by Chris Bostic
“Instead it was just a flop.”
I noticed Pete frown at my statement, and figured he could use a little guy time. Or just time away from me.
“Babe, why don’t you go back there with Vince?” I turned around to find the big guy bringing up the rear. He stumbled along the creek, brooding like The Hulk. “He looks lonely.” Or drunk.
Pete’s eyes narrowed like he was trying to see inside my head for a hidden agenda. “You good with that?”
“Yeah. Go on.”
After my fiancé slid back to walk with Vince, I sighed a little too loudly. Vic pounced on that.
“What’s up with you two? That looked a little heated.”
“Nah.”
She wasn’t having it. “C’mon. Now he’s asking for permission to talk to Vince. You got his nuts in your purse?”
“That’s at the bottom of the river.”
“Very funny.” She looked at me a little more seriously than I was used to. “What did you do to him?”
“Me?” I raised my voice in mock indignation. “Why would you assume it was me?”
“It’s always you.”
“Pfft. You make it out like he’s some kind of saint.”
“Maybe he is to put up with you.” She laughed, and said, “I’m kidding, but….”
“I know, I know. I’m a little intense.” I wasn’t proud of that, but it wasn’t exactly something I could fix overnight. “And so what? He knew that going in, and he still put a ring on it.”
I held up my hand to show off that rock, because it was still new enough that I hadn’t gotten tired of doing that yet. I hoped I never would.
A beam of sunlight cut through the trees, making the diamond dazzle like it had been hit by a spotlight. It was coming from a weird angle, though.
I looked to the sky and tried to get my bearings. It’s not like I had a clue how to tell time from the sun, but it was obviously past noon. Maybe well past.
“How long have we been out here?” I asked.
“Long enough.” Vic held up her arm to read an imaginary watch. “About four hours too long.”
My heavy feet scuffed in the gravel. It was a gentle incline, but it felt more like climbing a mountain.
“Feels like four hours of just the hiking part.”
“It’s been maybe an hour,” Vic said with a laugh. “Not that I’m not feeling it in my feet.”
With the miner still plugging along, I figured I should suck it up. I pinched my mouth shut and trampled onward. Upward. Over fallen logs, and wading through the creek when we couldn’t stick to the gravel.
Water poured out of my shoes every time I lifted them out of the shallows. My socks squished annoyingly loudly.
Finally, I couldn’t go any farther without asking, “How far is this place?”
Vic shrugged. “Didn’t the girl say something about a smokestack?”
“Yeah, but I can’t see anything but green.”
Vic spun around on the rocks. “Leaves, leaves, and more leaves.”
“I’d like to leave this place.”
Vic lifted a foot and let the water drain from her shoes. “Well, my pedicure is ruined.”
“I’m pretty sure my feet are pickled. Speaking of which….” I turned around to check on the boys.
I did a double take.
Vince tipped a flask to his lips and then held it out for Pete. My fiancé took a little swallow, and I choked back the urge to make him stop.
Then again, after everything we’d just talked about, I didn’t need to mother the poor boy again. At least not right then. Besides, he might have the right idea if I wanted to kill a little pain.
“If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.” I grabbed Vic’s arm to stop her. When the boys caught up, I held out a hand to Vince. “Got any left?”
“Not much,” he slurred.
I kept my hand extended.
“Why should I share?” He eyed me suspiciously. “You’re not gonna pour it out?”
“Just down my throat.”
Pete chimed in, saying, “I don’t think you’ll like-”
“At this point, I don’t even care.”
Vince took another swallow and handed over the flask. I swished it around. There was enough left to dull the pain.
I tipped the flask to my lips and closed my eyes. The quicker I got it down, the less it would burn. Or so I thought.
Whatever Vince had in there was not Blanton’s. Not even close.
Fire ripped through my throat and all the way down to my belly. My eyes teared up as I doubled over. “Damn!”
