Manitoba Lost (Book 1): Run (Survivors #1)

by R. A. Rock

  Zoe suddenly appeared, lifting the gun and shooting at me again. She missed, of course, but I remembered that one of her bullets had ended up in Matt’s head. She shot again to my left and I instinctively dove right, heading downriver. I was supposed to go upriver but I wasn’t thinking straight. I just didn’t want a bullet in my head.

  The path was narrow and I wasn’t able to run because the brush grew right against the trail. This was a very good thing because as the path widened again I skidded to a stop, slipping on the flat wet rocks and falling on my butt only about ten feet away from the falls.

  I had forgotten where exactly that little path led, only remembering now that it was too late.

  I was on a big, mostly flat rock that looked as though a glacier had sliced off its top. The surface area of open space was about twenty feet by twenty feet and the rock ended abruptly in a cliff next to which the powerful falls rushed past.

  “Oh.” Zoe came to a stop next to me, shock in her voice as she took in the view before us.

  The river poured, never-stopping, over the falls only a few feet away. Far across from us we could see the viewing platforms and below the churning white water of the river as it hit the rocks and whipped around a hair pin turn. It was one of the most gorgeous and awe-inspiring sights I had ever seen and it’s why Pisew Falls is one of the only tourist attractions in the Thompson area.

  All of a sudden, Zoe seemed to remember why she was here.

  She pointed the gun at me where I sat on the rocks, the desperate energy that had filled me so far draining out of me as I realized that it was all over. There was nowhere to run. Zoe had a gun and was clearly prepared to use it. I was going to die.

  At least it was a pretty spot for it.

  And it wasn’t drowning.

  “Get your hands up,” she said, the gun shaking a little.

  I lifted my hands up, feeling like I was in some stupid movie. And maybe it was the fact that I was probably going to die no matter what I did that gave me a certain sense of fatalism. And that was what made me open my big mouth and start talking. There was a few things that I had been wondering about.

  “How did you find us?” I said, somehow needing to know, though it certainly didn’t matter at this point.

  “You told us.”

  I gaped at her.

  “We didn’t.”

  “You did. When I was coming after you at SOAB creek, I heard Matt ask you if you remembered the rendezvous point and you said Pisew Falls.”

  I cursed internally.

  She was right. I did remember that. We had thought that she couldn’t hear over the sounds of her splashing in the stream.

  “And Matt let something slip, too,” she added. My arms were getting heavy from keeping my hands in the air, so I let them sag a bit. She raised her voice when she saw me dropping them, looking angry. “Get your hands up!”

  “Or what?” I said, truly curious. “What are you going to do, Zoe?”

  “I’m…” She trailed off seeming unsure of herself. Her chest was still heaving from our run. She wore a tight grey tank top that hadn’t been washed in some time, and jeans with rips in the knees. Her long brown hair was in a ragged ponytail and she had a swipe of dirt on her cheek. She was pretty if you could get past the anger and self-pity that radiated off of her. “I’m…” She tried again.

  “I’m going to kill you,” she finally said, her eyes looking a little wild. I wondered if she were drunk or on something again.

  “Why?” I said, honestly confused. “What did I ever do to you?”

  Her face hardened.

  “You and your stupid boyfriend almost killed Brett.”

  “He’s not my boyfriend.”

  “Whatever.” She shook it off as not important. “He was burned really badly and he almost died of infection. The worst of the burns haven’t healed enough for him to even be here.”

  “So why are you here?”

  She seemed infuriated by what seemed to me to be reasonable questions.

  “Because you idiots almost killed him and you deserve to die for that.”

  “But we didn’t kill him,” I pointed out. “If it’s an eye for an eye, then really you should…”

  All of a sudden I realized where that was going and stopped, not wanting to give her ideas.

  “Never mind,” she said, giving her head a shake. “Get up.”

  “Why?” I said. “You want to kill me standing up?”

  “I…” She stopped again and seemed to seriously be questioning what she was doing. I stayed sitting, comfortable on the rocks, sure that if I was going to die then it didn’t matter if I was sitting or standing.

  Then it occurred to me that maybe I wasn’t going to die because Zoe couldn’t just shoot me point blank. She maybe wasn’t totally insane, like Brett seemed to be from too much drinking, smoking up, and doing whatever other drugs he probably did. His brain cells were likely all shrivelled up but hers didn’t seem to be all gone. Not at all.

  “Zoe,” I said, changing my tack. “Why are you even with Brett? You’re way out of his league.”

  “What?” she said, staring at me in confusion.

  “Well, obviously you have a brain in your head…” Not that she was using it. “And he’s…”

  I wrinkled my nose, at a loss for words to describe the kind of loser Brett was.

  “Well, I mean you can obviously do a lot better than him.”

  She shook her head, her eyes troubled.

  “That’s not true,” she said, the gun starting to tremble in her hands by this point. “I’m not smart. I never did good in school. I need Brett. He makes the money. I just spend it. I’m not better than him. And what do you know about it anyway, you’re rich.”

  I studied the woman before me. She looked around my age, maybe a couple years younger. And she was intelligent. I could see that, even through the haze of whatever she was on that Brett had probably given her to pump her up enough to kill me.

