Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Dash’s first thought was about the fact that he wasn’t dead yet.  He had seen the barrel facing his head; heard the gun shot, and yet he wasn’t dead.  That was the last good thought that he would have in a long time.  The masked man turned and started giving orders to his men.  There was no confusion on the man’s part.  And then there was the screaming.  A long, drawn out wail so horrible that anyone who heard it would either be running away in fear or running towards looking to see what was wrong.  There was no words.  Just a long, pain-filled scream.  And it only took a fraction of a second for Dash to realize that the person screaming was his father.  Instinctively, he looked at his father, and then at what his father was staring at.  And that’s when Dash started screaming as well.

His mother lay on the ground, her head covered in head; there was a hole in her forehead.  The bullet had never been meant for Dash.

First came the denial.  She couldn’t be dead.  This was all a trick.  There was no way his mother was dead.  He crawled over to her.  He felt her pulse.  There was none.  And then he looked into her eyes.  They were already lifeless, staring blankly into the air.  There was nothing there.  That convinced him more than anything else: his mother was dead. 

Next came the rage.  He slowly rose to his feet, and took a step towards the man who had killed his mother.  His dad beat Dash to him.  With a violent thrust, his father charged the man.  “KARTH, DIE!” his father screamed.  His father was on Karth in a second.  Dash halted.  Even in his maddened state he recognized he could do no good right now.  He needed to wait.  And then, in a spit-second, he saw his father go limp.  Karth, for Dash figured that that must be the name of the man in the mask, calmly shoved the body off of him, and then, looking over at Dash, held up a needle.  “Don’t try it.”  Karth warned.  “You are nothing like your father, and I’d prefer to leave you alive.”  He smiled.  And then there was a loud bang, and the smile left his face, replaced by a look of shock and a bullet hole through his right eye.  Karth collapsed, several more shots were fired, and Dash stood through it all, the anger replaced by confusion.  For a second, there was silence, and then the clearing erupted into chaos.  Masked men seemed to be everywhere.  Several grabbed Karth and began taking him away; several more grabbed Dash’s father, and began to move him.  That sent dash into action.  He charged, as fast as his bad leg would let him, at the men, anger returning.  Dash had one goal: stop these men.  He barely made it five steps, however, before he was thrown to the ground by another man he didn’t see.  The man shoved one knee onto Dash’s chest, effectively pinning him.This one held a knife, and appeared to be prepared to use it on Dash.  It was strange, but Dash found himself focusing on the ensemble on the man’s vest.  It took him a moment, but he realized what it was: a phoenix, its body aflame, emerging from fire.  Dash thought it strangely ironic that a symbol for rebirth could be the symbol for people who murdered without a second thought. 

Suddenly, the pressure on Dash’s chest was removed. 

“Be glad for yourself,” the man said.  “We want you alive.  For now.”  The man sprinted away, and just like that, the clearing was empty except for Dash and, as he looked around, two bodies.  One was his mother.  The other, at the area of the clearing that Dash had entered, he didn’t recognize for a second, but as he got closer, he realized that the man was his uncle.   

The rage returned; Dash stood over his uncle, tempted, even in Dash’s weak state, to give his uncle the thrashing he deserved.  Then he saw the bullet holes.  The body was littered with them; Dash counted seven going through various body parts.  Most of them were fatal by themselves. 

Dash finally lost enough of the adrenaline in his body to realize what he was seeing: death, in all its nature.  He fell to his knees and emptied his guts by his uncle.  When he finished, he slowly, shakily, stood up.  His bad leg was holding up; thanks to the boot, he wasn’t very worried about it. 

Finally, his gaze returned again to his mother.  She lay near the center of the clearing, her body lying at an unnatural angle, due partially to the fact that Dash had picked her up earlier.  Dash approached her.  The anger was gone now.  Dash didn’t even understand how it had come in the first place.  In its place came an emotion he understood much more: sorrow. And so he wept.  He wept until there were no tears left to cry.  And yet, even before the tears had gone, a numbness began to set in.  His body had experienced too much, and his brain quietly began to shut down.  At last, the tears stopped.  Dash starred at his mother’s face, perfect except for the hole left by the bullet.  Somewhere in his mind he wondered where that bullet was.  It was a strange thought, but it was what came to mind.  It was a safe though; there was no emotion in it.  Until the thoughts led him back to his mother.  But there was still no emotion.  Dash paused.  He knew he should feel sorrow.  He had just lost his mother.  But there was nothing.  And maybe, Dash thought, it was because his mother was dead.  There was no life in her, so maybe it was Dash’s way of honoring her: if she couldn’t feel, neither would he.  And he resolved, right there, that he would hold onto this numbness for as long as he could.  Because, though he told himself that it was honoring his mother, he also knew what would come if he let emotion live.  Fear.  Pain.  Anger.  And they would not stop.  He knew now that he couldn’t possibly allow himself to feel those emotions.  He had felt them just moments ago, and they hurt.  So now, he decided, he would feel nothing.   

