“You’re bleeding,” Savannah said.
When Rex attacked me, I’d stopped thinking. Even now that he was penned up in the car, every bark made me flinch. My whole body was coated with sweat, my heart was thumping in my ears, and my mouth tasted sour.
Savannah was wiping blood from her good hand on her pants. But it wasn’t her blood. It was mine. It was coming from my right wrist. The white skin just past the layers of clothes now had a dark hole in it, about as big around as a pencil. Blood was steadily leaking from it. When I turned it over, on the other side was a matching bloody hole.
Looking at it, I could sense my wrist was throbbing. At the same time, it didn’t really feel like my wrist or hand. It was now just this weak, useless appendage attached to my body.
With her good hand, Savannah pulled the towel from around her neck. “Here, help me tie this around your wrist to stop the bleeding.”
Together the two of us managed to tie a bulky knot directly over one of the holes. I barely registered the pain as she snugged the towel taut.
“Try to hold your wrist above your heart,” she said. “That will slow down the bleeding.”
I knew enough to nod at her words, but they were more a jumble of sounds than anything that made sense.
“We need to get out of here! That dog won’t shut up. He’ll wake up Sir for sure.”
Sir! That did get through to me. Cradling my wrist to my chest, I began to stagger forward in my best approximation of a run. I hadn’t walked more than a few steps in ten months, and I was already exhausted from getting as far as we had. Soon my muscles were trembling again, my lungs protesting.
As fast as we could, we traversed the graveled, potholed road toward the fence. A squat cinder-block building sat just on the other side. The junked cars were beginning to be in neater rows, and they looked newer and more complete.
Finally we reached the fence. It was at least ten feet high. A pair of gates made of the same chain-link material as the fence bisected the road. A heavy chain bound the gates together, fastened with a padlock. Like the fence, the gates had metal pipes running the length of the top, middle, and bottom. To help the gates hold their shape, a fourth pipe went diagonally from corner to corner.
The chain-link was already a formidable barrier, but both the gates and the fence were topped with four strands of barbed wire.
“How are we going to get over that?” Just looking at the wicked inch-long barbs, I felt overwhelmed. I was shaking from the cold, the running, and the fear flooding my thoughts.
“Just start climbing!” Savannah ordered. “I’ll figure out what to do about the barbed wire.”
Raising my hands over my head, I hooked my fingers into the wires of one of the gates. I ignored how the movement made my wrist bleed more. But when I tried to put the toe of my shoe into the links, it didn’t fit. I kicked off my shoes and then stepped up with one foot and then the other. I looked down. I was now a whole ten inches above the ground.
Reaching up with one hand and then the next, I transferred to higher handholds. Now it was time to climb my feet up, too. Leaning back, I pulled out one foot and set it higher up. Slowly, I followed it with my second foot. But the wasted muscles in my arms were barely cooperating. They wobbled and shook every time I shifted my weight.
I looked down. For all the effort it was costing, I was still only a couple of feet above the ground.
And then from behind us, I heard a shout.