She could hear the dogs in the distance, baying
relentlessly. Pursuing relentlessly, as death pursues life.
Death.
Christ, she was going to die. The thought made her
incredulous. Somehow, she had never really believed this
moment would come. The idea had always loitered in the
back of her mind that she would somehow be able to cheat
the grim reaper, that she would be able to deal her way
out of the inevitable. She had always been a gambler.
Somehow, she had always managed to beat the odds. Her
heart fluttered and her throat clenched at the idea that
she would not beat them this time.
The whole notion of her own mortality stunned her, and she
wanted to stop and stare at herself, as if she were having
an out-of-body experience, as if this person running were
someone she knew only in passing. But she couldn't stop.
The sounds of the dogs drove her on. The instinct of self-
preservation spurred her to keep her feet moving.
She lunged up the steady grade of the mountain, tripping
over exposed roots and fallen branches. Brush grabbed her
clothing and clawed her bloodied face like gnarled, bony
fingers. The carpet of decay on the forest floor gave way
in spots as she scrambled, yanking her back precious
inches instead of giving her purchase to propel herself
forward. Pain seared through her as her elbow cracked
against a stone half buried in the soft loam. She picked
herself up, cradling the arm against her body, and ran on.
Sobs of frustration and fear caught in her throat and
choked her. Tears blurred what sight she had in the moon-
silvered night. Her nose was broken and throbbing, forcing
her to breathe through her mouth alone, and she triedto
swallow the cool night air in great gulps. Her lungs were
burning, as if every breath brought in a rush of acid
instead of oxygen. The fire spread down her arms and legs,
limbs that felt like leaden clubs as she pushed them to
perform far beyond their capabilities.
I should have quit smoking. A ludicrous thought. It wasn't
cigarettes that was going to kill her. In an isolated
corner of her mind, where a strange calm resided, she saw
herself stopping and sitting down on a fallen log for a
final smoke. It would have been like those nights after
aerobics class, when the first thing she had done outside
the gym was light up. Nothing like that first smoke after
a workout. She laughed, on the verge of hysteria, then
sobbed, stumbled on.
The dogs were getting closer. They could smell the blood
that ran from the deep cut the knife had made across her
face.
There was no one to run to, no one to rescue her. She knew
that. Ahead of her, the terrain only turned more rugged,
steeper, wilder. There were no people, no roads. There was
no hope.
Her heart broke with the certainty of that. No hope.
Without hope, there was nothing. All the other systems
began shutting down.
She broke from the woods and stumbled into a clearing. She
couldn't run another step. Her head swam and pounded. Her
legs wobbled beneath her, sending her lurching drunkenly
into the open meadow. The commands her brain sent shorted
out en route, then stopped firing altogether as her will
crumbled.
Strangling on despair, on the taste of her own blood, she
sank to her knees in the deep, soft grass and stared up at
the huge, brilliant disk of the moon, realizing for the
first time in her life how insignificant she was. She
would die in this wilderness, with the scent of
wildflowers in the air, and the world would go on without
a pause. She was nothing, just another victim of another
hunt. No one would even miss her. The sense of stark
loneliness that thought sent through her numbed her to the
bone.
No one would miss her.
No one would mourn her.
Her life meant nothing.
She could hear the crashing in the woods behind her. The
sound of hoofbeats. The snorting of a horse. The dogs
baying. Her heart pounding, ready to explode.
She never heard the shot.
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