Trouble & Treasure by Dave Moyer (learn to read activity book txt) 📖

I had far too much fear kicking around in me to consider reason. Taking the most enormous swallow I could, I turned carefully, ensuring that the bulk of my body couldn’t be seen past the trunk. I dropped low and tried to scamper as quickly as I could to the protection of an even larger tree further back. The plan was to continue doing that, ducking from tree to tree, until I was well and truly gone, no matter how long or how far that would take me.

“What the fuck happened to this car?” A gruff and deep baritone rang out from behind, giving me a fair indication from the language and tone that this wasn’t a country farmer with a particular love of military-grade cars and tinted windows.

“It's had the shit shot out of it,” replied a man with a wiry tone, offering laugh at the end, as if a bullet-riddled Lexus was the funniest sight on this green earth.

I bit my lip so hard that the pain radiated down into my chin. I ground to a halt, pressing my back up as far as I could against the rigid bark of the large oak tree behind me.

“Hey, I know this car,” a far more unpleasant tone replied, “It belongs to that lawyer shit.”

My eyes widened, and I clamped my teeth down, lips sucking in. This was Maratova, wasn't it? The same Maratova Sebastian kept warning me about, the same Maratova who'd chased me through the woods last night.

That thought was enough to see me shaking, arm jittering so hard that the tips of my fingers danced over the wood of the trunk behind me as I tried to hold myself steady.

“Well, looks like someone got to him,” the baritone replied, voice not peaking with concern.

“Should we call it in?” someone else asked.

“Don't have the time, plus, not our problem,” the baritone replied.

The man's tone was starting to get to me; it didn't feel right somehow. It seemed as if he was artificially holding his voice even, as if he was trying not to frighten someone. I hardly doubted he was doing it for the benefit of his men; I didn't think the army was a place where the softly, softly approach to interpersonal conversation was cherished.

My lips dropped open, my throat dry. Very carefully I tried to step back from the tree, and it was at that moment I heard the crack of a twig not too far from my left.

My heart gave a kick, and I’d never felt anything like it. An intensely cold sensation rushed across the top of my chest, a horrible tingling feeling cascading down my arms and legs.

They were hunting me. The apparently normal conversation by the car was meant to draw my interest and distract me while they sent several other men off into the forest to corral me.

“Still, it's a pity, looked like it was a nice car,” someone said as the sound of a door being opened filtered through from the lane-way.

With a fresh, undeniable, inescapable tingling pulsing through my body, I did the only thing I could think of, and I ran. It might have been smarter to peel off, assess the lay of the land, and try to pick the best route possible. I wasn’t in a sensible mood here; I was about to be the antelope captured by the pride of lions.

As I launched myself from the protection of the tree, heart beating so fast, chest trying so hard to suck in deeper and longer breaths, the conversation behind stopped.

I had stupidly, stupidly kicked my shoes off in the car, and I found myself running from the army in the woods, barefoot and desperate.

As I belted forward, in my peripheral vision I saw one of them, crouched low by the side of a tree barely five meters from where I’d been. The second he saw me, was the second he snapped up with the speed of a jumping spider.

I screamed, constricted throat making it sound as if I was choking.

Arms flailing about madly, feet striking the ground with hard, shuddering, quick footfall, I ran in the only direction I could see that didn't have a crouching soldier in it.

Sure enough, as I pelted forward, I heard another one move from my other side, snapping up just as quickly as the other one had.

This section of wood was infamous for its dips and rises, seemingly level hills dropping off dramatically into tree-lined ditches – and as I could hear the breath of the closest soldier behind me so loud it sounded as though it was issuing from my own skull, I came across such a treacherous rise.

Foot striking a raised root, and knee buckling at the sudden pressure it sent zipping through my leg and up my hip, I fell forward, realizing that the ground gave away sharply. With no time to scream, I sucked in a breath, closed my eyes, and somehow managed to tuck my body in. I hit the ground and began to slide down the sharp incline, leaves and twigs grating and brushing over my scooting form.

I had no idea how long it took, but I rolled onto a thankfully-soft pile of leaf matter at the bottom of the incline. Were it not for the fact my body was already primed with adrenaline from the pressing issue of having several heavily-armed soldiers chasing me, I would probably have lain there for some time, shocked as I tried to process what had occurred. I didn't have that luxury.

Shaking violently, my teeth clattering as I tried to clamp down hard on my jaw and get a hold of myself, I pushed to my feet. It didn't feel as though I had broken bones, and I didn't have time to check for the bruises and scratches and cuts that I knew for sure would be there.