“Nice! That’s how you do it.” Vince said and finished off the liquor in a final gulp. He coughed and slipped the flask back into his pocket. “It’s got a helluva Kentucky hug.”
“If that’s what you call it.” I held back a belch that still burned all the way up to the back of my throat. “More like a back-alley stabbing.”
At least it didn’t bring back the nausea from earlier, though that was clearly hours ago by that point. I blinked away the tears and focused on the mission at hand—going nowhere in a hurry.
The sun dipped behind a cloud as we stood there catching our breath. Even after a couple minutes, it didn’t seem like full daylight would return.
“Am I imagining things, or is it getting dark already?” I asked Pete.
“It can’t be that late.”
“I didn’t think so, but-”
A rumble of thunder cut me short. It was followed by a cold breeze that cut through my damp shirt like a knife.
“Oh, yeah.” I groaned. “That’s exactly what we need.”
CHAPTER 6
“We better get moving,” Pete suggested.
“Thanks, Mister Obvious.” I looked overhead figuring I wouldn’t see anything. The wind whipped the trees, and I actually caught a glimpse of the sky. It wasn’t fully dark, but a heavy gray was almost on top of us.
Pete pulled on my arm. “No time for daydreaming, Grace.”
“I know.” I looked up the creek and couldn’t catch sight of the miner and Plain Jane. “We’re way behind.”
“Then we’ll catch up,” Vince said with a swagger that didn’t quite match his stagger. He tilted hard to the side and overcorrected. When his foot hit a patch of slick mud, he buried a knee in the muck.
“Oh, sweet Jesus,” Vic muttered. She looked to me and Pete. “Help me with him?”
We stooped over to pull him up, but he put up a hand to keep us at bay.
“I got this.”
“It looks like it,” Vic sassed, drawing a sharp look from Vince.
“I do. Back off.” He put his hand down to shove off, and it worked. But it also left him with a mud coating from his fingertips to his wrist.
Before anyone could suggest he try cleaning it off in the creek, he planted a giant muddy handprint on Vic’s backside.
“Dude,” she shrieked, “You’re gonna ruin my shorts.”
“Ooh, that’s not coming out,” Pete said and tried to stifle a giggle. He looked at his own hand, then down at the mud.
“Don’t get any ideas, jackass.”
He wiggled his eyebrows, so I slapped him on the shoulder. That quieted him down.
Vince stood back to admire his work. “I kinda like it. It’s like a modern art masterpiece.”
“Oh, whatever.” Vic turned up her nose. “Just go wash off.”
“I’m just saying, you’re branded now. Fingerprinted as all mine.” Somehow he knelt beside the creek without falling over.
She rolled her eyes. “Yep, I’m a lucky gal.”
“Quit the clowning and let’s go.” A rumble of thunder punctuated my point. “That’s way closer.”
“I can feel it,” Pete agreed. “I swear it’s dropped twenty degrees.”
The breeze felt amazing at first. I could have stayed there a while longer and let it envelop me, but the danger behind the rattling was too obvious to ignore. Not to mention the way a chill set in without physical
activity to keep the blood circulating.
We trudged off, even Vic, leaving Vince behind to clean up. He called after us, but I tuned him out. The only thing that mattered was making tracks.
Somehow the wind speed picked up, coming at us in more powerful gusts. Leaves streamed off the trees, blowing nearly horizontal across my face. I had to twist my head to keep my ponytail from lashing me across the face.
No one spoke. We just rushed like our lives depended on it.
A crack echoed through the woods. Then another.
“The trees are splitting apart!” Pete shouted over the wind.
Like a tornado.
I couldn’t have seen a funnel cloud if it had been right on top of us. I mentally ran through all the telltale signs, but there had been no odd quieting or the sound of a train rushing toward us. It was nothing more than wind whipped to a frenzy.
A sound built off to the side, growing louder with every footstep until I couldn’t hear myself plant feet on the gravel. I could barely hear myself think, which might have been a net positive all things considered.
