The Last Trip of the Magi

By Michael Lorinser

Jade Byner has endured the abuse for a long time. The seventeen-year-old is not as innocent as she would like others to believe, but she may have good reason to fear for her life. Her intricate escape plan seems to be flawless. By nightfall she should be in a distant city starting a new life with her beloved Josh.

Bad, luck, bad people, and bad weather sabotage Jade's plan. Unexpected lethal winter temperatures numb her mind and diminish her ability to reason. Early the next morning she and Josh are near death in a large deserted park. Their only hope for survival lies with three elderly actors stranded in the same park after a late performance of a Christmas play.

The frail old men face insurmountable obstacles caused by their own individual demons and the vicious weather. Their combined ingenuity and strength may not be enough to save themselves and the two young strangers from the deadly forces of nature.

• Language: English
• Publisher: eBookIt.com
• Release date: Apr 26, 2016
• ISBN: 9781456610890

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THE LAST TRIP OF THE MAGI

To Karen,

For her Encouragement and Support

And behold, the star they had seen in the East went before them until it came and stood over the place where the child was. And the Magi rejoiced exceedingly. Entering into the house, they found the child with Mary, his mother, and falling down they worshipped him and offered him gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. (Matthew 2:9-11)

Jade Byner could not take one more day of abuse. Her original plan had been to leave after the holidays, but she could not wait that long. The seventeen-year-old knew she had to move swiftly and carefully if she wanted to escape by the following morning. The smallest slipup would alert her tormenters who would stop at nothing to prevent her departure. One of them had tried to kill her last summer. Make that person angry, add a little alcohol, and it would happen again.

The local library closed at 7:00 and she had no car. She splashed water on her tear-stained face before tiptoeing past the sleeping Josh and down the spiral staircase. Fifteen minutes later Jade slipped past the librarian at the front desk. Feigning interest in the labyrinth of dusty bookshelves, she edged her way to the secluded backroom containing five public computers and a printer. She was well on her way home by the time the librarian shooed the last few patrons out of the facility.

The blaring din of the living room television allowed the girl to enter the house undetected. She hung her ski jacket on the peg by the front door and sneaked up to her second floor bedroom. Josh was still asleep.

She already had a good idea of what she wanted to take with her. Fitting it all in the soft-sided suitcase and the oversize blue cloth tote bag was another matter. She had to eliminate forty percent of the clothes and other items she had once thought were essential for the journey ahead. Jade crammed her own belongings into the suitcase. The contents of the blue cloth bag were mostly for Josh.

The next hour was spent preparing her out-of-date laptop for the role it would play in her exodus. Her password had to be changed from a cryptic combination of symbols, letters and numbers to something easy to guess. Large amounts of data had to be downloaded and numerous e-mails had to be written. Finally, the computer had to be hidden in a place it was sure to be found.

Jade slid into bed around midnight, but rest did not come easily. She struggled to convince herself one last time she was doing the right thing. Her personal welfare was not the issue. The teenager felt her life could not get much worse. Her concern was completely about Josh. She did not want to do anything to harm him or their fragile relationship.

The buzzing of the alarm clock interrupted her fitful sleep. The sounds and aromas of the breakfast being prepared wafted up from the kitchen below, but she waited for the whining of the garage door opener to signal the others had left before venturing downstairs to consume the last meal she would have in that house. The toast, cereal and leftover sausage energized her body and renewed her confidence level.

It’s time to get moving, Jade said to herself. Got a few more things to do.

The old wooden stepladder was more cumbersome than she had remembered, but the teenager managed to lug it from the storage shed to a flat patch of brown grass near the backside of the garage. She was gasping for air by the time she finished toting the suitcase, cloth bag and other things she was taking with her to the same patch of grass.

Jade had no time to rest before returning to her bedroom. She locked the room’s door from the inside and took one final look around the room that had been her prison for so long. Satisfied with her preparations thus far, she forced open the window, boosted herself onto the roof of the attached garage, and inched to the awaiting stepladder. After a wobbly decent into the backyard, she hauled the ladder back to the shed. She was finally ready to begin her flight. The torture she had been enduring for so long would soon be a thing of the past.

Jade hoped to complete the first leg of her journey quickly and without being seen, but the miserable luck that had plagued her for so many months was not about to relinquish its stranglehold.

The delicate cargo she clutched to her chest was heavy. So was the suitcase she dragged behind her. The combined weight of the two exacted an unexpected toll on the pace of her short trip. The clattering wheels of the suitcase piqued the curiosity of the handful of pedestrians she encountered on the overcast December morning.

