by James Hunt
“Agreed,” the voice finally echoed back. “Come out with your hands on the top of your head. If your friend shoots, or even breathes too loudly, you’re dead, and he’ll be next along with your kids.”
Reuben scurried across the floor, blocking her path to the door. “This is suicide. They’re not going to let your children go. You’re only feeding them exactly what they want!”
“I’ll stop halfway to the bombs. Wait until they cluster, then hit the detonator.” Wren grabbed hold of Reuben’s large, dirtied fist and squeezed tight. “If I don’t make it find my children. I know you’ve seen them. Get them out of that community and make sure that psycho doesn’t touch them.” She touched the pocket where he’d hidden the picture of his family. “There are still people you can help.”
Most of the barricade was nothing more than dust after the gunfire, and Wren had to do little more than yank at the top board for the rest to crumble. Before Reuben stopped her, she burst from the door, the sunlight of the evening warming her face as she squinted. She held her hands above her head, and one by one the gang emerged from the depths of the forest, their rifles aimed at both her and the cabin. She looked for their leader, but as her eyes fell upon the lurking shadows, none of them held the demeanor and sophistication that she had seen on display behind the fire. Wren stopped in the middle of the clearing, with the circle of explosives only a few feet away.
The gang mimicked her motions, freezing in their positions as she stopped. They looked to one another questioningly, and then one of the filthier members, his arms and legs covered in soil, opened his mouth. “You come to us.”
They were too far out of range for the explosives to be useful. Wren looked to her left and right, the rest of the goons slowly stepping out from behind their cover, all of their rifles and pistols aimed at either her or the cabin. She stepped forward, slowly. Her pulse quickened, and she felt the nervous beads of sweat roll down her back and neck.
The explosives were only five feet from her now, but the goons had moved closer as well. Just a little further. She looked to her left and saw the gang’s boldness grow with very step. Only three feet separated her now from the explosives. Two feet. What’s he waiting for? The circle of goons had nearly engulfed the cabin now. Her foot grazed one of the explosives, and she shuddered. This is it.
“Wren, run!” Reuben’s voice thundered from inside the cabin, and she turned on her heel and sprinted back toward the door. A brief series of gunshots filled the air, cut short by the explosives. The ground rumbled and shifted under Wren’s feet, and she felt a hot blast of heat brush her back, coupled with a force that thrust her face-first into the dirt, and she felt the warm taste of blood upon impact.
The roar of the explosion was deafening, and as Wren lay in the compacted earth, she heard nothing but a high-pitched din. She brought her finger to her left ear and cupped it gingerly, a splitting pain running up the side of her head. Her ear felt wet, and when she examined her fingers, they shimmered red with blood in the sunlight.
Wren looked around at the bodies spread out on the forest floor, some of them twitching, some lifeless, and some of them in more than one piece. Wren looked to the cabin and saw Reuben rushing outside, rifle in hand, firing into the bodies on the ground. He seemed to find her without ever even looking down. She felt his massive hand yank her up by her collar and drag her inside, his one free arm still firing. Reuben flung her onto the cabin floor, and when he pointed down to her she watched his mouth move but still heard nothing. She collapsed to her back, her body hot and achy. She clawed the floor, dragging her body to the rifle next to the window where she’d left it. She glanced behind her to the open door. The ground was lumpy and uneven at the points of explosion.
Wren wrapped her fingers around the rifle, but when she tried to stand, she collapsed. The cabin spun along with her brain. She released the rifle and squinted her eyes shut, trying to hold back the brewing volcano in her stomach, but failed. Vomit spewed from her mouth. Her throat burned from the bile, and the foul, pungent stench filled her nostrils, adding to the sour taste that lingered on her tongue.
The second attempt at standing resulted in a more vicious bout of gagging, and Wren was reduced to standing on all fours, watching the puddle of puke beneath her grow larger with every heave. With her arms shaking and the contents of her stomach emptied, she collapsed to her side, the ceiling above her shifting from side to side. She wasn’t sure how long she lay there, but after a while she felt the thump of footsteps shake the floorboards. This was her end. Lying on the floor, surrounded by her own retch, the thoughts in her shaken mind adrift like a small boat in the vastness of an ocean.
