Journal (35 page)

I
saw it coming before they did.  It started when we were coming down out of the
mountains.  Her attitude on the outside stayed pretty much the same, but I
could tell it was put on, as if she didn’t know how to stop acting toward him
like she was, even though she felt different about him inside.  Alan putting
that man Michael Bass out of his misery, the one who was so tore up, was
probably the point where she gave it up.  She felt bad for Alan because of that,
and she showed it.  That’s all it took.  I know they were doing it.

The
point is, she wasn’t going to leave him behind no matter what, even if it was
the smart thing to do.

Maybe
falling in love isn’t such a good idea.

As
I said, we kept on walking, I’d say at least a couple more hours total.  The
terrain stayed pretty much the same, kind of scrubby, a little up, a little
down.  The weather wasn’t bad, either, although the sky behind us was darkening
up.

Eventually,
we came to a creek or small river that had, over time, carved a wide channel
about five or six feet deep into the landscape.  The water in it was only about
twelve inches deep, so it normally wouldn’t be a problem crossing.  In this
case, though, the rocks were slimy, so hard to walk on without falling, and with
Alan’s bum leg it took forever for him to get across.don’t know whytif

Mom
went with him while I stayed back at the bank’s edge watching for the people
after us.  But Alan made it, and they were just getting into position behind a bleached
out, twelve foot log to watch while I crossed, when it sounded like we had been
attacked by a whole army.  I’m exaggerating of course, but there must have been
a dozen shots fired off at mom and Alan.  Both of them dropped down behind the
log, out of my line of sight, and I was stuck in the river channel.

The
good thing about being where I was, was that I was out of view of those doing
the shooting.  The bad thing was that if I stayed there, I was dead meat.  All
they had to do was get up to the bank and pop me one.  So I started running to
my right, along the bank, with the plan of crossing the river and climbing up the
other side, away from all the action.  So that’s what I did, started running,
doubled over, with shots occasionally being fired off overhead.

About
thirty or forty yards away, I crossed the water without trouble.  Once on the
other side, though, I took a headlong tumble, my second of the day, landing on
the same shoulder I’d dislocated about a week or so back.  The pain was so bad
I thought I was going to pass out right there.  I think it was even worse than
when I first hurt it.

I
sat there a bit, one butt cheek on a rock about the size of a football, so
cockeyed, tears in my eyes, and for just a moment, only a few seconds,
considered just giving up and letting whatever was going to happen, happen. 
But the pain started to go away, or at least ease up, and my thoughts returned
to helping mom and Alan and, of course, saving my own neck at the same time.

So
after I got my wits more about me, and was working up the will to climb the
bank to see what I could do to give mom and Alan a hand, I saw something move
on the opposite side of the riverbank.  It was the same side where our
attackers were.  First the bushes shook, then some gravel was kicked loose,
followed by three men, one right after the other, kind of sliding low down like
over the edge into the river bottom.

To
give you a picture of how things were at that moment, Alan and mom, the three
men, and me formed a triangle.  The three men were on one side of the river and
the rest of us were on the other.  The men were obviously trying to sneak up on
mom and Alan from the side, only they hadn’t moved down the river as far as I
did when I crossed.  Because their attention was on mom and Alan’s position,
they didn’t notice me, even though I was sitting right there in plain view, not
that far away.  They should have had me for sure, three against one.

Well,
I got my butt off that rock I was sitting on and onto flat ground, and shot the
first guy.  The buck from the shotgun sent another wave of pain through my
shoulder, not as bad as I felt after the fall but bad enough to cause me to
suck in a breath and miss my next shot at the second man.

At
that point, the remaining two turned back to where they’d come from and were
practically climbing over each other to get up the bank on their side of the
river.  This time I was more careful with my aim.  I shot the second one square
in the back and saw him slide down the bank and rollover onto his side.  I was
too slowagreementwot to catch the last one, though.  He made it up and disappeared from sight.

I
didn’t waste any time sitting there waiting to see if that last guy was going
to come back.  I went up and over the bank on my side of the river and crawled
away from the edge, into the brush.  All the time this was going on, I could
hear guns going off.  It gave me a creepy feeling because I didn’t know if one
of those bullets fired was going to hit me or not.

After
crawling a few yards and rising up a bit, I could see mom and Alan lying behind
the log.  Alan was shoving rocks up against it.  I think he was trying to fill in
the gaps and provide some extra protection from the bullets that were still
coming in ones and twos their way.  While he was doing that, I saw mom had rolled
up on one side looking at her left hip area.  Even from where I was, I could see
it was awful bloody.

To
see her hurt like that, deep down scared me something bad.  For just a second
there, I once again let-in the thought we were done for.  I mean, all three of
us were hurt at that point.  They’d zeroed in on us, and we were caught pretty
much in the open.  So I started thinking it was only a matter of time before
they got around behind us and finished us off.  It was just so, so tempting at
that point to think all hope was lost and change our goal from escape to Woburn,
where we could give warning, to take as many of them with us as possible,
before we die.

Somehow,
someway, I pushed those thoughts out of my head long enough to hit on an idea. 
It was a good lesson for me; one that I’ll do my best not to forget.  If you give-in
to those kind of thoughts, you’ll just make your own ideas come true.

I
crawled toward Alan and mom.

Alan
saw me coming first and tried to wave me off and mom then did the same.  No
doubt they wanted me to be on my way toward home, maybe to get help but
probably just to save myself.  I ignored them.

As
I neared, I started to gather-up brush, weeds, blown down tree branches, any dead
vegetation that was on the ground and push it out in front of me.  I also made
sure to pull up some green stuff, too.  By the time I got to them, I had quite
a pile going and deposited it at one end of the log they were hiding behind.