As she neared her destination, an elderly male shuffled out of a drug store into the teenager’s path. Too late to elude him, she tried to avoid conversation by staring at the sidewalk.

The man, whose white beard and round face often caused children to mistake him for Santa Claus, ignored the girl’s downcast eyes. Looks like you’re leaving for the holidays, he said.

Just taking a few things to a friend’s house.

Better hurry. The wind’s bringing in cold air. Winter is on its way.

I’ll go fast.

Good. Don’t want to be sick for Christmas.

The girl trudged the last three blocks without looking back at the old man or peering into any of the store windows she passed.

Finally, she said as she lurched into the gazebo occupying the center of the small park across from city hall. In a few minutes I’ll be out of this hell hole.

She sank onto the gazebo’s well-worn bench and slipped her purse and the blue cloth bag from her shoulder. Her most prized possession, however, she continued to hold securely in her arms.

Jade scowled in contempt at the gazebo’s rickety steps, rotting floorboards and peeling paint, but a brief stay in the decrepit structure was part of her master plan. She needed a secluded place to wait. The gazebo’s three-foot high lattice railing and the surrounding oak trees, leafless as they were, provided the protection she needed from the prying eyes of passing motorists.

Everyone in town knew the history of the aging building. It had been constructed years ago as a gathering spot for those anticipating the arrival of the numerous buses visiting Sioux Ridge each day. Now only two buses stopped at the rural community of 8,000 people. One bus traveling north in the morning, the other south in the evening. Rarely did either pick up or deposit passengers. Courtesy stops had to be made at small towns such as Sioux Ridge for the bus company to maintain its government subsidies.

Hiding in the gazebo was one of Jade’s strategies to delay detection of her disappearance as long possible. Leaving her ski jacket on the peg by the front door was another. Her family would believe she was still hibernating in her bedroom upstairs.

Throwing her pursuers off her trail once her absence was noticed was a more critical part of her plan. Some of the tactics she developed to deceive them were simple. Others were more complex.

A key element was to go north. The teenager was confident everyone would assume she had gone in the opposite direction. The distaste for cold weather she had developed over the last few winters had never been kept a secret. The same was true of her yearning to join friends who pursued employment or college degrees in sunny southern cities. She solidified the fraud by cramming the laptop computer she had left between the mattresses of her bed with detailed information about major cities in Texas, Florida, and the Carolinas.

Using the interstate bus was another significant factor. No one would ever guess she would resort to such a bourgeois form of transportation to make her getaway. Purchasing the tickets on the library computer under an assumed name added to the deception.

Despite all her preparation, the young woman was dogged by a nagging feeling. A feeling that she had failed to consider something of great importance, something that would be vital to the success of her escape.

Her apprehension multiplied when the bus failed to arrive at its scheduled time. Her mind swelled with memories of nasty stories she had heard about girls her age traveling alone to unfamiliar places. To combat the building tension, she closed her eyes and forced herself to envision the wonderful life awaiting her in the big city.

The hissing of airbrakes interrupted her fantasy, but the significance of the sound took several seconds to register. The bus was already at the curb, its door wide open. The silver-haired driver was checking his watch. A surge of fear rocketed through the girl. She was going to miss the bus.

Wait, wait. She waived her tickets while sprinting across a bed of shriveled summer flowers.

The driver shook his head in disgust but waited for the girl. He muttered a curt greeting as she boarded, snatched the tickets from her hand, and slammed the door shut.

Her arms filled with her possessions, Jade struggled through the entire bus before settling into two empty seats adjacent to the tiny restroom. She unloaded her belongings onto the one nearest the window before settling into the aisle seat for the long ride ahead. She uttered an audible sigh of relief. Her escape plan was working. No one would be able to hurt her again. The hokey highway sign on the outskirts of town confirmed it. Thanks for visiting Sioux Ridge. Have a good day.

Then she remembered the suitcase. The one on which she had painted the initials JB in fancy letters. The one she had placed behind the bench in the gazebo. The one that could derail many of her plans if she could not retrieve it quickly.

Please, she said to the driver. We are barely out of town. It will only take a few minutes to go back for it.

Sorry, he said. Can’t. Already behind schedule. Got to make up time.

A lot of important things are in that suitcase.

Sorry. Call somebody to pick it up. You can use my cell phone if you don’t have one.

I don’t know anybody I can trust.

That’s too bad. You can get off the bus at the next stop and hitch a ride back to Sioux Ridge to get it yourself.

