Chapter 20 – The Hunted
Miranda had removed her shoes and laid out her work clothing for the next morning. She was covering her charred kitchen with spare bed sheets when a blast of noise and light shook the house and knocked her to her knees.
An echoing muffled roar followed the first boom. The initial bright light subsided to a wavering red-gold glow emanating from Orchid Street.
Miranda blinked and pulled in air, but she choked and coughed on suspended dust and ash stirred by the explosion. Sputtering and gasping, she pushed herself to her feet. The flames and smoke were concentrated beyond the roof of her rear-yard neighbor. She knew—but tried desperately to deny—that Shepard Krausse’s front yard was on fire.
She fumbled into the flip-flops beside the door. In a millisecond she raced through the rear hedge. The red glow blossomed higher into the air beyond the Krausse rooftop. Neighbors’ doors slammed, dogs barked, people shouted as all Minokee rushed to help. Some woman was screaming hysterically; Miranda decided the voice was her own.
She careened around the side of the house and froze in shock. At the curb a massive conflagration devoured twisted, blackened pieces of Pietro’s car. In the street beyond, shadows of frantic neighbors fought the fire with buckets, garden hoses, and kitchen fire extinguishers. People shouted into cell phones and at each other. What air was not sucked away by the holocaust was searing to the lungs. A wall of unbearable heat shoved would-be rescuers back from the white-hot steel skeleton of the car.
Squinting into the blinding glare, Miranda made out a silhouette no one else had yet seen: a body on the lawn, and it was on fire.
“Shepard!” she screamed. “Shepard!”
She ran and threw her body across the burning one. She rolled him in the grass, she beat out flames with her hands, ripped off her blouse and skirt and smothered the fire. His pant legs were shredded and black. Now in her underwear, Miranda wrapped her singed outer clothing around his calves and leaped to grasp his wrists and drag him toward safety. A gnarled, claw like hand covered Miranda’s hand. She jumped and screamed.
“Let me help!” shouted Martha Cleary over the hideous cacophony surrounding them.
Miranda pulled one arm and Martha the other. Together they heaved the big man to and through the front door of his house. Martha slammed the door, blocking out most of the heat and light, but the two women had no trouble seeing each other’s terrified faces in the fire’s glare through the windows. They slumped onto the floor beside the unconscious Shepard. Martha wore pin curls, a bathrobe, and ruined pink chenille bedroom slippers. Miranda wore bra, panties, half-slip, one flip-flop, and a coating of soot marred by tear tracks down her face. She made no sound and took no notice as tiny salty drops fell from her chin.
“Gonna take the Rescue a bit ta git out here,” said Martha, hauling herself to her feet. “Better get some cool water on these burns.” She gestured to Shepard’s lower legs encased in Miranda’s erstwhile clothing. “I’ll git a bowl of cool water from the kitchen.”
“I’ll get some towels,” Miranda said with a sniff. She wiped her chin absently on the back of her hand as she rose and went to find a linen closet.
Moments later the women were again seated alongside the man who lay facedown, silent, on the floor. Gently they lifted away the clothing on his calves, placed towels beneath him, and began drizzling cooling water over his reddened skin.
Outside someone shouted, “Everybody get back! Get back!” Unable to put out the flames, neighbors retreated to what they hoped was a safe distance. Some wept. Some joined hands and prayed. Everyone lurched backward when a second, smaller explosion blasted new flames high into the air.
“Prolly the gas tank,” said Martha when Miranda pulled back and squeaked with alarm. Miranda took a deep breath, let it out, and resumed the gentle rinsing of the man’s burns. Martha never broke rhythm. For a minute they worked in silence, with the decreasing glow and fading fiery roar coming to them through the closed front door and the living room windows.
Miranda cleared her throat and asked hoarsely, “Martha?”
“Yeah, darlin’.”
“Wh—, where is Dave? Where is Pietro? Is, is somebody helping them?”
Martha took a couple of calming breaths before she answered, as kindly as she could, “I think they’re still in the car.”
“Oh, God! Dear God, have mercy!” Miranda whispered.
Shepard groaned. His shoulders tensed, and he turned his head toward Miranda.
She wiped his face with a cool, damp cloth. “Shhhhh,” she said, leaning near his ear. “It’s all right. You’re gonna be all right.”
His eyes were closed, but his lips moved. Miranda said, “What, Shep? What do you want?”
He worked harder, and this time they heard him. “Dave,” he rasped. “Where’s Dave?”
No one answered.
Unconsciousness reclaimed him.
The next fifteen minutes dragged on for decades. Miranda looked at her watch, thumped it with her fingers, held it to her ear, certain that it had stopped. The noise outside had subsided. The fire had decreased from open flames to glowing edges of unrecognizable shapes. Most neighbors had gone home; only a few waited for the police and fire/rescue vehicles.
Miranda and Martha continued rinsing Shepard’s calves. Martha declared the burns were superficial and limited to his lower legs. Miranda examined them closely and agreed.
