Out of Place (16 page)

Chapter 28

Emily swallowed hard as she watched Zack’s reaction to the car that pulled into the lot. She knew the car too, but for some reason her panic-level was not reaching the level it should. It was as if she was just a little worn out of worry.

There was no chance to get to the ATV
. Harry parked the stolen red Toyota right in front of it. Even if he wasn’t heavily armed, it would be a risky proposition. She saw his face, it was bloodied and bruised and he was limping. The hit from the ATV clearly did some damage.

Zack
touched her shoulder to get her moving and pulled her out the back door, which led past a blacktop lane and up a hill towards a cropping of woods.

The last thing
she wanted to do was go back into the woods, but here they were, going in again. They stopped at the top and looked back towards the pumps. Harry wasn’t there. He must have gone inside the shop.

There was a strange noise off in the distance. “You hear that?”
Zack whispered to her and she nodded.

It sounded like big trucks, that noise they make to slow down when they go down a big hill. She didn’t know what it was called
, but it was loud and distinctive. The chorus of trucks seemed to carry up over the hill they stood on.

Zack
motioned with his head and they headed towards the sounds. The trees were growing thick the deeper they got into the woods. Tall pines blocked out any moonlight and plunged them into a pitch-black situation.

Zack
must have stopped because she ran into him. He turned and whispered, “Give me your hand so we don’t get separated.”

She obliged and they slinked through the tight trees hand-in-hand. They took slow
, measured steps. They reached the top of the hill, then came into a small clearing of light and looked down.

Below them stretched a large valley, in the center glowed the tall lights of a
large four-lane highway. A big rig came into view and several cars moved up and down the roadway.

Emily felt a little bloom of excitement as they moved forward towards the lights. But in the next second it all turned wrong when
the earth broke free from beneath them. They both lost their footing, slipped and fell.

They tumbled,
plunging back into the moonlight and down the edge of a steep cliff into the air.

They bounced off a short ledge,
rolled down, and slammed into another ledge. She came to a rest on a narrow piece of earth. Zack didn’t stop and bounced down one more shelf below her, disappearing from sight.

Emily felt
soreness all over her body start to radiate, but she was able to move everything. After a few seconds, she started to come around.

“
Zack?” She looked over the edge to the next platform. He moaned and started rolling side to side in pain. “No!” she screamed. “Don’t move!” He was right near the edge, another roll and he’d plummet into a long fall that looked too far to survive from her perspective. “Zack, can you hear me? Are you okay?”

He opened his eyes and looked up at her
. With a forced smile through a moan, he said, “Hey there, good-looking. Do you come here often?”

She cracked a reluctant smile.
“Are you okay?”

He moaned. “
Ugh, did anyone get the license plate on that truck? I’m a little hurt. I may’ve put another crack in my ass.”

“Just don’t move to your right
, you’re literally on the edge.” She pushed herself to her feet, looking for a way down this cliff without falling. There had to be a way down to that highway, she had to flag down a car.

She looked up
. There was no way to get back up there even if she wanted to. Looking down, she could see a series of jagged ledges to her right. The area they were on bowed out, so she couldn’t see all the way to the ground and what was directly below them.

The highway was out there, within reach. It was just a few hundred
yards away,yet it may as well have been ten miles. Emily couldn’t see enough by moonlight to know where she was walking, but she eased off to the right towards the next ledge. There was no way. The ledge was disappearing under her feet. She would have to jump down to Zack’s location. It was the only way to get down there.

It wasn’t that far, maybe ten feet or so
, but she had to be precise. A little too far to the right, or a little too much momentum and she’d fall into the unknown.

When some dirt hit her head, s
he looked up, and saw Harry standing there. He raised his pistol and pointed it right at Zack.

“No!” She stepped in the line of fire. “Don’t do it
, Harry.”

“I’m putting him out of his misery.”

“Stop it! Stop this right now! It’s over.”

“I say when it’s over.”

“We’re done, Harry. You’ve run your course, old man. I’ll never be with you. You blew it.”

She was pushing him, a new tactic, but it was just a guttural hate for this man that she could no longer fake. She’d rather jump off this cliff to her death than give him one more second of
her life. If he wanted a war, here it was.

