Beyond the New Horizon

by Christine Conaway

  “Yes sir. Just like you said, only to save another's life.”

  Sam held his hand out and was almost surprised when Gina took it. He pulled her to her feet. His eyes glanced down at her waist as if checking her gear.

  Gina patted her pocket, “I moved it. It’s in my pocket.”

  Sam smiled and gave her a thumbs up. “Let’s go, buddy. You lead the way but stay close.”

  *******

  Lucy was afraid to open her eyes. The last time she did, the man had dropped her to the ground when she had thrown up down the back of him. She thought it wouldn’t matter if she opened them or not, she could feel the vomit building, she groaned and struggled against his arm holding her on his shoulder. Lucy held her arms out to break her fall when she felt him bend over prepared to drop her again. She felt and heard the snap as her arm preceded her landing. Lucy could only lay as she vomited until she had nothing but dry heaves.

  Lucy rolled onto her side, cradling her injured arm close to her chest. She moaned in pain as sharp jolts ran up to her shoulder. Lucy was pretty sure she had broken something when she landed.

  “God dammit, why’d you have to hit her so hard? She should be up walking by herself right now. She gets that shit on me one more time, and I’ll leave her right where she falls.”

  Through the slits between her eyelids, Lucy tried to see where she was and who she was with. Both of the men wore military uniforms, but they didn’t look right. The camo pattern was all wrong, and their boots were not military grade, but some kind of knockoff.

  Both men were big. Not just with years of fat buildup, but big with muscle and they towered over her. Neither of the two men were clean shaven, and the one who had been carrying her, badly needed a bath. She thought the stench of him had contributed to her nausea.

  She allowed her eyes to close, giving her time to think. She knew that she had never seen either one of the men before that moment. She didn’t know how she had come to be with them or how long it had been that she had been carried. Her stomach muscles hurt, maybe from being carried like a sack of potatoes or from vomiting she wasn’t sure. Other than her arm, she couldn’t define one individual injury that contributed to her discomfort; she hurt all over.

  Her pounding head reminded her that someone had hit her. She remembered falling, and she remembered the first time the guy had thrown her off his shoulder and not much else. The gaps in her memory assured her that she had been unconscious.

  “I didn’t hit her, I told you. I went to grab her, and she fell. How was I to know she would hit her head on the only fucking rock in the area?”

  “You should have just left her there.”

  “I would have, but you don’t share. Remember? Hell, this isn’t even the one I wanted. I wanted that cute little blonde.”

  “You should have grabbed her that first night then, when she was out there with that big old girl. We coulda been back at camp long before this.”

  Lucy lay on the ground listening to them, trying to make some sense out of what they were saying. As soon as they mentioned the blonde and that ‘big old girl,' she knew they were talking about Journey and Gina.

  Then she remembered, she was going to use their latrine before she went to stand guard duty with Gina. She had gone to use the latrine but had neglected to say anything to Gina. Lucy remembered using the little folding shovel to throw dirt into the pit and doing up her pants She remembered the fall, but that was it.

  “Hey!” A foot nudged her, shoving her over onto her back. Gina cried out from the pain. “Thought you were awake. Now get to your feet and walk.”

  Lucy opened her eyes, she recognized the smell of the man and knew he was the one who had been carrying her. She tried to roll onto her side to help herself up, but cried out as soon as she tried to use her arm. “I think my arm is broken,” she moaned.

  “That don’t have nothin’ to do with how well your feet work. Now get up.” He used his foot to shove her again.

  Lucy allowed him to push her down again and made sure she left some marks in the dirt when she did finally get to her knees.

  She looked up into washed out blue eyes of the man who had shoved her down. His face was flushed and pot-marked, the face of a drinking man if she had to guess. It had been a while since he had shaved or cut his hair. What there was of it, was pulled back in a ponytail of sorts. His beefy hands reached for her when he must have realized with her holding her arm tight against her body, she couldn’t stand up without assistance.

