Free The Summer I Died: A Thriller by Ryan C. Thomas, Cody Goodfellow

running through a spider web that had me wiping my face like I was on fire. When I emerged from the trees I found Tooth reaching into the car. He pulled out a cell phone.
    Man , we really were stoned.
    He made a face as if he was the village idiot and started dialing. Three numbers could only mean 9-1-1. With the phone to his ear, he waited for a minute then said, “ Shit, ” and stared pacing back and forth. The trees crossing over us formed a big tunnel and offered little in the way of clear reception so Tooth walked all the way down to the main road. I watched him shrink into a dot, spinning around in an effort to connect to a satellite. Ironically, I prayed someone would drive by and see him holding the gun and report it, if not stop and ask if we needed help.
    While he spun and swore, I leaned against the car, wondering if our mystery woman was okay, who she was and would she be hot and, please God, naked.
    After a few three-sixties, Tooth came back up and slammed his palm on the trunk. “ There’s no reception here, ” he said.
    I was about to suggest driving a little ways down the road and trying the phone there when she screamed again and I nearly jumped out of my pants. Just three little words but they scared the living shit out of me: “ Oh, God, no! ”
    Then there was nothing.
    “ She’s in trouble, ” Tooth said, running back toward the tree line. I stood where I was, paralyzed, as if my body and brain were at odds. Tooth looked back at me and yelled, “ Don’t wuss out on me. Move! ”
    I sprinted forward and crashed through the trees with him, smashing my knee on a low limb and grabbing his shoulder for support. We dodged more limbs and stumbled over boulders as we pushed further into the woods. The sun began to fade away to shadow the further we went, and the moist underbelly of the forest gave rise to slithering insects and small rodents that dashed out of our way in a frenzy. In front of me, Tooth used the gun to hack through some thick foliage. I took a look around me and realized I wasn’t sure which way led back to the car anymore, since we’d been twisting and skirting around so many obstacles. A few minutes later , we emerged into a little clearing where a couple small trees had been knocked over, probably by a storm. Up to my left I could see the mountain clearing we’d been up on earlier when we’d shot the beer cans.
    “ Why don’t we go back up there and look out and see if we see anything? ” I said.
    “ We already looked out all afternoon. ”
    “ Not really, just shot the shit over the scenery. ”
    “ We won’t be able to see through the tree canopy. ”
    “ But we can’t see two feet in front of us now. ”
    He seemed to consider this but I could tell he wanted to keep going the way we were headed. Reluctantly, he said, “ Okay. Maybe I can get reception up there. ”
    We trekked over to where the mountain began to slope upward and climbed up by grabbing tree limbs and hauling ourselves forward, almost like doing chin-ups. Probably it would have been easier to go around the base of the slope and find a path but I didn’t think of it until we were a ways up. The mosquitoes came back in full force, and since we couldn’t cover our faces they attacked like hungry vampires. They bit through my shirt and into my neck, my cheek, my elbows, all over. I made an attempt to swat at them at one point and nearly fell down the mountain.
    T ooth was first to reach the lip and get on top. He covered his face with his shirt, put the gun in his waistband, and pulled me up. From there it was about twenty feet to the clearing. I stepped over one of the beer cans we’d murdered earlier and recognized my own work. Tooth started dialing but again got no service. “ Motherfucker! ” he yelled. “ See, this is why we need to move. Nothing here works. ”
    I walked back to the edge we’d just come up from and looked out over the valley. I couldn’t see anything but treetops — a vast