Cost of Survival

by Bonnie R. Paulson

  Nausea overcame me and I turned my head, bent over, and vomited what contents I’d had in my stomach. I’m not normally quiet when I throw up, but I didn’t really have any other options in the dark of the night with men chasing us – shooting us.

  Jeanine snapped her fingers, the click redirecting my attention. Of course she was right, I needed to focus. I wiped my mouth. What could I do? Something, not nothing. I could help my mom. Mom was invincible and something as lame as a bullet would never bring her down. Both women ignored my display. I acted like it hadn’t happened.

  “Can you walk, Megan?” Jeanine didn’t lower her hand, fingers held tight to her palm. Mom shook her head. Jeanine nodded. “Kelly, you’ll stay here and I’ll check the nearby houses for a wheelbarrow or something we can move your mom in.” Jeanine ducked out from under the branches and disappeared before I could stop her, ask her what we were going to do.

  I couldn’t look my mom in the eye. Patting her shoulder, I watched for movement or anything else that could be dangerous. “Are you okay, Mom? Keep pressure on it.”

  She coughed into a soft chuckle. “I’m the nurse. I know how to stop bleeding.” She clutched her fist to her side, like she had an ache which wouldn’t go away. Sadly, that’s exactly what she had.

  We waited for what seemed like forever. Any type of sound shot my heart rate through the roof and my breathing cut into panting. Mom reached for my hand and I gripped hers like the last bottle of water in the desert.

  The moon moved higher in the sky and men’s voices called off in the distance, their echo low in the dark. But, thankfully, they grew fainter and fainter. My chest moved easier and my grip lessened on her fingers. “Mom, I think we’re going to be —”

  Crashing and gravel crunching cut me off and I moved in front of Mom, dropping her hand. Where had they come from? I was prepared to take the next bullet for her.

  “Shh.” Mom pushed the air through her teeth with little effort, the hiss barely discernible.

  If I could scream, I would, but my voice had disappeared.

  “Megan? Kelly?” Jeanine’s whisper sent a rush of relief through me. The men weren’t crashing toward us, coming to trade me off and hurt my mom.

  “Here. We’re here.” I stood, looking for her on the road.

  She came into view, pulling a gardening wagon behind her – bigger than a child’s with large pneumatic wheels. “Let’s get your mom loaded. Come on.”

  I reached down for Mom and helped her up, taking as much of her weight as she would let me. Which wasn’t much because her stubbornness could challenge concrete.

  She limped the few feet down the ditch and up to the gravel shoulder. Hunched over into an almost standing-fetal position, she collapsed over the side of the wagon. The corner of the metal side snagged her jacket.

  “Grab your packs, Kelly. We don’t have time to do anything else.” Jeanine adjusted Mom’s legs and arms, turning her fuller onto her back. She spoke to Mom. “Keep your hand on your stomach, Megan. We might be able to find some place with first aid supplies.” She lifted her gaze, watching me as I gaped at my mom’s inert figure. “Go, now, Kelly.”

  The packs. I stumbled backwards, tripping over my own feet. We left the packs by the trees. I grabbed them, faltering under their weight. I hadn’t slept in so long, fatigue, worry, and the stress of the last few days added up, pulling at my shoulders and back.

  When would this end?

  Would it?

  Time for a break. The world needed to stop the craziness and open up hospitals. My mom needed help. We needed help. What could I do to make it all go away?

  How could I fix this?

  Could I?

  Or was I going to be forced to watch my mom die?

  Under the weight of the packs, I crawled up the side of the ditch and swung Mom’s over the side of the wagon. Pulling my straps on right, I shimmied my pack into the correct position and checked the road behind us and in front of us. Weird, usually my mom was the cautious one and I was oblivious.

  “I’m going to need your help pulling this. My arm isn’t quite right and I had a hard time with it empty.” Jeanine raised her left arm, the fingers and lower forearm stained with dark streaks tracing from her wound. Thankfully the full extent of her injuries weren’t clear in the dark.

  The small mercies, I guess. How much could I cope with? My limit had to be around there somewhere.

