Date: Mon, 12 Sep 2016 05:37:11 -0500
From: Kody Boye <boyekody@gmail.com>
Subject: His Touch of Ice - Part 27

DISCLAIMER:

This is a work of fiction, and contains scenes of graphic violence and
explicit male/male sex. If you are not of the legal age to read this, or
are uncomfortable with this sort of content, please turn back now.

HIS TOUCH OF ICE (The Ice Men, Book 1) is copyright © Kody Boye. All
Rights are reserved.

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The roads were easy enough to navigate. Filled with empty spaces and
shadowed by the darkness which had not been held back by the streetlights,
we ran through the far end of Fredericksburg without pause and broke out
onto the opposite end of town just in time to hear police sirens rev up.

Talking was too much of a waste of energy.

Instead, we ran.

Scattered treelines and fenced-off sections of farmland made for tricky
maneuvering. The obvious inclination was to continue forward and bounce
from copse to copse, hoping that in the meantime the cops wouldn't catch up
or a police helicopter wouldn't swoop in and spot us in its headlights, but
Guy's face told otherwise. His eyes scanned the distance for what I hoped
would be a possible escape—searching, constantly, the woods to our
right, the distant north. His mouth curled into a frown and his hand balled
into a fist just in time for another series of sirens to go up.

"Guy," I said. "What're you doing?"

"Looking," he said.

"For what?"

He didn't respond. Now that his eyes had returned to their usual,
albeit-strange color, he resembled more of a human than he did one of the
Kaldr, but nonetheless appeared just as troubled.

Standing there, clutching the backpack in my hand to the point where I
thought my fingers would go numb, I was just about ready to take off on my
own. Let him deal with it if he was just going to stand there like an
idiot.

I expelled a breath, bull-like in my unease. "Guy," I said. "What're you
waiting for?"

"I don't want to lure them north."

I frowned. "Why?"

"My father—"

"We don't have time for that!" I grabbed him arm—monolithic in structure
and stone-solid in weight. "Come on! Even if we don't end up going to your
father, we have to go. Now."

"Jason—"

I tore my grasp from his arm and slung the backpack over my shoulders,
grimacing from the dull but still-familiar pain in my back. I glanced once,
then twice out the treeline, both ways, before taking off.

Away from him, my heart hammered in my chest.

What the hell was I thinking? I was a goner without him.

The crunch of earth beneath my heels was a horrible reminder of how fragile
this entire situation was. The heat painstaking in its intent, globs of
sweat ran down my face and fogged the lenses of my glasses. Twice I had to
reach up to wipe them clean with my thumb, and even then that did little to
prevent them from fogging up again.

Something shot into sight.

I backpedaled and attempted to screech to a halt just as something entered
sight.

The backpack, bloated with supplies, sent me forward.

Its glimmer, its teeth, materializing from the darkness—

A hand snared around the back of my shirt and caught me just before I could
land face-first into a barbed-wire fence.

"I got you," Guy said.

I took in a deep breath of lost air as Guy pulled me back and thanked
whatever merciful God was out there that he'd shown up.

"Shit," I breathed. "I didn't think there'd be fences out here."

"City boy, I take it?"

I nodded—even managed to smirk, given the slight drawl that his voice
had taken on.

"There's people all the way through here," Guy said, pointing to the
distance beyond the fence. "We've been lucky in that we've missed the
pastures and peach farms so far, but this is it from here on out. We'll
have to climb these fences and make sure we don't spook any of the cows
while we're here."

"You have anything to weigh this down?"

Guy's method was meticulously straightforward and worked based only on the
fact that certain sections were graced with the unfortunate ingenuity for
practical stupidity. After snaring his belt through several loops of wire,
he passed the leather strap to me before pulling his shirt free of his body
and draping it over the wire.

"You first," he said, taking hold of the belt.

I pulled my eyes away from his well-muscled chest before stepping forward.

With the nerve any man could hope to muster, I maneuvered my foot over the
wire, then straddled it before swinging my leg over. I repeated the same
with Guy before he removed his shirt and freed his belt, pleased with the
makeshift results.

"Guess this is the way we'll do it," he said.

I nodded before we continued on.

Guy determined that our path would be less likely detected if we'd followed
an irregular pattern. Heading straight north would configure the idiot
fool's approach—that getting as far away from a location as possible was
what would ultimately prevent them from being captured. But heading east,
Guy said, and then cutting north, would provide the advantage of the
less-populated areas and the bare dirt roads that the elements would be
swift to wipe clean. The only problem was, they also presented the danger
of being discovered discovery.

If they put our pictures on the news, he said, we're fucked.

I took him for his word and decided to trust his opinion.

We passed a power plant and an array of lighting fixtures that initially
unsettled me. While still hidden behind the thick cluster of trees, its
light pierced through the darkness and offered clear sight of the
surrounding area. Guy'd been right. Going that way would've surely gotten
us caught.

"Don't look," he whispered. "Keep going."

I did as he asked and continued to follow him east.

I wasn't sure how long we were walking. Between alternating through
farmland and beneath trees, it was hard to tell whether or not we'd been
going for minutes or hours. We crossed a huge cattle farm, which nearly
sent me into hysterics when I bumped into a stray cow in the middle of the
night, then had to head northeast when we caught sight of buildings in the
foreseeable distance, but eventually we returned to the trees and my nerves
once more died down.

When I felt as if I could go no more, I leaned against a tree and slid to
the ground.

"Hey," Guy said, crouching beside me. "You all right?"

"Tired," I said, rolling my head and taking my deep breath.

He pressed a hand against my cheek and cupped the left half of my face, his
touch comforting despite the irregular chill that permeated its surface.

"You're weak," I managed.

"Just as you are," he replied, "but only in a different way."

"I can't keep going."

"Neither can I, but it wouldn't be smart to just stay out here in the open,
now would it?"

I didn't reply.

He turned his head and pointed east. "A ways beyond those trees," he said,
"there's a community with I don't know how many people. It's too far away
from a major highway for them to go there first, but that doesn't mean any
of the locals won't be wandering the woods."

"You really think any of them would bother us?"

"No, but it's going to look awfully suspicious when they see two guys out
in the middle of the woods without any camping gear, especially when my
picture and the video of you going in and out of the convenience store
comes out."

"Shit," I said.

"Shit is right." Guy took my hand. "Besides—we've been lucky so far. I
don't want to risk it."

"I know."

"I'll make it up to, Jason. I promise. We just need to go a little further
so we're a little ways from civilization."

Who knew when that would be.
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If you enjoyed this installment of HIS TOUCH OF ICE, consider emailing the
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