Run to the Hills

The desert air tears through my lungs like sandpaper while I run. Behind me, the Airstream still glows faintly beneath the moonlight, its polished aluminum sides flashing silver between the rocks whenever I risk a glance backward. I can still hear screaming from somewhere near the camp, men shouting and metal slamming against metal. Something crashes hard enough to echo through the canyon.

Then another sound rolls across the desert behind me, low enough that I feel it before I fully recognize what it is. Deep, guttural laughter echoes between the rocks with something almost animal hidden beneath it. There is no humor in the sound at all.

It feels predatory, like whatever is making that noise already knows I am running and enjoys the fact that I am terrified. Panic surges through me immediately, and I **** my exhausted legs to move even faster across the loose desert gravel. Loose gravel slides beneath my bare feet while I stumble downhill through the dark.

I catch myself against jagged rocks hard enough to tear skin from my palms. My curls whip wildly across my face in the desert wind. Every breath burns. The old denim overalls cling damply against my skin with sweat while adrenaline keeps my legs moving long after exhaustion should have dropped me already.

The moon hangs enormous above the desert tonight, bright enough that I can actually see the terrain unfolding ahead of me in pale silver layers. I see dry washes, broken rock formations and clusters of twisted Joshua trees reaching upward like skeletal hands. The deeper I run into the wasteland, the quieter the world becomes behind me until eventually even the screams near the Airstream fade into silence.

That somehow scares me worse. I nearly break my ankle scrambling through a narrow cut between two boulders. Pain shoots sharply through my leg, but I **** myself onward anyway, sliding and half-falling down a steep embankment littered with loose shale.

The desert path suddenly ends at a wall of stone rising straight out of the earth in front of me. I skid to a stop hard enough that loose gravel sprays beneath my bare feet while my heart hammers violently against my ribs.

The cliff towers upward beneath the moonlight, enormous slabs of jagged rock stacked like broken teeth against the night sky. Thin cracks split the stone face from top to bottom, deep enough in places that the darkness between them looks almost solid.

Then I see the opening of a cave. The entrance sits at ground level directly beneath the towering cliff face ahead of me, cut into the black stone like a wound in the mountain itself. It is narrow enough that the darkness beyond becomes impossible to read after only a few feet, but tall enough that I could enter without crawling.

Moonlight catches the jagged edges around the opening while the interior remains completely black and silent..I stand frozen at the base of the cliff trying to catch my breath while sweat runs down my arms and legs beneath the cold desert wind.

The rock wall rises steeply upward beside the cave, its cracked surface forming uneven ledges and narrow ridges disappearing toward the top of the cliff high above me. Climbing it might let me escape over the ridge line, but the terrain looks brutal in the moonlight.

Loose stone shifts constantly beneath my feet, and one bad handhold would send me crashing back down the slope. Behind me, voices echo faintly through the desert again, closer now. Laughter drifts upward through the canyon below. Somebody whistles once, long and low, and another voice answers with something I cannot quite make out.

Panic tightens every muscle in my body. The cave waits silently beneath the cliff beside me like an open mouth. The mountain rises endlessly above it into darkness. And I suddenly realize I have almost no time left to choose between them.