by Loki Renard
She’s lying in a fucked-out stupor. We’re alternating between adrenaline and eroticism right now and it’s exhausting her. I’ll have to make sure she gets enough rest, as soon as we get to a place that’s actually safe.
When she doesn’t respond, I scoop her up and put her on her feet. “Briarlee, come on.”
She makes a grunting sound. “Really, we have to leave already?”
My hand meets her ass hard enough to shock her into full consciousness. “Yes. Now.”
“Ow, dammit, Daniel,” she pouts, rubbing.
I reckon we’ve got about two minutes to clear out of here before that SUV comes over the ridge. In my mind, I’m thinking that some kind of APB probably went out when I left the company. I could be paranoid, but better to be safe than sorry. Right now we’re running from shadows, but I’d rather run from them than bullets or whatever else might be coming my way.
I start packing the tent down as she sits on a stump, watching me with a pout. I’m going to have to deal with her lack of discipline. If she wants to be out here with me, she needs to do as she’s told and follow orders. It could mean the difference between life and death.
It’s strange how all these thoughts come to me instinctively. Before Regenermax, I would have never done this. I would never have left the city, sought high ground, made sure that I knew precisely who was in my vicinity. I would have gone back to my apartment and waited for my fate. I would have followed authority blindly, let myself be overrun by the company, the military, whoever. Now, my senses tell me where danger lurks. I am vigilant, prepared to defend myself and the woman I love.
* * *
Briarlee
“Hurry up, Briar!” He shouts the words at me in a rough growl. Goddammit. I haven’t even had my coffee today. I need coffee. This sex is wearing me out. I don’t know that any mere mortal woman could keep up with his monstrous libido. I can’t even muster the energy to be scared anymore.
I’m tired. I need a nap, and I’m pretty sure that whoever is coming up that trail, it’s not the military. They’d come by helicopter or something. Or they’d dart out wearing camouflage with bits of tree sticking out of them. They wouldn’t drive up in a single late model SUV.
I try to tell him that, but he’s not listening. That drug makes him more animal than any man should be. He’s paranoid. I’ve come out into the wilderness with a crazy man.
He’s throwing things into the back of the car, but it’s not fast enough. Cursing, he slams the door shut and grabs me, pulling me over his shoulder, and then he races into the forest just as the SUV pulls up.
“Daniel…”
My words are cut off as he clamps his hand over my mouth. We hide behind a tree and watch as the rear door of the SUV opens. I feel his heart beating against my back, powerful and quick. There’s adrenaline coursing through the pair of us now as he lets out a low, feral growl. Whoever gets out of that car is going to be in trouble.
But it’s not heavy boots that hit the ground, it’s a pair of small pink trainers, and a blue pair behind them. They belong to a couple of kids of indeterminate age, a boy and a girl.
“Mom! Kayden put gum in my hair!” the girl shrieks, holding out a curly blonde lock of hair clogged with pink gum.
“Alright, Nevaeh, calm down,” a woman says blithely as she gets out of the passenger side. A man I’m assuming is Dad remains in the car, his hands somewhat white-knuckled around the steering wheel. It’s not the look of a mercenary. It’s the look of a man who just drove eight hours with squabbling kids and a nagging wife and is thinking about driving off and leaving them all there.
The female child has started hitting the male child with a branch while her mother lights a cigarette and makes a comment to nobody at all about how nice it is out here in the peace and quiet. If the military has decided to annoy us to death, then this could be related, but I don’t think so.
Daniel lets me go. I turn around and give him a look. “You’re out of control,” I say, trying to remain calm. “I mean, honestly. Daniel, you said this medication might have some side effects. Are you sure you’re being followed by the military? I mean… it’s not very likely, is it?”
My skepticism is not met with joy. I didn’t expect it to be, but I can’t help it. All of a sudden, I’m realizing that there’s not actually any evidence that the military is after him. There’s just his word. And he doesn’t seem to have the best perceptions right now. Maybe the treatment is messing with his mind. It’s certainly messing with his body. He’s bigger and meaner and madder every day, and he fucks longer and harder too.
“I’m not paranoid,” he says. “I was told the patent was held by the military and that my taking it made me their property.”
“Okay, but does that make sense?”
“Kayden, stop it!”
A high-pitched squeal adds audio background to our hushed argument.
“It doesn’t matter if it makes sense. It’s what’s happening.”
“Okay, but you told me the drug could have effects on you… is this one of them?”
“It might make me hyper-sexual and hyper-aggressive. It won’t make me think the military is looking for me.”
“Are you sure?”
“The rats didn’t become paranoid.”
“And how would you have known if they had?”
He stops at that, because it’s a good question.
“Those rats could have been convinced the walls were talking to them for all you know. That drug could easily be turning you insane. Maybe you should stop taking it and see if the military stops chasing you.”
His jaw clenches. “I don’t like your tone, Briarlee.”
“Well, there’s nobody else here to tell you these things. Bratty kids aren’t a SEAL team, are they?”
“Just because it wasn’t anyone from the military this time, doesn’t mean they won’t be coming. If you don’t believe me, that’s fine. You take the car and go back home.”
