Black Tide by Brett Diffley

Author:Brett Diffley [Diffley, Brett]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-02-10T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 19:

The Dead of Night

Running blindly through the darkness, Ron pitched forward again, this time over an unseen fallen log. He landed heavily, with a grunt, his cheek bouncing off the forest floor.

Don’t stop, he told himself, the pain is irrelevant. He scrambled up, rising again on tortured, bare and bleeding feet. There is no time. He stumbled on, limping badly, and spitting pine needles from his mouth. Somewhere behind him, in the distance, they were coming for him.

A thick branch stung his cheek as he broke clear of the tree line into a small clearing. Blinking rapidly, he wiped his watering eyes with a trembling hand. The lifesaving sprint from his house had bought him precious time, but now what? He was physically spent, bone-weary, the t-shirt he wore saturated in sweat and mud, and his pajama bottoms—clinging heavily to his skin—only accented his shaking knees.

Feeling dizzy, he finally bent over to rest, sucking greedily at the damp, woodsy air. His heart felt as if he’d just run a marathon and threatened to burst. Bile crept into the back of his throat, the acidic taste courting the debilitating urge to throw up. Adding to his discomfort, he kept reflexively licking his lips, the salt augmenting his dry mouth and ravenous thirst. Focus! he thought, throwing his pain and nausea aside. Were they still following? He had to assume they were.

His every move so far had been based on his familiarity with the neighborhood—or in this case, the surrounding woods. However, it all looked so different in the dead of the night; worse yet, his eyes were starting to play tricks on him as he tried to penetrate the gloom. Was that a darker shadow in the shadows? Did it move? It was difficult to tell, and his imagination wasn’t helping. In utter darkness, the personality of the forest had changed; the whispering winds became sibilant, ghostly, like the hiss of a serpent’s breath, and the gentle trees—mere shadows inside more shadows—seemed stark and foreboding.

A sound came from the darkness behind him, making him turn. For a moment, he held his breath, hearing only the sound of his rapidly beating heart as he searched for signs of movement. There! A beam from a flashlight, still distant, but charging fast.

Trying not to panic, he filled his lungs again and wiped the beaded sweat off his brow. Still bent over, it suddenly occurred to him that his attention had been forward and up instead of down. The ground was mostly flat now, the trees farther apart. Stooping, he ran a hand over wet grass, and suddenly he realized he was in the park, his throbbing feet too abused to feel the long blades between his toes. But now what? With the lake in front of him, and men with automatic weapons behind him, his options were limited.

He looked to his right. Somewhere in the darkness was the boat ramp and the only access road to the park. But that would take him back past his pursuers.

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