by Kelli Kimble
“You know what we have to do. It’s obvious.”
“What? You mean, go back to the mountain? Or to the city? Either one is suicide. You know we can’t do that.”
Leif’s face scrunched in frustration. “You know what I mean. We’ve been gone for years. You really think they’ve got nothing better to do than hang around the mountain, waiting for us to come back?”
“They don’t need to hang around. They have plenty of tech. They only have to monitor it from a distance.”
A plummeting feeling started behind my eyes, then sunk all the way down my throat and through my stomach. He was talking about the mountain. We’d gone there, and if the city was monitoring it . . .
No. It couldn’t be true. Leif was right. The city had better things to do than monitor a mountain that had been abandoned for nearly 20 years.
Silver drew his hands back from the fire and began gesturing. He put his left palm up, and the knife’s edge of his right crossed over it. “I’m not going back there. I won’t lead people there. We have to figure out how to make it out here on our own, and we can. I believe we can. Don’t you?”
A girl around my age approached the two men. “Daddy?” she asked Leif. “Can I go down to the beach?”
Leif eyeballed Silver before turning to the girl. “Sweetheart, I wish you wouldn’t. It’s getting dark, and someone could get lost.”
She pouted. “But, Da-addy, all my friends are going.”
Silver stood up. “Hey, everyone! We’re staying at camp tonight for . . .” Silver grabbed the girl’s hand. “Story Night! Everyone loves Story Night! Don’t you love stories, Tikka?”
Tikka scowled, twisted her hand free, and crossed her arms over her belly. She knew that not only had she lost her privilege, she had impacted the freedom of her friends, as well. She likely wasn’t going to be very popular when the others realized it she had attracted the unwanted attention of an adult.
Silver and Leif sat back down. “There, now,” Leif said to Tikka. “Nobody is going to the beach. You’re all safe here, with us.”
Tikka scuffed her shoe in the dirt. “I just wanted to hang out with my friends,” she whined.
“And you can. You will. They’re right over there. Get on with it.” He nudged her towards a small group of kids, clustered across the other side of the fire. She reluctantly dragged her feet away, kicking up dust and debris near the fire ring as she moped towards her friends. About halfway there, she miraculously perked up and joined them, giggling and preening.
I sighed. I’d never been a regular kid and no longer could be. I felt a million years old by comparison — even though she was probably 11 or 12.
Something touched my leg, and I jerked the vision out of my head.
Gayle was tapping my knee.
“Are you okay?” I asked. I flipped open the shelter flap and glanced at the fire. I wanted it burning big and bright. It would need some more wood soon, but it was okay for now. I let the flap fall back down.
“You were talking,” she said. “Just now. I thought you were talking to me.”
“I was?”
“You said something about staying at camp. Are you leaving?”
I grabbed her hand and sandwiched it between mine. “No, I’m not going anywhere. I was checking on Silver and Tabby.” I ducked my head a little. “I thought it would help keep my mind occupied during the night.”
Even in the low light from the fire, I saw her face brighten. “You saw Tabby? How did she look? What was she doing?”
“They were sitting around the fire: Tabby, Silver, and someone he called Leif,” I said, shaking my head. “A bunch of other people, too, and Leif’s daughter. Tabby didn’t say anything. Silver was talking to Leif.”
“Oh,” she said, disappointed.
“They’re afraid of something. Leif was trying to convince Silver to return to the mountain. But Silver said no, that the city was probably monitoring it.” For the first time since we’d left, I felt emotional. My eyes misted with tears, though I managed to keep them from falling. “Do you think they’re really watching?”
Gayle pulled her hand back under the cover of the coats and looked away. She sighed. “It’s not as farfetched as it might sound,” she said.
“So, they probably know we were there?”
She nodded.
“Did you know they were watching it?”
“Of course not,” Gayle said. “My contacts in the mayor’s office dried up when Tabby left. I don’t know any of their weird dealings — except rumors, and that’s hardly reliable.”
