The Death of Colleen Rivers

Chapter 42: Baylor

Crapcrapcrap. The pain was real. I just climbed a tree and came back down with a broken ankle. A BROKEN ankle. How'd I climb and not scream out in agony?

Because of her.

Colleen was counting on me to be healthy, to be alright. If I wasn't, she definitely wouldn't be leaving me behind. We would be found out and Colleen would suffer even greater because of me.

I couldn't let her suffer more than she already had; that wasn't right to do. I was her boyfriend, I was suppose to protect her and I failed.

I keep repeating myself to myself but I can't help it. I'm too worried about her to think about anything else right now.

I look at her, her head resting on my shoulder and her eyes closed. There it was, her innocent look. The look where the real Colleen shined through, even just a little bit. I couldn't help but smile and I kiss her on the head.

She looked up suddenly, quite alarmed.

"What's wrong?" I whisper.

"Do you hear that?" she whispered back.

I listened to whatever Colleen was hearing. At first I could only hear a few murmurs, but when my ears adjusted I could hear loud thuds, twigs snapping under feet, and men laughing and cussing with each other. The sounds were growing closer to us.

"Quick! We need to climb that tree," Colleen said, pulling me up off the log.

I almost screamed because of my ankle but I bit my lip instead, causing it to bleed now from biting it so much.

We scurried up the tree. I made Colleen go first. One, because I wanted her to be safe, and two, because I didn't want her to see my face full of pain every time I moved my ankle. Once me made it to the top, I leaned against the trunk, shifting my weight to my good ankle.

The footsteps were approaching, and not trying to be quiet at all.

"Tommy!" one voice cried out. It was certainly a man's voice, and a country one at that. "Where'd these here footprints come from?"

"Wha?" answered the man I presumed to be Tommy.

"Come 'ere Tom! Look!"

The men were now under our tree, investigating our footprints in the dirt on the ground. I could see they were dressed in camouflage and carried guns strapped to their backs.

"Stewart, these here are human prints!"

The guy named Stewart slugged Tommy in the arm. "Well, duh, Tom! Look, they end right at this tree right here."

My heart was beating out of my chest. I wasn't going to be killed by a couple of bumpkins that were illegally hunting in the woods. "We have to hide better," I whispered to Colleen.

"Where, genius? There's no where to go!" she hissed.

Well, we could move up higher but it was no use, they would only see the branches moving and definitely at shoot us.

Too late to move now anyways, they had spotted us. "Tom, look! There's a boy and a girl! But what they doing "

Colleen winced, preparing herself to be shot at. I wasn't going to let it end this way.

"Don't shoot!" I yelled down. "We mean no harm!"

The hillbillies stared at us in confusion. "Little fella, we weren't gonna shoot you, we wanna help ya!"

"Oh, well that's great then!"

Colleen sighed in relief and down the tree we went, each step harder for me to take than the next. Once we got to the bottom, they asked why we were here and I explained that we got kidnapped and had no clue where we were at. I told them where we needed to be and they told us to follow them. They had a truck and we willing to take us back home.

Lucky for me, that's when my dumb ankle decided it couldn't take anymore and gave out completely, making me fall over in front of the bumpkin pair and Colleen.

"Baylor!" Colleen rushed to my side. "What happened?"

I lightly chuckled, attempting to fight back pain filled tears. "Oh, you know, ankle was still bad, made it even worse. In fact, I made it so bad that I broke it. Hehe."

Colleen slapped me across the cheek like I expected her to, but then she took a deep breath and let it out, calming herself down. "Why didn't you tell me, Bay?"

I sighed and began explaining to her. "Because we wouldn't have gotten out of Leila's sight. Because we would still be trapped back there, separated from each other. Because you would have been being tortured right now and I wouldn't be able to stop it. It was either I sucked up my pain and got you out of there, or we stayed in there, suffering because you are too stubborn to leave me and I wasn't' going to let that happen—"

And suddenly she was kissing me. When she finally pulled away, I asked, "And what was that surprise for?"

"For being the best boyfriend ever," she said with a smile. "And to get you to shut up."

We were kissing again until the two men interrupted us. "Love is real nice and all," one of them began to say, "but we need to get y'all back home where ya belong 'cause we need to do some more huntin' before it gets too dark."

We got up, and the big one — which was apparently Stewart — slung me over his shoulder and carried me like firemen carry house fire victims to safety. It was very uncomfortable, but at least my ankle wasn't hurting very bad for once.

Colleen followed behind me the whole time, keeping an eye on me, making funny faces at me, and just keeping me company by talking to me. After a few more hours of trekking through the woods, the rednecks brought us out fairly close to where Colleen lives.  (We didn't wanting them dropping us off at her doorstep. They would know where she lived. They were nice and all, but we didn't trust them that much.)

"Need anything else?" Stewart asked me after setting me down on the ground.

"Nah, you guys have been a huge help though, thank you!" I answered.

They both saluted us and turned around, disappearing into the evening woods.

"Baylor, we need to get you to a hospital," Colleen said, stating the obvious.

"No, really? I actually love having my ankle be useless."

"Oh shut up," she retorted. "You're tired and cranky and you just need to stay quiet." She leaned down close to me, helping me up. "Here, use me as a crutch and we will get to my house so I can find James and a phone. Oh gosh I hope he's there."

We arrived at the front door and Colleen nearly collapsed because I was putting most of my weight on her with every other step I took. She searched in the rocks by her bushes out front and found the hidden key, unlocking the door and slamming it open. I decided to sit down on the stairs because there was no reason for her to carry me in there. She was finding her brother and we were driving to the hospital.

Not even five minutes later, I heard Colleen scream. I crawled inside as fast as I could since that was the fastest way for me to travel at this point. "Colleen! Where are you?" I yelled.

I was answered by another scream and a few wails. I followed Colleen's sobs to the kitchen, where there was a body laying on the floor, blood all over the floor, coming from the victim's head. I couldn't see who it was, but I had a good guess.

I continued to crawl closer to my girlfriend, who had collapsed on the floor now, her head in her hands, sobbing loudly. I put my arms around her, comforting her. She scooted closer to me, now crying into my shoulder as loud as she possibly could.

"It'll be okay," I whispered to her. "It'll be okay."

It'll be okay, I told myself. It'll be okay.