Running Into Trouble

by Mina McShady

  Eli looked at the pay phone in the middle of the cell. He considered trying to call Hell again. After all, Jennifer had finally given him Hell’s correct cell and home phone numbers; he’d tattooed them onto his arm. But he decided against it. Even the smallest crumb of hope was critical to his sanity in prison. He couldn’t risk calling Hell and discovering first hand that she hated him, that she really didn’t care. His hope was too precious.

  -Jennifer Champion-

  The Death March was scheduled to begin in two hours, and Jennifer was standing in line to be weighed. If she lost more than 10% of her bodyweight during the competition, she’d have to quit the race. She recognized a number of runners from last year, but nobody stopped to say “hello.” Instead, everyone was edgy, jacked up on coffee and adrenaline, and absorbed in the performance of superstitious pre-race rituals. The man ahead of her in line was reading from Revelations, and she could hear a vaguely female voice chanting “I can do this, I can do this, I can do this...”

  At the weigh station, Jennifer was relieved to see a teenage volunteer she’d never seen before, a clean cut girl with a blunt-cut blonde bob.

  “Holy shit!” exclaimed the girl upon reading Jennifer’s weight, “you’re skinny!”

  Although, as last year’s winner, Jennifer was entitled to attend a catered breakfast in the gaudy pink Shoetown tent, she chose to eat stale bagels and sugary breakfast cereals with the “regular” runners in the general admissions area. She knew she wasn’t going to be fast this year, and the thought of explaining her broken foot and her abbreviated recovery to a bunch of fit, healthy competitors had been too depressing.

  Sitting alone at a corner table with the remains of a poppy seed bagel smeared with strawberry jam, Jennifer tried to think about the race. She wasn’t especially nervous because her expectations were modest—simply to complete the race before the 30-hour cutoff time. For her, the biggest challenge would be managing the pain in her foot that always began gnawing after about three or four hours on her feet. She figured that she would try to avoid painkillers until at least the sixth hour. And then she would have to manage her water intake; too much ibuprofen can cause hyponatremia.

  A loud nasal voice, amplified by a megaphone, called all the runners to the final pre-race assembly. Jennifer stood up and made her way to a big yellow tent where Bob Robertson was standing on a podium wearing his usual skull and cross bones t-shirt.

  -Helen Kale-

  “I know everyone is expecting this course to be challenging,” said Bob Robertson, winking at the crowd, “but we may have an extra challenge this year. Park rangers tell us that a mountain lion was sighted on the course this morning. We discussed canceling or postponing the race.” Bob paused for a moment, giving the crowd a few moments to boo and groan. Then he continued: “But we decided not to. The rangers assure us that the mountain lion will be much more interested in white tailed deer than in us. But, in ther interest of safety, we are asking you all to be especially observant…”

  Helen tuned out as Bob read a prepared statement on how to face down a hungry mountain lion. She already knew the drill: make noise, look “bigger,” and try to fight back if attacked. Although Bob’s voice was dripping with concern, Helen imagined that he wouldn’t mind that much if someone really was attacked. The race would receive a ton of free publicity, and Bob would have a gruesome story to tell over cocktails.

  Looking around at her fellow competitors—almost all were lean with faded hair and weathered faces—Helen couldn’t believe that she was here, and Eli wasn’t. Just one year ago, she’d listened to the pre-race informational speech and held Eli’s trembling hand. He’d smiled at her, grateful for her steady, untroubled presence. And she had felt an unbelievable consisting of one part love for Eli and one part relief that she didn’t have to be in the race.

  Now, instead of contentment, Helen was experiencing anger and fear. She was angry that Eli wasn’t there with her, and that he’d chosen to rot in jail rather than have anything to do with her. She was angry that Jennifer was milling around, absently gnawing on a bagel, and acting as if she were perfectly innocent. If someone had to be eaten by a mountain lion today, thought Helen, she hoped it would be Jennifer, even if her stringy limbs wouldn’t provide much of a meal.