“You heard they were monitoring it?”
“No. No! I only know they’re still looking for other humans. You know. Searchers.”
The searchers. They were mysterious to me. Why search for people who might be dangerous, just so they could do dirty work in the city that could easily be done by someone without a chip?
“What if they were monitoring it, though?” she realized. “The searchers would come looking for us.” She gasped, and her hand flew up to cover her mouth for a moment. “What if we lead them right to them? Oh, Tabby. I’m so sorry, Tabby.” She groaned and tried to roll onto her side — but yelped in pain when her leg twisted from the effort.
“Stay still,” I said. “You can’t go jostling that leg.”
Gayle covered her face with her hands and began to all-out sob.
I curled up beside her and put her head in my lap, then stroked her hair back from her face, like she’d done for me so many times. “Shh, Gayle. It’s okay. We’ll figure something out. Shh.”
She cried herself back to sleep. I gently set her head on the backpack, then went outside to stoke the fire and add logs to it. I stood beside it for a long time, warming my hands, the same way Silver had done.
◆◆◆
The night seemed unusually long. At first, I thought it was because I was so tired from the sleep deprivation of the past few days, but then I heard thunder and realized the sky was overcast, and the clouds were dimming the dawn. I checked the area for safety, then quickly went up the ridge to collect as much firewood as I could carry. I brought it back to the shelter and stacked it inside.
Gayle opened her eyes when she heard me stacking the pieces. “Good morning,” she said. Her voice was groggy, but no longer seemed laced with pain.
“Hey, how’re you feeling?” I asked. I put the back of my hand to her forehead, then against her cheek to check for clamminess or heat. She felt pretty good.
“It still hurts. A lot. But I don’t want to die anymore.”
Startled by the brutality of her statement, I covered my alarm with a cough into my fist. “Um, good. I’m really glad you’re feeling better.”
A quick flash of light lit up the shelter, followed by a crack of thunder that seemed to roll on forever. “I think we’re in for some rain,” I said. “I’m just going to go get some more firewood, and I want to make a run to get some water, too, before it really starts coming down.”
“Can’t we just drink the rainwater?” she asked.
“Yeah. Yeah, you’re right. We could. If we had something to collect it in.”
“I think we can manage something. Maybe you’d prefer to catch us some breakfast instead? I’m starving.”
“Okay.” I pushed out of the shelter and resumed my chores. My own stomach was strangely quiet. I finished getting the firewood, and then I went about looking for a small animal for breakfast. We’d had rabbit several times, so I concentrated instead on a plump bird I spotted, rooting for worms near the woods.
I built up the fire as large as I could, then set about pulling the feathers off it and gutting it, throwing the guts and feathers into the fire. The feathers smelled like singed hair, and I wrinkled my nose.
I got the idea that while the bird was roasting, I should try to build a shelter to keep the fire dry. I found two Y-shaped branches and drove them into the ground on either side of the fire, far enough away so that they wouldn’t burn. The crux o
f the branches was nearly four feet from the ground, so I got another branch to hang between them, creating a support beam. Then, I stacked a series of long branches so that they leaned against the support beam and touched the ground a good few feet from the fire. I put pine boughs over top of those branches, and then topped it all off with dead needles and leaves.
It wasn’t waterproof by any means — but if it didn’t rain long, maybe it would keep some of the fire dry.
As soon as I’d finished, the rain started. Big, generous drops plunked out of the sky, few and far between at first. I grabbed the roasted bird and dashed for the shelter as it turned to a full-on downpour. I ducked into the shelter and zipped the door closed. I presented Gayle with the bird, and we picked the bones clean, washing the charred bits down with water from the canteen.
Behind me, the shelter edge the cats had cut through was flapping in the wind. I dug through the first-aid kit and found a needle and thread to repair it. With the threaded needle in hand, I crawled over to the flap to try and sew it shut.
