The Devil’s Woods

by Frederick Zackel

… The woods across from the cemetery: leafless and gray and chilly and creepy in a steady rain. Moon-colored trees dirty from a century beside a train yard. Rainwater dripping from the black twisted branches. The warmer rain and the icy ground produced a white mist that snaked and slithered through the narrow trees like a blond assassin.
… Special Agent in Charge Moses Stone said, “This is the FBI. Surrender!”
… But Frankie Walsh took off running and disappeared into the woods. Like a turkey through the corn, Moses Stone thought. He chambered a round, frustrated that his agents were still wiggling into their heavy armored vests. He gave a signal and his agents began fanning out, moving after Frankie Walsh.
… Frankie’s wife Vickie also was running to the woods, firing after Frankie Walsh as she ran. She too breeched the woods and vanished inside the trees.
… Moses Stone cursed them both. He grabbed a flashlight and he and his agents went after the two bank robbers. When he flicked on his flashlight, the cone of light lashed out no more than a few feet ahead and then dissipated among the dark trees.
… Moses Stone, square-jawed and Mormon, brooked no crap from bad guys. You will pay the price for your transgressions, he always vowed. He switched to full auto as he walked.
… He also carried a .40 Glock Model 22 and extra clips.
… Okay, so I will follow their footprints, he thought, and he began with slow long strides after them through the slender trees. Each tree was only as thick as a forearm, but the woods were packed tightly together, only a foot or less apart, and in places anyone would have to turn sideways to squeeze between them.
… A half-dozen more steps in, and the light was beginning to evaporate.
… His watch said they still had a couple hours until sundown.
… A light gray mist among the dark gray trees. Still, white patches of snow or ice.
… The trees thinned. He skirted the edges, tried staying in the shadows.
… The lake was … over there?
… A break in the trees. A rise in the ground.
… The ground was spongy.
… A great stench, like an opened sewer ditch.
… Raccoons lived in this murky bog, Moses Stone remembered. But he couldn’t remember where he was remembering that from.
… Cautiously he moved across the flat, ice-choked land. Mangled trees were littering his path. The snow crunched under his feet. Fallen trees. Rotting logs. Exposed roots to trip over. Then frozen water everywhere underfoot.
… Smells overwhelmingly swampy, nauseating, primordial smells of decay: mildew, methane, the sour stench of rot.
… For a few feet more he could track the two killers. Then the muck and the broken ice and the warm rain obliterated the true steps with a thousand false ones.
… The trail petered out.
… Which way did they go?
… He walked a few more feet then stopped. Rain drummed on his bare head. The milky-yellow light that shafted out from his flashlight was pitifully inadequate in the woods. Do I go left or right? He held his flashlight higher and saw only trees at night.
… Moses Stone swept the beam onward, like a lighthouse lamp. Voices among the trees, agents shouting to each other, and Stone listened to them. They were his crew, hand-picked and highly-trained. All fighting the good fight.
… Fifty yards further and he stood silent on a ledge of dirt packed with rock, now ignoring his agents admit they were lost in these woods. Black dirty water was flowing near here. He could hear it, too.
… The FBI agent hated woods like this. Spooky. Creepy. Deadly.
… His flashlight terrified with ghastly shadows popping up and then disappearing.
… Splashing light around, flailing at the dark with the flashlight…
… So many trees packed together, the first picture that came to mind, he thought of a fakir’s bed of nails. He knew how the fakir’s bed worked. Since so many nails were so closely together, the man lying atop the bed of nails doesn’t have his skin punctured by any one of them.
… Also, the ground was moss-covered rocks and green muck – iced over and frosty-topped – and murky yellow water collected in depressions here and there.
… Dense, a carpet of gray leafless enormous nails. Here and there, stacks of black slag and then even larger piles of gray rocks that suggested broken walls. Frozen mosses thawing in the warmer rain but still very slippery. Crushed tin cans underfoot. Thrown-away truck tires.
… His cell phone rang.
… Special Agent Collins said, “Which way did you go?”
… He asked, “What happened to your radio?”
…
…
… Vickie Hughes squeezed through the walls of trees in the woods, her gun in her right hand, her flashlight from the car in her other. She would kill anybody in her path.
… Her peroxided hair was short and scruffy.
… Frankie had nicknamed her “Snowdrop.” Back when they said they loved each other and maybe meant it.
… Her fists tightening. She was after her husband. She was furious with Frankie for screwing up, and she had no remorse about re-opening old wounds with a bullet or a knife.
… She zigzagged, heard guns go off behind her, and the shots went wild.
… A gap in the trees she could squeeze through.
… All this was her husband’s dumb idea. Twice she asked him not to go through with his plans. But she couldn’t break through. It was always about him.
… She smelled welding rods; she had grown up with that ozone smoke growing up in Pittsburgh, flashing sparks and manganese fumes; it brought back almost-memories of gloom and pain, and tuning out the acrid stench came easily enough.
… A factory was nearby; the night shift was working.
… She paused, catching her breath. Her eyes had accustomed themselves to the dark woods. The lights of the railroad were no longer visible, not even as a glow in one part of the sky.
… But from which direction?
