Read the first three chapters of Many The Miles, the fast-moving Florida thriller about unconditional trust and the selfless kindness of strangers.
The text might contain language or sexual references unsuitable for under 18s.
© Annie Holder 2019
You can run, but you can’t hide.
Gage Rutter is alone, and that’s the way he wants it – travelling the empty trails, always moving, keeping the memories at bay.
Sometimes, he’s even able to forget that terrible night; the raging wildfire that killed his wife and week-old son.
Irrevocably damaged by the pain of his loss and the guilt of his survival, encounters with humanity are agony to him now.
All he needs to sustain him is scouring wind, open sky, and the freedom of the road.
When he stumbles upon the barely-breathing body of a horrifically-injured woman in a remote gulley, is the fragile peace of Gage’s self-imposed isolation about to be shattered forever?
Who is she, where has she come from, and why won’t she utter a word?
MANY THE MILES by Annie Holder
BEHIND YOU
Mal would kill her if he knew what she was doing, but he’d demanded proof, and she was determined to get it. Whatever noble crap she might spout about this being a crusade for justice, the truth was more prosaic. Bye-bye backwater; hello big-time. The political scoop of the decade, if she could obtain watertight evidence – and for that, she literally had to catch him in the act. Nothing else would do.
At ground level was a small, square window. No lights showed at the rear of the house. She could squat here all night waiting for something to happen, or she could investigate what she’d been told about the basement.
A swift sprint across the well-lit garden from sunken jetty steps to rear terrace, dropping to her stomach and wriggling sideways under cover of the nearest shrubs; she caught her breath, watched the house, and waited.
Nothing happened.
No one appeared; was she alone here?
She scooped a small handful of gravel and threw with little accuracy in the direction of the window.
Waited again.
Still nothing.
No light within.
No discernible movement.
She scooped and threw another handful. Hard to aim from flat on her stomach under the lush branches, the gravel bounced off the patio and peppered the rendered side of the house with muddy blobs, fortunately liberally spattering the window too. This time, there was something; a writhing, squirming stripe of white like a worm crawling behind the glass. Then another. Rolling awkwardly onto one hip, she fumbled with her cellphone in its waterproof pouch. She snapped a series of pictures, zooming in on the last. Despite the camera lens having to focus through the plastic pocket, she could easily identify that the worm was a finger!
As she scrabbled from her hiding place, the pouch slid into the freshly dug earth, forgotten in her exhilaration. Scuttling across the lawn and crouching at the window, she tapped cautiously. More fingers, different shades of skin, hooked over the boards she now realised covered the window on the inside. Female fingers; slim, with delicate nails. Some bitten, some with coloured varnish chipped and flaking; more and more different digits poking through. Pressing against the glass, cupping her hands around her face to block out the garden lights, she could see through slits in the haphazardly affixed planks to the glint and moisture of eyes peering back at her. The swoop of long lashes. The curve of a female cheek. Movement behind the wood. A change of observer. Different skin. An earring. The collar of an animal-print blouse. Rocking back onto her heels, she felt frantically around the window for a gap where she could slide something under the frame to prise it open. Perhaps it would be better to find a stone to smash the glass? Utterly absorbed in casting about the immediate vicinity on hands and knees for a suitably heavy rock, the crunch of shoe on gravel made her start, and whirl around. She saw legs in dark suit trousers, creases pressed to sharp points, and was about to dart crablike towards the cover of the hedge when something heavy struck repeatedly above her left ear, making her pitch forward; burning, throbbing agony spreading outward from the impact point. In the close and muggy night air, she registered the surprising cold of the sprinkler-watered lawn against her cheek, and sensed looming shadows suddenly blocking the light.
****
The sound shifted. The rumble that had been building behind him, like approaching truck tyres on a deserted highway, fell silent for so short a time he was barely aware of its absence, but when it guttered and roared anew, he subconsciously understood it was closer now; louder; and something more. Something worse…
Reassured that the flat slab of heat had remained unwaveringly at his back as he’d tugged at the stable doors and hauled open the gates, suddenly his left eye was prickling and blinking involuntarily, and was it his imagination or did his back feel cooler, as if he’d been snoozing in the summer grass and unwelcome clouds had covered the sun? The left side of his face felt scorched, and his ear throbbed uncomfortably. He brought up a distracted palm to cup it protectively. The released horses turned as one, like a shoal of fish reacting to danger. Ears up, eyes bulging, nostrils flaring, they surged past him directly towards where he believed the threat still was. Why would they run straight into trouble?
He swung in the opposite direction to the fleeing animals, terror tightening within him. Sure enough, the wildfire had done what they said it wouldn’t. When he’d left the house, the flames were still at a distance, doing what the experts had predicted, their travel slowing as the wind dropped. Time enough, he’d reasoned, to get down to the stables, turn the precious horses loose to outrun danger if it was within their power, and get back to the house for Joelle and the baby. He could carry both recovering wife and newborn son to the truck, throw in the bags they’d already packed, and hightail it into town like everyone else.
