over in the dark and not get hit in the process. She would simply have to guess, because there was no real way to tell just where she was anymore, there were no signs, to markings, at least not that she could see in the blackness.

Finally, she had gotten tired of driving and decided that wherever she was as good as it was going to get and did an illegal U-turn to get to the other side of the highway. A few car horns blared indignantly but Jessie didn't really pay them any attention, no body had gotten hurt so she didn't feel the need to apologize to the drivers she had startled enough to keep them from falling asleep.

Jessie guided the Cadillac over to the gravel shoulder and left the head lights on so that no one would crash into the abandoned car and leave a traffic accident behind them. She took the gun off the passenger seat where it had rested since she had discovered it and slipped from the car, wishing that she had a flashlight to use to penetrate the blackness that hung around the woods.

Staring at the thick net of trees once again, she froze and stood on the shoulder for a long while before she could work up the nerve to leave the car behind and head into the woods once more. This time she had a weapon and the element of surprise. Jessie convinced herself that she had the upper hand, though she really didn't believe what her brain was telling her.

* * *

In the darkness, it didn't take Jessie long enough to get her herself turned around and lost, stumbling over roots and knocking into trees. Unable to walk any more, she dropped to her knees and pressed her forehead against the pine needles beneath her, taking a deep breath to steady herself; she didn't think she could continue without Chris to push her along. Jessie didn't know how long she lay on the ground, eyes squeezed tightly with her hand on the hilt of the gun, but when she opened her eyes again, the sun was beginning to rise and the shadows were slinking back off to their hiding places for another day.

Jessie lifted her head and looked around her, trying to see if she could recognize anything in the growing light. She didn't see anything she knew but she heard a familiar sound: the sound of water running through a stream, gurgling over rocks, heading toward a larger body of water. The only stream she had come across during her wanderings through the woods had been around the new cabin that the murderous hillbillies had taken up residence in and she hoped she had stumbled upon the same stream. Getting to her feet, she tightened her grip on the pistol and headed in the direction of the stream, feeling weary and beaten once again.

The stream she had heard was indeed the same one from before and Jessie almost ran into the cabins walls without even realizing it. From where she stood, but the back windows, she could hear several wordless grunts coming from inside the cabin, and almost lost her nerve once again, all her previous worries suddenly rushing back to her in full force. This was not something to be taken lightly (though she had no intention of taking it that way), this was life or death.

Jessie crept around to the front of the cabin, figuring that her best bet would simply be to bust through the front door and start firing bullets. She was bound to hit something that way. Taking a deep breath, she steeled herself, evening her heart beat and holding the gun ready, just as she had seen the officers from Law and Order do right before they prepared to bust down a criminal's door. Though Jessie had no intention of kicking the door open as dramatically as the officers on the show did, it still made her feel a little bit better to seem prepared.

Without wasting anymore time, she reached for the door knob, threw the front door open and stood in the foyer, pulling the trigger. Jessie was surprised that nothing happened when her yanked down the metal trigger, no bullet was fired, the gun remaining silent in her hand. That was when she realized that the safety was on.

Before she could flick the safety off, the mountain men, whom had been surprised by her arrival, reacted; the bulky man snatched up the club she had left behind earlier and cracked it across the back of her skull. Jessie dropped the gun and crumpled to the ground, everything turning black before she hit the floor.