Michael Malone - Weebly

another way into the marshland, from the north or west,
though he had never heard of one, and there were no
towns in those vicinities. It meant that except for the
unlikely chance that someone, like himself, might
stumble on the clearing by accident, no one need ever
know the compound was there. It meant those who
built it intended that to be so.
As he stood there, he saw something to which old
instincts reacted before he had consciously assimilated
what he'd seen. He dropped to the ground with a grunt
at the pain the unaccustomed quick movement caused
his leg. From the far corner of the compound, two
young men in fatigues had walked toward him, laughing
at a third who jerked at the chain of a black German
shepherd. All three men had rifles. Ransom crawled to
a covert of bushes, where he hid until the soldiers and
the dog moved north out of sight. He'd felt in danger;
he'd felt, though he could not have said why, guilty and
caught in complications.
He had pushed himself too hard. His face and arms
bled with cuts from brambles he had to shove through
at a run in the fastdarkening woods as he worked his