When Shepard stirred and opened his eyes, the women helped him stand and move to the nearby sofa. They propped his feet on an ottoman and draped wet towels over his shins to cool his burns. Martha fetched a glass of water, and Miranda fed it to him.
Silently, Miranda thanked God that Shepard could not see the devastation outside his front window. She could not keep her eyes off it. She yearned to see—and at the same time prayed not to see—the shapes of a man and a large dog inside the twisted metal.
Shepard had lost his sunglasses in the blast, and his blue eyes stared unblinking into middle space. His head ached—from concussion, he surmised—and his calves felt like the time he had fallen asleep on the white-sand beach at Destin. Unforgettable second-degree sunburn. At least this time it was only his legs, not the backside of his entire body.
Martha went outside to confer with neighbors and watch for the authorities. Shepard and Miranda sat in silence.
“Would you like me to call your mother?” Miranda asked softly.
He shook his head carefully, as if it hurt to move. They sat isolated in their own thoughts a little longer. Then Shepard said, “Bean, I need to call Carlo.”
“Carlo?” she said. “Who is Carlo? Never mind. Doesn’t matter. Do you have his number?”
“It’s in my phone. But I have no idea where my phone is.”
“It’s on your coffee table. I found it in your pocket.”
He groaned and dropped his face into his hands.
She rose, retrieved the phone, and when he sat up again placed it in his hand. He held it. He thumbed it on, then flicked it off again. He lifted it toward Miranda.
“I can’t,” he said. “Would you?”
“Sure,” she said, taking the phone. She turned on the device and scrolled through the contacts directory. She found “Carlo” in the directory and activated the call button. “It’s ringing,” she said. “What do you want me to say?”
Shep cleared his throat. “Tell him his brother has been murdered,” he said, then seemed to choke. He coughed and continued, “And I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.” He clamped his jaws shut and swallowed hard. Tears pooled in his eerie blue eyes and rolled unchecked down into his beard.
Miranda steeled herself for the conversation, and when Carlo answered she was able to speak almost normally. His Italian accent was nearly identical to Pietro’s, and that tore at her heart. Still, she managed to introduce herself as a friend and neighbor of Shepard’s and to tell him Shepard’s message more-or-less verbatim.
Carlo was quiet a mom
ent. Miranda put the call on Speaker and held it between herself and Shepard.
“Who?” said Carlo. The single word spoke sorrow, fury, determination, and inescapable vengeance.
Shepard managed to force from his constricted throat: “Iggy. Has to be Iggy.”
“And madam?” said the voice of vengeance.
Miranda’s brow furrowed in confusion.
Shepard answered, more strongly now, “I am certain madam knows nothing of this. She is not part of it. I caused this, Carlo. Pietro warned me, but I didn’t listen. I thought I was risking only myself. I should have realized there was as much danger to the people around me.” Shep’s chest heaved with his weeping. “I’m sorry,” he rasped.
For a few seconds Miranda heard only Shepard sobbing. She slipped her arm across his wide shoulders and hugged him.
Finally, Carlo spoke again. If Death could speak, it would be in that voice. “Is not for you be sorry. Is for Iggy. Iggy will be the most sorry.” He disconnected.
Shepard stared straight ahead, gaining control of himself. Miranda’s hand slid soothingly back and forth across his shoulders. Only eighteen minutes had passed since life had changed forever in a ball of fire. In another ten minutes the outside world would arrive with flashing lights and helping hands.
Suddenly Shepard stiffened. “Hear that?” he whispered.
Miranda wiped at her wet cheeks and listened. Outside, a car approached and idled to a stop near the wreckage. A man called out, “What the hell happened here?!”
“Car fire,” a neighbor shouted back, in a tone that also said, as any fool can see.
“Damn! Anybody hurt?” the newcomer yelled.
“One got out,” Martha Cleary shouted. “You lost or somethin’?”
The man in the car told a fast story of old maps, bad lighting, and wrong turns. He asked how to get back to the interstate. Someone outside seemed to be giving directions.
“It’s the same car, isn’t it!” Miranda whispered, as if the strangers might hear and discover them. “The one you heard during dinner!”
“Now we know what they were doing in Minokee,” Shepard said.
“And now they know someone survived,” said Miranda.
“Yeah,” said Shepard. “They’re gonna want to finish the job for sure.” He stood and held out his hand to her. “Bean, we gotta go. Velocemente! C’mon!”
She put her hand in his, he pulled her with him, and they headed out his back door toward the break in the hedge.
“But we can’t run from them! You’re hurt,” Miranda protested. “Can’t we just hide—if not here, then in my house—until the police and paramedics get here? It won’t be much longer now.”
“Trust me, Castor Bean. Those guys intend to be finished up and long gone before the police get here. I don’t suppose you’ve replaced Phyllis’ shotgun that was stolen?”
“No, I—”
“Doesn’t matter. We may be unarmed, but we’re not dead, and we’re on our own turf. Feeling woodsy?”
“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.”
r /> “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 bes
ide 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.