by Mic Roland
It was not a very good plan. The man did not fall in. He was holding onto the door jamb with one hand.
As soon as Martin realized this, he did the opposite. His new half-thought plan was that the man, braced so he would not fall in, might not be situated to resist a push out. Martin lunged into the carjacker, throwing his shoulder into the man’s chest. Martin was right that time.
The two of them tumbled out of the shed and onto the ground. Martin was thinking that if the man had a gun, it would be harder to use if his ‘target’ was grappling with him. Martin concentrated on trying to control the man’s wrists. If he had a knife, Martin would have, at least, a little control.
Martin got a quick glance at one of the carjacker’s hands as they rolled in the grass. One hand had a wad of Martin’s jacket in it. No knife. The other hand, however, did hold a small knife with a wide curved blade.
The carjacker was trying to get on top of Martin, but Martin kept twisting. He had no plan other than to never let go of the knife hand’s wrist, and avoid letting his attacker get into any kind of position of leverage. He wished he had a better plan.
The carjacker pushed himself out of Martin’s grip and slashed across Martin’s belly with his knife. He looked down for a second, as if expecting to see blood or guts. Martin did too, but there was nothing.
A loud clang rang out. The man fell forward onto Martin, who quickly rolled out from under him. Susan stood behind them, holding a small spade. When she saw the man fall, she dropped the shovel and covered her mouth, surprised at what she had done.
Martin scrambled to his feet and snatched up the spade. As the carjacker was shaking his head and pushing up onto his arms, Martin gave it his best swinging-for-the-fences swing. The flat of the spade caught the man behind his ear. The man fell flat on his face.
“Let’s get out of here,” Martin said. He grabbed up the man’s knife and ran back to the shed for the roller bag. Susan still had on his backpack. They ran across the small backyard. Martin pulled the roller bag up in his arms and ran through the brush as best he could. Susan followed him into the woods.
Pushing left, right, ducking under, whichever way he had to move through the understory as quickly as he could, the roller bag was an awkward and bulky load to push through the brush. Martin wanted to put as much distance between themselves and the carjackers as he could before the man came to.
To the left, the trees were thinner, the woods brighter. A clearing might be faster going. He veered left.
The ground got soft. His sneaker sank into the dark mud. Swamp. The clearing was a pond. Martin ran back to the right, deeper into the pine and oak woods.
Amid all the thrash and crash of themselves running through the leaves, Martin could hear that the carjacker was up.
“Hey!” he shouted groggily. “They’re back here! Hey!”
The other man’s voice was indistinct.
“Back here. Over here,” the first one shouted. “They ran in them woods. Cummon.”
Martin could hear the carjackers crashing through the brush too. He thought that the men were likely to catch up with them. He resolved to veer off and lead them away. He would tell Susan to go straight. Hopefully, he could buy some time for her to escape.
He turned to tell Susan his plan, but never got a word out.
He fell instantly and hard. There was no time to put his hands out to break his fall. The impact knocked the breath out of him. He had mud in his mouth. Martin had fallen into the depression left over from where a tree’s roots had been when the tree had blown over many years ago. The former root ball had decayed down to a leaf-covered mound beside the pit. The tree itself was little more than a raised line of moss in the leaf litter.
“This way,” shouted one of the men.
Martin did not have the breath to leap up and run. A quick glance around showed that the understory was too sparse, or layered, to conceal them if they ran. The ground was fairly flat. The pit might be just what they needed to disappear.
Susan was trying to help Martin up, but he flailed off her help.
“No. Get down…in here. They won’t see us,” he whispered hoarsely.
Susan crouched down and pulled the roller bag that Martin had dropped.
“No. Lower. You’ll have to lie down, like me, but not in the water. Make yourself as flat as you can. Keep your head down. Be very quiet. We need to disappear.”
Martin pushed himself up the sloped bank of the pit to where he could just see with one eye over the leaf litter and under the spindly scrub of the understory. He rubbed the mud from his chin and neck up around his eyes, nose and forehead. He put a handful of leaves on his head, and laid dead still.