… Which way was out?
… A smile rose in the corner of her mouth. That mud puppy thought he could hide all night in the woods. Stomp him to a pulp, that’s what she would do.
… She heard wheezing and dropped to her knees.
… A peripheral motion caught her eye.
… Nothing there, she saw.
… She heard the noise again and turned on a dime and doubled back. Her husband had swiveled from his path and was headed right for her. She sprinted to intercept him. But her feet slid out from under her. She landed flat on her back, hard on her hipbone. Startled, she whimpered, and then was embarrassed by it.
… Her husband ran past her, cursing his luck.
… On her feet again, hair plastered with muck, her clothes covered in muck, Vickie Hughes boiled with an almost incandescent rage watching Frankie disappearing from her sight.
… She heard a cracking sound and swiveled. There was an echo that confused, she thought, seeing and hearing nothing more.
… Frankie Walsh zigzagged through the woods. Climbing over fallen timbers. Squeezing through the cleft between trees bent over each other. Disentangling himself from the branches. Large branches out to catch him or at least slow him down.
… Worked his way carefully from left to right, praying he wasn’t being followed.
… The lake was – where?
… Somewhere there must be a road.
… Beware the river, though.
… The trees little varied in their widths. Trunks thick as a fat mother’s ankles. At places he had to bend his body to the ground.
… He kept to the far side.
… He ran and measured where he ran, desperate to save himself. The wind was moaning, the icy rain merciless. No moon tonight would lead him to safety.
… How tired he was. His head felt light as a feather. Carrying so much weight. Completely worn out. Hoping for luck. But too long a day. What started at daybreak was still going on now, after midnight.
… Two bank guards lay dead, one in the street and one on the sidewalk.
… Now it was his turn in the barrel.
… He blamed Vickie for that. Stupid broad with a hair-trigger temper. Just because a guy looks cross-eyed doesn’t mean you have to shoot him.
… He saw a culvert – as inviting as a porch light on a stormy night – and ducked inside. Maybe he could use it and its brethren beyond to slither out of this mess.
… But the culvert turned out to be a lone concrete pipe left over from some rail yard construction. He knew it was a hopeless choice to hide in. As soon as anyone passing saw the concrete pipe, they would peer inside, and he would be trapped in their gun sight.
… An almost silent belly laugh at his own plight and he moved on, but painfully. His path was blocked by cement, crumbling blocks, some as big as sofas, others of undeterminable sizes. He walked around the shattered blocks. Running both of his hands over his hot face. His face was contorted with the pain he felt. Crazed by the cold. Soaked and freezing.
… His eyes were unsure of what he was seeing.
… Climbing the concrete. Launching himself from the plateau of one block to the pointy peak of another. His hands trying to keep him steady.
… He slipped on a patch of moss. He spread his arms out wide, like wings, falling backward. He had an agonizing fall. He landed on his right elbow; the pain was sharp and intense. He felt, no, heard a rib crack. His ribcage was sore. His right arm hung limply. No, it wasn’t broken. Just bruised.
…
…
… Vickie Hughes, head down, slogging away, bulldozing through the woods, and only a bullet would stop her maniacal ways. But she winced at the scuffing sound of her shoe leather against rock.
… She stumbled through a tangle of low-hanging pines, careening through the older trees, ricocheting off big trees and stumbling over smaller ones, yet somehow managing to stay on her feet.
… She put up her hands to shield her face, grabbing at branches to bend them away, to fend them off. The branches slowed her, but she wouldn’t stop.
… The chill came from the rain pelting the frozen earth.
… Once she stopped, when she thought she had cut her eye on a pointy branch. The only sound was her breathing coming in ragged bursts.
… When she heard the scuffling sound of shoe leather on pebbles, caught off-balance, she stumbled backwards, her own shoes snapping twigs. She jerked back into the shadows. Afraid to exhale. Her stomach was in a frenzy, churning out bile strong enough to make her wince.
… She hunkered to peer out for her enemies. Fumbling in the dark, her hand found a sharp rock stuck in the frozen ground. She braced herself as best as she could against it.
…
…
… Heavily muscled, Special Agent Steve Dillinger was taller and wider than the others; his way into the woods was more difficult. The woods were a nightmare.
… He pulled his blue FBI jacket above his head, plunged like a blind horse through some thickets. He thought he made a noisy passage.
… The trees that came next, thin and spindly, were without leaves. Dirty white plastic bags, blown here by the stiff winds, were stuck in high branches like huge spider webs.
… The smell of wood smoke coiling and curling through the pelting rain came to him. He wished he were home with his kids and his wife. One of his kids was sick with chicken pox, and his wife might be coming down with shingles.
… One stand in particular where the tree bark was as shiny as crescent moons. There he tilted his head backward to get between the trees.
… A sudden chill brought goose bumps.
… He rubbed his eyebrows and enjoyed the bristly texture.
… He stepped on an empty whiskey bottle. Lurching sideways, he twisted his ankle.
… He made sure his safety was off.
…
…
… Then Vickie Hughes was rushing toward Frankie, grabbing for him, slipping on the icy muck. She grabbed him by the elbow and flung him around. Then together they fell headlong over a fallen log.
