Chapter 2 - The Mile-Long Trail of Red Dirt
The heavy diesel engine of Medic Unit 4 roared to life before Gabe Miller had even fastened his seatbelt. Beside him, Deputy Sheriff Marcus Hayes gripped the steering wheel, his jaw set in a hard line as the siren began its mournful wail into the late afternoon heat. On the clipboard between them was a hand-drawn map reconstructed from the fragmentary memories of a six-year-old girl: *a blue mailbox shaped like a barn, the oak tree split by lightning, and the long road that goes downhill where the gravel hurts.*
"Old Pine Hollow Road," Marcus muttered, his knuckles white against the steering wheel. "It has to be. Nobody lives back there except the caretakers and the squatters who took over the abandoned logging cabins after the mill shut down five years back."
"That’s nearly four miles from St. Jude’s," Gabe said, staring at the brass key resting on his palm. The twine was worn fuzzy, soaked with the child’s sweat. "Marcus, she pushed that wheelbarrow with a flat tire for four miles. Uphill past the quarry, then down the gravel wash."
"I saw the tire marks when we pulled out of the hospital driveway," Marcus replied grimly. "A single, wobbly line in the dust alongside Highway 9. God knows how many cars blew past her without stopping."
As the ambulance turned off the blacktop and onto the rutted dirt of Pine Hollow, Gabe leaned his forehead against the side window, scanning the roadside ditch. The evidence of Mia’s journey was everywhere once you knew how to look.
Here was a patch of crushed weeds where she had clearly lost control of the balance and tipped the barrow into the grass before hauling it upright again. Half a mile further, they passed an overturned plastic water bottle, its cap chewed raw—the child’s only ration, likely drained within the first hour of her march. On a steep incline where the red clay turned into sharp shale, Gabe spotted dark droplets dried against the gray stone.
"Stop the truck," Gabe said suddenly.
Marcus hit the brakes, the ambulance sliding several feet in the loose gravel. Gabe jumped out, his boots crunching in the dirt. He knelt beside a jagged stone sticking out from the shoulder. A smear of fresh blood stained its edge, accompanied by the distinct tread of a worn sneaker sole.
The child had stumbled here. Her sneaker had slipped, her bare knee had struck the rock, and yet she had refused to drop the handles. Had she let go, the wheelbarrow would have rolled backward into the deep ravine below, taking the infants with it. Instead, she had held on, taking the brunt of the impact onto her small joints, bleeding onto the stone before digging her heels back into the dust and pushing forward.
"She didn't stop," Gabe whispered, a chill washing over his skin despite the humid southern air. "Not even here."
Marcus stepped out, pointing toward a concealed driveway ahead, nearly swallowed by overgrown blackberry brambles and weeping willows. At the entrance stood a rusted blue metal mailbox, roughly hammered into the shape of a barn, its flag broken off.
The ambulance lurched forward again, turning into the dark corridor of pines. The trees grew thick here, blotting out the late sunlight and plunging the path into twilight. The air smelled of damp moss, decomposing leaves, and chimney smoke long extinguished. At the end of the half-mile driveway sat a low-slung, weather-beaten cabin with peeling white paint and a sagging front porch.
There were no other cars in the weed-choked yard. No bicycles, no neighbors within shouting distance. Only absolute, suffocating silence, broken only by the cawing of a crow in the canopy above.
May you like
Gabe gripped the brass key in his hand, feeling its cold weight, and drew his medical kit from the rear compartment. "Marcus, let’s go. We’re on the clock."
***