“Come on, Amanda, you don't have to run from us,” one of the soldiers said from the top of the incline.

I chose to ignore his words as I saw two others expertly making their way down the horrendously steep incline towards me.

“We are here to help you,” the soldier tried again. He wasn’t the baritone, that much I did know, and his voice, dare I say it, had a kinder edge.

That didn’t stop me from turning from him and resuming my escape. “Like hell you are,” I muttered under my breath.

I heard him swear, just as the other two soldiers, boots skidding, made their way towards me.

Though I hadn’t been to these woods for many years, I still remembered them from the fond times I had spent with my great-uncle as a child. He had often taken me out here, sat me under the different trees and told me of his various adventures. I remembered the time he'd pointed out this hidden old lane-way to me, leading me along it, my small hand in his, as he pointed out all the different trees and plants and birds.

As I ran, feet so painful it made me want to close my eyes to get away from it, I remembered something more. My great-uncle had told me this lane-way and the woods around it were surrounded by one of the country roads. If you kept walking down with the dip in the land, you would get to the road below. The other thing he'd mentioned was the thing I had proved to myself as I had thrown myself face-first down that steep hill: the land around here was full of ditches, valleys, and bloody horrendously steep hills.

That would be when I saw another incline pop right up in front of me. This time I managed to skid to a halt, grabbing a tree trunk before I fell off the hill and rolled down to the flat almost 20 meters below.

They were right behind me, and I do mean right behind me. For some reason my hearing was more acute: I could pick up the tread of their boots as they ran through the soft forest floor. I could even pick up the metal clinks and clangs as whatever horrible weaponry they carried impacted with their belts and buckles as they threw themselves forward.

Below me, beyond the massive dip, was the road. I could see it, see the slice of gray bitumen through a gap in several trees.

So I did it again, this time intentionally. Taking the most massive of swallows, and wincing like I’d never winced before, I plunged over the dip in the hill, trying to keep myself low for as long as I could. I had intended to control my descent, but I started to slide out of control, and I had to curl myself in tight as I began to roll violently down the incline.

I thought I heard someone swear from behind me; it was hard to tell as air rushed past my ears, the sounds of twigs and small branches cracking as I skidded and rolled past.

I bottomed out and reached the flat below.

This time my body felt so bruised and battered that I gave out a terrible moan as I pushed myself to my feet.

“For fuck's sake, love,” the soldier from before shouted from atop the incline above, “We're not here to hurt you. We're here to get you to safety.”

I think I was crying, it was hard to tell; the skin along my cheeks, nose, and forehead was so tingly and over sensitized from the fall and rush of adrenaline, it was hard to differentiate between a stinging sensation in my eyes and the possibility of tears rushing down my cheeks and over my chin. Plus, my face felt so dirty from the beating I had given it by rolling down two inclines in the space of less than two minutes that you would probably have to press right up close to it in order to see the tears, if they were there, between the mud, muck, and scratches.

In front of me, near the road, I saw someone move. Before my heart could leap at the possibility it was Sebastian, I recognized the large, heavy, black-leather coat and thick neck. It was the man who had shot at us outside of the library. He was barely five meters before me, picking his way towards me from the road beyond. He had a gun in hand, and sliced his eyes upwards to the soldier on the rise. Before he could do anything, he sliced his eyes back to me and pelted for me.

I didn't have time to think; I had fallen down yet another incline, body so full of painful protestations at my punishment that all I could do was stand there and shake.

The soldier above yelled, “Contact.” As he did several bullets zipped around me, but not close enough to indicate that I was the intended target. One of them ripped through the shoulder of the thick-necked man's leather jacket, one plunging into the ground right next to his boot. It was enough to make him falter, and he jerked back, before his outstretched hands got a hold of me.

I threw myself to the ground, or fell, more like it. My legs buckled out from underneath me, mouth so open and wide and limp that I didn't think I could ever get it closed again. I tucked my arms over my head, nestling my chin down until it was as close to my chest as I could make it.

I could hear the noise of the soldiers above, as they kept shooting, kept shouting. Then I heard far closer shots as the thick-necked man obviously drew his own gun.

With the smell of dirt clogging my nose and the mud on my face mixing with my tears, I sobbed.

I had to get up and move. I couldn't assume the fetal position and wait to be kidnapped by the victor; I had to act, I had to get away.

Pushing to my feet, arms and neck so stiff it felt as if I