For someone so slim...Isaac was a lot heavier than he looked.

As if I didn't have enough weight on my shoulders without having to carry his unconscious body through the woods like this. Why the hell did he run like that? Hemust have really been scared out of his wits to knock himself out like that.

Then again...can I really blame him?

I'm not exactly a part of a normal one night stand here, am I? To an Amish kid who's been raised in a God fearing household away from the rest of society's wickedness, I must have come as quite a shock to him. Am I really a monster? Am I the devil's punishment for straying from the path, and following the golden road of temptation into the unbearable flames below. A torture meant for the ceaseless wickedness of those without conscience, without empathy? A broken moral compass beyond repair.

I had to ask myself if I could be honest about such a thing. Monsters don't know they're monsters. They only look that way to the fearful masses who rejected them. That's what I used to think. But now? I'm not so sure.

Cyrus, along with the rest of my brethren, taught me that there really is 'evil' lurking in the darkness surrounding us all. Deliberate wickedness...looking to recruit others. Seduce us into becoming one of them. As always, Cyrus' words rang true. I had fallen from grace. And I did it by choice.

The rising sun was beginning to make it easier for me to navigate through the thick cluster of trees, the uneven terrain creating a sense of fatigue in my knees and ankles as I did my best to carry Isaac along with me.

I took a moment to try and get his truck started back there, but with the way it rammed into that tree...the engine was 'done'. It wouldn't even start up when I turned the key in the ignition. And even if it had, the vehicle had run so far off of the road that I doubt the tires could have powered their way back up out of the deep trench it had rolled into. Thank God we had gotten far enough away from my pack's pursuit to buy us some extra time. Father won't just let this go. He'll come for me. He'll come for us both. Nothing else will take priority over him hunting me down and, possibly, trying to bring me back.

I doubt I'd still be alive if he wasn't convinced that he needed me to be a part of the group. I wish that could bring me some comfort at a time like this, but it didn't. not at all.

Ok...this boy is getting WAY too heavy for me to keep carrying over my shoulder like this. I would have left him where he was if I wasn't worried about the others finding him before he woke up. With a heavy sigh, I put him down on the forest ground as gently as I could. Considering my exhaustion, that was just a few degrees away from dropping him like a sack of potatoes. Still, I needed the breather.

I rotated my right arm, trying to massage the sore muscles in my shoulder. The scars on me from Kriegar, Scout, and the twins, were like pressing a hot iron against my skin...especially when I touched the deeply grooved wound with my fingers. Shit. They got me good. This wasn't some random bully on the beach that I was dealing with here. It was a pack of pissed of supernatural creatures that considered this 'taking it easy' on me.

I leaned up against a tree and carefully lifted my shirt. Ugh! JESUS! It looks even worse than I expected. Some of those cuts looked as though they went all the way to the bone. Specifically, the ones I got from my tussle with Scout on the back of Isaac's truck. That evil pipsqueak has been itching to take a few chunks out of me from day one. He definitely enjoyed himself. My fever was causing me to sweat profusely as my body worked to regenerate itself, but it was going to take time. Hopefully, I'll be back in working order before my brethren come for me. Because, even at peak condition...I was clearly no match for them.

I took a seat at the base of the tree and tried to rest for a few moments when I finally heard Isaac beginning to stir again. He had a pretty nasty bump on his head from running into that branch at top speed the way he did, but it serves him right. I told him to chill out.

"Unnghhh...what happened?" He said, groggy and disoriented. He touched the lump on his head and winced from the pain. "Where are we?"

"I don't know. Somewhere in the woods." I replied.

"What part of the woods?"

"Shit, I don't know. The part with all the trees in it?" I sighed.

"Not helpful."

"Well, I'll tell you what...if I find a Starbucks coffee shop out here, I'll be sure to use it as a marker to get our bearings straight." I said.

Isaac took a moment to look around, and then he asked, "Where's the truck?"

"You crashed the truck. Or don't you remember, basically, trying to kill me a few hours ago with your little stunt?"

"Kill you? I...I just remember..." Suddenly, everything came back to him, and his eyes grew wide as he looked me in the face. "Holy Christ!!!"

"I swear to God, if you bolt on me right now...you're on your own!" I grumbled. I, honestly, didn't have the energy to chase him down again.

"You...you're one of them..."

"Relax. Your immortal 'soul' is safe. I don't want it." I said, and began rubbing my eyes.

Trying to keep his distance, Isaac seemed to recognize parts of me that were a little less threatening than what he saw in the early hours of this morning. Something human. He was still overwhelmed with disbelief, but I can't say that I would have handled this situation any better, had the roles been reversed.

"You're not going to hurt me?" He asked, meekly.

"Are you kidding me? You've been unconscious for over an hour now. I, physically, carried you here. If I wanted to hurt you...you'd be hurt. I didn't even bother to take your wallet. You really think I'm waiting for my 'moment' to take advantage?"

Isaac was still. Foggy. Still trying to shake himself free from the nightmare. "I had a lot to drink last night. Too much. I saw things...somebody put something in my drink..."

