AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Tean raised his head, his surprise at the statement transmuting into bewildered amusement at the outrage on Jem’s face, when several things happened at once.
Headlights flashed down the road, in the direction they had left Theo and Auggie. Jem jerked upright. A horn blared, and Tean’s head snapped toward the light and sound. A figure, nothing more than an outline against the light, was frozen at the edge of the honeysuckle brake. Tean had only a moment to process the general shape of the figure, the outline, and to decide, in that instant, it wasn’t Una.
Then the figure turned and ran.
Jem scrambled out of the car and sprinted after the figure.
Tean shouted, “Jem, wait!” But Jem didn’t slow. A moment later, the sound of a body hitting the ground came from the other side of the honeysuckle.
Tean fumbled the pictures back into the envelope, stuffed it into a back pocket, and raced after his husband.
When he reached the road, Jem was picking himself up, swearing a blue streak. A rut in the dirt road suggested what had happened. He tore off again, but by then, the figure had shrunk to a relatively darker patch against the night. Tean ran after them, but the figure had too much of a lead, and the darkness would make finding them impossible.
Then the door to the Audi opened, the dome light winked on, and Auggie darted across the road. He was young, and although his legs weren’t as long as Jem’s, he was fast. He sprinted after the fleeing figure. A moment later, Theo got out of the car, his movements slow and unusually stiff. He favored one leg, and as he ran, he bellowed, “Auggie! Stop!”
An uneven patch of ground made Tean stumble, so he turned his attention forward again. Auggie was in the lead, closing on the fleeing figure. Jem wasn’t far behind, but it was clear that the fall had cost him, and now Jem’s stride looked off, and he was losing ground.
Ahead, the hum of the electric fence made the hairs on Tean’s arms stand up. As he watched, the fleeing figure threw themselves at the fence. Tean understood the decision as soon as he saw it; the electric fence wasn’t like what you saw in movies, where an entire chain-link section was electrified and would kill you if you touched it. Most electric fences had a single line carrying the electric charge, which was mounted on insulated reels set low on the fence posts. The rest of the fence was plain old wire. As long as the figure cleared the electrified line, he—or she—would be fine.
Sure enough, the figure jump-stepped onto a mid-section of wire and launched themselves over the fence. Auggie duplicated the maneuver a moment later, and he whooped as he landed, the sound wild and full of excitement. He’s so young, Tean thought with a kind of horror that was also wonder.
Jem repeated the move, but when he came down on the other side of the fence, he shouted, “Fuck damn shit hell fuck!”
Tean dropped down beside him a moment later, while Jem was still hunched over, massaging his ankle.
“It’s fine,” Jem said.
“When you fell—”
“It’s sprained is all.”
Tean glanced up. Auggie was a dwindling shadow. Behind them, in the distance, Theo’s pained sounds were coming closer, but he wouldn’t be fast enough.
“Go,” Jem said.
“But—”
“I’m fine. Go!”
Tean ran.
He wasn’t a runner by nature or by training; exercise, for the most part, consisted of long walks with Scipio, or hiking, occasionally mountain biking. But all of those activities used his legs, giving him muscle he wouldn’t have had otherwise. He wasn’t going to win any races, but when he needed to move, he could move.
Ahead, the pasture opened up, and beyond it loomed the hulking shadows of the poultry houses. The path the figure and Auggie had taken snaked darkly through the seed-heavy grasses, and Tean raced after them. Everything was so dark; Tean had been on lots of farms, and it took him a moment to wonder why the automatic lights weren’t coming on. Farmers loved motion-sensor lights. But this was an organic farm, and part of him wanted to laugh when he made the connection. The birds needed a minimum number of hours of darkness, without any artificial light. So, he ran into the darkness, and a rooster crowed again.
Auggie shouted. The sound was wild, fueled by adrenaline, and it had all of a young man’s challenge behind it. The darkness was too deep, and Tean could make out only the barest suggestion of the shapes ahead of him, but then the thud of bodies came, and he knew what had happened: Auggie had caught up with the fleeing figure and tackled them.
Then Auggie shouted again, and this time, the sound was different. Fight. Fear.
Tean pushed himself to run faster.
Metal glinted in the night.
Training took over. With some animals—not all, but some—the best thing to do if you were attacked was to make yourself as big and noisy as possible. Animals don’t want to fight; fights might mean death, and even in victory, an injury could eventually prove fatal. So, the bigger and noisier you are, the less an animal is going to want to fight you. In theory.
So, Tean screamed, “Get off him!”
He couldn’t do much about making himself bigger, not while he was running full out, but he screamed again, wordlessly, and he screamed some more. He screamed until his lungs burned and a stitch in his side made it impossible to scream any more.
