Chapter 2

Roger woke slowly. His whole body hurt. He was lying on the steering wheel of his truck and could tell the airbag had deployed. It was deathly quiet. No, that wasn't entirely correct. He could not hear normal traffic and airport noises. He did hear wind rustling leaves and birds chirping. He heard his dogs whining and felt them licking his face trying to awaken him. Roger raised his head and groaned then wondered what the HELL had happened, what had hit him. He was immediately assaulted once again by two wet tongues and some worried whining from his dogs. They both tried to climb into his lap to show him their relief at his awakening. Roger hugged his dogs as he thought about the immediate past. He was reasonably certain he was involved in a vehicle accident when he turned toward the airport. What confused him was the sunlight. When he turned toward the airport it was dark. Now it was light. Why hadn't someone gotten him from his truck and seen if he was ok by now? As light as it was it must be at least four or five hours since the accident. He also wondered about the tree his truck was pushing against and those he could see in the immediate vicinity. He was sure there was no park near where he thought the accident occurred.

Roger unfastened his seat belt and started to open the door when what he was looking at finally registered with him. His truck was not on the highway. In fact there was no highway in sight and no buildings either. Well, there were pieces of things that might have been buildings at one time and there were several chunks of concrete with reinforcing steel in it. There were even some other wrecked vehicles around him. He was on the edge of a forest and was looking out onto a meadow with a fairly large stream running through it. From the slanting of the sunlight it was almost mid day.

Roger slowly opened the door and stepped from the truck. Damn his whole body ached. Blue and Misty were on his heels. They immediately began running around and sniffing of everything in sight. Of course they did take time out to relieve themselves. Roger walked to the front of his truck. The front bumper was tight against a tree about twelve inches in diameter. Hitting it was probably what set off the airbags. He inspected the heavy bumper his father and he built for the truck and smiled. It was barely dented from the impact and he knew he had been driving about 25 miles per hour when he turned onto the road.

Roger staggered away from his truck in the direction of the nearest vehicle. He looked inside and almost threw up. There was a dead couple inside. They were not wearing seatbelts and were almost crushed when their sub compact car hit another tree. Roger moved toward the next vehicle, then the next. The first four vehicles Roger looked into had corpses inside. One was a small family. The rest were just single individuals. Roger trudged toward the last two vehicles. To his surprise one of the vehicles was totally empty. The other, a very large older model car had a young woman inside. She was lying on the seat and blood was seeping from a cut on her head. Her air bag had deployed also. Her car was almost in the meadow. Off to the side was a semi truck pulling a trailer with Tru Value on the side. He didn't take time to see what was in the trailer. He saw the driver was dead as were most of the other people around. He did not even have to go over to the truck to know the driver was dead. He could see the tree branch smashed through the front window of the truck and driven through the driver's chest from where he stood. No, there was no need to check on that driver right now.

Roger reached out toward the woman in the large auto. She groaned when Roger touched her. Like all soldiers Roger had some first aid training. He checked the unconscious woman as carefully as he could and found only superficial injuries. The lacerated scalp was the worst thing he could find. He carefully opened the driver's door and pulled the woman from the car. He carried her a few feet away and lay her down then took off for the stream to wet a cloth and clean the blood from her face.

When Roger returned to the woman she was writhing and moving more. Every movement she made caused her to groan. The wet rag on her face seemed to bring the woman back to consciousness. She looked up at Roger then tried to rise. He moved to hold her down and accidently pressed his hand on her breast. He immediately moved it and said, "Wait. You've been in an accident. Don't move until we see if we can find any injuries I didn't find when I pulled you out of your car."

The young woman looked around a moment and said, "Bullshit. You don't check for injuries by mauling my tit. Where have you taken me you asshole? I was on my way to work at the airport and now I wake up here in the woods with an asshole pawing at me. What do you want? I don't have any money..." Her eyes got large and she screamed then continued, 'Oh my GOD. You're going to rape me! You'd better kill me then asshole because when you get done I'll have the police on you like stink on shit."

"Whoa there missy. I told you I found you here in a car. I don't know any more about this than you do. I was on my way to the airport for a 0430 flight then I woke up here a few minutes ago in my truck. Look around you. Do you think I would set something like this up if I was a kidnapper and rapist? Hell, if you think I could set this up you're crazier than a loon."

The woman looked around again and broke down crying. Roger did what he could to calm her down. He finally left her sitting under the tree and went to check out the area to see if he could figure anything out from the debris scattered around. He was famished. He had not eaten breakfast when he got up that morning and by the looks of things it was mid afternoon now. He looked through some of the cars and found a couple of candy bars in one. He hit the jackpot when he looked in the small car with the dead family inside. There was a cooler filled with sandwich makings and soda pop. The ice in the cooler was mostly melted. He picked it and a grocery bag with bread and chips in it up and took them back to where he left the woman. At least they could eat something while they tried to figure out what to do next.

When Roger got to the tree the woman was gone. He set the food down and yelled for her thinking she had wandered off to take care of personal business. She did not answer and he could not see her anywhere nearby. Roger was not a great tracker but he could follow easy sign. It was a skill he picked up as a child and young adult while hunting. He followed the woman's tracks as she walked away from the area. After she got out of sight of the disaster area she began running. After several hundred feet when she was well out of sight of the rubbish and vehicles she dropped down to a walk again. It looked as if she was then trying to obscure her trail but she was worse at that than Roger was at tracking her. Roger followed along the trail slowly. Blue and Misty accompanied him ranging all around. It was as if they were protecting him while they surveyed their new surroundings.