Fleeing

Priya staggered ashore first, her red t-shirt and jeans clinging to her petite body, her running shoes squelching wetly as she emerged from the cold river. The muddy riverbank sucked at her shoes, gassy sounds emanating from her feet as she plodded away from the river.

Jenny stumbled ashore a moment later, muttering curses in Priya's direction as she did so. Her yellow blouse, tied off just below her breasts, was plastered to her torso, emphasizing her generous bust. Ice-cold water trickled from her soaked white shorts down her legs. Freezing mud squeezed between the toes of her bare right foot, it's hiking shoe having been lost in the river, the mud sucking at her remaining shoe.

Both girls stood a moment, shivering in the cool evening air. With naught but the sodden clothes on their backs and a bucket of blueberries, the coming night looked rather miserable. Jenny, thoroughly frustrated, fixed Priya with a deathly glare. "This is all your fault!" Jenny's voice, imbued with a twinge of panic, carried sharply over the chilly evening air.

Priya retaliated in kind, reminding Jenny of whose idea it had been to take the left fork in the first place. For a few minutes, the two girls argued over whose fault it was, before a terrifying thought coursed through Priya's mind.

"Jenny, it doesn't matter right now. It really doesn't. Somebody shot at us. We need to move. Besides, it will help keep us warm." Jenny, about to lambast Priya yet again, suddenly fell silent. Whatever misgivings she had about Priya, she was right. If they stayed here, they were all too likely to meet whoever had fired at them, if they didn't freeze to first.

Subdued, Jenny nodded quietly. "You're right, Priya. Let's go. We need to find a place away from here to make some sort of camp." Satisfied that Jenny was dropping the blame game for the moment, Priya turned, scooped up the bucket of blueberries, and headed into the forest. Jenny followed close behind, cursing as her soft, freezing bare foot hit a particularly cold patch of mud.

Roughly a half-hour later, Jason, Josh, and Morris arrived at the spot where they though the canoe had sunk, only to be unpleasantly surprised to find the girls not there. Josh grunted his frustration as he looked around, not seeing anyone hiding in the bushes.

Jason stood off to the side, anger written clearly on his face. "Where the fuck did those bitches go? They better not have fucking drowned!"

Morris ignored both of them. He'd spent a few years in the military, and knew that the girls weren't planning on returning by the complete lack of things on the shore. They had gone somewhere, and he was going to track them down.

He scoured the ground in the fading light, as Jason and Josh kept a lookout. These girls were soft, and wouldn't know the first thing about fieldcraft. They'd leave signs of their passing.

He found the spot where they'd argued easily, the mud stamped down as they'd argued back and forth. He headed to the treeline then, and started looking for more signs of which way they'd headed. It didn't take him long to find a single, bare footprint in a patch of mud. It wasn't hard to spot the trail of footprints leading into the forest from there, several fainter shoeprints interspersed with a few bare prints, all of a right foot.

He grabbed Jason and Josh's attention, then gestured toward the forest. "They went that way. One of them lost a shoe. Between that and the dark, I doubt they'll make it that far. We probably ought to stay here for the night, though. It'll be a bitch tracking them in the dark."

Josh fixed Morris with a steely glare, and, in a low growl, said, "Damnit, Morris, if they aren't going to get far, why the hell should we stay here? Let's go fucking get them!"

As the two men devolved into an argument, Jason quickly realized he was the deciding vote. If they were going to catch the girls tonight, they needed to get going now.