A fat raindrop hit me on the cheek. The cold stunned me at first. I ducked my head lower and kept plowing forward.
“This just got worse!” Vic shouted, as more drops came faster and heavier, pummeling us like boxers up against the ropes.
A massive crack—wood, not lightning—brought me to a screeching halt.
Wood groaned, then whined ear-piercingly loud as it split. The whole forest rushed at me.
“Look out!” Vic yanked me to the side.
I scraped my knee when we hit the gravel and rolled. With an earth-shaking boom, a giant tree dropped right where I had been standing. More than one branch poked me in the back.
Darkness closed in around me. Yet the water still dripped into my face. At least I hoped it was water. A few open cuts on my face wouldn’t have surprised me any.
I tried to turn over, but branches held me down.
“Grace!” Pete pulled on my arm. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” I managed. “But stuck.”
Leaves rustled all around me. I thrashed against them at first, but thought better of it when my skin rebelled.
“Someone get this off me!” I yelled in frustration.
“I’m trying,” Pete replied. “Hold still.”
A smaller branch pulled back to reveal his face next to mine.
“There you are,” he said. “Hang on.”
“I’m not going anywhere.” However, I did manage to get an arm free from underneath me. So I pushed up and rolled enough to almost get the other free.
Pete offered a hand, while he held back some of the branches with his body.
Fabric tore. I finally wiggled free, scraping myself all the way across my back and up the side too.
“Thanks.” I stood up and went to dust myself off. My fingers hung up in the ripped fabric of my tank. Further inspection revealed a hanging strip of fabric, frayed silk underneath, and a bit of exposed side boob. “Oh, great. That was my favorite bra.”
My forearm looked like I’d gotten in a fight with a feral cat. Based on how it stung, as well as the condition of my tank, I could only imagine what my back looked like.
I stretched my hands over my head and backed away from the tree. The behemoth extended from one side of the creek all the way to the other. If it hadn’t landed touching the far bank, I wondered if the branches alone would have crushed me. Obviously the trunk would’ve taken me out if Vic hadn’t shoved me.
Two people couldn’t wrap their arms around the trunk. With the forest still closed in all around us, I didn’t even want to think about any more trees crashing down. All I knew was we needed to be done with the woods. My legs just weren’t up to moving yet, so I leaned on Pete and sucked in a deep breath.
He kept staring at the fallen tree, shaking his head.
“Dodged a bullet there,” Vince said from somewhere behind us. “Damn near killed y’all.”
“Big fucking bullet,” I mumbled, and wrapped my arms around my stomach to fight off a sudden chill. “Second time today.”
From the far side of the tree, upstream where we couldn’t see through the roadblock, voices called.
“We’re okay. Just stay there,” Vic yelled back to the miner and Plain Jane.
“At least someone cares about us,” Pete said. I echoed his thoughts, but kept my mouth pinched shut.
Running the back of my hand over my forehead to wipe away another fat droplet, I checked for blood. By some miracle, my face remained blood free.
I stepped closer to the tree, trying to pick out a path around it. Over was definitely not an option seeing how the trunk was off the ground with a maze of limbs shooting into the sky.
The hair on the back of my neck stood on end.
As I looked up, a sizzling bolt of lightning burned my retinas. I flinched and could have sworn my heart stopped. There wasn’t time to cover my ears before the clap of thunder temporarily deafened me.
“That makes three,” I muttered and tried to feel grateful to be alive. It wasn’t easy. Breaths came ragged. My back continued to burn like I’d played in poison ivy.
Just when things couldn’t get much worse, a wall of sound rose up like a drum corps from off to our right. Even with my hearing coming back, the volume rose so loud I couldn’t hear anything but a pounding, thrumming, discombobulating crescendo.
A steely wall moved through the forest like a shadow rushing us. I ducked right before the heavens opened and dumped a water park bucket right on our heads.
