by Stash (v5)
Maybe she wasn’t drunk, she said, maybe just feeling good—for once. Maybe not for once, but you know what? Having a damaged knee wasn’t the worst thing that had ever happened to her. I mean, she’d be better in a few weeks after another cortisone shot and regular icing and no running, although the fall season was basically shot, but right now there was no pressure on her, she was carefree and could do anything she wanted, no grueling training regimen, none of those prerace jitters which sometimes made her throw up although she was used to the puking, it wasn’t so bad, did he know what she meant?
He did.
Here she paused and frowned. Aaron looked at her and wondered if she was about to heave now. Please not on his leather seats. Then her frown passed and she was smiling and giddy again and saying where was I, oh yes … Did he know he was like the first person, the first guy, she meant, who hadn’t asked first thing how she got her black eye?
Forgetting that he had already asked her about that. It was what made her so special to him.
Well, if he must know it wasn’t a black eye, it was like a birthmark but really extra veins just below her skin—did she already tell him about that? And now she had two things, a venous malformation and iliotibial band friction syndrome wow she couldn’t believe she pronounced that properly but don’t worry they weren’t as bad as they sounded, they weren’t contagious or anything so when are you going to kiss me again?
He looked at her and smiled and put a hand around the back of her neck. He would have said her name but he’d forgotten it. Instead he said she was beautiful.
She unbuckled her seat belt and leaned over and kissed him. First on the cheek just below the part that was missing and it made him flinch and he felt sad for a few seconds, then she put her face in front of him and kissed his mouth, putting her tongue right in. He swerved and corrected his course and bent his neck to see the road. And all through the kissing she wouldn’t shut up; if it was possible to talk while kissing she was doing it, telling him now he was cute and strong and how she’d always wanted a boyfriend.
He reached and grabbed one of her tits through her sweater. Not much there but it still felt like discovered treasure in his hand. She kind of squirmed and moaned.
She’d gone from zero to sixty in about two minutes. He should find a spot to pull over before the magic moment passed or she passed out.
He drove another mile and came upon a turnoff for a parking area. The tires spat gravel when he skidded in. Empty and dark, the one overhead light shot out by jerkoffs playing with their shotguns. He slowed and parked as far from the road as he could, next to a picnic table and garbage can.
“What’s the matter?” she asked.
“It’s hard to kiss you while I’m driving.”
She found this funny enough to start laughing, a horsey twang. At least she’d stopped talking so much.
It would be tough to do her in the truck. He’d have to recline her seat and bend her over the back of it. Not that he couldn’t, but he’d pictured going to a hotel and having a regular bed, maybe waking up with her the next morning and having coffee and a conversation, the way other people did it.
She wore a denim skirt and some kind of tights; he could yank them down and go to bat.
That’s how he was now—hard as a bat, jittering for a swing. For the contact and her flesh. He reached across her and released the seat and it shot back, giving her a jolt.
“Hey what was that?”
“Nothing, making you more comfortable.”
But she was already comfortable, she said, so comfortable, like her body was floating in warm water. Could she be that wasted?
He tried turning her over. She was thin but heavier and more solid than he’d expected and she didn’t just roll like a ball. He had to push and she said hey again. “What are you doing?”
He reached up under her skirt and grabbed a fistful of fabric and yanked until it tore and she grunted as if he’d punched her in the stomach.
Wait! Stop!
He held the back of her neck with one hand while the other went at his own pants and zipper. In a hurry now, he could feel it had to be now, fumbling with the button on his jeans, only one hand to work with because he needed the other to keep her down. Come on, come on, and at the same time she protested that he was pressing her head and said she wasn’t feeling well.
Let go! Get off me. She twisted wildly under his grip.
He pounded his fist on her back and she fought back. He tried to pin her down with his forearm and knee but she got an arm free and slammed her bony elbow right into his solar plexus.
He punched the back of her head.
She got herself turned and kneed him in the nose. He slammed her against the door and it opened and they tumbled out together onto the gravel and rolled into a puddle. He cocked back to strike her but she wasn’t underneath him anymore.
She’d gotten to her feet and was already running, heading toward the road. He had to fix his pants and then started chasing after her but she had a lead and the distance was growing between them. How the hell can she run like that. She was abandoning him, leaving him here alone.
He yelled after her, spitting saliva with his words, “Wait, I’m sorry. I’m sorry! It’s okay. Come back!” And he was sorry now. And afraid, too, because he hadn’t been able to stop himself, all the time he’d been going after her his conscience was gasping for air against the flood of drugs poisoning his blood, and he knew he was wrong, wrong, wrong and he wanted to stop but he couldn’t.
“Come back!” he yelled into the dark night. He stopped and listened and heard nothing. Fuck. He pursued for another fifty yards and stopped again, knowing he’d never catch her on foot, then turned around and went back for the truck.
You Must Keep Moving
Gwen reached out for the trunk of a tree to keep herself from stumbling. She gulped at the air. When she could stand straight again she looked back into the darkness, listening, waiting for the bushes to move. There was nothing. Only gray and black shadows, silence.
