The Enigma’s Anomaly

“Frank? Frank!”

“What happened?” I say blinking my eyes open.

“I hit a tree,” Gerard says.

“I told you not to hit a tree.”

“You told me to try not to hit a tree. I tried not to, and failed.”

I blink my eyes open then remember where we are, “oh shit, Gerard we’ve gotta go!”

“You were only out for a few seconds,” Gerard says, pulling the driver’s side door open after I grab the handle on my side.

I notice quickly that the door does not want to open, and I see that it’s because there’s a tree branch blocking the door, so I crawl over the shift control and Gerard grabs my elbows to help pull me out.

“Come on, Frank, they’re pulling over!” Gerard says.

“Wait no, I’ve got to grab something,” I say and I quickly get the door to the back of the car open and grab the sweatshirt that’s been sprawled across the backseat.

“Really? Is this the time to be thinking about clothing?” Gerard asks.

I pull my head out of the car and grab his hand, “I’ll explain in a moment, now run!”

Gerard nods and we jog quickly behind us into the woods. I check the other car and see that they’ve pulled over a fairly long way down the road, because they had to speed down. They’re quite a bit off all things considering. We’ve got at least a minute and a half head start.

There’s two men, neither I recognize. One is bearded with dark brown hair, and the other is an intimidating looking Asian man.

“As fast as you can go,” I say, as we cross under the threshold of the trees. The sun is still high in the sky, but it is most definitely setting. I don’t know what time it is, sometime around dusk, but I forget to even think about it as we start to really run.

It’s hard with the trees in our way, making it very complicated with the added obstacles. These woods are heavy, not much cultivating has been done, so we’re really in the grasp of Mother Nature.

I hear the snapping of twigs beneath us, but also the sound of large men behind us, and a lot of heaving. My hand is sweating in Gerard’s and I can’t really do anything, but allow him to guide me. He’s better at choosing the best route through the trees then I’d have expected, considering how gangly he’s always made himself to seem, but I still get a bunch of scrapes on my arms and face. His legs are also longer so he’s faster.

The sweatshirt in my arms almost gets caught on a few of the jutting branches but I yank it along with me, because I can’t risk losing it.

The question is not whether or not these men will stop chasing us, because these guys mean business, it’s whether they’ll catch up to us, or whether we give up and let them find us. We’ve only been running for about five minutes, but I can already feel myself getting tired, and I’m too afraid to look back.

They’re bigger which means they’ll meet more interference, but they’re brawnier so the interference won’t have as much of an effect on them. I don’t know if we’re better built for this, or they are but we’re stressed and terrified so that gives them a plus.

It’s only about a minute later when they make us aware that they’re armed. It’s not hard to follow us because we are making a lot of noise, since the trees, leaves, and everything else is crunching beneath our feet, but still I’d have hoped we had some cover from the trees.

The sound of very large guns bangs behind us and I hear Gerard squeak, and he looks at me, his pale face an almost grey color. The trees around us make groaning noises from the tension on their bark, and I fear that some of the thinner ones’ might collapse altogether. Those guys are going to kill a tree if they keep at it. I should probably worry more about us then them.

The firing stops a moment later without any bullets actually getting anywhere near and I chance a look over my shoulder at them.

They’re a ways off, but I can definitely see them. They look more like shadows than anything else because the canopy above us is low hanging and dense, but they are still making their way. I can’t be sure if we’ve successfully held our advantage on them, or if they’re averaging a better speed, but I hope it’s not the latter.

“When do we stop running and start hiding?” Gerard pants at me, and I don’t have an answer for him.

The sun is at that time of day where it’s lowering at an unimaginably fast pace, but it’s already thin in the trees. Dusk is on our heels and we have only to hope that it can cover us as well.

“Have you seen the Fellowship of the Ring?” I ask, and Gerard looks at me like I just grew a third head.

I almost trip on a tree root, and Gerard is forced to pull me up and away from it, which puts a painful strain in my arm, making me really feel where that bullet was a few months ago. Sometimes I still feel the hurt, like a ghost of pain and then it’s gone. I think it’s partially in my head, but it’s still sensitive. Right now it feels like I’ve been shot all over again, even though I know I haven’t.

“The scene, with the mushrooms. We need to find somewhere like that to hide,” I verify for him, and he seems to understand me a little bit better. Really, he has a point though, now isn’t exactly the best time to be commenting on the cinematography of Tolkien based pictures.