As I hunched over with hands on knees, I looked at the creek rolling by. It seemed the same intensity, but flooding, of course, came to mind. What else could go wrong?
A hand wrapped around my wrist. I shielded my eyes with a forearm and looked up to see Pete standing next to me. He guided me over to that cursed tree. Damned if we didn’t nestle back underneath it.
I don’t know if he thought it would be better, but I still got drenched. Not that I wasn’t soaked already.
Lucky for Pete, the deluge was so loud I couldn’t even speak over it. It didn’t stop me from glaring at him, though it obviously wasn’t his fault.
Thunder crashed overhead louder than cymbals. We cowered like drowned rats.
After another lightning crack, Pete hopped back up as if he was afraid of the tree. Or maybe not. Next thing I knew, he was out in the middle of the creek stripping off his t-shirt. He wadded it up into a ball and proceeded to wipe the grime off his face.
“This can’t be happening,” I mumbled, so surprised by his spontaneity and borderline recklessness.
Through the rain, just ten feet away, he looked more like a fuzzy shadow. What I could make out was the maniac grin he sported. So completely out of place.
“What the fuck is going on?” I muttered. Then it hit me. Lemons and lemonade. “Might as well make the best out of a shitty situation.”
I staggered back out from under the tree and pulled off my own shirt. It was a bit of a struggle considering sore muscles, and how it was sopping wet—not to mention tight to begin with.
A big shake of my tank sent little bits of leaves and dirt flying. After squeezing the water out of it, I balled it up into my fist. Then I cleaned myself head to toe like it was an oversized washcloth, all while humming a catchy tune.
For the body parts I could reach, the scrubbing helped with the burning. But I couldn’t quite get to the middle of my back. Pete was no help, ignoring me the whole time to focus on himself, his grin having already faded to a businesslike demeanor. I could relate, but some teamwork would have been nice.
I stretched the shirt out like a towel and flossed between my shoulder blades. Pete finished up cleaning himself, and I waved him over to join me. Maybe take turns scouring each other’s backs, and elsewhere. Instead, he walked past me with barely a glance. Possibly he missed my suggestive wink because of the downpour.
“Come on, babe,” I shouted after him, but a raised ha
nd signaled his unwillingness to participate. “Party pooper.”
The rain kept coming. I figured my hair was equally covered in leaves and debris, so I stayed out in the open to undo my ponytail and shake like a dog. As I stood there in short shorts and my ripped bra taking a shower in the middle of backwoods Kentucky, it was hard not to reflect on how poorly the day had turned out so far.
Unfortunately, we were just getting started.
CHAPTER 7
“That was quite the show,” Vince slurred, drawing a sharp glance from Vic.
I didn’t dignify him with a response. If anything, he deserved a hard slap, but I’d leave that up to Vic. Besides, I was afraid he might have enjoyed that a bit too much if I’d done it.
After tugging the bottom of my shirt down to cover my navel, barely, I pulled Pete toward the tree.
“We can’t go around,” I stated. “Under or over?”
“I vote under.”
“That’s what I was thinking.”
“Good.” Pete eyed the tree a while longer. “Let me lead.”
I waved him forward. “Show me the way.”
He crouched and held back the initial branches. He tilted his head to side and stared deeper into the tangle like a dog looking for its toy under the furniture.
“Just go, Pete.” I held out my hand for Vic. “If we all go together, it might be easier.” Or at least less likely to get smacked in the face with a limb.
It worked out okay, not great. I lost contact with Vic about halfway through, and was ready for another shower by the time we got to the other side; however, the rain had subsided by then.
As Pete stepped clear of the tree, denim overalls filled my view.
“That was a helluva scare,” the miner said gruffly.
“Not as bad as yours,” I managed with a smirk. “Thanks for waiting.”
“The soldiers didn’t,” Plain Jane replied.
“Figures.” I shrugged. “We don’t need them anyway.”
“I reckon we might be more your pace,” the miner said. “I’m still not too quick on my feet.”