I can’t. I gotta get out of town. And I mean now.

Sorry. Can’t help you.

I’ll pay you. I’ll give you fifty dollars.

Fifty whole dollars? The driver made no attempt to hide his sarcasm.

Okay, seventy-five.

Nope. Not even for a hundred bucks. Against company policy. We can’t turn around unless it’s a bonafide emergency.

But this is an emergency. It’s a matter of life or death.

Now that’s an original line. You have to do better than that to get me to turn around.

But I’m telling the truth. I could die if I don’t get my suitcase.

Listen, girlie. The driver’s voice rose in irritation. Either you go back to your seat right now or I’m going to pull over to the side of the road and toss your cute little bottom right off this bus.

You can’t do that.

Do you want to see me?

No.

So which is it? Are you going back to your seat or do I pull over?

The teenager responded with an anger-filled glare.

She saw the two men leering at her as she bumped her way down the narrow aisle. Both were in their late twenties and wore old, dirty clothes. They looked and smelled like they hadn’t bathed for weeks. But she was too upset with the callous driver to pay much heed to the unkempt and ill-mannered pair sitting across the aisle and one row ahead of her. Instead, she mentally prepared an obscenity-laced tirade to hurl at the driver once the bus reached the city that would be her salvation.

Within an hour boredom replaced the girl’s anger. She had convinced herself the missing suitcase posed only a temporary inconvenience. The loss would make life difficult for a few days, but she and Josh would be able to survive without its contents.

She studied every passenger on the bus one by one. With the possible exception of the two undesirables sitting across from her, all were either young children or adults two or three times her age. None appeared to be the type of person she would like to involve in a conversation.

The trip was long, in part due to the string of stops at small, lifeless towns where only invisible customers awaited the mandated bus service. But Jade also faulted the driver, who, despite being behind schedule, seemed to keep the mammoth vehicle below the speed limit.

While taking deliberate steps to conceal her activities from the other passengers, she passed the time caressing, rewrapping, or otherwise caring for the bundle she had earlier placed on the adjacent seat. She completed her tasks unobtrusively and almost silently, increasing her confidence that the other riders were unaware of what she had carried onto the bus.

She remained in her seat during the brief meal stops, munching on the granola bars and dried fruit she had stuffed in a pocket of her overcoat before leaving home. A second pocket contained a bottle of water and a small box of juice.

Halfway through the journey she remembered the new smart phone in her purse. She had plucked the phone, more accurately described as a miniature computer, from a gift box bearing her name underneath the family Christmas tree. According to the accompanying brochure, the device was equipped with all the latest features and was preloaded with a generous amount of useful applications.

Her face blazed with excitement as she fondled the sleek burgundy phone. The thought of the immense capabilities of the new technology sent a slight shiver rippling through her body. As if attracted by a magnet, a single finger halted abruptly on the button that would bring the phone’s magic to life. Then it struck her. How realistic were those detective shows on TV? If she activated the phone, could the cops trace her movements and pinpoint her exact location? Jade couldn’t take the chance. She jammed the phone into her purse, muttered a few expletives under her breath and slumped down in her seat.

The uninspiring scenery flashing past had a hypnotic effect on the girl, causing her eyes to droop in drowsiness. She was jarred back to full consciousness by a sudden clamor racing through the bus. Excited passengers babbled to each other and pointed out the window. The once drab landscape sported a coat of glistening snow.

They must never have seen snow before, Jade thought. They should have been here last year when we had so much before Christmas.

The novelty of the snow diminished after a few miles, and the short-lived excitement was soon replaced by the quiet monotony of a long bus ride.

Jade’s own tedium was interrupted by one of the scruffy guys sitting across the aisle. She assumed the rough jolt to her shoulder when he first got up to use the restroom was accidental. Two repeat performances later in the journey changed her opinion. She had to use every ounce of willpower to refrain from retaliating against her transgressor with anything more than a sneer of disgust. She did not want to create any kind of scene that would draw attention.

For the same reason, when the bus reached the terminal Jade abandoned her plan to rebuke the driver for his refusal to return to Sioux Ridge. A better strategy would be to blend in as much as possible with the departing passengers. She squeezed past her obstinate adversary without looking or speaking to him.

She concentrated so hard on avoiding the driver that she failed to notice she was sandwiched between the two seedy males until all three began their descent down the vehicle’s steep steps. For a few brief seconds she became physically wedged between the pair.

The foul-smelling man behind her stumbled forward and pushed Jade into his partner. As the contact was made, a hand slipped into her purse. The same