Mackie

Let me explain something to you while you wait. I'm not all I appear to be. I heal fast, I don't catch diseases, and I'm a fucking idiot. Any IQ test will try to tell you that I'm a genius, but a genius would be sitting in the dark nursing a ripped up leg with dogs running at him in one direction and a fire blazing in the other. A genius wouldn't have gotten himself in this situation, so I'm going to have to inform you that for now I am a fuck up…once again. I make a habit of it. I over estimate my own abilities and under estimate every one else. There is more to me…more than being a tosser who gets it wrong time after time. I don't learn by my mistakes. I go on doing the same stupid things over and over…this I am going to blame on my up brining; of which there was none. I didn't have a childhood I can blame….I didn't have abusive parents I can blame, all I can do is point my finger into the dark and blame them the ones who want me to mess up. The ones sitting back laughing at me. The ones really in control of this shit.

I can tell you that I was right in thinking that my leg wasn't broken, but that doesn't stop it hurting like, well like I just trod in some fucking hunter's trap. I've licked at it. I've wrapped leaves and shit around it and I've ripped off some of my oh so lovely Tshirt and bound it, but it's still bleeding like shit and blood is the one thing those bastard dogs are going to pick up on easiest and of course my running days are over for a while. The only good thing about this is that I can't actually hear the dogs yet, so I've reset the trap and maybe that will slow someone up for a short while if they are as brainless as I am and don't see where they are walking. The smell of the fire is stronger now, but that might be cos the wind has changed and is pulling the smoke over quicker. I don't really know. Having your leg nearly chopped off sort of makes your thinking process go awry, but I do have a horrible feeling that towards the smoke is the direction I need to keep going. I've not tried to stand yet and I'm a tad confused as to why this is hurting like a motherfucker, when it shouldn't. I can get my brains shot out and it doesn't do more than tingle slightly so this situation is new to me.

I do know that I can't sit here like the poor wounded soldier I am, I do have to get my arse into gear and find my princess and, and, well there are other things on my mind too, but that's going to have to wait, mainly cos there's no sheep or boys here to satisfy that sudden need. This brings me back to thinking of this Reid bloke again and I'm thinking of him as I stand carefully leaning on a big old tree to give some support. The head wound has stopped bleeding, but it has made a lovely mess. Not too much I can do about that now. So thinking of Reid and what I'd really like to do to him I stagger forward and then downward and onto my face. OK….the leg isn't going to want to work for me so I'm going to lie here in the dirt and bleed and well…think of this Reid person for a while. We all have needs you know. Mine are just unfortunately getting in the way of the great escape and I can hear a thousand angels and demons laughing at me and pointing fingers back at me and telling me that this is why I mess up so often and they are right. I have to keep my mind on what I'm meant to be doing. Get it off this mysterious person who I know, yes I damned well know I've fucked but I just don't remember bloody well doing it!

So I'm back on my feet again and looking out at the darkness and wondering what else I'm going to plant my feet in before I reach my destination, and I just know it wont be anything sweet. Not for me, if I find something, it'll be shit.

'I did what you wanted!' I shout at them as I get up. 'I did it even though I didn't want to and I gave you a bloody bonus! Give me a break for fuck's sake.' I'm pissed off with them today. Very pissed off, but maybe this pain in my leg is a small price to pay when you consider the amount of lives I just eliminated so I could get here in the first place.

I walk slowly and carefully now. Once I get there I know everything will be alright. I have stuff in my lab to fix this pain. I'll take something, smoke something, inject something into my blood to remove the pain and this is the thought which keeps me going.

I don't know how long I've been stumbling along now; I have no idea, but I can see a glow in the distance now. I'm nearly there. It doesn't seem to be getting closer to me though, so the thought that it might have been a forest fire was incorrect. It's something else and it's right were I need to be. When I finally burst out into the clearing I stand and just look. My home. My lab. Everything I own is a burning lump at the edge of the forest and dancing in front of it is my princess covered in soot.

'What the fuck happened?!' I stumble forward looking at her. 'I told you to burn the fucking evidence not the whole bloody building!'

She turns to look at me. 'I could ask you the same damned question Floyd, where the hell have you been what happened to your face, what's that on your leg?'

'My house princess! What the hell did you do?'

And she is skipping happily towards me. 'I got bored waiting. It's OK I saved all your stuff.'

'I've got the feds chasing me you stupid little shit!'

She looks offended and bites on her bottom lip. 'And I knew this how? Did you write me a letter? Did you think to send an email? A message in a bottle? Carrier pigeon? No! For all I knew you weren't coming back…at least I thought to send you smoke signals.' And she is turning from me and dancing back towards the fire. 'Anyway,' she calls out. 'It was a bloody oversized shed. Not a house.'

You know I've lived here for a long long time. It used to be the gardeners cottage – OK over sized shed - on the grounds of a fine old house which its self was lost to a fire many moons ago and this loss has come as a bit of a blow to me. It was my base. The place I felt comfortable in and now it's gone. I should kill her. I should pick her up and throw her in the bloody remains and be done with it. One less thing to worry about, but I can't do that. She's all I have now even though she said she's saved my things…my things mean nothing if not housed where they ought to be.

