The remains

Chapter 52

When I tried to walk, I tripped. With every step I took along the trail in the darkness came a branch slap to the face, a tree trunk to the thigh, a boulder to the shin. I caught a thorn from a thick bush that hung over the trail. It tore into my jeans, penetrating the skin on my lower calf. I knew I was cut. Not because I could feel the sting. But because I could feel the blood trickling down the calf muscle, warm and wet, the thick consistency not at all like the cold October rain.

It was a struggle to get anywhere in the dark. Five minutes of walking and stumbling, and I managed to cover no more than thirty or forty feet. Whether or not I was maintaining a straight line was a mystery to me. I might as well have been crawling.

The only way to continue with the blind trek was to drop down onto hands and knees, feel my way along the gravel trail the same way an animal might do it: by touch, by smell, by sound. By using as many senses as possible.

It’s exactly what I did.

From down on all fours I crawled over the smooth rocks and mud-covered gravel toward the sound of water. Not rain water falling from the sky, but stream water running heavily into a pool. I knew the pool from my childhood. It had to be the same one. The more I crawled the louder, more forceful it became. I knew the pool was situated close to the house in the woods. No more than a couple hundred feet separated the pool from the house.

I was closer to Michael than I thought. Just the thought of going to him, helping him, offered me a trace of hope and a trace was better than nothing at all.

I felt suddenly lighter.

I began to move along the earth floor with increased speed while the sound of rushing water became more intense. A sudden burst of energy filled my veins. But when something stung the back of my leg, I dropped down face-first onto the path like a sack of rags and bones.

My God, had I been shot?

The ground zero of pain was located in the back of my right thigh. From there it rippled throughout my body. The pain shot up and down my backbone with surprising efficiency. I might have rolled over onto my back then, bled to death.

But I attempted to move my feet, then my legs. Until I pulled myself up from off the wet ground. I leaned up straight, felt the welt growing behind my thigh. Because the wound was out of vision, I had no way of knowing if a bullet had actually lodged there or merely grazed the skin.

My gut reaction was a graze. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to move my leg.

Then, coming through the leaves, the quick whoosh of bullets flying overhead, slapping the foliage. Some of the rounds that pinged against the stones blew up red-yellow sparks. I dropped down hard onto my belly. My body ached while the bullets came at me fast, but missing all the time as though Whalen intended for them to miss. And I was sure he did.

Whalen had lived in these woods, hunted them for food. He knew what he was doing. The silent rounds fell short, most embedding themselves into the ground only inches from my face. Water and mud splashed into my eyes, ears, nose and mouth. The rapid fire rounds burst through the trees, but not a hint of gunfire or a muzzle flash as though Whalen were using a silencer. The scene was like something out of Michael’s manuscripts-guns, bullets, silencers. But then I was no stranger to firearms. My dad had been a trooper, a hunter, a shooter, a gun collector. I’d lived with guns for my entire childhood.

From down on the ground I reached around to my thigh, touching the spot of impact. The thick welt had already formed. There was a small tear in the jeans above it. I felt the sting of my touch. Bringing my fingertips back to my face, I raised them to my lips. I tasted the fresh blood.

The rounds kept coming at me fast, furious and accurately inaccurate. If this weren’t like a surreal dream, I would have been too petrified to move. But none of this was real to me. It was all a bizarre dream that only bordered on the realistic. At least, if I wanted to live, if I wanted Michael to live, that’s what I had to believe.

I had to do something. I could either lie there and waste precious time, worry over the pain, worry that I would never wake up from the nightmare, or I could make a move, get myself further downhill, out of range, and closer to the house in the woods. Closer to Michael.

A scream pierced the darkness-a yelp coming from behind me along the high ground. The yelp shattered my senses; cut through flesh and bone.

Whalen releasing thirty years of pent up desire?

I made a silent three count. Breathing deep, I pushed myself up and onto my feet and bolted off through the brush like an angry field cat.