Unnamed

I witnessed something late at night on the 4th of July that I feel the need to share. Bear w me here because I'm not a great story teller, but I wrote down all events and even drew a map of where everything occurred immediately after so I'd never forget.

To give some context, I'm a fucking weirdo and spend a lot of my time hiking. I've been dealing with serious emotional and mental distress, brought on by things which are out of my control. My way of coping and finding comfort is by being a fucking weirdo and tempting fate by going for late night hikes. Turns out, I made the right decision by going out to the countryside late that night to enjoy the view of the full moon, see the fireflies shine deep in the woods and across the fields.

I parked my car at an unmarked pull off next to the river, which is surrounded by dense forest and unforgiving swamps. I started on my way on foot at approx 1130 PM. I may or may not have had a few White Claws stuffed into my backpack, that's beside the point. After walking for about 2.5 mostly uneventful hours, I decided it was time double back and go find my car. This is the part where things go from "I feel a bit better and more at ease" to "oh holy shit what the ever loving fuck have I stumbled onto".

I began crossing the bridge to get to my car (which was still roughly 3 miles to the west of where I was on the bridge at that time) when I hear foot steps on the asphalt approaching me from behind. My mood shifts to: "make my day, I am SO READY to cut you if you even think about attacking me". I whipped around and see a man wearing all black, who was MUCH closer than what it sounded like... we make eye contact (full moon, pretty easy to see at night) and this dude breaks into a full ass SPRINT towards me, but then veers around me at the last minute.

Maybe it was the liquid courage or pure adrenaline but I yelled out to the guy, "hey man.... you good? Sup?" And he replies "I gotta go get my wife" swiftly veers around me and keeps running. I'm thinking to myself, ok, kinda weird considering it's, ya know, 0200 and in the middle of nowhere. But I digress. He runs out of sight, I keep walking to my car.

I make it about 1.5 miles further when I hear a woman screaming, crying, wailing. The kind that makes your hair stand up, the kind that tells you in your gut that something is seriously wrong. I stop and listen.

Through her sobs i hear her say "please... I can't take it... I don't want anymore. Please don't!!!!" At this point I wanted to throw up, her screams were coming from the same path I had to take to get back to my car. I channeled the energy of the movie Tropic Thunder and went full Vietcong, dove into the bushes and stealthily made my way closer to see what the fuck is going on and find this screaming woman. Didn't take long.

Because I now see the same man that ran past me earlier and a second much larger man also dressed in black walking on the road coming back my direction. The larger man had the woman slung over his shoulder like she was a sack of potatoes, she wasn't screaming anymore but she was crying and completely incoherent. She looked like she was maybe 19-21 at most, blonde hair, and was very small, I'd say 110lbs at most.

I popped out of the tree line and asked man #1, "is that your wife? Is everything ok?"

He says, "yeah she's fine she just can't handle her liquor."

As he said this both men continued walking past me, the woman is clearly not drunk but appears to be drugged. She was trying to talk, but her speech was very slurred and she could not even lift her arms or head to get out of this mans grasp.

To the best of her ability, the woman keeps trying to say "please no, no, help" she was trying so hard to lift her head and look at me and reach her arms out to me but she was so weakened by whatever they had done to her that she was incapable of even making out a single word. Something was seriously wrong, something much more than alcohol.

Not 15 minutes prior I was able to hear her screaming actual words, and now she appears barely conscious. I carry pepper gels, razor blades when I hike, however I knew there was no way I could take on 2 men by trying my hand at some vigilante justice. I'm about 5'6", 140lbs and definitely no match for 2 men twice my size. Self preservation and survival mode kicks in for me, and for my fellow woman, and I say to man #1

"oh yeah man I've been there before, I'm sure she'll sleep it off and be fine!". (Please understand I only said this to him as a means of playing dumb. Again, I am not equipped to take down 2 men) The woman tries to cry and plead more as they carry her away, and I was quite honestly terrified. That sight and the connection I felt between myself and the woman pleading for help is something I will never forget.

Once they are about 20 feet behind me, I take a quick glance over my shoulder to see what is happening because the slurred cries she was letting out were nauseating, I wanted to be sure they weren't harming her further. I see they've stopped in the road and are looking back at me. It took EVERYTHING in me to be cool, act as though I didn't notice them looking and couldn't care less what they're up to (again, self preservation). They begin walking further away from me then. I quickened my pace to go hide behind a sloped railroad track, out of their view.

I call 911. I describe to the dispatcher/officer what I've just seen and that I believe that woman was being taken against her will and appeared to be drugged. The officer(?) dispatcher on the other line says "yeah, we've got 2 other calls earlier tonight, We'll go ahead and work on sending someone out.". Great police work, my dudes. Keep in mind this is one of those out in the boonies, and most people seem to think "that sorta thing don't happen round here!" (Even though we have an extensive amount of cold cases of women and children here in this area).

I'm only a mile from my car now. Obviously the police gave approximately 2 fucks about this woman's safety, but I was so disturbed by what I saw that I knew it was time to go find these guys myself since it seemed no one else was going to... side note, the amount of cigarettes I smoke in a day is roughly equivalent to the amount of toilet paper sold during this pandemic. Fuck, I was huffing a cigarette, crying silently, praying for her safety, praying they wouldn't disappear with her to God knows where, to do God knows what. what I'm saying is I fucking R A N like never before to get to my car and track these men down again before they could drop out of sight with her.

I don't personally know this woman but I'll be damned if I don't do everything I can to help her when she was clearly in danger and unable to help herself. I floored it to where I saw them last (maybe 15-20 mins had passed between the last time we crossed paths and I got my car), and much to my relief, as I round the corner I see multiple police units on scene up the road. I drove up closer just to be SURE they found the right guys, and they did. They had the men up against their cruisers with their hands up and were being frisked.

Paramedics were on scene, this poor woman was lying on the ground as they were working to place her onto a stretcher to get her to a hospital, I assume. The sense of relief I felt was unreal, probably not even a fraction of the relief this woman felt when police finally intervened.

Dispatch actually called me back and advised they'd not sent officers previously as the situation was described to them as a noise disturbance. Not unusual for a holiday weekend, so I cannot wholly blame them for not coming sooner since they'd not received any calls specifically stating there was a woman screaming for help or being carried off caveman style against her will in the middle of nowhere in the wee hours of the night.

Needless to say I didn't sleep at all the rest of the night. I went home and sobbed all day. Mostly out of the horror of what I saw, and the awful though of "what if I hadn't taken that walk... what if no one got help for her.... what if they would have grabbed me, too?"

I'll close with this. DO NOT BE A BYSTANDER. If you see something, SAY SOMETHING.