by L. E. Howel
What was salvageable was swiftly packed away and the convoy was quickly moving again. It was a sorry reflection of its former self. Two battered troop carriers and the missile launcher were all that remained of their group; the rest were left to rust or rot where they lay. Edwards had been careful to remove or destroy anything useful to the Ares; at least they would be deprived of the spoils of their attack.
The next step was clear, get to safety. There was an outpost three or four days travel from their present location, on the eastern side of the mountains. These eastern bases were tiny, but well protected bastions against the wild excesses of the Ares. Their complement was small, but their firepower was formidable, as was their reputation. Despite their size none of the Ares ever willingly engaged them in open attack, but waited for troop changes or patrols to ambush. If they could make it there they would be safe, for a time at least, before they traveled on to Washington. They needed time to rest and repair, and to gather whatever strategy they could for what lay ahead.
Edwards’ immediate concern had been with the condition of the road. They needed to be fast, another day of delays would leave them stuck in the mountains another night and he knew that another attack like the last one would destroy them. They had to get off that mountain before nightfall. In this respect the day’s experience turned out better than he could have hoped. Where their travel had previously been slow and interrupted, this time it was swift and uneventful. Apparently the Ares had been confident in the success of their night raid, and had made no provision to slow their progress beyond the camp. As a result they encountered no mines and passed swiftly through the remainder of the mountain range.
Their speed was a blessed relief to Edwards. He couldn’t get away from the night’s scene quickly enough, but as they drew away he had seen the futility; he would never leave this place. His body might move on, but the scene would live with him forever. Maybe the others could live with it, they were trained to kill, but he was trained to protect and understand life, not destroy it. He understood death well enough, but his hands had been unbloodied until now. In theory he knew what had to be done to protect themselves, but the practice was alien to him. He was in a foreign land. He knew that they had only done what was needed to keep themselves alive, and he understood that their enemy was merciless and wild, but while his mind accepted these things his stomach could not.
These were the feelings Edwards fought with as they traveled. He took no pleasure in the victory. Unlike the soldier class, who high-fived at the defeat of another Ares attack, he was affected. It made him sick. Somehow this had to stop, and yet here he was in the middle of it all and in the sad realization that he had to do the very thing he hated to survive. He must defeat the very hopes he held or die uselessly supporting them.
***
Birch leant silently over the grave. The futility of his search dawned slowly on him as rage welled up inside him. Angrily he pulled at the iron ribs and inner cloth that embraced Karla. Metal cracked and cloth tore until a few minutes later she was free of her primitive sarcophagus and lying limply at his feet. She was peaceful now. Her face showed no sign of distress and her restful countenance only seemed to fuel Birch’s fury. He shook the body mercilessly, madly seeking life in the lifeless, but instead of waking her it seemed she had the power to draw him down, even down into her own grave. His head spun. The robe she had worn was sticky, pungent, and powerful, and a putrid residue from it remained on his bandaged fingers. Something in it, or perhaps in her, seemed to grip him physically and to pull him down into a spinning darkness, he pulled away instinctively but felt the magnetic attraction irresistibly beckoning him. Karla was there, but no longer dead. She was alive and vibrant, and it was he who had died.
TWENTY-TWO
Birch’s head hurt, and the fact that someone was slapping his face wasn’t helping. It took three blows before his muddled brain finally recognized what was happening enough to react. He pushed the hands away and punched back hard. A light, laughing voice responded to his heavy blows. “Hey, getting feisty aren’t you?” his attacker complained. “It seemed like this was the only way to get you to wake up, but you can cut the rough stuff now! I promise not to hit you again.”
It was Karla’s voice and as Birch’s eyes cleared he was astounded by a vision of her bending over him, not dead, but looking very much alive and vibrant after her ordeal. She was somehow better than before, better than last night before the battle, better than before everything had gone wrong on the mission, better than he had ever seen her. He guessed that she was glad to be rescued, but she seemed positively radiant, and under the circumstances it struck him as strange to be so happy.
“What happened to you?” Birch muttered, rubbing his head painfully. “Weren’t you dead?” Karla laughed again, but a shadow of trouble passed across her face for an instant as she shook her head.
“I guess not,” she responded, her hair bobbed and her eyes danced as she spoke, “though I don’t know why I’m alive. I guess I’m just blessed.”
“That and the fact that you’ve got crazy people who’ll come and get you when you get yourself kidnapped,” Birch remarked bitterly. Karla didn’t notice his tone. She was too happy. She only seemed to have two modes of operation and it was hard for Birch to know which irritated him more. Most of the time she was a bouncing ball of personified happiness. It was like she was some kind of conductor of human joy, and she had to inflict others with the same condition. Birch found it maddening, but probably marginally preferable to her rare dips into despair, that could be pretty ugly. She could crack under pressure. A few times on the mission he’d worried that she might come unglued, but that was just part of the baggage of Karla.