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I reached the end of the road.  I saw the parked car, and instantly identified it as the one the uncle had been driving.  I pulled out my cell, and only then realized that, this deep into the forests, there was no service.  They had phones that got around this problem, but I apparently hadn’t been issued one.  I sighed.  Yet another issue that was caused because of the joke that was MDI.  I looked around, and soon discovered that someone had left a trail so clear that even I could follow it.  (I have many strengths, but my weaknesses are many when I’m out of a city).  The grass and leaves had been trampled down, but not so hard as to be a deer trail.  This wasn’t as defined, but whoever had gone through here had been in a hurry.  I wasn’t a good tracker, so aside from the fact that someone(s) went through the area, I couldn’t tell much.  I followed the trail, as it was obvious, and after about ten minutes of hiking, I came upon blood stains.  They were small, but they were there, and they gave me new energy.  It was a good thing too, because I was becoming worried that I’d made a mistake.  But after I saw the blood I became even more convinced that whoever had taken Daniel had gone this way, and I followed quickly. 

After another ten minutes of walking, I came to a clearing.  I saw the three bodies immediately, and through myself back into the forest, grabbing for my gun.  I scanned the area carefully, though I knew that if there was anyone hostile around the clearing, I would have already been dead.  After about thirty seconds, I began to slowly walk around the parameter of the clearing, my entire body on full alert.  I made it completely around the clearing without seeing any signs that there were other humans aside from the bodies on the ground, and by this time, I could see that one of them was breathing.  I decided to risk it, dashing out into the clearing, aiming for the one body that still showed signs of life.  He was lying face-up on the ground, and I confirmed what I had already suspected: that he was the boy that had gone missing.  I did a quick examination, and, finding no visible injuries, I moved on to the other two.  It didn’t take me long to find that they were both dead.  I had already seen a fair amount of dead bodies, so it didn’t bother me as much as you might think.  It still bothered me though.  My dad once said that if I ever become comfortable around dead bodies, there is something seriously wrong with me.  I was now faced with a problem, however.  I was obviously standing on a murder scene.  I needed to get the right people here soon.  There was only one real problem.  I still had no signal.  My only option was to hike out and call once I had a signal.  Finding my way back wouldn’t be a problem, but I still had to deal with the teen who was still alive.  I was saved by the problem of how to wake him up when his eyes shot open.  I started a little, because of how suddenly he became awake.  He looked at me with a blank expression. 

“You ok?”  I asked.  He didn’t answer.  He just stared at me. 

“What happened here?” Still nothing.

“Who’s that?” I said, gesturing to the woman who lay just a few feet away, though I suspected the answer. 

He looked at her, and I saw a series of emotions flash across his face in an instant.  Pain.  Fear.  And something else.  Something that scared me.  It was only there for an instant, but I saw what had to be anger.  And an amazingly strong anger.  And then it was gone.  His face seemed to grow even blanker, if that was possible.  And that’s when I realized what was going on.  During my training, I had learned to recognize several varieties of shock.  This kid had just gone into a coma like state that sometimes occurred after a severely shocking experience.  While not an actual coma, the person in this state would force themselves to act like they were in a coma.  They would literally force themselves to shut down.  It was the first time I had ever seen someone in that state.  I was again in a tough situation.  If anything, I was in a worse situation that when he had been asleep.  Now he was awake, but not functioning.  And if he decided to wander off while I went for help, there was a high chance he would find some way of hurting himself.  It was then that I realized another problem.  The sun was starting to set.  While I was only a twenty minute walk away from my car, I had two dead bodies and one person in a dysfunctional state.  It was then that my phone rang.  I reached to answer it instinctively, only then realizing that only moments ago I hadn’t had a signal.  I looked at the caller ID.  It was my dad.  I shrugged, and answered the phone. 

“WHERE ARE YOU!” My dad’s voice exploded through the speaker. 
“About a twenty minutes’ walk from the end of a small path that breaks off from the highway.” I responded.  “And I have bodies.”  That got my dad’s attention.  I explained my situation to him, and he then proceeded to explain that about ten miles from where I was, a van came shooting through a roadblock, with guns firing from virtually every angle.  He wanted to make sure I was still ok.  He had tried calling several times before, and this was the first time that he had gotten through.  He knew about the poor coverage, so he had finally been able to pull some strings to get through to me. 

“What now?” I asked.  The boy in front of me had laid down and fallen back to sleep.  It was strange.  He still looked tense, like a single sound could wake him up.  I had walked a short distance away so I could have some privacy.  Even though I knew that he wouldn’t overhear anything that he shouldn’t, I still wanted privacy. 

“I have your GPS coordinates now.”  My dad said.  There will be people with you in about five minutes.”  

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The rest of the evening past in a blur.  After the rest of the feds showed up, I was pretty much out of the picture.  I gave my report, short as it was, and then settled down at a hotel for the night.  The next day, I learned what I had already suspected; namely that the kid was the same one who had gotten kidnapped, and the women was his mom.  The other dead guy was the kidnapper, which did surprise me.  I had thought that he was the dad.  But the police suspected that the uncle had been nothing more than a tool, and once he was finished with, his boss had disposed of him.  They were working on the teen, trying to get him to talk to them, but he wasn’t responding. 

All this I learned through my father, who then told me to prepare to come home.  I suspected that would happen.  I had done my part, and now that this had gotten big, I could get out of town.  A part of me was ready, but mostly, I wanted to stay in the action.  I thought that, when this became a kidnapping, I would get a chance to play a larger role, and in a way, I had.  But they wanted experts handling this case, not a seventeen year old rookie.  I got it.  Didn’t mean I had to like it.  But orders were orders, and I hadn’t expected this trip to last long anyway.  I boarded the plane later that afternoon, and was home late that night, anticipating going back to a normal, mundane life.  The problem with anticipating, however, is that when you’re wrong, you’re really wrong.