After Midnight

again.

I was shivering slightly. No matter how hot the air is, it always feels chilly when you first come out of water. Also, I hadn’t gotten over being scared.

The pistol gave me enough courage to go on, but it didn’t make me fearless.

I was still vulnerable.

After all, a .22 doesn’t pack much punch.

And I’d never counted the rounds in the magazine, so I didn’t know how many cartridges were left. They were singlestacked, I knew that. Fully loaded, a magazine that size might hold about eight or ten.

I’d already fired one.

And maybe it hadn’t been fully loaded to start with.

I could find out how many rounds were in the gun. But not without unloading it. Which didn’t seem like a great thing to try. In the dark, I might drop a couple of cartridges and lose them on the ground. Or what if somebody came along while I stood there with a handful of loose ammo?

Doesn’t matter, anyway. When I run out, I run out.

Let it be a surprise.

I started walking into the dark woods, keeping the pistol down close to my side, raising my left arm in front of me for protection against crashing into tree trunks or low branches. I walked slowly, unsure of where my feet might land. Very soon, the chill from the water went away. The air again felt hot and heavy. Here, surrounded by trees, I felt no breeze at all.

I walked without knowing where to find Judy.

Just that her cries had come from deeper in the woods, somewhere east of the creek.

I walked slowly in that direction and tried not to make much noise.

19

THE SEARCH

Soon, I began to think it was a waste of time. I might search till dawn and never find Judy.

How could I find her? Miller’s Woods went on for miles, and she might be almost anywhere. Maybe I’d already missed her. I might’ve walked on past her and left her behind. With any step I took, she could’ve been a hundred yards away to the north or south. Or sprawled unseen in the darkness five feet away.

It would take a huge stroke of luck for me to find her.

And maybe that wouldn’t be so lucky.

Maybe I’d be luckier not finding her.

If she’d faked the outcries, a trap was waiting for me. If she hadn’t faked them, I might have to face whatever had torn those shrieks out of her.

Even if I couldn’t find Judy, it might find me.

It or he.

Probably a he.

Most monsters are.

At any moment, he might jump me from behind. Take me down and drag me away. Do things to me so I would cry out in terror and pain just like Judy.

The pistol might not do much good if he caught me by surprise. Or if there turned out to be more than one guy.

I knew what it was like. All of it. To be jumped from behind. To be outnumbered. To be beaten and tortured. To be raped, gang-banged, sodomized and all the rest.

No, not all the rest.

I hadn’t been killed.

Not yet.

I’d been left for dead, but not killed.

I’ll tell you about it. I hadn’t planned on getting into stuff like this, but what the hell. Why should I keep it a secret?

It happened when I was eighteen, and got a flat tire on a highway outside Tucson. I was alone. Alone, I tried to change the flat. But three guys in a pickup truck stopped to “help.” They helped me, all right. Drove me off into the desert and spent all night “doing” me, doing everything that popped into their sick ugly heads. By the time they were done with the fun, I apparently seemed to be dead. So they dug a grave for me, rolled me into it and covered me up. Then they drove off and left me. I would’ve ended up dead for real, but I’d landed at the bottom of the grave with an air pocket under my face. I also would’ve ended up dead if they hadn’t been such lazy bastards. They’d dug the grave too shallow, hadn’t bothered to pile some heavy rocks on top, and so I managed to crawl out. Then I was picked up by a family of off-roaders who happened to come along in a Jeep.

You might think nothing would scare me, after being through a deal like that.

But guess what.

It’s the opposite. Everything scares me.

You’ve probably heard the saying, “What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.” It might be true, as far as it goes. I have gotten stronger and stronger from all the bad stuff. But I’ve also gotten more and more afraid.

So even as I crept through the dark woods hoping to find Judy, I shivered with fear and felt ready to scream and wanted to run for home.

If the fear wasn’t bad enough—and it was plenty—I also had accidents. I was trudging through rough wilderness, not hiking on a path through a park. All I could see were a few bits and pieces of moonlight, dim gray blurs that might be anything, and blackness that might be nothing.

I hated walking into the black places. I might drop into a pit or step on a body or get leaped on by a madman. And the gray places weren’t much better.

Three or four times, I tripped and fell down.

Twice, I scraped the top of my head against low limbs.

Countless times, I was whipped across the face by unseen branches or bushes.

Only once did I get the real shaft. Striding through a black place, I walked straight into the end of a large, broken limb. I never saw it coming and didn’t even slow down. Just plowed into it. It slammed into me above my belly button. It probably would’ve plunged all the way through and killed me if it hadn’t been so thick. Instead of skewering me, though, the branch gouged me, caved me in, punched my breath out and knocked me backward. I fell sprawling.

For a while, I twisted and squirmed and couldn’t breathe.

When I was able to catch a breath, I curled onto my side and clutched my belly. The wound felt raw and seering hot. Not very deep, but awfully painful. I held it with both hands and cried.

Finally, I was ready to get up. I found the pistol on the ground beside me, then struggled to my feet.

Judy no longer mattered much.

I really had no hope of finding her, anyway.

And so what? With or without me, she probably wouldn’t leave the woods alive. Not unless she’d faked those cries, which I doubted.

Even if she gets away, I told myself, she doesn’t know who I am or where I live.

She knows my face.

So what? Unless she bumps into me at the supermarket…

What if she describes me to a police artist?

That could be bad. Sometimes, those drawings turn out to look exactly like the suspect. I might be watching the TV news in a few days and end up staring at my own face. Most of the people in Chester would see it, too. Even though I pretty much kept to myself, I wasn’t a total recluse. I’d be recognized, for sure.

On the other hand, maybe Judy wouldn’t be able to describe me. Though we’d spent time together in her well-lighted apartment, she hadn’t gotten a good look at me after I shot her in the head