Joe simply could not believe what had just happened. He and his new extra-sensitive foster brother had come to the golf course after a great adventure in the woods that had hopefully helped some down and out people reunite. They then went to the golf course looking to work for hand outs lugging gulf clubs around only to be attacked by some maniacal adults. He could not shake the empty look on the dead woman’s face, a look so similar to that which Mom had worn every day and all night since Dad was killed in Afghanistan.

Alex did not seem too well suited for adventuring, especially not in a world of crazy adults, so Joe was taking charge of the situation, guiding his little delicate foster brother down into the overgrown drainage ditch that was as large as a mountain river bottom and would hopefully be their avenue of escape.

Then came the sound of a siren just as they hit the bottom of the shadowed creek cleft. When stationed in Fort Benning, Georgia Dad used to take Joe out camping in the mountains as often as possible. This ghetto streambed was like a zombie apocalypse version of a real creek bottom.

Joe’s heart sank at the sound of the siren up behind them, of a police car that must be ripping across the golf course.

Alex actually froze and began to shake, looking up to Joe, and asking, “What do we do Joe? That lady is dead. Our life is at an end. They might treat us like adults!”

Joe got a firmer grasp on the quavering arm of his little foster brother. “You have your cell Alex?”

Alex then fished out his cell with shaking hands, hit the Mom button, and put it up to his ear, for a whole minute. “I can’t call out of here. Have to getup above Joe.”

Another siren and the roar of an engine was heard above, and behind, along with the slamming of car doors. Alex buckled and went to his knees holding Joe’s hand. The gentle little kid who seemed like he might have been meant to be gay but had no idea, looked up at Joe. “Pray with me Joe, please?”

Joe and Alex knelt on the moist gravely dirt before the stinking stream as Alex recited a prayer he seemed to know okay, but not as well as others:

“Though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death,

“I fear no evil,

“For the Lord is my shepherd—”

Another siren and a man’s yelled curse sounded from above and Alex threw up right into the stream. Joe scooped him up and carried him across and set him down on his feet. He then turned Alex around and looked down into his red watery eyes. “If anything happens it was all me. I’m the problem kid. You just need to get in touch with your Mom so she can get a lawyer and get you home. Lookey here, a footpath up to the back of the shopping center. Let’s go.”

Alex looked at him with big trusting eyes, nodded yes, pocketed his cell phone, and then took the lead, Joe placing a hand on his back whenever he seemed likely to fall. Alex’s legs shook a little when the sound of cops searching the brush and trees up above behind them rustled down into the creek bottom.

Joe whispered, “Don’t step on twigs. Step on the dirt. They won’t be able to see us.”

Alex then really began to take the lead, as if he were showing Joe the way up out of this dark place he seemed to fear so much.

Within a minute, just as the sound of big clumsy hard-shoed men pushing their way down the opposite bank came crashing over to them, they reached the level, just behind a big tree and a dumpster. Alex turned and smiled and pulled out his cell as he darted out from behind the tree to call from the open, Joe right behind him.

He had heard the sound many times before when out at the range with Dad, the indoor range where MPs and officers and local police and some others practiced with their 9 millimeter automatics. The punching thunder of three reports ripped the noon sky apart as blood, bits of bone, and other jellied stuff splashed across Joe’s face.

Joe found himself standing dumbfounded and open mouthed over Alex, who had a great gushing hole in his chest and was missing the top right side of his forehead, which had been blown away, his little cheap cell phone still clutched in his little brown hand, calling Mom.

Joe looked up at the person who stood now before him, a lady police officer holding her pistol in two shaking hands as she crouched in fear. She was gushing tears from a blank dead-looking face, an expression he had had too much intimacy with to doubt for a moment that she was frozen in an inactive state.

She looked at him questioningly and he answered, “Grownups attacked us on the golf course and called the cops. He was calling our Mom.”

The cop broke down in a crumbled sobbing heap and began to wail away. Behind him he could hear a cop stumble on a rock in the creek bottom and curse while another yelled.

'Run Joe run!’

Always Bro, always.

Joe felt free in the sense that he no longer had to slow his pace to make sure Alex was not left behind. But the heavy weight in his chest had just grown heavier by at least double, and he had no expectation of being able to outrun the cops for long. But somehow a voice in his head that he liked to think belonged to Alex urged him on; skipped and cheered for him to run until he could run no more.

Joe's story continues, and is concluded in Fat Girl Dancing, the novella due out this October.