Gunfire erupted again, and flashes of light were coming through the windows of the
basement bedrooms. One of the ailing guards, who had been too ill to get up, had surely been
found and killed. The man rushed back into the house to view the action.
Shadows were moving violently within the pool house. Carly’s world was now being ripped apart.
Soon the men would start searching the grounds for me. With the moon and stars lighting up the
landscape, I knew I would be exposed if I moved out of the shadow of the house. Taking one big
breath, I darted across the grounds, praying that no one was watching.
I managed to get near the trees without notice.
Hopefulness started inching its way inside me, until I tripped.
My foot had gotten caught. I pushed myself up through the long grass and staring back at me were
dead eyes—eyes that I had once known, eyes of one of the guards who had been shot down by
Norestrom’s men. A scream involuntarily left my lips, and I kicked, struggling to get my foot
loose.
In the distance, I heard a booming voice cry out.
“She’s over here!” a man coming out of the pool house yelled. All of a sudden, every man
looked out of the back windows of the house and started herding in my direction like a pack of
hyenas.
After I managed to struggle free from the dead guard’s grasp, I ducked into the dark woods.
Branches slashed me in the face, and I pummeled full speed into a few tree trunks. I couldn’t
see more than two feet in front of me but I could hear the men’s war cries and earth-stomping
footsteps near and around me, so I didn’t stop. I kept running, often tripping over fallen logs
and bushes. My legs were getting severely scratched and bruised. My hands were tattered. The
adrenaline was pumping too fast for me to feel much, but after a while, my burning lungs were
also starting to plot against me. Though my mind continued to speed through, my body was slowly
giving up.
When my shoulder hit an unseen tree limb, I fell backward to the ground, the back of my head
hitting the hard ground. I forced myself to get up but just fell forward on my hands.
I couldn’t go on anymore.
The forest was black, with the only light coming from an imperceptible moon that reflected off
the treetops. I couldn’t see the men that scoured the forest looking for me, but I could hear
them all around. Voices screamed all over, and inside my head. I slid my body next to a tree
trunk and shakily took the gun into my hands.
I had never actually held one before. It was cold and heavier than I had imagined it would be.
My hands didn’t fit well around the handle. I pointed the gun in front of me with both shaking
hands, resting my elbows on my knees, and curled up into a ball against the tree. I closed my
eyes and hoped that the voices would go away. In a half-answer to my prayers, the wind picked up
through the trees, and rustling leaves drowned out some of the voices. But the screaming in my
head continued mercilessly.
I rocked my body back and forth in an effort to keep my mind focused on staying warm. I was
dressed in a T-shirt and shorts, and my bare feet were covered in cold mud.
It got much colder. At first, I could feel the chill flow right through me, and my body shook
uncontrollably. Eventually, though my body continued to shake, I felt nothing. On a few
occasions, I heard branches crackling and breaking nearby as the men continued to search for me
in the darkness. I would just squeeze my eyes tighter, praying that they would go away. And they
did, every time.
After what seemed like days of being curled up against the tree, dawn seeped through the woods.
I became horrifically aware that I was no longer hidden from them by the darkness but I could
see nothing but thick brush around me—maybe this would be enough to keep me unseen?
But then there were rapid steps and crashing branches. I listened with all my senses and
realized that the noises were heading in my direction.
I had been uncovered ….
Somehow, I always knew that I was going to die alone. Maybe I even knew that I was going to die
young—or maybe I had once upon a time just wished I would die young to get it all over with—
but I had never thought that, in the face of death, I would have something, someone to fight
for.
As the stomping steps moved closer, faster, I stopped my hands from shaking long enough to cock
the gun’s lever back, like I had seen done in so many movies before.
I could now clearly hear running steps just beyond the brush that had kept me hidden until now.
Though my hands were shaking uncontrollably once again, I held onto the gun as tightly as I
could and hoped that I would figure out how to fire this thing before I was discovered. As the
leaves to the side of me rustled, I turned, closed my eyes, steadied myself tight against the
tree trunk and pulled the trigger. With a deafening bang, the gun fired. Pieces of tree bark
went flying everywhere.