Chapter 31 #2
“You know, Delilah, you still haven’t told me any good news, and it’s been hours.”
Calf-deep in the wet, we were so close to getting out I felt the earth solidifying beneath my toes. “Things changed.” When you betrayed me, went unsaid.
“So… you don’t have any good news then?”
I’d entertained her for hours while navigating the backwaters of whatever state we were in, trying not to freak out from the fact that we were walking barefoot through the unknown, and working not get caught by a cult—one Three had been intending to lead to us—in the process, so no, I hadn’t been preoccupied with thinking of something that would make her feel better.
“I see…” was her response to my silence.
“Good news is…” I started, not knowing where the sentence was going or why I felt the urge to calm her.
It took a moment, as I pulled her out of the godforsaken swamp and onto the muddy bank after me, to figure out what I would say next. Spotting a large hollowed-out tree, gave me what I needed.
“Good news is that we have food, and shelter, and when night falls,” I looked to the sky, at the violet, plum, and dusky orange, at the first stars peeking out overhead, “we might be lucky enough to have the sky guide us home.”
?
In the near complete darkness of the swamp, I could hardly see my own hand in front of my face, which meant we couldn’t travel by night, but we could see the light pollution from the nearest inhabited settlement.
By my guess, it was a day’s worth of walking away, if there were no surprises along the way.
I planned on working us hard and fast the next day so we wouldn’t need to spend another night in the cold wet woods.
For the record, a swamp is not silent at night.
If anything, it came to life. Bugs chittering, buzzing, frogs croaking, all of the creatures I ignored and pretended didn’t exist during day light, made their presence known.
Now and then, a low throaty bellowing reverberated off the trees confirming my worst suspicions—we were in alligator territory.
Things would have been different if I’d have been able to make a fire. Fire created a circle of warmth and safety, but not when getting pursued by other humans and their pets. And with nothing on hand but wet wood, we wouldn’t have been very successful in getting the kindling to spark.
Despite the damp and the cold, Three managed to fall asleep rather quickly. Curled against my side for warmth, I told her I’d take first watch, and that I’d wake her when it was her turn.
But the truth was, I trusted Three as much as I could trust anyone who had been brainwashed by a cult their entire lives. So, no, I wasn’t about to trust her with keeping watch, even if it meant I wouldn’t sleep.
I told myself extracting people from cults was what I did, and taking Three with me was part of the gig. That I could handle whatever came next. However, I’d never been at the center of a cult’s attentions, carrying a passenger, while trying to escape through the wilderness before.
Then again, there was a first for everything.
Like the dogs. I’d never been pursued by tracking dogs before. I’d heard enough from old Leslie’s Pies contacts who had to get dogs off their trail to know what worked and what didn’t, but that didn’t make me feel any better when I saw a beam of light arching through the pitch-black night.
Or the next.
Or the next.
Each beam illuminated a person, a dog leashed to their side—nose to the ground or in the air. Flashes of arm. Leg. Tail.
The swamp drowned out the sound of their approach, but every now and then, the light lit the clouds of moisture emanating from the dogs’ mouths.
That’s how I could tell they were getting close.
I could make out more than general shapes, I could see the dogs barking, just as I could tell what the men were wearing.
The lucky fuckers had boots and waterproof chest waders, and here I was a sitting duck in a hollowed-out tree, skin caked in muck, with only a lukewarm leech of a person at my side hoping that the dogs didn’t catch onto our scent.
My hand hovered over Three’s mouth, feeling the gentle puffs of unbothered breath as she continued to sleep. A sleeping Three, was a silent Three, and the only way I could guarantee her compliance.
If she knew how close the men were, she might change her mind about our escape, which she would have been free to do, if there wasn’t a chance she’d give me up in the process.
As the men and their dogs drew closer, Three’s teeth began to chatter, and a horrible, dreadful, thought crossed my mind—to fend for myself, and leave Three behind in the hollowed-out tree, if the men got too close.
I mean, she had planned to lead the men to us, and return to her cell. She didn’t know enough about the world to dislike her former life. In fact, she found comfort in it. Maybe this would be easier, maybe it would be for the best if I just left Three and—
No. I wouldn’t, I couldn’t, do that, even if she was a terrible traveling companion. She deserved to live her life outside of a cage. Or at the very least, get to choose her own path forward.
Light slashed over the ground before us. The men were closing in.
The all-too-familiar rise of blue-black panic swelled. My limbs so cold with fear and wet, if it weren’t for the constant waves of Three’s warm breath against my fingers, I would have thought they were numb.
The men were getting close. Any closer and we’d need to make a run for it. Any closer, and our odds of getting away plummeted.
Think before you run.
Swallowing down the lump of nerves in my throat, along with every instinct that told me to flee, I forced myself to think things through. Logically.
If the men were onto us, they wouldn’t be scanning our surroundings, they’d be bee-lining for us. Which meant they didn’t know that we were here, not yet anyway, and running now would most definitely get their attention.
Keep going…
If the men had just walked through the swamp, like us, this was the first non-submerged stretch of land they’d seen for miles… they were probably looking for a break from the water just as much as we were.
Good.
Or they came here thinking we needed a break, that we’d look to land—which we had—so we could rest.
Wrong direction…
The fact that they were closing in didn’t help matters.
If they ventured any closer it would be next to impossible for the dogs to not latch onto our scent.
Dogs could separate out odors, the mud and sulfur really wouldn’t be much of a deterrent, and the men were near enough I could start to make out their voices. Just.
The first man said something that sounded like, “I thought you said the road was this way?”
“It is,” said another.
“You sure? Protocol dictates—”
“I’m aware we need to regroup, the road is… wait is that east?” A beam of light shot west.
Another beam of light moved, this time, north-east. “No, that’s east.”
They were lost. Which would have been funny if it weren’t for the threat they posed.
“Are you kidding me, we’re an hour-and-a-half late, and we’ve been walking the wrong direction?”
“I brought my phone, not a compass.”
“Phones don’t work out here, idiot.”
“I’m aware of that now, Warden.”
“Madame’s going to have our balls for this. The key and Three are out here, and all the dogs have tracked are sticks.”
“Apparently, the dogs don’t work out here, either.”
It was obvious from the way they bickered that they too, were not only tired, but afraid. Disoriented, they’d come up with nothing, and were about to get punished for not only failing to find us, but for not adhering to protocol.
Sucked to be them.
But not as much as it sucked to be us.
“Come on, then,” all but one of the men turned north-east and began to trudge through the sludge, “or we’ll be out here all night. There’s no way they’re moving in this dark, and we need to be back on the hunt by first light.”
The man who stayed behind placed a reflective tack in one of the trees.
“Hurry up, Warden!”
“I’m doing my job, Warden, keeping track of our path. Maybe if you kept your mind on yours, we wouldn’t be lost.”
I wasn’t sure which of the men were speaking now, their voices growing distant and blending beneath the ambience of the forest. “This whole thing has been a cluster-fuck. If Warden White had done his job, we wouldn’t be out here in the first place.”
“Madame trusted him to watch the key.”
“And he couldn’t even do that.”
“Give the guy a break, we’ve been out here for eighteen hours, and we haven’t got a clue where they are. We need to give the key more credit.”
“We’re chasing two girls. It should be easy. But no, we’re being bested by someone who is pregnant and barefoot!”
“Maybe one of the other teams had more luck.”
“We would only know that if our phones worked out here!”
Slowly, but surely, their presence, along with their bickering, faded into the distance.
As anti-climactic as it was, my choice not to move had saved us. For now. But the close call meant a change in plans. And more time in the wilderness.
Yay.