  She clutched at the flesh above the dark red hole in her arm and twisted her lips.

  “You need to keep pressure on that. I’ll pull my mom.” I learned a lot with a mother for a nurse. I wasn’t as knowledgeable as her, but I helped in emergencies growing up and I could stitch a thing or two. Okay, so not really. I watched her do stitches and deliver a baby as well as help with a few other things, so I understood the theories. The most common thing I always heard growing up was ‘put pressure on it’.

  When I started my period, I worried I needed to put pressure on it. Not something you want to do at twelve. I asked Mom about it and she had laughed so hard, Dad had run in the room to see if she was alright. They both laughed for a few days afterwards. I don’t remember anything funny about my question.

  I took the long handle to the wagon and dug my feet into the rocky road, pushing my weight forward. The larger tires moved surprisingly well and didn’t take as much energy or strength as I expected.

  Mom groaned, the sound more alarming since I hadn’t heard anything from her since we put her in the cart. “Everything okay?” I glanced at Jeanine. She trundled along beside us, eyes focused down as she clutched her arm.

  Crap, I was the only one left uninjured. What did that mean? Oh, please, please, let them be okay. Please. We need a safe place to hide. Please. I picked up my pace, scanning the trees for something, anything.

  But my plea must have fallen on deaf ears.

  A shot rang out, zinging into the rocks off to our left, but not by much.

  I sobbed. Seriously, how much more did we have to take? I hadn’t been shot yet, would this macabre game go until all three of us bled from a hole in our bodies?

  Pulling harder, I broke into a trot, the wagon following me easily. My pack dragged at me and I forced my sobs down and quieted my crying. Tears wouldn’t get us out of there.

  Jeanine turned, shooting behind us at nothing in particular. The light wasn’t enough to see into the forest line. We were easier to see because we had nothing to hide behind on the gravel.

  “We need to get off this road.” How long had we been walking? I didn’t even know where we were. A Y in the road loomed and I pulled to the right. We needed to get out of the line of sight so we could disappear from view.

  Another shot and a shout from behind us. Judging from the faintness of the call, they were far enough behind us we had a small window of time to try and hide. I dug in harder, harder still. Jeanine panted as she kept up with me. I ignored the small whimpers coming from Mom. If I focused on her pain and discomfort, I wouldn’t try so hard to get us out of there so fast.

  We broke past the line of sight and trees muffled the noises coming from our pursuers. Walking a few more feet, I stopped. “Look, we’re in a roundabout. We have too many options and no idea which way to go. Let’s get up in the center island.”

  “The center? They’ll find us.” Jeanine watched the road behind us, her gaze spastic as she searched for the briefest glimpse of our followers.

  “Not in the chunk of trees there. They’d never suspect we would hide with so many roads to choose from. Help me get the wagon up there and hide the tracks.” I pulled hard, turning the front wheels and jerking the wagon behind me. We would make noise but if we moved fast, we could trim down the time and get silent before the men got within range.

  Jeanine took up the rear. She pushed with her one good hand and helped me maneuver the cart up the sloping dirt, into the copse of trees and bush not torn out when the roundabout had been put in. I dropped back, straightening as much grass and roadside weed as
possible. I dragged my foot back and forth over the tracks in the soft gravel on the side of the road.

  Returning to the wagon, I helped Jeanine as she adjusted branches and leaves to cover the glossy paint of the wagon metal and Mom.

  After we tucked ourselves as deep into the center of the natural camouflage as we could, I took a seat on the ground and leaned against the side of the wagon. I needed water and a nap. Pulling my canteen from my pack, I sipped carefully. The water hadn’t even had time to grow stale since we’d abandoned our home a few days before. The taste reminiscent of home, so familiar and yet so foreign.

  Turning, I checked Mom to see if she was awake to drink something, but her eyes were closed and she breathed erratically. I didn’t want to wake her and possibly increase her discomfort.

  I held up the canteen, noticing for the first time Jeanine didn’t have any supplies with her besides a small fanny pack around her waist. I pushed at her leg and offered the canteen into the air.

