Journal (36 page)

I
got my answer to the last question only about five minutes into my jog when movement
to my left caused me to spin and drop to one knee.  It turned out to be just a
deer running, a doe actually.  I guess I hadn’t heard it because of the wind.  It
hadn’t heard me either, for the same reason.

As
I watched, it stopped for a second and looked back behind it.  A few seconds
later, it was off again, going my same direction.  That told me that they were
behind me and not too far behind either.  So I also started off, faster this
time, trying to increase the distance between us.  I was afraid, and for the
first time that I can remember, felt very, very alone.  What a have only
been my imagination6it strange feeling
that was.  It messed with my head.  It made me doubt myself.

Ten
more minutes of running, so maybe another mile and a little more, and I was not
only breathing hard, but my legs felt as if someone had taken razorblades to
them.  Those bushes were nasty.  On top of that, my shoulder wasn’t feeling
great either.  All the bouncing up and down was a hurt to it.  It was about
then that I heard a couple of shots behind me.  I hoped that it was just a
signal they knew which way I went and not a sign they found mom and Alan.

I
stopped for a few seconds to get an idea of where I was.  It was then that I
saw a group of them cross an open space that was a little bit higher than where
I was, about five hundred yards behind me.  They were moving right along, too. 
I remember doubting that they knew where I was, feeling it was more a matter of
trying to get out ahead of us, me.

I
started out again, and as before, at as fast a pace as I thought I could keep
up.  It was going to be a foot race with the loser dying.

After
maybe another ten minutes, I came out from the trees onto this flat area that
at one time had been a parking lot for ten or fifteen cars.  I knew that because
the railroad ties, used as tire bumpers, were still in place.  A road, or what
remained of one anyway, connected to it and shot off to the west.  Where this
road and the parking lot came together, there was a cement block building of
maybe twenty by twenty, painted tan, with a peaked, brown metal roof and two metal
doors, also painted brown.  Next to that were three cement picnic tables that
looked like they had just been built, but of course they weren’t.  Weeds were
all around and under them.

I
walked to the edge of the parking lot, next to the road, and read a sign bolted
to a square wood post that was leaning off to one side — “Welcome to Bolton
County Regional Park.”  I knew where I was.  I’d been there as a little kid.  If
I remembered right, which I did, continuing on would bring me to the fields
where we grew our food.  Woburn would be after that.  I remember the feeling of
relief that came over me.  I remember thinking we were going to finally make it
home.

Suddenly,
I had hope.  Before, I was thinking there wasn’t any.  But Eric’s men were
still close behind and trying to catch me, so I told myself I couldn’t start
taking it easy now.

I
took off again and, as I passed the cement block building on my right, out
stepped Eric and another man, each holding a gun pointed right at me.  Mine was
hung over my shoulder, so there was no way I was going to make a fight of it
and have any chance of winning.  I swore at myself for that mistake.  How
stupid could I get?  I waited for the bullets to hit me.  The skin on my chest
pricked all over.  No bullets, though.  No shots.  No final thought of
helplessness.  But what did come my way, was almost worse.  It was the look I
saw on his face.  It said, “I win.  You Lose.”

As
I sit here now, writing down what happened, I can remember seeing that snotty,
stinking smile on his face and wishing I could put one right dead center in the
middle of it.  It was just a hollow thing to think, though.  That’s how it sounds
to me now anyway.  It’s like threaten after the rain had stopped22iting the wind or, better yet, like telling
the big guy picking on you that ‘someday I’ll be big and strong, and you’ll be
sorry.’

Eric
kept his pistol and his smile pointed right at me while the other man, a guy of
about forty, with greasy black hair and a missing front tooth, took my rifle
away and punched me a good one in the back of the head.  I wasn’t expecting it,
so it made me stumble forward a little.  It didn’t hurt much, though.  It probably
hurt him worse.

Eric
told him to “Knock it off,” and added, “There’ll be plenty of time for that
later.”

Toothless
pushed me forward, until I was face to face with Eric.  It briefly crossed my
mind that maybe I could make a grab for Eric’s gun and turn it on the both of
them.  But he was just out of my reach, and besides, he was stronger than me,
so I wasn’t sure I could even get it away from him anyway.  At least I was
thinking again.

“Where
is she?” he asked.

That
told me they hadn’t found mom and Alan yet and they didn’t even know there was
an Alan.

“Dead.” 
I gave him a real hard look when I said it, like I wanted to do something back
to him for what happened to her, (which of course I did) hoping to convince him
I was telling the truth.  He didn’t buy it, though.

“I
don’t believe you.  Where is she?”

I
told him I buried her shortly after they spotted us back by the river.  I
added, “She bled to death, you asshole,” again hoping the extra information and
the name calling would convince him I was telling the truth.

He
stepped to one side at that point, motioned me down the road with a wave of his
pistol and said, “Show me.”  As soon as he said it, toothless gave me a hard shove
that snapped my head back, and I started off, wondering at the same time why we
were walking that way instead of back the way I had come.  I soon found out.

About
fifty yards down this road I’ve been speaking of, and around a slight curve, sat
our little car, and seeing it caught me completely off guard, big time.  I must
have showed my surprise, because Eric’s face lit up like he’d just been given
the keys to Woburn’s front gate.  I guess we didn’t hide it well enough.  It
made me mad that he’d found it.  It was another insult.  Nothing seemed to be
going our way.  It was taking the stuffing right out of me.

Toothless
tied my hands in front of me and motioned for me to get into the front
passenger seat.  He got in the back, right behind me, looped a section of rope across
the front of my throat, and snugged it up nice and tight, giving it a little
jerk just to let me know not to try anything.

