Page 3 of Curves for the Mountain Man

But who will follow it and when? The man who screamed? Search and rescue officials once my missing status becomes official? Law enforcement with cadaver dogs many months from now?

When I judge the distance from my captor the greatest I can exploit, I swallow hard, having collected as much spit in my mouth as possible with the help of the bigger, faster-falling snowflakes the storm now blows in. Gusts of frigid wind whip my long, loose hair around my shoulders and face, and my cheeks burn from the cold.

I sprint from the game trail we follow, letting out the most bloodcurdling scream I can manage. My weak legs carry me into thick, nearly impassable underbrush.

Barreling towards the sound of rushing water and the man’s voice, I’m unsure of my course in the cover of the emerald-hued woods, guided solely by one imperative…

Survive.

Behind me, a gunshot pierces the air, weakening my knees as I stumble forward, desperately begging the forest to swallow me.

Chapter

Two

ROSCOE

Click.

My heart races at the sound of the empty chamber.

Lucky bastard.

I scrub my face with my hand, leaning back against the rough tree bark of the massive lodgepole pine I sit under. On the march to the tree, I emptied my revolver, five bullets falling consecutively into the thick brush of the forest floor as I walked, heedless of their final destination. Spinning the cylinder and locking it into place without looking, I took my seat, commencing the grim game of Russian Roulette.

One click…

And my hands tremble. A single tear slides down my cheek. Everything would be so much easier if I hadn’t lived.

If I hadn’t been the lone survivor…

Today marks the sixth anniversary of the roadside bombing and ambush that killed my comrades and left me with more than forty percent of my body severely burned. I spent months in the hospital for skin grafts, ruminating over how fate fucked us.

Lone survivor…

Those words come with a heaviness I can’t carry, a weight I haven’t been able to bear since returning home from overseasdeployment after endless months in hospitals getting pieced back together.

I can’t tell anyone what actually happened to my squad. Not even my comrades’ wives because they don’t have the clearance for that. And they don’t really want to know.

I should get this over with. Be done for good, but some part of me clings to hope and finding meaning in my life. My poor mother’s words fill my head, “Time heals all wounds.” She’s getting older these days, looking for the comfort of family close to care for her. Fortunately, she has my three younger sisters.

“God, why have you done this to me?” I scream into the void.

Silence greets me. The kind of fucking silence that makes my brain grind out what needs to happen.

The lone survivor needs to not survive…

And yet, I sit with my back pressed in the rough bark of the tree, unmoving like a fucking coward … unable to act, incapable of getting my mind off the action I should take. Two hot rivers deluge my cheeks, escaping from the permanent fissures in my soul.

The men I served with had families. They had every reason to live. Unlike me. I’ve made a shitty mess of my post-deployment existence, hiding from the world in Northern Idaho’s wildest woods. My only companions are grizzlies and bull moose that do everything except what the fuck they should do when they cross my path—finish me off.

“What do you want from me, God? Why keep me here in this unending torture?” I shake my head, fully aware of how insane I sound, ranting to the wind. But I have no one else to talk to. I’ve made it that way to protect those I love most from the pain I cause. Monumental amounts of pain because I can’t move on. What happened in the AOR haunts every inch of my existence. Ironically, the most healed part of me is my IED-scarred and savaged back and legs.

But even that’s not a part of the official narrative because we weren’t where we were “supposed” to be, carrying out orders never “officially” given. The blood and guts and sacrifice were as fucking official as it gets, though … from the smell of burning flesh to the death rattle in my comrades’ throats and their glassy-eyed stares.

At least I lived long enough and made enough proper financial decisions to provide for the immediate families of the eight comrades in my squad. I’ve done so for the past four years, supplementing the death benefits they receive with additional funds to make their existences more livable. I have arrangements in my will for continued support as long as the lucky investments fueling them hold out.

Long after I’m gone…

---