Right now it was her exuberant joy he had to endure. It was understandable, she had come back from the dead, but still it grated against his nerves. His head throbbed and she was like one of those ever-smiling flight attendants that woke you on a redeye flight with their inane patter about good mornings and disembarking. The difference of course was that on the flight all you wanted to do was sleep, and all he wanted to do right now was curl up and die. His legs ached, his back hurt, and his hands were a pair of bloody numbed pulps at the end of his arms. He had rescued her, but her life in the face of his exhaustion was draining. The effort of the night and reaching her had left him utterly empty.
“What do you think we should do now?” Karla asked, prodding him again as if to make sure he didn’t go back to sleep. He wished she would just let him alone, but somewhere within the remnant of his thoughts he knew she was right. They had to get going. That didn’t make it any easier. He sat groggily up and looked around. The sun was toward the west and the shadows were getting longer, it must have been late afternoon; he had been out for a while.
“The first thing we have to do is get off this rock as quickly as we can. It would be very easy for them to trap us up here if they come back. You look around and see what looks like the easiest route down, I’m going to see if I can get any reading on DeSante again.” He pulled the heat sensor from his belt and clicked it on.
Karla frowned, “You don’t think they’ll be watching for us in the daylight do you?” Her voice was nervous again and a shadow crossed her once carefree face.
“It’s possible,” Birch snapped. He was glaring down at the sensor’s screen. Karla’s heat was registering again; her disappearance from the readout must have had something to do with that foul cloth she had been wrapped in. Now DeSante was missing and he couldn’t help wondering if he was now in a similar position. He turned to look at Karla.
“Trust me,” his voice was calm, “I made it up here. We’ll make it down. We still have some daylight left, and from what I know of these guys the night is their time. I don’t know why they stuck you up here, or what their plans were, but I’m sure I don’t want to be up here tonight to see if they’re coming back to get you.” Karla shivered in the early evening sun. “We need to get down,” Birch continued, “and the sooner th
e better. It’ll be dark soon and I want us to get somewhere safe and find some cover before night.”
He staggered to his feet. Karla tried to steady him as he stepped closer to the edge. “I’m okay,” he muttered gruffly and pulled his arm away. Shoving the heat sensor back onto his belt he strode to the precipice and looked down. There was no sign of the Ares, but he was sure that the longer they waited the greater their chances of bumping into one of them coming back up.
He and Karla scanned along the top for the best way down. Instinctively he was drawn to the idea of descending the same way he had climbed, he was familiar with the terrain, but now that side would now be covered in sunlight, exposing them clearly to any watching eyes below. It might not have made a difference, but he thought it could. He wouldn’t go that way, besides he had noticed an easier incline on the shaded eastern side.
Looking about the cliff-face he saw more holes. The same type of holes marked out across the stone as those he had used in his assent that morning. The rock surface was covered with them in all directions, well-worn holes and grooves like the cells from a bee’s hive. The impression came to him suddenly that this was somewhere important. This wasn’t just any rock. It was a place that meant something to the Ares. The marks and holes in the side of the cliff gave evidence to frequent travel. Perhaps there was some deeper reason for putting Karla up here. This was more than just as a safe place to stow her while they rested in the daylight hours. As he looked around he could imagine the holes used by hundreds of wild Ares at a time, all pushing for the top from every side. This was a dangerous place. He turned quickly to Karla.
“We better get down now. I’ve got a bad feeling about this place, and it looks like we’ve probably only got a few hours of sunlight left. We won’t make it to the bottom by nightfall. I’m not sure what’ll happen after that, but we have to try. We need to hurry!” Karla looked doubtfully at her commander.
“I’m not that confident a climber, Major,” her voice trailed off for a moment in response to his withering glance. “I don’t know if I can do it.” Her bright smile had disappeared. Birch sighed. There was something fragile in her voice that warned him that if he didn’t handle this right she wouldn’t go at all, and then, because he couldn’t leave her, they’d both be stuck at the top. At least she wasn’t so irritatingly cheerful anymore, he mused bitterly.
He tried to be patient.
“You’ll just have to do your best, lieutenant. You can make it if you try.” It was as close to sympathy as he could manage. “You better make it quick though,” he added pointedly, “because if we’re not down in the next few hours then we probably won’t make it at all.”
Secretly he wasn’t so sure that he could make it himself. His hands had gone numb, and while this gave him welcome respite from the pain, it also robbed him of the climber’s most important asset, the ability to feel. Without it he would be groping for handholds and cracks. His hands would grasp, but could not perceive. The potential for catastrophe was obvious.
Absolution from his pain had led them into deadly danger. He didn’t share his fears with Karla. He just planned around them. He would go first on the descent. It made sense anyway; he could lay out a path and guide her over the problem areas as they came to them. It also meant that if he fell he wouldn’t take her with him.
He glanced down one last time at the cliff face then turned to Karla. “Let’s go,” he muttered. His eyes went briefly again to his bandaged hands, the blood had dried to a crusty brown but the tattered rags were wet with perspiration. He rubbed them in the dirt and then on his pants before turning and slowly edging toward the precipice. His foot found the first hole and slowly he began the descent.
