Runners

A deep breath.

“Wake up. It’s time to go.”

“Yeahbuhwha-“

It was dark still. He rose from the floor, shaking with sleep. Bud was already at the door, his rucksack slung over his back and a bandana tied loosely around his neck like some bandit in an old John Wayne movie.

“We’ve got to get a move on, Clark. Before it gets too bright out.”

Clark stretched and tossed his one good shirt over his back, wincing as cloth touched a long, dirty gash on his shoulder. His pack, half-empty and falling apart at the seams, was overturned on the floor. He picked it up with a frail, rail-thin arm and with shaking fingers zipped it and put it on.

“Okay,” he said, his voice hoarse and cracking from thirst, “Let’s go.”

***

The forest was quiet and dead still. It was early. Too early for the sun, too early for the squirrels, too early for the birds, and too early for Clark, to put it bluntly. He was tired, tired as bones, and if he had a choice, he’d just lie down and sleep like Rip Van Winkle and only wake up when his beard was gray and the world had forgotten all about him.

“Hey,” Bud called from further ahead. “Don’t fall behind.”

It was hard for Clark to keep up. Bud was big, tall, and strong, like the trees that they had come to take shelter in. Clark wasn’t. He was thin, skinny as a rail with a bad complexition and a crooked back that kept him up at night and made it hard for him to move. The kids back in school used to call him “Hunchy”.

Bud was waiting, leaning against a tree, polishing his silver handgun with his breath and the dirt-crusted hem of his shirt. They were travelling by starlight once again, just as they had for a long while before. Always on the move, never staying still. At first there were five, then four, and then, finally, their numbers had dwindled to two. They were the only ones left now. They couldn’t stop running; Clark thought it right that they couldn’t just leave everyone else to rot for nothing.

“How may bullets left?” Clark asked, panting and sweating and near out of breath.

“Three. Our little skirmish back in Kyburz cost us quite a lot of metal.” Bud twirled the gun around his index finger and shoved it back into the gap between his jeans and his ass, just like a gunslinger in the old west.

“Shit. Y-You think they’re still after us?”

“Why wouldn’t they be? Even if we didn’t do what he did, they’d still be after us. With everything we’ve done? They’ll just shoot us on sight. Hell. If we’re lucky, they’ll catch us, beat the living shit out of us, and then kill us.”

“They wouldn’t.” They were on the move again, each crunching twig underfoot a loud intruder upon the two men’s lives.

“Why? If we were in their shoes, we’d do the same thing.”

“I wouldn’t,” Clark muttered.

“Speak for yourself. If I were them I’d want the cold bastards to suffer.” Bud gave a cold puff of laughter and quickened his pace through the woods.

***

After a few hours, the sun came up and the frost started melting and running down the sides of the trees like there was sweat from the bark. The men were sweating too. Clark was always sweating. In the heat, in the cold, when he ran, when he sat, it didn’t make much of a difference. If Clark was alive, he was sweating.

They reached a cliff, where the forest seemed to abruptly drop twenty feet below their feet.

“Let’s rest here,” Clark said with fatigue catching his voice like phlegm.

“Can’t,” his companion responded flatly. “We’re out in the open up here. We’d be sitting ducks.”

Clark ignored him. He lay back against a thick evergreen and massaged a thick knot out of his back. Bud sighed and, realizing he had no choice, grudgingly joined him against the tree. That was always how it worked. Bud would object to Clark’s request but then end up doing it anyways. He was always the malleable man, which was how he’d gotten long as far as he had.

He pulled a nearly empty carton of smokes from his pocket, shook it, and extracted a sad looking one from its brothers. Bud had always been a smoker. At least, that was what Clark believed. No one else in the group did except for him. He thought the act looked dignified, made him look smarter, older. As if the fugitive lifestyle didn’t make him look old enough.

A quick, flickering flame later and Bud’s head was one big smoke cloud. Clark turned away and coughed. He had never been able to stand the smell of tobacco. He asked, “You think they’ll ever stop chasing us?”

