Walking Out
by Jon R. Jackson
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2012 Jon R. Jackson
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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In the beginning, the man awoke again; his breathing was harsh in his ears, and his eyes saw only light and darkness without form. He blinked, his mind wanting to make sense of what he saw. Then his vision cleared and he saw the inside of his pickup.
The truck! A flash of memory, headlights coming at him, and then no more. His mind snapped back to what-was-now and he was upside down, hanging from something. The man moved his head. His eyes did not quite track with that movement, and that made him feel dizzy, downright nauseated. He screwed shut his eyes and blindly felt around his waist.
A memory came back of childhood and trips with his dad and mom and three brothers. A memory of smooth plastic seats and nylon lap belts with big metal buckles emblazoned with the Fisher Body logo on the big button in the middle of the side.
He pressed the side of a small, palm sized box at his side, near his waist. Nothing happened. His truck didn’t have those. His truck’s seatbelt release was orange, plastic, and on top. Finding it by touch, he pushed it and fell to the ceiling, lay there, and experienced the world revolving around him.
He was going to vomit, he was sure of it. Until he saw the moon. Out of the passenger window he saw it, low, large, and orange; it hung half above the trees. He focused on it, staring at the burnt-orange shape and willing the world to stop. It did, and he blinked.
The moon was whiter, smaller, and clear of the horizon. He crawled toward the moon, broken glass beneath him, though not much, and he knew he had little to fear from it. Reaching the shattered window, he pushed, but was unable to dislodge it. He closed his eyes and breathed, resting a moment before turning around and kicking at the window. The remaining glass dislodged, and he crawled outside.
The air felt cold and sharp in his lungs. His breath plumed before his eyes with each exhalation, “Cold,” he said, “Thirty-four degrees, latitude, elevation, eighteen-hundred feet”. Here he paused and breathed again. Was the moon higher?
He rolled over, sat up, and screamed when the pain caught up with him. Putting his hands to his head, he gritted his teeth and forced himself into silence. With his right hand, he probed his head. There was swelling and clotted blood over his right eye. The man spoke through gritted teeth. “Blunt trauma.” He paused and panted, quick, shallow breaths. “Concussion.” More panting. “Cerebral edema.” Panting again. “Neurogenic–"
The moon was definitely higher this time. He lay on a field of rocks, his head down slope. He was cold, but not yet into hypothermia territory. He looked around, moving nothing but his eyes. To his left stood a hill, and as he looked toward the top he saw two beams of light arc out over the void, sweep around, and then disappear. No other light appeared.
His breathing had returned to normal, but his mouth was dry. He ran his tongue over his cracked lips. He needed fluids, though he had no idea where to get them. He pushed himself slowly to a sitting position. The pain returned, though not as severely as before. He rested another moment, and then slowly stood. The pain was bad, but he was pretty sure it wouldn’t kill him. “No,” he said, “the concussion will do that.” Then he giggled.
Forcing himself to stop, he looked around again. Then he saw it: At the base of the slope, where the talus met the rise, there was something round. Even in the clear moonlight, he had to walk carefully. The rocks were each about the size of his head, and it would be easy to let his foot slip between two of them and sprain or break an ankle. Or worse.
As he approached the round shape, he began to pant again. Twice he slipped on a rock, though he didn’t break anything. Another time he fell and scraped his hands, but again, his luck held; nothing was broken.
He arrived finally at a concrete culvert, perhaps four feet across. Using the top of the culvert for support, he bent down, put his hand into the blackness of the opening, and reached the bottom of the culvert. He smiled in the moonlight: There was water. He then knelt and drank from his cupped hands.
The man perched on a huge rock and waited for his panting to subside. “Well, doctor,” he said at last, “I believe your prognosis is improving.” Water wouldn’t completely eliminate the danger of neurogenic shock, but it was the only treatment he had at the moment.
Twice more he went back to drink, and then stood to survey the situation again. Above him, another pair of lights arced over the top of the hill, and this time he heard the grinding of gears as the large tractor-trailer truck in question downshifted. He looked back at his pickup and then up at where the road lay. “They won’t see it,” he said. His vision blurred again and he felt himself falling.
The man lay on his side, breathing, and saw that the moon was still higher. He looked at his pickup. The lights were out. His headache was still there; the shock might have abated, but the edema still had to be contended with. Getting slowly to his feet, he turned on the uneven talus and looked up the escarpment to where it leveled out on what had to be the road, perhaps eighty feet above. Another pair of headlight beams arced out over the void.
Another memory came back to him, the fight with Claire. He closed his eyes with the intensity of it, though he did not pass out again. Accusations had flown through the air, and settled to the bottom of stony silence. He had been so angry at her. Why had he gotten so angry? It was nothing, really. A bounced check? Everybody bounces checks. It wasn’t the end of the world. He should never have stormed out of the house like that. He remembered slamming the car door and jamming the key at the ignition several times before getting it in and starting the engine. The car roared to life, and he raced the engine several times before pulling out of the driveway.
