“I will die out here if you don’t get me some help. Sure, I might be able to hobble to the highway like this if it came to it, but it doesn’t need to. You can save me, Fiona, if you go quickly. Start running and don’t look back. And hurry. For me, for Jill, for Sarah and Carol, for everyone else the people from the woods have hurt. Go, go as if our lives depended on it, because they do.”
“I’m so tired, Roz. So, so tired.”
And she was. Her eyes were scratchy with sleep, and her lips and throat were already parched from lack of water. She was trembling all over just from trying to keep herself in a crouch. She couldn’t imagine trying to run for several miles like this.
“But you can run a mile, right?” Roz asked.
Fiona considered, then nodded.
Roz grinned. “Okay—do this. Run a mile, walk half, run a mile, walk half, and repeat until you reach the highway.”
“But how will I know how far I’ve run?”
“Run until you can’t. Until your lungs feel like bursting. Then walk until your heart slows down and you can breathe regularly, and then wait a minute or two more before running again.”
Their hands were entwined, fingers digging into the backs of their hands. Fiona took in her face one more time. Even now, hurt and pale and dirty, Roz was one of the most beautiful women she’d ever seen. She hadn’t realized that fact until right this moment, in part because she had never truly believed they would make it out of here together. Some part of her had suppressed the very idea of it, dismissing it as a fantasy brought on by stress and horror. Now, with the real possibility that she might never see this woman again, that they might never have a chance to get a beer or a meal together, that fantasy returned tenfold.
She could see them together at Jill’s Labor Day party, eating barbecue and drinking too many mojitos. She could picture the two of them at her own annual Halloween party, dressed in some cheesy couples’ costume and smearing makeup on each other every time they kissed. She could see herself introducing Roz to the rest of her family at Thanksgiving, her little brother making stupid jokes, and her uncle getting too drunk and saying something awkward about their sex lives. Staring into Roz’s eyes, she saw their life together stretched out with crystalline clarity.
Hands still clutched together, Fiona pulled Roz toward her and kissed her, hard, almost brutally, before releasing her grip.
“Okay,” she said.
Roz’s eyebrows shot up. “Just like that?”
“Just like that. If I hurry, we might be in time to catch happy hour somewhere.”
Roz’s laugh was a real one, this time, neither weak nor bitter, her head thrown back.
“Why—do you know a good place?”
“Yes,” Fiona said. “I told you—my friend and her sister run a brewery in Loveland. Even if we’re a few minutes late, she’ll usually give me the happy-hour discount.”
“Sounds good to me. Not much of a beer drinker—”
“You’ll like their stuff. I promise.”
Their merriment died a few seconds later, and Roz rested her forehead against hers, fingers digging into her shoulders.
“I want you to know I’m rooting for us. I really think we have a chance.”
“Even after all this?”
Roz smiled. “Even so. I knew that first time we talked, just the two of us. By the pond.”
“Serenity Pond,” Fiona said quietly. Instead of days ago, the memory seemed to be from another life.
Roz laughed. “Exactly. I knew even then that I liked you, that I wanted to know you better.”
“I thought I was imagining it.”
Roz frowned. “Why?”
Fiona shook her head. “I couldn’t believe someone like you would be into me.”
Roz still looked confused.
“I mean, you could have anyone. Someone prettier—”
“I want you, Fiona. And you’re pretty. I see now that you don’t know that about yourself, and that makes me really sad, but you’re gorgeous, inside and out.”
“Even like this?”
Roz laughed. “Even now. And it’s not just your pretty face and cute little body, Fiona. I like you . Just like this. Any way you are, I’ll like you.”
Fiona struggled to accept the words, even in the face of what they’d gone through the last few hours. Mostly she dismissed them as flattery, as twisted altruism on Roz’s end to give her hope. Part of her, however, desperately wanted to believe her.
She kissed her then, lingering in the sinking pleasure and pain it simultaneously gave her. If this was to be their last kiss, she wanted to remember it for the rest of her life. Roz pulled away first, her eyes sparkling with tears.
“Run, Fiona. Save yourself for me. Please. I can be brave if I know you’re safe somewhere.”
Fiona gave her another quick kiss and stood up. “I’ll do more than that. I’ll save you, too. And Jill, and Carol and Sarah—all of us.”
“Okay. Good-bye. Good luck. I believe in you.”
Fiona stared down at her for another long moment, taking her in one last time. The sight would have to last her for however long this took—it was the only thing she would have to draw strength from, the only motivation she would have to keep trying. Even in her defeated, broken state, splattered with Jill’s blood, lips parched, leg swaddled in cloth, Roz was a vision.
“Good-bye, Roz. I’ll save you. I promise.”
Chapter Twenty-three
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.
“Take it easy,” she told herself, vaguely aware she’d spoken out loud.
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.
“I have to keep going. Ignore it,” she whispered.
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—sometime
s 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.
“Stop it. Think about something else.”
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.
“Water,” she whispered, her heart rising.
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 held her hands up in the air. “Don’t shoot. Please don’t shoot me. I’ll do whatever you want.”
The woman didn’t move or react, her eyes twinkling slightly behind the mask.
“What do you want?” Fiona asked. “What do you want from us? Why are you doing this?
Again, no response.
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, Fio
na 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.
“Fuck this,” Fiona said and stood up, a surge of water coming with her. She stood, dripping, soaked through, and watched for a few seconds before moving toward the edge of the pond.
This time the woman did react, lowering her rifle toward Fiona. Fiona froze, hands shooting into the air again, but nothing happened. They stayed that way for perhaps a full minute.
“Can I get out of the water?” Fiona asked.
A slight nod.
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.
“Goddamn it! Just shoot me and be done with this, already. If you’re going to kill me, do it.”
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.
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