Depraved by Bryan Smith Page A

mother’s note.
    A week later, the day after Jessica finally deposited the check in her bank account, Cynthia Sloan shocked the whole family by killing herself, doing the job via a combination of pills and a deeply slashed wrist. No one knew why she’d done it. There’d been no fatal medical diagnosis. She hadn’t been having an affair. Her loving husband of thirty years had always treated her with great tenderness and care. The surviving Sloans had talked about it endlessly in the ensuing weeks, hashing out theory after theory, each more unlikely than the last, and had come up with nothing.
    She was just gone, that’s all.
    Gone, and never coming back.
    Tears spilled from Jessica’s eyes as the memories assailed her. She nearly stumbled over a vine as she swiped at themoisture with the back of a wrist. Spying a big rock ten yards to her left, she decided to take a break. Some time had passed since the last time she’d heard anything remotely like the sound of a pursuer. She could stop for a minute, long enough to get herself together, at least. She unslung the rifle, sat on the rock, and propped the weapon between her legs. She wiped the tears away and tried to make herself focus on the problem at hand.
    Goddammit, she had to get that bag back.
    And not just for sentimental reasons. Her wallet was in the bag, along with her driver’s license, social security card, and multiple credit cards. All but one of the credit cards was maxed out, though. And she wasn’t too worried about the possibility of identity theft. Somehow she doubted the ability of the mutant rednecks to do much damage in that regard. Shit, she doubted they could spell their own names. No, there was just one thing the bag contained that she really needed right now.
    Her fucking cell phone.
    Her ticket out of this nightmare, if she could just get her hands on it. But that would mean going back to the car. Back to where she’d first glimpsed the men the hunter had called the Kinchers. Those monsters. Just the thought of it made her shudder. A deliberate march back in that direction would be pure madness. She thought of the Kinchers some more and for the first time wondered what had become of Hoke. He wouldn’t have been able to take off running like she had, not after the hours spent in that cramped and filthy trunk. So they had either killed him or taken him somewhere. Either way, his current situation was even more dire than her own. The thought brought a small, trembling smile to her face. She hoped the Kinchers were running a redneck train on him even now, cornholing him endlessly with enormous, mutated cocks, making him scream and mewl like a baby as theceaseless pressure ruptured his rectum. This made her think of what Hoke had done to her earlier in the day and the smile disappeared.
    Jessica glanced upward, narrowing her eyes against the glint of sunlight visible through the canopy of tree leaves. She had at least a couple hours of daylight left. And if she hoped to make any progress toward getting out of the woods before nightfall, she would need to get moving again.
    She stood up and slung the rifle strap over her shoulder again. She turned in a slow circle and realized she was no longer sure what direction she’d been heading in before she stopped. Frustration assailed her again. She wasn’t a wilderness person. Nor did she have any survival skills, despite her father’s oft-repeated advice over the years that she needed to prepare herself for a coming global catastrophe. She loved her dad, but the career military man bought into certain strains of right-wing paranoia a touch too enthusiastically for her taste. He honestly believed some form of apocalypse was right around the corner. Pure nonsense, of course, but now she wished she’d taken him up on his frequent offers to teach her basic survival skills. They sure as shit would come in handy right about now.
    The hell with it, she thought.
    She stopped turning, picked a direction, and