  Helen was also terrified of the race itself. She’d read the list of potential risks—organ failure, extreme dehydration, heat stroke, and hypothermia were just a few—and was familiar enough with the course to know that the terrain was inhospitable to rescue efforts. In the event that someone did become sick or injured and couldn’t make it to one of the designated aid stations, he or she would have to wait hours for evacuation.

  Just as Helen saw herself spraining her ankle along the rocky Suicide Stretch at three in the morning and trying to limp to the next aid station, she was enveloped in a cloud of Opium perfume.

  “Oh Helen, look at how far you’ve come. You’re goin’ to make us so proud,” said Sue as she hugged Helen and noisily kissed the air beside her.

  “I just want to survive this thing,” replied Helen, grimly stating the truth.

  “Oh you’ll survive. You know everything there is to know about this race. You’ve seen all the trails during practice runs. The only thing you haven’t done is run all the trails together.”

  “I know, I know,” said Helen, who was so preoccupied with the race and memories of last year and that she was finding it hard to be appropriately pleasant.

  “Oh you’re just nervous. Everybody is. If it’s affecting your digestion, if you know what I mean, you may want to skip out on the rest of Bob’s blather and hit the port-a-potties. Once this is over, there’s going to be a terrible line. There always is.”

  “Sue, that’s a brilliant idea. I’m going now.”

  Helen, glad for an excuse to get up, I’m-sorried and excuse-me’d her way out of the tent and found the port-a-potties—a long line of pale turquoise, shit-filled sentinels. Even from a distance she could smell the stench of human waste intermingled with corrosive chemicals. No, she thought, she could wait until she was on the trail. Choosing an appropriate tree to fertilize would be something to keep her occupied.

  In fact, she was wondering if she'd forgotten to develop an adequate strategy for handling boredom during the race. She could be on the train for 30 hours or more. Sure, she could kill about three or four hours fantasizing about how that one stupid night at Bob’s house could have gone differently, another couple hours imagining that Jennifer and Eli had somehow become grotesquely obese, and a final hour or two thinking about what Eli might be doing in jail. Altogether she had maybe eight hours of programming accounted for. What in God’s name would she do with the other sixteen or more hours lying in wait for her unprotected brain?

  -Eli Hawthorne-

  The Death March was about to start, and Eli was eating his usual institutional breakfast: reconstituted eggs, slimy canned peaches, and a dense, dusky-tasting muffin. He’d also received a half-blackened banana—it was one of the good days—but he was planning to save it for the afternoon, when Jerry Springer would be on in the common area. Sitting alone at a flimsy plastic table and eating with a rubber spoon, which hundreds of experts had determined could not possibly be fashioned into any sort of weapon, Eli envisioned himself at the Death March. He stood at the starting line, glanced over at Hell, whose face was bright pink from the cold, and watched his breath form white clouds in the air. The starter’s pistol rang out and…turned into a dull throbbing bell.

  The bell meant that Eli had to return to his cell for a headcount and, if he was lucky, a strip search with the rest of his cellmates, standing in front of a drafty vent.

  -Jennifer Champion-

  Jennifer was running slowly, holding pace that she had determined would not overstress the tendons surrounding the still-healing bone in her foot and thereby lead to premature pain. She felt a gentle whoosh from a small clot of men and women who passed her about 5 miles after the start. A few smiled and nodded
, but most chugged along wearing expressions of grim determination. It was early in the race, hours before concentration would start to wane. Each time someone ran by, Jennifer considered speeding up; her current pace felt ridiculously easy. But she knew that over time many of the early “rabbits” would lose momentum and even drop out.

  On the trail behind her, Jennifer heard the sound of a large social group. These noises signaled the beginning of the non-elite middle of the pack, people who were fast enough to be competitive, but did the race with friends and numerous pacers to make the long hours more enjoyable. Jennifer was in a quandary. Rather than conversation, she wanted silence in which to enjoy the pristine views of the Sierras afforded by the Death March course. She knew the logical, pain-sparing thing to do would be to let the boisterous group cruise on by. But Jennifer hated the idea of finding herself behind the group, no longer one of the elite, but instead just another seeker on the exhausting road to self-discovery.