'You are a complete…'

She turns to me and cuts me off. 'Whatever I am Floyd, I'm only how you made me. Are we leaving then? You said you had people after you.' She prods a small box with her toe. 'Here's your stuff.'

I walk forward and look into the box and see some twists of cellophane which I take and put in my…I was going to put them in my jeans pocket but I have on these stupid sweat pants. 'You thought to save me a change of clothes I trust?' And the bitch laughs at me and points to a pile of clothing sitting under a tree. 'Chuck the rest of this shit on the fire. I'm getting changed and then we're going. I hope you didn't wreck the pick up too.'

I just wish she didn't laugh and smile at me the way she does. It really makes me want to rip her head off and eat her brains sometimes.

-o-o-o-

We are making good time, but he had a good head start on us. The dogs have his trail and we have flak jackets and flashlights. We will find him. We have to find him. Dave stayed back at the scene of the accident, but Morgan has joined us. I am blaming my lack of breath here on the beating I took from Flanders, but I'm refusing to let it show. I know I'm sweating too much and I'm not going to accept it is panic, it's this flak jacket. I'm not going to show weakness in front of my men or these rangers as the dogs guide us faster and faster towards our prey. Keeping Jack's safety in my mind is keeping me going. Keeping my mind on task and off the pain in my neck and back.

The sudden barking of the dogs alert us all that they've found something. I can't believe that they have located Flanders. I don't want to think it was that easy, not after the carnage he left behind. What they have found is a trap. We stand and look at it and at the blood on the ground and the fierce metal trap sitting there in a small pool of blood. It glistens and shines in the light of the flashlights and the dogs are moving on again.

'This is Flanders blood?' I am talking to myself but Derek answers me.

'If it is, if he trod in that evil sonofabitch, then he's not got far.' Morgan shines his light towards where the dogs are now making a new fuss over something.

'He was able to reset it.' Again I'm not talking to anyone in particular. 'If it was him, he reset the trap.' I know that if I'd been caught in that I'd still be there. What sort of a man can take the damage that would have done and been able to get out and do that?

'We don't know it was him. It might be from an animal.' Derek responds to me, but I can hear the doubt in his voice. He is thinking what I am saying.

One of the rangers walks over with a sturdy branch in his hand. 'It's what he used to pry it open with I'd think' He hands it to me and I can see the marks where someone, Flanders, has used it to force the trap open again. I can see the specks of blood on it. We should bag it. We should get it checked but now walking over to where the dogs are now barking and pulling on leashes I can see that we'd have to take back have the forest if every piece of ground with Flanders' blood on it was to be taken back.

'Damn.' Morgan is standing looking at the scene. There is too much blood. Too much blood for him not to still be here. It's on the ground in sticky puddles…It's on the side of the trees…it's splashed across leaves. 'Man, he can't be far. Not with that amount of blood loss.' Morgan mutters and swings his light around looking for what should be a body.

But we don't have time to look now. The dogs have picked up again on a trail. 'He kept going.' A statement. This was no ordinary guy we were tracking through the night to find. This was something else altogether. We do take samples. We do have to be sure that this is the blood of who we are assuming and not of someone else or an animal, but the dogs are off again. A ranger disarms the trap and then pulls it apart and leaves it somewhere we can collect on the way back. Somewhere it can't hurt someone. I know he reset it in hopes that it would slow us down, and in a way it has. And in another way it has shown us a better picture of the sort of person we are pursuing. We keep going with pockets stuffed with small evidence bags full of leaves and stones. I would have liked to stay longer. Morgan would have liked to have stayed longer to work out exactly what happened here, but we don't have time now. The sun is coming up and we are no closer to where we were when we arrived at the scene of the accident.

It's probably an hour or so before we break out of the forest and stand at the edge of a clearing. We'd been able to smell smoke for a while now and now we can clearly see why. A building had not so long ago stood over to one side of this place. Now it was a pile of smouldering ruins. All that seemed to remain was a rough stone built chimney. Side arms still at the ready, but now with the flashlights off we stepped out into the morning light and surveyed the scene. It is a crime scene. I can see that clearly enough. My heart is thumping hard in my chest at the thought of what got burnt and what was trying to be hidden here. We walk carefully around the edges of the clearing taking as much in as we could, but I didn't like what I was seeing at all. Morgan's hand is on my arm.

'There were kids here.' His voice sounds worried.

There is a swing made from an old tyre hanging from a tree. There is a blanket laid out on the ground with a couple of old cups sitting on it. Up in the tree is a platform with a ladder and a rope hanging down and under another tree are the bloodied remains of the clothing Flanders had on.

'I'll call the CSU…we need them here now. I need to know what was in that building.' And I look back and just see a pile of burnt nothing. I'm tried and exhausted and now the dreadful thought that he did have the children here alone or at least with just another child is drifting through my head. What if they were in that building? Would he have done that? Would he have gone to all the trouble of getting back here just to kill them or let them die like that? I didn't think so. I really don't think he'd do that. But then again…I didn't think he'd do a lot of things he has. Morgan points out fresh tyre tracks across the grass and now I know we've lost him again.

