by Sharon Dunn
Zane signaled for her to keep moving. He made an abrupt turn and headed toward the base of the mountain, running in a serpentine pattern to stay in the cover of the brush.
She could see the base of the mountain and the forest beyond. Zane came to where the brush ended and crouched. He must have studied every tree, trying to discern movement.
Finally, he signaled for her to step out. She followed behind him. Her gaze darted everywhere. It felt like an elephant was sitting on her chest as her ears tuned into all the sounds around her.
She tried to take in a deep breath. As the landscape leveled off and opened up, Zane broke into a trot. She ran beside him, still expecting to be attacked. Every once in a while, he’d stop and study the landscape and look at the sky.
Her hands grew cold. She slipped her gloves on while she kept running.
She watched the trees for any sign of movement or flash of color. Still nothing. It didn’t seem possible that they had outwitted Willis’s men. But gradually the fear of getting caught was overwhelmed by other concerns. She was exhausted and hungry. And it was cold enough that she could see her breath. Zane ran shoving his bare hands into his pockets from time to time.
She stopped and pulled her gloves off. “Here, we’ll take turns.”
He put the gloves on. They ran through the day. Gradually the terrain started to look familiar. She recognized the mountain peak, the place where she was supposed to spread her father’s ashes. The slim wooden box still pressed against her rib cage.
Clouds covered the sun. “Let’s build a small fire and get warmed up,” said Zane.
They gathered tinder and wood and chose a place where the trees surrounded them so the fire wouldn’t be easy to spot.
She made a seat of dry evergreen boughs, sat and crossed her arms, mesmerized by the flames. Her legs ached from having run for days. And her empty stomach growled.
Zane found a plastic pop container that a hunter must have dropped or littered on purpose. He cut off the top, washed it with snow and then melted snow in it so they had something to drink. They passed the container back and forth, both of them staring at the fire.
“Why haven’t they come for us?”
Zane scooted close to her. “We may have outwitted them. He might have only put a few men at the base of the mountain. My guess is that Willis positioned his men at all the points we might use for escape. That means his forces are spread pretty thin. Maybe two or three guys at each post.”
“So if we try to cross the river at that other bridge to get back to Fort Madison, he’ll probably have men waiting for us there?” She shivered, not from the cold but from the possibility of another battle.
“We have to cross the river. From where we are at now, it’s the fastest way out.”
She knew he was right.
Zane rubbed his beard with his hand. “Here’s what I think we should do. They’re expecting us to try to cross at one of the bridges. So I say we make a raft and just float down into Fort Madison.”
Make a raft? Was he light-headed from exhaustion? “The only tool we have is my pocketknife.”
“I know. And we’ll have to come up with something to lash the poles together. If we can’t make something seaworthy, we won’t do it. But it’s an option we need to consider.”
Despair sank into her bones. Had it come to this unrealistic idea? She let out a heavy breath. “It just seems time and energy consuming. Aren’t you wilderness guys always weighing energy expenditure against results and outcomes?”
“And you know this because—” There was a note of amusement in his voice.
“The survival shows on Discovery Channel.”
Zane laughed. “Okay, so maybe my head isn’t working right due to a lack of food. What do you suggest?”
She stared at the fire. Her stomach growled. “We need sleep and food and weapons.”
“Stopping to rest is out of the question. Willis’s men have the only weapons and food nearby. Are you saying we should ambush them?”
The thought made her stomach squeeze tight. “Some of the guys with him are just boys. They might have food on them and weapons for sure. If we get the chance, we should try.”
Zane raised his head, brushing both hands over his beard. “Willis used to leave stashes of food and sometimes weapons buried or high up in the trees in case we were ever attacked. They’d be marked in a unique way. I forgot all about that.”
Now she felt like they were getting somewhere. “So what were the markings like?”
“Something from nature, but out of place all the same. Roots braided together and hung on a tree or a ring of dried leaves. He might still be doing that.”
A tree branch cracked not too far from them. Both of their backs straightened as they lifted their heads. Zane rose to his feet and kicked snow on the tiny fire. “Could be nothing but let’s not take any chances.”
She stood up, studying the trees section by section. Her heart drummed past her ears. “What if it’s someone we could overpower?”
He tugged on her sleeve. Another noise—this one more distinctly human, a grunt—made them both take off running.
As they ran, she could hear the man or men behind her charging toward them. Her tired leg muscles burned with pain. Still, she kept up with Zane as they jumped over fallen timber and angled through narrow spaces between the trees.
The pursuer never closed in on them but remained close enough that stopping and hiding wasn’t an option.
She could feel herself slowing down and weakening. Zane decreased his pace, as well. One of the men was almost on top of them. They’d come this far and gotten this close; she wasn’t about to give up. Both of them sped up to put more distance between them and the man or men chasing them.
When they could no longer hear their pursuer, Zane dived behind a log and flattened out. She scooted close to him. Her breathing sounded unbelievably loud.
