The Pines

inching onto the road. The crickets resumed. She glanced back and wondered how far she’d walked, but there was nothing by which to judge, no landmarks, only her footprints in the sand. Plodding forward again, she told herself the main road couldn’t be much farther.

She carried only one sandal.

“Wouldn’t you just know? And I only wore them the once.” Reluctantly, she started to backtrack.

Just a few yards away, beside the imprint of her bare feet, the sandal lay on its side in the sand…another set of prints trailing next to it.

Some sort of animal must’ve made them, she guessed. A deer, maybe. But didn’t deer have pointed feet or hooves or whatever? These tracks looked flat and broad.

She turned. The tracks were all around her now.

Clearly etched in moon shadow, the prints crossed her own, sometimes running parallel. She couldn’t have missed them if they’d been there seconds before.

The night breathed around her, and her teeth clicked together.

A mosquito hummed in her ear, and something rustled in the woods.

She ran. The main road had to be just up ahead, just beyond this bend or the next. She sprinted heavily, fleshy arms jouncing, and one foot came down hard on something sharp. She cried out, hobbling, her full bladder feeling as though it would burst with every jolt.

At last she slowed to check the road behind her. The itch of insect bites was maddening, and her clothes clung tightly.

Nothing. Beginning to feeling silly, she balanced on one foot and pulled something thorny from the sole of the other. “What’s the matter with me?” Out of breath and trembling, she wiped sweat out of her eyes and gazed down at the imprints her feet had made in the sand. “Talk about being scared of your own shadow.” The pounding of her heart slowed, and she examined the sticky mixture of sand and blood on her foot.

A rumbling vibration startled her. Blinding lights jerked through the night as a truck shuddered past.

The highway lay right there. Not twenty yards away in the dark, this dirt track emptied onto it. She went limp with relief and put her sandals back on. The shadows of the pines had shifted heavily, and she decided it was lucky a car hadn’t come along on this narrow road—she could easily have been run down.

The pressure in her bladder still throbbed.

More approaching lights. As another car passed, she smiled at the prospect of bending the ear of whoever picked her up. What a story!

Oh well, last chance to use the facilities. She considered crouching where she stood but figured—just her luck—a car would come along and spotlight her. It wasn’t fair, she thought, scanning the area to her right: men had it so much easier.

Spotting a clump of pines that might do, she took a few steps toward it. One foot sank deep in muck, and the ground oozed. Her foot made a squishy suck coming out, and she almost lost the sandal. “I don’t believe this.” Fouled with slime to the ankle, she began picking her way back across the marshy ground.

There came a hideous stench. Behind her, something moved heavily in the underbrush.

Her legs and arms ached with the sudden pressure of blood, and her bladder voided as, with agonizing slowness, she turned.

The darkness moved.

Unaware of the sudden hot tears on her face, she groped her way backward toward the road.

A shape lurched toward her from the shadows.

Branches slashed at her plump bare thighs as she ran. Something exploded out of the thicket behind her. Propelled by terror, she ran faster than she’d ever thought she could, her brain screaming too loudly to register sights or sounds. Only her bones felt the pounding that gained on the road behind her.

Lights! A car ahead—she cried out, but the sandals, plowing through soft dirt, slowed her so that…

Slammed into from behind, she was spun around with incredible force.

Distantly, strangely dislocated from herself, from this body whirling through the dark, she wondered if she’d been hit by a car after all. Had the old man come back? It was her last coherent thought.

She lay, pain humming through her in the night, then felt herself being lifted.

A large bat scurried across the sky as a car flashed past the side road, red taillights retreating. The thrashing in the thicket gradually diminished, and soon there remained only the droning of insects.

“You can slow down now, Jack. I told you, there’s no hurry—this one’s DOA. I’d rather we didn’t all wind up that way, if you don’t mind.”

“Are you saying my driving ain’t all it should be, Doris?”

“You mean to tell me you didn’t finish filling that out yet?” Ignoring him, she sat down next to the woman in back. “What’s taking so long, kid?”

The narrow stretcher creaked. Perched on one of the cushioned seats of worn orange vinyl, Athena looked up. “The first one got a little messed up,” she responded, trying to keep dark arterial blood from getting on the report.

“Big surprise. Darn, would you look at my jeans? I throw away more clothes! You should’ve seen it coming out of my hair last night in the shower.” Doris Compson was a short, solid woman. Steel gray hair, steel gray eyes. The patch on her sleeve read captain. Originally from the Tampa Bay area, she’d been living in these woods for almost twenty-five years but still spoke with a slight Southern twang. She’d once avowed, “Jersey’s the crookedest state in the Union—Mafia runs the whole damn place, like Mexico,” but she’d said it with pride, swearing in the next breath that she’d never want to live anywhere else: it was the local style.

With a loud rattle, the ambulance shuddered, spattered ceiling lights faltering. Tires shrieked, leaving twin streaks of acrid rubber on the road.

“What in hell was that?” yelled Doris, jumping to her feet.

The ambulance regained speed.

“I hit a dog.” Shirtsleeves rolled on his muscular arms, Jack Buzby wrestled the wheel, steering the rig around a series of sharp turns.

“You what?”

“You heard me, Doris,” he said, glancing over his shoulder. The thick glasses he pushed back on his nose gave him an incongruously studious air. He was twenty years old, good-looking and normally easygoing, though just now trying hard not to look upset. “It ran outta the woods in front of me. That headlight’s so outta whack, I didn’t even see it till too late.”

“Kill it?”

“Prob’ly.”

“You think it might’ve been one of those wild dogs, kid? The ones Barry and Steve were talking about?”

Athena glanced up. She felt light-headed, nauseated by the heat.

“We had that happen around here once before, couple years back,” Doris went on. “Remember, Jack? A gang of dogs got to running wild in the woods, raiding farms and the like. Hmm, dog days,” she muttered, wiping her face. “That’s what they call it when it’s thick like this. Damn air feels like a dog’s breath.”

“Feral dogs.” Athena stared at the small puddle of blood sloshing around her shoes. The disposable blankets they’d used to sop up some of the liquid lay wadded and soaking.

“You say something, honey?” Doris peered at her.

“Feral dogs, they’re called.” Absently, she massaged her leg. “Like feral children.”

“Leg bothering you again, hon?”

“No.” Scowling, she tried to ignore the ache in her knee while she completed the accident report.

The corpse that sprawled across the stretcher was immensely fat and mangled. The accident had taken place barely a mile from the ambulance hall, and blood had still been spouting from him when they’d arrived. Despite his wife’s protests, the drunken idiot had gone up a rickety ladder to prune a tree at night. He’d landed beer belly—first on the chainsaw.

Athena shook her head, writing up the particulars. Her faded work shirt was drenched and sticky, her hair pulled back in a tight bun.

“Hey, Athena, why don’t you come up here and keep the driver company?”