Saving Jason

by Michael Sears

  I moved first, dashing out in an arc, away from Aimee and what I thought was the safer course of a straight run for the door. I hoped to draw fire away from her. I hit the door shoulder-first, surprised at the lack of resistance. I fell through the opening, rolled up onto my feet, and turned to look for Aimee. She was right behind me, one foot still inside, when another shot sounded. Her face contorted, but she kept on coming.

  “Go!” she yelled.

  The night was both starless and moonless. The field was almost as dark as the inside of the ice truck. But my eyes adjusted quickly. I couldn’t see much, but I knew which way to go. I took her hand again and we ran.

  36

  We dashed across the road and into the field. At that moment, the choice between taking our chances on being ignored by a herd of bison or dying at the hands of those three stooges was a layup.

  “Just keep moving,” I said. I would tell her about the local wildlife when we had more leisure.

  The ground was rough, rutted and cracked, and surprisingly dry for that early in the season. The grass was uneven, cropped by the herd to a few inches in places, tall and already tasseled in others. Aimee was tiring, I could feel it. I needed a good-sized patch of long grass. We would be invisible on such a night.

  A floodlight came on over the door to the building, but we were well outside its reach. It wouldn’t help our pursuers at all, reducing their night vision rather than revealing their prey, but the dim light that far out in the field was just enough to navigate by.

  The grass rose almost to my waist. That was the spot. I ran another two steps and dropped, pulling Aimee down with me. We lay facing back the way we’d come and parted the grass directly in front of us.

  “Not a sound,” I whispered. “We’ll wait here and see what they do.”

  The floodlight placed our pursuers on a stage. Gino came out the door first, then turned to call to the others. They stepped out through the doorway a minute later. The three men conferred. Then they walked to the edge of the pool of light, taking turns looking in various directions, as though they were afraid to step off into the darkness. The big man was holding a blood-soaked rag to the back of his head. I hoped he was in a lot of pain.

  Aimee shook me and held a finger over her mouth in the universally recognized signal for silence. I had been chuckling softly and hadn’t even noticed until she told me to stop. She was breathing heavily, almost panting, but doing her best to stifle any sound.

  “Are you all right?” I whispered.

  She shook her head.

  “What?” I asked.

  “I think I’m in shock,” she said.

  I could barely hear her. I leaned in closer.

  “In shock?” I said, seeking clarity. Shock from what?

  “I’m shot.” She reached around and touched her back. “And I’m bleeding.” She showed me her hand. In the dim, grainy light, the blood on her fingers looked black—but it looked like blood.

  My plan collapsed. I had thought that if we could make the fence and get to the road, we’d be able to walk to the highway in less than an hour. The L.I.E. was patrolled enough that a cop would find us in minutes once we got there. And as the road to the highway was straight as the path of a bullet and bordered by dense woods, we would have plenty of warning if a vehicle came after us, and plenty of places to hide along the route. Now I needed to get Aimee to help immediately. I needed a vehicle and a way of exiting the gate. Chances of coming upon either in short order looked to be impossible. If she didn’t die of shock, she would simply fade away with loss of blood. Without help, she would deteriorate quickly.

  I checked on Gino. He and the others were still gathered under the light. He had pulled out a cell phone and was engaged in what I guessed was an intense and unpleasant conversation. Reporting to the front office on his failure to murder us.

  They were blocking our other avenue of escape. Riskier, but faster, and more direct. The building was filled with vehicles, some big enough to breach the gate if I could get enough momentum going on that dirt drive. There were at least two or three big Mack trucks that would turn those gates into kindling and scrap metal. I didn’t know much about driving a Mack truck, but I thought once I got it rolling, matters would pretty much take care of themselves.

  “What are you thinking?” Aimee whispered.

  “I think I heard something.” We were both still and silent. There it was again.

  The sound was a deep cough. Real terror returned. Less than ten feet from us, a bull bison rolled up onto its feet and coughed a third time. I looked at Aimee to warn her and saw that she had already taken in the new threat. Her eyes were wide and losing focus. Terror and loss of blood had turned her face pasty white.

  “I meant to tell you,” I whispered.

  I reviewed what I knew about American bison. There were a few that lived at the Bronx Zoo. The Kid found them fascinating. I had read the guidebook to him a half-dozen times. Unfortunately, there had been no succinct advice on how to survive an encounter in the middle of the night while on the animal’s home turf. I did know that the bulls kept away from the herd except during mating times. The cows were all either about to calve or were already being followed by little ones. So it probably wasn’t mating season. A relief, as I did not want to find that I was between a bull buffalo and the object of his affection.

  We could be surrounded by resting buffalo or steps away from the only one for a quarter mile. They didn’t sleep much, I remembered, so if the beast had just awoken there was little hope of its nodding out again anytime soon.

  Somewhere behind us, another twenty yards or so into the dark, there was the electric fence. If we could get past it, the way I had the first time I had been caught out there, we would be safe. Safe from this horned battering ram on four legs. It began grazing. It looked peaceful, almost docile, but I had seen the transformation once before.