She heard the footsteps of their pursuer as he ran through the trees past the log. Was it really just one guy out by himself? It seemed like Willis always sent the men and boys out in pairs.
“He might come back,” Zane said. “We should try to take him. Grab a rock and climb a tree. Hurry.”
With some effort she found a tree whose boughs would shield her from sight. Zane chose a tree not too far from her and climbed up. The minutes ticked by. She heard noise off to the side deeper in the trees. Maybe their pursuer had gotten sidetracked.
She heard a different man approaching, walking much slower. Heather took in a breath and prepared to be the attacker instead of the attacked.
FIFTEEN
Zane held the rock, ready to drop it. A tremendous crashing and breaking of branches coming from a different direction alerted him. An elk moved into his field of vision. Even from this angle, the animal was huge and magnificent. Its hooves pounded the earth as it thundered across the terrain. When it left the clearing, the area seemed even more silent.
A moment later, a teenage boy holding a bow stepped through the forest. One of Willis’s followers, no doubt, hunting out of season. There were other things taking place besides chasing down Heather and Zane. The men relied heavily on the wild game they hunted. Zane realized even if the kid did come near the tree, he couldn’t drop the rock on him.
These boys and young men were not truly evil, though they had been taught to do evil things just to stay alive or avoid Willis’s wrath. They were lost just like he had been. Just like Jordan was.
He watched as the kid moved stealthily through the trees and decided that ambushing him would be pointless. The bow wouldn’t be much of a weapon anyway. If they were going to face Willis’s men at the river, they needed a gun. The bow hunter disappeared into the thick of the forest.
Once he was sure the bow hunter was gone, he dropped his rock on the ground
. “Let’s head toward the river. That kid was chasing down the elk, not us. If we do get a chance to jump one of them who has a gun and not kill him, we should take it.”
Heather climbed down, dropping the last five feet to the ground. They hurried through the trees for at least half an hour. A smell filled the forest. Zane recognized that coppery taste in his mouth. They were getting close to a fresh game kill.
Heather put her hand over her nose. “What is that odor? Is it...a body?”
He picked up on the fear in her voice. “Yes, but it’s not human.” Zane made his way through the trees until he came to where the elk carcass lay. The bow hunter had worked fast. The animal was already dressed out and the hunter was gone. The teenager was on foot with no means of transporting the fresh meat before it spoiled. That meant he must have radioed for more men to come this way to pick it up.
The bow hunter had probably already moved on to try to get more game before the day was over.
“Let’s get out of here.” Zane tugged on Heather’s sleeve. He heard noises to the side of him. He crouched behind some brush and Heather pressed in beside him.
Three young men wearing backpacks ran past them. One of them stopped to check his compass. “It’s around here somewhere. Hurry.”
These men were not after Heather and Zane. They were the cleanup crew for the elk. Less experienced and probably not fully trained to fight. He turned toward Heather. They could probably take one of the boys and get a weapon with no one being hurt. She nodded, showing she understood.
They leaped to their feet and fell in behind where the teenagers had just run. He could see that at least two of them had guns. They needed to wait for the chance when one of them was far enough away from the others to be vulnerable.
The boys’ rapid pace slowed as they seemed to have lost their sense of direction. One of them checked the compass again. “I think we’ve gone too far. Let’s split up. A hundred paces in different directions. Holler when you find it.”
Zane dipped behind some brush, splitting off from Heather so they could come at the kid approaching their direction from either side.
Once he was in the cover of the trees, the kid slowed down and walked more aimlessly.
Zane caught a flash of movement through the trees that told him where Heather was. The kid stopped, placed his pistol on the ground and leaned over to tie his tennis shoe.
Heather ran ahead, bursting through the trees. She grabbed the gun and pointed it at the kid. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
The kid held up his hands. “My friends will be coming back this way.”
Zane stepped into the clearing after her just as the kid whistled—probably some sort of signal for the other two. “We don’t want to kill anyone today. That was never the plan.”
A moment later, the other two young men appeared on the opposite end of the clearing. One of them raised a rifle and pointed it in their direction.
Heather kept the gun steadily pointed at the first boy even as she said, “I really don’t want to have to shoot anyone today.”
Zane raised his hands in surrender. “We just need the gun.”
The young man aimed the rifle at Zane and then at Heather. But his hands weren’t steady, and those were not the eyes of a killer. He was afraid. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t impulsively pull the trigger though, which made him just as dangerous.
“We really need to get out of here.” Tension threaded through Heather’s words.
Zane called out, “If you’ll just let us back off...” He turned his head sideways and spoke to Heather in a low voice. “Take a step back.”
Heather continued to look down the sight as she backed up.
Zane pointed. “Your elk is off that way about thirty paces. If you don’t get to it quickly it will spoil, and then you’ll be in trouble.”