'He'll turn up again. He will let us know where he is. He needs us to know he's won this stage. Flanders is not the sort of person to just leave it now…he needs to gloat. He needs to see our reactions.'

I hope.

-o-o-o-

There is light just showing through the trees now and I hurtle towards it like it's my salvation and when the tree line suddenly ends and I'm sliding down into a ditch I wonder for a few seconds what is going on. I keep deadly still. I lie there and stare at the blue sky and suddenly I start to laugh. I don't know why. Maybe just the sudden release of everything going on inside my head. It was laugh or cry or scream and right now I'm laughing. I did it. I got away. I escaped.

For now.

I rub at my eyes and lick my sore lips and slowly sit up. The ditch is at the edge of a small road. No…a track more than a road, but it's a proper road. There is tarmac and drainage ditches and that's good enough for me. Where there is a road is a way out. I have no idea which way to go now but by the looks of things this will go either to a larger road or to a farm. The remains of tracks on the road look like they have been made by muddy farm vehicles but there is no way of telling which way is which…in the end does it really matter? Either to another road or to a phone, either will do and so I pick "right" and start walking again. I should run. I should remember that they might be following me…but I'm at the point now that I am so close to getting away, but I'm also too sore and battered and tired to do more than keep stumbling along and hope the route I've taken is the shorter one.

-o-o-o-

The kids weren't out looking for trouble. Sometimes trouble finds you all by it self and this is what happened this morning. A small collection of trailer homes sat at the side of the road at the point where forest had turned into shrub land. A large metal fence secured the area and kept unwanted visitors out. Not that anyone would normally wander in, but it did happen occasionally. They were the homes of local farm workers and their families. Too far out to get them to regular school everyday they had the delight of being home schooled and when the mothers were busy with caring for the little kids or out getting groceries, or working for extra money then the schooling was a tad neglected. Today there was a small group of boys kicking and throwing around a ball on the rough dirt patch just inside the gates. Their ages ranged from the eldest who was sixteen and the youngest who was seven. The five boys wearing just short pants and sneakers were bored and so when the eldest saw a lone figure walking, or rather stumbling along the road they all stopped to watch the ball long forgotten.

He looked like many of the people who sometimes travelled along here, a vagrant and a drunk; maybe a druggy. The stood in a line next to their fence and watched silently as he fell down and then crawled his way back to standing again to resume his journey.

'Don't talk to him. I'll be right back.' The older boy said. He pushed dirty blond hair back behind his ears and grabbed the smaller of the boys by the hand. 'Get inside.' He said in a firm voice as he half dragged the smaller child towards one of the trailers.

'Why? What you gonna do?' He whined back.

'I'm not gonna do nothing. Now get!' And with a firm shove the boy was through a door way with the older following him.

The other boys just stood and watched as the figure got closer. They knew that when strangers came by and their parents weren't around that they weren't to talk to them. They had been told maybe a million times not to hurl stones or abuse at people, but kids left alone when bored sometimes do things their parents don't like. Well these kids do anyway. Each now had a stone clasped firmly in his hand and a malicious look on his face and the three remaining boys jostled for a better position to be the first to throw their stone at the hobo walking along their road.

It was only a couple of minutes before the older boy was back at the fence with them. In his hand a large rifle. 'Put the stones down.' He snapped at the younger boys. 'We don't want trouble.' But his words didn't sound much like he meant them. Just words he had to say because he was the oldest and that's what he should be saying.

They could see that the man had seen them and they made excited little bounces and jumps as he got closer to them, but still they didn't change their position. They didn't go down to the gate to meet him; they just stood and watched as once again he fell hard to the ground. Mackie, the oldest boy was really hoping that this guy would walk on by and ignore them. He was really hoping that he would read the notice on the gate "Trespassers Will Be Shot." It said in big red letters on a white board. Of course it was just a threat to keep the low lifes out of their safe place. No one had actually ever been shot. Not yet anyway. Mackie held the gun tightly in sweaty hands as he watched as the man got to his feet again and walked in a not very straight line towards their gate.

'He's gonna come in!' One of the others gasped. No one ever came in. It just never happened, not when they were alone. 'Mackie stop him! He's gonna come in!' And the boy's hand gripped his stone tighter and his face went red as adrenaline flooded his system.

Mackie could feel that same flood over taking his body too as he stepped slightly away from the boys and called out to the stranger. 'Hey – you can't come in here. Fuck off!' And he pulled the gun up with shaking hands to point it at the stranger.

He thought the guy was going to say something back. He pushed the gate open and walked in and stood looking at the small group of boys. He raised a hand as if in a welcome and then started to walk towards them. It was too much. The excitement had over taken Mackie's brain…and now the egging on of one of the other boys was filling his head.

'Shoot him Mackie! He's come to kill us all…shoot the bastard!'

Mackie aimed for the guy's head. He knew he could kill him if he shot true, but the red splodge appeared on the man's chest not the middle of his forehead. The gun slammed back into the teenagers shoulder and with a yelp he let go of it and watched the hobo fall onto his knees and then face first into the dirt of this safe enclosure.