  After several minutes of steady running and listening to the group’s muffled chatter, Jennifer willed herself to slow down and allow them to approach. As they drew nearer and the voices became more distinct, Jennifer glanced backwards. She saw the group’s constituent parts separate and spread out as the trail turned into a relatively wide fire road. There were a couple of tall, sinewy men she didn’t recognize, a tall redhead with a high, bouncy ponytail, and a blonde sporting two pigtails and shocking pink tights over large, muscular thighs. Something about the blonde was familiar. She ran for another 30 seconds and then looked back again.

  Oh shit, she thought, squinting at the blonde who was laughing and joking with the two men. It’s Helen, Eli’s ex-girlfriend. Jennifer felt a pang of guilt (she’d slept with the woman’s boyfriend, after all), a burst of anger (the woman hadn’t done a thing to help Eli), and, strangely, the cold chill of fear. Her instincts told her that Helen was bad news and that she should stay as far away from her as possible. Without thinking, Jennifer sped up. It took her about ten minutes to completely lose the talkative group. There was no more conversation in the air; all she could hear was the sound of the occasional bird and debris crunching and cracking beneath her feet.

  -Helen Kale-

  After twenty miles, Helen felt as if she were flying. She had left the small group from Montana behind, skimming over rocks and roots and watching intently for her quarry. Time had become strangely elastic. At some point—she couldn’t tell whether it was a long time ago or just a few minutes ago—Helen had seen a slender form decelerate and come closer and closer to her and the rest of her group. It had been satisfying for Helen, who thought of herself as slow and plodding, to be gaining on someone.

  But then the figure had twisted its head and shown its sun-browned narrow face, a visage that would have been weasel-like if not for its large liquid brown eyes. Helen had thought it was Jennifer and, when the woman swiveled her head for the second time, she had been sure. The knowledge that Jennifer, her weirdly passive enemy, was running ahead of her had filled Helen with a great, nourishing anger and an irresistible desire to chase. She had been reluctant to say goodbye to Derek and Scott, two simple, outdoors-loving men with whom she’d been chatting with for several miles, but the compulsion to follow Jennifer had been too strong.

  A red ribbon affixed to a young fir tree indicated that there were 6 miles until the next rest area. She had plenty of time to catch up with Jennifer. Although all Helen could see in front of her was rock and vegetation, she somehow knew that Jennifer was not yet out of reach. As she ran, she imagined herself gaining on Jennifer. She wasn’t sure what she would do if she actually caught up to Jennifer. Some dark, ancient part of mind wanted to simply tackle her and bring her to the ground for a good pummeling. She also considered running beside Jennifer and telling her exactly why it was her fault that Eli was languishing hopelessly in jail.

  Or, she thought, she could simply accelerate and leave Jennifer behind, letting pure forward momentum sweep her to a new phase of her life.

  -Jennifer Champion-

  Jennifer was sucking air and running with a fast but uneven gait that was almost certainly worsening the injury it was meant to compensate for. Approaching the 25-mile mark, Jennifer knew she’d blown her strategy of conserving energy and warding off pain to enable a comfortable finish. Really, she thought, the race hasn’t even begun. There were seventy-five more miles to traverse. If she wanted any hope of finishing, Jennifer knew that she had to slow down. But she didn’t. Instead she kept flinging herself forward, ignoring the now-stabbing pain in her foot.

  Although it was dumb—she was sure it was dumb—she just didn’t want Helen to reach her. Mostly, she just didn’t want to deal with listening to a self-righteous speech that could go on for tens of minutes, ruining miles of stark scenery. But she also didn’t want to admit defeat to an amateur, a stocky woman wearing pink tights who looked like a self-satisfied dairymaid. She just plain disliked Helen for abandoning Eli, and gossiping about her, and, yes, beating her up on the awful day. She even vaguely blamed Helen for Nasty’s death. If Helen had done something—anything—to get Eli back, maybe he wouldn’t have been there to fall prey to Nasty’s last trick.