“Are you sure?” shouted one of the men. “I don’t see ‘em anywhere.”
“They were right up there. I saw ‘em running.”
“Well they ain’t there now.”
“Shhhh,” said the first man. “I think they’re trying to hide. We’d hear something if they were still running.”
Martin could make out the legs of the two men through the understory. They were roughly twenty yards away. The two stood motionless for a long time, listening. In the limited visibility of the forest, this was an audio game. Martin intended for them to hear nothing.
When the men lost patience, one of them gestured to the other to spread out and search very slowly. They were slow, but not particularly stealthy. One of them headed to the right — towards the swampy pond — getting further away. The other one advanced slowly, stooping down frequently to peer beneath the understory and behind trees.
Martin laid completely motionless. His leaf-covered head would be just another small bump in the leaf litter.
The nearer man slowly zig zagged to the left of the pit, checking behind the bigger trees.
His cohort called out in pointless half-whisper. “Nothin’ over here.”
The man near the pit backtracked to where they had split up. He waved the other man to join him.
“We can’t let’m get away,” said one. “They saw us. And I wanna get even for that crack on the head they gave me. They’ll pay for that, big time.”
“Whatever, but we need to get movin’.”
“They couldn’t have gotten away that fast. You go get the car, and ditch those bodies. I’m stayin’ right here. They gotta move sometime. And when they do…”
Susan whispered very softly without moving her head. “What do we do?”
Martin shushed her softly. “We wait. Lay totally still. We can’t make a sound.”
Eventually, the second carjacker returned. “Couldn’t find one of them. Car’s in the street. Cummon, let’s get outta here.”
“Shhhh. I’m still listening. They can’t have gotten away. They gotta be out there.”
“Man, let it go. We’ve got more important stuff to do than look for those two.”
In the distance, far to the right, a branch cracked and something fell into the brush. Martin sometimes heard spontaneous noises like that in his own woods. It could have been a dead branch finally letting go, or a clumsy squirrel knocking something loose. Martin was often curious what such spontaneous forest noises were, but this time he did not care. He was delighted.
“Ha! Told ya!” shouted the waiting man. “I knew they couldn’t stay quiet forever. That way. Fast!”
The two carjackers ran through the woods towards the sound. Martin was very thankful that the woods sometimes made its own noise.
“Hey, I found a footprint! They must be on the other side of this pond,” shouted one.
“I’ll go around this way. You go that way. We got ‘em now.” They crashed further away, sounding like a pair of charging moose.
“Now,” said Martin quickly. “While they’re going that way, and making so much noise, let’s go the opposite direction as quietly as we can.”
He finally dared turn his head to see her. She had wide frightened eyes, but nodded. She crawled out of the pit and began to take a few furtive step
s away.
“Pssst,” Martin hissed. “Your bag.”
“Leave it. We can go faster without it,” she whispered back impatiently.
“Yeah, but if they come back looking around here and find it, they’ll know we weren’t over there and maybe start looking in the right direction.”
“Oh jeez,” she gasped.
Martin took the wheels end, she took the handle. They hurried as quickly as they could, crouched as low as they could. Martin stopped periodically to listen. The carjackers voices still carried, as did their plowing through the brush on the other side of the pond. They did not sound like they were getting closer.
As Martin and Susan traveled deeper into the woods, Martin was mindful to not push through twigs and dead branches that would leave an obvious trail. He remembered seeing deer or turkey scrapes in the woods and looked back to see what sort of tracks he and Susan might be making in the leaf and needle litter. Martin did not want to be leaving an obvious trail for the carjackers to follow.
“Be careful as you walk,” he whispered back. “Try to only step ON the leaves and not kick them as you walk.”
“I have been. It makes less noise.”
“Good, good. We have to avoid leaving broken twigs and branches too. If either of those guys have done any hunting, they might be able see traces of us, and follow.”
