by Tyler Wolfe
THE RUN
Book One
TYLER WOLFE
THE RUN Copyright © 2019 by Tyler Wolfe.
All rights reserved. Published in the United States of America. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
For information contact: www.tylerwolfenovels.com
Book and cover design by www.bookcoverzone.com
ISBN: 123456789
First Edition: June 2019
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
for Phyllis
‘’The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.’’
—Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
PROLOGUE
I can still remember the night that everything in my life took a hard, unexpected turn for the worst. The details, the feelings, will remain forever—deeply embedded in the trenches of my mind.
Now and again, the memories creep up on me with stark clarity, and when they do, it’s like a flash-bang going off inside my head. A shock wave rings through me—startling, leaving me incapacitated—but only for a moment.
When it happens, I instinctively focus my breathing, closing my eyes tight while I count back from ten. I tell myself, it’s over now, in a quiet, convincing tone…it’s all over now.
When I come to, my anxiety slowly dissipates like a candlelight flickering off into the darkness. My vision returns and my heartbeat slows back to normal, then I move on with my day. I’ve gotten good at it. But it’s not like I have a choice.
Like all memories though, good or bad, mine are a reminder of a time when I did something unspeakable—something unworthy of forgiveness—a time when I became someone I never thought I’d be.
My anxiety spells are outright crippling, sort of like a PTSD, but how can I complain when after all, I’m the lucky one. I’m the one who came out unscathed, the one who was never caught.
These aren’t things most people say when they talk about perilous encounters, but it’s also not often that people find themselves in these kinds of situations. As the old saying goes, I was in the wrong place at the wrong time—a victim of circumstance—is what I tell myself.
My nightmare started a year ago on a thick midsummer evening in Lakeland, Florida. It was routine to round out my day with a run and I did it almost every night unless the weather was bad or I was under it.
My passion for running started back in middle school and in those days, boys were required to participate in a sport activity. I joined the track team because running was the only thing that I wasn’t lousy at, and surprisingly I was great at it. I was slim and fast and went on to win competitions.
Running quickly became my favorite hobby. It also became my mechanism for coping with the world around me. It helped me stay fit, relieve stress, and continuously escape scads of schoolyard bullies. It was my release, my therapy. It was the only time I felt free from the stress of this world and those who cause it. And even now it was the one thing that still gave me joy and solace after a grueling day at work.
And so, one summer night, even with mosquitoes in high season and nauseating humidity, I went out to pound the pavement.
I still remember everything. The hum of the tall glowing street lights swarming with insects. The patter of my sneakers as they kept pace on the pavement. The occasional distant bark of a neighborhood dog.
It was late July, one of Florida’s hottest summer months. The air was so thick it took work to breathe and left me bathed in sweat. Oddly, I didn’t mind so much as it kept me relatively cool and gave a sense of accomplishment. If I wasn’t sweating, I wasn’t running hard enough.
The noxious stench of my mosquito repellent covered the thick green scent of cut palmetto and Bahia grass. Mosquitoes pursued and fled again, and sometimes small fluttery bats swooped out of the dark night sky to catch them.
I can still see the lonely street. There laid a faded Raggedy Anne in the gutter, soaked and sullied from the afternoon downpour. Window curtains twitched as I ran by, accompanied by the fleeting sense of being watched.
Then there’s something that will haunt me forever. Something that I’ll never be able to understand. A young man’s face seen only for the first and last time in near darkness: eyes frozen open and staring back at me, blood frothing at the corners of his mouth. He was…
…Perhaps I should start from the beginning.
CHAPTER 1
Inner Struggles
I left the house at a quarter of nine to go for my run. The sun had finally set at eight thirty, making it slightly more bearable to be outdoors.
At night the streets of the neighborhood emptied quickly leaving behind a quiet darkness that only I and the creatures of the night could appreciate. It was peaceful and the near-solitude was comforting. I could focus on my thoughts while I put one foot in front of the other in perfect alternating tempo.
I enjoyed running because it was time to myself and I liked that time. I needed it. There was no one to bother me or tell me what to do. There were no distractions. Just me, the road, and my thoughts—alone.
On my run that night I was especially tense from a day of dealing with some heavy stress at work. There’s a certain headache I get when I run out of patience for human stupidity, and that day had been a complete migraine of staff meetings where not one, but two of my co-workers, both veterans, had unexpectedly been fired. But they had not gone quietly.
This prompted a ridiculous tantrum from the Acting Director and I had been left with a tension that had lingered all through the first half of my run.
Finally, with enough focus and some road behind me I was starting to feel better. Well, that is right before everything went wrong.
Typically, nine or close to it was the best time for me to go on my sprint. I called it my “happy hour”. I had given a chance to going out early a few times before work, but it just wasn’t as satisfying. I only sleep well once my wife Zoe is home, and since she works the night shift, that’s usually after midnight. In the morning I’d rather linger next to her a while longer, at least until necessity drives me out of bed.
