Survival (3 page)

Ruiz scampered over to a sizable
log. “Here then, Bryan. Lend me your shoulder.”

The men hunched at the base of
the log. Grunting, they rolled it across the ground, over to a copse of
juvenile pine trees. “Ok, we’ll need to lever it.” He disappeared into the
forest, returning a few moments later with a thick bough. “Push. Give it a good
shove, now.”

Bryan understood what he meant to
do and, with the help of the lever and ten minutes of sweaty finagling, they
were able to balance the log across the low branches of the pines, just above
their heads. The green branches bent beneath the weight of the log, but they
held.

Ruiz disappeared again into the
forest, returning with a length of blackberry vine. Carefully, he tied the end
to one of the branches, drew the line taut and fastened it to an exposed root
beneath the trap. He shrugged out of his windbreaker and delicately draped it
over the root.

Norton smiled, shaking his head
at the man. “And now?”

“Now we draw their attention.” He
stooped and began to gather stones. Bryan followed suit. When they each had an
armful, they pushed out into the meadow, creeping behind brush as they advanced
on the men.

“Where did you get the knife?”
one of the bulls asked. Bryan heard the anger in his voice. “Was it Fornoy?”

One of the detainees sniffled,
but none of them answered.

“Ok. Have it your way,” the bull
said. He pulled his sidearm, put it to the head of the sniffler and pulled the
trigger, the man’s head vanishing in a crimson mist. Bryan saw the men stare at
each other in horror. One wet himself.

At that moment, Fausto stood and
threw his first stone. It found its mark, cracking a bull on the bridge of his
nose with a solid thunk, the soldier’s eye socket instantly welling with blood.
The bull hunched, holding his shattered nose, and Fausto hurled stones like a
pitching machine, rearing back and peppering the bulls.

The captured men hit the deck as
one of the bulls sprayed bullets at Norton and Ruiz, the ammunition springing
wildly through the air over their heads.

But Fausto was gone, already on
the ground, crawling as fast as he could for the tree line. Bryan fanned out
wide; he stood and threw his own stones, managing to just take cover as another
blast of gunfire ripped through the air above him.

“This way,” Fausto shouted, and
then they were both angling for the trees. A trio of bulls had pealed away, now
striding purposefully for the trees while the guard with the ruined face
somehow held the muzzle of his weapon on their terrified quarry.

“Here!” Fausto whispered, and
Bryan sprinted for a copse of fallen spruce trees. They pressed themselves
against the rotting wood as the bulls entered the forest.

“There,” one said, motioning at
the windbreaker. “Scan the tag. Let’s see who we’re dealing with.”

Two bulls went to retrieve the
jacket. As the shorter of the two picked up the windbreaker, he jostled the
vine, tripping the branch and its precarious support of the log. The block of
wood lurched and tumbled down onto the men. There was a sound like a cantaloupe
falling off a kitchen counter as the shorter guard’s skull shattered. The log
rolled onto the taller bull, pinning him to the forest floor as a stub of
branch pushed deep into his eye, the viscous fluid spilling out onto his
cheekbone with an audible popping sound.

“Aw, Christ!” the bull in charge
said at the sudden demise of his men; Bryan could hear the confusion in his
tone. The bull ducked behind a tree, weapon secured to his chest like a life
preserver on the open ocean. “Who’s there?” he shouted, his voice high and
panicked.

The cries of his fallen comrade
were the only reply.

“My eye! Oh God, my eye! Cap, it
hurts! Ooohhhhhh, Cap it burns!”

“Calm down!” the bull shouted,
voice still wavering. Bryan turned to Fausto for direction but the man had
vanished. He understood why when there was a grunt and a sound like kindling
breaking. Bryan watched as the captain’s body slid out from behind the tree,
followed by Fausto Ruiz.

“Come on, Bryan. We’ve got to do
this quickly.”

Bryan stepped out. “What do you
call that…that trap?”