… They grappled for his gun.
… And he got away, weaponless.
… Tracking a man without a gun…
…
…
… On the other side of that stand, Special Agent Melinda Carlyle, Korean and happily married, flashed her light to her left and caught Special Agent Tom Pendersen urinating out in public like a trucker outside his rig, steam hissing and rising up from his saffron stream. Disgusting, having to work with a jerk like him.
… Huddled in the cold damp rain, she felt bruised and sore. So cold, her eyes were watering. Her lungs were heaving in misery while the rain came pouring down.
… She had goose pimples from the damp and the chill.
… The rain was loud. In these woods, rain sounded like a running creek. Rain trickled down her face and onto her clothes. Then more thunder and lightning. She was startled, panicky.
… She stayed down until she caught her breath. Her entire body ached getting to her feet.
… A thunderclap made her jump straight up.
… She felt sheepish. But, geez, talk about being under stress.
… Scuffling sounds on the rocks behind her.
… Frankie Walsh was a tall, well-built man with penetrating blue eyes, thick snowy hair and a rakish mustache.
… He passed her on the right.
… She went after him, firing from the hip. She cursed aloud when he vanished in the mist and she lost him.
… Frankie Walsh, steadying himself, struggled to stay upright.
… Parts of the bog here were caked with ice and partially frozen water.
… His feet were shredding the thin cover of ice, one wet foot and one dry foot. The water was now flowing around his shoes and in his shoes.
… He jumped and thought he found hard ground.
… Some of the snow had dissolved with the rain, making the footing tricky and unstable. The muck clamping down his shoes, brown goop that was as slimy as oysters. Puckers in the muck from large raindrops.
… Looking down at the icy water pooling around his feet. His shoes now were as sodden as the muck around his feet.
… The sounds of his shoes unstucking themselves from the thick slime. His own ragged breathing. Twigs breaking under his feet.
… He stumbled forward across some gaping holes in the uneven ground that were hidden by the rain. What was this hellhole?
… Wetlands or holding pond, he couldn’t remember.
… Exposed roots tried bringing him down.
… The run-off from toxic materials, he remembered.
… Smells awful, too. The stench of the bog was only partly Mother Nature. The stench of decaying plants and the perpetual mulch of fallen leaves. The unearthly smell of sewage sludge was here, too, like the slime inside the dragon’s mouth.
… He heard a train but never saw it. Had no idea what direction the sound came from. Once it was gone, he heard his wife shouting, calling his name, mostly, Frankie thought, just to hear the sound of her own voice. But her voice sounded weird, and no echo came back, her voice just absorbed by the damp cold night.
… Leaning against a tree to catch his breath, he felt the muscles on the left side of his face twitch and then twitch again.
… How do I get out of here?
… He held up his hand and couldn’t see it.
… How many fingers am I holding up?
… The joke fell flat in the black night.
… His cell phone rang.
… Now who’s calling?
… His wife. The murderous bitch.
… Have to keep moving, he thought.
…
…
… FBI Special Agent Angelina Swanson was trembling and red-faced from the chase. She hated woods like this. She hated weather like this. She hated feeling stalked like this, even though she was part of the stalking team.
… She chewed her bottom lip and thought of her mother lying in bed with bronchitis, making coughing noises at the busted television set. Her radio was crackling with winter static. Lord alone knows what anybody was saying.
… Rain sloshing down. Cascading rain pooling everywhere beneath her feet. Her hair was soaked. Her feet were wet. She had the sniffles, too.
… This job, she decided, had engraved lines permanently into her forehead.
… Vickie Hughes came rushing at her from the tail of her left eye, from outside her peripheral vision, startling her, making her jump.
… She plunged into the ground nose first after colliding with the other woman.
…
…
… She sighted on her husband as he popped out of a thicket.
… She slithered from the bush and then rose in a crouch.
… He saw her. Was looking right at her.
… She opened fire, fired three times. That fool, that dog, that jerk had to fall for a waitress right out of high school.
… Vickie couldn’t believe his stupidity. “You told her?”
… But her husband must have seen the glint from her gun and he stumbled back by reflex, and only that reflex kept him from walking into the bullets.
… Then he ran for it. Away from her.
… She fired anyways. Twice. She blamed the slippery sludge under her feet for missing her target. She blamed her husband for everything else.
…
…
… Special Agent in Charge Moses Stone had a stitch in his left side. He pressed fingertips into a throbbing vein on his throat and checked his pulse. He was too old for this nonsense.
… His heart was beating loudly in his ears. His legs could barely hold him up. Now he limped on his left side. He was tempted to turn back, let his agents do their jobs.
… He was too old for this field work. Too close to mandatory retirement.
… He was cold, too, with goose bumps. Rain drummed on his bare head. Gloomy drip-drip-drip. He shivered. The cold was inside him, at his core radiating out to his every limb. This is what death feels like, he thought, stuck in a grave for eternity.
… Those two killers were not going to make it out of here alive.
… Not after what they did to those guards. And that redheaded teller inside.
… His lungs were on fire. Now he knew how the dragon feels. With that, he laughed. Screwy how he could joke at a time like this.