I pulled the fabric apart for a moment and looked at the sky. In the distance, the rain was so heavy, it looked like a blurry haze in front of the trees and the mountains. Lightning lit up the sky, a crooked hook of white light arcing across it, pulsing briefly before disappearing, leaving a trace of brilliant white on the inside of my eyelids.
The hole was letting water into the shelter, so I stopped admiring the lightning and pulled the two pieces of fabric back together. Starting at the bottom, I pinched the two sides together and sewed them shut as neatly as I could, then continued straight to the top. The position was awkward, and I wasn’t accustomed to holding a needle. I gripped it too tightly and left a welt in the pads of my right pointer finger and thumb. I jabbed my left hand three times, drawing blood once. I sucked on the finger until the metallic taste subsided, then finished the job.
It wasn’t perfect, but it would do.
“What do you think?” I asked Gayle, sitting back to admire my accomplishment.
She craned her neck backwards over her pack to see. “Looks good enough,” she said.
I was tired, but the rain was loud on the surface of the shelter. I had to try and get some sleep, though. I hadn’t slept since I’d gotten up from my nap the day before. “If you don’t mind, I’m going to curl up beside you and take a nap,” I said.
“Sure.” She pulled the bedroll back so that I could snuggle against her side. “I don’t know how you could sleep in this, though. It’s so loud. How about I tell you a little story?”
“Okay,” I said. I yawned and rested my head on her arm, with my back to her body, and my legs curled against her side.
“My mother used to tell me this story when I was small. She’d tell it to both Tabby and me at bedtime. I looked forward to it every night.”
“M’kay,” I said.
“A long time ago, there was a young rabbit. He had many brothers and sisters, and because of this, his mother did not have a lot of time to oversee their daily activities. Instead, she’d feed them breakfast and turn them out of the burrow to learn how to do rabbit things with a much older rabbit, who lived nearby, while she cleaned their nearly-constant mess in the burrow.
“The older rabbit’s name was Dame Ruby, and she was very strict. The young rabbit and his siblings did not like being tended to by Dame Ruby because she was quick to punish — and truth be told, not particularly pleasant-smelling. But they didn’t dare disobey their harried mother, so every day, they went with Dame Ruby to a field, where she would show them rabbit skills, like how to choose the sweetest clover, and how to run with their white tails raised in alarm . . .”
I didn’t hear any more after that. I drifted off into a dream of rabbits with a foul-smelling babysitter. I caught the sitter and ate her, and the young rabbits became my legion of minions.
◆◆◆
I don’t know how long I slept, or how long it rained. But I woke to Gayle, nudging me in the side. “Nimisila, wake up,” she said.
“I’m awake,” I said. My head felt like I’d been pounding it against the ground, instead of resting it on my arm. I rubbed my eyes and turned towards her.
“The floor, it’s getting wet. Look.” She pointed at a corner of the shelter. An inch or so of water was collecting in a puddle there.
“That’s weird,” I said. “I thought these shelters were waterproof.”
“They’re water-resistant,” Gayle said. “They can’t tolerate extended submersion.”
“It’s just rain,” I said, gesturing to the sky we couldn’t see above us. “Who’s talking about submersion?”
“Can you just fix it? Maybe the corner is in a puddle. I don’t want to be soaking wet tonight.”
The rain hadn’t let up, and I didn’t relish the thought of going outside to get soaked. But she was right; I needed to check and make sure the shelter was set up properly, at least.
I yanked the zipper up roughly, and then bit my lip. We needed this shelter to keep us warm and dry. I should have been taking better care of it.
Stepping out of the tent, I immediately saw the problem. The entire shelter was smack-dab in the middle of a puddle. My shoulders drooped. How was I going to fix this? Rain ran through my hair and dripped over my eyes. Irritated, I dashed it away. I jammed my hands in my pockets and walked a slow circle around the shelter, as I tried to figure out some way to keep us dry. Could I relocate it? Not without moving Gayle, and I really wanted her to stay still.
