Scott Williams - The Pulse

“I don’t see any other tracks,” Jessica said.

“He probably didn’t let Casey get out. That could be a good sign. At least he didn’t make her get out so he could try to rape her or something.” Grant was still bent over, looking carefully at the tracks. The man had walked back and forth around the place where he stopped the canoe quite a bit, and the details were vague as there were prints on top of prints.

“I’m amazed at how you can tell all this just from looking at the ground. I would have never thought of any of that.”

“I only know the very basics. If it wasn’t for all the sand along this river, I wouldn’t know any of it—even that Casey had been taken. Real experts, like the Wapishana hunters I spent time with, could find and read signs even in dense jungle where you can’t see the ground. But that’s what they do for a living. At any rate, I know he stopped here, and I’m sure Casey must still be with him, but then again, I can’t even prove that without a single track of hers to be found. And I’m afraid I’m not good enough to tell if these prints were made last night or sometime earlier this morning.”

“So, you think they’re still somewhere ahead of us?”

“They pretty much have to be downstream, the question is how far. Come on, let’s go.”

Over the course of the next four or five miles they paddled before noon, the character of the river and its surrounding forest began changing somewhat. Occasional areas of high bluffs with pine trees on them gave way to almost unbroken hardwood forest and large stands of cypress. In many stretches the sandbars disappeared, with the river’s edge running right up to the bases of the cypress and tupelo trees. They passed several sloughs connecting the river to dead oxbow lakes left behind long ago when the river had changed its course over time, and at the entrance to each of these, Grant stopped to investigate and look for any clue that the man who had Casey might have turned off the river. He looked for tracks in the mud and on both sides of each tributary, but only near their entrances, as it would have killed the entire day to paddle each one to where it came to a dead end. Each time he stopped he came to the conclusion that the mysterious paddler must be still ahead of them, and each time they got underway, he dug in and paddled hard with renewed determination not to give up until they caught up with him.

The hours of darkness seemed to Casey to go on forever, lying bound in the bottom of the canoe, watching the trees go by overhead against a backdrop of starry sky while worrying about what was to become of her. This man who had taken her against her will, who called himself Derek, relentlessly and tirelessly paddled hour after hour, expertly guiding the canoe among the countless snags and fallen logs that were everywhere in the river. Sometimes he spoke to her, but for the most part he was quiet while he paddled, and she was glad he was. She had no idea how far they’d come since he had found her the afternoon before, but at this pace she knew it had to be many miles, and with every hour they were on the river, she was being taken deeper and deeper into a land of swamps and forest that separated her from everyone and everything she knew.

When the first pale grays of dawn replaced the darkness, he turned off of the river into an opening in the forest, and paddled into a stagnant, smelly slough of still water. At the far end he ran the bow of the canoe into the stinking mud and hopped out to pull it aground. “We’ll stop here awhile,” he said, “and rest and eat.”

Casey didn’t want to acknowledge him, but she was hungry and thirsty, and more than anything, her bladder was about to burst and she couldn’t hold it any longer. “I have to go to the bathroom,” she said.

“Of course. I’ll untie you so you can go over there in the bushes. But don’t get any ideas. This is an island with the river on one side and a dead lake on the other. There’s no way out of here on foot, and I’m going to be right over here. Believe me when I tell you, you cannot outrun me out here, so don’t bother trying.”

Derek squatted behind her and worked at the lashings binding her wrists, and then he untied her ankles. “I’m sorry I’ve had to keep you all trussed up like this, but you understand I couldn’t have you jumping out of the canoe or something.”

Casey avoided eye contact with him as she rubbed her wrists and ankles and tried to get the circulation going in them again. Now that the morning light was getting brighter, she could see a bit more of what he looked like. He was tall and lanky but it was hard to tell much about how he was built because of his loose-fitting clothes—olive drab military fatigues and an untucked, long-sleeved shirt that was a couple of shades darker green than the pants. The most unusual thing about the way he was dressed was his footwear—tall, over-the-calf moccasins that looked to be homemade from some kind of animal hide. From what she could see of his hands and bearded face, he was deeply tanned, as if he spent a lot of time outdoors, and his shoulder-length hair was shaggy and somewhere between blond and light brown. His movements suggested that he was fit and at ease in this environment, as he showed no signs of fatigue despite paddling all night without rest.

After he untied her, he ignored her while he pulled one of his backpacks out of the canoe and rummaged through it for something. “Go ahead and do your business,” he said, “just don’t go far.”

Casey was both surprised and greatly relieved that he would offer to let her have her privacy. She had been holding it all night because she was so afraid that he wouldn’t and had decided she would sooner pee in her pants than have him see her naked, though she knew he had seen her bathing. She pulled herself up out of the canoe with difficulty, and nearly fell back down as she waited for the numbness to go away in her feet. She stepped over the gunwale into the muck and wet leaves of the forest floor, still barefoot because she had left her shoes on the log where she had undressed for her bath. She picked her way carefully over fallen branches and around thorny vines, feeling the disgusting, foul-smelling mud of the swamp squishing up between her toes with every step until she had gone far enough to screen herself from his view with foliage.

When she stood again, she thought about running as fast as she could in the opposite direction, but peering through the trees and bushes that limited her view to just a few dozen yards, she could see that there was indeed more water that way, just as Derek had said. With no shoes, she knew it would be hard for her to walk fast, much less run with all the protruding cypress knees, fallen branches, and twisted briar vines covered with thorns that were everywhere on the forest floor. From the ease with which Derek moved and paddled the canoe, she knew he was in good shape, and she doubted she could outsprint him even in open terrain. She resigned herself to the hard truth that there was no use trying to escape right now. It would be better to wait for another opportunity when she had a better chance of succeeding, and she was determined to find one, and not miss it when it presented itself.

When she made her way back over to the canoe, Derek had just finished tying a dark green cloth hammock between two nearby trees. “I’ve got to get some sleep,” he said. “I hate to have to do it, but I’ve got to tie your hands and feet again. You can sleep in the bottom of the canoe if you like. I’ll move my stuff out to give you more room. I don’t plan to stay here more than four or five hours though, and then we’re going to be on the move again.”

Casey had no choice but to submit to being tied up again. At least this time he tied her hands in front of her body instead of behind her back, so she could lie down comfortably. He had also tied a piece of light rope between her bound ankles and one of his own wrists, so that when he fell asleep in the hammock he would know if she was trying to get away. She resigned herself to wait. The only way to escape now would be to somehow untie her wrists with her teeth without waking him, and then launch the canoe and paddle away in it. She knew that was hopeless, as his hammock was strung squarely in the path the canoe would have to be dragged to get it afloat again.