… He tightened his grip on his Glock and went on.
…
…
… Frankie Walsh looked through the branches. Nothing was visible. Nothing was distant. Several yards in and then the total darkness of the woods had closed in on him.
… He huddled, drenched, wiping his eyes. His teeth chattered.
… A pain in his chest. He massaged the muscles of his calves.
… His hair and his clothes plastered to his body with rainwater. Punished by the woods. Paralyzed by fear. A light flashed behind and to the right. He scurried away from the light. He wanted to live.
… A beam of light hit him from off the path ahead. He took off in the opposite direction. Weaving through the trees, head bent like a work animal, squeezing through an opening in the trees. His hand protecting his face from the sharp branches.
… His face was as torn as his clothes. He kept his eyes peeled for those chasing him, terrified that these were the last moments of his life.
… He felt he was never coming back from this.
… He crossed himself. Lord, let me live.
… He heard shoes splashing water behind him, the same sounds he had made. He couldn’t slow down. The sound of shoes cracking through the ice. Vickie the huntress was too close behind him. If he slowed, all was lost.
… He plunged between the trees. Through the first gap he saw. Shoving aside branches. He bungled one turn, his feet went sideways, and he went sliding on his side down a sloppy slope, sliding on his belly, sliding in the slippery mucus through the slimy vegetation, the rocks and branches tearing at his clothes and his flesh.
… Motionless, then aching. He had pulled a muscle.
… He rolled away, into cover. When he felt he had recovered enough, he took a deep breath and went for it. Climbing back to his feet, mud and ice and rain streaming down his face, brushing the icy mud from his face. He could barely straighten up. Clasping a tree trunk to steady himself. Dirty filthy. Splattered with mud. His hands came up oily.
… He moved too quickly and winced at the vertigo that slapped him.
… He was moving hurt. Kicking up snow and ice and mulch and muck.
… In a rage, smacking his fist against his side, tears of fury blurring his vision.
… Then the FBI flashlights forced him deeper into the woods.
… He kept his distance. He had seen the Feds stalking guys before. As a kid, he had hid behind a dumpster and watched the Feds go after two bank robbers. He respected their prowess. That time they were shooting at the guy standing. He got swiss-cheesed, while his old man crouching behind the brick wall got hit six times.
… His clothes were caked in mud. Walking through the muck, which threatened to rip the shoes off his feet.
… His hands were empty. He had no weapon. The adrenalin dissipated like morning fog in sunlight.
… He heard the sound of shoes on pebbles. Too near! He shrank from his pursuers, ducked behind a tree, crouching, hoping for cover.
… Gasping for air, he bit his tongue and was silent.
… After they had past him, he stepped in a patch of muck and lost a shoe. Moldy, squishy, steaming mud. He went back for the shoe.
… He dragged his legs through the black goo, and his legs ached as if on fire. His heart was hammering in his chest.
… His feet had turned to stones.
… He tried to stretch to get the kinks out of his neck and spine. He stretched too suddenly, and his joints creaked loudly, and he looked around to see if they had been heard.
… He heard a pair of feet walking through icy muck. Staggering backwards, startled, he dove for cover. Watched a Fed stalk past, crouching, ready to shoot on sight.
… Scuttling, skittering sounds all around …
… He collapsed, sagged downwards, snarling at his misfortune.
… The trees thickened. Special Agent Melinda Carlyle had to inch sideways under an arch of broken branches. Shocked by the broken branches above her head.
… A space she could barely squeeze through. A path only a small child could walk. Pushing forward, edging forward, she felt like the trees were fighting her, jostling her from side to side, deliberately slowing her.
… She saw a human-shaped hole and dodged through it. Bent at the waist, gasping for air, she found the trees prevented her from moving anywhere but forward.
… The exertion had made her sweat. Now the sweat was turning cold and clammy under her FBI parka.
… Her scratches were bleeding. She was bruised, too. Even in the near-darkness, she could feel the bruises as they appeared.
… The path through the trees curved to the left.
… She went that way.
… She soon found that she had made a complete circle.
…
…
… Vickie Hughes roared out of the dark at him. Skidding after him, she charged straight for him, at his slowly turning head.
… He braced himself to face her down. So she went headfirst. She plowed into his gut and surprised him. Knocking him off his feet. He gasped, all the air went out of him, and he folded in the middle.
… He was flat on his back and she was atop him.
… Her hands curled around his neck, digging her thumbs into his soft throat, going for the blood vessels, saying, “I am the last breath of air you ever take.”
… His hands were bundled into fists. He punched her hard in the shoulders. They traded punches as only married people can. He landed a good one against her head, and she loosened her grip.
… He leapt to his feet and tried stomping on her, but since she kept rolling away, he had to hop after her on one foot, still stomping what he could with the other when he could, frustrated he couldn’t get in a solid hit.
… Then on his tiptoes in the muck, his legs buckling, and he fell.
… She was upon him again.
… He hit her above the collarbone, the soft flesh of her throat, and she yelped. She kneed him in the groin and he fell off her.
… Kneeling face to face, they traded punches as they tried rising upright.
… He hit her in the belly again. She bent, doubled over, yelped in pain.