The birth had been premature, complicated, gruelling, and Jo had needed a caesarean. Days later, and she was already up and about, but sore, slow, moving with the ginger care of unpredictable pain, and unable to manage stairs or baby without assistance.
Even as he began the several-hundred-yard pelt back up the stony track from stables to farmhouse, he already comprehended the change in wind direction was not the forecasted slackening in intensity, but simply the demon casting about for fresh morsels to satisfy its still-voracious hunger. Now, he could see the flames shooting upward forty feet or more behind the sloping tin roof of the farmhouse, moving closer with unbelievable speed. Each heavy-bass whump as the next huge, tinder-dry fir tree ignited like a struck match sent a vibration through the ground under his feet. The pines glowed white-hot as they were consumed by the bright orange fire. The dense forest petered out ten yards from the rear of the house. It wasn’t enough. As a kid, he’d seen wildfires leap the wide, flat lanes of empty highway in the time it took a dumbstruck boy to draw sharp breath. The sun-bleached lawn would prove a woefully insufficient firebreak. He tried to run faster. The shiny soles of his boots slipped in the stony dust, and several times he nearly went over, throwing out a frantic palm to steady himself. Chest heaving in the searing, smoke-filled air, he gasped aloud with every agonising breath, each exhalation a shout of hopeless pain, burning from the inside out.
The fire roared louder than a sandblaster the closer he got, the air around him thick with falling ash and glowing embers. Every tree that tumbled sent a shower of sparks shooting upward in a vertical column like a ghoulish firework. He could smell something that reminded him of branding – burnt fur and blistering skin – and realised it must be him, the hair on his exposed arms and bare head singeing with the indescribable heat. His eyes were so sore and pouring with tears he couldn’t make the house out properly; an indistinct black silhouette against an inferno so bright it hurt to look at it. He was close enough to hear the screaming now. He pictured what he could not see – Joelle clutching the wailing baby to her breast, a prisoner in the upstairs of the already-burning house, leaning as far out of the window as she could get, yelling for rescue. Could she see him, illuminated as he must be by the brightness of the flames, ineffectually stumbling and staggering, getting slower and weaker with every step?
“Gaaaaaage!”
That was when the flames hit the propane tanks, punching out a fireball like a bomb blast, and silencing everything but the scream inside his soul.
****
She was able to discern only daylight or darkness through minute cracks in the corrugated metal walls of her prison.
She was glad of her wetsuit, as the floor was permanently saturated, and it at least meant she could retain some body heat despite the moisture seeping into the neoprene. It was hard to change position. She wasn’t restrained, but the slightest attempt at movement made her feel dizzy, nauseous, and produced such sharp, stabbing pains across the crown of her head that it felt as if she was a plush toy in an arcade game, slowly borne aloft and dangled by a gripping claw around her skull. Enforced immobility kept her sitting upright, back against the wall, head leant uncomfortably on the ridged metal, legs splayed across the wet floor, bottom numb.
During the day, her prison was an airless oven; at night, an icebox. In the morning, a blinding shaft of white light sliced through the dimness directly in front of her, touching first her kayak shoes, then the grubby skin of her shin, sliding up her thigh, rippling across the wrinkles of wetsuit and rash vest, and finally shining straight into her squinting left eye, making black dots pulse disconcertingly before her swimming vision. The sunlight moved to her right throughout the day, stabbing harshly through screw holes and mismatched panels. Motes of dust temporarily caught in its piercing beam revolved slowly, like ballerinas pirouetting in a stage spotlight. Although the travelling sun marked the passage of time, the pain and disorientation made her drift, leaving her unsure whether the light waking her in the morning and the cold rousing her to shuddering consciousness at night, were hours or days apart.
There was a metal bucket beside her. She didn’t know how it had got there – whether it or she had arrived first – only that it had water in it. Uncertain whether it was suitable to drink, she tentatively tested it whenever she was thirsty, passing cautious drops from fingertips to tongue. She used it sparingly, as she had no idea if the bucket would be refilled once it was empty. There was no food…or perhaps there had been, and she just didn’t remember it? She felt too sick to eat anyway.
She knew there was a reason for her being here, but couldn’t recall what it was. She had no idea who her anonymous captors were. Square jaws and neat haircuts, cufflinks and tiepins, gun holsters showing when their jackets swung open. She supposed she was meant to be frightened, but was too far-gone to care about anything but the longing for gentle hands to lift her out of the cold and wet, support her pounding head, lay her tenderly on a dry mattress, and cover her chilled body with a soft blanket.
