Scott Free

by John Gilstrap

Brandon opened his mouth to speak, but no words would come.

  “He’s never done anything like this before,” Arthur said. “He’s always been a good boy. A responsible boy.” He paused while he gathered himself. “I don’t…I can’t…” The old man’s voice cracked and he hugged his wife closer to him.

  “We’re just so sorry,” Annie said again.

  “Well, I’m sorry, too,” Brandon whispered. For the terrible thoughts he’d harbored for their son, for the way he’d never even thought to worry for him.

  It all transpired behind the backs of the congregation, unnoticed but to a few. As Brandon and the Jamiesons stood there in silence, unsure what to say, the moment grew uncomfortable.

  “We didn’t mean to interrupt,” Annie said, finally. “We just didn’t want you to leave before we told you how sorry we are.”

  This time, Brandon’s wan smile came easily. “I’m not going anywhere,” he said. He nodded toward a nearly empty pew on the left-hand side. “There’s a spot free over there. I’d be honored if you would kneel with me and pray.”

  Day Four

  18

  HIS DAD WOULD BE WORRIED SICK. The thought troubled and comforted him at the same time. At a gut level, it was kind of nice to think that somebody was filling God’s party line with prayers. You never knew if things like that helped, but five’ll get you ten that they never did any harm.

  Wading through the snow on this endless march toward who knew where, Scott imagined the look in his father’s eyes as he got word of his fate, and his throat thickened. How could he have been such a shit? He hated himself for the countless times he’d used the Battle for Scott to his own benefit.

  Dad liked to think of himself as an aloof, independent leader, but Scott knew that the real Brandon O’Toole was like a rudderless ship in a storm. If Scott died, the old man would just come apart. And for that, Scott felt profoundly sorry.

  “I’m going to make it,” he told the snow. “And I’m going to be better. I swear it.”

  He peeled back the soft elastic wristband on his glove and fumbled for the button to illuminate his watch. Two in the morning. How did that happen? Last time he’d checked—just a few minutes ago, he thought—it was just a few minutes after midnight. The backlit display left a green ghost on his retina after his wrist turned black again.

  He wondered when the fog had rolled in, until he saw snowflakes impacting his coat sleeve. The fog was really a new storm, and now that he opened his ears, he could hear the steady hiss of flakes falling through the trees. Christ, it was already knee-deep—hip-deep in some places. How long could it possibly keep up like this?

  The compass! Jesus, he hadn’t checked it since…since the last time he checked his watch. Two hours! Holy shit, two hours was a lifetime! Where had the time gone? He must have fallen asleep while walking. Was that even possible? His brain had that dull, stupid feeling that he sometimes got after a long period of intense study for a test, or when he was trying to write a song. He felt like he wasn’t a part of this world anymore.

  Think, Scott, think. How much trouble was he really in?

  Then he remembered. Once he’d located the river, he’d put the map away. As long as the river remained on his left, then he really couldn’t go far wrong. Now that he listened carefully to the night, he could hear the water clearly. Perhaps he’d always heard it but just forgot that he was listening for it. It was the exhaustion. Had to be.

  Still, he wanted to see it, just to be sure. He turned and followed the sound. Sure enough, there it was, just barely visible as a shiny black line snaking through the white cut of the riverbed. Everything would be okay.

  He didn’t even want to think about the two hours. He supposed that’s what happened when you didn’t eat for three days.

  Or, maybe he was freezing to death. Goddamn that Sven. Scott kept hearing that heavily accented voice telling him about the slow death that was hypothermia: the slurred speech; the diminished mental capacity; the overpowering need to sleep. Scott remembered thinking that he must have been hypothermic nearly every night when he went to Boy Scout camp, way back when. And he was certainly hypothermic on New Year’s Eve a few years ago, when his dad lost track of the time and let him stay up till four in the morning. Christ, by those symptoms, Scott had been hypothermic more times than he could count.

  How were you supposed to tell the difference? He’d asked that question of Sven, who’d responded with one of his glares and said, “You judge by your surroundings. If you find yourself without shelter in the middle of winter, and you feel like you did on New Year’s Eve, then you probably are in trouble.”

