Fatal Justice (Jack Lamburt #1)(20)

When he reached the top, he placed one hand on the rim of the well and the other hand against the stone. He pulled on one arm and pushed with the other, and the stone slid open enough for him to slither out of his tomb.

Holy shit, he’d made it. He stood on solid ground for the first time in hours and took a deep breath. The cold, fresh air and the pumping adrenaline invigorated him. He felt like a god. He wanted to scream out, to rejoice at the top of his lungs, but thought better of it just in case the bastard who’d dumped him in the well was within earshot.

He looked around and studied his environment. Other then a few Boy Scout treks as a kid, he’d spent his entire life in urban areas, where vehicle traffic, sirens, and the normal hustle and bustle of city life created a never-ending symphony of sounds that all blended together. He’d gotten so used to hearing them that he didn’t notice them anymore. Here it was the opposite. The quiet tranquility of dawn in the early-winter forest was so foreign to him that it put him on edge and made the hair on the back of his neck stand up.

He saw trees, many of them evergreens, and with the light dusting of snow reflecting the early-morning sun, the scene reminded him of a Christmas card. There were some smaller shrubs, most of them bare of leaves, and a small narrow path. He noticed tire tracks in the snow that led down the path. The tracks continued as far as he could see, and he realized that was the way he had been brought here. And his way out.

He thought about walking the path, but his whole body shivering reminded him that his clothes were frozen to his skin, and if he didn’t get dry and warm real quick, he’d die from hypothermia. What a waste that would be, after all he’d been through.

He shook out the plastic sheet, freeing most of the water from it, and folded it up. After a lengthy inner conversation that lasted way too long for the seriousness at hand, he decided to swallow his manhood. He draped the plastic sheet over his shoulders to form a knee-length shawl, then looked over his shoulder to make sure that no one was around to see his feminine clothing faux pas.

He pushed the stone back over the well and trotted over to an evergreen tree and broke off a branch. He walked back to the well and smoothed the snow out to cover his tracks in case that bastard who had thrown him down the well came back. The dry snow moved easily under the breeze created from the waving evergreen branch, and he smiled at his ingenious handiwork.

He backed away from the well in the opposite direction of the path, all the while fanning his tracks clean like an expert outdoorsman.

He’d gone about fifty or sixty feet when the ground sloped away at such a steep angle that he thought he’d slip and fall. He kept going, but at a much more careful pace, until the clearing around the well area disappeared from his line of sight. He continued for another fifteen minutes, memorizing landmarks so that he’d be able to navigate his way back to the well area later and pick up the path that would lead him out of here.

When he was satisfied that he was far enough away from the well, he gathered some dead tree limbs. He cleared the snow away by dragging his foot along it and scavenged for some dry leaves. Most of the underbrush was moist from the snow, but after scraping away the top layer, he found some that were dry and would be easy to start a fire with.

He went over to the biggest evergreen he could find, something that would help hide the smoke as it rose from the fire, and shook off the snow from the branches he could reach. He cleared the snow away down to the leafy ground, creating a small fire pit. He laid the dry leaves down in it. He threw a handful of twigs on top, and then placed some dead branches on top of the twigs.

He searched for his lighter and had a brief moment of panic when he couldn’t find it. In the last of his pockets, he felt the cold metal and smiled in relief. Now he just needed for it to work after being soaking wet for hours.

He took out the lighter, its gold casing reflecting the sunlight, opened it, and thumbed the flint. It lit on the first try. He set the dried leaves on fire, and in a few minutes the damp twigs dried out from the heat and started burning. After a few more minutes, one of the bigger branches started to go up in flames and he sat down, his plastic shawl under his butt, ensuring that he didn’t get any wetter. With his back leaning against the evergreen, he warmed himself by the fire.

Thank God for the Boy Scouts.





22





Sam’s exhaustion from being up all night and the adrenaline dump that followed his climb out of the well was bone-deep. He fell asleep in front of the fire within five minutes of sitting down. When he woke up an hour later, the front of him was almost dry, but his back was still wet and cold.

The fire had died down, so he needed to get some more fuel to feed it. He closed his eyes and listened to the silence, making sure there were no out-of-place sounds. He stood up and gathered an armful of dead branches and placed them on the embers. After a few minutes, they ignited, and before he knew it the fire was hot enough to make him sweat.

He tried to swallow, but his throat felt like sandpaper. What irony, spending all night in a well and waking up thirsty. He looked around and spotted a small oval-shaped indent of sunken snow by the fire. It was about the size of a softball and it contained a few inches of water. He leaned over and examined it from different angles. It looked as pure as anything he’d ever seen. He grinned, placed his lips on the surface of the water, and sucked his mini-pond dry. Ahh, that hit the spot.

He stood up, removed his plastic shawl and spread it on the ground. He stood on it, his back turned to the fire, enjoying the warmth that spread across him. He was well rested now and felt rejuvenated.