AUTHORS'S NOTE:
Miranda and Shep narrowly escaped death in the car bombing that killed Pietro and Dave. Now they are on the run from thugs who want to eliminate any survivors. It's late at night, and Minokee has no street lights. Does this mean Shep has an advantage in the dark? Or will he be able to cope without Dave at his side?
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"What?" Miranda was running as fast as she could in one flip-flop, but when they had crossed Shep's yard, the hedge, and her own back yard, she dug in her heels and pulled him to a stop. Panting, she told him, "I need shoes!"
She led him into her house and left him fidgeting in the living room. Dashing to her bedroom closet, she stamped into a pair of loafers at the same time she whipped a denim sundress off a hangar and over her head. She refused to run for her life wearing only her undies. Sure, Shepard couldn't see her, but there might be ambulance drivers, the police, the (ick!) undertaker. Not to mention the murderers sure to be pursuing them. She needed clothing and whatever dignity it afforded,
"Let's go!" she said, grabbed Shep's hand, and trotted out the door. Crossing her front yard, she asked, "Where to? My car!"
"No, they'd follow us. We'd be a teeny-weeny sitting duck in your clown car. Just run. Straight across the road from your front gate, turn left. Follow the edge of the asphalt for a hundred twenty-five paces. There's a deer trail into the Cypress."
She hesitated a half-second, then pulled him with her across the road. He took the lead as they turned left and counted steps. At the designated spot, he stopped and turned right. "See it?" he asked.
Night had settled down in the Little Cypress forest like a cat settling into a nap. Miranda took a step left, then right, before discerning a grayness amid the blackness. She stepped into the gray and found herself on a narrow dirt path through the dense undergrowth. "It's here!" she said.
He stepped past her to take the lead, and off they went into the scrub.
"You really know your way around in here?" she gasped, tripping over a thick strangler fig tendril. Shep lifted her one-handed before she hit the ground. He set her on her feet, steadied her, then resumed their trek.
"I've been exploring and camping and bird-watching in here every summer I can remember. Phyllis brought me. She said if I could learn to survive in here, I'd be fine anywhere."
Miranda felt him step over something and barely managed to get over the same log herself without scraping her shins, stubbing her toes, or falling flat on her face. "It's so dark in here!" she said.
"Bean, it's always dark—and not just in here," he said.
"Oh, yeah," she said. She followed him to the left and back again to the trail. He avoided a puddle. She drenched one foot in it. "Wait a minute! 'Bird-watching?' Seriously?"
Moonlight skittered across his white-toothed grin as they passed through openings between trees. "Thought you'd catch that one quicker. You must be distracted by something."
"Kinda," she panted, clenching his hand and trotting to keep pace as he dodged obstacles and ducked low branches. Then her foot plunged into a hole where solid ground should have been. She clamped one hand over her mouth to stifle her involuntary cry.
Shep froze. "What!?"
"I fell in a hole," she whispered, using his hand to pull herself out of the knee-deep, sandy trap. "Huge hole," she said, then squeaked, "It's not a snake hole is it!?"
"How huge?" he asked.
"A foot across. I fell in up to my knee, but it could be deeper."
"Armadillo. Big one." He pulled her after him as he began moving again. "Don't worry, they're almost never man-eaters."
"Dude, if you're trying to scare me, you're way too late."
They had penetrated about two hundred yards into the woods when Shepard stopped and about-faced. "Look back at the road now," he said.
Miranda turned, placed her back against his torso, and peered through the dark. "I see two lights bobbing around. Looks like they're walking down Magnolia Street."
"Toward us or away?" he asked.
"Away."
"Can you see their car?"
"No."
"No flashing emergency vehicles yet?"
"Sorry, no."
"Don't be sorry, Bean. This is a great adventure. Smell the roses."
"I'm too busy smelling the psycho killers," she said. "Uh-oh."
"What?"
"They turned around just beyond Bernice's house. They're coming back this way."
"Okay, then," said Shep. "Time to play mama bear and baby bear, Castor Bean. How are you at climbing trees?"
"Please tell me that's a rhetorical question."
He pulled her farther along the trail. Soon he began raking his free hand across the bark of the large trees they passed. When he found the tree he wanted, he stopped and turned to Miranda. That was when she realized he had been counting his steps since they had left the pavement. He knew right where they were, and he knew what he would find there.
"You're gonna be the baby bear," he told her. "You're gonna climb as far as you can up this tree, then mama bear's gonna climb up behind you and protect you from the mean old hunters."