Hands grabbed her by the arms and pulled her backward. Any thoughts of trying to fight back were useless, as she no longer had the use of her limbs. She felt her body be leaned up against the cabin walls, and just when she thought her time had come, it was Reuben’s face that greeted her. She squinted at him like he was something out of a dream. “What?” She felt herself mouth the words, but couldn’t hear her own voice. Panic gripped her at the thought of deafness.
Reuben shook her by the shoulders, his face highly animated, reddening from raising his voice to a scream. But no matter how much he yelled, Wren just shook her head. She buried her face in her hands, the fear of the disability taking hold of her senses, of her reason. Her palms grew wet with tears, and her shoulders trembled with Reuben’s continued agitation.
“We have to go!”
The words were dulled and muffled, but she perked up at the noise. “What?” she heard herself ask.
“We have to go, Wren! Now!” Reuben lifted her off the floor with ease, and she managed to keep her legs under her, even though the floor still felt tilted. Reuben hurried around the cabin, more mumbles escaping his mouth as Wren moved her jaw and shook her head as if water blocked her ears.
By the time the spinning subsided, Reuben was already out the door with the remainder of their gear, and she stumbled forward. She felt her heartbeat thump in her chest, vibrating like a bass drum. She looked down at the bodies littered in the clearing, the few survivors of the explosions dead with a bullet lodged in their heads, bleeding the soil red. She hurried after Reuben, struggling to keep up, not knowing whether they were running from someone or after someone.
Chapter 5
The longer they ran, the more Wren’s hearing sharpened. She brushed past a branch and heard the light snap of wood, followed quickly by the angered hush of Reuben in front of her. Out of the two of them, he’d remained stealthy, tracking the few men who’d escaped after the explosions. She did her best to remain silent, but her feet had the stealth of bricks, and her coordination was still warped from the blast.
“Wait.” Wren stopped, her breathing labored as she bent over and rested her hands on her knees. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, her chapped lips scratching the dirty skin. She shook her head and felt the dried, crusty blood in her left ear. She pawed it nervously. While her right ear had returned to normal, her left had not.
Reuben glanced up ahead and walked over to a branch, bits of blood staining the leaves. He rubbed the liquid between her fingers. “It’s still wet. They’re close.”
Wren forced herself to stand. The exertion had sapped her strength and left her body drenched in sweat. She ran her tongue over her upper lip and rolled some of the salty moisture back into her own dry, cracked mouth. “How many?” She tucked the rifle under her arm. The quicker they ended this, the quicker she could get her children back.
Reuben bent down, running his fingers over the prints in the soil. “Three. One of them is walking with a limp.” When he turned to look at her, it was the first time she had really seen his face since the cabin. Specks of blood dotted his cheeks and beard. The red tinge provided him with a more sinister appeal in the sunlight, but his eyes still remained the calm pools she remembered seeing upon their first meeting.
“You should have let me die,” Wren said.
Reuben remained stoic. “It’s hard to find life in a place like this. And when I recognize it, I do my best to keep it alive.”
Wren watched him press forward a little farther before she followed. They tracked for what felt like hours, though she knew that was false due to the setting sun. She wasn’t sure what would happen if they didn’t find the men before nightfall, or what would happen if they found the men at all, or if Reuben could even track them in the dark. Lost in her thoughts, she slammed into Reuben’s back, stumbling them both forward a few steps. “Sorry.”
The sun set, and the forest blurred in the darkness. With her left ear still deaf to the world, Wren panicked at what was left of her diminishing senses. She kept her eyes focused on Reuben’s silhouette, stopping when he stopped, turning where he turned, placing her feet in his footsteps.
