part0032

Fiona turned and started running. Here in this stretch of woods, despite being at a lower elevation than before, the trees were a little sparser, more open than in other parts of the forest they’d hiked the last few days. The undergrowth was also clearer, the sun too harsh to allow much growth. She could see the path before her, almost as if it were marked, stretching directly in front of her, true and sure. She only occasionally had to dodge around a cluster of trees or bushes, finding the path, imaginary or not, almost at once when she moved past each obstacle. Once, twice in her first frantic dash, a branch or a barb caught at her arm or face, but she moved on without a second glance and ignored the small pain it brought.

While the day was still overwhelmingly hot, as she sped through the woods, she found some relief from the air flowing over her face. She ran and ran, not as if being chased, which she thought she probably was, but because she had somewhere to be. She had to get to the road, not for herself, but for the others—for Jill’s future, for Carol and Sarah’s, for her and Roz. Even if that future she’d imagined with her was a fantasy, she had to try.

On her first rest period, she had to stop a moment and catch her breath. She stood there in the middle of a wide clearing, bent in half, hands on her knees, gasping. This was, she realized, a dangerous pace to set. She couldn’t run so hard she’d have to stop, or she’d lose any advantage she gained while running. It took too long for her heart and breathing to slow down before she was ready to start walking.

She walked for a while, working at the stitch in her side by swinging her arms and pausing to stretch from side to side a couple of times. Her teeth and gums felt strangely sticky, her tongue swollen. Without any water, she risked collapse if she kept going like this. That wouldn’t do at all. Next time, she had to be capable of running again much sooner than this, and she had to be able to do it without passing out somewhere.

Heart rate and breathing finally back to normal, she pushed herself into a slow trot. Within twenty yards, her knees and hip joints were already aching for relief. Each step was jarring, unsettling, sending shooting pain up through her neck and the back of her head. She could feel a major headache coming on, the cause multiple: lack of sleep, exhaustion, dehydration, hunger.

She picked up her pace a little, finding it more comfortable to jog, and, as she moved through the woods, the stitch in her side finally let go. She remembered this from training—sometimes you just had to run through it.

This pace was manageable, sustainable. She remembered the plan—run a mile, walk half, but she was probably going farther and faster by doing it this way. Walking, she and Roz and Jill had been doing a mile every twenty or twenty-five minutes this morning, and she estimated she was making closer to fifteen or twenty at this pace. Occasionally she pushed herself into an actual run but would slow down to a jog again the moment her breath started hitching in her chest.

Another branch swept her cheek, sending a stream of warm blood running down her face. She wiped at it absently, not slowing, eyes trained on the next set of trees, the next group of boulders, the next thing she could focus on.

Occasionally, she would throw a glance up at the sky, worried she was getting off course, but she only had to adjust her course forward slightly once or twice. Without Roz’s more specific sense of direction, she could never hope to head precisely south, but she trusted her accuracy was close enough to get there eventually, especially as the land was sloping down that way. She could also feel the direction of the sun now on the side of her face and didn’t really need to keep checking where it was. If she kept it to her right, almost directly in her eyes, she would reach the road eventually.

Except for that first time gasping in the woods, when she did slow into a walk now, she didn’t feel the need to fully stop anymore, nor did she need to walk for very long. Her muscles were warmed up, her adrenaline had come back. Except for the constant thirst, she felt good, comfortable keeping this up for now. How long she could go without water was anyone’s guess, but for now, she felt capable of continuing for a long spell yet.

The thirst, however, was brutal. She tried to make herself think about anything else. Even picturing her friends stuck in the woods was better than thinking about her parched, dry mouth and throat. The ache for water, however, was overwhelming, all-consuming. Picturing Jill, her mind would go to the river nearby, and she found herself almost envious of her sitting there, waiting, gunshot or no.

She couldn’t. Again and again, her mind returned to the river. Why had they decided to leave it behind? It seemed foolhardy now. There was no point in taking a new path if you didn’t have access to water. The river, she thought now, had been their lifeline. Licking her lips did nothing now, but she had to fight the urge to keep herself from doing it almost constantly. The skin there was peeling away already, the corners of her mouth painfully chapped. She tasted blood there in her next probe and forced herself to keep her tongue in her mouth. Nothing would help now.

Her head was pounding, almost unbearable. The sun felt like it was roasting her here in these sparser woods. The ground itself had dried up in this heat, as she began to kick up dust as she ran. These were the Colorado woods she was used to—arid and nearly barren.

