by B.R. Paulson
Chapter 6
Small puffy clouds teased me by not moving in the sky as we walked down the same gravel road. I couldn’t find anything to help me figure out how much time had passed. Watches weren’t my thing, never had been, and I wasn’t the type of person that could make a time piece with a pine needle and acorn shell. If that was such a thing.
Another foot in front of the other. Another. Another. How many was that? I lost count what seemed like years ago. Somehow the effort to just breathe had increased since I shot that man.
Guilt weighed on me. Not because I shot him, but because I most likely had given a reason to someone to chase after us. I used to read books about that type of thing – before the government had shut down libraries.
We passed under some shade from a collection of gathered aspens.
I froze. I couldn’t take another step. Not one more. Bending at the waist, I braced my hands on my lower thighs and locked my knees. “Mom.” I gasped. Despair welled inside me. My tongue hurt and my eyes burned.
Why couldn’t I breathe?
Her feet scuffed over the gravel as she turned and picked up the pace, closing the distance between us. When had she gotten so far away? I hadn’t noticed.
She reached me, resting her hand on my shoulder and bending to meet me at my level. “Kelly, are you okay?” Mom forced me to release my hold on my knees and half-straightened me to remove my backpack. She’d taken hers off and placed them along with the rifles against the side of a small ditch.
Shrugging from her own burdens, she set mine on the ground and pushed me to stand. “Lift your arms. Look up. Good. You’re okay, breathe in and out. Nice and even. Are you okay?” When my mom had worked full time as a nurse, I always wondered if she really knew her stuff. Even when we rarely saw a doctor because she always tended to us, I still doubted her.
Looking up didn’t help. My lips wanted to part but I fought to hold them together. Moisture – no, I couldn’t admit to tears, not yet, not again – filled my eyes and I dragged in a ragged gasp. The air refused to rest in me and pushed back out on a long painful sob.
Mom wrapped her arm around my shoulders and pulled me in for a tight hug. She glanced around, leading me toward a clear spot inside the tree line. Grabbing our bags and the guns, she returned to sit beside me.
The cover of the branches somehow released the tight imaginary band constricting my chest.
I cried, unable to define why. Pinpointing the exact reason didn’t seem as important as getting the pain out.
With a quick jerk, I turned into my mom’s arms and pressed my cheek to her shoulder. I gripped her with both hands.
And I cried. I sobbed.
The tears wouldn’t stop, but the relief grew. Things didn’t feel wound so tight.
Mom stroked my head under the damp balaclava. The morning hadn’t passed fast enough that it was too warm to wear the covering. “Shh. I know. It’s okay to cry. Let’s eat while we’re here. How does that sound? We’re both tired.” She patted my back as my erratic sobbing subsided and I sniffed.
Food? Of course that sounded alright. Her hands moved gracefully between our bags as she pulled out individually wrapped sandwiches and pickles in baggies. With a sheepish grin, Mom passed me a turkey sandwich. “We can start eating other stuff after the sandwiches are gone.”
She bowed her head and silently blessed her meal. I avoided her eyes when she lifted her gaze. Motioning with her sandwich toward the road, she raised her eyebrows. “What was with all the crying? Did you hurt yourself?”
I shook my head. The last thing I wanted was to sound like a coward, but I needed someone else to hear the insanity in my head. “I didn’t mean to shoot anyone. I wanted to fire a warning shot into the ground by his feet.”
Mom lowered her sandwich and slowly chewed the bite in her mouth. She swallowed, watching me. “What do you mean? You shot him pretty clean. You know how to shoot.”
Heat flooded my face over my behavior. I shifted on the lumpy ground. Cool moisture dampened the backs of my thighs and I crossed my legs Indian style. “Well…” I stared at the sandwich resting on my leg. Did I tell her I was petrified? Not for any solid reason, but more like I feared karma – something she never believed in.
Another thing about me and Mom that didn’t fit – I worried about things being true whether I believed in them or not. She had complete faith what she believed was end-all-be-all. Therefore, karma didn’t concern her.
If karma had been a true belief of mine, I would be comfortable knowing I’d shot that guy. Those men had been about to do something even more horrible than kidnapping and beating my mom and karma had come along and taken my accidental shot and shoved the bullet into a leg.
If I believed karma had a role, I couldn’t say I would feel too bad at that point.
I shrugged. “No, like I said, I aimed for the ground. I didn’t want to hurt anyone, only scare them, you know? Make them think I meant it?” In the movies actions like that always went well. Why couldn’t mine work?
