Man on the Run: Flash Fiction

At the end of the trail, the DeMarcos brothers gave up.

They would never find him.  The dogs had lost the scent. They circled around, sniffing desperately, unable to determine where he had gone once the trail ended.

The brothers hesitated. Neither one wanted to plunge willy-nilly into the Westervelt Woods.  Was there dangerous wildlife in there?  Valukian Swamp Kats and rats the size of cocker spaniels? Yes, but the worst were the insects - murder hornets and the VW wasps among them.

If that's where Georger had gone, more power to him.  The odds of him ever being seen again were pretty low on the Rister Scale.

"I ain't going in there after him," said Reedly, the fat, and oily brother.  "Chance is, he's done for."

"Maybe," said Porter, the skinny and pock-marked brother.  "But are you gonna tell that to Raylen?  He's gonna have our hide if he can't have Georger's."

"I'd rather get a tongue lashing from Raylen that get et up by the VWs."

The DeMarco brothers heeled their dogs and then left.

A half-hour later, there was rustling coming from the woods at the end of the trail.  A man emerged wearing a beekeeper's suit.  He had a large backpack,  and he used it to put back his foldable beekeeper outfit.

Now he just had to hope the idiot siblings didn't double back.  Georger doubted they had that kind of foresight.  Patience, stealth, intellect - none of those were DeMarco's strong suits.

The trail led to Whisper Lane, one of Crater County's many backwoods dirt roads.  He would only have to pass three widely separated country estates (double wides on large weedy lots).  Then he would come to Maddy Lynn's palatial mobile home, where she kept a car he could use for the getaway, a thirty-year-old Rivian Pickup, colored in rust.

First, he had to pay Maddy Lynn his respects.  Then he helped her make the bed, gobbled a strawberry toaster strudel, kissed her goodbye, and then drove off into the sunsets.

Georger saw the fuel tank was full.  Good.  That gave him enough to get to Cape Cortez.  It was a busy port, but he was smart and cunning (unlike the DeMarcos brothers), and he had faith in his ability to stowaway.

Time to get off this planet.