The Roaming

The Roaming: Part 6

        Uncle Greg owns a six-wheeled pickup truck. He drives with confidence, as if the truck is the child he never had. Dad sits in the passenger seat, Boltana and I behind them. Aunt Brenda is back at the ranch, teaching Jeremy the basics of shooting and showing Heather how to set snares and start a fire. We’ve only been on the road for a of couple minutes, the sun just barely awake. We’re silent, looking out of the windows, gently tapping our fingers against our knees in rhythmic beats.
     “I’ve never understood why you two go hunting,” Dad confesses, drawing our attention, “it’s not like you eat the meat. Seems wasteful, you know?” I’d never expect Dad to call out my uncle like that. I suppose he’s just stressed out about everything, but now is not the time.
     “We sell the meat,” Uncle Greg shrugs, “a lot of people in the area enjoy venison. What we don’t sell, we feed to the barn cats. They like the rabbits we catch,” he replies casually. They don’t need the money from selling; I’m sure they just do it for recreation. I guess that makes them a little like me.
     “Is it worth it, though? I mean, I don’t see why-“ Dad’s about to further his argument when Uncle Greg slams on the brakes, Boltana and I jerk forward and nearly bust our heads against the front seats.
     “Jesus,” Boltana gasps and clutches anxiously onto her door handle.
     “Kind of,” Uncle Greg responds, inhaling sharply.
     “What?” Boltana questions, bewildered.
     A Middle Eastern looking man pulls himself off the ground. I’m not entirely sure whether we should help him or not. A hit from a truck like this should have killed him instantly. He turns to us, long brown hair waving over his shoulders. His skin is somewhat leathery and a tawny brown color, but what stands out the most is the suit he wears- a torn straight jacket.
     There again are those glazed over, milky white eyes. He is not alive; he is actually an it. It climbs onto the hood of the truck, clawing at the metal and sniffing the front window. Boltana screams. It perks up, suddenly alert and way more wild looking than it was just a second before. It growls and begins smashing its head against the glass; cracks start to appear. “Stay inside the car!” Dad urges.
     “Are you out of your damn mind?! It’s going to break in!” Boltana shouts, her entire body trembling.
     “I’ve got a plan, just-“ Boltana is already out of the truck before Dad can explain himself. At the sound of her door opening, the beast rolls off the car and towards her. Boltana is much faster than I thought she was, sprinting down the road like a mad girl. Her footsteps, however, are loud enough for the roamer to follow her. I leap out of the truck and chase after them. I’m not nearly as fast as either of the two, which is sad because one is in a straight jacket. I’m just going off the hope that the roamer will make a mistake and trip or something. After that… I’m not sure what I’ll do.
     A gunshot rings out, and for a moment all I hear is high pitched buzzing. The roamer falls to the ground, and I nearly topple over him. Boltana skids to a stop and immediately starts assessing herself. Why would she think she was the one who was shot? Not even a second later, another bullet is fired, even though the roamer before me has already been shot in the head.
     I fall to my knees and roll onto my side. At first I feel nothing, only blinding pressure that escapes from my leg and weighs down on me like nothing I’ve ever felt before.
     Then it happens; I remove my hand from my calf, only to find my fingers dripping with blood. I don’t scream, I don’t shout. I pant so hard my vision blackens at the corners. A shell casing rolls onto the pavement beside me. My head is lifted and rested on someone else’s leg. Fingers skate over my cheeks gently at first, and I feel as if I might pass out. Then I’m slapped.
     Everything comes back at once. I can see again; Boltana cups my face in her hands and breathes heavily. I can hear again; Dad and Uncle Greg come racing towards me, their guns clattering on the ground behind them. I can feel again; boiling hot pain bubbles through my veins and sends me sputtering profanities.
     “Oh my god,” Uncle Greg kneels next to me and attempts to move my leg. He stops when I let out an uncontrollable shout of agony.
     “Valentine, I… I don’t,” Dad stutters.
     “I’m sorry, Valentine. I shot before I realized your dad already had. This is my fault, I’m sorry,” Uncle Greg cuts in, and Dad gives him a strange look, “but you’ll be all right. It was just your leg, it was just your leg.” He scoops me up, one arm under my shoulder blades, the other under my knees. It hurts initially, like my skin is tearing, but once there’s no more movement involved the pain settles just slightly.
     He stuffs me into the backseat of the truck, groaning and tasting copper as I chew on my own lip. Uncle Greg rips off his sleeve and elevates my leg as he tightly ties up my calve. I cry out as the cloth is wrapped around my skin, around the wound I know is bleeding out. When he finishes the final knot, my sight returns to its painful blurriness. “Keep your knee up like this, Valentine, it’ll slow the bleeding,” he orders just as Boltana climbs into the truck, pulling my head onto her lap once again. Uncle Greg regains control over the steering wheel while Dad crawls onto the passenger seat.
     There’s a period of time where I’m in and out, vision and hearing leaving me every few seconds. The entire time we drive, all I can feel is the pain and the blood leaking down my leg and onto the leather interior of Uncle Greg’s truck. After a few minutes, though, my calf just starts to numb.
     “Why haven’t you turned around?” Dad urges as Uncle Greg continues along the road.
     “One of the reasons we’re going to the convenience store is for medicine, right? We need to get him antibiotics, gauze, cleaning alcohol- anything to make him better.” Uncle Greg responds. Boltana doesn’t look at me, but she absently runs her fingers through my hair. It makes me feel both nervous and comfortable.
     Dad groans and pinches the bridge of his nose, “This is all your fault, you know!” He shouts, sending a quick glare back to Boltana. I stare up at her, and I watch as her expression shifts from concern, to confusion, to anger.
     “Me? What the hell did I do?” Boltana questions, fury in her voice. She never once looks down at me, but I never take my eyes off of her. After all, the only direction I really have to look is up since my head is in her lap.
     “You jumped out of the car, making him chase after you! None of this would have happened if you just stayed in the damn truck!” It’s strange to hear my father so infuriated. Never even when my parents were in the process of their divorce did they fight. That’s always been Dad’s skill; staying calm and collected. It’s part of his job- he needs that skill to get anywhere in his career, and now that ability seems to have vanished.
     “Well maybe if you guys hadn’t been distracting yourselves with conversation, we never would have hit the guy in the first pla-“
     “Quiet,” Uncle Greg demands, his voice thundering through the car and stopping all speech, “just stop talking. We’re going to the gas station in silence.” It’s then that the truck becomes painfully quiet, and it gets harder to focus on anything other than the open wound in my leg. Fortunately, there are moments where I don’t feel anything, where my senses dull for a moment and I can close my eyes and let my mind go blank, before Boltana pats my cheek. I know she’s just trying to keep me conscious, but in the state I’m in all I want is to fall asleep.