Running. It is hard enough to do when you’re an athlete at the top of his game, competing in a marathon, and running across smooth terrain as winds back and forth testing your resolve. When you’re a fifty-year-old fugitive stumbling over rocks and trudging through shallow streams in nothing but a pair of bright orange flip-flops and socks, running is an impossible task. The dogs are coming and they brought their hounds too. After making his way into a narrow pass at the foot of the Sobie mountain range, seeing only steep rock walls jutting up on either side, Riley Evans, former Olympic hero, almost gives up. He had been in this place before, at every qualifying race he ever had to compete in. Chest burning, heart pounding, and mind racing. And each time all he had to do was dig a little deeper and he would always win. This was different though. His vision was a little blurry and his knees felt like they were going to give out at any moment. If he could just make it into the forest, he might outrun his captors and lose them. The thought of the three men he had escaped with drove him on. Two of them were dead but the other man, a younger man, was long gone. Just flew ahead of them like a fucking bird. Didn’t even look back once. Riley pressed onward pushing his body beyond its limits. The dogs would have to quit first.
Ananse the Writer 