  Big help.

  Scott started to laugh. Something about the absurdity of it all just struck him as funny, and as the chuckle boiled up from his gut to become a real, hearty case of the giggles, it occurred to him that laughter in the face of this kind of danger had to be yet another sign of his impending death. And that made it funnier still.

  “Well, screw it,” he told the night. One thing was by-God certain. Come tomorrow morning, he’d either be alive or dead.

  Sometimes death is a relief to the barely living, he heard Sven say in his memory.

  “And screw you, too.”

  The river jogged sharply to the east, a landmark obvious enough to warrant a check of the map. A glance at his watch showed him that it was 4:12 A.M. That couldn’t be right. In just over thirteen hours, he’d walked only six inches on the map and he still had four inches to go.

  God, he thought, I’ll never make it.

  He checked again, but nothing changed. Sighing deeply, he rested his head against a tree for just a few seconds, then snapped himself back to attention and stood. He could sleep later, for as long as he wanted to.

  Maybe forever.

  ISAAC DE HAVEN STOOD IN THE BACKYARD, drinking in the beauty of it all. There was no silence like the silence of a nighttime snowfall. A gorgeous spot 365 days and nights a year, the Flintlock Ranch had special charm in the winter. Perhaps it was merely the contrast between light and dark, cold and warm. He would miss it.

  The terseness of last night’s message weighed heavily on him. You are in danger. Sam didn’t send such messages lightly. Damn. Cover blown. So, the time had come for him to leave. Moving constantly had once been such a routine part of his life that it never bothered him. Now it did.

  In three days, he’d be gone. With one thing left to do, he had to stick around that long, but then it was good-bye, Utah. Three days.

  Cover blown.

  Well, what the hell? The storm would make it tough on everybody. As long as the snow continued to fall, and the winds continued to whip the way they were, only a fool would venture out. Nights like this had death written all over them.

  In this case, they were deadlier for the hunter than they were for the hunted.

  Tonight, he could afford to sleep. And most likely tomorrow. After that, sleep would be a risk; but at least his job would be done.

  THE SNOW STOPPED FALLING around six. Scott didn’t realize it until he stepped into a clearing and looked at the sky. He gasped at the beauty of it. Millions of stars—literally, millions of them—studded the sky in clusters and bands so dense that he wondered for a moment if they might be clouds. He’d never seen such a thing. At home, there was too much ambient light rising from the streetlights and post lights of suburbia. For the longest time, he just stood there, staring up into forever, understanding for the first time why so many pages of classical poetry were dedicated to the moon and the stars.

  Soon, as the blackness lightened, turning neon pink in the east, he could feel the temperature rise, if only slightly. Under his cap, his ears and his cheeks felt brittle with the cold; his chin and his upper lip felt chapped.

  Overnight, his gait had slowed to a step per second, about the most he could muster. Still, he pushed himself. To stop was to die. He made a deal with himself. All he had to do was walk on for ten more minutes. Just ten. Then, he’d renew the deal for ten more.
By the time he did that just six times, he’d killed another whole hour.

  One foot after the other. Just keep your head down and walk. But each step, it seemed, yielded less distance. His legs and his back screamed from the effort of every step, and below the smooth surface, rocks and sticks and saplings continually lassoed his feet, causing him to fall, always face-first, and his hands never seemed to be fast enough to catch himself effectively. He imagined that he had more snow stuffed down the front of his ski jacket than lay on the entire mountainside, but to clean it out would mean taking his gloves off for the zipper, and then putting them back on when he was done. To tell the God’s honest truth, he wasn’t sure he had that much energy.

  By 6:30, it was snowing again, harder than before.

  The riverbed had begun dropping away a long time ago, as the terrain changed from mostly downhill to mostly up. If he listened carefully, he could just hear its rushing sound, but the last time he wandered toward the noise to take a peek, he found a fifty-foot sheer cliff and he’d steered clear of it ever since.