A gunshot broke the silence of the night, and both Reuben and Wren hit the ground. She lifted her head from the dirt and waited for Reuben to move, but he remained still. When no other shots were fired he crawled backward on his stomach until he was side by side with Wren. He leaned in close enough for her to feel his hot breath in her one good ear. “The shot missed far left. They can’t see us.”
“Can we see them?” Wren asked.
Reuben gestured left. “I saw the muzzle flash in that direction. About one hundred yards out. They must have heard us coming. We’ll follow the trail for a little while longer, but we’ll have to stay low. They’ll be actively looking for us now. Just do exactly as I do.”
They pressed on, hunched over, which Wren found difficult with her center of gravity tilted from the explosive. She was amazed at Reuben’s stamina. He never tired, no matter how far they walked, while her body clung together with duct tape and gum.
They continued in silence for another hour, their movements slower. Every once in a while Reuben would tell her to wait, then move ahead alone. She wasn’t sure what he was doing but knew better than to try and follow. He’d had multiple opportunities to leave if he wanted, and now wasn’t the time to question his methods. This was his world out here, and Wren was merely a spectator.
Reuben came to an abrupt halt and gunfire erupted ahead. Wren crashed into the bushes on her right and she crawled through the sharp twigs and branches until she burst out of the other side, her face and arms stinging with fresh cuts. In the darkness, white flashes burst from the enemy’s barrels with each gunshot. When she tried to shoot, she realized she’d dropped the rifle and she scrambled back through the bush, searching for the rifle.
Reuben returned fire, and Wren tried to keep one eye on his movements, but after a few moments, she lost him in the darkness. Her foot smacked against something hard, and she reached down through a thicket of brush and felt hardened steel.
“Wren!” Reuben burst through the trees on her left, and she nearly shot him on sight. “C’mon, stay with me.” All she saw were the whites of his eyes and then the back of his head as he quickly returned to chase their prey.
Wren struggled to keep up. Every step numbed her legs, sending a tingling sensation up her back. Gunfire was exchanged on both sides, and more than once Wren and Reuben were forced to stop. But with every two steps forward, they managed to gain a half step on the enemy. Reuben maneuvered through the forest as if it were broad daylight. He came alive on the hunt, and as she followed, Wren couldn’t help but feel a certain adoration for the man. She’d never been a violent person, and if she’d seen this a month ago, man hunting man, it would have made her stomach turn. But here, in the wild, in the dark, she knew she was witnessing a man who’d mastered his craft. And from her countless hours at the drawing board mastering her own, it was something she admired.
A brief lull in the chase provided Wren time to catch her breath. She leaned up against a tree while Reuben changed out his magazine and then dropped his pack. For the first time since they departed, she heard him out of breath. “I’m going ahead a little bit on my own. Their gait’s shortened. They’re tiring. Probably looking for a place to make their last stand.”
“Do you know where we are?” Wren asked, trying to rub the feeling back into her thighs. “Is there someplace here where they could find shelter? Did they lead us back to town?”
Reuben shook his head. “They started in that direction but then veered off about a mile back. I don’t know where they’re going now.” He pulled a new magazine from the pack and tucked it into the waist of his pants. “Don’t venture far.”
Wren propped herself up against a tree. Her muscles ached with fatigue. The rest only worsened the desire to close her eyes. But she forced the rifle under her arm, staving off the weariness, and focused on scanning the different sections of the woods around her in case she needed to move quickly.
The trees were shorter here, with the majority of the greenery consisting of shrubs and bushes. The terrain was rockier and the soil loose and silky, almost like clay. It was a peculiar patch of forestry for the area, and Wren wondered how much farther the small biosphere would stretch.
“Wren!”
Gunfire erupted, and she pushed herself up in what felt like slow motion and sprinted toward the firefight. Her ankles and feet wobbled unevenly over rocks and pebbles, and twice she felt her right ankle buckle, but she managed to stay upright.
Reuben hadn’t ventured very far, and he saw her before she saw him. In fact, she nearly stepped on him on her way past. He yanked her down behind the cover of a rocky shelf as bullets ricocheted and echoed off stony earth. “They’ve cornered themselves. The bastards thought they could lose me on the rocks. They’ve got nowhere else to go.”
