Germ

At that moment, when he was at the apex of his stretch and was just reversing direction to pull the door shut, he first felt, then heard footsteps on the carpet directly behind him. Without looking, barely thinking, he swung down with the bat and felt it connect with something—someone! In the edge of his vision, he saw a man, big, with something raised over his head. He used his grip on the door handle to propel himself forward. He felt wind on his back. Something made contact, shearing pain just below his shoulder blade. He swung his leg around and through the opening. In two steps he was at, then over the railing . . . falling through darkness.

The grassy earth below caught him with unkind arms. He crumpled, slamming his head painfully against it. He sprang up and ran for the woods where his backyard ended. He heard a thunk! and a divot of grass exploded near him, flying into the air and back down.

He was being shot at!

Fifty feet to the woods.

An irregular dot of blood-red light hovered like a firefly on the grass in front of him. Allen realized that the assailant was using a laser sight to target him. It spasmed back and forth, then vanished as it found his back. He jerked to the right. Immediately he heard the thunk! again. Another divot erupted from the yard.

Twenty feet.

He crashed into the heavy foliage . . . tumbling over the first thick branches . . . rolling onto heavy loam, twigs, more branches, stones . . . smashing into a thick oak. A dozen small wounds opened on his naked body. He rose facing his yard and saw a shape, black against the gray silhouette of the house, leaping as he had over the railing. The laser shot off into the sky, visible only when it pierced some mist. Before the figure landed, Allen was running again, blindly crashing through the deep woods. The ground fell away sharply. His bare feet slammed down on bruising round rocks and cutting sharp ones. Skeletal fingers of tree branches clawed at his face, his arms, his legs.

He plunged madly down the hill, trying to recall the topography, the placement of the area's roads and houses below. He wondered wildly if he'd find refuge or if a bullet would find him first. He heard the crunch of twigs behind him and pushed harder, rebounding off trees, tumbling and leaping forward, tumbling again. Holly bushes raked their thorns across his skin. His chest slammed into an unyielding branch, knocking him off his feet. He landed hard . . . was up again . . . pounding down the hill. . . slipping on ferns . . . flinching as limbs lashed his face, back, legs . . . fighting the urge to stop, to rest, to think.

The night had robbed the leaves and wildflowers of their brilliant daytime colors, leaving them with only shades of gray. He plowed through them, scrambling into prickly brambles, falling into blankets of ankle-high plants.

The moonlight was more hindrance than help. It cast a maze of shadows before him, deceiving him time and again, causing him to flinch away from thickets of razor branches that weren't there, only to send him crashing into ones that were. Far worse, he imagined its apathetic glare illuminating his pale skin like a beacon for his pursuer.

Trying to avoid catching a bullet in his brain, he added to his chaotic scramble a series of erratic zigs and abrupt zags. He knew this method of escape was noisy and didn't care: speed was his advantage now, not stealth.

He leaped over a thick clump of tangled vines, roots, and shrubs. His foot came down hard on earth that gave away. His leg sank into the ground, broke through something with a sharp crack, and stopped when the surface was up to his waist. His head flew forward. He raised his hands before his face before it hit a large, flat rock.

The wind knocked out of him, he gasped for breath as a plume of dust mushroomed up from the hole. The soil around his sunken legs began to collapse into the hole, wedging him more firmly in the earth. His foot must have crashed through a dried and rotten root system, the broken ends of which were now digging painfully into his foot, ankle, and shin.

As his breath came back, he waved away the dust and found himself staring at a name etched in stone: Ed Johnson. A notorious name in these parts, belonging to a man hung in 1906 for rape. Allen was in the old Negro cemetery, which dated back to the Civil War. He had fallen into Ed's grave, and what he had thought was a dried root system was more likely a rib cage. The ancient bones gouged at his ankle, ripped at his calf. He leaned onto his side and wiggled his leg. Something chalky ground under his heel. He turned onto his stomach, reached for the top of the headstone, and tugged. The earth around him shifted, and he pulled free.