It had been a deer. That was the logical explanation. It had come upon her and they scared each other and she bolted in one direction and the deer in the other.
No bear, no madman, was chasing her.
Her hands clung to the clammy tree bark. With each breath she heard wheezing. She began shivering again. She didn’t know how far or long she’d run, or which direction, only that when she’d heard the noise she bolted into the dark. She’d tripped and fallen once, staggered a second time and managed to stay up by throwing her arms around the tree.
So much for staying in one place. That had been her plan to get through the night, after facing the reality that she was utterly lost. She had spent the daylight hours walking downhill and then up and then down, hope melting that she’d reach the road if she simply walked downhill. Because every downhill ended and turned into an uphill, she was trapped in a labyrinth of mounds and gullies, unable to determine in the dense forest which direction headed up the mountain and which down. As darkness overcame the day, she found a grove with a few sweeping pines and she tucked under the low hanging boughs of one and scraped up some of the drier pine needles underneath and covered herself with them to stay warm. The rain had ended but clouds still covered the moon and stars. She would stay in this one spot for the night rather than wander without direction, and when the sky began to brighten she’d get a better sense of her bearings and set out again. That was her plan.
But soon she began to shiver. First her teeth and jaw, then her shoulders, soon her entire body shook uncontrollably. Was she having some kind of seizure? No, just cold and wet. And alone and lost. And terrified. She snapped pine boughs to make a better cover for herself and the exertion warmed her up but when she huddled back down she began to shake again so badly she became dizzy and disoriented.
Then she’d heard the noise, like footsteps, only louder. Hooves. Giant clawed paws. Leaves trampled, swishing. A shadow feinting. And she’d sprung from her cover ben
eath the pines and run blindly through the black forest.
Now she was somewhere else, but it might as well be the same place. Same conditions. Her cotton sweater heavy and wet, flimsy shoes soaked through, jeans sticking to her, skin like chilled dough. She’d ripped her pants and cut her knee on one of her falls, the blood warm and sticky on her cold flesh. What was the temperature—midfifties? Gwen didn’t know. Cold enough. It didn’t need to be any colder than this for her to die, because wet and cold together created a deadly whole much greater than the sum of its parts. She was no outdoors expert but knew that much. Whatever flush and heat that filled her earlier that day had long dissipated. The skin on her arms and hands had taken on the pale look of a corpse, milky and unnatural in the lightless night. She wouldn’t want a glimpse of her face in a mirror right now.
She decided if she stayed in one place hypothermia would set in.
So she’d have to keep walking. And stop crying. And stop feeling sorry for herself.
Keep moving, step slowly, you don’t need to cover a lot of ground, just move enough to keep the blood flowing and get through the night.
But that bear could find her again. No, it was a deer. It had to be a deer.
She took a few steps and listened. Nothing but dripping from the trees when the breeze kicked up—and her heart drumming; her rapid, shallow breathing. She started again and stepped into a thicket of thorns that stabbed and scratched. She retreated, extricating her ankle from a noose of ground vines.
She walked with one ghostly arm outstretched in front of her, the other hand gripping her extended forearm so it wouldn’t shake so much.
The same thought kept returning to her: she was going to die due to her own selfish stupidity. She would not see her children again, she would not see Brian. She would die out here cold and alone, and now she was crying again.
You must keep moving, she repeated to herself. You will get out of this. Remember what you know about survival in the wilderness. You were a Girl Scout once; you went to camp in these mountains when you were a girl; you learned to make a fire. Although that would require matches or a lighter. You learned to dress appropriately in layers and the importance of keeping your feet dry, although that would require a change of clothes. You learned campfire songs, which she tried singing now to feel less desolate and alone.
In a Spill of Blood
The road curved left and right following the base of the mountain. Every quarter mile or so a narrow dirt driveway cut off and headed uphill. None of the cutoffs were marked with numbers or mailboxes, this area rural enough that people who wanted their mail drove into the post office to pick it up. According to Keller’s dashboard navigation map, he’d passed 2364 Old Rainbow Lake Road, then passed it again on the way back. After a third pass he identified the correct driveway by process of elimination. He drove past one more time until he reached the next cutoff, where he pulled to the side of the road and parked.
He checked the clip in his Glock, which was full and shiny. He’d never fired it in the line of duty, only at the practice range, but would not back down from opportunity or obligation if the situation arose.
He secured a blade in an ankle sheath.
It was colder in the mountains than in Morrissey, and he shivered when he first stepped out, but his jacket and cap would keep him warm enough once he got moving. From the puddles spotting the shoulder he concluded the earlier rain had been steady, and now the ground and vegetation along the side of the road were tamped and soggy; he could step silently.
He walked back down the road toward the driveway for Gates’s property where he stopped and listened. He peered into the woods looking for any light from a house. Nothing. The building could be another fifty yards or more farther in. He spotted the magnetic detector at the driveway head, most likely wired to a signal inside the house that sounded when a car approached. He stepped over a ditch to avoid it and cut back to the driveway.
