The Fields Tinged with Red

The Fields Tinged with Red-5

Ambedo. That’s what he was feeling as he ran after Selena through the tall grass (having awakened with a knot on his head to find her fleeing) and tried not to think about the danger. Ambedo: that trance-like state in which one became so absorbed by their surroundings—the wind massaging the green hills so that they undulated like sea anemones or the red-gold chiaroscuro sky lending palette and poetry to everything or the sun glaring over the horizon like a burning but indifferent god—that they forgot what they were doing or even why they were there. But he knew what he was doing and why he was there; why he was sprinting through the fields even though the velociraptor, Silent Jim, might be anywhere—on any side.

He wanted answers.

And so he pursued her even as she pursued him, the raptor with the mottled colors and the sky in its eyes; pursued them through the blood haze beneath the lights in the clouds until they burst into a clearing and Jim came to a halt—circling like a great cat (only confined to a cage), pacing like a puma, until they, too, came to a stop. Came to a stop and saw the girl—who was half in a bog with her arm thrown over a branch and a white sunhat floating next to her. Came to a stop and realized why he had been so curious about them; which was that they looked just like her—Katrice Lee, no doubt; who was still alive. Alive but unconscious. That they looked just like this pale flesh he’d had no interest in consuming; perhaps only because he’d never seen it before.

“Jesus,” said Nick, raising the gun. “I mean, did he lead us here on purpose, or what? How is that even—”

“Possible?” Selena chuckled, eyeing the predator cautiously. “How is anything possible— from elephants to earthworms.” And she went to the girl.

Nick aimed at the raptor. “But how did—how could you have—” He tightened his finger on the trigger.

But Jim was already gone—pow, like that—flitting back into the grass, pausing once to look back. He lowered the rifle.

“I didn’t,” said Selena, “if you want to know the truth. Know, that is.” She held her hand out for the rifle. “I felt it; in a way I can’t possibly explain. You know, like how you get all dreamy when you stare at the fields. You’re going to have to get the girl, by the way. She’s really stuck.”

He handed her the rifle. “Yeah, well. That’s me. Known for my muscle.”

And he bent over the girl—who, good to Selena’s word, was really, really stuck.

That’s when it came—the decisive crack! of the rifle; the smell of sulfur and graphite. That’s when he paused with his face close to the girl’s and realized she was awake; that her eyes had fluttered open and she was looking at him. When she said, “You killed him, didn’t you?” And he just stared at her.

And then he was pulling her out and laying her on the solid ground even as Selena dropped the rifle and gathered around with them; after which they helped her slowly to her feet and headed for the farmhouse—past the rusting hulks and barbed wire and a bevy of grazing cattle; through the Idaho fescue and bluebunch wheatgrass and arrowleaf balsamroot, across the green, rolling fields tinged with red.

end.