Posted on June 27, 2007

Part 15

Elliot turned away and ran. He didn’t care what direction and had lost all immediate desire to find Evajean or Nahom, if it existed. What he wanted was only to get away from these three zombies, his mind flooded with mad thoughts of being bitten and turned into one of them.

Glancing back, he could see the woman was out in front, having overtaken the two suits, and was sprinting after him with her head down and her arms pumping. The men only jogged, faces pointed up at the trees and sky, shouting incoherently. They were quickly being outpaced by the woman and Elliot thought it would be easy to lose them if they kept that pace.

The woman, however, was fast. Elliot wasn’t a runner, had never gone out for track in high school, hated treadmills, and didn’t exercise nearly enough once the landscaping business went bust and he moved on to an inside, behind a computer job. He couldn’t keep this speed up for any distance but that woman–she looked like a goddamn marathon runner.

So he did the best he could. He pumped his legs, glancing down occasionally at his feet to make sure he wasn’t going to trip, and ran. He forgot about the girl he’d been chasing, about finding Evajean, about the dog and the overturned truck. He didn’t think about the shotgun or the fact that he’d be mighty thirsty by the time he finally slowed. All he could manage to keep in his mind was the image of that woman in a red dress.

And so he fell. Had he been paying more attention, putting effort into doing more than stealing glances at the ground, he might have seen the grey branch with a line of dirty white mushrooms. He might have lifted his foot over it and kept going–and maybe even outpaced the woman in red, with adrenaline doing what his skills couldn’t.

Elliot felt his toe catch and had a moment to think about this before the ground was at his face and the gun was tumbling from his hand. He tried to roll over but his shoe was twisted in the branch. He swore and scrambled, pulling at his foot, but panic of the situation got the best of him and he eventually froze, watching without breathing as the woman in red slowed and stopped next to him. She was still talking, words he didn’t understand but in a language that sounded like he could if only he had someone to teach him. Her tongue kept popping out from between her teeth, but she’d pull it back in just before biting it in her mad gibbering.

She held out her hand to him.

“Get away from me,” he said, and turned his head away to look for the gun.

When he looked back–after seeing the shotgun within stretching reach–she had crouched down next to him and was sliding her hand along the ground toward his leg. He kicked and she pulled back, stopping her babbling long enough to glare. “The hell do you want?” he asked her, pushing out with his feet, trying to force his body closer to the gun.

She gave him a look, one he thought might have been genuine interest, maybe puzzlement, and then she started talking. This was calm, slow, like she was speaking to a child or a retarded person, and Elliot almost laughed at how considerate she was. Behind her now, like bodyguards flanking some diva, he could see the two suited crazies, walking casually and chattering at the forest. They stopped when they were a couple of feet from Elliot and continued to talk, not looking at him or the woman.

She leaned in close, putting both hands on his calves, and dropped her voice to a whisper. He didn’t recognize any of it, not even the emphatic “More!” of the Wal-mart crazy, but she was extraordinarily intent on trying to make him grasp whatever her message was. She didn’t want to scare him–though she’d certainly done that–and now her goal was to get him to understand.

“I don’t know what you’re saying,” he said to her, trying to keep his voice calm. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

She stopped talking then and turned around to look at her colleagues. The three had a short and low conversation, the shorter suit upset by the decision reached at its end. He shook his head, pointed at Elliot, and said something harsh to the woman. She responded tersely, then put her head close to his and whispered something into his ear.

Elliot took this all as an opportunity to reach again for the gun. Stretching backward, trying not to make any big movements, he inched out with his fingers until they tapped at the fat end of the stock. He was unsure at this point if he even needed it, because he was getting the strong sense that they weren’t a threat. They wanted to talk, that’s all. But having the gun, ready to swing it in defense if needed, was a whole lot better than just laying on the ground, waiting for that woman to finish whatever it was she’d planned with his legs.

She turned back to him and got down very close to his face. She had a strange smell, like lightning, and her lips were cracked. Three words she said to him now, slow and enunciated, and while he didn’t know what any of them meant, each of the three sounded bad and condemning.

When she finished, she stood up and walked away from him, between the two men in suits, who now bent down and crouched where she had been. Each took hold of one of Elliot’s ankles, the shorter guy working his foot out of the branch, and then they pulled, trying to drag him. Elliot twisted and grabbed the gun, grasping it against his chest. He wrapped his hand tight around the barrel and raised the weapon up.