  She smiled, taking the water and sipping it, closing her eyes. Lowering the canteen, she wiped the back of her hand across her lips. “Thank you.” She mouthed with no sound. She glanced between Mom and me and then gazed back the way we came, searching for something.

  Once when I’d gone on a hunting trip with my dad, he pointed out only prey watched for danger. So the shining of their eyes gave their position away. He taught me to keep my eyes down, shielded and not to look directly toward anything or anybody when in the dark. I usually ruled at Evening Capture the Flag with my friends because of this.

  Jeanine had obviously never been taught or she never would’ve watched the road behind us with abandon.

  I reached into my pocket, determined to get her to look away from the road, hide her eyes. Pulling out the picture frame, I tugged at her pants again.

  She glanced down to be courteous. But when her gaze landed on the frame, the glint of the metal and glass in the meager light, she froze. Slowly reaching for the picture, her fingers trembled and she gasped, the sound barely louder than a leave falling from a tree.

  Tears glistened on her cheeks, and she became more than someone my mom knew.

  This woman had children and a husband and for whatever reason, they weren’t with her. She’d been damaged and destroyed and shot. Warmth filled my chest when I realized she was like us, her story and her value hadn’t diminished because of the end.

  More shouts carried to us, but closer. Jeanine didn’t acknowledge them right away. She traced the small faces of her children with her forefinger, a soft smile playing on her lips. Glancing up at me, tears still bright on her cheeks and in her eyes, she whispered, “Thank you, Kelly. I needed this.”

  She leaned down and kissed Mom’s forehead, whispering, “Megan, hang in there. Thank you.” She nodded, holding her finger to her lips, her injured arm dangling at her side. “Don’t do anything until daylight and you’re sure no one’s around.” Then she disappeared.

  A moment passed. Her footsteps crashed through the underbrush, scuffling when she reached the gravel.

  Her uneven gait faded under the dry rasp of my panting.

  An empty moment passed filled with the panic of my heart beats rushing in my ears.

  Suddenly shouts and shots broke up the stillness of the night.

  Indecipherable yelling reached me through the padding of trees and branches. I dug my fingers into the soft dirt and pressed my face into my knees.

  Jeanine screamed, screamed, screamed, another shot and she...

  Stopped.

  My breathing caught.

  Men whooping like Indians in a poorly made Cowboys and Indians film surrounded me from not too far off. I lifted my head and crossed my arms. Sadness and disbelief overwhelmed me.

  She was gone.

  Gone.

  What the heck was I supposed to do with my mom? All by myself?

  Chapter 15

  The party over Jeanine’s death faded minutes after starting. Like a sample of what was to come, the intensity of the search for Mom and I increased. Palpable, like a mist in the air, the hunt fever drenched the woods, soaking us.

  Thankfully Mom didn’t make any more noises. I’m not sure if this was a good thing or not from a medical standpoint. Coming from our position, her silence worked for the time being.

  I turned to kneel beside the wagon, checking her wound for more bleeding. The blood didn’t gush or even seep fast, but the dampness covered the area like it bled some here and there.

  Setting my pack down, I used the bulk as a pillow. Pine needles and spring growth weren’t my first choice as a bed, but I’d take what I could get. We weren’t going to get very far in the dark, not with a frenzied hunting party after us or with Mom injured like she was.

  I wrapped my arms around my waist, holding my stomach and staring into the black, star-speckled sky above me.

  Boots stomped on gravel all around us, the startling nearness deafening and incapacitating.

  The roundabout branched out in four different directions – the direction we came from, and three others. At least a dozen men paced and walked around the center island searching for a clue as to which way we had gone.

  Nothing would move me from my spot. I could stare at the sky and no one would see the shine of my eyes.

  Every time they called to each other, I flinched. Would they wake Mom? Would she make a sound? Fear enhanced selfish thoughts. I didn’t want to die. I didn’t want Mom to either. If she stayed asleep and quiet, our chances increased by the minute of surviving until morning.

