17

17 Night falls. You are running feverishly between a fear of the sirens and a fear of missing clues, again. Your past outweighs the present danger of being caught, so you follow the sirens from a distance.
Avoiding roads, you weave through a dump. The ground is uneven and slides away beneath your feet as dump trucks reverse in your path. The sirens fade, again. Finally, you climb a barbed wire fence. From there you are chased by a pack of horses across some fields.
The sirens have returned. Now they are silent, and you see them parked next to a blinking semi truck. As you approach across a distant field, you see Loli and Lacy handcuffing the driver. You continue to descend on the scene under a veil of trees.
As you inspect the area around the figures, you notice body parts rustling like leaves in the wind. The image becomes clearer and it is merely trash. Yet your imagination continues to run wild as you glimpse the faces of the officers. They are not Soli and Lacy.
The foreign faces of the uniformed women becomes less an issue as you study the driver. His hunched figure and bony face suddenly remind you of two people: the old man and your friend. This mixture casts a convincing shadow behind the driver, who is otherwise unrecognizable.
The emergency vehicles take off with the driver, leaving you with a decision.
[to go to the police station, skip to chapter 19. To rest and walk west of Lexington, skip to chapter 20.]