Ryan Westfield - Defending Camp

They had to make it.

Max’s leg was killing him. And it was slowing him down now. It was always worse the more exhausted he got.

But he kept at it. His arms were swinging. His boots were slamming into the ground.

Max glanced back over his shoulder. The vehicles were getting close. Too close.

Mandy made it into the cover of the trees first. Max followed.

They didn’t stop running. They had to slow down as they wove their ways through the densely packed trees.

There were no leaves on them. But they could hide behind the trunks, just as Mandy had.

“Behind the trees!” shouted Max.

Mandy was slightly ahead of him. She heard him, and darted behind a thick tree trunk.

Max did the same, pressing his back flat against the cool trunk. He was out of breath, and his chest was heaving from exertion. The only gun he had was his Glock.

He didn’t dare stick his head out. He waited, silently, glancing over at Mandy.

From the sound of it, both vehicles stopped instead of driving on by.

Maybe they were just stopping to see what had happened to the dead men. Or maybe to retrieve something from the crashed SUV. Or to pilfer the gear from Max and Mandy’s pickup.

Or maybe they were there to track down Max and Mandy. And kill them, for some unknown reason. This time with more men.

If they came after Max and Mandy, what would give them a higher chance of survival? Staying to fight? Or fleeing?

Max’s leg was killing him. He didn’t want to admit it, but he was slower than he should have been.

But they couldn’t stay to fight. There was no way they’d make it.

Without seeing what was going on, Max had to guess what was happening from the noises.

Car doors slammed closed.

“Get the gas!” someone shouted.

No talk yet of finding Max and Mandy.

“You got a lighter?”

What did they want a lighter for?

Silence for a long minute.

“Give me that!”

Someone said something else, but Max couldn’t make it out.

“Come on. Let’s get the hell out of here!”

Max glanced over at Mandy. She was watching him with wide eyes, her eyebrows raised. She looked nervous and afraid.

A couple car doors slammed.

Suddenly, there was a loud bang. Sounded like an explosion.

What had happened?

Max heard the vehicle engines starting, and he heard the unmistakable sound of them driving off.

“Are we in the clear?” whispered Mandy.

“Sounds like it,” whispered Max. “I’m going to check.”

He stood up. He led with his Glock, getting out from behind the trunk.

The SUV and the car were gone.

There was still a chance they’d left a man behind. But Max doubted it.

The flipped pickup truck was in flames. The fuel tank had exploded. The men had set it on fire. Large flames licked at the edges of the chassis. It was a tower of red and orange flames, with blue inhabiting the center and trying to get to the top.

The SUV, too, was burning. But it hadn’t yet exploded.

They’d already settled on the fact that they’d be walking from here on out.

But now they were without their gear. And there was no chance of recouping it.

“Shit,” muttered Mandy, standing now beside Max.

“What do you have with you?” said Max.

“Always going right to the practical,” muttered Mandy, fishing through her pockets.

Max said nothing. He was thinking about what he had on his person, which wasn’t much. He had some pemmican in his pocket and a small bottle with a water filter built into it. The bottle was about half-full right now. He had his Glock, his knife, a compass, and a fire starter and some alcohol-soaked cotton balls.

He could start a fire, defend himself, make a trap, know which way he was headed. The pemmican would last about one day. But he knew he could push himself without food for far, far longer than that. He wouldn’t die of thirst so long as he could find a source of water.

Of course, this all depended on what Mandy had with her. He had her to think about, too.

“Um…” said Mandy. “I’ve got… not much…”

“Any food?” said Max.

“Nope,” said Mandy, shaking her head.

She was still checking her pockets, patting each one as if she might find something else.

“I’ve got some caffeine pills,” muttered Mandy.

“No pemmican?”

“It was in the truck.”

“And the maps?”

“In the truck. I’m sorry, Max.”

“We’ll be fine,” said Max, making mental calculations on how many calories might be in the chunk of pemmican he had in his pocket.

They stood there between the barren trees by the highway, watching their truck burning along with most of their gear.

“What are we going to do, Max? Are we still going to try to rescue that kid?”

Max was lost in thought, his gaze fixed on the flames.

Finally, he spoke. “I don’t think we’d be much help at this point,” he said.

Mandy nodded silently.

“It’s time we head home,” said Max. “There are people there who need our help just as much as that kid.”

“He’ll be fine,” said Mandy. But her words sounded hollow. “And we did what we could, Max. We both know it’s too dangerous to keep pushing on.”

Max nodded. “Well,” he said. “At least we know what the world is like outside the hunting grounds. It’s still chaos. Maybe worse than before.”

“Don’t say that,” said Mandy. “This is just one part of the country. Who knows what it’s like elsewhere. Maybe it’s not so violent everywhere.”

“Somehow,” said Max, “I have the feeling it’s the same all over.”

Mandy stepped closer to him, and Max put his arm around her back, his hand on her side, pulling her closer to him.

They were alive. But it was a long walk back to camp.

Dan had to act quickly. There wasn’t much time.

He was in a complete panic. He was trapped. He had to act but he couldn’t.

What could he do?

There wasn’t any way he could get free without being noticed.

He gazed off into the distance, his eyes unfocused, as the pickup drove through the streets.

By pure chance, he happened to glance at the other prisoner, the woman. She looked right back at him and to his surprise, she began blinking rapidly at him.

He stared back at her.

She kept blinking.

What did it mean?

Then he noticed that the pattern of her blinks was changing. She was trying to communicate something. Some form of code.

The only code Dan knew of was Morse code. And he didn’t actually know it. Sure, he was familiar with SOS.

Was that what she was doing? Giving him the SOS signal? It sure seemed like it. Three slow blinks, three fast ones, the pattern repeating over and over again.

Dan knew that wasn’t actually the pattern. But he also knew that a lot of people didn’t know it. Maybe this was the woman’s approximation of it.

But Dan already knew she was in trouble.

What was the point of telling Dan that?

They were both in trouble and they weren’t like to get out of it.

But when she started directing her eyes pointedly over to the soldier, Dan started to think she might have been trying to communicate something else.

What was it?

She wanted Dan to do something, most likely. What other reason would there be to communicate with him?

Dan couldn’t move. He couldn’t attack the man.

The only thing he could do was speak.

In the action movies he’d seen, one crucial element was always “the distraction.” If you couldn’t fight, you could distract the bad guy.

Maybe that was what she wanted him to do.

Of course, it seemed pointless.