Kelly reached the far bank and put Anita down on the grass. She whispered to the girl, “See that dark brush over there? I think it’ll be a good place for us to go. Wait for me there, and I’ll be over when I get out of the water.”
Anita nodded and went to the bush, moving behind it and peeking out at Kelly as the older girl struggled to get out of the river.
The cut into the far bank didn’t slope gradually up, but rather the water cut deeper on that side and left a flat place, like a five-foot tall cliff under the water. She scrambled for footholds, but all her feet did was slip down the muddy underwater bank like it was covered with teflon.
A loud Bam exploded from the brush behind her and a bullet slapped into the wet river bank a foot to her left, exploding clods of mud into the air like a small cannon shot. Kelly looked back and spotted Nadine, holding her pistol over her head to clear the brush and fire at her. “Don’t run!” She yelled, and her flush, scratched face looked murderous.
Kelly slid to the right in the water, going downstream and making the river gurgle around her chest as she hurried to find a way up the bank. She found it five feet later, where a small draw entered the water, but was hidden by the brush. She put one foot up, then the other, and was on dry land and crawling under the cenizo, cedar and mesquite, following the draw as it went away from the river.
Nadine asked, “Where’d she go?”
Another voice said, “Maybe you hit her and she floated away.”
Kelly felt hope from that, and crawled further as she peeked under the brush, looking for Anita. The violet-eyed girl was five feet from her, hiding under a small cedar. She showed her excitement, with her cheeks flushed as she crawled to her friend. She hugged Kelly’s neck and Kelly hugged her back for a while, both crying a little. They heard a splash as someone waded into the river behind them, and Kelly whispered, “Let’s go.”
She led the way, following the bottom of the small draw as it snaked further up through the land, growing deeper as it went as other draws cut into it.
The tension in Kelly made her heart beat fast and, if she dwelled on it, made it hard to breathe because of the squeezing feeling in her chest. Kelly had endured days of mental and physical abuse, through the kidnapping, the escape and chase, seeing her friends Bobbi and Consuela killed by these same people so close to her now, and the running, running, running that she did now, all with Anita in tow. Kelly knew she didn’t have much stamina left, and she felt a failure because of it, the same way she felt when her father left, w
earing his uniform.
She shook it off and looked at Anita, “You still okay?”
Anita nodded, “How much longer?”
“I don’t know, but we just keep going, okay?”
“I go with you, Kelly.” She grasped Kelly’s hand and looked up at her.
The hand-holding helped. “Let’s go a little further.” They continued up the draw, and the strata in the walls changed from soil to caliche, and from that to stone and gravel mixed in the bone-colored caliche. Dark roots emerged from the walls in places, looking like black snakes going in and out of the pale soil.
Kelly used the roots as handrails in places where the draw’s floor was uneven. Anita held her other hand in a tight grip, and Kelly caught her several times as the child tripped and fell, keeping her from hitting the rocky floor of the draw by lifting her up by the arm.
Kelly heard vehicles driving on a road off to her left, maybe a half-mile away. It would be a place to go to, soon. A short distance up the draw Kelly spotted evidence of road construction, and a caliche road that extended across the draw. She and Anita walked to it and looked around, all the while checking behind them for pursuit. No people were in sight, so they stepped onto the makeshift road.
To their left was a part of the sports fields Kelly had spotted from the opposite side of the river. Much larger than she’d first thought, there were twelve baseball fields grouped in fours, and another area with what looked like three more for little league, plus a few other areas for play. It looked very nice, with good grass and fences, and the paved road they could see paralleling the ball fields on the north side. No people there, though. Maybe it was too early in the morning, she thought. Vehicles drove on the road in the distance, and a large portion of the sports field complex had been paved for parking. “Come on,” she said to Anita.
They stepped onto the caliche road and trotted to the edge of the parking area, then stepped off it, where they could hide behind the berm. It looked safe. Kelly held Anita’s hand and they stepped to the paved road to begin walking toward the convenience store, a Stripes, in the distance beside the busy road. “That’s where we need to go,” she said to Anita.
Anita was about done. She looked exhausted, and had several cuts and scrapes from the brush. “Can we rest there, Kelly?”
“Yes, we can.”
Anita liked that and said, “Okay.” She was a tough kid, Kelly thought.
Once they stepped on the paved road, they made good time, and it made for easy walking compared to the draw. They only made it fifty yards when Nadine yelled at them from the caliche road crossing the draw, “Stop right there! I’ll shoot you if you don’t stop!”
She looked terrible, with cuts on her face, mud on her ripped clothes, and her arms in the short sleeve tee shirt bloody from many scratches. She looked exhausted, too, with hair ratted and muddy.
“I’m not kiddin’!” She said.
Kelly said to Anita, “We have to run.”
Anita’s lip trembled, but she nodded yes.
Nadine said, “Shit!” She raised her pistol as the two women finally caught up to stand beside her. They looked terrible as well, and breathed heavily as they rested with their hands on their knees, heads down.
Nadine fired, and the shot boomed loud out on the open flat, not muted like it had been down in the draw.