  He roughly pulled her to her feet. It took Lucy a few awkward steps to get her feet planted firmly under herself. Immediately, she unzipped her jacket and careful not to jar her arm, she pulled it from the sleeve.

  “Come on, we ain’t got time for this bullshit. You’re either going to walk or get carried over his shoulder again, but we need to get back to camp tonight.”

  “Just let me fix this, and I’ll walk.” Lucy clenched her teeth against the pain. “Zip it up.”

  “Huh?”

  “I can’t zip it one handed. Zip it up.”

  The man just stood there as if he had no idea what she wanted until the other guy shoved him aside. He wore a cumbersome looking pack on his back and Lucy realized while the one guy had carried her, the other had carried both men’s backpacks.

  “Jesus Christ…can’t you do anything on your own? We don’t have time for this bullshit.”

  “I just need to immobilize my arm, and I can’t do this alone.”

  He was the cigarette smoker. His clothing reeked of stale tobacco. He bent over with a grunt, balancing his load and reached out, grabbed both sides of her jacket, after seeing what she was trying to do. He zipped her arm inside.

  Lucy tried to make eye contact with him, thinking it would make her appear more human to him. To let him know she had feelings and right then she was in an awful lot of pain.

  His cold brown eyes avoided direct contact. Maybe he wanted to keep her at arm's length. Maybe he didn’t care that she was in pain or hungry or cold. Maybe he just wanted her to walk. To confirm her suspicions, he roughly pushed her out in front of himself. Lucy managed to catch herself before she was back on the ground truly helpless.

  “Get moving. You stay up with him, or I leave you behind for the bears.”

  Lucy had no idea if there were bears, but she knew there were cougars in the area and decided she would rather walk on her own than be left or carried.

  She placed one foot in front of the other, up hills and down them. After several hours, she could hardly make herself move. The pain from her leg was almost as bad as the pain from her arm. It was all she could do not to fall to her knees in tears.

  Lucy didn’t know how long they had walked for, but she had done her best to leave a clear trail. Neither of the men had noticed what she was doing, or they hadn’t cared.

  When they finally stopped, Lucy had no choice, she collapsed to the ground. They were either going to have to leave her or carry her. She couldn’t walk another step, and she lay where she fell. Only in the beginning, had her leg hurt as badly as it did right then. Even if the opportunity presented itself, Lucy doubted she was capable of running. She thought the most beneficial thing she could do for herself was to rest as much as she could for whatever was to happen next.

  Lucy replayed the conversation the two men had been having about Journey. The man who had been carrying her had said the other didn’t share. Did that mean that somewhere, they had another woman, another prisoner like her? Which meant that they had to have some kind of permanent shelter.

  “Get a fire going. We may as well spend the night here. It’s going to be dark soon, and we don’t want to try climbing down those rocks in the dark, or we’ll end up all crippled up like your friend there.”

  “We shoulda just gone back to the roadway. Then we wouldn’t have had to climb down those rocks. What if one of us falls?”

  The other guy, Lucy was going to call him the leader of the two….. neither had let a name slip out�
��. belly laughed as he dug through one of the backpacks, “Don’t worry, I’ll put either of you out of your misery.”

  The follower, the man building a fire stopped what he was doing and glared, “You’d have a hard time explaining to the boss where I was.”

  The leader laughed again, this time, he opened his mouth and tipped his head back as if those were the funniest words he had ever heard. “You idiot, do you really think he’d care. In case you forgot, we’re not even supposed to be up here. We’re guarding the house, remember? By the time those guys get back, you would be little more than a memory for them. Your bones would be picked clean, and you’d disappear.”

  “You’re forgetting, Silas, is my uncle. He’d wonder what happened to me.”

  The leader dropped a pan and a mylar package of something, down beside the now burning pile of branches. “If or when Silas makes it back, what’s he going to say when I tell him, you grabbed a woman and left? It’s not like he knows you have any allegiance to the family. Turning your brother in for that hit in Seattle kind of destroyed your credibility.”