  I gestured Follow me and rose to a low squat. Aimee tried the same and staggered and fell. This time, she whimpered when she went down. Shock was wearing off and soon she would be feeling the pain. I had to get her to move.

  The bull coughed again. I risked a look in its direction. It had stopped grazing and was watching us. Trying to determine whether we were a threat or not. Bison had few predators in the wild—wolves and bears mostly—but humans made the list. I reached down and helped Aimee to her feet. I moved very slowly. The beast blinked but otherwise did not move.

  “Can you walk?” I said, speaking as quietly as I could.

  “Yes,” she said without much conviction.

  Looking back toward the light was disconcerting. Gino and the two thugs were easy to see. The bison was now framed in light, a dark silhouette. Yet when I turned and looked ahead toward the fence—and the electrified wire—I could only see for a few feet. I felt that they must be able to see us since we could see them so clearly. But they couldn’t. My senses told me one thing, but the brain knew better.

  “I’m going to carry you,” I said. I stood in front of her and draped her arms over my shoulders. I bent and took her weight on my back, then rose and lifted her off the ground. I didn’t yet have a plan, but escape seemed to be our best chance to survive.

  I stumbled through the grass. Aimee wasn’t heavy, but she wasn’t able to help me, either. I could not imagine how I was going to get her over the fence, traverse the forest, and do it all in time to save her life. So I stopped thinking about it and just kept moving. Her feet dragged behind me. I stopped and hitched her higher and she gasped in sudden pain.

  “Hang in there,” I said. “Not much farther.” I had no idea how far it was to safety, but I would not admit it to her or to myself.

  A large dark shadow passed a few yards ahead of me. It took me long seconds to realize that it was another bison. Another solitary bull. It was peacefully grazing and ignored us. I paused to let it go by.

  But th
e animal stopped suddenly and raised its head, sniffing the air. A breath of wind had carried our scent to it. I froze. The beast swung its head around—it was spooked. It lowered its head toward me and began a series of short hops, meant to frighten me into retreat. It frightened me, but there wasn’t much I could do about retreating with Aimee on my back. I stepped sideways, and it huffed loudly and continued its dance. The sound of its distress and aggression had become impossibly loud in the otherwise silent field.

  I risked a look back over my shoulder. Gino was arguing with one of the men and pointing in our general direction. The situation was easy enough to read. I was afraid to move, but more afraid to stand still. I had no choice; I had to keep moving. I headed for the fence again, slowly and steadily. No sudden movements. No threatening actions.

  The blond-wood posts, eight or ten feet tall, began to appear, like ghostly signposts, ahead and slightly to my right. I had been walking in a tangent, approaching the fence, but not by the most direct route. I made the adjustment.

  A moment later, I pulled up and stopped. There was another bison curled on the ground directly in front of me. Another few steps and I would have stepped on it. I looked back. The agitated male wasn’t following, but he hadn’t given up. He was watching and occasionally stamping or coughing a warning. But around him, two other shapes appeared. I had carried Aimee right through the group of bachelor males. Five of them were all around us. The reason for Gino’s reluctance to follow us out into the dark field was now apparent. We were surrounded by painful death. Stealth and subtlety weren’t going to help us. I hitched Aimee higher again and moved quickly around the sleeping bull, taking long strides.

  The fence was suddenly much closer and I stopped again. Somewhere in front of me was a single thick strand of electrified wire, with enough of a charge to stun a bull bison. Enough to kill a stumbling human and the woman on his back. I closed my eyes and counted to ten. When I reopened them, my night vision was stronger. I inched along. My peripheral vision caught the faint glint first. We were there.

  “I’m going to put you down and pull you underneath the fence. Just stay low and you’ll be fine.”

  She murmured something. I couldn’t understand her words, but I didn’t need to. She was conscious and capable of following instructions.

  I eased her to the ground, not daring to look back, then I slipped under the wire and reached back for her hands. Though I tried to be gentle, the pressure on her wound must have been dreadful. She gasped once, but held back any further sound as I pulled her across the intervening space. And then I had her. We were both between the tall outer fence and the electrified wire. I stopped and took stock of our situation. And came near to despair.

  We were safe from attack by bison, but we were no closer to escape. Aimee couldn’t climb the outer fence, and I couldn’t carry her over. She was still bleeding and it was too dark for me to determine how serious her wound might be. I looked back. The three men had disappeared. They weren’t in the field. I wasn’t reassured. I knew they hadn’t given up.

  “We’re going to be okay now,” I said. Maybe she believed me, though to my ears I did not sound at all convincing. “Stay here. I’ve got to reconnoiter.”

  I rose up and, running in a bent crouch, made my way along the fence, looking for any break, any possible spot where we could get through without having to climb over. It was futile. The fencing was in excellent shape.

  The bison didn’t like my movements. They couldn’t easily see me; I was nothing but a dark shadow flitting along on the far side of the wire. But they could smell both me and the scent of fresh blood in the damp air. They all began to stamp and huff. They sounded like a cross between a chorus of bullfrogs and Roger in the morning. From across the fields, the herd of females and calves picked up the agitation of the young bulls and began to reply with plaintive lowing. Then there was the sound of the alpha male, somewhere in the same direction, roaring. It wasn’t anything like a lion’s roar really, but it communicated all the same information. The boss was there and in charge.