Mom chuckled and bit into her sandwich again. I raised mine, hungry and yet still nervous all at once.
“Your first shot on a living thing is what’s bothering you. Plus, you’re so much like your dad. Let me guess, you’re wondering if that guy had deserved to be shot, right? Or maybe now that you did what you did, what’s going to happen to you?” She watched me, waiting for my answer.
I nodded, hunkering my shoulders in shame I didn’t want to feel. “I wanted to save you, but I was hoping to do it without hurting anyone.” Plus, what if they ignored Mom’s warning and they came after us? Two men against two petite-sized women? We would be screwed.
“Well, you did save me. I’m going to rely on the Old Testament’s teachings right now and hold to the practice of an eye-for-an-eye.” She paused, looking down at her sandwich and inhaling heavily. Lowering her sandwich to her lap, her gaze met mine. “Okay, I’m sorry. That’s not what I meant. I don’t want to exact revenge on anyone. I…” she picked at the seam of her pants, pinching and rolling the small amount of excess material. “You’re not ready to be on your own yet. Those men are nothing compared to what I can only imagine is out there for us to face.” She shook her head. “You’re not ready.”
“Mom, I’m stronger than you think. I promise I can handle more. You don’t need to worry about me.” How did I tell her I’d already been kissed? Kids at school teased me about still having my V-card, but that wasn’t anyone’s business. I wasn’t rolling over for just anyone. And the boys at my school were just anyone. Unless of course you count Bodey Christianson. Seriously, the boy was smart as heck and hot, too. But I didn’t count him because he didn’t go to my school technically. Did he count, if he was dead?
“Why did you leave your sleeping bag? How did those guys get you?” I played with the plastic corner of my baggie. I hadn’t asked yet because the full import of how much danger we’d been in hadn’t disappeared from my nerves.
Mom blushed. “I had to use the bathroom. I told you not to drink too much water and I almost emptied my canteen. I walked a little ways away so I wouldn’t wake you and wasn’t paying attention. Didn’t even take my gun.” She shook her head. “All that preaching about camp rules and safety and I’d abandoned every single one of them.”
Now that we were safe, I chuckled, but shakily. “That’s not funny, but it is. Sounds more like something I would do.”
“Nah, Kelly. Give yourself more credit. We’re all human. We all make mistakes. I’m glad you were brave enough to fix mine.” She leaned over and shoulder-squeezed me in a half-hug.
We ate together in silence, Mom thoughtful as she finished her pickle and sipped water.
Nothing about the sandwich was spectacular. I mean, seriously, what was dramatic about mayonnaise, mustard, cheese, and deli-turkey meat? Not a lot. But since I hadn’t eaten in a while and after the exhausting ordeal with the men, the sandwich and pickle could’ve been from a five-star restaurant in Seattle.
The full sensation hit me after a few minutes and I moaned.
So glad to not be hungry, I ignored the worry a simple thought brought to the forefront – I had only gone eight hours or so without food. Things were guaranteed to get worse.
Could I survive without comfort and convenience? Or had my mom’s training weekends and week-to-month-long training sessions been in vain?
Mom collected my baggies and tucked them into another small pocket on her backpack.
Glancing behind us, I blinked at the ever-clearing sky. “Hey, the smoke has stopped. Maybe we can go back?”
“No smoke isn’t reassuring, Kelly. If the bombing stopped, whoever attacked got what they wanted.” She fell silent, arranging her pack on her shoulders. Matter-of-factly, she helped load mine on my back and patted the bottom of the bag before walking around me. “We’re almost to the turnout. Let’s keep going.” She glanced at my face then over my shoulder. “Stop looking back. We’ll never see our world the way it was.”
Tears built in my eyes again, but Mom’s? They were clear as if she’d just woken up from a restful night.
An hour later a pinching burn on the pinky side of my foot got my attention. I walked on the inside of my foot, trying to take the weight off that side, but the pain only abated for a few steps before returning with a heated anger.
So I limped, but the change in stride didn’t work either. Shuffling to the side of the road, I leaned my shoulder against a tree. “Mom.” I didn’t speak too loud. We didn’t need a repeat of last night and that morning.
A lot of noise wasn’t necessary. Concern knitting her eyebrows together, she backtracked to me. She studied the scenery, then pressed her face close to mine. “What’s wrong?”
“My foot is killing me.” I whispered, trying not to groan.
“Did you double up your socks?” She knelt, untying my hiking boot with fast hard motions.