Wren stuck her neck out to get a better look, then ducked. The bullet that nearly killed her originated from a dark portion of the rocks, a cave carved by millennia of rain, wind, and eroding earth. “How do we get them out?”
“They weren’t carrying any supplies, so unless they stumbled into a cave with running water, which I know they didn’t, they’ll have to come out for water.” Reuben pointed to a small clearing of trees. “We’ll keep watch there. It’ll offer a good view of the cave, and the trees will provide us cover. We’ll take shifts. My guess is they’ll try and make a run before morning.”
Reuben started a fire and, once it was blazing, handed Wren a container of water. “Sip it. But make sure you drink till it’s gone.” Wren cradled the canteen as if it were made of gold. The water rushed over her chapped lips and wet her tongue. She fought the urge to drain it in one gulp, heeding Reuben’s advice, and sloshed the liquid back and forth in her mouth, savoring every drop.
After the water and a bit of jerky in her stomach, Wren inched closer to the fire. The night air had cooled quickly, and she was thankful for the flames’ warmth. She shut her eyes, trying to picture her children’s faces, to hear their voices, afraid their memory would fade from her own.
“How’s the ear?” Reuben kept his gaze on the cave’s entrance.
“What?” The tone in her voice caught his attention, and she smiled at her own joke, which he reciprocated. “The right ear’s fine, but I don’t think the left is coming back.” She poked at it half-heartedly, hoping to prove herself wrong.
“One’s better than none,” Reuben replied. He paused a moment before he added, “It was stupid, what you did. You’re no good to your children dead.”
“And my children are no good dead to me,” Wren spit back. “I’m not a soldier, Reuben. I’m not a fighter or survivalist. I’m an architect from Chicago and a mother of three. And the latter is all that matters to me. I’m not going to let my kids die. No matter what the cost.”
Reuben returned his gaze to the cave’s entrance. “I’ll take the first watch. You get some rest.”
Wren didn’t object, and she used a portion of his pack as a pillow. The moment her eyes closed, she drifted to sleep. When Reuben prodded her awake for her shift, it felt as though she’d just lain down, but the plummet in temperature and the bags under Reuben’s eyes told a different story. She kept the rifl
e close and tried to get comfortable for her watch.
Flames glowed from inside the cave’s depths. No doubt the gang had someone on watch as well. Two pairs of hidden eyes peering through the darkness, each of them locked onto one another in a stalemate of wills. She raised the rifle’s scope to her eye and peered through the magnified lens. Her vision ascended to the pinpoint accuracy of crosshairs, and she saw the faintest outline of a man’s silhouette at the edge of the cave. She placed her finger on the trigger, her arms surprisingly calm. End it now.
But before she squeezed the trigger, another gunshot rang out, this one coming from inside the cave. Wren ducked, trying to elude the bullet meant to kill her, but as a second shot thundered, she realized she wasn’t the target. Reuben was already at her side, gun in hand, staring into the same darkness as she was. “Did you shoot?”
“No,” Wren answered. After the two gunshots, only silence and the shadows of fire filled the night air. She wanted to investigate, but with Reuben frozen like a statue, she stayed put.
“Don’t shoot!” The voice echoed from the cave, and a silhouette appeared at the entrance. “I’ve chosen to give myself up. And if you take me alive, I can help get your children back, Wren.”
Wren peered through the scope to get a better look, but the man had stopped at the edge of the shadows. She recognized the smooth, casual voice of the leader, but in the darkness his features still eluded her. Reuben, who remained in the same position, with the rifle’s stock tucked closer to his shoulder, stared down the tipped sight of his rifle, but Wren placed her hand over the barrel and lowered it. “I want him alive.”
“Could be a trick,” Reuben answered.
“He shot his partners,” Wren interjected.
“He fired his weapon. We don’t know if he shot anyone.”
