Andrew Klavan - The last thing I remember

The fear gave me another burst of energy. I stopped looking back and ran even faster. Now there was nothing in front of me but the trunks of the trees and the deep depth of tangled green darkness that was the forest interior.

Then I felt an earthy cool, and the trees closed over me. The trail turned sharply and I tore along it. I looked back. The guards were lost to view-that meant they couldn’t see me either anymore, couldn’t get a shot at me at all.

But I didn’t slow down for a second. I just kept running. Running on the trail fast as I could. Leaping over holes and roots and rocks. Running deeper and deeper into the welcoming shadows of the forest. Running through the pain. Running for my life.

Never give in.

The Woods I don’t know how long I ran like that. A long, long time, it seemed like. The woods got thicker and thicker around me, darker and darker as they shut out the sun. I strained my eyes, looking for a sign of civilization. A house, a cabin, a ranger station, anything. But as far as I could see, the woods went on forever, an endless, mysterious pattern of vines and branches, massive tree trunks and low shrub.

For a while, I stuck to the trail. It was broad and flat- more like a fire road than a hiking trail-so I could move along it quickly. I figured that was the best way to put some distance between me and the guards. In here, see, in the forest, their weapons were useless at long range. There was no way they could even see me for any distance, let alone get a shot at me through the trees. So they’d have to catch up to me first. They might be able to do that if they could push a vehicle through here. But if I was right about that truck-if it was the only vehicle in the compound-or even if they had to go back to the compound to get another truck-then I had time to cover some territory before they could begin to close the gap.

So I ran along the trail as fast as I could go, deeper and deeper into the woods. But it was tough going. I was already unsteady, battered, hurt. Soon enough, I began to feel my legs start to weaken and my lungs start to give out. Not to mention, I needed a drink of water-a lot. I didn’t know how long it’d been since I’d had a drink, but I was starting to feel the need in a big way-not just in my dusty mouth and my parched throat, but in the wooziness that was seeping into my brain like fog and the weakness that was spreading from the core of me out to my limbs.

Finally, I was staggering. The trail was no good to me now. I couldn’t travel quickly anymore anyway. So I left it and plunged into the depths of the brush and trees. There was no running here, not for long. After just a few steps, the undergrowth got so thick that I had to tear it away with my hands to make any progress at all. On the plus side, the trail was soon invisible behind me, which made me suspect I was probably more or less invisible from the trail as well. Even if the guards caught up to me, they wouldn’t be able to see me. They might well miss me and run right past.

But if the way had been hard before, it was even harder now. Pushing through the brush, tearing through the hanging vines. Now that I wasn’t running anymore, the pain-that spiky torture suit of pain-seemed to close over my body again. I ached and burned. Branches scratched my face and arms. Vines and tangled bushes wrapped themselves around my legs like hands trying to hold onto me. I yanked myself free of them. I shoved myself on. With every step, my thirst got worse. I got dizzier. The weakness at my center spread steadily into my legs and arms.

Then, suddenly, I was down. I didn’t even remember falling. All at once, I was just lying on the forest floor with my face in the dirt and half my body caught in a tangle of thorny underbrush. I lay there, gasping, barely conscious at all. I tried to listen for voices, for footsteps, for gunfire-to hear if the guards were closing in on me. All I could hear, though, was the harsh, rasping sound of my own breathing and the hammering rhythm of the pulse in the side of my head.

It was a long while before I stopped gasping and another long while before my breathing and heartbeat slowed. Then, as I lay there listening for any sound of the approaching guards, other noises came to me, the noises of the forest. They sort of rose up around me so that I knew they had been there all along and I was just becoming conscious of them. There was a steady flow of birdsong, birds calling to birds in the high trees. There was a steady trill of crickets and the rising, falling rattle of the cicadas. Bees hummed and twigs and dead leaves crackled as the lizards scrambled over them.

I lay there and listened. They were good noises somehow. They were cheerful, peaceful. Exhausted as I was, thirsty beyond belief and scared beyond telling, the noises soothed me. They gave me a sort of lazy, dreamy sensation, and I started to think there might still be some hope-I might still get away from this insanity and back to the life I knew. Maybe someone would find me here, I thought sleepily. Or maybe I would somehow summon enough strength to get up and stumble on a few more steps and find a village or a highway or hikers-or better yet, hunters with guns who would protect me. Or maybe I would just fall asleep and wake up in my own bed, as I had fallen asleep in my bed and woken up in this insanity.

I lay there lazily and listened to the forest noises- birdsong, crickets, bees. And without thinking much, I kind of gazed at my hand, the hand lying on the ground right in front of my eyes. That’s strange, I thought in a distant, dreamy sort of way. Where’s Beth’s number? Because this was the hand that Beth had written on with her marker yesterday. And though it was bruised and bloody and there was an ugly burn mark on it, I could still see: the number was gone. There wasn’t a trace of it. Which really was strange, wasn’t it? I remembered how, just before I went to sleep last night, the last thing I did before I turned off the light was to look at my hand and see the number was still there. It was strange-strange that there should be no sign of it now at all.

I lay there gazing at my hand and thinking about that and listening to the forest. My mind drifted from thought to thought, and not all my thoughts made sense as my consciousness came and faded. I don’t know how much time passed like that, but the next thing I knew, amid all the birdsong and so on, I became aware of something else: a deep, loud, almost comical burp of a noise. A frog. A big one, by the sound of it. A big old bullfrog honking it up not very far away.

The frog burped again, and it made me smile-it’s true-a hunted guy lying there with my face in the dirt and my arm tangled up in scratching branches, and I smiled at the noise the frog made… and then I stopped smiling, because an idea had come to me.

I listened harder. Or that is, I shifted the way I was listening. I started listening for noises of a different tone, a different kind. Now, instead of the birdsong and all the rest, I was listening to the sound of the air moving through the treetops. I was hearing the creak and pop of wood bending as the trees stirred this way and that. I heard the low rustle of silence, and finally-there!-there it was-almost buried in that range of sounds but just audible: I heard the trickling whisper of running water.

The frog gave another great big burpy croak, and I not only smiled again, I almost laughed out loud. It was as if he were talking to me, calling to me through the forest, saying, “Here I am-burp-a frog-burp-and what do frogs like?-burrap!-pardon me; must’ve been something I ate-they like water!

”

I’m not sure anything else could’ve gotten me moving again, not even Winston Churchill. But water-oh yeah, I’d move for that. I ran my tongue around my mouth, trying to dampen the terrible dryness there. I braced my hand against the dirt. I started to push myself up. The bushes-those thorns I was lying in-they seemed to grab hold of me, as if they were trying to keep me there, as if they were saying, Not so fast, Harley-Charlie. What’s your hurry, dude? Take it easy. You don’t need water! You just need to lie here and sleep, sleep, sleep!