King of the Horseflies (2 page)

“Ricky?” he repeats.

“I’m back here, sir.”

He walks into the break room and sees the deputy slightly bent over the sink, washing his face.

“What on God’s green earth is going on? Didn’t
ya see the damn fugitive run out of the building? This ain’t the time to be dolling yourself up right now!”

His frustration got him to the where he didn’t have his normal complexion. He was nearly fire engine red at this point.

“That stranger, Carter, got out somehow and threw a dead mouse at me. Hit me right in the eyes!”

“It’s Carver, you idiot. Dry yourself off; we got ourselves an escaped convict. Go get the guns and call up the boys. He
ain’t got too far yet.”

Carver treks through the forest, glancing behind to see if he can still see the town through the trees. He thinks, “
If I can see the town, the town can see me
.” Out of nowhere a heavy thunder rumbles throughout the valley. He pulls off his backpack, rummages through the contents within it, and pulls out a black hooded sweater. If he’s learned anything so far it’s that you don’t want to be wet when the temperature drops at night. Hypothermia can catch you off guard, then the next thing you know; you’re huddled underneath the 210 overpass fighting to survive the night. He decides he’s going to get the jump and stay dry early. It doesn’t hurt having that camo to help dissolve into the background either. Navigating through the terrain that’s wet, muddy, and cold gets old quick, but when you’re being pursued, you have no choice.

The static sound of rain descending upon the leaves of the redwoods begins to fill the forest. He heads toward high ground, barely seeing where his size 12 boots are landing. The only light that helps him is provided by the occasional lightening flash radiating in the background. Carver sees a cave in the distance and decides to head inside. If they know where this cave is he could be setting himself up to be
trapped. But he needs to stay dry, so he has to take the chance. Doesn’t help he hasn’t eaten in nearly a day and a half. He searches for anything that could be living in the cave but finds nothing but old shards of bones. He sets his bag down, searches for an old aluminum cup to gather water to drink, and settles in until the rain subsides.

Chapter 3

The sheriff meets up with his deputy and crew made up of hunting buddies and local tough guys. They gather at the edge of town close to where Carver was last heading. The crew sees the sheriff as they get out of their vehicles and huddle around him.

“All right, gentlemen, we got a criminal loose somewhere in our woods. He is dangerous and will do anything to stay free. He’s stabbed Jerry in the hand already, and there’s no telling what he would’ve done if I wasn’t sitting right there in the same damn room!”

“I was ’bout to whoop ’em, Willy!" Jerry shouts.

“The hell you were!” someone shouts in the crowd.

They all simultaneously chuckle.

“All right
now, focus! Anybody get a hold of Bama?”

“Last I heard, he was already out there in his hunting stand since Friday.”

“Good, as far as I know, this guy doesn’t have any weapons, but don’t think he won’t have none. Okay? Now let’s spread out and get after him; he couldn’t have gotten far in this storm. Let’s go!”

The men go to their trucks and grab rifles and other hunting gear before heading out.

Meanwhile, Carver drinks water from his cup and fills the rest inside of an old water bottle that he keeps inside his bag.

“Hey you!” says
Bama. Carver looks up and sees a broad shouldered, statuesque man standing in front of him dressed in complete camouflage gear.

Carver thinks to himself, “
How could’ve they tracked me so fast?
”

“Stand up!”
Bama says. “I heard a gunshot earlier that wasn't a hunting rifle and you come running by 45 minutes or so later. Saw you clear as day in my hunting stand.”

Carver begins to stand up but remembers the bone shards in the cave behind him.

“Come on, get up. Don’t make me shoot you now,” Bama says.

Carver looks over his shoulder as he kneels on one knee. He then raises his hands towards
Bama. Fragments of bone go flying towards Bama and lodge themselves into both sides of his shoulder. He manages to get a shot off that reverberates throughout the valley.

The hunting crew all look up in the general direction of where the shot was heard. “
Bama got him!”Ricky shouts. They all head towards the gunshot.

“
Ahhhh!” Bama screams. Carver stands up and walks over to Bama, who is now lying on his back.

“I don’t want to hurt you. So don’t follow me!” he tells
Bama.

“What did you do to me?”

“Nothing that will kill you.”

Carver picks up
Bama’s gun and takes it with him.

Bama
struggles to get to his feet and begins to walk back in the town’s direction. With both arms draped to his side and blood running down his arms and dripping from his fingers, he tries to recall the last time he felt this much pain. The closest might have been when he played college football for the Crimson Tide in 1992. He played as a defensive lineman going after the quarterback when he got his leg rolled over by a 350-pound offensive lineman trying to protect the quarterback. Every ligament around his knee snapped. That was the only time tears had ever came to Bama’s eyes, but this will be the second time ever in his adult life. He walks for what seems like an eternity before he finally runs into the hunting crew.

“
Bama, is that you?" the sheriff says with his gun drawn.

At a distance, it looks like his body type, but he is not sure enough to not protect himself. When he falls over, that’s when they start doubting it’s him.

“Ain’t no way that’s Bama,” Jerry says.

They run up to the body to investigate. The sheriff turns him over with one hand while the other is on his rifle to see his face.

“Arghh!” Bama screams in agony.

“
Bama, you all right? What happened to you?” the sheriff asks.

“My arms…can’t…feel them,” he responds in a weak, raspy voice.

“Who did this to you?”"

“Never seen him ’fore.
Headin’ to Willa Creek.”

“All right, easy Bam.
Two of y’all get him up and over to Doc’s place and make sure he’s all right. Then I want y’all back up over at Willow Creek. I don’t care if we have to chase him to Mexico; we're gonna get him.”

