You Only Die Twice

Chapter ELEVEN





Cheryl Dunning wasn’t sure how far she’d run, but she was sure that she couldn’t run much farther without stopping to catch her breath, which was out of the question since he was not far behind her. And so she ran, her chest burning, her legs hurting, her heart hammering, her entire being alive with the fear that this might be it for her. And for what? She didn’t know. She only knew that she had no choice but to run in these ridiculous boots to save herself if she could, though doing so was increasingly looking doubtful.

She’d run through so many twigs and branches, she could feel the blood trickling down her face just as she could see it on her outstretched arms, which were cut and scratched far more than they were earlier, when she woke on the forest floor. Parts of her forearms and hands were splintered and bruised because she had to slam through some of the thicker branches just to get through them.

Worse for her, the ground was turning into a carpet of mud concealed by a deceptive blanket of needles and leaves. Sometimes, it sank quickly beneath her when she crashed one of her heeled boots down onto it in an effort to propel herself forward, which told her that she was going in the wrong direction. She was a born Mainer who once, as a child, hunted yearly with her father and grandfather. She knew the early signs of oncoming wetlands, and there was no question that she was headed straight toward them now.

And with me wearing high-heeled boots, she thought in despair. When the mud turns to slop, what then?

There wasn’t time to process the “what,” or what was happening to her now, or why she was being chased, or who was behind it, or why she woke bruised and beaten on a forest floor less than an hour before.

She was in pure survival mode, railing on instinct while driving herself forward as quickly as she could in an effort to keep a reasonable distance between whomever was chasing her.

All she saw in front of her were trees and branches. She ducked to miss them, she swung left and then right to escape others, and sometimes she had no choice but to plow through them because they were too dense to skirt.

Pain registered and it evaporated. Twice she stumbled and fell, but she was quick to right herself and charge forward even faster than before so he couldn’t close the distance between them. Each time she screamed for help, the man behind her laughed through winded gasps. Once, she heard him say, “Jesus ain’t going to help you, whore. Jesus is the reason you’re running right now. Jesus is cleaning his house of warts and he wants you out!”

He was crazy. A religious zealot. Maine was filled with them, but nothing that approached his level of insanity. He planned to kill her.

So, why doesn’t he just do it then?

Because he wants the hunt.

She took a sharp turn around a large rock covered with moss and leaves, and this time, the woods opened to her. Fewer branches to dodge, fewer twigs to scrape her face, but the ground sank quicker beneath her boots, which worried her because she knew what that meant.

Soon, she’d approach an estuary or worse. Maybe something deeper. A larger water source. Something she wouldn’t be able to run through without becoming mired in it.

And then what?

Should she turn right? She glanced in that direction and saw nothing but Autumn’s brownish hues and the pools of water on the ground, the latter of which shimmered in the sunlight slicing through the trees.

Going there held no hope, so she looked left. And what she saw when she did was something so threatening, it either would be the end of her or, if she played it right, it could offer her a possible way out.