The footprints trailed out far past the door. It was a clear morning, and I could follow the trail to the treeline with my eyes, where it disappeared into the woods. The sun had just crested the nearby mountains, and I hadn’t been outside yet. My hand tightened on the door. I went back inside.

“Tab,” I knocked on her door, though it was wide open and I could see her asleep on her bed. She groaned and turned over, blinking hard at the morning light. She squinted at me questioningly. “He got out.”

“Shit,” she mumbled, clarity creeping back into her voice. She rolled out of bed, and I shut the door, retreating to our living room. She was out and ready in less than a minute, brown hair piled high in a loose bun. She had thrown a teal puffer jacket over the tank top she’d slept in.

“Here.” I handed her the rifle I’d spent the past minute loading and stood up. She followed me out the door.

The sky was still clear, but the sun was rising quickly. There’d be nothing to cover the tracks for a good, long while. I began to follow the trail.

“You can track him, right?” Tab asked.

“In this snow? I could track a mouse.” Tab grunted in acknowledgement, and we walked on. We reached the outskirts of the woods and began to make our way past the trees. Most had shed their leaves, leaving an almost open sky and a snowy ground. The tracks continued deeper.

“Colt?” Tab called, “where’s the nearest highway?”

“It’s miles. ‘Sides, he can’t have been gone long.” I discovered a broken branch, snapped by the body of a large animal running through. “We’ll find him.”

We walked for nearly half an hour, following the deep, clear imprints in the snow. Eventually, we reached a fork. The footprints went off in two directions. “Clever,” I muttered to myself. “He’s close,” I told Tab.

“Zach!” she called. I considered our options. “Come on out, hon!”

It didn’t take me long to realize that the footprints branching to the right were imprinted deeper, meaning he’d retraced them. I motioned Tab over to the left and we continued down our trail.

“Nobody’s gonna hurt ya,” Tab called out into the wilderness. “S’not safe being out in the cold like this.” She traced the length of the rifle with her fingers absentmindedly as we passed through the trees.

After traveling a while longer, through a few more tricks like the one at the branch, we came to an old, overgrown part of the forest. The gnarled branches were grown so thick over us that, even devoid of leaves, they’d blocked a good deal of the snowfall. The footprints were fainter there, and the air darker, the snow-laden branches smothering the sunlight. In the center of this overgrown stretch, the trail broke off suddenly.

“Don’t be scared,” Tab continued her calling as I bent down to inspect the abrupt end to the footprints. I didn’t see any continuation further down. “S’alright, just come out now. Nobody’s gonna hurt ya,” Tab repeated. She stepped slowly away from me, calling out to the surrounding trees.

Crouched down by the trail’s end, I looked out further, scanning for signs of breakage in the foliage. The couple trees closest to me seemed untouched, and I didn’t see any signs of disturbance in the bushes or brambles. Tab paced around several feet behind me, glancing into the walls of branches that surrounded us. I saw, above my head on the tree to my right, a snapped twig.

“Hah…” Before I could look up, a heavy weight crashed into me from above, blindsiding me. I cried out in shock, my voice mixing with another, more ferocious yell above me. Adrenaline hit me in a rush as I reeled from the sudden impact. The force had knocked me down, and my attacker was on top of me.

I’d ended up under him when he’d knocked me over. He was clawing at me like a cornered animal, grabbing anything he could get ahold of. I hit him a few times with my fists, sufficient to hurt him but not enough to deter him. I tried to restrain him as I recovered my wits, but it was hard with him on top of me.

He began attacking my face with a desperate fervour, like he wanted to gouge out my eyes. Still being startled, it was all I could do to protect my face as he attacked me. All of a sudden, he let out a howl of pain and dropped back from me. Before figuring out what had happened, I shoved him off of me and stumbled away, panting. He’d left me bleeding from several scratches on my face and arms.

He lay on the snowy ground, clutching at his right leg. Bright crimson spread out under him from between his fingers as he continued to cry out in pain. I turned to find the source of my salvation.

Tab stood a few feet away from us, rifle poised on her shoulder, cool as anything. The escapee writhed on the ground before her, most likely no longer a threat. Still, she kept the gun trained on him. His leg must have been mere inches from me when she hit him. I slowly caught my breath.

“That wasn’t smart, Zach.”

“You… You fucking shot me!”

“Didn’t give me a choice, now did you?”

“Fff…” His voice trailed off as he tried to move, no doubt worsening the pain in his leg. “Fuck you!” he gasped.

I approached him, having overcome the start his attack gave me. I took a knife out from my pocket, one I’d been unable to reach in our earlier scuffle.

“Wh-” I flicked the blade out, kneeling down beside him. I could see fear flash in his eyes. I brought the knife to the flannel jacket I was wearing and cut off a nice, long strip. By now, the snow underneath him was dark with blood.

“Don’t touch me,” he gritted out as I wrapped the strip around his leg, pocketing the knife.

“Can’t let you bleed to death,” I told him, wrenching it tight around him. He cried out again.

I took a stick lying on the ground around us and fashioned a makeshift tourniquet out of the piece of my jacket. Tab watched us from her position a few feet away, ensuring he didn’t make any more problems for us. He didn’t appreciate my application of the tourniquet, but he was all but incapacitated at that point.

“Alright.” I grabbed his right arm and lifted him up, slinging his arm over my shoulders. “Let’s get you back.” We started back toward the cabin.