She opened a swollen eye and observed the first blade of light carving through the darkness, illuminating one neoprene-shod foot. Sun-up. Soon its heat would arrive, putting a stop to the uncontrollable shivering that tortured her night-time hours, eventually bringing welcome warmth to the metal at her stiff and sore back during the afternoon. Contemplating reaching for a scoop of water from the bucket, she found she lacked the energy to lift her arm. She licked her dry lips, and drifted again…
****
Awakening. The sun had moved. Full daylight now. The prison was already hot and close. Crickets called unceasingly until her ears rang with the rhythmic reverberation. Barely able to open her heavy eyes, peering from under her lashes, she was startled to focus on the gleam of an unusual belt buckle in a shaft of sunlight, shiny shoes squelching footprints in the slimy dirt of the damp floor. Alarmingly close voices murmured right above her, but she couldn’t look up at the faces without tilting her head, and moving was simply not an option if she didn’t want to pass out again. Were they discussing her? Her fuddled brain struggled to make sense of it.
“Any idea yet?”
“None.”
“Definitely no ID?”
“Nothin’…”
“And she was where?”
“On the fucking grass, man! Trying to prise the basement window open!”
“Shit…”
“One of the ones that got away, do you think?”
“Dressed like that? Anyway, if you got away, would you come back?”
“I guess not.”
“So, what’s your explanation? She just kayaked past in the dark?”
“I don’t know…”
“That’s the end of the canal! One way in, one way out. You’ve got to mean it to go right up there. What was in the kayak?”
“A map of that spit of land and the channels around it.”
“Nothing else?”
“No sir, Mr Logan; we’ve had it apart. You think she’s a cop?”
“With no back-up, no radio, no gun? She’s no cop…but she had to have a reason to be there – and she hasn’t said a thing?”
“Floyd hit her a coupla times…probably a bit hard. He panicked! We both did!”
“What’d he hit her with?”
“Butt of his gun. She’s been days here like that. Hasn’t moved. Got a pulse, but it’s weak. I ain’t sure she’s really conscious any more.”
“Jesus… This is a big fucking problem! I hope Floyd knows that.”
“Yeah, he does.”
“Look…here’s the deal; whoever she is, just get rid of her.”
“What – “
“Wait until it gets dark, chuck her in the trunk, drive her somewhere, and dump her.”
“Where?”
“I couldn’t give a shit. Far away from here. You and Floyd created this goddam problem, you can fix it. I want her gone, tonight…ok?”
“Yeah, man…yeah, ok.”
“Good. And we won’t speak about this again.”
“Sure thing, Mr Logan.”
“Oh, and Tyler?”
“Yessir?”
“Coveralls and gloves, yeah? Burn them when you’re through…and not near the body, right?”
“Understood.”
“Just get it done, man. No fuck-ups…and no one need ever know.”
****
Her body lifted, torso flopping heavily down a wide back, hard swell of a shoulder digging uncomfortably against her pelvis, pressure in her hanging head pulsing and building agonisingly. A swinging trail of glutinous, acidic vomit escaped one corner of her mouth as she tried to beg to be righted before her brain exploded. Carried swiftly from her prison, she could feel a breeze on her exposed skin, and hear the unmistakeable rustling of dry leaves in what must be tree canopy above. Behind her, she heard the clatter of the bucket being lifted and the gush of the water emptying out, presumably across the floor, washing away any evidence of her presence there. The blood flow returning to her bruised and numb buttocks made them burn and itch like chilblains, nerve endings leaping. She tried to speak again, but all that escaped her lips was another bubble of sticky saliva, and no sound.
When she next awoke, it was to perceive movement; the rocking motion of vehicular travel along an uneven road surface inducing the uncontrollable urge to vomit once more. One monumental effort to roll onto her side lest she choke resulted in further loss of consciousness from the exertion.
A feeling of flying – delicious weightlessness during which even the unbearable pressure in her head seemed to lighten for a moment – before the sharp and winding trauma of a hard landing on unyielding ground. Her stiff limbs screamed at the impact.
She must be rolling, as grit filled her slack mouth, dust compacted her nostrils, and sharp stones and vegetation scratched and sliced at her uncovered skin. Suddenly, a greater agony than any she’d experienced so far – a million needles inserting themselves into her from chest to hips. What new horror was this? She tried to open her eyes, but they were gummed shut with Lord only knew what vileness. Presently, she understood she was finally, mercifully still. The tumbling, tightening terror was over, but a fresh torture seemed just beginning. The forest of sharp points made their deeply embedded presence aggressively known at the minutest physical twitch. Such was its rigidity, whatever material now bound her restricted her ability to breathe deeply. Unable to draw in sufficient oxygen, it didn’t take long to lose her fragile grip on consciousness once more…
LEAVING
Once he was well enough to sit up, and could dispense with the itchy, uncomfortable oxygen tube that rubbed the tops of his ears and made his upper lip sweat, his mother, pale and grim, placed a box of salvaged personal items onto his lap; pitifully little to indicate three lives lived in the destroyed building.
Photograph albums, mostly ruined. One leather-bound folder was the baby’s album, with a two-page spread for each month of the child’s first year. Only one page of pictures was completed: in hospital, coming home, meeting his bigger cousins, being sniffed by the curious dog and everybody laughing.
One page…
Plenty of time to fill those plastic sleeves with his son’s first smile, first jar of baby rice, first roll over on the rug before the fireplace, first attempts at crawling, first cruising forays around the furniture in preparation for those first magical unsupported steps. Plenty of time…
He stacked the other albums to one side of the cardboard box, unopened. Not yet. Later.