… He leapt up and tried running.
… She jumped and landed on his back.
… The weight nearly tipped him over. Like a bucking bronco, he tried throwing his wife off. They thrashed around.
… She had him in a headlock.
… He bucked her off his back.
… She howled in outraged frustration.
… He took off running.
…
…
… Special Agent in Charge Moses Stone was behind them, and he arrived and watched as they ran single-file into the dark trees. He sprinted after them and hit a patch of ice.
… He fell backwards, his feet sliding forward at the same time, and he landed flat on his back, banging the back of his head on the cold wet moss. Skinned his hands on rocks. He stayed down until he caught his breath.
… He rose up and his entire body ached getting to his feet. He hobbled after them.
… Scrunching through the mucky snow, sweat beads up above his eyebrows, he had an irregular tic on the right hand side of his upper lip.
… A few rays of sunshine would be nice.
… He fell back further behind them.
…
…
… In desperate agony Frankie Walsh hurtled through wet trees as if they were walls of fire. Jumping over fallen logs and old tires, hoping nothing lethal lay on the other side. Branches whipped his face.
… His head bent forward like a charging bull, pounding his way across the algae, the muck and the ice. Hurtling obvious sinkholes, ducking under branches, jumping over blobs of trash. Lifting his shoulders, pressing onward. Fresh air not clearing his head. Lungs hoarse from the harsh cold. Dodging, sidestepping, squirming through the trees.
… Found a path wide enough for a raccoon amid the rubble and trash. Tangles of trees that had fallen, and jagged stumps that would dismember anybody unlucky enough to fall on them. Long stones dotting the darkness themselves slippery as the wet leaves.
… Broken glass cut through the sole of his left shoe.
… The shoe was shredded. He limped. His foot ached.
… Startled by a paper bag trapped by a branch, he tripped and fell and tumbled, then thumped onto the ground. He crumpled into a sodden batch of tears and self-pity.
… Nerves trembling, getting panicky
… Tears streaming down.
… His hands more blue than white from the cold.
… Abruptly alert to the whisperings of the rain dripping in the trees.
… He crouched, gathering courage, shaking, catching his breath, barely able to move, panic rising, eyes terrified in the gloom, filthy, covered in muck and slime and his own blood, wincing, groping forward.
… Vickie Hughes crouched as police choppers came overhead, hovered loudly, and turned their white searchlights down on the woods. A distant voice calling her name through loudspeakers, telling her and Frankie to surrender to the FBI.
… She snorted. Like that was going to happen.
… Her hands on her knees, catching her breath. The son of a bitch had gotten loose. As if she could snatch and hold fast to a shadow.
… She heard the shuffle of fallen leaves on her right.
… She watched one of the FBI agents, a woman, swinging her flashlight, back and forth, and she was thinking the Special Agent looked like a locomotive wagging its headlight back and forth. Except for the Glock in her right hand.
… She took cover in a thicket. The Feds were that close behind her. The thorns grew thicker here. She thought she might be safer here. Then, as she moved away from the Feds, she stumbled into walls of thorns growing at haphazard places. She stretched her body to go between them. Her clothes tore on the thorns.
… The FBI agent had heard her. Now she crept in her direction, and Vickie moved backwards and deeper into the shadows. The dead branch she crashed into and snapped in half was as thick as her wrist, and the sound seemed inordinately loud.
… The FBI agent spun in a crouch, Glock up and firing wildly.
… Vickie shot the woman agent in the face. And then ran onward.
… Blood was still oozing from her neck. The scratches on her skin were bleeding. She hurried, hoped she wouldn’t wear herself out. Her face burned red from exertion.
…
…
… On his hands and knees Frankie Walsh crawled forward. His stomach loudly rumbled; for an instant he worried the noise would give away his location.
… He regretted everything. A man should never sleep with his bookie’s wife.
… But what’s done is done, he thought, and he had to escape or die.
… He crouched in silence, a canopy of branches like a low ceiling above him, afraid to break cover. Frankie Walsh couldn’t go on. Ragged breathing, his legs had gone rubbery, the rest of his body uncontrollably trembling, and his heart beating wildly. He wanted to throw up.
… He had the chills. Struggled against the cold. He shut his eyes and took a moment of comfort in the darkness. His stomach lurched over the stench surrounding him. This was a swamp, a nightmare, and nowhere did he see a way out. Big mistake coming here, he thought.
… He rebelled against the woods. He refused to be left behind, either dead or alive. His anger grew as he climbed to his feet. Brushed off the leaves and the bugs. Wiping the toxins from his face.
…
…
… His wife shot at him, just missing.
… He ran wildly, impaled by branches, even stumps. Stumps the size of sewer pipes. Then his feet skittering across the mossy rocks.
… He splashed into mucky water. He slogged through, plunged forward, and went in up to his chest. Panicking, flailing his arms, muck as far as he could grab, intense chill, shivering.
… Clambering out of the watery ooze, tears freezing on his cold cheeks. Needles in his fingers. A sharp pain in his left side. Pains in both legs.
… He propelled himself onward, forcing himself, pushing his feet onward.
… She was gaining on him.