Susan looked behind her then began stepping with more deliberate care. Martin had to take some convoluted courses to steer them around dense brush or tangled branches.
Martin stopped to listen. More faint crashing of branches could be heard in the distance. The carjackers were still on the other side of the pond.
“They sound even farther away now. Maybe they think we went back to the road, or they’re going back to the car they stole.”
“I can’t believe it,” Susan exclaimed in a harsh whisper. “Those guys killed that old couple? Maybe Kevin too?”
“Maybe they did, maybe they didn’t,” whispered Martin. “Regardless, they sure don’t want us around to tell about it.”
“I know. I’ve never been so scared.”
“Let’s keep going a little further, then listen some more. They don’t seem to be coming this way at all.”
“That’s good. I feel a little better just being this far away from them.”
“Me too,” said Martin as he ducked under low pine branches. “I am so glad you kept your cool back there when we were in the pit.”
“I knew I had to keep it together. Having a melt-down then, or now, would be…well…really bad.”
Martin smiled. There was that pioneer spirit again.
“But don’t let the calm exterior fool you,” she continued. “A few times back there, I wanted to throw up.”
Martin stopped. “Oo. That would have been beyond bad.”
“I know, right? Talk about a trail to follow. And you were so worried about them seeing bent twigs.” She smiled. That did Martin’s heart good. Humor proved she was coping okay. Distance from a threat brought a huge sense of relief to both of them.
When they could hear no other noises behind them, Martin thought it might be safe to stop, rest and reorganize. Being quiet for awhile would be good too. They had come to a tumbled-down stone wall, marching arrow-straight through the forest. It was one of those lost traces of the old days when the land was farmed. Corn fields and cow pastures abandoned a hundred years ago had grown back into forests. The lichen-covered stones were the only traces that remained of an agricultural past.
“I’m wiped. Let’s rest behind this wall,” Martin said. “Those two hoodlums are way off in that other direction, if they’re still there at all.”
“You think we left too little trail to follow?”
“I think so. Also working our favor is that I don’t think those two have the luxury of waiting and searching. I bet that when they realize how long it will take them to search, they’ll opt to bail and run.”
“I sure hope you’re right.”
“We’ll have to keep an ear out.”
Susan gasped as Martin turned to face her.
“Your stomach! That guy cut you! I saw him cut you. Oh my God, you must be hurt.” She studied the gash in his jacket apprehensively — wanting to know, but not wanting to see.
“You’re right, he did!” In the rush to escape, Martin had forgotten that too. He looked down at the gaping horizontal slash in his jacket. Not only was there no blood anywhere, he did not feel any pain. Martin probed around the gash. He pulled out wads of newspaper then let out a laugh — quickly stifled.
“What?” Susan was confused and a little annoyed. Slash victims are not supposed to laugh.
“My newspaper. Last night, I waded up pages and stuffed them in my jacket for extra insulation. Worked great, but I forgot I had them in there. Hmm. Looks like he nicked my flannel shirt a little, but not bad. It’s mostly just my jacket. Zipper is shot now. Time to get out what’s left of my duct tape.”
“Oh, thank God you’re not hurt. I thought he had really cut you. I was so upset that I…” she gasped and covered her mouth. “…I knocked that guy out.”
“You did real good, Susan. Perfect timing.” He took the carjacker’s knife out of his pocket to see what his battlefield pick-up prize might be. It was a generic folding blade: nothing fancy, but better than his multi-tool blade.
“I’ve never knocked anyone out before,” she said, as if pleading to a judge. “I’ve never even hit anybody before.”
“That was a perfect time to start. You’re quite the little fighter. Good thing I didn’t leave you at La Quinta, huh? You’d have laid them all out.”
“Oh, stop it.” She frowned and leaned against a tree. Her face looked pensive as she tried to digest her newly discovered violent streak.
Martin leaned against one of the larger stones such that he could peer back over the rubble. He started cleaning the mud off his jacket, so the duct tape would stick.