He was sobbing now, at the foot of the hill, and put his hands to his face, grief overtaking him. Then, through tears, he forced himself to look up and turn to the pickup truck lying on its roof. “Who is Claire?”
Turning around again, the man stumbled to the escarpment, his head pounding with every beat of his heart, his vision blurring. At last he felt the long, unkempt grass of the slope. Clutching it in his hands, he opened his eyes. The slope was forty-five, perhaps fifty degrees, steep but not unmanageable, especially when you considered the grass he could use for handholds.
A chill ran up his spine. The man shivered, gritted his teeth, and set a foot on the slope. His head hurt and pounded and his breathing became harsh in his own ears. He pumped his feet as hard as they would go, but could only manage a stagger. He could see his breath in front of his face, and realized that a moment before, he had not been able to see it. The cold became more intense, and the chill on his spine became an icy finger, and then what had been one finger became five, and then a palm, pressing into his back. The man spun around, trembling, whether from cold or fear he could not tell. His ragged breath became clouds in the moonlight. He stopped facing downhill, but the world continued to spin and he fell, face down.
When he awoke, he began by spitting dirt. His nose hurt, and he realized it was probably broken. Rolling over, he looked for the moon. It was at its zenith. His breathing was ragged and his breath fogged in the moonlight, but he wasn’t panting. Yet. At least it wasn’t as cold as before. He turned and started up the slope. His head was pounding and he knew that had to be bad.
One foot in front of the other, that was the trick. What was it they said in that movie? “Sólo seguir nadando, nadando.” He continued up, remembering sitting in the theater with Jose and Bettina and how they laughed at the pescados azules and the man started crying because he missed them so much. Gritting his teeth to keep the tears back, the man forced himself to look up at the top of the escarpment. He was standing still. One foot in front of the other, he continued to climb. The moon was perhaps a little past its zenith now. In ragged gasps he said, “It’s… in English. I saw it… in English.”
The man felt a chill run up his spine again, and then fingers, and a hand, and more hands. He went faster; the head would just have to hurt. He knew his brain was swelling inside his skull. Swelling with memories that were not his own. Medically, of course, he knew that was impossible. Neurologically speaking, memories had no mass and–. “I’m not… a doctor!” he screamed at the night and his head felt like it was going to burst, like one of the sandias he had come here to harvest, one that had sat too long in the verano la luz del sol.
He looked up, to the top of the escarpment. It was definitely closer now. There were more hands now and he thought his heart would freeze. He breathed in jagged gasps, each breath freezing his lungs. Nothing like the winter of 38, though. That had been a cold one. He and Sally and the kids had worn two pair pants apiece and they were–. “Eighty-two… Born in 1982.”
The man would never have thought it possible to run to the top of a slope like that. He burst through the rupture in the guardrail, out onto the road, and into the beams of a pair of headlights. The vehicle’s tires screeched and he felt himself skidding on the pavement. When he looked up, an old man was crouching over him saying something. “–I ain’t never hit nobody. I swear, fella, nobody. You gotta believe me. I–”
“Brandt’s,” the man said. “You have to get me to Brandt’s.”
“You ain’t supposed to move nobody when they get hit,” said the old man. “Everybody knows that, fella. I’m going to have to go somewheres to get reception on my phone, but I’m going to get you an ambulance. Okay?”
The old man started to rise but the man grabbed his arm. “Listen to me,” the man said through gritted teeth. “This is a message. I have severe cerebral edema. My brain is swelling. If I don’t get to a hospital soon, I'll be dead. Brandt’s is half an hour away. By the time an ambulance gets here and back it will be over an hour. I’ll be dead. You’ve got to take me to Brandt’s and you have to be fast.” The old man chewed on his lip, unable to make a decision.
“Help me up.” The old man obeyed, helping the man to his feet and then to the back seat of his old Grand Cherokee.
The old man got behind the wheel and turned the vehicle around on the narrow road, the headlights arcing over the guardrail and the roadside crosses that stood beside it. “You’re lucky, fella. Not like them poor souls. I pray they found a better place.”
The man looked out the passenger window at the dark crosses in the moonlight, the warm breath from his nostrils fogging the window. Then he whispered. “No. They grieve for us.”
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[Authors Note: First of all, thank you so much for reading. Without you, the reader, the author's life is empty indeed. Secondly, I want to thank my first reader and love-of-my-life, my wife, Paige. When she told me all those years ago, "This is really good, you should write some more," I don't think she knew what she was starting. Last, but by no means least, I want to thank my lord and my savior, Jesus the Christ, the son of the Living God--Gloria in excelsis Deo.
Please be sure to look for other works coming soon or check out my web-site at jonrjackson.com. You can also find me on Smashwords and Twitter]