… He found a dry patch and ran as if ten thousand demons chased him. Twice he tripped on roots he never saw. The second time he did a nosedive into icy black waters and waterlogged muck.
… On his feet and running blindly. He was soaking wet, but he was still alive, lurching through the sticky muck until it was knee-high.
… Gunfire erupted all around him. None of it too near him.
… What were they seeing that they were shooting at?
… Then: splashing through the icy shallows. Soaking wet below the waist. He stumbled and landed on his knees. Lost a shoe. Gasping and panting. Shivering from the cold. With one bare foot.
… He couldn’t lift himself from the watery ground. His legs weighed a ton. He crawled off the path. Zigzagging by crawling. He was squeezing his neck to keep going. Coughing and groaning.
… He let himself collapse to the ground. He was parched, as if he’d been drinking glasses of sand. He felt breathless. His left side was pinching. He massaged what ached. A grimace to hold back the tears that wanted to cross his face.
… He belched, guts churning like a riverboat’s paddle wheel, something bad tasting came up and presented itself, and he felt nauseous. He was moments from heaving his gorge.
… He saw large rocks in a row and climbed up.
… The rocks were half as high as a man, and he moved quicker.
… Frankie felt a sudden jerk. A fist clutching his ankle, and he was caught, dragged backwards. Anger from deep inside exploded. You won’t shackle me! He lashed out, kicking savagely once, twice, three times, with his free leg. The iron grip broke. Now just fingers desperately clawing, pulling.
… He broke free, jumped sideways, down from the rocks, away from his wife. He bolted forward, old leaves and twigs crunching under his soles.
… He ran, eyes wide, fueled by the instinct to flee. His legs were screaming in agony. Now and then he stumbled.
… The path sloped slightly. His one shoe were filling with wet muck, and he slowed. The earth here was too soft.
… His feet broke the ice crust. Sloshing along slippery ledges.
… A moment later he was ankle-deep in icy slushy muck.
… His knees buckled, he crumbled and collapsed. He landed poorly. His face scraped a rocky surface. His own fist slammed into his throat.
… He ached, his knees sore where he fell, hitting rocks.
… He heard an agent crashing through the underbrush.
… Frankie Walsh lowered his head another notch.
… He would have to move soon.
… This was dark territory, he thought.
… He saw where the nearest FBI flashlight’s beam landed on a pair of orange eyes. The agent fired at it and missed. The feral cat scurried away on its belly. He heard the FBI agent curse, then snort her frustration.
… He watched as the female FBI agent got on her radio and explained the gunfire. He watched her move on and vanish among the gauzy trees.
… To his right he could see where two sets of footprints had broken the icy crust, had gone deep into the muck, had kept running. Muddy water sloshed in his shoe. Then: gaping holes hidden by tonight’s rain. Splashing through puddles of water.
… This part of the woods was a sea of bilious brown-green water.
… He heard FBI agents cursing and identifying themselves and crying out their locations to their compatriots.
… Frankie was okay with some friendly fire among the Feds. If it means I get away … they can shoot themselves all of them dead.
… His legs were stiff from crouching too long.
… Frankie Walsh scrambled to his feet. He felt lightheaded.
… He stumbled on slippery wet leaves and then caught himself.
… Which way do I go?
…
…
… Special Agent Brian Collins was getting tangled in undergrowth. True, the rotting ivy was failing to stop him, and, true, he was breaking the tangles into pieces from frustration, but it was distracting and also very noisy.
… He was a rookie and a novice at field work.
… Then the path opened up and branched to the right and to the left.
… He jumped a concrete wall now crumbling. The stones were loose here. The ground was rough and uneven. He stepped, and a sharp stone nearly pierced his sole. He lost balance and then found his footing.
… He jumped a foot-wide ditch filled with broken ice and brackish water. The other slope was soft, his heels sank and he almost fell backwards. He was stuck in ankle-high stinking mud. But he saw heel prints in the muck beyond and that sight gave him the desire to speed up.
… He pulled himself up and free and got to hard ground, a ledge of curved stone. His left ankle gave out. He tried moving off the moss and his legs went out from under him. He was catapulted upward, but he fell and landed squarely on his back, knocking the air from his lungs.
… He failed at standing upright, found the slope was slippery, and slid by the seat of his pants into a low-lying patch of water-soaked mosses.
… He panicked and covered his head with his hands at the nearby sound of gunfire. And all the calm he could display at the firing range seemed to mock him.
… He rolled away, over and over and again. Then, crouching, he scurried. Then he jumped up and sprinted. Swerving and lurching through trees too small to climb.
… Now he was resolute. This one is for my lovely wife Lucy, he thought.
… He loved the swing in her hips, her dazzling smile.
… Vickie Hughes ran on until she saw a grassy rise in the ground, a fuzzy lump like an island in the ooze. She figured it was high enough and solid enough to launch herself faster. Just beyond was another dense thicket good enough to hide in.
… She launched herself, and her left foot landed squarely on the grassy rise.
… But the crust of the grassy rise was false, like a moldy tomato.
… She sank sickeningly into it.
… The grassy rise was the corpse of some animal.