Eric,
though, remained standing on the roadway and in a couple of minutes I saw why. 
A group of men, six in all, came into view and approached him.  I think they
were part of that same group I saw following me.  They talked among themselves
for a few minutes, allagreementwot of them at one time or another looking my way,
especially this one guy wearing a red baseball cap and dark glasses, but I
couldn’t quite hear what they were saying.  There was some sort of agreement
reached, though, because they nodded their heads to Eric and turned around and
went back the direction I had come.  I took it from this that Eric had sent
them back to find mom.

After
they took off, Eric sat down in the driver’s seat, said, “Let’s go dig her up,”
and drove off.  We hadn’t gone twenty yards before he swung his right elbow
toward my head, sharp like.  I saw it coming in enough time to tuck my head a
little and turn it to my right but not soon enough to avoid the blow altogether. 
It hit me a good one, almost squarely on my left eyebrow, opening a cut and
knocking me goofy.  As soon as the sparklers burned themselves out, I felt the
blood, warm and thick, flow down into my eye, onto my cheek and watched it drip
from there onto my pants.  I remember telling myself that more was coming, and
I was just going to have to take it.

“So
are you going to tell me where she is or do I really mess you up?” he said. 
“There’s too much at stake to let that little tramp ruin it.”

What
I said back to him must not have been to his liking because it just got me
another elbow, this one to my nose and you know how those feel.

At
that point, I faked passing out, which wasn’t too much of a fake to be honest
with you.  Everything was swimming round and round about then.  I needed a
little time to think about how to get out of this mess, instead of worrying
about what he was going to do to me next.  As my head slumped forward, I could
feel the rope around my throat go slack.

I
also felt Eric pickup speed.  He got to really flying, too, and we started
bouncing all over the place because of all the potholes and other things on the
road.  Over all the noise, the engine, the wind, and the bouncing, I heard Eric
shout to Toothless, “To be safe we’ll step things up a day.  I still want her
found, though.”

I
guess I should have been deep down scared.  I mean just for starters, he split open
the skin over my eye and on top of that it felt like he busted my nose (it
turned out he did).  He also had my gun, and I was tied-up like a chicken ready
for cooking.  But instead of being afraid, I just remember feeling really,
really mad; insane mad, kill him with my bare hands mad.  So mad in fact that I
didn’t really care what happened to me as long as I could make Eric dead.  So what
did I do?  I let out this loud growl, reached over and grabbed the steering
wheel, and pulled it hard and quick clockwise.  With the car driving fast like it
was, the sudden turn flipped it over on its driver’s side.  It skidded several
feet before coming to a rest in a drainage ditch next to the road.

I
don’t actually remember the flipping over part or, for that matter, the
skidding part, either.  I just remember feeling the feeling of it, kind of like
banging around inside a cement mixer or something.  Dust, light and dark,
colors of green and brown, all mixed together and zoomed past my eyes.  When I
had my first clear thought, I found that I was face down on top of Eric with my
butt up against the steering wheel.  He was partially pinned under the driver’s
side of the car and his face was covered with blood">Anna
interrupted at with t .  I had no idea where
Toothless was.  (Later I found him lying in the road with a broken leg and
another missing tooth.)

After
that, it was like the God of misery twisted the pain dial all the way to high. 
It was my shoulder.  It popped out of its socket …again.  Not as bad as last
time, so I guess you could say just partially out.  But with my hands tied and
one shoulder half out of socket, it still made it almost impossible to get
myself out of the wreck and on my feet, but I did it.  I even managed to get
around to the side where I could give dead Eric a kick in the head.  He may not
have felt it, but it sure made me feel good.

After
the kick, my first order of business was to free my hands.  That wasn’t as hard
as it would seem.  I just rested my elbows on the upside of the car and used my
teeth to work the knot apart.  Next, it was a weapon.  They were lying all over
the place, but I could only get Eric’s pistol and my rifle.  The gun Toothless
was carrying was stuck underneath the car.

As
far as Toothless went, he was lying on his back, kind of propped half-up on his
elbows, with his left foot twisted completely to the outside.  I shot him with
Eric’s pistol.  He knew he had it coming.  He never said a word when I pointed
the gun at his face.  I only saw his neck muscles tighten up, that was it.  The
way I figure it, he would have killed me without a second thought.  Enough
about him.

Before
starting off, I grabbed hold of the car with the hand of my bad shoulder,
relaxed the muscles in that area as best I could and leaned back slipping it
into joint.  There was a quick surge of pain right when it popped back in, and
then it just became a dull ache that only today, what, seventeen days later, is
just starting to go away.

I
started south after that, with my left hand gripping the waist of my pants to
give my bad shoulder some support and holding the rifle in my right.  I can’t
begin to describe how I hurt, from one end, every inch to the other.  The way I
figured it, though, feeling anything was a hell of a lot better than feeling
nothing, if you know what I mean.

While
I was walking, I was thinking.  The smart safe thing would have been to stick
to the woods and avoid the roads.  It would be less likely I’d be spotted that
way.  I knew this.  I also knew that the patrols from Woburn stayed pretty much
to the roads because that’s where they set up their checkpoints.  So if I
wanted to have a better chance of getting help and getting it fast, I’d have to
at least stay within eyesight of the road.

In
my head, I tried to picture the map we’d looked at the day before.  I thought
that if I angled off to my right, I would meet up with a main road, which I
could follow to Woburn.  If I was lucky enough to come across some of the
town’s people, and not Eric’s people, I could deliver my warning to them and right
away turn around and start back to help mom and Alan.  It would be even better
if I could get some of them to go with me.

So
that’s how I played it.  I angled my way pretty much to my right, through the
same type of terrain I’ve already told you about, with a pretty hard wind and a
black sky behind me.  It soon began to sprinkle, and I started to get wet and
cold.  that’s what I didwotDoes it ever stop?