"I'm not sure, but I think there's a sexist remark in there somewhere," said Miranda.
He pointed up into the tree. "Think you can do it?"
"Anything you can do, I can do better. Maybe," she said, looking up through tangled branches where a faint dusting of moonlight was the only thing showing the way.
Shep placed her hands on a sturdy branch with a U-shaped dip close to the tree's trunk. "I'll give you a boost," he said. He placed his hands at her waist and easily lifted her above his head. She straddled the low branch.
"Movin' on up," she sang beneath her breath as she gripped higher boughs, got her feet under her, and began climbing from one limb to the next.
Shep listened to her progress. When he thought she was well out of his way, he pulled himself onto the low branch. He moved only a few limbs higher, then settled himself and went still.
Miranda heard him stop. Following his example, she nested silently where she was.
She watched.
He listened.
A minute later, one of the distant flashlights turned off the road in their direction.
"They found the trail," she whispered.
"Hang tight," he breathed.
The treed humans froze so completely that the owls, crickets, and tree frogs resumed their nightly noises as if no Homo sapiens had joined them—arboreal or otherwise.
A lizard walked onto Miranda's hand, and she wondered if a heart attack would cause her to fall or cause her dead muscles to cling permanently to the tree. She kept her vocal cords silent, but her mind was screeching maniacally. Just when she had decided to faint and let nature take its course, the lizard waddled away, slithering its long slinky tail across her skin. She began breathing again but promised herself a good, satisfying vomit when this was all over.
Her mind traveled to the lower branch where Shep waited. If she had not known better, she would have thought herself alone in the tree. He made no sound, no twitch. He had to be in terrible pain, squatting in a tree with fresh burns covering his lower legs. She was sure he had a headache and most likely a concussion, and she prayed he wouldn't get dizzy or pass out and fall.
When thoughts of Dave and Pietro crossed Shep's mind, he shoved them ruthlessly aside. Survival first; heartrending agony later. First, take necessary steps to secure for himself (and Miranda) a future; later, try to imagine a future without—he refused even to name them in his mind. His lost ones must remain a black void for now, or he would shut down completely, leaving Miranda in the merciless hands of killers.
Miranda's brain traveled a similar circuit, except that she had the disadvantage of seeing over and over again the conflagration and shifting shapes among the flames. She had to view repeatedly the moment when she realized the burning debris on the lawn was actually Shepard. She tried to name the state capitals, the presidents and vice presidents in order, the major Dewey Decimal categories, anything to force herself to visualize something, anything, besides hellish death.
The first flashlight was approaching slowly. The man had to be feeling his way along the foot-wide trail. She could see the light bobble when he stumbled and nearly fell. She imagined she could hear him cursing as he scraped against tree bark or craggy oolitic rock outcroppings.
Miranda prayed for a dramatic entrance by a Florida panther, a razor-tusked wild boar, a black bear in a very bad mood, a rabid coyote, or even a blue heron with a stabbing beak. But if they were waiting in the wings, they never took the stage to rescue the damsel from the villains. She expected little help from turtles, insects, reptiles, and amphibians – all of them present in great numbers but ineffective as crime fighters. Where was a Chupacabra when you needed one?
The second man had turned onto the trail many yards behind the first. He seemed to progress more easily with the advantage of the first man's light ahead. Now two lights drew white arcs on the rough ground and bobbed inexorably toward the tree that scarcely hid the two fugitives. If a hunter turned his flashlight upward, Shep and Miranda were doomed.
Miranda's hands ached from clutching the bough above her. Her back muscles cramped from staying bent in an awkward crouch. Her thighs burned and her calves went numb from squatting, balanced on a narrow branch. The urge to move, to adjust, to ease the pain was unrelenting. And with every second, the nearest hunter was closer and more likely to hear any rustle of leaf or clothing.
The first man was just four yards from the tree, now, and Miranda could see from the backwash of his flashlight that he had drawn a handgun and kept it pointing everywhere the light swept.
The other man was still many yards away, but Miranda felt certain he was armed as well. Both men had already committed murder once tonight. They had everything to gain and nothing to lose by exterminating Shep and Miranda.
The forest denizens went silent. Miranda's muscles screamed for relief. Below her, she felt rather than heard Shepard draw his strength together for flight or fight.
The first hunter was now three yards away. Two yards. Shep launched from the tree, hanging by his arms like a great ape, slamming both feet into the gunman's chest.
Both men fell.
Both grunted with pain.
The flashlight flew into the bush.
Oily blackness coated everything.
The gun disappeared into the undergrowth.
