CHAPTER NINE
In retrospect, I don’t believe Glasses had been poised lying in wait for me, so much as camping out for the night. He certainly wasn’t on his guard, as he was tightly bundled up inside a sleeping bag and was most likely sleeping, when I tripped over him.
We apparently surprised each other, he yelped as I stepped on his middle, and I nearly fell over but caught myself in time. We looked at each other for a moment then, in the darkness, the hunter and the prey.
He was quick to release himself from the sleeping bag though, and emerged fully dressed and with a pistol in his hand. He was even still wearing his glasses. I ran then, away from my base, out into the blackness, knowing he was in pursuit, and trying to take the route he would find most difficult to follow. I glanced back and he was still giving chase showing no sign of slowing.
For a brief moment I contemplated stopping, and plunging the sharp point that was still in my hand, deep into his chest as he approached. I so desperately wanted him to stop chasing me down. I was not a murderer, and it would surely be self-dense since he would almost certainly kill me if he got the opportunity. Think logically. He is the police. Who would I turn to with my self-defence story?
I tumbled through bushes, he followed, I leapt the large wind-fall logs that were not easily visible in the dim light, but he did not trip nor falter once. This guy was proving hard to shake off. So much for my advantages, though at least I didn’t have the added challenge of showering bullets from the drone overhead.
If it were airborne now it would soon pinpoint me, my body was so hot from running and would provide a very easy target. I realised that we had been running for a
while now, so in fact the drone might become airborne any time soon. I needed to get rid of Glasses.
In a bold instant I stopped and turned to face him then.
He stopped with a skid, out of breath but still keeping the gun aimed at my head, he looked at me for a few moments then said “drop the stick Tarzan.”
I dropped it.
“You’ve made this easier on us, Kaplan. No-one’s expecting you back now, not after being gone so long.”
For some reason at that moment I recalled the tale of Brer Rabbit and Brer Fox. I was standing there in my rabbit coat. That made Glasses the trickster, Brer Fox. I noticed there was even a briar patch to the right of Glasses, and stifled grin.
“You can’t just shoot me, that could never look like suicide. That’s what you want, isn’t it? Make it look like I did to myself?” I said.
He chuckled “doesn’t really matter now. No-one’s going to find you for a very long time. Good of you to dig out your own grave back there.” He stepped to one side then “Let’s get back there shall we, you lead the way, jungle boy.”
I started to walk, slowly at first but he shoved me roughly to make me walk faster.
“So what’s the plan then? You shoot me and put me in the hole under my tree? You’ll never get away with that, people come through here all the time.”
Glasses chuckled again. “Actually you’re going to get in the hole first, and then I’m going to shoot you. Save me having to lift your carcass into it. Smart eh?”
At this I fell to my knees “Oh please, don’t do this!” I cried. But Glasses dragged me onto my feet and pushed me onward, back to my burrow. My home, my safe place for six months, and now, according to this man, it was to be my final resting place.
Arriving back at the clearing, I felt I wanted to ask this man questions about what had happened over the past six months. This was my first human contact since my arrival here, and it seemed somehow to be a waste that the only conversation would pertain to my demise.
“Are my friends all dead?”
He didn’t answer, instead he indicated with the gun that I should get inside the hollow. I did as he bade me, and went as far back into it as I could. It was pitch darkness inside my burrow now, I knew he could no longer see me, but he would surely assume that I was there when he fired his shots. Where else could I be? I called out a final plea “please, I’m begging you, I’ll do anything…”
The shots rang out so loudly that I had to bring both hands up to my ears. I was deafened momentarily afterwards, my head felt like it was vibrating, and I only just caught the last part of his sentence, he was talking to someone else outside the burrow. “… can rot in there.”
I kept still and quiet, as I had before. Only this time my pursuers believed me dead. They had not looked deeper into my burrow where I had dug further back, so that my burrow stretched into a small cavern to one side of the main hole. Initially I had done this to protect me from the wind, which could be fiercely cold in winter when heading directly toward the opening. A cavern to the side provided an excellent shield from the wind. And now also from bullets.
I had tricked Glasses, aka Brer Fox, into sending me, aka Brer Rabbit, to the place I most wanted to go.
With a lippity clip, I hopped away.