  It was nearly eight o’clock when Scott paused at the base of a long hill, looking up and wondering how he was possibly going to make it through this. “Ten minutes at a time,” he told himself aloud, but his voice sounded breathy and weak, barely audible. “One step at a time.”

  But there’d been so many steps. Hundreds and hundreds of them. Thousands. And now, this hill rose above him for what seemed to be forever, a constant twenty-degree slope without relief.

  Put your head down and walk. One step at a time. Left foot, right foot. Left foot, right foot. Good leg, bad leg. On and on forever till you die.

  Sixty seconds yielded maybe twenty steps, and each one of them took the same effort as a mile at the school track. Two minutes. Three minutes. He looked behind, then looked ahead and saw that he’d barely moved.

  “Please,” he gasped. “The night was supposed to be the hard part. Don’t take it away from me now. Just get me to the top of this hill. Just this one, and then I’ll take care of the rest. Please. I need Your help.”

  19

  FIVE MINUTES BECAME TEN, and Scott passed the halfway mark on the hill. You gotta keep going now. It’s longer to go back than to go ahead. Yeah, but downhill was a helluva lot easier. What he wanted to do—what he needed to do—was sit down and rest. Maybe take a little nap. He owed himself a little rest. He could afford that much.

  After the crest of the hill.

  Fifteen minutes. One foot was barely clearing the other now, and he’d fallen three more times, opening a cut on his forehead. He didn’t care anymore. At least the blood was warm. Until it froze.

  Can’t do this.

  Gotta do this. He chose to look only behind him this time, to see just where he’d been, and the view of the forward progress lightened his heart, even as it pounded behind his breastbone. His lungs hurt. His head hurt. And his legs. Oh, God, his legs.

  His stomach churned, too, and inexplicably, he found himself thinking of bacon. Honest to God, he swore he could smell it.

  How weird was that? He didn’t even like bacon that much. Not that he wouldn’t eat a dog shit sandwich right about now if someone offered it.

  But why fantasize about bacon? Why not french fries? Or a cheeseburger. McDonald’s cheeseburger. Better yet, the Number Two Value Meal: two cheeseburgers with fries and a drink. Supersized. Keep your flame-broiled, have-it-your-way square hamburger patty crap and let him have the real thing. The original.

  And a glass of orange juice, freshly squeezed with lots of pulp.

  Left foot, right foot. Good leg, bad leg…

  As he climbed, he kept his head down, watching his shins dig their trenches through the powder. He found his mind wandering back to a soccer game from eighth grade. He saw himself up against some tall Mexican kid who had the skills of a pro, but only three-quarters of Scott’s speed. It was late in the fourth quarter, and the Mexican was making his break for the tying goal. The kid had blistered the halfbacks, and all that remained between him and the score was Ryan in the goal box and Scott, who came out of nowhere to level him. Bam! The kid hit the ground like a crash-test dummy. The ref gave Scott a yellow card for rough play, but it didn’t matter. The ball stayed out of the box and Smurf was a hero to his team-mates.

  He reached the top. He couldn’t believe it. He whirled to look behind him, and sure enough, there was the endless, unbroken path of his footsteps through the woods, zigging and zagging around trees and rocks. And if he focused really hard, he imagined that he could see his tracks for another half-mile beyond the base of the hill.

  “Yes!” he cheered, but it came out as a raspy croak. He looked toward the sky and nodded his thanks. Only now it was time to cut another deal, maybe this time for thirty minutes instead of ten.

  Ahead of him lay the down slope, equally long, but a little steeper, and not nearly as heavily treed. Beyond that, the ground flattened out and he could see the river again. He stood there at the crest of the hill for a long time, wobbling on unsteady legs as he willed himself to move on. Come on, downhill is easier than up. Ten more minutes. That’s it, just ten more minutes…

  But his legs wouldn’t work. Suddenly, Scott knew that if he tried to take another step—if he so much as lifted one leg—the other would crumble under him. He needed to rest. God, he needed to sleep. Just a few minutes, no more. Just a ten-minute nap, and he’d be up again and refreshed. He knew he would.

