The E Utopia Project (8 page)

“Mistake or not, he wants to
kill you.”

They heard the sound of an
oncoming vehicle.  George raised his head for a split second.

“It’s a delivery truck. It’s
our only chance of escape. When I break into a run, you follow me. Hold on to
my belt and the hem of my trousers. Don’t let go if you want to live.”

Heart thumping, Sara slipped her
right hand into his pants and gripped the hem and the belt. George raised his
head for a split second and a bullet whizzed over them and ricocheted off the
wall of the supermarket.

“One, two three, run!” George
sprang to his feet and broke into a run, dragging Sara behind him. Spurred by
adrenaline, she matched him step for step. George timed his run when the front
of the truck was coming between them and the gunman. They sped toward the truck
and George managed to jump and grab the truck’s trailer before it passed away.
Sara held on to him with all her strength. She gritted her teeth and closed her
eyes when she felt her shoes skidding on the tarmac. Praying his belt and
trousers would not break, she gripped the fabric and the leather with her right
hand as tight as she could, and grabbed his T-shirt with her left hand.

“Put your arms round me Sara,”
George ordered, praying the driver would not see them in the view mirror and
stop to investigate.

Sara put her left arm around
him but she was too scared to take her right hand off his belt. They heard the
sound of gunfire and two bullets hit trailer. To George’s relief, the driver
accelerated the truck, sensing danger. Amid bursts of gunfire, the truck drove
out of the shopping center and turned left, putting Sara and George under the
cover of the concrete walls that surrounded the shopping center.

“Put both of your arms around
me, Sara!” George ordered, panting. He had only run for twenty meters but he
felt like he had run a marathon. He panted as his lungs sought for oxygen in
the oxygen-deficient air.

She sighed deeply before she
released her hand from his belt and put it around him. Before they broke up,
when they were making love, there were times when she thought she held him tight
as if her life depended on it, but now she knew what it really meant to hold a
man as if her life depended on it.

“The gunman must have a car
and we have to jump off before he overtakes the truck.”

“Jump off,” Sara said, panting
more from adrenaline than from lack of oxygen.

“Yes. We jump off on my
count.”

“I’m scared.”

“Sara, you can do it. If we
stay on the truck, we’ll run out of oxygen and fall. You let go of me on a
count of three.” He closed his eyes, feeling like he was about to faint from
asphyxiation. “You must land on your feet, facing the direction of the truck
and when you land you must run a few steps to reduce the force of the change in
momentum. Do you get me?”

“Yes.”

“What did I say?” he said breathlessly.

“You said I should land on my
feet, facing the direction of the truck and I must run a few steps when I touch
the ground.”

“Good. Try to jump as far
away from the truck as you can... one... two... three... jump!”

Closing her eyes, Sara pushed
herself away from him and swerved in mid-air. She landed facing the direction
of the truck and the momentum made her run for three steps before she lost her balance
and tumbled. George jumped off the truck two seconds later. His head spinning,
he unslung his breathing machine and put it on. He breathed a few deep gasps
before he ran to her.

“Are you alright, Sara?”

“I think so,” she croaked,
panting.

He took off his breathing
machine and extended it to her. “Put it on as fast as you can. We’ve got to
run!”

He pulled her to her feet as
she put on the machine and dragged her into the woods. They sat behind the
trunk of a huge American beech. 

A black car whizzed past them
at maximum speed.

“I bet that’s our guy going
after the truck.”

Sara breathed hungrily. The
oxygen from the breathing machine felt as sweet as honey in her lungs.

“We’re going to have to share
the machine. It’s now my turn.”

She took off the breathing
machine and he quickly put it on.

“Let’s get going,” he said. “When
your friend finds out we jumped off the truck, he may call for reinforcements.”

“Reinforcements? You make it
sound as if we’re in a war.”

“What do you think this is, Sara?
Do you think this is a game?”

“This must be a mistake.”

“Mistake or no mistake, he
wants to eliminate you. Let’s get moving.” He sprang to his feet and walked
into the woods.

“We must get in touch with
the police,” Sara said, following him.

George took out his phone and
switched it off. “Do you have a phone, Sara?”

“Yes.”

“Switch it off. He might use
your phone to track you.”

“But we need to call 911.”

“We’ll not use our phones
before we know what we are up against.”

Sara felt dizzy. The
adrenaline had increased her heartbeat and her need for oxygen.

“It’s now your turn,” he
said, taking off the breathing machine.

She swiftly put on the
machine and inhaled its delicious oxygen.

“It’s my turn,” he said when
they had walked for over forty meters.

She took off the breathing
machine and he yanked it away from her and put it on. He closed his eyes,
enjoying the oxygen.

“What did you do to him?” he
asked, increasing his pace.

“Who?” she said, panting as
she struggled to keep pace with him.

“Who else? The man who wants
to kill you of course. Did you ditch him like you ditched me? This time it
seems you ditched the wrong guy.”

“Ditched you?” Sara bawled.
“I didn’t know you were so fond of re-writing history.”

“Did you get promoted, Sara?
You ditch guys when you get promoted. If I remember correctly, you ditched me
when you were promoted from Deputy Director to Director of GEMA. Why did you
ditch our gun-toting friend? Have you been promoted to the UN
Secretary-General?”