Wedding picture still in its frame, glass broken, photograph beneath bubbled and rippled with the heat, but still recognisably them. It had been on Jo’s dressing table in the bedroom, next to the mirror where she’d used to sit and brush her long hair. The bedroom…where his wife and son had been trapped when the wildfire did its terrible worst. How was it fair that this picture had survived when they had not? He stacked the photograph against the albums, its broken face hidden from his sight.
He assumed there was nothing else of note in the box. He retrieved a pair of his spurs, metal blackened, leather straps burnt away: useless. Beneath them was a small wad of folded tissue. He bunched it in his fist, irrationally angry. Had someone thought these shabby, boxed remains of a once-happy life were trash? He was about to discard it atop the remains of his untouched, congealed dinner on the tray-table over the bed, when his clenching fingers detected a hard centre in the ball of softness. He unpicked the layers and discovered Jo’s wedding ring, cleaned and polished. It sat small and shiny in the centre of his calloused palm. His mother shifted nervously in the plastic chair next to the bed. Before he thought too deeply about it, he pushed the small ring onto his left little finger. It stuck at the knuckle, then slid down and sat comfortably against his own wedding band. He wasn’t certain, but thought he detected a slight lessening of tension in his mother’s erect form. She made no comment, so neither did he. He moved his fingers to click the two rings together, then nodded once, and continued with the box.
He withdrew another item: one partially melted baby bootee. His body spasmed, and the tiny shoe fell from his trembling fingers. Jo had bought them even though he’d said it was crazy, the kid’d be too small to wear them for six months or more. She’d laughed, agreed, insisted, and he’d put them in the cart with the sardonic observation that they really didn’t have to buy every stitch of clothing to see the kid through from kindergarten to college before it was even born. She’d pouted playfully, and flounced off with as much sass as a girl can manage at eight months’ gone. Dumb idea or not, she’d got her way, of course. They’d bought the bootees and countless other unnecessary items too. All gone now. A waste. All of it a waste. The sweet little shoes his beautiful boy would never grow into. The empty pages of a baby album that would never be filled.
His voice remained a hoarse croak, his vocal chords damaged, but he managed to whisper, “I can’t look at this now, Momma. Maybe keep it…you know…for sometime later…?”
They made brief, significant eye-contact, and his mother slid the box off the bed onto the floor, pushing it out of sight. Once he knew it was gone, he felt able to take a breath. His chest still hurt, his throat hurt, his eyes hurt, his mind, his heart, his guts, his soul…
His mother was speaking, hesitantly, “Vernon was asking what you want done with the damaged land?”
Gage thought of his brother-in-law; big, solid, dependable – a man of action, not words. While everyone else wrung their hands and fretted over the best thing to do, Vernon got his head down and worked the problem.
“Tell Vern to decide. He and Jan’ll do the right thing.”
His mother forced a prim smile, and patted his bandaged forearm condescendingly with soft fingers. Did she truly expect him to give a shit about the farm? What did it matter? Vernon could run it without him.
She persisted, “And soon, you can come home to us while you decide…what’s…next for you…”
He closed his prickling eyes and eased his sore body carefully back against the propped pillows, whispering, “I told you, Momma, I can’t think about it now.”
His mother pursed her lips disapprovingly, took a breath, and counselled patiently, “Gage, you’re twenty-nine years old. You might live until you’re ninety. Refusing to acknowledge that you have the good fortune of a future will not bring Joelle or Ryan back. When Daddy died, did I decide my life was over? I miss him every day, and I’m sure you do too, but we didn’t make him sick, any more than we made that fire roll through our land! What just happened was awful, cruel, unjust – but it’s not your fault – “
“It is!” His damaged voice cracked and squeaked like a pubescent boy’s as he wailed, “I could’ve got them out of the house! I should’ve – “
The fury of his mother’s retort shocked him into silence. She pounded her fists manically on the metal rail around the hospital bed, “Shoulda, woulda, coulda! Stop this, Gage! Stop hiding! You have to deal with what is, not what might have been! It’s too late, Honey, you can’t change it! You have to think about what comes next!”
Next. He grunted humourlessly. There was no next. Next had vanished in the split second of that explosion. There was only the unbearable misery of Now.
****
He tried, and not only to please his mother. He understood he was twenty-nine, not ninety-nine; that life would continue, and he must find a way to live it tolerably well. The months ground interminably on, but the guilt at his survival refused to abate. If anything, it deepened the more he endeavoured to push it away. Gradually, his health improved. He became stronger, his natural physicality returning to almost what it had been before the fire. He turned thirty. It didn’t feel like a milestone. Thirty years’ old: no wife, no family, nothing to look forward to but more of the tormenting same as he’d endured for the last nine months. He began to blame the farm for everything, as if it alone was responsible for preventing his full recovery. He dreaded waking up in his single bed in the tiny box room, listening to the morning sounds of Janice’s happy brood beyond the bedroom door. He resented the chores that became more meaninglessly onerous with every day. Finally, he decided if the hurt wouldn’t leave him, he must leave it instead.