"No. They didn't."

"Monsters. I saw monsters. My brain...something isn't working right. Hallucinations. Sometimes at Rumspringa...people bring drugs..."

"It wasn't drugs! Listen, I know this may be a super weird experience for you right now, but you need to stop with the denial and realize what's going on here. Because what we ran away from this morning? It's not done with us. Cyrus isn't going to just leave us alone. We need to keep moving. We need to find some place safe to think and figure out how we're going to get me back to camp. Around people. A place where we can ask for help."

"I don't know where to go. I don't know where we are." He said. He looked up at the sky, trying to shield his eyes from the light. "Do you remember where the sun came up?"

"What?"

"The sun. Did you see it rise? What direction did it come from? it might help me get my bearings."

Shit. Why didn't I think of that? "I don't remember. I've been walking this whole time...I didn't think to track it." I said.

"Maybe...if we stay here for a while, a few hours, I can see if it's moving from East to West...and we can come up with a plan to..."

I put my hand on his shoulder to get him to look me in the eye. "Dude...you're not hearing me. We can rest for a few minutes every now and then...but we don't have a whole lot of time to linger around the trees and see which way the sun is headed. My brethren are tracking us. Right NOW, they're out there somewhere...looking to rip us to pieces. The only way we're going to have a chance of surviving this is to get somewhere public. And fast." I told him. "And to be honest...I still can't guarantee that they won't slaughter everyone in sight just to get to us. But it's the only shot we've got."

"What were you thinking?"

Looking around us, the woodland landscape looking identical in all directions, "I say that we just keep walking in a straight line to keep from wandering around in circles. We move straight head, and we're bound to come to an open road or a populated area eventually. Hopefully before nightfall. How well do you know the are?"

"Not very well. We were only allowed to leave our town for work or for church. Sometimes to go to market. Rumspringa was my first exploration into new territory. It was my first time being free from home."

"Well, it looks like we've both got some exploring to do now. I'm not sure how many miles of woods there are out here, but I'm guessing it's going to be more than your average walk in the park. The sooner we get started, the better."

I began to step forward in the right direction, but Isaac took a hold of my hand. I turned to look him in the eye, and with an emotional catch in his voice, he said, "Thank you, Wesley. You fought for me. You saved my life."

He moved forward to give me a hug around the neck. Me...the monster who brought him INTO all this mess. But after a sniffle or two, I backed out of his embrace, and said, "Don't thank me yet. Save it for when we find a way to hitchhike back into town."

I felt that was a bit more tactful than telling him, 'we might still be meeting our maker by night's end'. What do you think?

So we did pick a definitive direction and start walking that way, careful not to stray too far from a straight line...even though the thickness of the forest trees kept trying to throw us off course. I, personally, wanted to find a way back to on of the nearby roads so that we could find some help...but as we kept hiking, we only seemed to get deeper and deeper into the woods. With nothing but bird chirps above us, and no signs of civilization anywhere else.

This is NOT how I expected my forced trip to Bible camp to go! Believe me!

We kept walking for what might have been ten minutes...or it could have been twenty. Might have been a quarter mile...might have just been the rise and fall of a single hill. It was hard to say. I was still extremely disoriented. Dizzy and sore. Raw, bruised, and wounded. In desperate need of two or three consecutive showers. My body overheating as my healing ability did all it could to rapidly stitch me back together. Finally, when I couldn't stand the burn of the fever any longer, I pulled my shirt up over my head and used the ripped fabric to mop the sweat from my brow.

I seriously felt ill. Is this how this healing thing is supposed to work? It's never been this bad before. Then again, this isn't just a black eye and a busted lip this time.

I know that Isaac thought he was being sneaky, peeking over at me every few seconds...the urge to run still evident in his frightened scent. Already annoyed with my situation, I told him, "You can stop staring at me now." He looked away again. "I'm not going to 'bite' you, alright? I just want to find a place to rest."

He attempted to calm himself down, but I noticed that he continued to keep his distance from me, regardless. i simply rolled my eyes to myself and kept hiking forward. I can't say that I had a plan of any sort. I couldn't just keep Isaac joined at the hip for the rest of my days. But I couldn't necessarily just get rid of him either. I would, quite literally, be leaving him to the wolves. And even though we didn't know each other all that well, a highly sexualized evening romp aside...I wasn't quite sure that I could live with that.

"You don't...seem like them. The others." Isaac said after a long silence.

"That's because I'm not like them." I grunted.

"But...you were with them. You called them your 'brethren'. You had me come home with you..."

"I don't remember putting a gun to your head." I snapped. Why was I so frustrated? Something about the recently freed, defiant, creature within me had me just itching for some kind of confrontation so I could use this excess heated aggression to rip them apart. "I called, you came. it was a simple as that."

"I didn't know they were MONSTERS!" He grumbled.

"Yeah, well, neither did I?"

