“Tripp!” Dana was still shouting, and it sounded like she hadn’t run far.
I didn’t know where Charlie had gone, but the mad charging through trees somewhere off to my left suggested that he’d headed in roughly the same direction that Jamie had. That left the married couple and all their equipment behind—alone so far as I knew, and unprotected.
On the battlefield, acoustics are funny; things echo where it seems they shouldn’t, and noises feel like they’re hitting your head from all angles at once. Therefore, it was hard to pinpoint Dana’s exact location. But depending on how much ammunition the shooter carried, his aim might not need to be precise.
“Oh my God! Oh my God!”
She wasn’t getting any quieter, and it sounded like she’d stopped fleeing—she’d maybe even doubled back. Bad plan. Sticking around the field was a good way to get killed.
“Hey asshole! Come and get me!” It was Benny, but I couldn’t tell where he was hollering from.
“Shut up,” I whispered back, knowing he couldn’t hear me. I held my position, but only because I didn’t think the shooter’s odds of catching me were very good so long as I stayed in the woods and kept low. Heaven knew he couldn’t see me, and if I kept my mouth shut he wouldn’t hear me, either. But Dana, frozen to her place and panicking for all she was worth, was a very loud fish in a murky barrel.
The searing heat on my chest was either wearing its way down to a warm, dull line of pain, or I was getting used to the sensation and it didn’t feel so bad.
I braced my back against the tree trunk and used it to slide myself upright, catching flaky bits of dirty bark all over my back. I felt shaky and scared stupid, but otherwise not too bad. I was not hurt bad. Not too bad. Not bad at all. I mumbled it like a mantra.
Up and around I flexed my right arm, testing the ligatures and making sure that my assessment had been correct: just a graze. The arm pulled my skin tight across the deep, nasty scratch, and it stung like hell, but it was nothing I couldn’t live with.
There was always the possibility that I was in shock, and simply unable to process the extent of the damage, but, given the circumstances, I’d take what I could get.
I pushed myself away from the tree with my hip, stepping around it to face the direction of the distraught Dana Marshall. All the running, stumbling, crazily thrashing retreats had fled beyond earshot; and another round was fired—farther away this time, and back towards the field.
I cringed, remembering that Benny had taken off that way. I thought he’d hit the road and run along it. That way would be quieter and easier to navigate. There would be less chance of trees and rocks stopping him.
Surely he hadn’t cut through the field?
Benny wasn’t a big guy, but he was wiry and fast when he needed to be. I consoled myself with the thought that he must’ve gotten a good head start, and was surely halfway to the car by now. Also, he had the flashlight with the dim red beam. If he was far enough ahead, he could flip it on and make even better progress.
Bless his heart, the loony little bastard was leading trouble away from the rest of us.
I held my arms out in front of me and felt my way out of the woods, homing in on Dana. She was closer than I thought, maybe twenty yards from where the guys and I had been spying. I almost tripped over her, but grabbed her instead and fell down beside her. I whipped my stronger arm around her face to muffle the crying.
She tried to shriek, and gave me a mighty elbow jab that honestly winded me, but I was larger and stronger; I pinned one of my legs around her waist. “Shut up,” I muttered into her ear, stronger than a whisper, so she could hear from my voice that I was a woman. “Shut up, or you’ll get us both killed.”
Dana nodded, and when I removed my arm she clapped her own hands over her mouth. Whatever was making her sob could not be stopped by willpower alone. When I unwrapped my leg from her lap I kicked something prone on the ground, and then I knew why.
I let her go, and felt my way along the body. His head was sticky, and in the dark it looked like tar had been poured over it. With a grimace, I ran my hands up Tripp’s neck and felt around for a pulse. I only found gore, and a wound the size of a plum behind his right ear.
The shooter had made one remarkably lucky shot—two, if you counted hitting me. I prayed that those were the only two hits he’d made.
Once I’d forced Dana to muffle herself, things had gone quiet again in a very scary way.
Click.
Distant. Farther away than when he’d first begun shooting, but close enough still that he might get lucky again. I wiped my hands on my jeans and let my fingers crawl up Dana’s face.
I took her chin and turned it towards the direction of the gunman’s approach. Her chest shook and her face quivered, but she swallowed back everything she could and we held there, immobile.
Down, I gestured to her. Down.
