Robert Parker - Wilderness

Janet first, Newman behind her.

"Easy," he said, "watch where you're running." She slowed. "They won't come charging after us." He slowed behind her. "They don't know where we are. Don't want to turn an ankle or sprain a knee or something."

She slowed more and he slowed. They jogged for fifteen minutes, Newman listening always behind him. "Okay," he said. And they stopped.

"Did you see the others?" he said.

"Yes, they were behind. But you got the one in front."

"Bad way to do it," Newman said. "Stupid. Shouldn't have ambushed them from in front. If I'd been on the side or in an open area I could have got them all." "You did very well," she said.

"Could have had them all. Now they'll be a lot harder."

His left arm was numb. He put his hand on it and felt the warm wet.

"God," he said, "they shot me."

She looked at the back of his arm. "It's bleeding," she said. "Take off the coat and let me see."

"Not here," he said. "We got to get under cover, out of sight. Where we can watch."

"Let me tie something on it to cut down the bleeding," she said. "It won't take a minute." She took the first-aid kit from his knapsack, opened it, took out a spool of gauze bandage and wrapped it around his arm outside the sleeve. She wrapped it as tightly as she could and then cut the bandage with her hunting knife, split the end, and tied the bandage in place.

"Okay," she said. "Let's go find a place."

"On the way up. the trail crossed a little meadow, remember? A stream ran through it and there were a lot of wild flowers and the trees were all around it. It's where the hiking sign was."

"I guess so," she said.

"Okay. We'll go there and put the meadow between us and wait for them there."

"You think they'll still come down this trail?"

"It's the only way they know. They're city, like us. They have no food. They're wet and freezing. They must be scared. They have no maps. Probably no compass. The trail's all they have. I'd stick to it."

"I hope you're right," she said.

"Even if I'm not, it's all we can do."

They walked for an hour and a half down the trail. The numbness wore out of Newman's arm. It began to throb. It was nearly dark when they reached the meadow. They crossed it and turned right along the edge of the woods and went a third of the way around the meadow and settled into a small hollow inside the cover of the woods.

Janet took the first-aid kit from her pack and placed it beside her on top of the fallen tree behind which they lay. She unwrapped the bandage on his arm, and with her knife she carefully cut the fabric on his jacket and shirt away from the wound.

"How's it look?" he said. He kept his eyes on the trail opening across the meadow.

"It's too dark to see," she said. She took the flashlight from her pack and cupping it to shield the light she looked at the wound. "It doesn't look too bad," she said. "Does it hurt?" "Yes," he said.

"There's some like little bb's in there," she said.

"It's shot," he said. "I was hit with a shotgun."

"I think I will have to get them out," she said.

"I guess so," he said.

"Give me your jackknife," she said.

He let the carbine rest on the log as he fished his jackknife out of his right hip pocket. He handed it to her and took up the gun again.

She opened the larger blade. It had a narrow sharp point.

"Give me your lighter," she said. He handed that to her. She snapped it into flame and ran the knife blade through it. She released the lighter and slipped it into his pocket. She blew on the knife blade until it cooled. There was a smudge of black soot on it.

"What I'm going to try to do," she said, "is to pop the bb's out with the point of the knife, like you would a splinter. I'm not going to dig you."

"Okay," he said. "Go ahead."

She put the flashlight in her mouth and held it with her teeth so that the light shone on his wound and her hands were free. She carefully probed the point of the knife at the edge of a bit of shot looking black against the raw flesh. He jumped.

"Hold still," she said around the flashlight, unable to make the dental sounds.

He clamped his jaw harder and she flicked the shot out of the flesh with a quick movement of the knife blade. It didn't hurt. It was the sense of what she was doing that made him jumpy, the sense of knife blade in open wound that made the sweat begin to bead on his forehead.

He was tense. He looked around at her. Saliva ran along the casing of the flashlight. Her eyebrows were down, her face taut with concentration. The light of the flashlight reflecting upward on her made her eye hollows seem deep. He noticed that she had sweat on her forehead too. He turned away and looked at the woods. She carefully and with great delicacy pried another shot fragment from the wound.

It was full dark now, the open meadow before them still gray with the memory of day, but the woods black. He jumped as she pried too deep with the knife. She murmured around the flashlight. He held still and she got another bit of lead. Across the open land an owl moved in almost soundless flight, low, looking for field mice.

She worked on his wound for twenty-five minutes. Then she put the knife down, opened a tube of antiseptic cream, smeared it on a large gauze pad, and placed the pad over the wound. She took adhesive tape from the fir staid kit and wrapped it tightly around the arm, holding the pad in place. Then she took the flashlight from her mouth.

"All there is is aspirin. Why don't you swallow a couple. Can you do it without water?" "Yes," he said. He put the two aspirin in his mouth, tipped his head back with a sudden movement, and swallowed the aspirin.

"Here," she said, and handed him back the jackknife. Her hands were shaking.

He put the blade into the ground to clean it and pulled it out and folded it and slipped the knife back in his hip pocket.

"Thank you," he said. His arm throbbed and he felt weak.

She shut off the flashlight and put it and the first-aid kit back in the pack.

"How do you feel?" she said.

"Not bad," he said. "It throbs, but having it bandaged right helps.

Makes it feel, you know, protected."

She nodded and put her hand on the back of his neck and massaged it lightly. It was cold and getting colder. She put her hood up and tightened the drawstrings. Across the open meadow nothing moved. The owl was gone. They had become accustomed to the night sounds of the woods. It now seemed to them like quiet.

"When they get to this open place," she said, "won't they expect us to be waiting for them?" "Yes," he said. "I would think so."

"So what will they do?"

"I wish I knew," he said. He talked without taking his eyes from the circle of wood-line. Back and forth in a slow semicircle he watched.

"So far they have been stupid as hell. But they can't be that stupid.

They wouldn't just walk across the open field like targets. Nobody could be that dumb."

"So what will they do?"

"Well, they don't have many choices. They have to get downhill to the lake. This trail is the only one they know. When they come to this clearing they'll have to skirt it. That means they'll be ploughing through the woods at night."

"So what will we do?" "We'll listen," he said.

They lay perfectly still, shivering in the darkness, close together in the hollow just off the trail at the edge of the meadow. There was no moon and the darkness was absolute. They listened. The owl they had seen earlier still hunted and occasionally called out in his hoo hoo hoo sound, so like an owl was said to sound that it seemed almost contrived. They listened intensely, feeling an ache of effort along the jawline. His arm pounded steadily. There was no wind.

It was an hour before dawn. He heard a branch snap. Half hypnotized by the hours of dead-quiet concentration, he jerked as if waking up, though he had not slept. He put his hand on her arm. She patted it.