“And what, leave you in the woods with no way out? I’m not doing that.”
“You’re not my caretaker. I’m yours.”
I don’t know if that’s true or not. He’s massive, but maybe he needs me to take care of him, even if he doesn’t want it. If these are paranoid delusions, someone needs to get him the care he needs. And that someone might have to be me.
* * *
Daniel
I see the doubt in her eyes. Briarlee has always been an open book to me. She came with me because she got caught up in the drama of it all, but she doesn’t really believe it. I suppose I can’t blame her. There’s an old adage: if you hear hoof beats, think horses, not zebras. I suppose it does seem more likely to her that I’ve gone mad on my medication than the military is actively stalking us. I know the truth, but I also know that’s what people with mental illness issues always say, so telling her that isn’t going to help.
The worst part of this is that if I do a good enough job of keeping away from the military, she’ll never see them. There will never be any real evidence. So I’m making a claim I can’t prove, and I’m expecting her to believe it without evidence. Not exactly scientific.
“We’re going to wait until they leave,” I say. “And then we’re going to park the car deeper in the forest, take our things out and carry them deeper. I want to go fully wild.”
“Do you think that’s a good idea? I mean, I already need a shower.”
“I’ll lick you clean if I have to,” I rumble.
She smiles, but only a little. The woods aren’t really her scene. Briarlee is used to being comfortable. She’s used to things coming easy to her without really having to try. One night in the woods was romantic. But hiding from every sound isn’t. And having to wait while this family rampages around the parking lot isn’t either. I curse the fact that I left the car out in the open like I did. The only saving grace is that I’m pretty sure not one of the people performing in the family circus out there have noticed it, or anything else for that matter.
We sit about two hundred feet from the parking lot, listening to screams and laughs, usually followed by a parental shriek. They’re having a picnic. This could go on for hours.
“Get some rest,” I say, pulling Briarlee into the space between my legs as I sit with my back against a tree. She cuddles up with me, but I feel the stiffness in her body. She’s not happy. Not even when the sounds of the forest start to overtake the sounds of the family beyond. There are thousands of birds here, most of whom seem to be interested in competing for some kind of bird talent show with their calls and trills.
It takes some time, but Briar starts to relax and then even doze, curled up against my body as I stroke the hair back from her head. She hasn’t showered. Her hair is getting messy. She’s going to complain about that I’m sure, but I think she looks as beautiful now as she ever has. Maybe it’s because she’s fully mine to protect. As mad as she might be with this situation, she feels safe enough to sleep. There’s a trust that has always been there between us, and I hope it always will be. We’re going to need it over the coming days, maybe weeks.
After about an hour, the family decide they’ve had enough of nature. I hear squeals about flies and how it’s boring and they can hardly get reception, though apparently the boy can. Eventually their car rumbles into life, that perfectly pristine SUV that just justified its existence with this one trip into the wild, though it remains as pristine as ever.
“Wake up, sweetheart.” I nudge Briarlee awake.
She blinks and frowns, curling up with a grumpy expression, then extending her legs and sitting up to look at me.
“Are they gone?”
“Yeah.”
“I gotta pee,” she announces. “Where am I going to do that?”
I cast my arm at the wilderness around us. “Pick a spot.”
The look she gives me is one of pure disappointment. “This is so gross.”
“Don’t go too far. Don’t want anything wild to find you.”
“Something wild already did find me,” she pouts. She’s referring to me, of course. Except I’m not wild. I’m controlled. I know exactly what I’m doing and why. Even if it doesn’t make sense to her. Even if it looks like paranoia—though if I am, being paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you, as the old adage goes.
“Go pee.”
She stamps into the bush. I listen, getting a sense of how far she’s going by the way her petulant footsteps crashing through the undergrowth and litter recede.
“That’s far enough!” I call out to her.
The footsteps stop. There’s silence.
She’s going to pitch a fit if I get too close when she’s toileting, but Briarlee doesn’t have the best instincts for danger and I wouldn’t put it past her to let an animal creep up on her while she wasn’t watching.
I walk quietly through the bush, my larger frame making much less noise because I make sure not to step on twigs, to land my feet softly instead of stamping my way through the undergrowth.
The soft flow of her urine is what I expect to hear. Instead, I hear muffled cursing.
“Hello? Can you hear me? Hello?”
I look around a tree and see her with a phone she is absolutely not supposed to have pressed to her ear. Did I tell her not to bring it? Maybe I forgot. But the fact she sneaked off to use it makes me pretty certain she knows I wouldn’t approve.
“Police, please…”
She’s calling the cops on me! I flare into action before I can think this through. I don’t know if she has a line open. I don’t know if they have enough to track her call. All I know is that phone has to die, and now.
Coming from behind, I snatch the phone from her hand, drop it onto a rock, and stamp on it with my heel and crush it to plastic dust and circuits.
“No phones,” I growl.
She looks at me with fear in her eyes. I never wanted this for us, but now she’s in this with me, she can’t decide to opt out. We are being tracked, of that I have no doubt. And that phone she’s carried around has probably been like a big flashing red light for people with the resources to track that sort of thing.
