David Morrell - First Blood

But when he tried crawling fast, he only managed a sluggish strain to pull forward. He must have been unconscious a long time back there. The light wasn't black now, it was gray, and he could see the brambles everywhere, thick and ugly, spines an inch long. He fingered his back, and he was like a porcupine, dozens of barbs hooked in his skin. He stared at his hand all bloody and struggled worming on. Maybe the kid was very close, watching him, enjoying him suffer.

Then it all confused, and then the sun was up, and through the tops of the brambles, he saw the sky bright and stark blue. He laughed. What are you laughing at?

Laughing at? I don't even remember the rain stopping, and now the sky is clear and it's daylight for crissake. He laughed again and realized he was turning giddy. And that was funny and he laughed at that. He had crawled ten feet out of the brambles into an autumn-plowed field before he understood that he was out. It was quite a joke. He squinted and tried to see the end of the field and couldn't, and tried standing and couldn't, and the inside of his head was spinning so much that he had to laugh again. Then he suddenly quit. The kid would be around here somewhere aiming. He'd enjoy watching me come out sliced to pieces before he shot. The sonofabitch I'll… Bean with bacon soup.

His stomach heaved up.

And that was a joke too. Because what on earth did he have in his stomach to heave up? Nothing. That's right, nothing. So what was this stuff on the ground in front of him? Raspberry pie, he joked. And that made him sick again.

So he crawled through it over a couple of furrows and collapsed, and then he crawled over a few more. There was a pool of black water between two furrows. He had been twisting his face toward the sky all night to drink the rain, but his tongue was still choking him, his throat was still swollen dry, and he drank from the muddy water, poking his face down close and lapping and almost passing out with his face in the water. There was sweet gritty dirt in his mouth. A few more feet. Just try to do a few more feet. I get away, I'll kill that bastard kid… tear him.

Because I'm a, but then the idea fell apart on him.

I'm a, but he couldn't remember, and then he had to stop and rest, chin on the top of a mulchy furrow, the sun warming his back. Can't stop. Pass out. Die. Move.

But he couldn't move.

He couldn't raise himself to crawl on his hands and knees. He tried clawing at the dirt ahead of him to pull himself forward, but he couldn't force himself to move that way either. Got to. Can't pass out. Die. He braced his shoes against a furrow and pushed and pushed harder and this time he budged a little. His heart swelling, he pushed his shoes against the furrow even harder and inched forward through the mud, and he didn't dare let himself stop: he knew he would never be able to raise the strength to go again. Shoes against furrow. Push. Worm. The kid. That's it. He remembered now. He was going to fix the kid.

I'm not as good a fighter.

Oh yes, the kid's a better fighter.

Oh yes, but I'm, and then the idea fell apart again as he lapsed into the mechanical rhythm of shoes against furrow — push — one more time — and push — one more time. He didn't know when his arms had started back to work, hands clawing the dirt, dragging him along. Organize. That was the word he'd been searching for. And then he clawed forward and he touched something.

It took a while to register.

A wire.

He looked up, and there were other wires. A fence. And sweet God, through the fence was something so beautiful that he didn't believe he was really seeing it. A ditch. A gravel road. His heart was pounding wildly and he was laughing, sticking his head through the wires, shimmying through, the fence barbed wire, ripping his back some more, but he didn't care, he was laughing, rolling into the ditch. It was full of water and he tumbled on his back, the water trickling into his ears, and then he was struggling up the rise toward the road, sliding down, groping up, sliding, flopping himself over the top, one arm touching the gravel of the road. He could not feel the gravel. He could see it sure. He was squinting directly at it. But he could not feel.

Organize. That was it. Now he remembered it all.

I know how to organize.

The kid's a better fighter. But I know how… to organize.

For Orval.

For Shingleton and Ward and Mitch and Lester and the young deputy and all of them.

For me.

I'll cream that fucking bastard.

He lay there at the side of the road, repeating that over and over to himself, closing his eyes to the glare of the sun, snickering at how his pants were in shreds, at how bloody he was, the blood seeping through the mud on him while he grinned, repeating his idea, telling it to the state trooper who said 'My God' and gave up trying to lift him into the cruiser and ran for the car radio.

It was night, and the back of the truck smelled of oil and grease. A sheet of stiff canvas had been pulled across the top to form a roof, and in under it Teasle sat on a bench, staring at the big map that hung on one wall. The only light was from an unshielded bulb dangling over the map. Next to the map was a bulky two-way radio on a table.

The radioman wore earphones. 'National Guard truck twenty-eight in position,' he was saying to a deputy. 'Three miles down from the bend in the stream.' The deputy nodded, shoving one more red pin into the map next to the others along the south side. To the east, yellow pins showed the deployment of state police. Black pins in the west were police from nearby towns and counties; white pins to the north were police from Louisville, Frankfort, Lexington, Bowling Green, and Covington.

'You're not going to stay here all night, are you?' someone said to Teasle from outside the back of the truck. Teasle looked, and it was Kern the captain of the state police. He was out far enough that the glare from the bulb lit just part of his face, his eyes and forehead in shadow. 'Go home and get some sleep, why don't you?' Kern said. 'The doctor told you to rest, and nothing serious will happen here for a while.'

'Can't.'

'Oh?'

'Reporters are looking for me at my place and the office. The best way I know to rest is not go through everything again for them.'

'They'll be coming around here looking for you soon anyhow.'

'No. I told your men at the roadblocks not to let them pass.'

Kern shrugged and stepped toward the truck into the full light. It was stark and accented the lines in his forehead, the pinched skin around his eyes, making him look older than he was. It did not reflect off his red hair, making even that seem lustreless and dull.

He's the same age I am, Teasle thought. If he looks like that, then after these last few days, how must I look?

'That doctor came close to making a career out of bandaging your face and hands,' Kern said. 'What's that dark stain soaking through your shirt? Don't tell me you're bleeding again.'

'Some kind of ointment he spread on too thick. I have bandages under my clothes too. The ones around my legs and knees are so tight I can hardly walk.' He made himself smile, as if the tight bandages were a practical joke from the doctor. He did not want Kern to realize how very bad he felt, sick, dizzy.

'Any pain?' Kern said.

'I hurt less before he put these bandages on so tight. He gave me some pills to take every hour.'

'Any help?'

'Enough.' That sounded right. He had to be careful how he talked about it to Kern, minimizing his pain, but not so much that Kern would stop believing him and insist that he go back to the hospital. Before, at the hospital, Kern had shown up damn mad at him for rushing into the forest after the kid without waiting for the state police. 'It's my jurisdiction, and you took advantage, and now you can just stay the hell out of this,' Kern had said. Teasle had taken it all, letting Kern get rid of his anger, and then slowly he had done his best to convince Kern that more than one person was needed to organize this wide a search. There was another argument that he did not use, but he was sure that Kern was thinking it: as many men could die this time as at the start, and somebody ought to be around to share the responsibility. Kern was that son of weak leader. Teasle had seen him rely on others too often. So now Teasle was here helping, but not necessarily for long. Despite Kern's faults, he did worry about his men and how much work they could stand, and if he once thought that Teasle was in too great pain, he could easily decide to send him away.