“I thought they would find us for sure,” Susan said. I was so scared. “I know we were hidden in that hole, but why did you think they wouldn’t find us?”
“I was thinking of the second shot rule.”
“Huh?”
“It’s one of those old war wisdom things. A single shot in the woods alerts the enemy, but it’s over too quickly. They can’t tell where it came from. But, once the enemy is alert and listening, it’s the second shot that gives away your direction. I figured that if we stopped making sounds, they would have no idea where we were.”
“Oooh.” Susan said. “You were in the military?” She sounded ready to be impressed.
Martin hung his head a little. He had no brag-able credentials: no tours in Afghanistan, no duty in Iraq, no Ranger battalion. Who gathers around the bar to hear a software geek tell his ‘battle’ stories? ‘There I was, searching every subroutine for this rogue conditional loop that was jeopardizing the success of our…’ No. Software is about as un-Rambo as it gets.
“Well, um. No.”
“Then why would you know that second shot thing?”
Martin gave her an embarrassed smile. “It applies to hunting out of season too.”
She frowned. “But that’s against the law, isn’t it?”
“Technically…yeah.”
“Then why would you do that?” Her voice was hushed and sounded incredulous, as if she were interviewing a convicted felon.
“It was the strawberries,” Martin said, in what he thought was a passable Humphrey Bogart impersonation.
“Strawberries?”
Martin took her blank look to mean she was not a fan of The Caine Mutiny. He started to chuckle at his own wit, but his ribs hurt. He flinched and gasped.
“Oh my. You are hurt” she said. “Is it when you fell in that hole?”
He nodded. “I’m a little sore is all. Nothing serious. I got this far, didn’t I?”
“True, but look at you. Jacket ripped and cut. You’ve got mud all over your face and jacket. Here, let me get some
water and help clean you up.”
She wet one of the paper McDonald’s napkins he was using on his jacket and handed it to him. He wiped at the crusty mud from around his eyes and off his forehead.
She gasped. “Wait. That’s not just mud. It’s blood! You’ve got a big cut on your forehead.”
Martin looked up, as if he could see the cut. “Really? I don’t feel anything.” She wiped mud out of the cut with a wet napkin. “Ow, ow, ow. Okay, NOW I feel it. You can stop now.”
“No,” she said firmly. “This needs to be cleaned up. Sit still.” She unzipped the front pocket of his backpack and pulled out his little first aid kit. “My turn to play doctor.”
Martin was not going to get a lollypop for being a good patient. He squirmed and several times had his hands up by his face, trying to help. She swatted them away.
At one point she stopped, hands on her hips. “Did I wiggle this much when you put the bandage on my blister? Hmmm?” A chastened Martin sat very still.
“What did you mean, ‘it was the strawberries’?” she asked while she applied the antibacterial ointment.
“Sorry, that was an old movie reference. Humphrey Bogart plays the captain of a navy ship during the war. He’s going mentally unstable and his crew had to deal with it — sort of a soft mutiny. Captain Queeg got all paranoid and obsessed. The trigger was thinking someone was stealing his frozen strawberries. There’s more to the movie than that, of course. Great movie. My point was that sometimes I think I sound like Queeg, all obsessed about ‘my strawberries’.” His first Bogart came off better than his second.
His eyes narrowed as he remembered run-ins with his rodent pests. “Every now and then, the squirrels discover my strawberry bed. When they do, the little monsters can wipe out my whole year’s produce in a week. I go all Queeg on them.”
“Squirrels have to eat too.” She took a bandage out of its wrapper.
“They can eat in the woods. I don’t grow a garden to have fat squirrels.”
“So you hunt them illegally? I didn’t know squirrel hunting was illegal, or legal, for that matter.”
“Well, there is an official season, but I try to keep the local herd small. Too many of ‘em and they’re all over my garden. I take ‘em when I need to, regardless of any seasons. It’s on my own property, so not really anyone else’s business. Still, I try to remember the second shot rule to avoid any upset neighbors calling cops, or whatever.”