… She had stepped onto its rib cage, shattering it, oh god, her foot through its rib cage and sunk deep above the ankle into the rotting chest cavity, guts squishing and flying out and splattering, infested with maggot larvae, all over her shoes and her legs.
… Badger dog deer woodchuck raccoon?
… Bloody muck, partially frozen decomposition.
… Oh, disgusting!
… Somebody took a shot at her then, and the bullet took a chunk out of the concrete blocks inches from her foot.
… She ducked, fired back two, maybe three times, and darted to the left and then burst into a run. A dozen yards later she back-tracked and lurked and waited to ambush.
… She waited longer, hunched over like a runner set to run.
… She nibbled at her lip. But no one followed.
… Have to save my bullets, she thought.
… Marrying the wrong person, geez.
… Boy, was I dead-wrong.
…
…
… The FBI agents ran single-file through the rain and the trees.
… Frankie Walsh could hear the loud cursing of the special agents behind him and off to his left flank. Branches crackling, breaking, snapping, from men crashing through their barriers. They were unhappy, and he had zero sympathy for them.
… They were in the deepest part of the woods. No lights were visible. The bare branches were thickening. Hard to know what direction was out.
… Completely alone. He was disoriented. But if the voices were coming from there, then the way he had come into the woods was back that way.
… Glancing around to get his bearings. Searching for a rock or stick for a weapon. Searching for the far sides of the woods.
… Thrusting himself through the random openings among the trees. The woods seemed to go on forever.
… He stumbled over a scrabble of rocks, went sprawling, looked back but couldn’t find in the dark the exposed roots or rocks that had sent him sprawling. Maybe it was a foot that tripped him, a ghostly foot to slow him down.
… Hearing noises off behind him. Slithering through the cold muck to escape and then scrambling on all fours, he found a short dirt path through tangles of fallen branches.
… His sleeve caught on a spiky broken branch.
… This path was choked off by brambles. He had to go backward to get around them. He backtracked.
…
…
… Vickie Hughes was breathing heavily, almost laboring.
… A peripheral motion caught her eye.
… She caught her breath. Then: nothing there, she saw.
… She raised an arm to block the wind and rain. Now she could see the flashlights slashing at the night, flashing as they started their search. They were getting closer.
… She held her hand up and out to cover her eyes from the sudden glare of one flashlight. She ran then, half-blinded, forward. There was gunfire, but it landed nowhere near her.
… The skinny alleyway through the dense woods became a single-file path along a stone edging. She had no choice but to walk it.
… More rubble underfoot. She had to pick her way more carefully so she wouldn’t stumble. That slowed her down, which frustrated her. One wrong step and she was dead. The Feds behind her kept forcing her forward.
…
…
… Frankie Walsh was huffing and puffing, moments away from collapsing. He felt like he had been punched. A coughing fit overcame him, and he struggled not to make noise.
… His pants were not just wet, but sodden up to his belt.
… He tripped over a cinderblock long-buried in the bog.
… Sinking into the muck, face down and spread-eagle in the shattered ice, he gulped bog water, gagged on it, and then vomited it out.
… He moved onward. The water was deeper here.
… He pulled himself out of the water, soaked, pitiful and staggering like a drunk.
… Sat back against a tree trunk to catch his breath. He closed his eyes for a moment and prayed for release. He was rattled and nervous about what lay ahead.
… He rested. Was the sky growing light? Was there a moon behind the clouds?
… Thick sheets of rain suddenly. And now thunder and lightning.
… A rustling sound. He roused himself.
… Barely moving his lips, he cursed the Feds.
… He cursed his wife. And moved on, much slower.
…
…
… Winded, Moses Stone slowed. He checked again his ammunition and that his safety was off. This was endgame. He rubbed his temples.
… The acoustics were rain, the drip of rainwater from the overhanging branches, and his heavy breathing.
… The woods were dense; no one could see more than a few feet into it.
… Dripping rain like whisperings in the dark around him. A hissing began in his head, became insistent, an uncertain murmur, voices in his head.
… A pain in his chest. No surprise, there. If he were fortunate, he wouldn’t have a heart attack here. He was too old for this nonsense.
… Moses Stone had his eyes closed because his headache was back and pounding, throbbing and thumping. He had been counting shots. But Vickie Hughes had to be on her second magazine. No gun will shoot that many times without reloading. How many magazines did that bitch have? How many did her worthless husband have?
… Then the water was ankle-deep. He went wading in the murky waters, making way too loud splashing noises.
… Pitch black ahead. What if there was an abyss ahead?
… Take a deep breath, he thought. Then: go for it.
… Frankie sensed another person stumbling nearby. His filthy beast of wife, her head bowed, pacing. They were parallel to each other. But she hadn’t seen him.
… His fingers plowed through his wet snowy curls.
… She had worked at a beauty parlor next door to the bank.
… Crouching like an animal. Rubbing his face where the bare branches lashed him. He had a large gash across his right cheek. He touched it and his fingertips came back bloody. Gasping.
… Struggling to his feet.
… He planted his feet and leaned against a tree; it buckled under his weight with a loud crack, like a glacier calving. He had to catch himself from falling.