Alan
said, “What the hell are you doing” and chewed me out good for not getting away
when I had the chance.  I just ignored him, there wasn’t time to talk at that
point, and I started to crawl out and around our position gathering up more dry
and green plants, coming back and bunching it around the log.

After
I had a good three foot high pile on either side of us, I asked Alan to get me
the alcohol stove out of his pack.  That’s when he caught on to what I was up
to and gave me a big old smile that was better than any pat on the back or good
word he could say.

The
stove was an amazingly simple device.  It was a quart-sized paint can with lid,
stuffed with fiberglass insulation and filled with alcohol.  The insulation
acted as a wick of sorts that could be ignited to produce a flame over which a
pot with food could be hung to stay where with t and cooked.  (I’ve since made one for myself.)  I
pried off the lid and poured some of the alcohol onto the gathered brush, here
and there, along its length and lit it.

The
fire started slow but, as it grew, it began to produce a good amount of white
smoke.  That’s what the green stuff was for.  When it was big enough and smoky
enough that it completely hid our location, I half stood up, drug over more
brush from further away and threw it on.  While I was doing that, mom and Alan
were getting to their feet, gathering up the gear and limping away, using the
smoke to hide their exact location.  I could see they both were hurting.  Again
those negative thoughts began to creep in.  Were we just putting things off
that were going to happen anyway?  It seemed we were losing at every turn.

Of
course the men who were after us weren’t just sitting around.  They were taking
shots from time to time, some of which came pretty close, but what choice did
we have?  No doubt they were also moving toward us, using the smoke to their
advantage as well.

About
mom’s injury, it looked like a bullet had cut a pretty good notch in her hip
right below, I don’t know what you call it exactly, I guess the pelvic bone,
the big one that sticks out on the side.  There must be some pretty important
muscles in that spot, and they were damaged, because it made it hard for her to
swing her leg forward.  It was also bleeding pretty badly.  Unfortunately, we
couldn’t wrap it while on the move like we were, so the best she could do was
take another piece of the blanket and hold it against the hole.  I was worried
about her.  It also made me mad.  I wanted to get even more than ever.

We
limped along for God knows how long, twenty or thirty minutes I guess, with the
walking getting harder and harder.  If I had to say, there had been volcanic
activity in this area at one time or another because the rock was black, or at
least blackish, where it wasn’t covered with brown dirt.  The trees probably
topped out at no more than twenty feet and were twisted from their base right
on up like some wrung out rag.  There also were these bushes with tiny
blue-green leaves.  They were the worst.  They sprouted up from their roots in
the shape of an upturned bowl, three feet tall, and with spindly branches as
thick as my big finger that seemed to go out of their way to grab and poke at
you as you passed.

As
you can maybe picture, mom and Alan were having a tough time of it at this
point.  I could see it in their fixed looks and tight jaws as much as in their
struggles to walk.  If it wasn’t so serious, it probably would have seemed
funny to see the two of them, both limping, helping each other to walk; the blind
leading the blind, the crippled walking the crippled, that sort of thing.  It
was serious, though; so bad at that point, that I had to face the truth, we needed
to find a hole to hide in.  There was just no way getting around it.  I
remember admitting it was probably the worst thing we could do, but I excused
all that away by telling myself, “We’ll just rest for an hour or so.”

Off
to our west, the earth shot straight up, and I could see these great big black
rocks that stretched north and south for at least half a mile, kind of like a
giant fence in the middle of nowhere.  Here and there I saw shadows in those
cliffs that I hoped meant cracks or caves that would make for good hiding and
protection from the ex-wife and daughter y point people chasing us.  It could also make for a trap, though. 
Once they found us, there would be no getting away.

I
told them of my thoughts and plan, expecting an argument back but got none,
which kind of tells you how much they must have been hurting.  They just nodded
at me and turned to our right and marched on like robots.  At this point, I saw
them holding hands before the uneven footage and their injuries caused them to
pull apart.  I wonder what they were thinking.  I wonder if they’d given up.  I
wouldn’t blame them.  It would have been so easy to do

In
another fifteen minutes, we were there and soon found a place to hide out.  It
was in a spot where the cliff had been split from top to bottom as if whacked
with a giant chisel, making an opening fifteen feet deep and maybe six to eight
feet wide.  Huge rocks, the size of cattle trucks, had tumbled down from above
and stuck in this opening.  It made a roof that was twenty feet tall and so gave
protection from above.

I
thought it was a good place to rest, care as best we could for our wounds, and,
if we had to, fight from.  The bad thing about this place was that it was so far
out of the way, I doubted anyone from Woburn would be coming to our rescue.  Just
to make things worse for us, a pretty wicked wind kicked up.

While
Alan went to work on washing and bandaging mom’s wound, I began to stack rocks
across the entrance to the opening of our hideout.  It was hard work in my
condition, but I only stopped long enough, here and there, to look over at
mom.  I won’t tell you how bad the damage to her hip was, I’ll just say that
I’m amazed she got as far as she did.  I think if there had been time, I would
have cried.

After
we made her as comfortable as we could, using our packs as cushions, she touched
my sleeve and told me I had to go on by myself.  She said I had to warn our
friends and bring back help.  I didn’t argue with her.  It was the smart thing
to do.  I just felt sad about leaving them because I was suddenly filled-up
with the feeling I’d never see either of them again.  It caught in my chest,
but I never let it out for them to see.  I left carrying only some water, mom’s
cut down rifle, and the bullets for it.

I
cut back into the trees and bush and, once more, turned toward Woburn.  I rough
figured that I was less than ten miles, but more than five miles, from the
outskirts of our town.  I thought that if I jogged it, I could make it in maybe
two or three hours.  I also wondered where the heck Eric and his crew were. 
They should have caught us by then.