Miranda jumped, slipped, clambered, and swung down from the tree. Two heavy forms grappled, grunting and panting, on the ground. Miranda tried to reach the fallen flashlight, but bloodthirsty thorns and thick vines held her off.
Dust rose from the ground as the men scrambled blindly after the missing gun. The battle was as quiet as it was deadly. From far down the trail, the second hunter could perceive only that the light had gone out.
"What's the deal?!" he bellowed through the trees. "Didja see 'em?! Carney! Do ya see 'em?"
The one called Carney didn't answer. His throat was beneath Shep's iron forearm. Shep strained to close the distance between his arm and the dirt, crushing Carney's larynx, esophagus, and windpipe. Carney would not be talking or breathing ever again.
Miranda stood by, praying silently and actually trying, for a change, to be invisible. Shep remained hunched over his foe after the man went still.
The remaining gunman reacted to his partner's sudden ominous silence by charging forward, careless of his footing. Eager to kill.
Shep reached toward Miranda. She helped him rise stiffly, painfully.
No light.
No gun.
They faced the oncoming hunter.
He was close.
They were spent.
It would end here.
Abruptly, the killer swung around the nearest bend in the trail and pinned Shepard dead-on in his light. He smiled and raised his pistol. Miranda screamed, "No!" and flung herself across Shep, arms wrapped tight around his ribs, with her back to the gunman.
Shep was trying to pry the female shield off his chest while, at the same time, struggling to turn them both so that his body was between Miranda and the murderer.
A shot blasted the night.
Everyone froze for a second and a half. Shepard came out of his stupor and clutched Miranda to him.
"Oh, God help us! Miranda! Miranda!"
Miranda had closed her eyes and waited for the pain. When she realized she was uninjured, her first fear was that Shepard had replaced her in the shooter's sights.
She wrapped her arms about his waist and ran her hands over his big frame as far and as fast as she could. She didn't even think of stifling her sobs, and between each one she cried out some version of, "I'm fine. I'm all right. Are you hurt? Are you bleeding?"
Then they both heard a dull thud like an overstuffed duffle falling off a baggage cart. Miranda turned her head and opened her eyes. The gunman lay facedown in the dirt, illuminated by his flashlight on the ground beside him.
"Miranda!" demanded Shepard. "Answer me!"
She swallowed her sobs as reality penetrated her hysteria. On a grateful impulse, she lifted herself on tiptoes and gave him a short but solid kiss on the lips. "I'm okay," she breathed. "Are you hurt?"
"No worse than before." He hugged her to him, then grasped her shoulders and pushed her back an arm's length. "What did you think you were doing?! Are you crazy!? You could've been killed!"
Martha Cleary stepped into the white oval cast by the dead man's fallen flashlight. Her rifle hung from the crook of her elbow. "Ain't gone be no more killin' tonight," she said. She picked up the flashlight and shone it across one limp body and then the other. "Them fellers picked the wrong place ta do their mischief in. We takes care of our own in Minokee."
Engines rumbled on the asphalt beyond the trees, and blue lights flashed between the black shadows of palmetto bushes, southern pines, strangler figs, stopper trees, cypress, and live oaks.
"'Bout time they got here," Martha groused. She gave Shep and Miranda a thorough inspection, heads to toes, with her light. "Y'all better stay here. I'll hightail it out there and bring back the paramedics."
"Oh, Martha!" was all Miranda could get out.
"Don't you dare thank me, chile!" the old lady bellowed as she moved briskly down the trail toward the police and fire vehicles.
Shep and Miranda leaned on each other and concentrated on breathing in and breathing out. When their heart rates had settled into less than a full gallop, and breathing had become less of a chore, Shep said, "Bean, I'm sorry but I gotta sit d--."
He passed out mid-word. Miranda braced herself against the trunk of their tree and managed to lower him to the ground without injuring either of them further.
Minutes later four paramedics with large lights, medical supplies, and a stretcher rushed toward her on the trail. She couldn't remember, later, what was said or by whom. She only knew that Shepard was being airlifted to Montgomery Memorial Hospital, and that she was staying by his side come hell or high water or imperious mothers or dishonest politicians or would-be murderers.
Miranda had appointed herself the new Dave.
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AUTHOR'S NOTE:
Miranda's first job as the new Dave will be to deal with an angry Hermione Montgomery-Krausse when they clash at the hospital. Will Miranda resort to barking and biting? Chapter 21 coming up on Tuesday.
Thanks for reading, dear friends. Don't forget to vote and comment; you always make my day!
Iris