“I’ll
shoot you!” he said.

She stared down the barrel of the gun
and raised her arms to her side. “Go ahead. You’ve taken everything away from me, Harry. And I’ll never give you what you want. So just kill me now.”

Harry nodded. “Fine, have it your way.” He pulled the trigger.

Emily felt the blow crush into her like she was hit with a bat. She wasn’t even sure where she was shot, but the impact knocked her off the ledge. She landed briefly on the ledge next to Zack, but then she felt herself falling again.

When she stopped falling, she realized
Zack had her by the arm. She looked up and couldn’t see Harry from here. She wasn’t feeling well. Nausea and dizziness hit her hard. Zack looked down at her. She met his eyes. They were sliding.

“Let go of me
,” she said through considerable pain. They slid a bit more.

“Never.” Rocks from the edge broke off
and rained down on her head.

Her body was buzzing with
numbness. It was so intense she almost couldn’t see. All her strength was fading and then her body went completely limp. She could barely get out the words, “Let go, you’re going to fall.”

He gave her one last smile.
“I already have.”

A second later, the dirt broke free, and they fell.

Chapter 29

Zack opened his eyes. It took him a few moments to realize where he was, and what had happened, but it all came back. He realized he was still holding hands with Emily, who was face-down next to him in the water.

Adrenaline hit him and he immediately turned her over. Thank God
, she was breathing. Her face had been resting on the edge of the grass and wasn’t full in the water. He had no idea how long they’d been down here, but it was a miracle she hadn’t drowned.

“Emily, can you hear me?” She didn’t respond. He could see from the lights of the highway in the distance that she was bleeding badly from the abdominal area. “Oh, Emily
.” He felt a gut-wrenching pain in his chest. “This isn’t how this was supposed to end. It can’t end like this.” He made a fist and punched the ground, but quickly got it together.

Blowing a calming breath, h
e took her pulse, it was slow and very weak and he knew what that meant. Her blood pressure was dropping because she was losing so much blood. She was dying. He took off his jacket and wrapped it around her body to slow the blood loss. What he really needed to do was put pressure on the wound, but he had to find help. He looked around and found a fist-sized rock in the water. It was better than nothing. It might not stay there, but it was worth a shot.

Zack
put his lips near her ear. “Hang on, Emily, please. Fight it, please, keep fighting. You can do this.” He kissed her on the forehead and got to his feet. All the pain he was feeling suddenly went away as he looked up in the distance at that highway.

He trudged through the swampy area
they’d fallen into and climbed up onto more solid ground. Tall weeds and thick grass slowed his progress but he started running as fast as he could. It was only a few hundred feet to the highway and he was going to make it.

Feet finally touched solid ground and he was able to hurry into a good run.
He was within a few steps of the highway when he felt the punch to the back, followed by another.

The impact knocked him off his feet.
Falling forward, he felt his body going numb as he slammed into the ground. But he didn’t care. He wasn’t letting Emily down, he was getting to that highway if it was the last thing he ever did. Hand over hand, on his knees he crawled to the edge of the roadway. He felt the sure asphalt under his hands and it boosted him forward into the lane of the highway. On pure determination, he raised his head up, hoping the oncoming cars would stop. The first one didn’t, it just sped by his head, missing him by inches.

Now his entire body was in the slow lane
, it was do-or-die. A car was approaching. With his last bit of strength, he raised his head, waved his arm and screamed. The car was approaching, bearing down on him at a rapid rate. It was either going to kill him or stop. There was no other option.

The sound of screeching
tires and blaring horns was the sweetest music he’d ever heard. He started to laugh to himself as delirium set in, and time seemed to click by in staggered buffering moments. It felt like time couldn’t handle the traffic on it’s own bandwidth.

Click,
someone stood over him. “Oh man—hang on buddy—calling for help.”

Zack
tried to speak, but his voice had no power. His breath wheezed in and out. He wanted to roll over to his back, but couldn’t manage the strength. He said, “Emily, Emily.” But he didn’t think anyone was hearing him.