With tedious, careful slowness we lowered ourselves until we were lying flat. I pushed the camera over to the side so it snuggled against my shoulder. Dana and I both put our chins on the ground and drew our limbs up close. The fog rolled over us in a damp, wooly blanket, obscuring everything beyond a small circle’s diameter. He wouldn’t be able to see us until he was literally on top of us.
I parted my lips and breathed through my mouth. Dana copied me, and I was glad. Her sinuses had filled as a result of the crying, and any trace of sniffles would give us both away.Pat. Pat.
His feet hit the pavement again. He wasn’t coming straight for us—probably because he couldn’t remember or tell which way we were hiding—but he was advancing all the same. Dana closed her eyes, but I lifted my face up off the ground and saw, through the soup-thick mist, a humanoid shadow.
I was certain then that it was a living, breathing man: He moved in a top-heavy way, and the vague proportions I could make out implied hips that didn’t sway.
I couldn’t discern anything else. Not a hairstyle, not a distinguishing feature of his face, not a color of clothing. He was a nebulous blob, nothing more; and I hoped that we were less than that to him.
I was wearing dark jeans and a black shirt with my customary black boots. I didn’t know what Dana was wearing, but a cautious glance told me it was fairly dark. I hoped we blended into the ground, a gravelly mix of cast-off asphalt and deep green grass.
Two more shapes formed in the fog. At first I held my breath; then I realized that these two were not like the shooter. They were dead.
Before us stood two soldiers in bulky, poorly cut uniforms—I couldn’t see what color—but they saluted in sync, and dashed in front of the man with the gun. I don’t know whether he could see them. God knew I barely could.
They left a trail, though—a wake of swirling air that pulled the fog into patterns of action. Maybe the man felt them, even if he couldn’t hear them. They got his attention, at least. His heels swiveled in a full circle, and he fired a shot at no one who would care.
Dana whimpered under my arm, very softly, but he didn’t hear her. He stepped forward, lurching away from us. His legs went swishing back into the grass, charging away in fits and starts, well out of my view.
I squeezed Dana’s shoulder and slowly rose. I pulled her with me, but she hesitated, still clutching the form on the ground. We’d dropped down closer to Tripp than I thought. She must have been holding onto him while we were lying there.
I tugged a second time and she stood up, carefully.
She reached up to put her hands on my face, and I was struck by how small she was. “He’s dead, isn’t he?” she asked, in words so quiet I couldn’t hear them—but I felt them all the same.
While she had her hands on either side of my jaw I nodded. I wanted to say something more, but we both knew there weren’t any words that would help.
We listened. The murderer was somewhere across the road, in the grass.
We looked around, trying to get our bearings. It was impossible. We couldn’t see more than three or four feet in any direction. If it were only dark, we might find a way out of the park; or if it were only foggy.
Between the two, we were pretty much screwed.
Huddled together, we took a few steps in each direction until we spied the edge of a cement picnic table. We crouched to take hold of it, and felt our way around it until I guessed we were facing the road, if the setup was the way I remembered it.
Still hanging on to Dana’s forearm, I tried to orient myself.
If I was correct and we were facing the road, then off to my right would be the way we came in, and to the left, along the road, would be the way back to the front of the park. Behind us, more woods. Around us, a fog so thick I could reach out and grab a handful of it…blended thoroughly with the lovely pitch dark that happens out in the middle of nowhere at nearly two in the morning.
The moon was out, but it may as well not have been.
I didn’t know where Jamie and Benny were, and I was still bleeding. A warm trail of wet worked its way down my shirt, and the burning sting was spreading into a humid, nasty pain across my chest. But when I rubbed at the source it was numb, and what had at first seemed a ferocious scrape felt less disastrous.
Dana must have sensed my movement, because she reached out and touched me—landing a hand squarely on my chest and working her way up.
“You’re hurt too,” she said, though I didn’t know who else she could mean besides her husband, who was well beyond hurt.
I nodded, and gripped her hand. “It’s not bad. Come on.”
“Where?”
“This way.” We were both whispering and holding close. I had to lean down to reach her ear.
We would move most quietly if we could walk on the road, and if we followed the road far enough we would eventually hit the front of the park. Though the visitors’ center would almost certainly be deserted, there was a main road right outside the entrance. One way or another, we’d flag somebody down for help, if Jamie and Benny hadn’t done so already.
Together we crept off the grass onto gritty gravel, and then on to the asphalt.
A sliding wrong step brought us both to a halt, ears perked with fear.