A tent, a sleeping bag, some clothes, his hunting knife, his father’s fishing rod – plus the practical stuff; pots, pans, cutlery, headtorch, shotgun, axe, toolkit. Right down one end of his rucksack, wrapped in a towel, the rippled wedding photograph and his son’s half-melted bootee. He didn’t tell anyone he was taking those. His mother presented him with a packet of plain postcards, and exhorted him to write. Janice gave him a small, framed photograph of them all on the porch steps. Vernon, like a huge, benevolent Buddha, sat in the centre with a grinning toddler on each knee and his ever-faithful Blue-Heeler, Lacey, lying at his feet. Gage’s mother sat on one side, holding a photograph of his father in her lap. His little sister was on the other, beaming proudly, slim fingers curled around her husband’s bulging bicep. Gage had smiled, and playfully pinched his sister’s arm, “It’s a long vacation, Janny. I’m hardly gonna forget what y’all look like.” He’d noticed the quick, nervous glance pass between husband and wife. Had they decided he was never coming back?
Truck packed, he kissed the chubby faces of his gorgeous little nieces, patted the dog’s soft head, hugged his mother tight, cupped his already-crying baby sister’s cheek in one palm, and clasped his brother-in-law’s mighty shoulder with the other, trying to grin.
“Back before you know it,” his mouth smiled, but his forever-damaged voice cracked over the words.
He got in the truck fast, and drove away waving and honking the horn as if he were embarking on the best and most-exciting adventure ever, when really what he was doing was running away.
In the rearview mirror, he could see his mother wiping her eyes with a blue handkerchief. The barking dog and waving babies started after the truck, running into the clouds of dust thrown up by his departure. His brother-in-law raised one massive arm in farewell, gently folding the sobbing Janice against his chest with the other. They’d be all right without him. They had Vern to take care of them.
****
He drove for three days on two stale sandwiches and four cups of coffee, only pulling off the road for gas or to find a secluded spot to hole-up for the night. The weight of nameless anxiety pressed upon him as if he was being buried alive, the tightness in his chest leaving him struggling to manage a deep breath. He spent more time with his eyes glued to the rearview mirror than he did watching the road in front of him. What if he kept driving to the ends of the earth and it made no difference? Might he just as well have stayed home, surrounded by people who treasured him, and whom he cherished just as fiercely? But he knew he was a baleful presence in their contented midst. He was well-aware that interacting with him in his current state pained his mother, upset Janice, worried Vernon, and confused his small nieces. Hell, he even made the animals edgy! Stand brooding too long in the stables and he caused the horses to turn in agitated circles, trying to evade whatever malignance pulsed unbidden from him. He wanted to purge himself of the rawness of this guilty grief so he could return home freer, lighter, and better able to participate in normal family life with his previous good humour. When she looked at her adult son, was it paranoid to think he could see disappointment in his mother’s previously proud eyes? Was he no longer the man she’d raised him to be? The idea he was letting everyone down stung him. Had they all breathed a sigh of relief as his truck turned down the curve of the driveway and disappeared from sight?
He was looking in the rearview mirror again, hunted eyes staring back at him from a gaunt, prematurely-aged face he barely recognised as his own. Abruptly, he saw what he must do. Slamming on the brakes, he brought the truck to such a sudden halt that the seatbelt tugged sharply across his collarbone, and left a red weal at the base of his neck. He dived out as if the vehicle were an action-movie prop set for imminent destruction, yanked his rucksack after him, slammed the door, and plunged down the opposite bank towards a river curling like a ribbon of mercury through the valley below.
Despite his blundering urgency, it took over half an hour of quad-shredding strides through thigh-deep grass to reach the bank. Panting, sweating, he collapsed to his knees and scooped handfuls of the icy mountain meltwater, slurping with impatient need. Thirst slaked, heart hammering with exertion, shuddering uncontrollably with what could only be fear, he fumbled the rolled towel from the bottom of his bag and spilled its precious cargo onto his dusty lap. The photograph: blackened, rippled, ruined. One tiny shoe his son had never worn: mostly melted, no good to anyone. Why had he attached such significance to these two items? He had sentimental possessions at home, deliberately left in his mother’s safekeeping because he couldn’t bring himself to look at them, and yet he’d insisted on carrying the past with him as surely as if he was still on the farm, steeling himself to gaze upon the patch of scarred and empty land where his family home had been. He clicked the two wedding rings together as if rubber-stamping his radical decision, took an item in each hand, strode into the centre of the freezing, shallow river, and released both from his trembling fingers into the fast-flowing current.
For a while he could detect them, bobbing along with the passage of the water. Then he realised he could no longer make out the little shoe, and wasn’t sure whether the light was reflecting off the shiny surface of the photograph, or simply bouncing off the water where the picture had just been. He squinted into the climbing sun, straining to focus, gradually accepting they were irretrievably gone.