  “Rich?” I almost laughed.

  “You got a house, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “A car?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You got a job, too? Money in the bank? You have a bank account, don’t you?”

  I was starting to see where she was going with this.

  “Of course.”

  “I don’t have any of that,” she said. “All I have is Brett and he’s the best I can do. He takes care of me. All I have to do is…” She trailed off and I saw bitterness fill her eyes, her stomach muscles clenched under her tight tank top.

  “What Zoe?” I said, my voice soft so that I thought she wouldn’t hear me over the falls.

  “Keep him happy,” she said with a stubborn lift of her chin. “Make everything nice so that when he gets home after working hard, he can relax and chill. It’s not good when he gets stressed.” Her face was troubled at the thought.

  Suddenly something occurred to me.

  “What happens when he gets stressed, Zoe?”

  She wasn’t looking at me. Her gaze was focused up and to the right as she remembered.

  “He puts me in my place, that’s all. I usually deserve it because I screwed something up.”

  “How?” I said, unable to stop this conversation now that I had started it, though I really didn’t want to know all this. It was like watching a video of a terrible accident. You’re horrified but you can’t look away, even though you don’t really want to see it.

  “He beats me up,” she said and her cold eyes locked on to mine, the gun dropping as her arms got tired of holding it up. “Is that what you want to know, Rich Girl? That my boyfriend hits me? Does it make you feel better? Does it make you feel superior?”

  “No,” I whispered, watching in my peripheral vision as the nose of the gun finally pointed harmlessly at the ground.

  I made my move, jumping to my feet and pushing her backwards towards the path. The gun went off and the bullet ricocheted wildly off the rocks. Okay, not so h
armless after all. My good hand was on her chest and I elbowed the hand with the gun violently in an attempt to make her drop it.

  To my surprise, it worked. Obviously neither of us were trained fighters. That was good for me. She grabbed me, then pulled on my hair and dragged my head back.

  Or not.

  Damn, that hurt.

  I squirmed only making her pull harder. I tried to punch her face but only managed to make contact, not do any damage.

  “What a wimp,” she said and slapped me as hard as she could across the face, making my head crack to the side. Some of my self-defence training returned and I stomped on her toes as hard as I could. She screamed in rage and grabbed my shoulders. I tried to protect my hurt arm and we wrestled as she tried to take me to the ground.

  “I will kill you,” she said, pushing me backwards so that I stumbled towards the falls. Fury pulsed through her as she approached me.

  She grabbed my hurt arm and twisted it making me groan. Her eyes lit up at the sound and she did it again. I stepped back away from the pain, stopping when I realized that I was only a few feet away from the edge.

  “You don’t deserve what you have,” she spat at me, putting both hands on my chest and pushing hard. My arms wheeled and I struggled to catch my balance as I fell towards the falls.

  Matt

  My head snapped back as the man’s fist connected with my jaw. Goddamnit that bloody well hurt. I didn’t know who this guy was but I wasn’t going to let him hurt Nessa or me.

  I needed to keep this guy and Zoe away from her, because both of them were either crazy or Brett was holding something terrible over their heads.

  Also my mother was waiting her medicine. She could be sick already for all I knew. I hadn’t got this far, only to let him stop me from getting to her.

  I slung a punch at him but he danced out of the way. He seemed to not have any injuries — probably that was the reason Brett had brought him — and that was definitely a point in his favour. He came at me again and I barely avoided his fist. But I had determination and desperation on my side and that made me a formidable opponent. I hoped.

  He faked a jab and I lifted my hands to protect my face, while he came in with a solid blow to my chest with the other hand. I blew out my breath, my torso exploding in pain as he connected with some of the cracked ribs.

  God, now that hurt.

  Then he pulled a knife from a sheath at his belt.

  My heart stopped for a moment as I looked at the blade, glinting in the innocent morning sunlight.

  All of a sudden things had got serious.

  He moved towards me, pointing the blade at my chest. I backed away just as slowly, reaching for the pocket in my cargo pants where my own knife was and drawing it out.

  He looked a little surprised but soon he was taking me in and assessing my threat potential. By the arrogant look in his eyes, he had decided that I was no threat at all.

  To hell with that.

  We circled each other, watching, waiting.

  Without warning, he lunged at me and I scrambled back, tripping on a root but not falling. He smiled at my awkwardness and kept coming at me, keeping me moving backwards and at a disadvantage.

  He slashed at me and ducked. I knew that once I saw my own blood the fight would be over. His knife cut through the air, over and over, trying to get to me.

  I haphazardly avoided it, fear making me short of breath.

  Then he caught his foot on one of the many roots that ran across the path and went down. I swooped down and cut a slash across his forearm, making him scream.

  I was instantly appalled at myself.

  Who was I becoming?

  But he was already getting up and I needed to get away from him. I ran back towards the bridge but he caught up to me before I got to the rock steps and he tackled me.

  He brought the knife up high, stabbing down at my chest. In terror, I rolled away so that the knife buried itself in the ground. As the man struggled to get it out of the dirt, I looked up to see Nessa running along the path away from the falls.

