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EAGLE
The swimback to shore took all the strength I had left and fighting the current proved almost too much for me. I had no idea how far the current dragged me before I was finally able to get out of the water, but it was too far, much farther than I hoped it would. At least my arm stopped bleeding, probably because of the cold water. I had just enough strength to find a hiding spot between a rock and a thicket of reeds and rip open the sleeve of my flannel shirt, the one pierced by the bullet and wrap it around the wound. Then sleep took me. Or unconsciousness. One I couldn’t fight, no way, no how.
I don’t know if what I’m doing now is waking up, or whether it’s just my spirit leaving my body to roam these lands forever as some do. According to Lily and her endless legends.
Just the thought of her name helps wake me up a little more. And thinking of her locked up in that cabin in the dark does the trick the rest of the way. I raise up on my elbow and roll over on my back, the most I can move right now.
Stars are covering the cloudless deep blue sky above me, shimmering coldly in the darkness. I feel like I’m floating among them, one with the night, one with the shimmering darkness. I still feel the river dragging me onwards, transporting me to safety, lending me its life giving energy. Even the earth supporting me, hard and sandy, does that. Life calling to life, telling me I’ll be just fine.
I had no choice. I had to leave her there, but I shouldn’t have done it anyway. I sit up ignoring the lightheadedness and pain it causes and roar her name, the sound blending with the air echoing into the distance.
And waking footsteps and labored breathing to approach from the hissing, singing grass. The footsteps stop mere feet from the rock and reeds concealing me.
“Where’d the yell come from?” a man asks in a near whisper.
Whatever the reply is, I can’t hear it.
How stupid can I get? Shouting in the night while on the run? That’s not just idiotic, it’s suicidal. Maybe if I stay real quiet and try not to breathe…
But it’s too late. They come at me, one from each side, dressed like the night, their faces covered. I lift the knife I’m clutching to at least take out one of them if I can, but a flashlight blinds me, filling my vision with bright yellow, painful light and erasing all else.
“Oh, shit, it’s Eagle,” a man whose voice I know very well says. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“Ash?” I say. “What are you doing here?”
He takes the flashlight beam off his face, which briefly shows me the man with him. Tiny, a wiry, lanky, short kid who’s absolute dynamite to have watching your back and strong enough to lift a bike by himself.
“Looking for you and Lily,” Ash says. “Where is she?”
All the events of yesterday play in my mind in vivid detail, starting with her saying she loved me by our trailer door, and ending with me bleeding on the ground and her getting dragged away by a stinking old man.
I can’t possibly tell him all that. I can’t even face thinking about it.
“Lost,” I say. “But I know where she is.”
They exchange a look full of worry, which is plainly obvious even though I can only see their eyes.
“Is Cross here too?” I ask.
Ash nods. “All the execs are here, including Ice, and forty more of us on top of it. Cross isn’t leaving anything to chance.”
How did they get here so fast? Why was Cross so worried? How the fuck am I gonna tell him I lost his daughter?
All questions that will get answered soon, so I might as well wait for that.
“We’re wasting time. Cross needs to hear what he has to say,” Tiny says and grabs my arm to lift me to my feet. Thankfully he chose my good arm, but the jolt still wakes every ache and pain in my body and nearly makes me stumble back down to the sand. He catches me though, using his strength to keep me upright.
“What happened to you?” Ash asks.
“I was shot, and a couple of other things,” I say focusing on steadying my vision. “Take me to Cross. We have to save Lily.”
I’m leaning heavily on Tiny as we walk through the grass, following the river for a ways before veering off towards a copse of trees much like the one I tumbled through escaping the lunatic and his scrapyard dogs.
With every step I take, life and strength start to return to my body. My arm throbs, but not unbearably and my headache is just a dull ache over my temple. The injuries I got rolling down the hill must’ve been just bruises and scrapes, because it feels like they’re already starting to heal. I was healed by the river. I’m certain that’s what happened.
I hear men’s voices long before I can see any of them, since they’re standing in the copse in almost complete darkness under the thick canopy that blocks out most of the moonlight.
“We found Eagle,” Ash announces to the two masked men guarding the approach. “Where’s Cross?”
