From: pecan@hotmail.com   
      
   Headers in part 1   portia_ventura@hotmail.com   
      
    Animals, predators. That was another consideration that came to mind.  He   
   was a sitting duck for anything lurking about with claws that fancied a   
   convenient snack. The last thing he wanted was to shuffle off his mortal   
   coil as a grizzly's 'Happy meal' and have his demise immortalized as a case   
   file on the Animal planet channel. As to where he was, he was completely   
   clueless, or indeed how he even got here. And what the fuck had exploded?   
   He hoped it would all come back to him, sooner rather than later, anything   
   that might give him some clues as to who he was or how he could get out of   
   here.   
      
   A sudden noise behind had him reaching towards his jeans belt.   
      
   'I carry a gun,' he realized with a sudden slither of clarity. 'But where is   
   it?'  Something large was lumbering on the incline above him, crunching   
   through the undergrowth and sniffing the ground. He dared not breathe, not   
   for a second and kept stock still, his heart bouncing painfully against his   
   cracked ribs.  As quickly as it came the sound receded into the distance and   
   he left out his breath in a wordless gasp that at least this time he wouldn'   
   t be the toy prize.   
      
   Despite his best efforts to remain awake and alert, his eyelids won their   
   battle to close.  He drifted off to the soft padding of snow against his   
   parka and the erratic thumping of his heart.   
      
   He never heard the distant chopping of the helicopter blades in the distance   
   as they pushed their way through the early evening storm like a silver angel   
   of mercy.   
      
   Something startled him awake and he suddenly found himself on all fours. He   
   coughed and tested forward momentum. He cursed himself for sleeping and felt   
   a sudden chill at the realization that he'd woken up at all under the   
   precarious circumstances. The final slithers of a nightmare clung to his   
   senses and he wondered if the vivid feeling that something had touched his   
   face in the night was part of that, or was real.  He'd never know if the   
   snow had been disturbed around him, a fresh layer inches thick had covered   
   up all but his startled thrashing as he woke up. He did a quick check that   
   none of his limbs had been gnawed off while he'd been unconscious; being so   
   cold he could barely feel anything.   
      
   He scratched at his face absently as he lurched forward in the snow, his   
   fingers splayed in the frozen drifts in front of him. They were almost blue   
   but he was oddly divorced from feeling cold. A nagging voice told him that   
   he must be suffering from hypothermia or frostbite by now.hurried along by   
   shock and blood loss.  He only had a few seeds left to keep his blood sugar   
   up, but the rest of his injuries would soon shut him down and that would be   
   a moot point anyway.   
      
   Slowly he worked his way through chest high drifts, feeling the bite of cold   
   through his thin shirt, his parka was torn open, offering him very little   
   sanctuary of saving body heat.  The raging wind was drying the moisture on   
   his skin in a chill caress all the way through him. Sometimes his vision   
   doubled and wigged out altogether as he pushed further and further through   
   the forest, his useless leg limp and throbbing, pointing at an oddly   
   sickening angle and dragging a bloody furrow behind him. A dinner call to   
   every hungry predator around, he mused bitterly.   
      
   His belly and arms did most of the work when he couldn't manage to stand and   
   before long he gave up trying. He stuck to crawling, or dragging his body   
   along.  It was easier to rest if he needed to, being closer to the ground.   
   A deep shudder threw him forward again but his left knee hit a concealed   
   rock and he saw bright sparks dance before his eyes. It was then that the   
   howl of a dying animal rent the freezing mist that clung to the trees.   
      
   Much later he would realize that it had torn from his own raw throat and   
   that another pair of eyes tracked his arduous journey.   
      
   His head was bleeding again when he came to next time and there was   
   something else; the ice-cold bite and click of metal against the pulse point   
   under his jaw.   
      
   "Don't fuckin move FBI!"   
      
   A hefty boot impacting his side threatened the integrity of his ribs again,   
   making him gasp and he flinched at the sound of the gun being cocked. A Sig,   
   his inner voice wailed despairingly. Probably his own.   
      
   Shitshitshit.   
      
   Fear swept away the remaining curtains of confusion, the pain in his skull   
   reached a new high point but several starling moments of clarity followed.   
      
    Can you die now?   
      
   He almost smiled at an old ghost from Deadhorse, so long ago.   
      
   What was he doing out here again?  -----Oh yes-a perp. Child killer of   
   Tailspin, North Dakota. A one-horse shithole in a small valley surrounded on   
   all sides by pine forest and mountains. Great. Nothing like having it all   
   come back to him at the business end of his own weapon and a flood of   
   adrenalin.   
      
   So he was an FBI agent; still couldn't recall his damn name but the rest was   
   astonishingly clear.  In some half assed moment of dutiful madness he had   
   hopped aboard a snow mobile and took off into the boondocks at breakneck   
   speed in pursuit of one Cleetus Ray Proudfoot, leaving his partner in a hail   
   of frozen mist.  The fact that he'd never driven one before seemed so   
   insubstantial at the time, and was lost in the desire to catch the slippery   
   son of a bitch before he murdered he last victim, still missing.   
      
   He realized that this hadn't been one of brighter ideas, both the snow   
   mobile or the lack of armed backup. Sent by the VCU while kicking their   
   heels for a suitable X file case, they had flown to the inhospitable North   
   Dakota hinterland where they quickly made headway on the gruesome results of   
   the killer.  The profile had taken him only days to complete but the   
   subsequent gun battle in the town's hotel where the perp was holed up had   
   left 2 agents badly wounded and several local cops dead.   
      
   A joint screw up by the local cops and foot dragging by local Native   
   American council, on which whose sacred land the killer had gone to ground.   
   It was said he was part Inuit; originally from Western Canada and skilled in   
   evasion and tracking. He could survive all winter in the dense valleys and   
   mountains of the Eaglespur National Forest. This might be their only window   
   of opportunity to catch him. He'd hardly slept since he'd read the file.   
      
   The child cases always tore at his soul.  In his mind's eye he saw only the   
   broken bodies of the tortured children, twisted unnaturally and daubed in   
   their own blood with some kind of deranged shamanic symbolism, for reasons   
   best know to the killer. He was making a point from some mutated sense of   
   his faith and escalating. He'd killed 12 children so far and two days ago   
   had dragged away another.  He was like a spirit that vanished in the dark of   
   night, no one saw or heard him and he left barely a trace. Some locals had   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)