A Girl Called Fearless: A Novel (The Girl Called Fearless Series)

by Catherine Linka

  I turned to Yates over my shoulder. “We need to find the creek.” I lifted up each ski and moved sideways over the snow, planting my poles, afraid I’d slip on the bank and fall into the water.

  Then I saw a narrow gap in the snow.

  We followed the creek. There wasn’t a trail, but the trees were far enough apart that we picked a way up that looked like it might work. Luke had warned us to look out for rocky places where the snow might be a thin layer hiding a slick of ice.

  How were we supposed to see that in the dark?

  At first, the slope was gradual. I jogged from foot to foot, planting my weight so I didn’t slide back. A hundred meters later, I was bent over, winded.

  I was broiling in my jacket, and the hanging wrapped around my waist itched like mad. I tore at the snaps by my neck. “It feels like we’re trying to ski Mount Everest.”

  Yates went around me. “Let me cut the trail.”

  We started up again, stopping every couple hundred feet. My lungs burned and I felt like I had bags of clay tied to my feet.

  I couldn’t see Salvation through the trees, but I could hear the bells. “O Come All Ye Faithful.” I imagined families huddled together on the church floor in the dark, singing until their throats ached, trusting us to get them help.

  “What time is it?” I said.

  “Just after seven-thirty. We need to switch to snowshoes or we’ll never make it.”

  A half hour to get to the ridge or we wouldn’t catch the cell and bounce our distress call out of here. People would die.

  We unclipped our skis and my breath caught as I changed boots. My feet curled up, because even thick socks couldn’t keep out this cold. I wiggled my boots into the snowshoe straps, and Yates crouched down to tighten them.

  I stumbled a few steps, the frame flapping at my heel. “I feel like I’m wearing clown shoes.”

  “You’ll get used to it. Walk like normal, but lift your knees high so you clear the snow.”

  Yates started between the trees and I climbed after him. With each step, the snow collapsed, and I sank up to my ankles. It was like trudging through sand. Then I tried walking in Yates’ footsteps, but his legs were so long I fell twice before I gave up.

  We crisscrossed our way slowly up the hill, nailing our poles into the snow. Step. Sink. Step. Sink. Breathe. My heartbeat pounded in my ears.

  Looking down, I saw our trail. We’d barely made any progress. “Why don’t we go straight up? This zigzagging is taking forever.”

  “Yeah, but there’s less chance we’ll slip and end up wrapped around a tree. It’s not that far. We’ll get there.”

  “If it was summer, I could run this easy.”

  “Yeah, and you’d totally beat my ass.”

  Step. Sink. Step. Sink. The cold made my forehead ache.

  I began to see faces in front of my eyes. Sarah with her angel-blue eyes. Dimpled Jemima. Keisha and her brilliant smile. Luke.

  I can’t fail. They’re depending on me.

  And then I remembered a scorching-hot day back when I was eight. A cancer fund-raising walk with Mom and Dad in Pasadena. Halfway down Colorado Boulevard, I told Mom I didn’t want to walk anymore. “You don’t have to,” she told me. “But see these names on my shirt? I have to keep going for them.”

  I didn’t understand then why those names scribbled on her shirt mattered so much, but now on this cold, dark mountainside I did. “I’m going to dedicate this walk to Salvation.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Yeah, every single step of it.” I stamped my foot in the snow. “This step is for Beattie.”

  “Beattie,” Yates echoed.

  “This one’s for Keisha.”

  “Keisha.”

  “Maggie.”

  I ran through every name in Salvation I could remember. Luke. Barnabas. Nellie. Jonas. Sarah. Rogan. Mr. and Mrs. Flores. Hector. Mr. and Mrs. Gomez. All the goats.

  When I ran out of names, Yates said, “How about Father G?”

  “And Ms. A.”

  We ran through all the girls in my class, even Dayla, then Yates said, “Your mom.”

  An avalanche blew inside me and I had to stop. I stood there, panting, my heart aching for her.

  “I wish I’d gotten to know her better,” Yates said.

  “Me, too.” I felt like crying, but I didn’t have any tears. Every day I’d never have with her, everything I’d never know about her hit me like a rain of shrapnel. “She left me letters before she died, so I could open them on my birthdays. There are at least ten more waiting in Dad’s safe at home.”

  Yates held out his hand and pulled me forward. “You remember what any of them said?”

  “I remember this one page where she wrote ‘See all the ways I love you,’ at the very top. Then she covered every inch of it with ‘I love you.’ She wrote it a hundred different ways. Capital letters. Lowercase. Wavy lines. Straight. Different-colored markers.”

  I love you. I love you. I love you.

  Yates turned around. “You know what I’ll never forget? Your mom’s face the day you stood up on Bruiser’s back and rode him around the ring.”

  I couldn’t help smiling. I had sailed around the big arena, no saddle, no reins, my arms spread out like wings, feeling like I could do anything. “Mom kept telling me to try—that I could do it as long as I didn’t let fear stop me.”

  “She was a smart lady.”