  “Geez, let it go. That was years ago. Silas knew it was either Butch or me. Why should I have done time for something I had no part in?”

  The leader shook his head, “It all goes back to loyalty. You turned in your own brother, for shit sakes. Your own brother!”

  “Weren’t related and you know it. He belonged to that trailer trash my Dad brought home. Hell, he didn’t even care enough for her to marry the bitch!”

  The leader towered over the man kneeling at the fire. With one huge foot, he pushed the kneeling man over. The pan went flying along with whatever was in it.

  Through gritted teeth the leader ground out, “That trailer trash you’re talking about was my sister. Or did you forget that?”

  The stunned look that crossed the guy's face said he had forgotten. He pushed himself back up to his knees, “Shit, Steve, no need to get so rough. I didn’t see you shedding any tears when she croaked last year.”

  “Yeah…well. It doesn’t matter what I do. You need to remember that she was my family, like it or not. Now get us some dinner fixed, I gotta take a piss.” He stomped off through the trees.

  “What are you lookin’ at?” he growled at Lucy.

  Lucy shook her head and rolled to her side trying to find a more comfortable position. Something gouged her in her side, and she smiled.

  She had found the source for some of her pain. The idiot hadn’t checked her for firearms, or he would have found the 357 in her holster. She couldn’t believe her luck. She would have thought that he’d have felt it digging into his shoulder while he carried her, but realized it may not have been. He had carried her on his right shoulder, and the gun may have nestled into the crook of his neck.

  Lucy’s excitement was short lived. Her stump throbbed from the pain, and she knew she wouldn’t be able to walk anywhere, let alone run away. This wasn’t Iraq or Afghanistan or Syria, how could she shoot them? Sure, they had taken her against her will, but did it deserve a death sentence?

  Lucy thought about shooting them in the leg, or somewhere else to incapacitate them, but wouldn’t that be the same as a death sentence? They wouldn’t be able to leave any more than she would. They’d either starve or die from exposure.

  As if to mark her words, something soft, light and cold fell onto her cheek. She stuck her tongue out and touched the wet place with the tip. Another landed on her nose. They started with a few and slowly multiplied.

  Lucy’s first snowfall for the year and she was stranded somewhere in the mountains with two men who only had bad intentions for her. Lucy wanted to curl up and cry. She felt a tears roll from the corner of one eye. It was warm on her cold skin.

  Hell no! She thought. There was no way that her friends would simply let her disappear without looking for her. She had left a legible trail for them to follow, but only after she had regained consciousness. She had no idea how long she had been out. When she had come to, it was daytime, but she didn’t know for how long. They had walked for hours it seemed so maybe she hadn’t been out that long. She did know that she couldn’t continue to lay on the cold ground, she would be hypothermic in no time.

  “Can I at least sit up?”

  The man doing the cooking looked at her, a spoon halfway to his mouth. He looked surprised to see her still lying on the ground, or maybe it was surprise at seeing her at all.

  He frowned and looked around as if trying to see where the other guy had gotten to. He had heated up one of their complete meals in a bag, and his partner still wasn’t back yet.

  In the firelight, Lucy could see the flash of fear in his eyes. She wondered if he was afraid his friend had gone off and left him. Lucy didn’t think the other guy would have gone without his pack or the rifle he had leaned against a tree.

  “Lean against that tree trunk,” he instructed, pointing at one close to her with the spoon. He looked in the pot and then at her and then off in the direction the other guy had gone. She saw him mentally counting them and looking in the pot. She saw when he realized there wasn’t enough to feed all of them.

  He dug out another packet, and a bottle of water. He didn’t bother to read but dumped the contents from the packaging into the pot followed by the water and began to stir with the same spoon he had just been eating from. The notion of eating anything from the pot or after either of the guys was repulsive to her.