“That was fucked up, Daniel,” she complains. Not so afraid she can’t still give me attitude, I see.
“Who were you calling?”
“The cops!” She doesn’t even try to deny it. “We can’t live in the woods forever because you took some drugs that make you think the military is looking for you. I saw enough of that in college.”
“Regenermax isn’t LSD or pot,” I growl. “I’m not making this up. This is serious.”
“No, it’s not! You’re fucking crazy! Nobody is after you! Nobody cares!” She throws the words at me wildly.
* * *
Briarlee
I see the exact moment that he loses all trust in me. I feel the moment I stop being his ally, and start being another person he has to worry about.
I made a mistake. I never should have said that I didn’t believe him. The look he gives me isn’t one of anger—it’s of pure, utter betrayal. I hate seeing that look in his eyes. It breaks my heart. But he had to hear it, because he’s going too far. He’s getting too extreme. We haven’t seen so much as a toy soldier, let alone the actual military.
He grabs me by the hand and marches me out of the forest, back toward the car. Thank god. Maybe he’s going to send me back. I refused to go before, but now I’m thinking I won’t be of any use to him out here, feeding these delusions.
“Put your hands behind your back.”
“What?”
He repeats the order in a deep, rumbling gravel. I don’t comply, because I don’t understand what he’s saying, or why he’s saying it. He sounds like the cops he didn’t want me to call.
When I don’t do what he wants, he takes me in those big hands and pulls my arms behind my back, then begins lashing them together with the tape I thought we had purchased for constructing shelters.
“Daniel!” I panic. “What are you doing?”
It’s a stupid question. It’s obvious what he’s doing. He’s taking me prisoner.
“I’m sorry,” he grunts as I struggle. “I have to do this.”
“No, you don’t!” I kick and twist and squirm, but it’s useless. He has me and he’s not letting go. I have no idea what he plans to do with me. I do know that he won’t hurt me—at least, I hope I know that. This man is not the one I used to know, though he must still be in there somewhere, lurking behind this bestial creature.
“Daniel, please,” I beg. “Don’t do this to me. Don’t hurt me. I’m not going to do anything bad. I’m not going to hurt you. Daniel… Daniel!”
I screech his name as he finishes binding my ankles with the tape and throws me up and over his shoulder. It’s so horribly easy for him to handle me, especially now I can’t really do anything more than caterpillar kick. I’m no longer his willing partner in evading the law. I’m his captive.
“Daniel! Let me go! Daniel!”
He doesn’t listen to me. He doesn’t even respond to me. He acts like he can’t hear me at all.
He sits me down next to the car and I watch as he pulls out the pack he brought and fills it with the tent, our food, water, other stuff. He’s getting ready to go deep into these woods, and that terrifies me because these are the kind of forests you can absolutely get lost in and never come back from. I try to talk to him, beg for forgiveness, plead for mercy, ask ever so nicely for him to let me go. I half expect him to gag me with the tape too, but he doesn’t. It’s like he’s turned off a switch and he no longer cares what I say.
He shoulders the pack on one side of his body, then pulls me up from the ground with his other arm and tosses me over his shoulder. He is so much more powerful than any man should be. He doesn’t grunt or bow under the weight.
He carries me into the woods, each one of his great strides taking me further and further from civilization. I start to panic, but that doesn’t matter. There’s nothing I can do against his strength.
It’s a very long time before he stops walking. We head down into the forest, then up a gully, across a ridge, and down the other side. It’s as if he knows where he is going, though there’s no way he possibly could.
By the time we stop, I have no idea where we started from. The world has been upside down and mostly green since we started. He hasn’t put me down for what feels like hours, though it’s impossible to tell time out here. There’s no TV shows to measure the passing of the day. There’s no neighbors coming and going to indicate it’s 8.30 a.m. or 5.30 p.m. All the rhythms of modernity are gone. Even the light is different, dappled and golden through leaves. It’s as though we are somewhere outside of time, and out of place. There are no references to go by. No street signs, no shop windows, no square blocks. Everything is a blooming confusion of green and brown and blue and I could be anywhere in it.
He sets me down at what feels like random, but probably isn’t. We’ve found a clearing near a brook, a place Daniel seems to think will be good for setting up the tent. He puts me down and sets to work. It’s been so long since I heard his voice I’m almost starting to think he will never speak to me again.
This is the world I find myself in, where everything feels endless and eternal, where escape doesn’t even make sense. Where would I be escaping to? Into the embrace of yet more wild places? I’d heard you can navigate by the sun and the stars, but I’ve never understood that. They’re just generally up. How does that even work?
I sit there as Daniel pitches the tent, builds the fire, and starts boiling some water from the stream. Watching him is frighteningly fascinating. He’s so utterly confident in everything. Before the drugs, he used to be unsure of so many things. It was an aura that used to hang around him, a repellent to women. He’s been transformed by the drug. I wonder if it’s permanent. I wonder if he will always be a beast of a man, willing to do whatever is necessary to get what he wants. He seems to think so. He said after thirty days, the treatment is finished.