The kid still twitched between aiming the gun at Zane and at Heather. The second young man only had a knife. Just as they slipped back into the trees, the second kid pulled out a radio and spoke into it. Great. Now that they’d been located, Willis’s whole army would descend on them.
Both of them rushed through the thick forest. Zane directed their route toward the river.
Heather stopped, speaking in between breaths. “You should take the gun, since you’re the better shot.”
She met his gaze momentarily. There was a weightiness in her stare. “I couldn’t shoot that kid. It was a total bluff.”
“I know.” The last thing he wanted to see was one of those boys die. Looking at them was like looking in a mirror at himself seven years ago. Willis was the bad guy here. All these kids deserved some kind of chance at a normal life and maybe a father figure who didn’t attach conditions to his affection or make them fear his wrath.
They ran out into open, flat country, the sound of the river growing more prominent. Within minutes, they heard ATVs roaring across the landscape, becoming louder and closer.
The river came into view, a welcome sight. They hurried downhill to the steep, brush-populated bank.
“Let’s get down there. It’s a little narrow, but it gives us some cover.”
Heather held out a hand for balance as she descended. The roar of the water filled his ears when he climbed down behind her. The path between the steep bank and the river was extremely narrow. They held on to the brush and balanced on a ledge no more than a few inches wide.
The dark, foaming water rushed over rocks and pushed debris downstream at a rapid pace. He’d already experienced the freezing chill of the river once and had no desire to live through that again.
Heather slipped and her toe dipped into the water. He caught her elbow.
“I’m all right,” she said.
This close to the river the temperature dropped several degrees. They worked their way along the narrow bank. Though the sounds of the ATVs indicated that they were still not in the clear, the pattern of noise and the way it grew louder and then fell away indicated that the searchers were still cutting a wide swath to find them.
If they were found out, they would be like fish in a barrel. Although he was sure that Willis had ordered the men to retrieve the missing bomb component, the men wouldn’t be foolish enough to shoot in such a way that Zane fell in the river and floated away with it.
They made progress inch by inch on the narrow pathway. The wind picked up a bit and his hands turned colder and stiff since he couldn’t put them in his pockets for warmth. He needed to use them to balance. The shoreline opened up into rocky beach that allowed them to walk without risk of falling into the river.
The beach curved around. Zane slowed his pace. Up ahead he could see that several men were camped out where access to the river was easy. He and Heather were shielded from view by a rock formation.
“What do we do now?”
“We have to get back up on the bank and circle around them.”
They started their ascent just as the sky turned a dusky gray. Once he was back on level land, Zane lay flat in the short grass and watched the men. There were three of them and they’d built a fire. Every ten minutes or so, one of them picked up a rifle and paced out a big circle. They must have been positioned here for some time. Their posture and lack of attention to their surroundings suggested boredom rather than vigilance. But Zane knew that all that apathy would switch to violence if they saw Heather or him.
Heather stayed close to Zane. Zane pointed at the trees and then crawled commando style toward them. Several times, he glanced in the direction of the men to make sure no alarm bells had gone off for them.
Once they reached cover, they got to their feet and sprinted away from the river. A shout to the side of them told him they’d been spotted. Once the alarm was sounded, the forest seemed to come alive with pursuers. The ATVs were on top of them within minutes.
He and Hea
ther ran as fast as they dared, forced to go through a part of the forest that had been burned by fire. They wouldn’t find much cover in this part of the forest and the camo did them no good. The noise of men on the move seemed to surround them. Had they come all this way only to lose?
He’d run until he had no breath left. He was pretty sure Heather would do the same. He heard the barking of a dog, and it was like a blow to his gut. This was not going well. He prayed even as he sprinted and skirted around another burned tree.
God, please help us.
The noise of the pursuers seemed to surround them on three sides. Zane made a beeline toward where the forest had been unaffected by the fire. Though he was relieved to reach an area where the evergreens hid them from view, they weren’t safe yet. They kept running. Zane wasn’t sure how they were going to get away. He felt the fatigue in his own body. These men had had time to rest and refuel. He and Heather had not.
All the same, they kept a steady pace through the evergreens.
Jordan stepped into the clearing in front of them.
Both of them stopped.
Jordan had a gun in his holster but it wasn’t drawn.
“Come with me, I can get you out of here.”
Zane’s throat went dry. Was his brother telling the truth or was this a trap?
* * *
Heather could feel her cheeks flush and her heart race at the sight of the man who had held a gun to her head. Clearly, this was a setup. She turned on her heel to run away.
Zane caught her by the elbow. “I think he’s telling the truth. A lot happened back at that bunker.”
The baying of the dog grew louder and closer.
“We don’t have much time,” said Jordan.
Heather couldn’t shake her confusion. Jordan still looked wild eyed.
“This way.” Jordan took off running.
Zane pulled Heather along even as she wrestled with uncertainty. Zane was Jordan’s brother. Maybe he saw something she couldn’t see. All she knew of Jordan was his violence and his loyalty to Willis at all costs.