Chapter 1 - The Long Walk in the Dark
The fifty-dollar bill sank into the mud, a useless piece of paper dissolving in the rain. I didn't reach for it. I couldn't.
The taillights of Marcus’s Audi had long vanished, leaving me entirely to the mercy of the storm. The wind howled through the pines, biting into my soaked skin. The cold was a physical weight, but it was nothing compared to the white-hot agony radiating from my abdomen. I pressed my hands against my sweater, feeling the unmistakable, terrifying warmth of fresh blood and infected fluid soaking through the thick wool.
My knees buckled. I hit the wet gravel hard, the sharp stones tearing through my stockings and scraping my skin.
Get up, a voice inside me whispered. If you stay here, you will die.
I dragged myself forward, one agonizing inch at a time. I didn't crawl toward the fifty dollars. I crawled toward the faint, flickering amber glow of an emergency call box I could see about a quarter-mile up the interstate. Every movement felt like broken glass grinding inside my stomach. My vision blurred, doubling the yellow light, then tripling it.
"Just one more step," I muttered into the freezing rain, my teeth chattering so violently I bit my own lip, tasting copper.
It took me nearly an hour to cross that quarter-mile. When I finally reached the metal pole of the call box, I couldn't stand. I used the guardrail to pull myself up, my fingers numb and blue. I smashed my hand against the emergency button and collapsed against the cold steel, sliding back down into the mud.
A tinny, distorted voice crackled through the speaker. "State Police dispatch, what is your emergency?"
I tried to speak, but my throat was closed. Only a dry rasp came out.
"Hello? If you are in danger, press the button twice."
I lifted a trembling fist and hit the button two more times.
"We have your location at mile marker 45. A cruiser is en route. Stay where you are."
I didn't have a choice. The darkness was closing in, tunneling my vision. The last thing I heard before the world faded to black was the sound of tires screeching on wet asphalt, the slam of a heavy car door, and a man’s voice shouting into a radio.
May you like
"Dispatch, I need a bus at marker 45, stat! I've got a female, unresponsive, severe hemorrhaging. Tell MedEvac to put a bird in the air now!"
Then, nothing.