His hands were working. He could imagine the feel of the grains of dirt and flinty rock beneath them and he felt secure. His mind was absorbed in the task and he had taken a few dozen steps down before he noticed that Karla wasn’t following him. He sighed. “What are you doing up there, Dawson?” he hissed as loudly as he dare. There was no answer. Grimly he retraced a few steps, resenting the lost ground, and repeated the question.
“I’m coming,” Karla’s voice came weakly from above, “this isn’t my favorite part and it’ll take me a minute to get it right. Birch sighed again, but didn’t press her too hard, he was desperate to get down and even now the sky seemed to be darkening visibly, yet he knew that if he wanted her to get down at all he needed to just let her deal with it. It was always easier getting on the roof than off it, anyone who had ever climbed a ladder knew that, and though he was impatient to go he also knew that Karla would do this better alone and without his comment.
Finally he could see her. It was like watching a child fearfully pulling themselves to the edge of their grown-up bed for the first time. He doubted many children were as slow and fearful as Karla looked just then. She couldn’t have looked more alarmed if the whole Ares force had suddenly appeared at the top with their weapons drawn.
Eventually her tentative legs found the first foothold and she slowly began her descent. Birch shook his head, “How did you get up here?” he asked “I can’t imagine how you made it at that speed.” Karla didn’t answer for a moment; she was fumbling for the next foothold.
“I don’t have any idea,” She mumbled, “I was totally out of it. I guess they must have carried me up.” She clumsily began her descent. “You wouldn’t like to help me out on the return journey would you?” she added slyly, “That might speed things up you know.”
Birch laughed in spite of himself. “I’ll see how you go. I think the way my hands feel right now it would probably be a faster shortcut than you’d be comfortable with.”
Karla smiled and shook her head. She was strange, her despair had melted away again and that irrepressible sunshine she had inside her was trying to burst out again. She would get down better that way anyway.
Birch tried to turn his attention again to the rock face. Staying still had been difficult. When he had momentum he could keep going, but now his hands bothered him again. He wiped the sweaty bandages on his pants then began his descent again. Karla was still a distraction; he was constantly aware of her hesitant movement above him. She was going at a steady speed, but it was much too slow to get them down in time. This route was easier than the one he had taken that morning, and on a good day he could have finished it in two or three hours. This wasn’t a good day. Karla was holding him back. Even in his debilitated condition he could have done it more quickly alone. “Hurry Karla,” He repeated, “it’s getting dark!” She nodded, grunted, but continued at the same languid pace.
She was doing her best, but it didn’t look like it would be good enough. The sun would be down soon and the Ares would be back.
It was impossible to see the western horizon from their side of the cliff. The rock obscured their view, but the dusky hue of the sky made it clear that the set, leaving them in the cold night until it should rise again the next day. This was the Ares’ time and they were on the Ares’ ground.
They were still nearly a hundred feet from the ground as the last dim ray of sunlight gave way to the ebony sky of a moonless night. This was going to be hard. Now he and Karla would have to find their handholds and footholds without seeing. Karla would be slowed even more, and his own danger of falling would be greatly increased. More alarming, though, was what the darkness meant. He hadn’t seen any- thing in the dying daylight, but Birch nervously expected the Ares to return with nightfall. The first they would know about it would be when they bumped into one of them on their way to the top. That was a real possibility. All they could really do right now was get down as fast as could and hope nothing met them on the way.
At that moment he heard it, the call of an owl from the woods beneath them. It wasn’t the screeching of the night before, rather the more calm hooting sound, but it still came as an unwelcome shock.
“Did you hear that?” Karla’s rasping voice came from somewhere above. “Is it one of them?”
“I h
eard it just fine,” Birch hissed. “Just shut-up and get moving!” In the darkness He couldn’t be sure where Karla was anymore, but she sounded closer than he had expected. Perhaps fear had finally inspired her to find it within herself to speed up. He began to hope. If they both hurried then they might just make it off of this rock alive. As unsettling as the birdcall had been it was the passive call, not the war-like screech of the other night. Perhaps they didn’t know they were here yet. That was as much as he could have hoped for; the only thing was making sure it stayed that way. The call had sounded like it was from nearby, though, so he would have to be careful.
The last few feet passed swiftly and finally he found himself standing once again on solid earth. It felt good. He slumped silently against the rock for a moment, with his head resting between his knees.
A few minutes passed. He listened anxiously for any sound of Karla; he was still too tired to do any more than that. As he waited the owl’s call sounded nearby again. It was on the cliff this time, somewhat to the left of his position, close enough to Karla to put her in real danger. If she made a noise or moved at all she would be discovered. He had been lucky. His exhaustion had left him silently sitting when he was in danger, and he had not been discovered. Now he had to hope Karla would be equally fortunate. He wanted to let her know, to warn her to stay still, but there wasn’t any way he could without being detected himself.
For a time he waited breathlessly, waiting for the sound of discovery, the upheaval that would probably result in the capture of them both, but no sound came. A few moments later he made out the slight silhouette of the girl shakily stepping down onto the dusty ground. He sighed tiredly and beckoned to her with a hoarse whisper. For an instant she started, but quickly recognizing his voice she walked over to him.
