For a beat, she looked down into the gray muted light of the forest. Afternoon was settling in and the sun had begun to move away beneath the trees. She pulled herself back, moving on her stomach until she could stand safely out of view. Somewhere down below she knew she would come to a road and farther on the church, and hopefully if she could find him, her brother.
She had grown up in the county and she knew these roads, she knew the forests and the mountains. And though she had never gone this far into the woods, or off the paths that lined and connected many of the lakes and mountains in the area, she knew where the county road ran the edge of the Eden’s Gate property and she charted a course in her head to get there. Pines and aspen on the slope then paper birch below that ran out and moved across boggy lowlands a mile on. She’d have cover all the way down the slope into the lowlands before she started coming across sedge and grassland right before the road.
She took one last look over the edge of the rock outcropping before she turned and moved downslope. A couple hundred feet on she came to a dead stop and looked back up toward where she’d been. In the exact spot she had picked to lay upon her belly, was a man seen standing at the top of the rise there looking down on her.
WILL DID NOT PUT THE RIFLE ON HER OR EVEN MAKE A SINGLE movement. He stood atop the small rise and looked down toward her. She had grown up considerably since he’d seen her last. She wore jeans and a T-shirt and a dirty, zippered sweatshirt. She carried her boots in her hands. She stood there looking back at him and if she recognized him at all she did not show it.
She was off and running before he could say a thing and for only a second he let her go. He knew where she was going and though she had removed her boots and changed her track, he could see now that he would have little trouble following her. What did concern him was the ache and sickness he had started to feel at his core. He was moving now slightly bent over with a hand across his belly where Lonny had connected with a fist and then delivered kick after kick. Will knew whatever damage had been done, a bruised organ or a cracked rib, the adrenaline of his fight with Lonny had hidden it. And now as he went on that feeling was wearing off and each step seemed to pain him further.
He watched the place she had been standing, then he set off down the rise and came into the wood. For a moment, he could see her running, the light coming through the pines above flashing on her as she moved. He took several steps forward, the ache and pain in his stomach now showing on his face. He stopped and looked to where he had seen her last, but she was not there. He wondered how much time he had. He wondered about Lonny and what Lonny had said to him before Will had moved and watched the man go over.
Then, standing there, he bent double and the insides of his stomach came up and splattered across the ground. He went down on a knee and the relief he felt was almost immediate. He could breathe again and the muscles of his stomach had come free from the knot that had bound them up so tight. Will could see blood in the vomit and he wondered again what evil thing might reside within him, whether it was an ulcer, or whether it was simply Lonny beating the shit out of him only a half hour before. But there was no time to dwell on it as he rose to his feet again then looked back the way he’d come.
John and four of his men were still out there and if any of them were trackers they would come upon him soon. Will looked back upon the rise and the path he’d taken down from it. He was unsure what to do. He was unsure what would happen, or what had been meant to happen all this time.
John had said he wanted to help Mary May, as John and The Father had once helped Will so long ago.
Will turned and looked again to where he had last seen her. He’d lost too much time and he knew it. She was scared and now she knew she was being followed. He called her name low at first and then stepping forward he cupped his two hands to his mouth and yelled her name. He had said he would protect her. He had said he would keep her safe and he would help her, but he could not do that if she ran. He could do nothing for her if he could not catch her. He called her name again. “Mary May,” he called. He let the name linger in the air and then he yelled again.
MARY MAY TURNED AND LOOKED BACK THE WAY SHE’D COME AS soon as she heard her name. She hesitated and for a second she thought about stopping. But there had been no denying the fact that she had been shot at, that the man who had likely shot at her was out there following her still, and that like a hunter using an elk call, this man was hunting her, calling out her name, hoping that it would stop her and draw her near.
Twenty minutes later Mary May saw the road. She had backtracked and crosscut the forest behind her in such a fashion that future archeologists looking over the casts of her movements in the mud would wonder if she were not already wounded in some way, delirious, and headed straight for whatever tar pit might be close at hand.
She came out of the trees into patches of dogwood and mountain ash, dotted here and there with clearings of sedge. Her legs burned slightly and her hands and forearms, though tough from years of working the bar, were scratched and dappled with minor cuts and bruises.
She had no idea where the man who hunted her had gone, and she had seen no more of him. She stopped and just listened to the forest, then satisfied he was gone she put her boots back on one at a time. A mile or so up and over the ridge was the sound of a big truck running down through its gears as it came out of the northern mountains. She tried to listen for more but all she fathomed from it was that perhaps it was a logging truck, though that seemed false to her, the church already having bought and closed the mill years before.
When she reached the road, she did not go directly out. The light was fading and she was beginning to feel the cold. She had no way of knowing exactly where Eden’s Gate was, whether it was right or left, but she was certain it was on this road. She was shivering slightly, the dusk was settling in and the thought of spending another night out here was beginning to weigh heavily on her mind. She stepped now onto the road and she began to run, feeling her lungs beat inside her chest and the air move across her skin.
When the headlights broke from around a bend in the road far off and spread their light toward her she was quick to drop off the road and hide herself within the underbrush. But the vehicle did not pass her by. It stopped fifty feet away, its headlights reaching out across the pavement, and the dusky light of the setting sun giving everything a tinge of auburn red.
She heard a door open, then she heard the sound of boots on cement and she watched the shape of a man walk out and through the light of the headlights as he came toward her. She backed now, increasing her distance, almost certain she would run. Almost certain she would need to dive headlong through the brush, that whoever had seen her would go after her and finish whatever had been started days before.
But when she heard her name it was not the same voice she had heard calling to her in the mountains. It was not John’s voice or any she had heard in a very long time. She stood now and she came forward. She heard her name called again. She walked up onto the road, almost disbelieving she had found him, or that it was him that had actually found her.
“Drew?” she said.
He stood looking down on her from there atop the road. He was thinner than she remembered, but bigger in the chest and in the shoulders and though he was bearded, his skin and eyes were much the same and she knew he was the same brother she had so often thought about and that her father had gone to find.
“Drew,” she said again, just to say it, just to speak his name as if she feared she might not get another chance.