  Lucy decided if it were offered, she would eat. She would eat every last drop and lick the spoon. She hadn’t eaten since the night before, long before she went to bed.

  When he was satisfied, he tasted it. He grimaced, and Lucy wondered how bad it could be. They had used the same packaged meals at times when they were camping and didn’t remember them being that bad. He shuddered as if it was and set the pot on the burning branches.

  “Steve? Hey man, you going to stay out there all night, or come eat some of this?”

  He waited expectantly, but there was no answer. He tipped his head to hear and sat listening. “Steve?” he said as he set the spoon in the pot. “Everything all right?”

  Steve didn’t answer.

  Chapter sixteen…………Stripping the enemy

  By the time that Sam, Gina, and Lucas had caught up to the men, the sun had set, and snowflakes had just begun to fall.

  Hidden in the brush, Sam touched Lucas and with sign language only, showed him how he wanted Lucas to circle around the pair of men and Lucy. Before Lucas turned to leave, they saw one of the men leave camp. The guy was already working on his belt, so it left no doubt where he was going.

  Sam showed him how he wanted Lucas to go the other direction and circle around to the other side of the camp. Lucas nodded and melted away in the dark.

  Sam leaned in close to Gina and whispered, “I’m going to get around that guy,” he pointed where the man had disappeared, “and take him out. I need you to stay put unless you hear me or Lucas call out.”

  “But Lucy…”

  “She’s fine for right now. If that man so much as touches her, then you can shoot him.”

  He must have felt Gina’s disdain when she pulled away from him. He leaned close to her ear, “Just stay here until I get back or you hear differently. With any luck, you won’t have to do anything.”

  Gina studied Lucy. She saw the man react to something Lucy said and watched as Lucy shuffled her way to a tree, scooting across the ground on her butt. The shadow of the tree almost swallowed her up, but Gina could still see her shadow. The man at the fire seemed to be cooking something, tasting it after every few revolutions of the spoon.

  Gina heard when the man called out to the one who had left and in the glow of the fire saw the frown on his face when his call went unanswered.

  He dropped the spoon into the pot while staring into the darkness. “Well, if you ain’t going to eat, that means more for me, and maybe I’ll even give your little gal some.” He yelled at his friend and waited expecting an answer.

>   Something crashed in the brush, and the man at the fire dropped the pot he had just lifted from the flames. He scrambled backward as if searching for something. Gina saw when he realized his rifle was leaning against the tree behind him. He wheeled without rising, reaching for the rifle. As soon as his hand touched it, he screamed and pulled his arm away clutching at the arrow protruding from the back of his hand. The shaft was still quivering in the firelight. He stared in disbelief.

  “Don’t move a muscle unless I tell you to. Now turn around and face the fire.”

  Gina saw Sam step out of the trees, with his rifle resting in the shooting position. He hadn’t shot the arrow at the guy, the timing was off. He wouldn’t have had time to change from the bow to the rifle.

  “Where’d you come from?” The guy blustered out. “Man gets himself shot sneaking up on another man’s camp like that.”

  “A man can get himself shot if he makes one wrong move too. Now, take off your jacket and empty your pockets. I’d like to caution you not to do anything stupid, or my friend will have to shoot you again.”

  While the man struggled to remove his jacket, one handed, Sam saw and understood the problem. The man’s eyes kept peering into the brush behind Sam.

  “I have a friend out there who’ll be right back. You are welcome to share our fire if you want.”

  “Nope. We have no use of your fire, but let me help you with that.” Sam reached down and inspected the arrow point and the positioning in the guys hand. It only had a target point and Sam wasn’t going to destroy a perfectly good arrow. He gripped the shaft in one hand and the guys arm in his other.

  “You’re going to break off the feathers aren’t you?” the man whimpered.

  The man screamed as Sam pulled the arrow out the same way it went in, “No sense ruining a good arrow, and you don’t have a friend who’s coming right back. He’s a little indisposed at the moment.”