  The fact was that Eli was just stupid, and Nasty had taken advantage of that. She had probably even laughed about it as she exited this world, not realizing that her hapless dupe would actually be arrested and charged. Jennifer willed herself to stop thinking; the only way she could maintain her pace was to fall into a mindless trance. She heard the soft thud-thud-thud of a helicopter, and she willed herself to put it out of her mind. For the next few miles, all she was aware of was the wind, the trees, and her footfalls.

  -felis concolor-

  It had been so easy. One of the Tall Apes had bent over, reaching his hands toward his feet and exposing its soft, pink neck. The way the ape’s back sloped forward triggered something in the predator’s brain that had evolved over generations to recognize ruminants’ grazing behavior. The predator crouched, twitched, and leaped. And, as quickly as it had begun, it was over. The predator’s muzzle was wet with warm blood that was sweet but not unpleasant. As the predator gorged himself, a connection was made. These Tall Apes were an easy meal. His ears pricked up when he smelled another one passing by.

  -Helen Kale-

  She was thirty miles into the race and Jennifer was finally, consistently, in her line of sight. She was concentrating so hard on her objective—catching up to the bitch who had ruined her life—that she didn’t notice the unusual emptiness of the course. She hadn’t seen another racer for at least forty-five minutes. She had looked up once at a black and orange helicopter, but only to wonder if one of her competitors had been injured. She was glad that it wasn't her.

  Overall, Helen was surprised that she was so lucid at the thirty-mile mark. When Sue had convinced her to enter the race, she had been almost certain that she wouldn’t finish. She had decided that she would go as far as she could—maybe twenty miles or so—and then fake a knee injury or disablingly low blood sugar. Over time, as she trained, Helen had become incrementally more confident. She had hoped to last until twenty six miles—marathon distance—or maybe even thirty. But, here she was, robust, clearheaded and energetic at the outer limits of her goal. It was surreal.

  Dipping into an immense reservoir of angry energy, Helen accelerated. Within a few minutes, Jennifer came into crisper focus. She noticed Jennifer’s short, bouncing walnut hair and her narrow hips barely supporting a pair of deep gray baggy shorts.

  -Jennifer Champion-

  Out of nowhere, Jennifer heard the sound of a woman’s breathy laugh. She turned around and spotted Helen, now only about fifteen feet behind her. Helen was the picture of red-cheeked vitality, an avenging Valkyrie with a square jaw and short, muscular thighs that could crush rocky terrain and still keep churning. Jennifer groaned and forced herself to speed up, causing quick bursts of pain to shoot along her foot and up her leg. She glanced backward and saw that she was now gradually movi
ng away from Helen. The only question was whether she would be able to maintain her new, punishing pace long enough to wear out her opponent.

  At first, Jennifer tried to distract herself from the pain. She looked over the side of the trail at distant, snowcapped peaks and the dry, scorched valley into which she would fall if she missed even a single step. The view was breathtaking and stark. It reminded her of how small and fragile she was compared to the relentless majesty of nature, and she thought about how good it would feel to stop fighting her human frailty, to just give in and sit down on the trail. While these thoughts flickered through her mind, she began slowing down, and she realized that once again Helen was on her heels.

  Jennifer sped up with another burst of pain, but this time she concentrated on her pain in its many variations, riding it like a wave, studying its troughs and crests. Pain is just, she thought, an evolutionary system designed to warn its recipient of danger or damage. She was aware that continuing to run was probably damaging some tendons and overstressing her barely healed metatarsal, but she was committed to defying her body. Soon, the waves of pain began to conform to a predictable pattern, and, by expecting the pain, she was able to tolerate it.