“Nope.” Bud’s voice was muffled behind the curtain of smoke that held in front of his face.

“Then how long are we going to keep running?”

“Long enough.”

Silence. Bud finished his cigarette, let it drop to the forest floor as a hollow cylinder and stomped it into the ground until the dirt covered it.

“You ready yet?” Bud put his pack back on and adjusted its straps, tightened his belt (Clark knew that they were both getting dangerously thin), and explained, “We’ve stayed in one place too long. They might have seen something.”

Clark pulled himself up with a heavy groan, grabbed his sagging pack, and massaged his back. “Almost. Just give me a sec, I’ve got to do something.”

Bud frowned and placed a nervous hand on the butt of the gun in the seat of his pants. “Fine. Just do it fast.”

The hunched man nodded and turned into the forest, where the branches got thicker and it was harder to move. He got a good distance away from where they had just been to a place where a couple of trees came together tight to form a natural alcove, sheltered on the sides. Clark unbuckled his belt, let his feeble patched jeans drop to the turf, and squatted using the trunks of two trees as support for his shaking legs.

For a minute, there was nothing but the silence of the deep forest. Then a twig snapped somewhere behind him. Again. There was movement. Someone was there with him. Clark held still, the tips of his fingers digging into the sides of the trees as he strained to hold himself up. The person passed, a shadow hidden amongst the trees. Clark breathed a deep sigh of relief and pulled his trousers back up and belted them as tight as his oversized strip of leather would allow.

What do we do when one of them finds us?

There were five of them then. They were sitting around a large fire, out in the open under the night sky. It was Bud, the self-appointed leader, that answered. Simple. We run like hell.

A log cracked apart in the flames, shooting brilliantly luminous sparks into the air like stars.

Out here it’s everyman for himself. We’re only together until we’re apart. I’ll be watching your back when we’re all out here and safe but when they come- I’m saving my own damn ass first.

One of the other men rose and stoked the fire. Bud didn’t move. He was staring straight ahead into the heart of the fire, the flames dancing dimly across his eyes.

A gunshot ripped through the silence of the woods like a tidal wave of noise. The tree trunk next to Clark, where his hand had just been only seconds before, was torn to shreds in a violent explosion of bark and obliterated tree flesh.

Run like hell.

Clark took off, his aching feet suddenly alive and upbeat like they had never been before. The other person was giving chase; he could hear the man’s deep, heavy breaths as if they were his own. Clark took an abrupt turn into the thickets, desperate to shake this new assailant off.

He emerged into a new part of the woods. Here the trees were downed and long dead, all in various stages of decay. Clark leapt over a downed log, his back suddenly of no burden to him in the game of life and death. The breathing was further away now, so that Clark couldn’t quite hear it over his own. This scared him. If the man was chasing, then there was no chance to shoot.

The tell-tale click of metal and the reverberation of gun fire. Clark gave a staggered leap forward over another log. This time, the weight of his pack kept him down and he crumpled forward like a dead dog.

Aching pain in his side. Grim realization hit him now. He touched the source and brought his shaking hand back to his face. Blood. Lots of it. He was shot.

Run. Run like hell. Damn it, Bud.

He crawled now, dragging himself on his forearms with his legs twisting like a snake through the brush, hiding behind the log that hat just downed him. Heavy footsteps on the other side and gasping, wheezing, desperate breathing. Clark saw a hollow depression in the log only a few feet ahead. With the speed of a sidewinder, he slithered in, pressed himself up against the folds and went silent. The hunter jumped over.

The blood. The blood. He would see the blood, would see the hole, would see the dead man inside.

Clark clawed at the wood coffin around him. It was dead, rotting, falling apart in strips. Desperate paws clawed and scooped. The log came apart on the other side. He pushed his way out, cold, sharp breaths of fresh air and rotting organic matter rattling his insides. On all fours and covered with flesh like a newborn baby, he aimed for the thick underbrush up ahead.

The hunter leapt and roared his victory, the gun pointed mercilessly at the innocent on the floor. The gun shook back in a thick tuft of smoke and powder, a twisting swivel of metal tearing through sinew and skin and bone in Clark’s heel. He moaned and went down. The hunter knelt to meet him.

