I jolted forward and felt a twinge in my upper hamstring, just below my ass. It was the fastest I’d moved since high school, which was thirty years ago, and even then I’d never played any sports. But I didn’t let the pain slow me down. I cut across to the far side of the highway and used my hands to hurdle over the guardrail. I landed on a decline and my feet slipped as I waved my arms for balance. Then my feet slid out from underneath me and I landed hard on my side and kept sliding, scraping my palms as I placed them down to brake. It was a forty-five-degree descent, maybe twelve feet or so to the strip of grass bordering the pine wood hill opposite the highway. I wouldn’t get far in there, the trees were too densely packed. The hill too steep. At least it was dark down here at the bottom. It would be hard for them to see me from the road.

I stooped low to the ground – the back of my leg was now burning – and turned back the way I had come, figuring I could loop around and come up behind them. Up ahead I saw something that gave me a better idea. The opening to a circular culvert that tunneled under the highway. That would put me clear across to the opposite lanes where I could run – limp, more likely – toward the nearest off-ramp and a gas station. I lurched toward it and scrambled inside.

Something had died in here. The smell caught in the back of my throat, the cloying stench of flesh rotting in stagnant water. It felt like a bad omen – this place knew death – but I was running low on options. The back of my leg was throbbing and growing tight. I had obviously pulled something, and wasn’t sure how far or fast I could run before it gave out.

I ventured farther into the tunnel. Light only penetrated five feet or so. Beyond that, total darkness. There was no way to see the other side, but it had to open out on both ends. It had to.

The rounded ceiling was low, forcing me to hunch over. I felt a strain in my lower back much like the one in my leg. Fuck, if nothing else this escapade had revealed what kind of shape I was in. The ungainly shape of a squash.

Water stewed in the center of the tunnel. I straddled the stagnant river to avoid splashing. It forced me to waddle but I kept moving forward, toward the smell. It was growing thick. I was entering its atmosphere, a cloud of noxious fumes. Of putrid decomposition. I hoped this wasn’t something’s lair. The death den of some scavenger that poached roadkill from the highway and feasted on it here. Or on people from broken-down cars.