He had no idea how far behind Wilkes might be, or how long it would take the marine to catch up to him. He had no real idea, even, of how much ground he was covering, or whether he was just crawling along at a snail’s pace. He kept moving forward because stopping or slowing down meant his death, that was all. It was the only thought in his head.
Behind him — right behind him — Wilkes stepped on a branch and it exploded under his boot with a noise very much like a gunshot. Chapel rolled to the side in case the killer was about to pounce, thinking he would head sideways and maybe lose Wilkes that way. Instead, he slipped in the mud and went sprawling forward. His good right hand swung out before him, looking for anything to grab.
It found nothing. Chapel’s feet slid out from under him and the ground just seemed to give way.
The creek he’d heard had dug a narrow but deep ravine through the soil of the forest, and Chapel had blundered right over the edge of a steep slope. He could do nothing to stop or even slow his fall — he could only curl into a ball as he bounced off rocks and exposed tree roots, hurtling down into the defile. Above him he heard Wilkes cry out, “Holy shit,” and the only thought in Chapel’s head was, That about sums it up.
Sliding down the loose dirt of the slope, he came up very short as a fallen log caught and stopped him. His head bounced off the rotten wood hard enough that his vision lit up with a bright light. He felt skin come off his cheek as it rasped against the rough log. Icy water filled his shoe and his mouth was full of mud.
Okay, that sucked, he thought — when his brain was capable of anything but silent shrieks of pain and fear. Now get up.
Get up.
His body refused to obey. He couldn’t even lift his head. Chills ran up and down his spine, but he felt too weak to even shiver.
“Chapel?” Wilkes called out, from high above. “Jimmy? You down there? I know I heard you fall down there. You want to just give up now?”
Chapel couldn’t have replied, even if he wanted to.
“I just want to talk. Honest.”
He couldn’t tell if Wilkes was being sarcastic or not. He was pretty sure that talking wasn’t the only thing on the marine’s agenda.
“Come on, Jim. I could just start shooting in the dark down there. I could just hose you down with bullets. I mean, it would be a waste of good lead. But I bet I could hit you at least once. And I’m guessing one more would finish you off. Why don’t you just talk to me, instead?”
Chapel realized suddenly that his eyes were closed. His injuries had exhausted him to the point where he could have gone to sleep right there on the edge of the creek.
Talking was out of the question.
It was possible that he did pass out. It was hard to tell the difference between unconsciousness and the dark, cold place he was in. He was certain time got away from him, drifting through his awareness like smoke. An hour? Thirty seconds? Who knew how long it was before he heard something else.
When the sound did come, it was a scatter of pebbles and twigs raining all around him, as if Wilkes had gotten frustrated and just chucked a handful of the forest itself down at him. One rock hit his leg hard enough to sting, but still Chapel made no sound.
“Well, shit,” Wilkes said.
And then Chapel heard boots crunching through leaves, and the sound was moving away from him. Receding.
Wilkes was just walking away.
Maybe he thought Chapel was already dead. Maybe he thought Chapel had crawled off, out of his reach. Chapel had no idea what the marine was thinking.
He didn’t much care, either.
He waited a while longer — not that he had much choice. Marshaling his energy, conserving his strength. Sure.
When he did finally move, his first attempt was pretty feeble. He just rolled over onto his back. That didn’t achieve much, but it let him take an inventory of his various injuries. He felt like he had a lot of new bruises, but nothing had broken in the fall. That was good.
His gunshot wound was still bleeding. That was pretty bad.
Staying down, keeping out of sight might be a good way to avoid being shot again. But if he did that, he was just going to bleed to death. He needed to move. His body was adamantly against the idea, and it had a pretty firm veto to work with, since he wasn’t going anywhere on sheer brain power. But he had to move.
Damn it, he had to move.
His body disagreed.
It was his foot that cast the lone dissenting vote. It was freezing in the stream and it really wanted to get out of the water. Eventually it twitched enough that his whole leg moved and pulled the foot free.
It was something. It was something to work with. Chapel forced himself to move his other leg as well, and then to roll up into a sitting position, leaning against the fallen log. He sat there panting for a while, after so much exertion.
He had another ally. His artificial arm didn’t recognize that his body was in shock or that it wanted to shut down. It had its own energy supply and it moved when he wanted it to, damn it, not when it felt like it. With his legs and his prosthetic arm he forced himself to lunge upright, to get on his feet.
Good, he thought. Better. Maybe — maybe he had a chance.
Then he realized what he was going to have to do next, and it made him want to break down and cry.
He was at the bottom of the stream. He had no idea where the stream went or how far he would have to walk along its course to get anywhere. Looking back, he saw the slope he’d fallen down. Cliff might be a better term. Climbing back up there was way beyond his capacities.
That just left the other side of the stream. There was a slope there, too. It looked a lot gentler than the one he’d fallen down, a lot more climbable. But that was a relative concept considering the state he was in.
When life gives you a lot of bad choices, he told himself, take the lesser evil, right? He tried to convince himself of that as he splashed across the stream and more or less fell against the far slope. He reached up with his artificial hand and tried to find something to grab, something he could use to haul himself upward. He found an exposed root that would make an excellent handhold. He grabbed it in both hands and pulled.
If he hadn’t know there was an armed assassin somewhere nearby, he might have screamed. It felt like he was being torn in half. The wound in his side blared with agony, and blood spurted from the neat hole in his skin.
Before he could let himself think about it, he scrabbled to get his legs under him, to find anything solid in the slope that he could use as a foothold. A big rock gave him a little purchase. He used it. He would use anything he could get.
He reached up. Found another root. Pulled—
“Jesus,” he whimpered. “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.” The pain was so bad he couldn’t keep quiet.
He reached for another handhold. No way he was stopping now.
Little by little he pulled himself up. Kicked his shoes into the mud, grabbed handfuls of grass, pressed himself against the slope every time he started to slide back down. Inch by inch he climbed.
And then somehow he reached the top. He pulled himself up onto ground that was firm enough to hold his weight and he was there, he was at the top.
On the far side of the defile stood more trees. More dark woods for him to grope his way through, with no indication they would ever end.
He’d come too far to give up. He kept moving, his head bobbing, both arms waving in front of him to ward off branches and tree trunks. He stumbled, he staggered, but he kept moving, kept fighting for another step, another.
One of his feet kicked something very hard and unyielding. He dropped to all fours and felt it. It had the pebbly, rough texture of asphalt.