… Frankie was feeling woozy. He had trouble catching his breath. He kept blinking his eyes. He was tired. His heart was burning and his lungs were aching. His eyes blinking back tears. Cold as the tomb. The tips of his fingers were numb.
… No sign that others had come this way.
… No light coming through the tall branches.
… The ice shattered under his feet into a thousand pieces. Then he was hopping foolishly through the icy shallows. Feet caught in muck. Up to his ankles in icy mud. The sound of feet pulling free from muck.
… He stopped to listen. He heard the patter of rain behind his own hoarse breathing. But that was all he heard.
… He ran, stumbled, and slowed when the space between trees grew narrower. Tree limbs protruded from the muck like the limbs of escaping corpses. Thorns and nettles appeared.
… He started walking beneath the thick canopy of branches, trying not to brush against the stinging brambles. Trees in line, tightly packed rows of trees leading him straight… where?
… Brushing against the bark of the trees. Poked in the eyebrows by a pointy branch. A spine of a tree scarred his neck and drew blood with its pointy tip.
… The rain had the sharpest needles.
… Marrying the wrong person, geez.
… Vickie will be the death of me.
…
…
… Special Agent in Charge Moses Stone called on his radio. “Can you see them?” He stood over his slain agent and grieved.
…
…
… Frankie ran until exhausted. He sank in the muck, eyes closing, praying.
… This was what hell is, he thought, an eternity of this. An infinity of this. Please, god, let there be no afterlife. When my time comes, cease me to exist. I can’t handle this. I want nothing but the void after this life. I want to be spared.
… It was cold in the woods. So is the Ever After, he thought.
… Lord, I am not ready for the Long Cold Time. None of us are.
… As though his left foot had fallen asleep.
… The blinding light of a flashlight on his face.
… He leapt up and bowled over the Special Agent.
… The Fed, a bald and lanky man, fell backwards, his feet sliding forward at the same time, and banged the back of his head on the cold wet stone.
… Panicking, Frankie grabbed a chunk of stone and bashed the federal agent in the face again and again.
… Frankie saw patches of snow streaked with blood. Oh, crap, I killed him, he thought. The chill he felt came from more than the rain pelting the frozen earth.
… His cell phone rang.
… He threw it as far as he could into the woods.
… He heard it plop, and then it went silent.
… If he got out of here, he could always buy a new phone.
…
…
… Her eyes were closed, listening for a cell phone ringing. There! About fifty yards ahead and to the right. Again. On the right. She saw him and fired.
… She fired another round.
…
…
… Her husband took the bullet in his thigh; it shattered the bone. He fell face-down onto the ground. His fingers and hands sunk deep into the cold muck.
… Out of breath, sweaty, cursing, tears streaming down his face. His side hurt as if somebody stuck a knife into it. He wiped his face with both hands, wiped away a smear of blood.
… Struggling to get up from the muck.
… Like a cat playing with a dead mouse it caught.
… Too difficult to struggle against.
… Frankie Walsh crawled, pain gnawing, his breath in bursts.
… His foot ached.
… He heard things.
… He crumpled.
… I just want to get out of here.
… I am lost.
…
…
… Vickie waltzed up to Frankie prone in the muck. He cowered at her feet. She fired again and again. And again. He looked up, surprised, started to rise to his feet.
… Out of ammo, she started to pistol-whip him.
… The gun butt was like a hammer’s blow, and he was slammed to the ground.
… Outraged, she hit him again and again.
… He fought back as best as he could, pistol-whipped, his face all smashed up, he couldn’t see out of one eye, so swollen.
… His eyes pleading, face gray as the slush …
… She kicked him in the face.
… Instantly he had a broken nose. Blood splashing out.
… He tried again, got kicked in the knee, his leg buckled, he fell, slid on his butt.
… But in his lashing out at her, the gun broke free from her grip and flew away.
… She had a plan. Stomping on his throat would kill him.
… She pulled his coat over his head, making it harder for him to hit back.
… Several times she stomped on him. She used two feet to stomp on him. She stomped so hard that Frankie was left with shoe-prints on his face and chest and his groin. She found her gun while he moaned and groaned and did not move.
… But now she was surrounded.
… The agents all crouched to fire their weapons, their faces pale as full moons in the night, arms upraised, fully extended, faces covered with muck, clothes dripping with frozen gunk.
… “This is the FBI. Surrender!”
… She whirled under the brilliant light, her gun now raised at the Feds.
… The gunshots echoed through the trees.
… Moses Stone yelled, “Hold your fire!”
… His cell phone rang. His supervisor needed to know. He had the Assistant Director on the other line.
… “That’s what I said, sir. It’s over.”
… He looked again at the two dead bank robbers. Their clothes were in tatters, and those rags were soaked in blood. He resisted the impulse to obliterate them with automatic weapon fire.
… Instead he grieved for the dead.
… “We lost the new guy Brian and Melinda,” he said.
… Lost in the pearly-gray mud.
… Above them, a sky that was black as soy sauce.

####

Fred Zackel is the author of ‘Cocaine and Blue Eyes’ and ‘Murder in Waikiki,’ both of which are available on Kindle, The Nook, and Smashwords.