I glared at the tree limbs overhead. Of course not. Why would I remember something she’d told me to do a hundred times before the world crashed down around us? Because I was an idiot. Blisters could be avoided. Heat flooded my face and I shook my head enough to move my hair but not enough to further my embarrassment.
Mom sighed. “Come on, Kelly. You have to do the basics.”
“I know.” I kept my voice tight. No reason to add to her “told you so” moment.
“Hey, don’t get lippy with me. If you know how to avoid this, then it’s on your shoulders.” She slid my shoe off and then my sock, careful on the tender side of my foot. Her gentleness irritated me. When I was being rude, she should be rude back. It was only polite.
“Yes, Mom.” My extra socks were in the bottom of my backpack. Hopefully she didn’t ask me for them. I could handle only so much humility and with a blister burning my foot, right then wasn’t the time to add more.
She pulled a bandaid from her jacket pocket and stuck it to my foot over the reddish area. Whipping my sock back on and then my shoe, she tied the laces before standing. “That’ll work until we get an extra sock out of the bag.”
“Thanks, Mom.” I grumbled, irritated I had to be grateful about anything. I gingerly stepped on the foot. A little bit of soreness persisted but nothing like before.
“Sure. You’re just tired. Come on, up ahead at the next bend we’ll go into the woods. I’m not sure what the trails will be like right now, so we have to be cautious.” She wiped her hands on her thighs, watching the road in front of us. “We haven’t seen anyone else this way, which is weird for such a large number in our co-op.” She didn’t look confused, instead worry added a downturned slant to her lips. “We’ll keep praying for help.”
“Yeah, okay.” I fell into step beside her, my head pounding from the lack of solid sleep. As irritated as I got with Mom, I had to give it to her. She was a monster with her discipline. She would probably tack her strength up to faith or something, but I dialed it in as craziness. Still her craziness was keeping us alive.
Shafts of sunlight enhanced the brilliant green trees and the grasses freshly sprouting from damp earth. We climbed the ditch from the gravel to the sloping forest floor.
The pain had dramatically decreased in my foot and even fatigued, I couldn’t hold back my optimism. Hopefully, where we were going had good food and a shelter. Maybe I could wash my hair, or better yet, take a shower. I needed to pee on a toilet – bad. The excitement of using bushes for cover had died long ago.
We climbed about fifty feet. In front of us, laid out like a viewing at a funeral, a fallen tree whose circumference I would never be able to wrap my arms around waited in rest like Sleeping Beauty. Green moss and lichen decorated the creases and grooves. Flower buds sprouted from the mosses and poked from the deepest green centers of the collections. I couldn’t help myself and ran my fingers over the velvety coverings.
Mom paused, looking behind us. She kneeled and motioned I follow.
Knees in the dirt, she pointed past the end of the log toward a dense copse of trees. Whispering lower than before, she barely moved her lips. “I don’t know who or what we’re going to find. It’s way too quiet. You do exactly what I say. Keep the balaclava on. I don’t care how hot you get, do you understand?”
I nodded, leery of arguing in case she was right. The balaclava wasn’t uncomfortable so agreeing didn’t hurt me any.
Together we rose and stepped cautiously around the tree. The ground covering absorbed our footprints and as I looked back, they disappeared as if we’d never been there.
We entered the thicker tree line and Mom grabbed my arm. She pushed me behind a tree and shook her head. Pointing toward a suddenly-present clearing, she mouthed. “Looks like a fight.”
She’d gauged the assumption fast. I poked my head around the rough trunk, scratching my cheek in the process. Rubbing the offended part, I stared at the scattered garbage and broken glass littering the well-packed dirt clearing. Smaller fallen logs, set up like seating around a fire pit, framed spread dead coals around the grass. A torn down tent fluttered in the soft breeze, poles poking into the air like a beetle on its back.
Mom motioned me back.
I moved to retreat, but stopped when she lowered her flattened fingers to the ground in a swift jerking move. Returning to my spot, I peered back to the clearing. A different shade of green from the surrounding forest moved slightly on the far border of the clearing.
A woman stared back at us. Her long dark blonde hair lay in a thick braid over her shoulder. Tight jeans and an even tighter sweater suggested she came into the end with something else on her mind than practicality.
She reached for something at her waist.
Mom tensed, reaching for her waist as well.
What did I do? Witnessing a shootout wasn’t my idea of surviving anything.
Was the woman as good a shot as my mom?