Fausto picked up the captain’s
weapon. “It’s a Malay Man Catcher,” he replied. He handed Bryan the gun and
motioned him over to the soldier. “End it.”

Bryan took the weapon. He touched
it to the man’s face, the soldier now quiet, regarding them from his remaining
good eye. Bryan heard his father’s voice.
You do what you have to, you
understand? They’ll kill you if they can…
.

He pulled the trigger, the man
flinching beneath the muzzle, but nothing happened. “Shit,” Fausto muttered. “I
expected that. Trigger locks.”

He took the weapon from the
younger man, inverted its stock and rammed the butt of the rifle into the
bull’s throat, crumpling his trachea. The man gurgled, a look of pain and confusion
on his face that morphed quickly into still reservation.

Bryan turned his head, suddenly
violently ill. He evacuated stomach bile and water; he was afraid of his
companion.

“We need to rescue them,” Fausto
said. “We can have a chat about morality when this is over, kid.”

Bryan wiped away the vomit. He
watched Ruiz creep into the meadow, took a deep breath and followed him.

They crept up on the periphery of
the bulls. The prisoners whimpered there on the ground—the man who had wet
himself had blood seeping from his ear and nose.

Fausto motioned to Bryan, one
hand engulfing the other. He held up three fingers. He wasn’t sure how he
understood the man’s directions, but Bryan did. He watched Fausto take a deep
breath, steeling himself, and then the man with the tired eyes counted to
three.

On three they burst from the
brush, covering the space in strides before leaping to take down the bulls.
Fausto made quick work of the guard with the ruined face, pulling him into a
choke hold before cleanly snapping his neck.

Bryan, on the other hand, wasn’t
as efficient.

He threw himself into the last
bull, hoping to subdue the soldier, but the man had been trained to fight for
his life. This man wasn’t some abstract rule—he was a living creature, a person
with thoughts and beliefs and emotions. Bryan felt him struggling beneath him,
the smell of testosterone and fear like burnt plastic on the air, and then the
bull freed a hand and jabbed up with stunning force. Bryan was dazed by the
blow; he lost his grip.

The bull sensed the shift in
control and brought his elbow up into Bryan’s temple—once, twice, three times.
Bryan felt his strength leaking away; the world went white and then black and
he hit the ground.

When he came to, they were back
in the woods. “Bryan,” Fausto said, his words distant, “Bryan, come on, buddy.
Open your eyes.”

Norton did. Fausto Ruiz and the
two rescued men hovered above him. “We need you to run, Bryan. I know it hurts,
but we might only have a minute or two before these woods will be crawling with
bulls.”

Norton turned his head, straining
to process his surroundings. “Okay,” he muttered, the pain a spike between his
eyes. “Okay—I can…I can do this.”

They fetched him up, the men
they’d rescued taking a position on either side of him, his arms spread across
their shoulders. In that fashion they pushed deeper into the woods.

Soon, they were indeed being
pursued. The sounds of the hunt were faint at first, but they steadily grew
louder as bulls fired their weapons into trees, ripping apart brush in their
quest to avenge the deaths of their brethren.

“Who are you?” one of the rescued
men asked Ruiz when they’d stopped to rest on the banks of another creek, their
backs pressed against a fallen log. A cold rain was beginning to fall, hundreds
of gentle dimples appearing on the surface of the water. Norton thought they
maybe had another twenty minutes of light left in the day.

“I’m Fausto. This is Bryan
Norton.”

“Eric Blaylock,” the man replied.
The rain had rinsed the blood from his face. He had red hair and fair skin, a
grid of freckles over his cheeks and nose and a firm handshake. His sharp green
eyes were filled with raw admiration for the man who had rescued them.

“And you?” Fausto said to his
partner.

“Bill Boyce. Goddamn, that was
really something back there.” He shook his head ruefully. “I shouldn’t even
be
here. I’m one of the lucky ones—got
two
children at home already. What
the hell was I thinking, trying this again?” He was stocky, with thick black
hair and large, calloused hands. “Jesus,” he repeated.

