Page 61 of Ramshackle
“Don’t worry. She’ll be out for a long time with a single shot.”
“Good.”
Not good.
I’m a sitting duck in a fucking tree with a bum knee.
One of them aims a gun at me and fires. I duck and swing to the side. When I look up, there’s a tranquilizer dart stuck in the bark where I’d been.
“Don’t move!” the one with the gun actually shouts. As if anyone in their right mind would willingly wait to be hit by a tranquilizer while they’re thirty feet up in a tree.
“Don’t shoot!” I counter with an equally ridiculous request, hoping it’s enough of a distraction that I can delay his next attempt. Turning awkwardly to one side, I lie forward on the branch where I’m sitting and cling to it like a sloth. I hear another round fire, and breathe a short sigh of relief when there’s no answering sting.
I move quickly, but in short adjustments, until I’m upside-down on the branch, and then release my legs to dangle to the branch below.
Another shot.
“How are you missing? Give me that!”
I have to loosen my arms a bit to gain a few more inches until my toes dance over my goal. Once the pads of my feet reach, I let go and lean toward the trunk again.
One down. A bunch to go.
The next few branches are closer, so I’m able to drop more easily to them. The last one snaps beneath my weight. I jump to another one and pray it’s strong enough, but it bows and then cracks. My back and sides knock into more branches as I fall. I reach for a branch. Then another.
I finally catch one, and it bounces and sinks.Don’t break. Don’t break.
“There. She’s close enough now without other branches in the way that you shouldn’t miss.”
I’m maybe ten feet from the ground but there aren’t any branches left between me and it.
One of the goons aims the gun at me, and I have no choice.
I let go.
I don’t even feel the pain in my normal knee because it’s completely eclipsed by the searing pain in my injured one. I’mon my feet for a split second before the pain takes over and I collapse to the ground, clutching my knee and locking my jaw to keep my screams contained.
No, no. Get up!
I can yell at myself all I want, but the wave of pain hasn’t subsided enough for me to move.
The crunch of boots on sticks and leaves gets closer, and I curse my fucking luck. I’m able to turn on my side in the direction of the sound and see the two goons walking toward me.
The tranquilizer gun is pointed at me again, and I thrust my gift into the dirt. I’ve used my gift through the haze of pain before, so I’m able to control it even though my knee hasn’t improved. It’s almost like an out-of-body experience. I know I’m in pain, I know I’m paralyzed by it, but as long as my hand is touching the ground, my mind can will my gift to do what I want.
I shove at it, pushing it to reach them faster and splitting it once I do.
I take them both in seconds.
They drop to the ground in hard thuds that I hope no one else is close enough to hear. My body rises and falls as I catch my breath and the wild burning in my knee slowly subsides. I close my eyes, panting and trying not to fall into the pit of despair that’s waiting for me in the back of my mind. If I let it, it would suck me down like quicksand.
Gordon’s threat to the guys.
The idea of being taken back by him. Of killing for him again.
The severe disadvantage I’m in now with my knee.
My thoughts flirt along the line of giving in, bringing me too close. Its pull is like a magnet drawing me in whether I want to go there or not.