He approached quietly along a muddy gravel drive cratered with puddles, taking a few steps at a time and then stopping to listen and look. It was still too dark to see much but the sky would begin to gray within the hour. His plan was to get close enough to the house and find a hiding spot, reconnoiter from there, and go in at first light.
Soon he could make out a clearing ahead and a single light. He left the driveway and went into the woods, stepping into a wet depression ankle high, just over the top of his boot. That was cold. No option except to walk through it, getting both feet soaked. He pushed on and found a good vantage point near the edge of the clearing. A coach light on the cabin’s porch provided the only outdoor illumination, the low-wattage bulb putting up meager resistance against the surrounding darkness. A row of yellow flowers glowed like fading solar lanterns along the path to the porch. There was another light from somewhere inside the house. He didn’t see any vehicles, which was not a good sign, although the van could be parked around the side. You didn’t walk to and from this house, you needed to drive. He had expected to see the van and discover Gates and Mrs. Raine inside the house or at least Gates. If they’d been here and left or had never been here at all, or if Gates had already moved his supply from Canada, then his hunch was shot. Keller didn’t have a plan for what would happen if that was the turn of events.
A steady noise came from within, a whirring chug that might be a generator or fan. He hunched down and a willy passed through him. If he were home right now he’d be in a warm bed with Patty spooned next to him, the way she liked to sleep, Andy in his room across the hall or maybe in their bed if he’d woken from a nightmare and came in for comforting.
Keller shrugged off the tingle and readied himself.
The black night faded to a gray, providing just enough light for Keller to move forward without tripping over himself or any obstacle, but not so much light he could be seen. He set out to circle the house and approach the front from the opposite side, providing himself the element of the unexpected and the opportunity to ID any vehicles. He kept looking at the windows as he moved but they were blank as slate slabs. He made out a propane tank secured in a steel cradle on the side of the house. At least 500 gallons, huge for this size structure. Meth factory? Didn’t smell like it.
He picked his way through weeds and saplings in the back of the house, came around the far side. He stepped up close to the window but the glass had been covered from the inside. You know what that means: there’s a secret in there. When he reached the front corner of the house he noticed on the porch stairs a bulky shape that had been blocked from view when he’d been on the other side.
He moved carefully against the side of the house, ducking low beneath the windows until he recognized the shape as a human body. Facedown, one arm and leg sprawled wide. Pool of darkness from underneath, seeping over the top stair.
Keller drew his Glock, buttoned off the safety. That got his heart pounding. He couldn’t check out the body until he’d secured the inside of the house, and he couldn’t secure the inside of the house without getting in there. Which meant stepping over that body and entering full frontal.
Decision time. Retreat and call for support or go it alone.
It was first light, this is what he’d been waiting for. This had been his plan.
He approached the body, an adult male lying in a spill of blood, the back of his skull blasted away. No risk of that thing taking a run at him. Then he was on the porch and at the door; it wasn’t closed all the way, the humming rumble from inside chugging like a far-off train.
Keller sucked three deep breaths and exploded through the door, staying low, leading with the Glock, straight ahead, left, right.
No movement in the shadows.
He was standing in a combination kitchen-living area with a queen bed—made, covers smooth, pillows undisturbed—in place of a table in the dining area. He approached a door to the right, tried the handle, and pushed through. The light was blinding and he covered his eyes and dove back into the other room, rolling once on the floor and
setting himself to empty the Glock. Nothing. Nothing except the smell, pungent and fertile, a pot farm. And the generator idling.
Keller secured the rest of the building, making sure no one hid waiting to ambush him from the bathroom or closets. He found a loaded shotgun leaning on the wall behind the front door and emptied the shells. He pulled the extension cord on the generator and the house went quiet and dark. He plugged the generator back in and the grow room lit up again, bright as a sunny beach, blazing overheads ricocheting heat and light off the glossy white walls. Looked like a new growing season from the appearance of the plant trays, most of them seedlings, just putting out their first set of leaves. Which meant the old growing season recently ended. The trays were lined up in neat, orderly rows on tables, with a complicated network of drip tubes feeding them. There must have been two hundred or more plants. How many pounds of weed did this place put out per cycle? Thirty or more, probably.
He went back out on the porch to check on his dead friend. Keller was disappointed, overall. Stymied. He hadn’t caught a bad guy, only the mess a bad guy had left behind.
He was about to turn over the body with his foot to get a look at the face when a bell sounded inside the cabin, a single ring too high pitched to be the telephone. That could mean only one thing: company’s here—someone had just pulled into the driveway.
He went back inside and pulled the generator cord, waited in the gloomy silence.
Putting Your Best Foot Forward
At some point during the night the clouds broke up and moon came out and cast enough light for Gwen to make out her footing. She could distinguish the shapes of trees, choose her next step without stumbling. She followed her strategy of staying on the move, but couldn’t travel the dense and rocky terrain fast enough to stay warm. Any heat she generated she lost. Her energy had drained away, even the adrenaline that boosted her early on. She stopped often for her breathing to catch up. Her cut knee throbbed. Her feet were sore and icy. The worst part was she couldn’t stop trembling—her jaw and back ached from the spasms.