He sloshed back to the bank, tugged at his boots and emptied a gush of water from each, peeled off his saturated socks and wrung them out, then knelt barefoot at the water’s edge like a pilgrim before a shrine, and bawled the way he’d longed to since that horrific September night stole his beloved wife and beautiful boy.
By the time he crested the hill and arrived back at the truck, the sun was high, the crickets in full crackling cry, and mid-morning heat haze shimmered before his swollen eyes. He slumped in the hot truck and caressed the thin gold band around the little finger of his left hand. Then he sat up purposefully, pushed the key into the ignition, and pulled away, tyres spurting loose gravel as they sought purchase on the weather-eroded surface.
****
It was liberating to be free of the constant demands of the ranch. He’d barely ventured more than a couple of hundred miles from home his entire life. Born and bred to be a farmer, he was tethered to the land tradition dictated must pass from one generation of Rutters to the next. He didn’t resent that; indeed, until a few months ago, had never doubted his willingness to shoulder the burden. Having to face the increasing likelihood that the Rutter name would die with him had consequently hurt more than he could reasonably explain, as if he’d failed the intrepid and hard-working generations who’d gone before. At least the family tree would survive through his baby sister. Janice may be a Reynolds by marriage, but Rutter blood flowed in her veins. His rambunctious little nieces were now the future of the farm. The purpose of Gage’s life had certainly changed the night of the fire, but he was determined to rediscover a reason to draw breath every day…otherwise, what was the point? He might as well find the nearest canyon-edge, and drive straight off the side.
He decided to go somewhere completely new to him. Already into his third decade on the planet, and he’d never so much as seen the beach, let alone felt warm sand between his bare toes, or swum in the ocean. Travelling ever-further from the only home he’d known, he concluded he felt mostly ok. Not excited, or delighted, or fascinated, or adventurous. Just ok. A tentative peace settled over his embattled soul, and he tried to accept things for what they were, rather than what he yearned for them to be. Not that it was easy to be a stranger out here on the road. Extreme embarrassment at the stares his terrible burns and damaged voice attracted in gas stations, diners, and stores made him actively seek out the lonelier places, the emptier routes, and voluntarily pitch camp rather than check into Motels. He didn’t stop and visit the towns he passed through unless he needed supplies, or the weather deteriorated and he craved a warm, dry night in a proper bed, a decent shower, and somewhere to do his laundry.
It got hot. Gage was no stranger to working in the ninety-degree heat of the Western midsummer, but was adapted to the thin, dry air of the high plains. He found himself quickly drained by the unremitting humidity of the sticky South. He lost weight pouring sweat all day, filling himself up on water alone. He stopped too infrequently for meals because he couldn’t bear the feel of anything but shorts and sandals on his overheating body, and hated the horrified double-takes when he got out of the truck bare-chested, and people clocked the unsightly scars traversing his left-hand side from forehead to shin. Over the past couple of fragile years, he’d voluntarily withdrawn from gawking, nudging society to the point where he was now accustomed only to his indulgent mother, easy-going Vernon, caring Janice, his cheeky little nieces, and mile upon mile of nothing but cows and horses, grass and sky. Most folks probably wouldn’t notice the detail of a soft exchange between husband and wife in a diner, as their toddlers smeared more ice-cream across their cherubic faces than they ever got into their rosebud mouths – but Gage found he couldn’t tune stuff like that out, no matter how hard he tried. Helplessly compelled to drink in every nuance of intimate human interaction with the desperation of a hot horse slurping at a water trough, Gage sometimes felt himself going so crazy with loss and longing he wanted to screw up his eyes, cover his ears, and scream at them all to stop. Just stop. Stop loving one another so vocally. Stop being so obviously happy. Stop allowing your adorable little children to beam the way his precious nieces did, their round cheeks like apples pinkening in the summer sun. His boy had never learned to smile. He hadn’t lived long enough.
The only remedy for the threatening insanity was to get back on the road, and concentrate unwaveringly on the boring, grey avenue of winding asphalt until the agony abated.
He drove. It was ok. There was enough to look at, he could croak along to the radio without anyone complaining like they did when he tried to sing at home, and if he never got where he was going, he didn’t ever have to go back, knuckle down to his inherited obligations, and forget…
Fortunately, the United States was a vast country, but he was passing into Florida already. Then what? Stop, turn, and face the demons that clearly still pursued him despite his best efforts to be rid of them? He didn’t want to have to make up his mind, but he also knew he was rapidly running out of road.
BODY
Late afternoon on a deserted stretch of highway, perpetual heat haze shimmering in front of the truck until the whole panorama turned to liquid before his blurring eyes. He swigged the last of the water from his plastic bottle and tossed it onto the seat beside him. All he seemed to do down here was drink, sweat, and pee. He needed to go again now, but wasn’t about to make the same mistake as earlier. Out of the truck with no one around, a carload of girls had gone by as soon as he’d begun to urinate, squealing from the windows and honking the horn. Some guys probably would have found it funny, but Gage wasn’t in the frame of mind to deal with women catching sight of his penis and passing vocal judgement upon it, even from a speeding car.
