A Life Wasted

Surrounded

It took longer than I would have thought, but eventually the helicopters landed on the nearby pasture and spun down their engines. When all was quiet I could hear the sounds of armed men and cooling car engines. Needing to know what was going on out there I climbed the tree I'd been resting against. Once I was high enough I could see through to the open ground on one side. What I saw through a narrow opening of canopy was two police cars parked about forty feet apart. Behind each of those cars I saw a police officer. I figured if they had three cars in that narrow field of view they would have a similar distribution all around the woods. I was too tired to do the math, but it was clear there were a lot of police out there.

Soon one of the helicopters began to spin up, then lifted off the ground. I heard it in a low hover over the trees on the side of the woods I'd entered on. It didn't take me long to discern by the sound that it was performing a grid search. This didn't make any sense since the canopy of trees was too thick to see through. This mystery was solved when the helicopter went over my position and I could look up and get a good view of it. Attached to the forward belly section was an infrared camera pod. I got a better look at it than I'd like because when it was directly above me it stopped and hovered there.

There was no doubt that the pilot was looking at a thermal image of my thirsty body hugging the tree, yet I froze, unwilling to move and remove any doubt they might have had. Yet there could be no doubt. I'd seen video images of what was displayed from an infrared image, so I knew exactly what they were looking at. Knowing they were up there making fun of me for staying still to hide from them didn't change my decision. I didn't move. Neither did the helicopter. After an uncomfortably long period of time the helicopter moved away and landed nearby. I heard its engine spinning down and then silence.

The next sound I heard was an amplified voice calling my name. Stating the obvious the voice informed me that I was completely surrounded and there was no possible chance of escape. It then suggested that I come out with my hands up. I thought about it for about ten heart beats. Everything the guy said was true. I was completely surrounded and there was no possible hope of getting away. As much as I despised the idea of giving up, there simply wasn't any other alternative. I guess getting killed was an option, but not something I would opt for given a choice. Here I had a clear choice, so I called out that I would come out.

I've climbed enough trees in my life to know that going down is always more difficult than going up, but going down this tree was unnaturally difficult. I'd climbed the thing like a monkey in heat. Going up I had been fighting for a way out. Even though I knew I was surrounded and that there didn't appear to be a way out I still had hope that I'd find one when I climbed up this tree. Now I had no hope. I had decided to surrender, but before I could do that I had to reach the ground. I've never accepted not having hope and I despise the idea of surrendering, so it was a long and painful decent from that tree.

I assumed they heard me shout that I'd surrender because they didn't say anything else as I took my time getting out of the tree and the two helicopters stayed on the ground. Of course they knew I'd been hiding high in the tree so perhaps they understood it would take a while to reach the ground so they were being patient. Or it might have been that it felt to me like it took an hour to reach the ground when in fact it only took a few minutes. Whatever the case, the instant my feet touched the ground my plans changed.

Recall that I didn't want to write about this part of my life. Well, this next part is one of the reasons I don't want to write about it. I don't like things I don't understand, so I really don't like writing about those things. Nor do I like making myself sound crazy. The next part of my story does both.

The moment my feet touched the ground I heard a voice. I know this voice was just in my head, but it sounded like it came from all around me. Like James Earl Jones doing the God voice in a movie. Not that it sounded like James Earl Jones, but that same effect. That voice said, "My warriors don't surrender."