Free Creed by Trisha Leaver Page A

booth or Holiday Inn sitting out in the middle of these stupid corn stalks.”
    “It’s soybeans, not corn, and no, there’s no … ” Joseph paused, waffling his hand as if he was trying to comprehend the meaning of the words “Holiday Inn.” He eventually gave up and moved on to Luke’s original question. “We’re not going into town. We’re headed toward an irrigation shed on the edge of town.”
    “Irrigation shed?” Luke questioned. “Yeah, no.”
    Joseph ignored him and kept walking, stopping abruptly a few yards up. His attention was focused on the town, and it took me a second to grasp what we were supposed to see. “I’m guessing that looks familiar,” he said.
    I stumbled back and landed on my butt for the second time that day. Luke went to help me up, fear clouding his eyes. He’d seen the same thing and was doing little to shield me from his panic. Joseph watched me carefully, his eyes softening briefly as I surveyed the crumpled-up hood of a car that looked alarmingly like ours.
    I needed to get a lot closer to confirm the license plate, but given that every other car in this town was your standard blue, four-door Ford and ours was a red Toyota, there was little left to guess. And it was sitting right there in the gas station lot. Town still deserted. Streets still silent. But our car had been moved, towed to the same station I’d begged Luke to let us hide out in last night.
    The front driver’s side of our car was bashed in, nearly totaled, and even from a distance I could see that the hood was popped open. My eyes trailed downward and I noticed what looked like a piece of the engine lying on the ground next to our flat front tires. Apparently Joseph was right. Finding gas was the least of our problems.
    “That’s our car,” Mike said, his voice seething with anger. “What did you do to it and how did it get there?”
    Luke fished around his pocket and pulled out the car keys, staring at them in disbelief. “What the hell?”
    “I didn’t do anything to it. I’m trying to stay hidden like you.”
    “Why should we believe you?” Mike fired back.
    The time it took for Joseph to acknowledge the question seemed like forever. It was like he knew there was no possible way to convince Mike completely, so why bother to try.
    “I don’t know what you want me to say,” Joseph finally replied. “I didn’t do it, and I want out of this town as much as you. Probably more.”
    I exchanged glances with Mike, wondering if he’d buy Joseph’s explanation. I doubted he would.
    “There’s no way we’re following you into some shed,” Luke said. “There is not a single person in this town, you destroyed our car, and don’t even get me started on the weird shit we found in your house.”
    Rather than answer, Joseph tilted his head to the right, as if seeking out a sound that no one but him could hear. The stalks on our left swayed. Luke saw it too and we both swung our heads around, hoping to God we weren’t surrounded.
    In front of us was the town and God-knows-who. Behind us was the messed-up house I had no intention of ever setting foot in again. Whoever was parting those stalks to our left was also rapidly approaching from the right. And Joseph stood dead in front of us. None of our options looked good, and we didn’t have the time for a debate. Whatever was coming out of those fields would be on top of us in seconds.
    “Where’s the shed?” I blurted out. I didn’t want to go there any more than Luke did, but right then it seemed like the safest place to be.
    “There.” Joseph pointed, already running toward it. The small rectangular structure was half a field away; half a field for whatever was stalking us to speed up and catch us out in the open.

TWELVE
    Since it consisted of little more than a roof over what app-eared to be a gigantic motor and a mess of pipes, I couldn’t imagine this was the shed Joseph was referring to. A few posts held the A-frame roof above the tangle