  You sleep, you die.

  Sven’s voice returned, but for the first time, Scott truly didn’t care. Fine, then, I’ll die. Take me. I’m ready.

  And his knees sagged. He was done. This was his spot. This was where they’d find him, whether the searchers were human or animal. This was it, atop the last hill, at the end of the walk that killed him.

  It felt good, too, propped up there against a tree, his knees drawn up nearly to his chest. If only there were a way to lie down without jamming snow into his frozen face, he swore that he could fade away and sleep forever. This dying stuff wasn’t all that difficult, after all.

  Bacon.

  There it was again, stronger than ever. He could almost taste it. Unsure whether he’d been in his spot for a minute or an hour, Scott forced his eyes open just a crack. Something out there wasn’t right. Down low like this, the world looked different, a tableau of random vertical slashes that were the trunks of towering pines, but without the visual clutter of the low-hanging branches, which were mostly at head height or above. The tree trunks stood like silent sentries, guarding the patch of ground that had been theirs for centuries.

  What was that at the bottom? A line of uniformly stubby trees crossed his vision horizontally, way at the bottom of the slope, where they just almost couldn’t be seen. Scott shielded his eyes and squinted even harder. What the hell was he looking at?

  Jesus, it’s a fence.

  Of course! A fence! A man-made fence!

  He’d made it. Yes! By God, he’d actually made it!

  His wind-chapped lips broke and bled as they pulled back into a smile. He wasn’t going to die here, after all.

  Rolling to all fours, he used his tree for support as he rose to his knees, and then willed his legs to take his weight. They felt dead, as if they belonged to someone else. They were totally spent.

  “This is bullshit,” he told himself, and he clawed his way up the trunk until his feet were flat against the slope and his knees were locked.

  Bacon. God, they’re having breakfast!

  The thought of food and a warm blanket drove him forward, caroming from one tree to the next as he fought to control his downhill speed. Left foot, right foot. Good leg, bad leg. He didn’t care anymore. In five minutes, maybe ten, he’d be done. He’d have food in his belly, and he’d be sound asleep.

  Where’s the fence?

  Suddenly, it was gone. How could that be? Scott stopped himself against a tree and jammed his eyes shut. He shook his head and reopened them, but still it was gone. A mirage? Pl
ease, oh, please…

  He pressed on, and a few seconds later, there it was again, hiding, it turned out, behind those low-hanging branches.

  He could see the house now. It was a big sprawling thing, leaking a wispy trail of smoke from its chimney, rising only a few feet before the wind wrestled it back to the ground.

  Come on, God. Ten more minutes. Really. This time for real. Just ten more minutes.

  Left foot, right foot. If he fell, he flat-out didn’t know whether he’d be able to pick himself up.

  Good leg, bad leg.

  ISAAC PULLED THE PAN OFF the burner and set it aside. In the forty-odd years that he’d occupied the planet, he’d yet to stumble upon the right recipe for bacon. There was a very fine line between crispy and burnt that he’d never quite been able to nail down. The bacon and eggs were a treat for himself. His life in the near future would be a succession of hotels and flophouses, so today would be his day of self-indulgence.

  Setting the pan on the counter, he reached for the tongs and he froze. Something moved out on the hill.

  Isaac darted to the window. As he squinted through the snowfall, his right hand instinctively moved to his holster. This wasn’t possible, was it? They wouldn’t possibly move against him in this kind of weather. What would be the point? Isaac would have all the advantage.

  There it was again, bouncing from tree to tree on the slope nearest the river. Only one, but where there was one, there was always another. This bozo was hardly the professional that he’d been expecting. He wandered like he was drunk, like he didn’t give a damn who saw him.

  Moving quickly now, Isaac holstered his pistol and grabbed his MP5 on the way out the door. Standing in the open, in the snow, he shouldered the weapon and peered through the scope.

  What he saw surprised the hell out of him.

  THANK GOD SOMEBODY WAS THERE. Scott saw a man standing in his snowy yard, his stance a little awkward, as if he were holding something on his shoulder.