She saw the markings on the trees before her brain absorbed what they meant. She continued jogging for a few more strides before she stopped, almost at once, nearly tripping herself in her haste to slow down. As before, three trees ahead had geometric patterns carved into them. Unlike before, at both campsites, at the pond, and just before the spot where she left Roz, these markings were much lower than before. Instead of ten or fifteen feet up in the trees, they were nearly at her level. She had no idea if that meant something, or if they’d just gotten lazier and forgot a ladder, but their location was markedly different. Still, the markings meant trouble, and she scanned the ground around her, searching for traps.

She altered her path slightly away from the trees, walking east about fifty yards before heading south again, eyes still glued to the ground and walking gingerly, mincingly forward, picking up her feet very carefully. After twenty or thirty minutes of this, she realized she was getting nowhere, fast. If she didn’t get moving again, it would take her too long to reach the highway. If she didn’t make it there in the next couple of hours, she wasn’t sure she would. She was just too deflated and dry to keep going.

Again, she forced herself into a slow trot, trying to watch the ground and the path in front of her at the same time. The effort was exhausting, stressful. Without a real path to follow, she had to look ahead to watch where she was going. Twice she almost collided with a tree before finally giving it up. If there were more traps, she had to hope they were behind her now.

Half an hour later, her headache almost blindingly painfully, she heard a loud crashing in the woods to her right. She stopped at once, leaping over to a tree and crouching next to it, training her gaze in the direction of the sound. She could see nothing moving over there, or anywhere, but she made herself wait another five minutes, counting down the seconds in her head. Finally, legs quaking, she climbed back to her feet and stared that way for another long beat. She couldn’t see anything, but she seemed to detect a sound—so slight she thought she was imagining it.

Without pausing to think, almost as if she had lost her ability to make decisions about where she went or what she did, she ran, full-out, toward the sound, almost tripping in her haste and carelessness. She rounded a large boulder and saw the source of the sound some fifty feet away: a small pond with a tiny waterfall splashing into it from a little river tributary. She didn’t pause, as she might have done if she was thinking clearly, instead belting toward it at top speed.

She flung herself into the pond, landing painfully on her knees, only dimly aware of the pain as she scooped and scooped water into her mouth. It was heavenly—the taste so sweet and satisfying she might have gone on drinking until she burst. She made herself slow down, afraid she might throw up, and rubbed some handfuls on the back of her neck and through her hair. It was icy cold, or at least seemed so on her hot skin.

She scrubbed at her face and hands, feeling as if she were wiping away this whole experience. Blood and dirt flaked off in the water, and she felt a rising sense of giddy relief. She leant down and scooped some more water into her mouth. Thirst finally slaked, she leaned back and down into the water. It was perhaps a foot deep, but she was able to submerge her whole body, and when she came up, sputtering and laughing in joy and relief, it took her several seconds to realize she wasn’t alone. She hastily wiped the rest of the water from her eyes and stared, and her breath caught in her chest.

It was the woman, that much she could see at a single glance. She thought of her as the woman, not a woman, as she’d been the only feminine person they’d seen among those people. She couldn’t, of course, know if this was the same one Roz had seen in the clearing, or the one they’d seen in the tent, but some instinct suggested that it was. She was slight and thin, maybe just above five feet tall, her exposed arms a deep tan. Like the others, she was wearing a mask, this one more catlike than the rabbits she’d seen on the men in the camp. The mask was still freakishly shaped, one ear higher than the other, the eyes slightly misaligned, the whole thing a lumpy, poorly formed and unadorned white papier-mâché. She was dressed strangely, too, her entire outfit a pale-brown linen or hemp, shapeless and baggy, her sandals likewise lumpy and misshapen, made of twine and strips of leather, perhaps. She was holding a rusty rifle across her body, pointed up and to the left, as if in military readiness. A long bayonet had been attached to the end, but it too was rusty, dull.

Fiona kept her hands in the air, muscles quivering with fatigue and terror. When the woman didn’t move or speak, after perhaps a full minute, Fiona let herself begin to lower her hands, waiting for a reaction. Nothing happened. The woman stood as if frozen there, the only movement an occasional flash of her eyes behind the mask.

Despite everything, Fiona was beginning to get cold. A shiver ran through her, gooseflesh rising on her arms. Sitting here like this was also uncomfortable. She’d risen out of the water to a seated position, legs stretched out in front of her, submerged, and her back and stomach muscles were starting to complain and quiver with the effort of keeping herself upright. She leant back on her hands, still watching for a reaction, but again, the woman stayed still.

