We hiked slowly down the trail, pausing to pick up trash, or strewn articles of clothing. Chasing the little paths that animals make, down to streams where we walked over the fallen trees that become bridges.
We kept going downhill, because that's what you do. The trails ended, but I knew down there was the river. So we followed the little animal trails through the trees, the deep grasses, the Smilax, the Dewberry, the grasping bedstraw.
We got down to the banks, my little boy and me, we found a way to get down into the water. We didn't take our boots off, we just waded through the shallow rushing waters to the little islands of sand, or stone, mud, or algae that looked like islands. We threw rocks in, skipped rocks over, waded up and down the river. So fun and carefree.
Right then, I felt that feeling. You know that feeling, when your hair stands on end, the chills radiates down your arms and your legs from your heart. And then I heard it, steps. In the trees above us. There's no way they couldn't have heard us. But maybe I was wrong. So to my tiny, beautiful as sun, seven-year-old, I said, "get down!" he hesitated. I said, "get down. If I ever say get down, you get down immediately." He asks why, as you would. I said, "I heard steps. We're near the prison. It could be someone who's escaped, or someone looking for them. Or a hunter. Either way we need to get down."
I heard a few more steps, and then nothing. I peered over the little sandbar island, covered in detritus from floods come and gone. I only heard a few more steps and then nothing. I kept watching and waiting. There wasn't really anything I could do but watch. So I just looked.
I've lived in the country most of my life, I can spot a bunny twitching it's ear, a football field away. So I crouched and watched the leaves dapple, the wind bend to the trees, the shadows against the bark, I looked everywhere. And then I saw movement. Just a small one, the tiniest - of a human head ducking behind a tree so as not to be seen. *shit* One of those ducks that a hunter knows. One of those swift silent movements that you make when you've been trained to make one. Trained. So. We're dealing with someone trained. Someone. I'm squatting here, behind this tiny island, with my 7 year old son. I have nothing. Not my phone, my knife, no way out, and far enough of a hike that no one would wander through here any time soon.
Isn't it always the times when you're least prepared, that the most fucked up shit happens? Like the time I got caught in a flash flood, and I was wearing slip. All my years of constantly carrying knives, and survival gear just randomly in my pockets, and the one time I actually might need to use something like that I'm wearing a slip. Universal morbidity.
But here I am, behind this island. I'm wearing normal clothes but I don't have my knife. I'm in boots, my kid's in boots. But nothing else. How do I get us out of this? I'm watching them, hidden down as far as I can be, and then I see the glint. Just the tiniest moving reflection catching on a scope lense. One pointed in our direction
