Chew ran. He ran until he was red in the face and his lungs felt empty and sore. The sticky heat of the Bog left his clothes sodden with sweat. He could hear the dogs in the distance. They were gaining on him. He had promised himself when he’d got out that he’d never go back, that he’d turn his life around, and he still meant to do that. No one knew the Bog like Chew and he sure as hell wasn’t going to let PCSD take him in without taking them on a merry run at least. Realistically his only shot of getting out of here was finding the car Dante and he had driven there in and getting across the county line. What he’d do after that he wasn’t sure but there wouldn’t be an after that unless he could find it.

That wasn’t going to be an easy task. He could tell from the tracks that at least half a dozen PCSD officers had followed them in here. Two dogs from the sound of it too. The deputies he could shake, the dogs would be a much harder task. As Chew sucked in air desperately he thought of all the hours he’d sat in his cell dreaming of seeing the outside of those walls. Yet here he was forcing his body to put one foot after the other despite their being thick and heavy with swamp gunk. The dogs could probably smell him from a mile away. Sweat, gunshot residue, both Roland and Dante’s blood splattered on him.

“Just keep going,” Chew muttered under his breath. “Just keep running, you son of a bitch.”

In the distance he heard a shout and Chew slid to the ground into a ditch. He squelched to a halt as his feet began to sink deep into the mire but hugged the dirt close to him as he heard footsteps approaching him. A dog sprinted past and closely behind it followed a deputy with a shotgun in his hands. Chew could feel his body trembling with nervousness as he hoped the dogs couldn't smell him and that the deputy wouldn't look down. The seconds felt like hours but finally he heard the deputy speak a language Chew didn't understand to the dogs and they sprinted past in the other direction. Chew sighed and dragged himself out the ditch and back onto his feet.

His clothes were now thick with mud and even on a frame as large as Chew's they weighed him down. It didn't matter, nothing mattered, all Chew cared about was getting back to that car and getting out. He kept his head down and stalked through the Bog silently, hiding behind trees and in ditches where he needed to, until finally the car came into sight. It was where Dante and he had left it and from the look if it seemed undisturbed. The deputies hadn't found it. He wasn't entirely sure how he'd even found it. He smiled broadly as he approached it, remembering he'd left the keys in the ignition, and opened the driver's side door to slide inside. As he did so he noticed the keys had been removed. The all too familiar clicking of a weapon cocking sounded from behind him.

"On your knees," Sherry Calhoun said calmly. "On your knees now, Charles."

Chew glanced across at the passenger side window at Calhoun's reflection. She had her weapon trained on him, her hands were deathly still, and there didn't seem an ounce of fear in her eyes. He glanced down at the Colt in the waistbands of his pants and considered reaching for it for a few moments. He'd been in this position before and lived to tell the tale. He reckoned he could throw the deputy off a little, enough to make her miss, and drawn down on her before she could get a second shot away.

As if sensing Chew's thought process Calhoun spoke up. "Nobody else needs to die today."

He pictured Yolanda Thomas laid dead on the floor of Spencer's Tires and Rims. The way her brains had congealed on the floor had made his stomach turn. Chew had tried to tell himself after he'd shot Dante that there was some justice to it, some balance, that in killing him he'd repaid Dante's debt to Yolanda. It was bullshit. He knew that then and now faced with the concept of life in prison or death by cop he [i]especially[/i] knew it was bullshit. He'd tried to tell himself that he had no choice. These things happened. That was bullshit too. When Chew felt sorry for himself he used to lament the fact that prison had "taken" years of his life. It wasn't prison that had taken it, but Chew, and even though it had almost killed him, he was still alive. If he reached for his gun there was a good chance that one of them wouldn't be.

There was always a choice. He knew that now.

Chew raised his hands in the air and slowly knelt to the ground.