Of the Knowledge of Good and Evil by Micah Persell

as he pondered what in the world had led him to believe he was facing a soft-ish landing.
    When he could breathe once more without passing out, he sat up slowly and took stock of his body. He was pretty banged up. He could feel bumps and bruises all over and there were some minor lacerations on his forearms from the desert brush. Also, he was pretty sure he’d hit a rock at some point with his elbow, which had swollen to grapefruit size. Luckily, the minor scratches were already beginning to heal. And as an added bonus, this new pain was pushing the pain of the Impulse to the side. Since he didn’t have any time to waste, he dragged himself upright and began to hobble down the tracks. It wouldn’t take long for his immortal body to heal itself. He would heal as he walked.
    He forced a painful pace. Trains traveled at about seventy-nine miles per hour, so if he had been out for any length of time, she had a huge head start on him. He had to hoof it.
    After about a half hour, Jericho had healed enough to move to a slow jog, and after forty-five minutes, he was sprinting across the desert despite the fact that he wasn’t quite back to par. He found the point where she’d jumped after an hour, approximately ten miles from where he himself had jumped. So, he hadn’t been out for too long.
    His eyes trailed her path. Looked like she’d rolled farther than he had. He winced at the sight of blood in several spots, then dismissed the momentary concern with annoyance. He would not be feeling sorry for her.
    Her trail was easy to follow. She hadn’t been covering her tracks at all. Overconfident in her incapacitation of him, or did she just plain not care? She had set out across the desert toward the soft glow from a tiny town in the distance.
    Keeping his eyes on her clear tracks to make sure he stayed on her trail, Jericho set off after the woman he was learning to hate.
    The tracks got fresher and fresher — he was gaining on her — and when he entered the town after another hour, he estimated he was about fifteen minutes or so behind her.
    He picked up the pace. Tracking her in an urban setting would be much more difficult than in the sand of the desert. By some stroke of luck, he spotted a blood pattern on the pavement and saw another one several feet away.
    If she was still bleeding, she must have been hurt pretty badly. He was all healed up, and he’d hit pretty hard. Again, that concern flared, and again, he shoved it aside. That was just the Impulse rearing its ugly head. The only thing he felt for this woman was blind rage.
    As he rounded the corner into a dark, dangerous neighborhood, he spied a figure limping down the street about a quarter of a mile away. Immediately, he knew it was her. He took off like a shot, his boots slapping the pavement as they flopped around loosely on his feet.
    She heard him and looked over her shoulder. Even from a distance, he could see panic streak across her face. She shouted in alarm and put on a burst of speed herself, her limp causing her to list all over the road.
    She was shouting in Spanish at the top of her lungs, and several neighbors came out onto the porches and watched the proceedings with varying expressions of boredom.
    Dimly, Jericho realized that none of them were jumping to the aid of a woman being chased by a man, and wondered where in the hell Dahlia had taken them.
    She cut across the overgrown lawn of a dilapidated house and tore the door out of the hands of an older Hispanic woman.
    He could still hear Dahlia shouting as he followed in her footsteps past the wide-eyed homeowner clutching her faded floral nightgown to herself and standing where Dahlia had left her. He sprinted through the sorry excuse for a living room and rounded the corner into an empty bedroom, opening his mouth to yell at this woman who was causing him so much trouble and terrifying innocent people.
    He skidded to a stop.
    Dahlia was huddled on the ground in the corner of the bedroom. Her back