At the next likely-looking exit, he turned off the highway and down a dusty track running perpendicular to it, bumping along for a hundred yards or so until he was certain no one could see him from the road. He got out of the truck and mooched to the edge of the scrubby undergrowth. As he stood there, peeing forcefully, he realised the rushing sound he could hear wasn’t tyres on the highway or wind in the trees. It was too constant and rhythmic, waxing and waning with the predictability of waves breaking on a shore! Over the past few weeks, Gage had discovered he very much liked the beach. He’d spent many of his recent hours just sitting on the sand and staring at the sunlight sparkling on the moving water, hypnotised by it in the same way the scudding clouds in the huge sky of home used to capture his imagination as a small child. He’d wonder where the shapes had been, and where they were going. He thought the same about the waves he watched roll in. Where had they begun, and what submerged secrets had they passed over on their journey to break on the shore before his sandy feet?
Bladder emptied, he stepped back onto the road and only then realised he’d managed to pee onto his own uncovered toes. Gross. And he’d finished all his water so he couldn’t even rinse them. That decided him; he was sitting down too much for someone usually so physically active anyway. He wound up the windows, locked the truck, slid the keys into his pocket, and marched briskly in the direction of the rushing sound, sandals slapping and kicking up puffs of dust.
The track stopped abruptly. He could hear the sea, and catch glimpses of twinkling blue through the bushes, but there was no clear path between this disused road and the ocean. Cheated of the sensory pleasure of cool water on his hot and dirty feet, Gage prowled back and forth along the hedgeline seeking a way through, eventually deciding he’d have to make one. Wriggling as carefully as he was able, trying to avoid scratching his half-naked body on protruding branches, he corkscrewed himself out onto a spit of coral and rock, a light dusting of white sand creating a beach no more than ten feet long, lapped by the lazy ebb-tide. Gage grinned with satisfaction at having achieved his objective, flicked off his sandals, and paddled back and forth in the shallows, appreciating the childlike diversion of playing in the sea by himself. Squelching from the water and enjoying the wet sand squidging between his toes, he pottered unhurriedly back up the beach to retrieve his shoes, absorbed in picking up and examining shells, and skimming the occasional stone. Back at the jutting spit of rock, he jammed his flip-flops into the pockets of his shorts, and climbed the few feet to stand atop it and look around. To the other side of the rock was a much smoother half-moon of sand, at the opposite end of which was a large and fine-looking villa on an open area of lawn, ringed by stands of swaying palm trees. Gage regarded the house with a twinge of jealousy. What must it cost to purchase a home of that size and grandeur in such a secluded location, with its own extensive stretch of beautiful beach? Probably more money than he’d see in a lifetime. As with all the high-quality houses he’d passed on the southern-Florida leg of his extended sojourn, it was all closed up for the boiling off-season – storm shutters down, no vehicles on the drive, no furniture on the terrace, a cover across the pool.
As Gage stood and stared with unconcealed envy at the empty mansion and, what he really coveted, a gorgeous beach of his very own, he realised there were tracks across the otherwise-pristine sand. They came out of the undergrowth five hundred yards down the beach from the house, curved around in a snake of trodden sand for only ten yards or so, and reentered the undergrowth a mere twenty feet from where he was standing. His first thought was that it might be a sea-crocodile, finding a place to hole up and wait for some unsuspecting food to scuttle by…but closer examination from his vantage point suggested regular indentations very much like the footprints he’d just left across the secret beach behind him. If the house was all closed up for the impending tropical summer, then who’d been in the woods that were supposed to be private? It might be hobos looking for a quiet, shady place off the highway to get wasted and sleep the day away, or maybe an amorous couple wanting somewhere safe from prying eyes? The footprints were above the line of deposited seaweed denoting high-water mark, so it was impossible to know how long they’d been there, but it was their location that troubled Gage. The highway was bordered on both sides by thick vegetation, meaning that whoever left the footprints had willingly fought their way through perhaps a quarter mile of dense growth from roadside to beach, only to walk the shortest distance along it, and dive straight back into the woods again. What was the point of that? If you were looking for a place to hunker down out of sight and swig your liquor unmolested, you’d only need to get a few feet into the hedge to be completely obscured from passing cars. If you were wild with passion for your latest girl, you’d hardly take the risk of her ardour waning by dragging her on a jungle trek, when a quick squeeze under the dense bushes right by the roadside would give you all the privacy you needed. The incongruity of those unexplained footprints bothered Gage sufficiently for him to decide on a little uncharacteristic trespassing of his own. A landowner himself, he usually greatly-respected the sanctity of other people’s property. He therefore made no negative judgement as he slid down the other side of the rock onto the private beach and found regimented lines of upright stakes marching at intervals from trees to waterline, swags of barbed wire strung between them: a physical barrier denoting the boundary.