These trees seem boundless, like there’s literally no end. The whole world is just trees now. We’ve been running for a while now and I honestly don’t know if I’d be able to go back the way I came.

This is miserable. My face has a bunch of cuts on it, enough that I can feel a drop of blood rolling down the side of my neck forebodingly. My whole body is sweating, which is making the running harder. My shirt chafes on my skin, especially under my arms where the perspiration is starting to build up. My legs feel abused, and the skin around my ankles is wrecked and raw.

I think I’m beginning to slow us down based on the way that Gerard’s guiding is starting to seem more like tugging. I don’t know how much longer I can run for though, because my lungs are pieces of shit.

Why isn’t there any sign of life out here though? No animals, no humans, barely even any bugs. It’s daunting and creepy, like we just entered the forest out of a horror film. I half expect Jason to run out of the trees with a chainsaw.

“We’ve got to find somewhere to try and hide,” I say, but all I get in response is Gerard’s breathing. It’s hard to even fathom stopping, while we’re being chased by men with guns. Really we have to though, I can’t run much longer without passing out.

My lungs are burning and I cough into my hand, which blurs my vision for a moment, making me almost stop dead in my tracks. I look down at my hand when I return to the lagging pace and I feel my heart groan when I see blood. That used to happen in gym when I was younger, but it’s been years since I’ve run enough for me to cough up blood.

“Fuck,” I say, “Gerard we really need to find somewhere to rest.”

Gerard looks at me with a worried expression, and he slows down his pace than looks around. The men are a fair bit behind us so we find the biggest tree to stand behind and inch around it slowly. The noise of our feet has all but stopped so all I hear is the two men, but they’re not showing any signs that they’re even effected by the sprinting. What are they robots?

I do see them starting to slow down though, and they realize that they’ve lost sight of us, so I move my head back to hiding behind the tree. It’s a very large tree so it has space to hide us both from their plane of sight, but if they keep looking around here they’ll find us in little to no time.

I look at the dirt at my feet, searching for something with enough momentum to throw. There are no rocks, but there’s a big branch of a graspable shape. I take it in my hand and throw it as far in the other direction as I can. It’s cliché, but I have noticed in my life that people with biceps bigger than their brains are usually as smart as their tiny heads would make you think.

I sneak a peek behind the tree to see them follow the direction where I threw the branch, so I pull Gerard off in the opposite direction, very slowly.

We duck behind another tree after a safe distance because there’s no such thing as to much caution. I’ve lost sight of them for the most part, but I do see figures moving in the opposite direction. They’re still looking over there.

“Put this on,” I say and hand the sweatshirt to Gerard. He looks at me funny, probably wondering why I want him to put on something that will make him sweat even more. “There’s a hood dummy. Your head is a siren.”

Gerard’s eyes look up like he’s trying to see his own hair, which is technically long enough for him to do so, but it’s been swept back from sweat. He grabs the sweatshirt anyway and puts it on, and over his head.

“Good?” he whispers.

I nod and give him a thumbs up. He grabs my hand when I do so and looks down at the bits of dried blood there, which makes me remember the tickle in my throat.

I shake my head to say ‘no big deal,’ but his eyebrows look critical and scared for reasons other than the obvious.

My throat is really starting to hurt now though, because I have to cough, but I can’t. If I were to cough I would essentially be sending out a red flare that we’re right here.

The look he sends me is inquisitive though, and I want to tell him that if I try to respond I’ll cough and we’ll be given away. He just keeps looking at me though. He doesn’t realize that what he’s asking, even without the words, is not ideal at the moment.

“Frank?” He asks firmly, looking fed up of me not answering. He’s still holding my hand up for me to look at it with the spattered blood on it. It’s the kind of configuration that is obvious it had to have been splattered, not wiped or anything. I just can’t open my mouth without giving us away and he isn’t getting that.

His stare bears into me and I look behind the tree to make sure that the men aren’t making their way over here. I grab my phone from my pocket and start a text without a recipient.

‘Can’t talk, I’ll cough,’ and I show it to him. He nods, but his stare doesn’t get any less interrogative.

“Just in case, Frank, I love you,” Gerard says and blinks his eye a few times, like he’s trying not to cry, which wouldn’t be entirely out of the question.

I nod, and hope that I’ll have time after today to actually say that too.