#10

it's hard to be fast and silent. and it's harder to do that when you can't see a @#$^ing thing. and when there's blood in your head and you're trying to breathe quietly but move a lot of air. but there are shadows, and shadows are good. and they can hear each other, and are closer to each other than to me, so maybe that's louder. and they're shouting, which makes them easier to count: four. all men. heavy, too, which should work to my advantage, at least until they catch me. no thinking like that now, no thinking about catching and shacks and the smell of rusted metal that mixes with the smell of hot excrement and sweat. and blood. and the hood over your head.
shake it off.
focus on the shadows, the starlight, the scuttling of little desert things as you float past, trying not to break off twigs, trying not to brush against the bushes, trying not to let anything move on your wake. just focus on the breathing, long, deep breaths, as quiet as you can-- running low against the ground, eyes on the ground ahead, ears on the feet behind you.
distance. they have to look; i don't. i think i'm getting distance. hard to tell. also hard to lose somebody if you're running in a straight line. they've got to have figured out that i'm heading to the mountains. there is no way to be sure how many of them there are. hard to figure out if the road went through this range at some point, but i don't think so.

songs run through your mind at the stupidest times. i start timing my feet to genesis. i can't dance. i can't talk. only thing about me is the way that i walk. breathing gets regular, too. rocks approaching. more cover, advantage: me. quickly zagging behind a set, working from them to the first crag. scree. hard to get purchase, but deep. narrow. pick the left side, steep but managable. dusty, loose soil. scrabbling up further, just beneath the ridge.

listen.

slower footsteps, farther away. searching.

further up the side, just beneath the ridge, lots of shadow on this side. rocks. irregular. harder to pick out shapes. getting fairly irregular up here, and, to be honest, fairly steep. hands and feet now, scrabbling. they call it scrabbling. i forget what number they put on a trail when you're scrabbling.

backing into a slot, rock overhead-- perfect. just one turn, long listen. nothing. which is kind of even scarier than something. nothing still. strangely reluctant to leave. flop sweat forming, rivulets and dust. sticky shirt, little hairs sticking on the back of my neck. wipe my face on my scarf. not a bad place to stay, but would rather get to the other side of the mountains first, before the legs lock up, before the mind starts to slow, to tell me that it's okay to sleep. preposterous.

long look up ahead. crag continues as far as the eye can see, which, truth me told, is not very far at all. crag and a bit of sky, but that's it.

footsteps, suddenly. above. dust, sliding onto my head. sneeze aversion suddenly top priority. but they're passing, off to the right-- uphill. maybe best to stay here for a very very long time.

too long.

grey predawn. hands on dirt and two extremely silent prayers delivered shivvering against the mist. i ask for forgiveness for the postures i'm not about to do. the only parts that come to mine at the moment are the braided rope, the braided rope again. in my mind, i exclude the gunmen from the forgiveness i'm begging for all of us, and am immediately ashamed. somehow i've got it all wrong again.

my body is a series of warning lights, all red. creaking out of my crouch and extending into the silence, slowly up the crag. far too light out. can't believe it's so bright out.

eagle up there. at least i think it's an eagle. or maybe a hawk. never been good at those things. circling in a thermal. wonder what that means. i think it means we're near a mountain, which i already knew.

looking back, i can just make out the road, across the valley, weaving in and out of the mountain range as it turns south. nobody on it now. not even dust trails. nothing. am i dead? no wait, there was the bird. can't be dead if there's a bird, that would be crazy.

and thirsty. not hungry, just really thirsty. probably will end up hungry once i get something to drink, which will be when exactly? which reminds me to look for towns on the other side of the range. someone has to live out here. people live everywhere. there has to be someone out there.

are those power lines?

power lines!

just past the crack, over on the other set of little hills over there-- power lines! higher up so i can see. wind farm. hard to make it all out, fading into the grey nothing currently creating a little bubble of reality with squishy, impenetrable borders, receeding into the distance, retreating in the moving light, now taking on an orange tinge, like being on fire.

maybe it's the dehydration talking now.

heading downward now. cutting across a small valley, a gap between the little rows of hills-- a shortcut: the fastest way to the power lines leading away from the wind farm. leading to people, to a town.