Carver makes it over the hill he’s been ascending for hours and starts to make his way down the other side. With the sun coming up, he hears a sound like heavy rain coming in the distance so he looks up at
the sky. Nothing but the steady stream that has consistently pounded the top of his head for the past nine hours now. The more he walks, the louder the sound gets. “
If it ain’t rain, it must be a river
,” he thinks as he continues down the side of the hill and sees water rushing between the trees. He gets to the side of the river and looks around to make sure no one sees him. He sets down his backpack and pulls out his water bottle that’s half full and refills it in the river.

BAM! A gunshot sprays the water into his face just as he kneels to get up. He grabs his bag and takes off running. More shots ring off as he hears someone yell, “He’s over here!” Bullets hit the ground, trees, the river, and his backpack. He doesn’t want to get wet, but his only option now to save himself is to get in this river. Carver dives in headfirst trying to hold on to his pack, but he loses it. The river seems to be speeding up and sucking him farther in so he can’t get out on the other end.

He’s not a strong swimmer by any standard as he struggles to come up for air. He takes a deep breath as he goes under again. With his eyes open, he tries to paddle up but notices the water in front of him is getting brighter with daylight as if he’s coming out the other end of a train tunnel. He thinks he knows what it is, so his eyes get wide with worry. Whoosh! He takes air falling from a forty-foot water fall. He doesn’t scream on the way down; he just covers his crotch with one hand and pinches his nose with the other. Carver plunges into the cold, icy river water below.

The hunting crew runs alongside the river. The sheriff shows up last. “Where is he?” the Sheriff asks.

“Clarence had a shot at him and missed,” says Ricky.

“I didn’t miss. He moved last second,” Clarence defends
himself.

“That doesn’t answer my question. Where the hell is he?” Sheriff Willy asks.

“He was running by the river and just sort of disappeared.”

“The hell he disappeared,” says the sheriff. “He probably dove in the creek, which means he probably went over the falls.”

Jerry says, “Which probably means he’s dead.”

“Well, let’s not assume, ’cause you know what happens when you assume, right? You make an ass out of you and Clarence for missing that shot. Now let’s get down there and find a body. If there
ain’t no body, that means he’s still alive. Let’s go!”

They all gather themselves and head down river.

Carver suddenly explodes out of the water, huffing for precious air. He slicks his long black hair towards his back and begins to walk out of the water onto the rocky shoreline. He looks behind him to see if he’s been spotted while sitting out in the open, but no one watches. He searches for his bag along the rocky river and sees it jammed in between three large, grey stones in the water. He rushes over as fast as he can, looking over his shoulder to make sure he doesn’t get shot in the process. Just five feet from the bag, he hears a gun shot that strikes the ground merely inches away from him. Carver reacts by jumping to his right side away from the shot. He glances behind and sees three or so men at the edge of the waterfall. He attempts to reach for the bag again, but another shot lands almost exactly where the first did, near his left foot. “Damn it!” he screams. Carver runs into the woods out of the gunmen’s field of view.

Sheriff Willy slowly trots up behind the three that were shooting at Carver.

“Did ya get ’im?" he asks as he peeks over the edge of the falls.

“
Naw, he ran off in the woods ’fore we could get a clear shot at ’im,” they replied.

“So all three of you missed? What the hell are y’all shooting at? The damn gnats flying round his head?”

Deputy Ricky replies, “He was reaching for something in the water, looks like a sack or something. He looked pretty intent on getting it, but he couldn’t reach it in time.”

“Good, I want eyes on that bag until we get down there. If he comes out to get it, shoot him! Ricky, did you search that bag when we brought him into the station?”

“N-no, no,” Ricky stutters. “I thought you searched it ’fore you got there.”

“Dag
nab it, Ricky, how many times I told you that procedure is to always double check whoever we book? He’s hiding something in that bag, and we’re gonna see what it is.”

The whole crew treks around to a safer route to the bottom of the waterfall minus Wallace Williams. Wallace, or W2, which his
friends pronounce Dub-ya 2, stays back and keeps his barrel on sight of the backpack floating in the water. He is probably the best shot out of the bunch, though they won’t admit it. As for his credentials, he would tell you that he could shoot a flea off the tip of a dog’s nose from 100 yards away. W2’s the only serviceman of the bunch, being in the army 15 years ago; he still demands respect, and most of the time, he gets it. This is mainly the reason he is trusted with not letting a fugitive merely perambulate away with whatever it seems he needs so desperately in that bag.

W2 sits down at the edge of the falls, guarding the bag until the crew can get a hold of it.

Carver peers through the trees, looking up at W2 guarding the sack as if the bag itself would grow legs and walk away. He needs his pack as if his life depended on it. One of the reasons he wants it back is because one of its contents was one of the only things he woke up with the day he found himself in the desert. The other was a small tattoo inscribed just below his waist line on his left hip. Carver.

“Carver!” the sheriff begins to scream. “I know you’re out there. We made the mistake of not searching your bag before.” Sheriff Willy holds the bag into the air while looking around the forest. “We won’t make the same mistake twice!” He turns around and tosses the bag to his deputy. “Search through that, will you, Ricky?”

“You think he’s watching, sir?” the deputy asks.

“If what I’m thinking serves me right, he’s looking at us right now,” answers the sheriff.

Carver makes his way through some dense trees and thickets trying to get a better angle on what the hunters are doing. He breaks through and watches.

The deputy begins to remove miscellaneous objects that one would take along if on the road. It entailed a small tube of toothpaste, a toothbrush wrapped in a paper towel, a hairbrush, an aluminum cup, a lighter, a solid black
v-neck t-shirt, a pair of brown cargo shorts, and a razor. All of the contents were flung and dumped on the wet and muddy ground.