Even if I were to get up early, it would have to be before the blistering sun comes up, and for my internal clock that’s just too early. The idea of flirting with heat stroke as early as seven in the morning just wasn’t something I was up for.
If you’ve never been to Central Florida during the summer months, the weather fits every stereotype you might have heard. When the sun is up, it’s hot. It pretty much feels like being under a heat lamp all day. Add in unbearable humidity and a bug problem, and you’ve got the idea.
Fortunately, it rains quite a bit during the peak months to keep everything from burning up, but the showers do almost nothing to lessen the heat. They just give way to more humidity and more pesky mosquitoes. But at least the clouds block the brutal sunbeams for a few minutes.
Sure, I probably hated the summer heat more than most, but I just couldn’t find the pleasure in the sweltering weather. Every year people flock down here to be in it, but I’d rather be away from it. The sun and the humidity gave me no option but to run in the evening, which was an all-around better option anyway—no sun, no people, a little less humidity, and if I was lucky, a hint of a breeze.
With the stress of my job continuously hammering down on me,
my dark solitary runs really did me a lot of good. They gave me the alone time I needed—time to clear my head, burn off some frustrations, and get me in a better mood for when Zoe came home—that last one being especially important now that we were having problems. But I digress.
Zoe always worried about me running at night. She thought I might run into trouble with a local or become the roadside victim of a careless drunk driver—God knows Lakeland had plenty of them. She could be a bit of a mother hen when it came to things like that.
However, she didn’t argue with me about it. She just stated her concern, listened to my reasoning, and now and again needed reassurance.
“You being out there alone at night just worries me. I just want you to be safe. I love you.”
Shoot, how do you disagree with someone who says something like that? She loves me and just wants to make sure I’m safe. I’m sure I’d feel the same if she were in my shoes.
Zoe certainly knew how to push my buttons now and then, but I could never stay angry at her. Frustrated, resentful, pent-up, sure. But for months now we had been butting heads pretty good, and I was beginning to show my agitation. We had been married for a little over a year and she, of course, wanted to take the next step almost every woman wants after being married a little while—she wanted a baby.
I did too, well eventually. I just wasn’t sure we were ready, or maybe I wasn’t ready. I knew it hurt her every time I’d say so, so I did my best to tread lightly.
A few times I snapped at her about it, but I quickly got myself in check. I knew what it could lead to, and I always did my best to never reveal that side of me to Zoe. She didn’t deserve it.
My real anger, the stuff I’ve held in for years, the hot and dangerous kind that sometimes worried me, never rose against her. I could never do her harm or treat her badly. I loved her too much.
Perhaps she correlated my running to having something I enjoyed while she didn’t, but it still felt a little like blackmail, and I needed my run. Of course, the baby thing and all the worrying was because she loved me. I think her main concern with my run was that if something were to happen, she wouldn’t be home to help me. She wouldn’t know. At least not immediately.
But what could really happen being only five or ten minutes away from home? Heck, the neighborhood I ran through was just one street over and I always took stock of my surroundings while I ran. I didn’t even wear headphones. I loved the quiet peacefulness of night as it allowed me to clear my head and calm my nerves.
Zoe acted as if I couldn’t handle myself. Yeah, maybe I wasn’t built like a football player, but I was a guy in good shape. I could outrun most people, even in this heat.
Plus, this was Lakeland, where the most interesting thing was finding out which of the local low-lifes had been arrested a third time for drugs or burglary.
My own biggest concern wasn’t any of that. The only thing I worried about was running into a stray dog, which had happened.
The beast had been somebody’s pit bull mix. He was full grown with a puppy brain, but a body that was lean and threatening. He had gotten loose from somewhere, perhaps a hole in a fence or maybe under a fence. I saw him standing in a neighbor’s yard when his eyes locked with mine. It was instant horror. My heart beat fast with fear while I cautiously slowed my jog to a nervous walk. The pooch watched me the entire time as I walked by. I remember doing my best to keep from shitting my shorts as he stood gazing only twenty or so feet away.
As I walked by him, the only thought I had was that this could go very bad very quickly if I didn’t stay calm. I had heard that animals can smell fear. I never knew if that claim was true or not, but it was not the time to test it.
I walked by slowly, stiffly, pretending I didn’t see him standing there tracking my every move. I thought if I just stayed calm, he would too. The last thing I wanted was for him to think I wanted to shake hands, so I stayed focused on the road ahead of me.
Luckily, I had made it past him and to a safe distance without hearing the animal move a muscle. As soon as I was a good distance away, I looked back only to see the pit was no longer standing there. It was the weirdest thing.
