sixteen

MICHAEL SAT IN THE TREE LINE on the side of Countyline Road. He looked to both horizons and saw an empty stretch of pavement. Across the road was the front wall of the north woods and the beginning of an endless expanse of wilderness. The city of Coldwater behind him, a labyrinth of nature before. The people who lived in the north were stretched out and isolated, the kind of people who preferred to be left alone, not bothered. If there was any place left on earth that a man like Michael could disappear to, it was there, just across Countyline Road.

Following the river had been a rash and thoughtless decision. It cut a clear path through the rugged country, but it also gave any pursuer a road map to where he would be headed. He had managed to make it to Old Man Jackson’s without incident, but when he came upon the Post Road Bridge, his luck had run out.

From the shadow of the embankment, he had seen men on top of the bridge. A truck on each end, heads moving back and forth, peering over the sides. Michael had counted four, but there could have been more. For all he knew, there were men down by the river searching the banks.

He had doubled back as far as he dared, forded the river, and cut a trail north.

And now he found himself on the dividing line between the last bastion of civilization and the northern wilderness, Countyline Road. Though it was only two lanes, it seemed an overwhelming gauntlet to run. The tree line provided a sense of comfort, an embryonic shell from which to peer out into the open. The road before him would be like walking naked into the world. Nightfall was approaching quickly and he could wait until then to cross, but each minute delayed meant more time for his pursuers to catch up with him.

Michael calculated the distance across the road.

It was about thirty yards.

He looked in both directions again.

Any car that appeared on either horizon would see him just as soon as they crested the hills overlooking this small valley where he found himself. He would be the fish in the barrel. There would be no warning. Each moment was as safe and as dangerous as the next.

Michael marked his crossing in his mind—away from the tree line, up the ditch, across the road, into the brush on the other side. He mapped it out, peering for anything that might trip him up, slow his progress. Once he had his route committed, he listened as hard as he could for the sound of a vehicle approaching. He heard nothing.

Gathering himself up, he made a dash for the crossing.

From his seat, Kyle gazed out the side window at the passing trees. They loomed ominous in their depth. In his mind’s eye he envisioned Michael by every tree, Old Man Jackson’s shotgun raised and ready to fire at the truck as it moved down the road. He counted each breath and tried to anticipate what the flash from the barrel would look like from the hanging leaves, the sound of the shot hitting the truck, whether or not the shell would pass through the metal and into him. If he would have any conscious thought between the blast and when his body would erupt in a fountain of gore.

His shirt was drenched with sweat, even though the cool evening air blew in through his open window.

James drove the truck down Countyline Road slowly, deliberately, seemingly reveling in the slow creep down the blacktop. They had been hunting in these woods all their lives, but this was a different hunt altogether, and while Kyle was quaking in his seat at the mere idea of the man lurking in the woods, James appeared as pumped up as any other time in his life. To him this was an adrenaline rush. This was sport. Kyle wondered if James was a man who wanted to be evil all his life and was suddenly given a free pass to do so.

The truck inched down the road and crested a small hill that opened up on a gully. The asphalt sloped down before rising up to a distant ridge.

James’s eyes widened as he stared through the windshield off into the horizon. A sinister smirk crossed his face.

Up ahead, a shadow of a man ran across the road, stopped momentarily at the center line, and then took off into the woods on the other side.

“There he is!” James yelled as he punched the gas.

It was if stepping on the road’s centerline had caused the truck to materialize on the western ridge. Michael could see it crest the hill and he stopped midstride, looked at the mechanical beast, then his reflexes took over. He sprinted across the blacktop, tripping over his feet and stumbling to safety in the opposing ditch. He clawed up the far bank and cut into the woods. Branches hit his face, grabbing at his cheeks and eyes, tearing at his skin to leave streaks of blood, but he pushed on. With each step into the blackness, he could hear the truck’s engine growling closer as it raced down the road to his location.

His mind was firing on all cylinders and his eyes darted for a solution.

Michael looked into the forest. Though the trees were thick, he could see clearly through old forest for about a hundred yards. He would never disappear in time.

The engine in the distance dropped another gear, and the roar changed tone but then increased in ferocity to a new height, as if the devil himself was going full bore down Countyline Road. There could be no doubt that they had seen him. There could be no doubt that the occupants in the truck were hunting for him.

They would never stop hunting for him.

It was with this realization that Michael could feel the tension in his stomach start to form, snaking up his spine. The same feeling that had crept over him many times in his life, that had crept over him earlier at Old Man Jackson’s when the shotgun was pointed at his face.

The same feeling he first experienced in the prison kitchen as a young boy when he knew that danger was imminent.

All he had to do was step out on the road and watch the destruction unfold. This silent protector of his, the killing shadow, the curse that hung around his soul since he was ten years old, would protect him. He would be safe, but at what expense?

That is not what he wanted.

He wanted to be left alone.

