I had thought of the cane as a walking stick, but with this slant, the exertion was intense. Already, I was breathing heavily, and all the old, familiar pains had returned. My lungs felt compressed and weak. I couldn’t always keep my footing on the gravel. Perhaps someone more graceful could have.

After a while, I realized I had lost all sense of where I was, except for the fact I was continuing upward.

Rain began again, soaking me. My legs ached from the sand-like exertion of walking on the gravel. This was a trek for a younger, fitter me. But this body was all I had. Swift, abandoned thought of turning back, waiting until morning. The fog was so thick that I couldn’t be sure of finding my way. Of not pitching forward down the slope and breaking my neck.

Through the fog, distant, there came in time an echo across the gravel. Dismissed it as weird acoustics. The sound of a huge monster—me—dragging itself across the gravel, ever higher. But when I stopped to rest, I still heard it. Coming closer.

I picked up my pace, at the risk of giving away my location with more noise. But whatever or whoever it was kept pace. Nothing good could come of this trajectory.

When the fog lifted a little, ten minutes later, I could see a copse of trees ahead on my right. Stubborn defense against the gravel. Unwilling to capitulate. I reached it and hid behind a clutter of dead fallen trees. Anyone coming up the slope would guess I had hidden there. But it gave me a clear line of sight to send a bullet or two their way.

I waited for someone to appear. Instead, the treacherous fog came back, rolling in from farther up the slope. Now I was lost in a welter of trees, unable to see anything downslope.

A flat, thick sound. A bullet zipped past my neck and I hit the ground. Undid the safety on the automatic rifle, strafed the slope.

Nothing. No sound. I’d missed, too.

Weird panic. What if whoever it was didn’t know it was me.

“Identify yourself!” I shouted—and rolled well to the side, to the shelter of a huge fallen tree trunk. The earth between roots smelled like bitter medicine.

A spray of bullets, but far off to the left. The fog was doing strange things to the acoustics. Okay, so no mistake. They meant to shoot at me.

I stood up behind the tree trunk, shielded by its ten-foot circumference of unearthed roots.

Listened intent. Crack of a branch to downslope, to my left.

It sounded so close, I emptied the clip in that direction. The bullets sizzled through the trees, into the trees. I heard a gasp, a scream. A man’s voice, I thought.

I stood there a second. Listening again. Didn’t want to give up my position behind the tree trunk.

Silence.