I never told Zoe about my encounter because I knew it would scare her enough to forbid me from running, and that wouldn’t do either one of us any good. Like I said, running was my release—the only thing that kept me sane. Plus, I never saw the dog again, so I guess it didn’t really matter. Just one of those freaky “onetime” occurrences.
Other than the random dog or bad driver, there wasn’t much to worry about when I ran alone at night. The neighborhood was a little run-down in spots, but even those areas didn’t concern me. With only a few street lights on the main stretch, it could get very dark in spots. I knew that had to make me pretty hard to see being that I wasn’t one of those people who wore reflective gear, but I liked to be unseen. If I saw a car coming, I’d just get onto the grass until it passed. There was never a problem with anyone driving by.
My route was very simple and never varied. I found the exacting routine to be relaxing.
I’d run down our street until I’d get to the one perpendicular to ours called Fernery.
Fernery was a nice, long, level street without any turns or broken pavement. I could really get up some speed and focus on my thoughts rather than worrying about twisting my ankle on a pothole. Neighbor-wise, it wasn’t as nice of a street as ours, but aside from the onetime pit bull encounter, I had never really felt unsafe running there.
I remember running down the length of Fernery, past dozens of houses and a few empty lots, and everything was right as rain. I felt relaxed. It was a quiet normal night, with no dogs and no issues. When I got to the T-intersection at the far end I’d say I was even in a good mood.
The street cutting left from the end of Fernery led around a long, shallow curve to another road running roughly parallel to it. That road then intersected a few blocks away from our place. The route was only about two miles total and it didn’t exactly have the best scenery, but was perfect for me. Just long enough to let me keep in shape and burn off some stress.
Unfortunately, that one particular night wasn’t much of a stress reliever at all—more like a stress inducer and a lucid nightmare combined.
Something unspeakable happened that night. Something that I’ll carry with me for the rest of my life. I see it in my sleep and sometimes, with almost the same clarity, when I’m awake.
If there was ever a night in my life I wish I could get a do-over for, it’d be that one.
Perhaps a second chance to rethink my actions, to start my run a few minutes earlier or later, or maybe not go running at all.
Better to knock around the house with my stress brimming over than to deal with what happened that night.
That night…
The night I snapped.
CHAPTER 2
Trouble Brewing
I’m not a bad person. Or at least, I try not to be. I work hard at my job. I’m good to my wife, even when she’s pissing me off to no end. I pay my taxes. I drive safely. I don’t cheat. I do my best not to lie.
That all means I’m a good person, right? Certainly, I am ninety-nine percent of the time. Nobody’s perfect.
But that one percent...that’s the bit that can get someone in real trouble.
I didn’t go out on my run planning to harm anyone. Sure, I’ve had thoughts cross my mind once or twice...about exacting revenge on those who vex me. But who hasn’t had the occasional fantasy of running over their boss or lacing the punch bowl at the company Christmas party? It all would surely be satisfying, but I would never actually do any of those things.
I only wanted to decompress and get in a better mood so that I would be better company for Zoe when she got home.
I was a peaceful man. I avoided confrontations, I stayed in my lane, and even when I was angry, I tended to hide it well.
That night was no different...for the most part. Maybe I was a little more tense than usual. M
aybe I wanted to punch a few people at work, or maybe I wished my jerk of a boss would step out in front of a bus, but all that was very unlikely.
Isn’t that how everyone thinks? I mean, it’s not like I wanted to shoot up the place or anything, but I was growing tired of the constant disrespect. I deserved better, as did a lot of my co-workers.
I always kept my anger under wraps, but I was beginning to feel like I could snap at a moment’s notice. That sort of thing could happen to anyone though, under the right circumstances. Job and home-life stress takes different forms, but it’s pretty much universal.
I worked in a big office that was dealing with a recent corporate buy-out and a change of management. We were all under tremendous pressure. It affected morale, especially as our numbers shrank, so did the bad policy constantly being shat out by the Acting Director, Bob.
Bob Ackerman had been the only member of senior management staff with any interest in taking the reins after our lovely boss, Greta, had to retire early due to health issues. Before that, the big, pot-bellied, balding Bob had mostly just been a fake-friendly loudmouth: pretty well-connected and somewhat competent, but also not too bright and definitely a self-preserving a-hole. He was the sort of middle management you spent a lot of time working around instead of with. But since he had become the boss, no one could do that anymore.
He had taken the job—and the raise in pay—six months ago, and since then had been running the entire department into the ground. He was inept, obnoxious, and had no leadership skills. He made nonsensical decisions without discussing them with anyone and had a memory like a sieve.
Work had already resembled a nightmare way before Bob took over and now it was even worse. He was also completely oblivious to the damage he was doing, in part because his raise in pay had very obviously gone straight to his egotistical head.