As I stood there, I became aware of a distant static. I ignored it at first, but it was persistent and getting louder. I turned in the direction I thought it was coming from.
Oh, no.
Chapter 4
A wave of water was hugging the base of the incline, churning towards me and the shelter. I smacked myself in the forehead. The rocks. The sand. The map. Of course. This was a dried riverbed, fed by the rain runoff from the mountains. The wave was only a foot or so high, probably not deep enough for me to drown in.
But I didn’t have a broken leg.
I ripped open the shelter flaps and without stopping to explain, mentally yanked Gayle from the shelter, and lifted her onto the drier land in the grass.
“What are you–” Her words were cut off by the excruciating pain from her unceremonious dump to the ground.
I turned back to the shelter — intent on grabbing at least our packs and our coats — but the wave of water dashed against my calves. I was so focused on the contents of the shelter that I couldn’t keep myself steady. I fell backwards, cracking my wrist against a rock, and was propelled forward a few hundred feet before I was able to gather my brain cells and lift myself free from the violent water. I ignored the pain in my wrist and swooped low over the churning surface, searching for the shelter — or any of our things that might have been inside it. But the water moved too fast.
We had no shelter, no extra food, no dry firewood, no canteens . . . nothing but the clothes on our backs. I glanced down at my wrist, from which my hand was hanging at a rather floppy angle. Good, we were both injured. Just great.
We were going to die.
“Nimisila! Where are you? Nimisila!”
I rose into the air and spotted Gayle. She’d shed the bedroll and butt-scooted her way nearly to the edge of the water. She was scanning it for some sign of me.
What was I going to say to Gayle?
“I’m here!” I called. She couldn’t hear me over the water, so I switched to mental projection. I’m over here. I’ll be right there. Don’t move.
Not wanting to use any more of my mental energy than necessary, I trudged back to her. I was soaking-wet, and the wind was driving rain into my face. I cradled my damaged right wrist with my left arm.
By the time I reached Gayle, she was sobbing into her hands. She grabbed my pant leg as I approached. “Thank God. I thought you’d drowned. I thought you were dead. I’m so sorry, Nimisila. I – this is all my fault.”
I crouched beside he
r and gave her an awkward hug. “No, I’m pretty sure I pitched our shelter in the middle of a dry riverbed.” I said.
She caught sight of my wrist. “You’re hurt,” she said.
“Yeah, and all our stuff is gone, swept up by the water.”
“That’s not important. You’re what’s important. Stuff is just stuff.”
I bit my lip. She didn’t yet realize how bad our situation was. “Thanks,” I said. I glanced around. It seemed like the best thing to do was moving towards the trees. Maybe we could find a hollow log, or something to crouch inside. I pointed towards the trees. “What do you think about heading in to the woods and looking for some shelter?”
“This time, will you give me some warning before you move me?” She gave me a pained half-smile.
“I’m sorry about that,” I said. “I was panicking; I should have been more careful.”
“You did the best you could under the circumstances — and we’re both alive, so there’s that.” She patted my shoulder. “You want to help me stand up? Maybe I can limp along next to you, if you give me some support.”
“Absolutely not,” I said. “The last thing we need is for your leg to get all messed-up again. I’m going to carry you.” She started to protest, pointing at my wrist, but I explained, “Not with my arms. I mean, I’ll carry you mentally.”
“Oh. Still, I’d feel better if you helped me stand on my good leg first. I want to be able to look around.”
“All right.” I stood and offered her my good arm to steady her, while I mentally scooped her up to stand beside me.
“Whoo!” she said, wincing as she held her bad leg out to the side. “That was quite a ride.” She brushed imaginary dust from her coat. Thank goodness she’d been wearing it when I pulled her out of there. We’d need it tonight.
“Can you carry the bedroll?” I picked it up and held it out to her.
“Of course. Ready when you are,” she said.
