“Guess he lives alone.” Ginger wiped her face clean on her sleeve. A dribble of saliva clung to her mouth as she licked her lips. They tore the patchy pajama shirt from his lean body and shredded him in seconds. They crashed into the front door, lunged onto the scrawny old man in the kitchen before he had time to squeeze the trigger of his shotgun. “Let’s go,” she whispered, her voice hoarse.

Urgent, warm hunger pressed in Ginger’s stomach. She bit her lower lip, immediately regretting the admission. “You’re sort of hot when you’re hunting,” Ginger said. A shadow across her face accentuated the wide-eyed expression. Her slender shoulders pulled up, and the heavy gray hood of her sweatshirt drooped over her head. Cory crouched, her small frame hunched against the peeling blue paint of the cottage. “It is.” Cory bared her teeth and snarled. As it crashed to the ground, a light flared on in the back of the house, illuminating the fifteen feet to the shed behind the house. Cory tripped over a rusted canoe leaning against the side of the house.

The land was big enough and remote enough for the girls to stay lost.Ĭory and Ginger approached the first camp they saw and crept outside, peering into the windows to see what awaited them. Off season, only half of the cottages would have guests, and even fewer would have phones or cell coverage. The trails that linked the parcels were scarcely marked. Two dozen camps dotted the acreage around the five-mile perimeter of the lake.

As Fast as She Can by E.F. Schraeder