From down here on the sand, the dents in the beach were obviously two sets of footprints. Gage supposed he should just let it go. He’d sneaked through where there wasn’t a proper path, and had no business being here. Whoever’d unrolled these swirls of vicious wire and staked them in place in the sand clearly wanted to keep people out…so he should probably take the hint and get going…?
Feeling guilty at what he was doing, Gage put on his sandals and hugged tight to the treeline, gingerly lifting his long legs over the fencing. Old links of partially broken stakes and severely rusted wire were scattered haphazardly among the trees, dislodged during the last storm season and obviously not included in a clean-up along this barely visited stretch of shoreline. He picked his way cautiously between them, anxious not to get caught on the razor-sharp barbs. Where the footsteps penetrated the undergrowth, the land dropped to a steep gulley, then climbed up a shallower bank back towards the highway. As he’d suspected, he certainly couldn’t see the road from where he now stood; the cover was too dense. He also couldn’t see his truck, which he knew was a very short distance away to his right. Why come here? For what? A hard, hot, uncomfortable trudge from the roadside, through the jungle of foliage, down the shallow opposite bank, across the gulley, up this much-steeper hill, and onto a beach they left metres later? Gage wiped his wrist across his sweating forehead, and sighed. Was he simply thankful to have something else to occupy his mind apart from fire, loss, disfigurement, and indefinable worries about the future?
His roaming gaze absently followed one particular tangle of the old, storm-torn fence. It curled strikingly like a backcombed quiff, affixed stakes hanging artistically in the air at intervals as if they were roman numerals on a giant clock-face. Abruptly, the sweeping swirl suddenly disappeared down the forested slope, the wooden pickets stabbing at an extreme angle into the bank, suggesting they braced a weight lower down, out of sight. Curious, he padded over to the trail of wire, squatted to prevent himself tumbling headfirst, gripped one of the firmly embedded posts in his fist, and craned over the edge.
Directly beneath, so close he could almost touch them, the soles of two little shoes pointed up the bank towards him.
****
Gage started, slipped, instinctively grabbed at the fence to steady himself, and squawked in pain as a knot of sharp wire pierced his palm. Unbalanced, he thudded onto his side in the sandy dirt, hurt hand held protectively against his stomach. From where he now lay, he could see tanned female legs extending from the shoes and down the bank. Mercifully, her head and shoulders were obscured by overhanging bushes, but he could clearly see that the barbed wire wound several times around the body, encasing the wet-suited figure from ribs to hips. Gage rubbed a thumb over the single throbbing lump in the centre of his own palm as he gaped in dismay at the intense purple circles of dried blood around each of the numerous puncture wounds, shockingly bright against the pale yellow of the long-sleeved rash vest. A surfer drowned at sea and swept ashore, tangling in the wire as waves battered the land? But the last extreme weather event with a tide capable of depositing a body this far up the beach would have been months ago, during the previous hurricane season. In such oppressive heat, decomposition would surely happen fast, and this body clearly hadn’t yet spent sufficient time in the gulley for the process to advance – so what the hell had he just found, a goddam murder victim?
Gage’s insides spasmed with the shock. He rolled his shivering, terrified body onto forearms and knees, and vomited a puddle of watery bile onto the parched sand, which instantly absorbed the moisture to leave only a bubbling crust on the surface. He rocked back onto his heels and dragged a shaking palm across his lips. He needed to calm down and reason this out. He had to raise the alarm – but where? Clearly, the closest house was empty. He had a cellphone, but didn’t stop in Motels often enough to ensure he kept the battery charged. By the road signs he’d passed, he was roughly midway between two small settlements – and knew he was at least twenty minutes’ drive from the one he’d just left. He could go back there and ask someone for assistance, but the cops would require basic information. Willing or not, he had to examine the body to at least report approximate age and other such relevant details. There could be a wallet or purse down in that gulley holding the key to her identity. It struck him she could even have a working cellphone on which he could call for help! Spurred on by this remote possibility, Gage edged down the slope until he was level with the body, apprehensively pushing aside the greenery hiding her face. One involuntary sob escaped him as he saw her long, blonde hair trailing across the forest floor, tangled with twigs, and clumped with congealed blood. As Gage pushed a large branch away, a snagged lock looped free and curled around his wrist. He recoiled in horror, shaking his hand frantically, body shuddering. It was how Joelle’s hair had felt; silky, smooth, and soft, slipping deliciously across his bare skin. He retched again, but his stomach was empty. He spat repeatedly, the vile-tasting phlegm sticking to his dry lips. Taking deep breaths, getting the burgeoning panic under shaky control, he crawled back to her side and rubbed at the film of compacted blood, sand, and soil coating her face. To his astonishment, as his faltering fingers wiped the revolting mask from her mouth, the tip of a swollen tongue protruded, and attempted to moisten the cracked and filthy lips.
She was ALIVE!
© Annie Holder 2019
Annie Holder has asserted her rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
First published by Annie Holder in 2019.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Place and public names are sometimes used for the purposes of fiction. Resemblance to any person, living or dead, is completely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the author.
With sincere apologies to all Americans for the liberties I have taken with your language…