Fiona moved up and onto the shore, rubbing some of the water out of her hair and dropping her hands to her sides. The woman still had her gun trained on Fiona, but she hadn’t moved her fingers nearer to the trigger—the gun was simply pointed at her. Fiona watched her, waiting for anything to change, hoping she might have a crucial second or two to try to jump out of the way. Nothing happened. The longer this went on, the more Fiona wanted it to simply be over. She couldn’t take it anymore. Her temper rose, frayed from fatigue and the emotional turmoil of the last few days.

The woman raised the gun to her shoulder, and Fiona closed her eyes. If she ran, she’d be shot eventually, and she was suddenly unwilling to try. Let this be done and she could finally rest, sleep. At least this way it would be quick.

In the next seconds, minutes, hours, years, time lost all meaning. She relived the last few days in total, experiencing every agony and triumph. Further back, she saw her last few days at work before the vacation, impatiently finishing several useless tasks to fill up her shift and get her boss off her back. Farther still, she saw Jill and her other friends, celebrating the Fourth of July at Carter Lake, a pony of local beer and pretty girls in swimsuits dancing around a bonfire. Memories sped up then, flickering through her mind in full relief. What she experienced and saw in that strange, everlasting moment was a life misspent. A life waiting for the next thing, nursing resentments, holding grudges, a life tainted with envy and self-created pain. This couldn’t be it. This couldn’t be all it meant.

She crumpled to the ground, howling with an overwhelming sense of gratitude and joy. She screamed once, an overpowering something inside her necessary to release, and then burst into laughing tears. She wrapped her arms around her body, hugging herself, and quaking all over with an exhilarating and a thankful recognition of her own continued existence.

Finally, she crawled over to the water again, trying to scoop the liquid in shaking cupped hands. She couldn’t stop trembling. Her nerves were overwrought, overexcited, and it took much longer than normal to get some more water to her mouth. She sobbed a few times, pinching her eyes shut again, opening them at once to stare up at the spot where the woman had stood. She was still alone, and she caught a sob and swallowed it painfully. She had to make herself stand up. It took several tries, her legs almost giving out each time, but she finally made it, swaying slightly before moving.

She was still light-headed and detached from her body, and her first steps away from the water were uncertain, clumsy. She made herself focus on her feet, putting one in front of the other, and her balance and equilibrium finally began to come back to her a few minutes later. She tried a shuffling jog forward, almost tripped, and dropped back into a fast walk. Running could wait. She had to find her way back to herself, first.

She refused to look back, refused to see if the woman was watching her, waiting for her to forget and then shoot. No, Fiona decided. It was better to believe that she had let her go, even if she had no reason to hope, even if believing in that didn’t make any sense. It was the only way to keep going.

She heard the road long before she allowed herself to recognize the sounds for what they were—cars and trucks. The highway was a significant east-west thoroughfare for weekend campers, but on a weekday, it was still busy enough for the sounds of vehicles to reach her, one on top of the other sometimes, long pauses between others. She tried to increase her speed again but only managed a loping trot. Any faster, and she started to lose her balance again, nearly tripping.

The ground had leveled off at some point, when, she couldn’t remember. It might have been before the pond or since; she had no memory of the change. All she knew was that level ground meant she was close—two miles or less.

Now they would shoot her. They knew where she was, and they had to recognize that they couldn’t let her go. If the woman was their leader, which Fiona had, like Roz, begun to believe, perhaps she had simply left to rally her troops. Any moment now and it would all be over.

Movement ahead of her—a flash of red metal—and she finally caught her final wind. It was a car, not fifty feet ahead, driving by beyond the barbed-wire fence that protected this forest. Fiona started running then, faster than she ever had, head lowered, body tilted forward, arms pumping at her sides and feet fairly flying over the ground in front of her. The fence slowed her for no more than a few seconds, as she quickly maneuvered to a nearby tree, jumping for the lowest branch, swinging her legs over, and dropping down on the other side.

She landed awkwardly, letting out a single moan of pain, then stumbled the remaining yards to the road. Something—a car, a truck—was coming toward her on the road, the light suddenly too bright to fully comprehend the shape. She waved her hands wildly once, twice, heard honking and the squealing of brakes, and then she was falling, falling, the world fading as she lost consciousness and sank to the ground.