Sellers stopped to catch his breath. The pain in his shoulder had died down some. Now it was only screaming rather than threatening to blow his head off his shoulders. He thought he had never felt so much pain in his life and surely had been about to die. The blood had stopped flowing quite as freely as it had been at first. He lit a smoke and sat on a large tree stump to rest a little.
He knew he was being followed. He had heard the far distant howls of what could only be bloodhounds and knew they were back there somewhere. Sure that he had a pretty good lead on them, it still amazed him how fast the cops had gotten their shit together. Having dogs out here after him already told him plenty about their motivation. They really wanted to nail him.
They would have to find and catch him first. He knew that finding him probably wouldn’t be that hard for the dogs, the blood he was leaking had to be making their job easy. He was counting on the lead he had to get him safely away.
But, where is the road!
He had been looking for the road for several minutes. He had angled his journey toward where the road should have been and as yet hadn’t come to it. He knew that there were other houses and campsites along the road and many of them had cars parked in front of them. If he could only make it to one of those places he could get a car and be gone before the stupid fucking cops even came out of the woods.
Walking along the road would not be a good idea. The police more than likely had cars patrolling up and down any nearby roads looking for him to come out. He needed to know where the road was so that he could follow it along to the other places he had seen on his way in. He planned to stay a safe distance off of it until he came to a place that had a car he could hotwire and get away in.
Getting lost in the woods was something that he was afraid of, but he was certain he wasn’t lost yet. Being caught by the police pursuing him scared him even more. He had no intention of letting them take him anywhere, and he wasn’t just going to give himself up to avoid getting lost.
He still couldn’t believe how fast his luck had turned sour. How the hell did that old cop know where he was? He had seen Duncan’s face as he had popped up from behind the truck and knew who it was shouting at him to freeze. He had almost run back inside the trailer, which would have been a fatal mistake. There had been only the one way out of there.
Instead he chose to fight. But again his luck had failed him and Duncan had managed to hit him in the shoulder with one of his shots. That was when running became the best option. He had managed to make it around the trailer and over the hill before he heard another shot. That one had passed over his head. He had heard it buzzing by above him and hitting a tree or something in front of him.
The deer had come out of nowhere and Sellers’ had nearly relieved his bladder when it had moved in front of him. He managed to keep from pissing himself but his right hand ran away without thinking, emptying half the clip before his brain told his hand to knock it off. He wasn’t sure he had even hit the animal, but hoped it was suffering horribly after causing him to expend the much-needed ammo.
Sellers had a sudden sense of being watched. He spun around but there was nothing there. He turned a full three hundred and sixty degrees and saw nothing moving at all. There was no one there. It was just the woods giving him the willies.
In all his life he hadn’t spent more than a few weeks out of the city of Pittsburgh and had never spent any time in the woods. He now knew why. They were far spookier to him than even the darkest of alleys in the city.


John watched as Sellers turned a full circle looking for anything moving. He was not so much as blinking as Sellers did his search. In the last few minutes John had closed the distance between Sellers and himself and was now only thirty yards away from him. Doing a lot of thinking as to what he would actually do when he had a clear shot, he had come to no conclusion yet; here he had the perfect opening for that shot.
Sellers had missed the road and would have to make a complete U-turn now if he wanted to find it. All that lay before him now were thousands of acres of forest with a few logging trails to count as roads. There were no more houses or campsites for all that distance. Unless Sellers got lucky and ran across someone pitching a tent along one of the logging roads, his chances of finding a get-away car were almost nil.
He finished turning in circles and sat back down on the stump. John watched as he lit yet another cigarette, using the butt of his last one to light it. Getting a little nervous, Willy? The woods giving you the creeps? Things can just jump out at ya at any time, can’t they?
John brought the gun up to his shoulder, still not sure what he was going to do. As he settled the rifle butt against his shoulder, he decided. He tilted his head just so and took in a tremendous amount of the pine-scented air. As he let the breath slowly out, he gently squeezed the trigger.