"Really?" Isaac said, stopping his forward motion to give me a pained look. "Are you so sure about that? You're going to tell me you didn't know?"

"You don't know what the hell you're talking about." I told him. But as he stood there in silence, scared, angry, confused. I walked back over to him and did what I could to calm myself down. "I didn't know they'd..." I reached out for Isaac's arm, but he quickly stepped back from me. "I didn't know what they were until it was too late."

"I don't believe you." He sniffled. "I don't believe I can trust you."

"Isaac, we really don't have time for this. I don't know how far you drove us away from that house while I was passed out, but if we don't find a way to get to a public place soon..." I stepped forward, and he stepped back again. Cautiously keeping me at a distance. So I tried a different approach. "Cyrus and the others...they can take things too far. But I had convinced myself that there was a line that they would never cross. That nobody in their right mind would ever cross..."

"Have you hurt people?" He asked with a shaky voice. "Do you follow them?"

It was best that I avoided that question. "Look, I was tricked into this..."

"No. Was no trick. It was foul temptation and you surrendered to it. Willingly."

"It wasn't LIKE that! I TOLD YOU..."

"You sold them your SOUL! And now you pretend that you were misled!"

"Fuck off, dude!" I scoffed. Turning to walk away from his accusations. "You wanna stay out here until it gets dark, suit yourself. I don't need this shit. I need to find my way home."

That's when Isaac shouted out, "You damn ME as well!!!" I looked back to see tears streaming down his cheeks. "You take your soulless temptation...and you pass it on to me. You separate me from God. From my family. You drag me into darkness with you. You put yourself in league with angry, murderous, demons...and then you 'pretend' not to know what they were at their core. You have seen. You have been a witness to their crimes all this time and you say NOTHING!"

"You certainly picked the wrong time to put this all on me!" I sneered. "You got what you wanted. A cute face and a hard fuck from behind. You surrendered to temptation too, just like anybody else would. So if I'm soulless...what does that make you, church boy?" I turned to keep walking, not really knowing if he was going to follow behind me or if he was going to just sit there crying like a baby. But I did take a moment to face him and spread my arms wide as I walked backwards. "Cyrus was right, you know? In order to gain knowledge...innocence must be lost. And you definitely gave yours up without much of a struggle. So...you know...you're welcome."

However, as I passed a few nearby trees, something caught my eye. Something that looked a little bit out of the ordinary.

I stopped walking, trying to focus my eyes on it. A little black box, about waist high...strapped to a narrow tree trunk.

My eyes widened and my heart skipped a beat. "Holy shit. Is that what I think it is?" I said, but Isaac was still sniffling over his hellbound sins or whatever. I hurried over to the tree for a closer examination. "Yes! Omigod, yes! Isaac!"

"What...?" He whimpered.

"Look at this. Come here."

He sulked his way over to the tree, wiping his eyes, but curious as to what would change my mood so quickly. "I don't understand. What is it?"

Running my hand over the surface of the box, I said, "It's a wildlife trail camera. I've seen these before." Looking over Isaac's shoulder, I added, "You see? There's a path intersection over there. These cameras are used for tracking game, mostly. Deer, raccoons...whatever." I saw another small box attached with bungee chords. "External power source. They might not check this very often, but somebody's definitely keeping an eye on this part of the woods."

Bewildered, Isaac asked, "You...you know this for sure?"

"My friend, Darryl Breck, back home...his bog brother Denny fancied himself a wannabe hunter. He never shut up it. I couldn't help but to pick up a fun fact or two for the sake of boredom alone." I got down on one knee, and although it took a little bit of work, I managed to get the camera cover open so I could look inside. "LED light...set to take pictures every 45 seconds...batteries seem fairly new..."

"I don't get it."

"Well this camera...it's low resolution. It's got an infra red night vision flash. Not one of those noticeably bright ones. No attempts to really camouflage it either." I could see he was still confused, so I continued. "This isn't an HD camera. It's not meant for nature photography. It's for hunting. A photographer might set up a camera and only check it once a month, or maybe only a few times a year. But a hunter? A hunter's going to frequent this place. It was chosen as a good game spot to keep an eye on."

"So...this is a hunter's camera?"

"I think so." I said. "This place might seem pretty secluded from the rest of the world, but if it's a common hunting spot for somebody...then they can't be too far away. In fact, Denny used to go on and on about getting his own place so he could set up a prime location on the edge of his property like some hunters do. And...if that's the kind of practice that's common for people like that..."

Isaac said, "Then we might be on someone's property."

I gave him a hopeful grin. "Exactly. And there might be a house or a cabin nearby." I stood up and brushed knee off. "Maybe just over that next hill. If we can find it...we can get help. I'm sure my family is looking for me. Your family is probably looking for you too. He can drive us into town, or...or call the police. Something! There may just be a way out of this mess after all."

Isaac was hesitant at first, but decided to follow me further into the woods, if for no other reason than to bring an end to this nightmare, once and for all, and split so he nevr had to lay eyes on me again.

If I can just get back home again...I'd be fine with that.