  37

  From the garage came the sound of the little door screeching open. The bison all turned their heads to look.

  The three men walked out into the light. Even from that distance, I could see that they were all holding handguns. Somewhere in the building, there must have been a cache. Gino probably knew what he was doing with a gun and the weasel looked at least minimally competent. But the Missing Link stuck a long-barreled silver revolver down the front of his pants. I hoped that he would trip and put a hole through his privates.

  They walked toward the field and split up. Gino and the weasel came straight on, but moved very slowly. Cautiously. I could tell by their body language that they were already frightened. The big guy jogged far around to the left before coming down toward me—flanking me. He was surprisingly fast for his size.

  From the driveway came the sound of a gunshot. I looked and found enough spilled light from the barn to see Gino, weapon in hand, firing into the air. He shot three times and began walking through the grass toward the young male bison. He had, no doubt, deduced that their commotion was the result of our presence. And he was coming to finish us.

  If the gunfire was meant to frighten off the bison, it didn’t work. Maybe it was merely meant to distract them from the approach of the other shooter. But the bison were so domesticated that they did not register the sound as dangerous. Instead they continued to focus on me. They ran, stamping and grunting, along the electric-fence line, both angered and fearful. I threw up my hands and shouted hoarsely and they scattered like a flock of pigeons, only to immediately form into a compact group and return. They were still ignoring Gino, who had advanced to less than a football field away. He was close enough to be in silhouette; I could see his outline clearly, but not his features. Soon—another minute or two—and he might see me, the distant light reflecting off of my face or white shirt. I panicked. With no plan other than retreat, I turned and ran back toward where I had left Aimee.

  I realized immediately that Gino was driving me, herding me. The shooter coming down from the other side would complete a pincer and they would have us both.

  Gino fired again. This time, however, he was close enough to the animals that they reacted. With the unison of a flock of starlings, they turned and ran. They didn’t go far—twenty yards or so—before wheeling and looking back. The weasel came forward, and for a moment stood facing off against the herd. Neither side was willing to make another move until they had fully assessed all the dangers.

  Gino still couldn’t see me, but the big man was now coming up along the fence, deep in darkness. His eyes would have adjusted and he would see me any second. He pulled the weapon out from his pants.

  I bolted. He saw me and chased after. We ran parallel along the fence. I didn’t know whether he could see it or not, but we were both dangerously close to zapping ourselves into eternity.

  He fired. It made a lot of noise. I wasn’t a great target, but if he was simply trying to scare me so much that my legs turned to Jell-O, it came close to instant success. I staggered, fell, picked myself up, and ran for the outer fence. I leapt up and hit the fence two feet off the ground, grabbing hold with my fingers and pulling myself higher.

  Another shot rang out and this time I heard the bullet whistle by, close enough that I believed that I could smell it. And then I heard the roar of the bull again. Much closer. I risked a look over my shoulder and saw, once more only in silhouette, a bison. A behemoth of a bison. Like some truant from the last ice age, snorting, roaring, and stamping the ground. He had arrived to defend his herd.

  The three shooters saw it, too. Gino and the weasel turned and ran, but the guy who had just been chasing me was penned between the bull and the fence. It was only thirty yards away. A heartbeat or two once it began to move. Courage or stupidity? He faced it, aimed carefully, and began to fire, smoothly and regularly, giving hi
mself time to pull the weapon back from the recoil and take aim again. Four more shots. Then he calmly opened the cylinder and began taking bullets out of his pocket and carefully inserting them.

  The bull wasn’t polite about it. It didn’t wait for the man to fully reload. With a long hop, it began its charge.

  I don’t know if any of the bullets hit their target, but if they did, they didn’t slow the bull down. It covered the intervening ground in seconds. When the younger bulls had chased me the week before, the ground had seemed to thunder and reverberate, but this attack was so quick, over thick grass, that it was almost silent. The man looked up from the gun and his calm evaporated. When the animal was only yards away, he turned to the side and ran.

  He ran the wrong way.

  He hit the electric fence belly-first. The lightning bolt that arced from the fence sounded like the demise of Gog and Magog. It boomed, hissed, and sizzled. The combined scents of burnt flesh and ozone filled the air. The man remained upright, jerking in horrifying spasms for what seemed like minutes but must only have been for a second or two. The gun dropped from his hand and he fell, slumped over the sagging wire.

  The fence was designed to stun a buffalo, which was then supposed to immediately recoil. It was not made for prolonged contact. One of the big lights over the barn burst, flinging a fireworks of sparks over the yard. Back inside the building, the circuit breaker overloaded, tripping off not only the fence but the main electric as well. The other light over the barn door went dark, the fence released the dead man, and he finally sank to the ground.

  38

  All the buffalo, the big bull included, moved far back from the fence. They recognized the crackle and sparks and respected them—and the smell of scorched flesh had them spooked. The bull kept his distance and made sure the more curious of the younger males kept theirs, too. One in particular retreated far down the field.