Uncertain Justice

Chapter 33

"In regional news tonight, Colorado State Highway Patrol authorities in Pueblo are scaling back an intensive manhunt that has been underway in South Central Colorado for the past two weeks. A spokesperson for the State Police say Miles Underwood, the Texas native wanted on a number of Federal and state warrants, has apparently eluded a search party of over a hundred law enforcement officers who participated in the weeklong hunt.

"Reliable sources tell us the fugitive was sighted on the first day of the manhunt, but Underwood was able to kill a dog being used to track him and then slip away under the cover of darkness. He hasn't been seen since.

"State troopers, reinforced by local law enforcement and Forestry Service rangers, have reportedly followed up on every reported sighting, but none of the leads has resulted in an arrest. Colorado Attorney General Robert Mendoza promised in an interview with KTPB producer Raphael Amherst that his office would continue to search aggressively for the suspected r****t and kidnapper."

"In Fort Collins this afternoon, students at...."

KTPB Channel Five

Pueblo, CO

"Early Mountain News"

March 25

§

He woke, but at first, reality was so much an extension of the dream there was no distinction between them for a time. Then he knew he was warm; he remembered bitter cold. He was lying comfortably but recalled running desperately. There was calm where there had been panic and fear.

Spurred by the disagreeable memories, he opened his eyes to a vague semi-darkness filled with the gagging odor of rotting vegetation. The air was stale and it was hard to breathe. He coughed.

The sudden paroxysm brought him fully awake. Another cough made sore muscles in his chest and back complain stridently. In spite of an aching stiffness throughout his body, he wrestled himself up on one elbow to look around. Bright rays of sunshine were reflected through the water to where he lay, but it was still dim in the hiding place. He could see fish in the water moving from light into the darkness below him and then swimming back out to the sunshine. He had to lie down again.

When he tried to move, he found his legs wrapped in a survival blanket and his upper body confined inside a parka. He was lying on his self-inflating sleeping pad that had been spread over a large boulder but he had no idea when he had even untied it from his backpack. His fingers trailed in the water and were stirred by a fast moving current. Groggy and disoriented, his mind fastened on the need to get away from wherever here was ... to fresh air and sunlight. He struggled to move.

His fingers unwound the survival blanket from around his legs. Two used chemical pocket hand warmers fell to the rock as he lifted the blanket clear and another appeared when he unzipped the uncomfortably warm parka. There wasn't a spark of heat left in them but he couldn't recall using them.

When he tried to sit up, his body rebelled. It took long minutes for him to stretch stiff muscles in his back and legs before he could try again.

When Miles slid off the flat boulder where he'd slept so soundly, the cold water created instant cramps in his calves and hamstrings. He had to crawl back up on the rock to massage them into submission. His lower back hurt so badly he couldn't sit erect.

A second attempt in the water produced more knotted muscles but he refused to climb out again. Moaning in spite of a resolve not to, Miles clung to the side of the rock and worked his leg muscles until they loosened. Hunched over, unable to straighten his back, he was forced to turn his head sideways and strain upward to keep his mouth out of the water. Had the river been running as high as it had when he entered the ersatz cave, his fatigue would have drowned him.

It took several attempts to find an underwater opening in the wall of roots and branches. In the end, he ducked under the water where the sunlight came through the strongest and crawled several paces into the middle of the river until Miles could see he was clear of the barrier above him.

Surfacing, blowing hard, he dragged himself downstream until he was clear of the logjam before he struggled to the riverbank. With his body lying just out of the stream, he rested and let the sun warm his chilled body. Water drained from the backpack for a long while. Sitting up, he filled his canteens from the stream without bothering to process it through the filtration system he had in the pack.

Without the buoyancy of the water supporting his body, it was almost impossible to stand--even in the hunched-over posture he'd managed under the mound of debris. He moved slowly uphill, away from the water and toward a thick grove of trees on a low bluff overlooking the stream.

He alternated between crawling on all fours and walking as nearly upright as he could get. Neither was particularly effective--both were excruciatingly painful.

After inching as deep as he could into the stand of trees, he eased himself down, rolled onto his back, and lay flat. His head was whirling. He panted, far more out of breath than warranted by the physical effort of climbing the gentle slope. He felt the hard earth pressing against knotted muscles and relaxing them slowly.

Once the pain in his back subsided to a bearable level, he discovered he was ravenously hungry. Moving carefully, he clawed open the top of his backpack and raked out the contents until he found one of the cans of preserved meat.Pulling the tab on its top to open it, he wolfed it down, breaking pieces off the compressed loaf of meat "products" and stuffing them in his mouth with dirty fingers. Still famished, he opened a bag of jerky and chewed on the strips of dried meat until his jaws hurt. He topped off the meal with two aspirins from his small supply.