Another freeze and buffer, time jumped forward and
the next second he was on a backboard. He heard the EMTs talking about him. He knew what they were saying wasn’t good. He heard words like multiple gunshot wounds, and losing blood, and shock trauma. He said it again, “Emily, Emily’s in the water by the cliff.”

No one was hearing him. Finally
, one of the EMTs leaned close to him. “Hey buddy, do you know your name?”

“Emily—”

“Your name is Emily?”

“Emily, she
’s by the cliffs in the water, she’s been shot.” He pointed.

“Okay
, buddy, you just hang on.”

Zack
heard the EMT shout to the cop, “Hey, we may have another victim.”

He still wasn’t satisfied until he knew for sure they’d found her.
They slid him into the ambulance. Another EMT was working on him, taking his blood pressure. Again, he said, “Emily, they have to get her.”

The EMT nodded to him. “They got her, friend
, they got her, you hang in there we’ll be at the hospital in no time.”

Zack
felt better to know that. But suddenly all his own pain came crashing down on him. The EMT was talking to him, but he wasn’t listening. He was so very tired. It seemed like a good idea to go to sleep and wake up when it was over.

***

Waking up, Zack didn’t quite know where he was. A man was standing over him. “There you go, buddy, there you go. Breathe it in, buddy, suck that air in.”

Zack
felt the oxygen mask on his face and he took a deep breath. They wheeled him through a white hallway and into an elevator. He wanted to talk, but for some reason it just seemed like so much effort. But then he managed to ask, “Where’s Emily?”

In the next second t
here were two women standing over him, maneuvering his gurney out of the elevator and into a room. Once the bed was settled into place, one of the nurses stood next to him. “Zack? How do you feel?”

He nodded. He felt okay
; not great, but not that bad. “Where’s Emily?”

She ignored the question and said,
“We want you to rest for a while. Doctor Lowenstein will be in to talk to you later.”

He was so tired
. He just fell asleep.

***

“Zack, can you wake up for me?” He heard the voice but it took him a few moments to open his eyes. When he finally did, he saw an attractive blonde nurse with short hair and large green eyes standing over him. “I need to irrigate your IV Okay, honey?”

Zack
nodded. He felt the sting in his arm and looked up to the bag of blood hanging on the J-hook stand. “I’m getting blood?”

“You lost a lot
. Your counts were way down so we had to transfuse two pints.” She hooked the IV back up and ran his blood pressure cuff. “One-fifteen over fifty, good job, you’re back up to normal pressure. That’s what we like to see.”

“Where am I?”
he asked.

“You’re in the I.C.U.”

“No, what hospital?”

“Oh, you’re at
Roanoke Medical Center.”

“Where’s Emily?”

She twisted her unpainted lips. “We were able to get in touch with your family, they’re en route.”

Just then
, a tall, thin female doctor with dark hair and a small pointed nose entered the room. “Well, hello, Zack. I’m Doctor Shoshanna Lowenstein. How are you feeling?”

Zack
thought about it. “I feel okay.” He thought for another second. “Was I shot?”

“You’re very lucky. You had some severe injuries
and we had to rush you into surgery. You sustained two gunshot wounds. One bullet passed right through your body, it punctured and collapsed your lung. The other bullet hit your shoulder blade. We got most of the fragments out but there’re some pieces still in there which won’t cause you any trouble.”

“So they’re in there forever?”

She nodded. “You’ll never know it. To be quite honest, I can’t believe you were able to crawl to that highway. You have quite the level of determination.”

Zack
was afraid to ask but he had to. “What about Emily?”

The doctor looked at him
, but didn’t reply right away.

“Please,
Doc, I need to know.”

The doctor nodded. “She’s down the hall
. I’m not really permitted to discuss another patient with you, but given the circumstances… We were able to fix up her bullet wound, but she lost a lot of blood and she has a few other injuries from the fall. She’s been drifting in and out of consciousness. But she’s been asking for you whenever she wakes up.”

He felt a huge measure of relief swell into him.
“When can I see her?”

The doctor smiled. “Let’s play that by ear. You’re not getting up until the blood from that bag is in your body, and I like the levels.”

He nodded and closed his eyes.