Jakob’s feet pounded the ground, bending tufts of grass as he went. They were coming, he could feel it. Sweat matted his dark brown shoulder length hair tightly to his head. He looked around himself into the thick forest, a bad move; his shoulder collided with a withering oak as he looked away, causing a spasm of pain to jolt through his arm. He let out a gasping breath, refusing to yell as he was spun about. He began to back pedal, waving his arms, trying to gain balance, but one of his feet hit a root sticking out of the ground and he fell. As he hit the hard, packed, forest dirt, the air was pushed out of his lungs in a gasp. His hand instinctively went to his chest as he gulped down air.
As he began to struggle to his feet he heard them, “Straight ahead, I was about to take the shot when he…” but the voices were drowned out as a scream broke through the night, then gunfire that cut the scream off and a flash of light somewhere in the distance. Jakob’s hearing was filled with a constant annoying ringing, he could hear nothing. He dropped back onto his back and then slowly rolled onto his chest and began to crawl away. He had made it no more than five feet when the ringing in his ears ceased. Then he heard the sound of a twig snapping almost right behind him.
He moved then, rushing to his feet he began to sprint forward. That’s when he heard someone yell, “There he is, hit him with the flash bang!” He heard a muffled thump and then something exploded a few feet to his right. His ears were filled with the ringing again and his sight was nothing but a shimmering veil of white. Clutching at his eyes with his right hand he yelled, and stumbled forward trying to find his way with his left hand. He spun around knowing he had no chance of escaping while like this, he began to lash out, swinging his arms wildly.
His vision began to return, able to discern shadows out of the whiteness he punched at one of them. His right fist collided with a tree and he yelled, hearing and feeling something crack in his hand. He began to cradle his right arm as pain soared through it. Then his vision and hearing began to return and he discerned one of the close shadows as a man wearing a gas mask on. Something glinted in the darkness and he felt his right shoulder get sting.
“Stop! He isn’t wanted dead!” shouted someone in the distance, causing the man in the mask to reluctantly retreat. Something sticky and hot was trickling down Jakob’s arm…blood. His vision and hearing had returned but was blurry in the pain searing through him. Something thumped in the darkness and a small projectile collided with his chest, and it felt like a jack hammer had hit him, causing two more cracks to resound. He gasped as the air was once more pushed out of his lungs, he was ready to collapse.
“If…you’re going to kill...me…just…do…it,” panted Jakob, each word a labored breath. Someone stepped forward, again with a gas mask, and smashed him in the forehead with the butt of a rifle. Jakob collapsed unconscious, but his fears were not over, in his mind, he was being chased by demons, they would catch him and began to tear at his flesh, but he escaped for it all to happen again.