Fausto whistled appreciatively.
“Very impressive, Bill. Are you familiar with this field?”

“Not well enough. I did Labor in
Phoenix eight years ago for my first—little Angie. Our boy’s name is Ryan. I
pulled his Labor here four years ago; honestly, I don’t recognize much.”

“We’re searching for an angel.
You know anything about that?”

Boyce shook his head. “Naw. I
heard there’s a couple in here, though. I thought it was all a bunch of
bullshit. Urban legends.”

Fausto nodded. “Probably is.
Still, we have to hope.”

Gunfire popped in the distance,
shaking the men from their conversation. They stood, stumbled across the
shallow creek and pushed into the woods. After a short time the rain let up
and, inexplicably, the clouds parted over the western horizon. The men stopped
at the crest of a wooded hill, watching the sun trace its path beyond the
ocean.

“It won’t be our last,” Ruiz
said. “Come. We shouldn’t stop here. There will be plenty more sunsets for all
of us. Come.”

The three men started down the
hill, but Bryan lingered another moment. Would there be another sunset? Would
he and Eli ever have the chance to watch the end of the day together?

It was a shimmering torch, that
sun, a beacon of blinding orange light that cast a single tree in silhouette.
It was beautiful, and he savored it a moment longer before plunging down the
hill in pursuit of his allies. 

It didn’t take long for the light
to fail, and soon they were feeling their way from tree to tree in darkness.

Twenty minutes later they arrived
at a small clearing. The smoldering remnants of a campfire lingered at the
center of the clearing; Bryan took a step toward it and Fausto jerked him back
violently.

“Wait,” he hissed.

He found a pine, reached into its
lowest boughs and tugged a dead branch free. He packed it back to the clearing
and tossed it onto the apron of the fire ring.

A whip-saw twang sounded like a
sour note on an old guitar and a nylon-mesh net shot out of the loose soil and
into the branches of the closest Sitka Spruce.

The trio of men fixed their gaze
on Ruiz. “How in the hell did you know to do that?” Blaylock said.

“It’s just caution. It keeps us
alive,” Ruiz replied. “We’ve got to move quickly now; I need the three of you
to gather tinder. Pick up anything that’ll burn. I know they’ve raked theses
woods, but they can’t get all of it. This was a mistake on their part. They
should have used a digital obstacle instead.”

He turned into the woods and
began to pick his way through the ferns, searching for dry, organic matter. The
others followed suit and before long they had a sizable pile.

Ruiz crept into the clearing,
knelt and blew on the dying fire. After a few minutes he’d stoked a honeycomb
of red coals on the tip of a small branch back to life. He brought it over to
the pile of tinder and got a roaring little fire going.

“Damn that feels good,” Boyce
said, warming his hands on the edges of the flame.

“Enjoy it another minute. With a
little luck, we can use it to put a little more distance between us and the
bulls,” Ruiz said. He rubbed his hands, crowding the blaze with the damp cuffs
of his blue jeans.

He tore one of the sleeves from
his shirt and wrapped it around a longer branch. He plunged the tip into the
fire, where it quickly ignited.

“That rain we had earlier is no
help to us. Still, we have to hope.”

Norton appreciated the man’s
optimism. He’d made the same proclamation a half dozen times since they’d
cleared processing.

Fausto strode back into the
forest, Eric and Bryan following him. Boyce was trying to light his own torch.

“Under the canopy, things are
much drier. Scoop up those pine needles, Bryan.”

Norton knelt and began to pile
them at the base of a huge group of ferns.

“Good,” Fausto nodded, touching
the flame to the base of the pine needles. The pile began to smoke and then,
with an audible poof, the ferns caught, the fronds curling quickly in the
flame. Soon, there were flames licking the lower branches of a couple of the
smaller junipers.

Boyce threw his branch into the
fray and the men searched frantically for more flammable material to keep the
blaze going until the junipers caught. It took some time—time that felt
dangerously short to each if them—but soon the junipers were alight and tossing
plumes of smoke into the night sky.