His only hope was to hide himself as best he could, and that’s what he did. Nestled down in the nettles and the leaves, Michael waited for his pursuers to arrive.

“Slow down, James! What are you doing!”

The truck roared down the road, chewing up pavement at a faster and faster rate.

“I saw him . . . I saw that son-of-a—”

“Haywood said to wait! What are you doing? Slow down!” Kyle yelled, his foot pressing into the floorboard in a futile attempt to apply the brakes of the truck. But James kept the accelerator down, racing toward the fugitive’s trail. He was whipped into a frenzy, a vigilante. Bloodlust.

The fear arose in Kyle double-time.

“Slow down!”

James was lost in his own world. His gaze was fixed on the point in the road where he saw Michael disappear into the woods. His foot on the gas, oblivious to how fast the truck was going or how hard the engine was squealing in agony. He paid no more attention to Kyle in the passenger seat, his ears deaf to the yelling. He was possessed, transfixed on the point in the road and the rush of speed.

The truck arrived at the spot, but before James could slow down, the vehicle’s back end pushed out to the side, fishtailing in an uncontrollable swerve. James stared at his static fists on the wheel, his expression locked in terrifying wonder as the machine was no longer under his control. The momentum carried the vehicle over on its side and onto its top, rolling several times. Kyle could feel the glass shatter across his face, the roof crumbling down against his head. The seat belt gouging into his chest and waist as the truck rolled and rolled . . . finally landing in the ditch upside down. James was gone. Thrown out at some point without a sound.

Kyle was stuck in the seat. The smell of gasoline fumes and mud flooded his senses. The pain was overwhelming in every part of his body. He reached for the buckle and unsnapped it, falling onto the roof as he did so, his body crumpling like a rag doll.

His door was gone, ripped off during the crash, and he managed to drag himself out into the ditch. He couldn’t move his legs. He couldn’t tell if they were broken or if it was his back. His vision was blurred and the earth was spinning uncontrollably, but he fought his way up the bank until his head rested on the side of the road.

He could see James’s lifeless body lying on the asphalt. Kyle’s mind couldn’t process the sight. With as much strength as he could he tried to call out to his friend.

“James . . . James . . .” The sound was more a bubbling of thick liquid than words.

Then Kyle saw him.

The shadow he had seen crossing Countyline Road.

The man they had buried in Springer’s Grove.

Michael stepped onto the road, between the wrecked truck and James’s body.

Michael watched the whole crash unfold before him from the false safety of the tree line on the north side of the road. He watched the truck accelerate, swerve, and roll as if in slow motion. The driver had been jettisoned at the first roll and was crushed by the vehicle as it careened into the ditch. He heard the whimpering sounds of the passenger as the man inside the cab struggled out of the wreck.

Michael knew that the only safe course was to start running, but he felt compelled to investigate the carnage. He still needed supplies—all he could scrounge—and he figured that any car coming down the road would be more interested in the accident than the shadow slinking back into the woods. It was worth the risk.

He stepped onto the road. To his right lay the driver. Motionless. His life gone as quickly as the truck’s abrupt deceleration. He turned toward the heap of twisted metal simmering in the ditch. He could see the passenger lying halfway on the road, the man’s head on the asphalt. Blood covered most of his face and was pooling from his mouth, but his eyes were wide open, the whites visible in the lessening evening light. The man stared in shock. He was trying to speak, single sounds, calling for his companion, but the noise was unrecognizable.

Michael walked toward him. The man on the ground was unarmed, and even if he had a gun on him, it appeared that he was so messed up that he wouldn’t have the ability to raise it and fire.

Michael stepped around him, went down in the ditch, and searched the upside-down truck. He found a variety of things on the ceiling-now-turned-floor of the cab. He found a backpack and dumped out its contents: a lighter, two water bottles, a half pack of cigarettes, and a couple candies. There wasn’t much but litter.

Leaving the truck, he walked up the ditch and stepped over the bleeding man, squatted down and looked him in the face. The man moved involuntarily, his body shaking uncontrollably.

Michael reached over and pulled the wallet out of the man’s back pocket and thumbed through it until he found an ID.

“Kyle Moore.”

The name seemed familiar, but he could not place it with certainty. Michael opened one of the water bottles and poured a little bit into the man’s mouth. Kyle took some and spit it out, along with the blood that had pooled in his cheek. He tried to mouth some words, struggling to get the noise out.

“Pl . . . please . . . hel . . . help me.”

“Why should I . . . Kyle?” Michael said, flipping the driver’s license off into the ditch. He stared down at the mess of humanity before him, feeling a duality in his thoughts. There was a certain amount of satisfaction in seeing justice meted out in so quick a fashion, but seeing carnage up close, he would be lying if he didn’t feel sympathy for the poor soul.

Kyle kept uttering his request as if Michael had said nothing.

“Pl . . . hel . . . help me.”