  She was wide-eyed, her braid a mess, and one cheek bright red. She grabbed my arm with both hands, pulling me to my feet and dragging me along the path. I noticed she was using the hurt arm and it looked more swollen than ever. The adrenaline must be masking a lot of the pain.

  “Come on. We have to get out of here,” she said, eyeing the other man, who had retrieved his knife and was following at a cautious distance.

  We made our way down the rough rock stairs at a slower rate than we had climbed them. I held the knife and we glanced ahead and behind us, watching out for danger.

  I almost thought that we might get away. We staggered down the stairs towards the bridge, watching behind us to see what the man was doing. We had made it as far as the bridge when it all fell apart.

  I spotted Brett as we got to the bottom of the stairs.

  He was obviously in pain and on something — morphine maybe — they might have given it to him at the hospital. I didn’t know but his eyes were glassy and red and he looked crazier than usual — and that was saying something.

  He was in pain, he was pissed at us for nearly killing him, and he was clearly hopped up on drugs.

  Not a good situation.

  Oh, and did I forget to mention that he was pointing two hand guns at us?

  “Freeze,” he said, from only about two feet away — we had almost run right up to him in our haste to get away from the other guy and Zoe.

  “And if you have any last words, he added. His thing with copying the movies showing up again in his choice of words. “…say them now…” The clichés were piling up with every word he spoke. “…because you’re about to die.”

  Nessa

  I landed hard after Zoe pushed me towards the falls, the wind was completely knocked out of me and I gasped trying to catch my breath again. My head was hanging off the edge, the spray getting in my eyes and blinding me.

  I struggled, trying to get up but Zoe came and sat right on top of me, holding me down. She put the gun that she had retrieved right against my temple. I held as still as a statue and realized that all the training in the world had not prepared me to face my own death. Not really. I had been kidding myself.

  Today was a good day to die.

  Ha. That was a load of crap.

  I stared up at the woman sitting on my chest.

  “You don’t understand anything,” she said, her voice breaking and her eyes filled with tears. “You don’t know what it’s like. I have no hope. None. You don’t get that. You couldn’t.”

  And if I hadn’t know before, I knew it at this point that it really was all over because people without hope have absolutely nothing to lose.

  She pressed the cold metal of the gun hard enough against my head to leave a mark.

  “It would feel so good to kill you,” she said. “I hate you.”

  I stared up at her and I couldn’t bring myself to hate her back. I only saw the woman before me — not the bad choices she had made.

  I tried to speak but couldn’t breathe enough to get my words out. I whispered them anyways.

  She frowned.

  “What did you say?”

  I whispered again.

  “I can’t hear you.”

  She seemed to realize that she was cutting off my air and she shifted back so she was sitting more on my stomach.

  “I said,” I paused, drawing in a deeper breath, thankful for the oxygen and that the black spots that had appeared in front of my eyes had gone away. “That I forgive you.”

  ZOE STARED AT me in consternation.

  “What do you mean?” she hissed.

  “I forgive you for killing me,” I said, freezing again as she pushed the gun tight against my head once more.

  “I haven’t killed you.”

  “No,” I said, patiently. “But once you do, I won’t be able to tell you, so I’m telling you now. I forgive you for killing me.”

  “To hell
with you,” she said, pushing the gun against my head, hard enough to hurt. She squeezed her eyes shut and tilted her head to the sky. “What mind games are you playing, Rich Girl?”

  “It’s not a mind game,” I said, feeling really tired as the adrenaline faded. I wished she would do it and get it over with already. “I really do forgive you. It’s not like you can help it.”

  “I can’t?”

  “No, everything in your life has led you to this point. A downward spiral of bad choices. You can’t do anything else at this point.”

  She looked down at me.

  “I can’t?”

  I shook my head.

  “Just kill me already.”

  “I could do something else if I wanted to,” she said. “I have a choice.”

  “No,” I said, irritated that she was arguing with me. “You can’t. You’re a pawn in your own life. You don’t have a choice.”

  “I don’t know what a pawn is. But I have a choice.”

  I didn’t feel like arguing anymore but my face must have shown that I still didn’t agree.

  “I could choose not to kill you,” she said, her face showing awe as she suddenly had an epiphany.

  “Maybe you could,” I said, staring at her. “Maybe you could choose to begin an upward spiral of good choices instead of the downward spiral of bad ones that has led you here.”

  Her eyes never left mine.

  “But will you?” I asked.

  We stayed that way for another long moment, until I saw that she had made a decision. There was nothing but determination on her face. I closed my eyes, waiting for the bullet to pierce my brain.

  And I supposed that, after all, it was a good day to die.

  Nessa

  Zoe climbed off me, a dazed look on her face.

  She looked shell-shocked as if she had never realized that she had a choice before. I hadn’t waited for her to change her mind but had taken off back down the path towards Matt, freedom, and life.

  I had been given a reprieve and I was high on it.

  Matt was fighting the other guy when I arrived. They both had knives and he had just rolled out of the way of a killing blow. The other guy had buried his knife in the dirt and was trying to get it out.