Clark made one last desperate dash, crawling, pulling himself foreward on his forearms, scooping the dirt like a winding down caterpillar, the hunger for freedom so fierce it tore him apart inside. The hunter reached down and ripped Clark back by his hair. Heavy breathing, like a smoker’s.

We’re together until we’re apart.

A gun barrel pressed against his ear, warm, a round black brand on Clark’s mind. Beaten, exhausted, a bloody fire burning through his side, he let his body go limply like a doll, and fell down onto his face, tasting earth mixed with blood. The other man turned him up, face to face. Clark couldn’t help but laugh. “Everyman for himself?”

“Give me your half.” Gasping. Chocking. Lungs coated thick with ash.

A wheezing laugh. “Is this what it’s all about?”

“It’s always been about the money, Clark.”

Wheezing, coughing, chocking, gurgling, drowning in his own blood. “Figures. Take it, take it. I won’t need it anymore. I never even needed it in the first place.”

Cold, clammy hands fumbled at his back. Clark did his best to cooperate and help but his hands were already numb and clumsy. He tried to make conversation. “It’s gotten harder to carry, you know. Since each of us ended up with a half of what was left.”

The hunter gave no acknowledgement, only a loud, choked cough as he worked at the pack. Finally it was done and the tattered mishmash of leather and fabricated materials was in his hands. “Thanks.” He pointed the gun down at the feeble other’s forehead.

Clark bit down, tasted more blood. He was bleeding it all out into the dirt. The gun clicked. Nothing. The hunter tried again. Nothing. Realization swept over him like a cold wave in the summer. He smiled. “Three shots. You’re all out.”

A roar of frustration. The gun came down crashing across his face. Back up and down again. And again. And again. A pause. He was a mess of flesh and teeth. Down again, a release of anger like a flood breaching the levees.

A break, a pause. Somewhere, the rubbing of cloth against wood. A red dot on the hunter’s forehead made him look like some sad imitation of Buddha. A wheezing cough and a laugh from Clark with his insides starting to bubble out onto the dirt. “H-Hey Bud… Guess what?”

The hunter gave no sign he had heard but Clark went on anyways. “They found us.”

The hunter’s eyes opened wide with fear, mouth hanging open, still gasping for air like a fish out of water. And he really was. A city boy at heart, the life of a running man had never suited him. He dropped the bag, mind emptying in those last inevitable moments. The bandana hung loosely around his neck, stained with sweat and faded by the sun. This final portrait of the man hung like a ghost. It even lingered a second after the shot rippled through the woods like a surge, dusting the downed man with a fresh coat of blood, hair, brain, flesh, bone. A limp torso took a step forward and, like a scarecrow untied from the wooden cross that held it, crumpled lifelessly into a disjointed, jumbled heap.

Bleeding out on the ground. Hearing the birds, heavy feet in steel-toed boots slamming against the delicate lattice of vegetation and dead matter like the pounding of his own heart. A hand not all his own fluttered over the gaping gash in his side, touched what was inside.

“Christ. Look at this.” Voices. Voices through the woods. God, it was good to hear someone else for once. Men in padded camouflage, the butts of massive military-grade weaponry still pressed cautiously against Kevlar breast plates, like they were ready for war. One knelt next to him, pressed a gloved finger to his throat, checked for a pulse and shook his head. “Nothing. I’m not picking up anything. Looks like we were late to the party.”

Others were looking through the packs, digging, searching, finding. “Got the rest of it. Let’s go. The brass will be happy it’s all over. Upset that we couldn’t bring one back alive for questioning and all that, but happy.”

The one next to him stood back up. He was young, a few days worth of stubble on his well-defined chin. “What about the bodies, sir?”

“Leave them,” an authoritative voice called. “No one’s ever going to come all the way out here anyways.”

Distant footsteps then silence. A moth fluttered down from above the trees and fluttered onto the still warm chest slick with blood and perspiration.

A deep breath.