“Shut up, you asshole.” The
word
asshole
echoed in Sara’s ears. The last time she used such language
was when she was in high school, talking to a boy who had grabbed her and tried
to kiss her without her consent.

“Asshole?” George exclaimed
with rage. “I risk my life to save you and you call me an asshole?”

Before Sara could say
anything, he pulled her down. She tried to push him away but he pinned her to
the ground with all his might. She gave up her struggle when she realized he
was too strong for her. Weeping, she surrendered herself to his will. There was
nothing that he could do now that could hurt her more than what he did three
years ago.

He rolled away from her when
he realized she was weeping.

“Sara, this isn’t the time to
cry?” He looked up, his eyes scanning the sky. “You have to be strong for us to
get through this.”

Sara looked at the sky and
her gaze followed his till she spotted an aircraft.

“What’s that?’ she asked,
sobbing.

“It’s a drone,” George said.
“I think it’s looking for us. We have to lie low.”

“Is that why you pinned me to
the ground?” she asked.

“Of course. Why do you think
I did it?”

“I thought... I thought... I
thought you wanted to...”

“Jesus!” George exclaimed
with horror. “Did you actually think I wanted to rape you?”

“I’m sorry, George. I wasn’t
thinking straight.”

“I risk my life to save you
and this is the way you thank me?”

“Please forgive me, George.”

“As Director of GEMA you have
so much gotten used to being around prominent people that you think that all
ordinary folks like me are scum.”

“George, I said I’m sorry.”

“Before the rape accusation
you called me an asshole if I remember correctly.”

“I’m sorry for calling you an
asshole. I overreacted.”

“Overreacted! That’s an
outrageous understatement.”

“I’m sorry,” she said
breathlessly. “That was totally uncalled-for.”

George took off the breathing
machine and handed it to her. She grabbed it and hastily put it on. She needed
the breathing machine more as a mask to hide her blushing face than as a source
of oxygen.

If anyone had told her that
she would one day ask George for forgiveness, she would have told him that he
was nuts. She was sorry for her wrong assumption about why he pinned her to the
ground, and she was grateful to him for saving her life, but that didn’t mean
that he was back in that special place that he used to occupy in her heart. No
matter what he did for her, he would never occupy that place again.
Never,
a
voice shouted in her ears.

The drone made circles above
them for two minutes before it left.

“Let’s move,” George ordered,
springing to her feet. “I think the drone is searching the area on the other
side of the road. We’ve gone far enough in the woods not to be seen from the
road. Now we turn and go parallel to the road. The Interstate 90 is not far
away from here. If we walk fast we will get to it in minutes.”

She sprang to her feet and
followed him like a little girl who was trying to catch up with her dad.

“It’s my turn now!”

She took off the breathing
machine and handed it to him.

“What did you do to the
gunman?” He asked, putting on the machine. “Is he your boyfriend or something?”

“I finished with boyfriends
when you broke up with me,” Sara said, breathing fast.

“Broke up with you? Sara, you
broke up with me. You simply shut me out.”

“I didn’t break up with you.”

“This isn’t the time for us
to do a postmortem of our relationship,” George said, increasing his pace. “If
we don’t get out of here fast, some medical examiner would soon be doing a
postmortem of us.”

They walked in silence for
more than half a kilometer, exchanging the breathing machine after every fifty
meters or so.

“Sara, they are looking for you
with drones. What did you get yourself into? Whose toes did you step on?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” His eyes
searched the sky for the drone. “Someone shot at you, chased at you and sent a
drone after you and you tell me you don’t know.”

She stumbled on a tree root
and staggered. She had to hug a tree trunk to avoid falling. “I don’t know why
someone wants to kill me. This is absurd.”

He took off the breathing
machine and handed it to her.

“Think hard, Sara.” He
crossed a small dry stream and stood akimbo, his eyes searching the sky, waiting
for her to cross the dry stream. “Why would anyone want to kill you?”

“I don’t know. My duties as
GEMA Director include saving the world from El Monstruo and that is supposed to
make me everyone’s friend.”

“Perhaps someone doesn’t want
the Earth to be saved.”

“We will all die if the world
ends? Why would anyone want to stop me from contributing to the fight against
El Monstruo?”

“Maybe they want the world to
be saved by someone else. Maybe they fear you’ll get too powerful. If you save
the world, your popularity will rise. You could become the next US President.”

“I’m not a politician,
George.”

“Maybe someone doesn’t
believe that.” He poked her. “Get down!”

Sara quickly took cover
behind a tree trunk and hugged her knees to make herself small. George did the
same two meters away from her. Looking up, Sara saw the drone going in the
direction opposite where she and George were going.

They resumed walking when the
drone disappeared from their view.

“My turn to breathe,” George
said.

She gave him the breathing
machine but he returned it to her after only twenty seconds when he noted the
shortness of her breath. Looking at him, she remembered a time when she had a
picnic with him in the woods in a place that looked just like this one. She
closed her eyes for a moment and let the pictures of the picnic flash through
her mind. She opened her eyes and pushed the pictures from her mind. Those memories
were from another life.

“I don’t think they have just
one drone. Maybe they have two or three drones looking for us.”

“We should phone the police,”
Sara said.

“From the looks of it, some
kind of mafia wants to take you out. The mafia often has moles in the police. We
can’t risk phoning the police.”

They walked at a steady pace
through the dense woods, avoiding places that had no trees. After walking for
more than ten minutes they came to the interstate.