  What would they do if they did find us? Would they shoot us, like Jeanine? Or would they take us back and do worse things?

  Included with our nightly instructions, Mom would always warn me about the good, better, best phenomenon which applied to even the bad, worse, worst alteration.

  In theory, things worked like this: Events start out good/bad like someone gets a job or gets a cold. In the next step of better/worse that job would come with a huge salary and the cold would turn to pneumonia. In either situation, the person would be thinking “how could things get better or worse?” And then the best/worst would come like a promotion or bonus and death.

  Before being able to go the other way on the spectrum, their circumstances had to go to the extreme of best/worst.

  So even while lying with my mom shot and men chasing after us, I wasn’t stupid enough to believe things would get better so soon. We still hadn’t survived the worst.

  I just didn’t know what the worst could be.

  Death? Or was surviving the worst and death would be the better?

  Even as the men continued searching, I couldn’t fight the pull on my eyelids anymore. I slept.

  ~~~

  I’m not sure what woke me.

  One second I was asleep and the next I wasn’t. Rather than a gradual wakening, I blinked at the early morning light with a snap like a victim of hypnosis. Dew covered me and small droplets sparkled on my lashes, filling my vision with streaks of light.

  Wiping my face partially dry with my damp sleeve, I shivered and sat up. We hadn’t been discovered. Nothing outside of our small safety site suggested they searched nearby for us.

  I turned toward Mom, her pale skin and shallow breathing didn’t create warm fuzzies in my chest. Dread tightened around my ribs. She shivered.

  Touching her arm, I whispered, “Mom? Which way should we go? I’ll get us out of here, but I’m not sure where to take you.”

  She licked her lips, which didn’t do much to moisten them, and breathed. “North.”

  North it would be. The roundabout had distinct north, south, east, and west roads coming in and going out. The sun had risen from the east so choosing the correct road wasn’t difficult.

  I continued glancing around, as I shrugged my jacket off. The moisture magnified the chill and did me less good on than I wanted. Kicking the concealing brush from the wagon, I longed to pee but no way would I waste another moment, waiting to be found. If we could g
et to a scene of relative safety, I’d be able to take care of Mom’s wound as well as our basic needs.

  “Hang on, things are going to be bumpy for a bit.” I pulled on the handle, the wagon easily following me down the slight hill and onto the road. Glancing left and right continuously, I pulled the wagon, counting one-hundred steps. Then I stopped for a break.

  Another one-hundred. A break.

  On my third break, Mom’s croaked question reached me. “Where’s Jeanine?”

  I shook my head, without looking back at her. I didn’t want to wait for another part to the inquiry so I cut my break and pulled forward again. This time, I stretched myself to two-hundred steps, ignoring the burn in my thighs and lower back.

  Five-hundred steps. Approximately five-hundred yards. I had no idea where I was going or even if I would... wait a minute, I recognized the mailbox feet from me. Camouflage paint covered the metal box and a deer antler protruded from the side as the flag.

  I stared at the start of the driveway. The last time I had been in that spot, I’d volunteered to drop off track and cross country information for Bodey Christianson. Our track coach hadn’t been able to get a hold of him and I wanted the chance to see him, talk to him for a second.

  Not many opportunities to be around him when he was home-schooled. We didn’t share classes so track meetings or math meets were highlights I looked forward to. I had sat in the car I borrowed from Mom and stared at their mailbox, worried I was walking into a trap or something. What if his parents had been into some kind of trespassers-shot-on-sight kind of thing? My nerves had been present more then, than now.

  Glancing behind us, I didn’t think anymore. I pulled Mom up the windy, twisty driveway and crossed my fingers someone would be there to help.

  On that day so long ago – okay months — when I came with my handful of pamphlets and my track sweat-suit on, a couple of golden Labradors had greeted me halfway up the driveway. The two friendly dogs hadn’t hesitated in licking my hands and jumping to place their front paws on my thighs.

  Where were they as I struggled to pull Mom up the slightly inclined drive? Why didn’t they come loping out of the trees with their tongues hanging out, tails wagging like paper fluttering in the wind?