  I pulled in a deep breath like I was filling myself up with Mom’s strength and love and belief in me. I held it in for a moment, imagining that power flowing into my arms and legs, then I let it out. “Okay,” I said. “I’m dedicating the rest of the way to Mom.”

  Yates shook his pole in the air. “To Mom.”

  I reached for his hand and held it. “You should dedicate this to Becca.”

  Yates face stiffened and he tried to turn away, but I jerked his hand so he’d meet my eyes.

  “Becca is looking down at you right now and, listen to me, she is proud of her brother.”

  “Avie—”

  “She forgives you, Yates. You don’t have to spend the rest of your life making up for not being there for her that day. This, what we’re doing now—it’s enough.”

  He closed his eyes and took in a deep breath, and as he let it out, his face changed. I could almost see, touch, the pain lifting off his body. Then he opened his eyes, and smiled sadly at the night sky. “Are you listening, Becca? This is for you!”

  “Ready?” I said.

  “Ready.”

  We planted our poles and the slope got steeper as we went. I slid backward a little with each step.

  Another fifty feet and Yates turned around. “Hand me one of your poles.” He twisted it until it was shorter than the other and gave it back to me. “We’ve got to crab-walk up the last part.”

  We didn’t have time to walk. We jogged sideways like we were climbing up crumbling stairs with shoeboxes tied to our feet. My throat hurt, it was so dry. Yates had a canteen, but just thinking about the icy water made my teeth hurt.

  When we get to the other side, we can stop. We can set up the kettle and rest. But now we have to get to the ridge.

  Yates pushed hard the last hundred feet. I wanted to stop and catch my breath but I knew we couldn’t.

  Mom, help me. Help me get to the top. The summit’s so close.

  And then, finally, we were there. Yates wheezed, his hands on his hips. “We made it,” he said. “Six minutes to go.”

  My head spun as I glimpsed Salvation through the trees. It looked small and forgotten in the deep blue snow. “I can’t hear the bells.”

  “That doesn’t mean there’s a problem.”

  I hoped Yates was right.

  I pulled my phone out of my jacket and turned it on. Pulled up Sparrow’s software and got ready to do a blast. If the software worked, we’d break through the paternal controls and reach millions of grannies and girls my age. Someone would hear me and go for help.

  No reception
.

  We waited. I ran through the message the way Barnabas had coached me. Remember: calm, not hysterical.

  “Two minutes.” Yates waved the phone over his head, but nothing. Then we saw the spinning globe. “We’ve got a connection.”

  I took a deep breath. Right now Maggie was waiting by the church doors, ready to step out, wave the banner, and offer herself up.

  I had to be worthy of her sacrifice. “I’m ready.”

  Yates moved me into the shadow of a tree and turned his headlamp on me. “Now.”

  “This is Salvation, Idaho. We’re under attack from armed federal agents. Please send help! We are barricaded in our church. Over a hundred men, women, and children, and we need help now. Salvation, Idaho, northeast of Boise. Please send help now!” I gave out the latitude and longitude and hoped whoever was listening was writing this down.

  Yates waved his hand. “Got it. And it’s gone!”

  It’s gone. “We did it.” I fell into Yates’ arms. “We actually did it.”

  “Yeah, we did,” he said, holding me close. “You and me, Fearless.”

  We’d gotten past the guards, kept going when the trapdoor wouldn’t open, dragged ourselves up the mountain in time to catch the transmission. We’d kept each other going.

  A gunshot cracked the air.

  91

  “Maggie!” I screamed. Yates buried my face in his chest, smothering my cries. I hammered his back with my fists, and he held me as the gunshots got louder, furious. Salvation was firing back.

  “Go ahead, scream,” he said in a strangled voice.

  I stopped pounding and clung to him. “Oh, why did we even try?”

  The firefight exploded below, and I saw in my mind the children huddled in the Bunker, while all the good and decent people I’d come to know were at the windows, fighting to stay alive.

  A hundred people under attack from the government that was supposed to protect them. “This is murder, Yates. It’s murder!”

  “We can’t let the government bury this. The tower is still open,” he said. “We should keep broadcasting until they shut us down.”

  I staggered back, and wiped my face with my mittens. “Okay, yeah, you’re right.”

  Yates turned the camera on me. I tried to keep my voice steady, but I heard it breaking up. “Please, please help us. This is Salvation, Idaho. Federal agents have opened fire and we’re firing back in self-defense. Please help us.”

  Yates sent out our blast, then tipped the screen so I could see it. “Barnabas sent us a video.”

  “What’s on it?”

  The grey, grainy footage was from one of the cameras trained on the church. It showed Maggie stumbling down the steps, her head ducked in the feds’ high-watt spotlights. She was holding the banner up in front of her. I SURRENDER. The words were unmistakable. I SURRENDER. The camera focused on the message, and gunshots exploded. Maggie sailed backward and slammed to the ground. The banner billowed like a flag then collapsed over Maggie’s fallen body.

  “Those bastards!”

  The video ended. Down in the valley, the hailstorm of gunshots continued.

  “We have to try to send this out,” I said. “People have to see it. They have to know what’s happening here.”

  Yates nodded and turned the headlamp back on me. “In one, two, three—”

  I held my voice steady even though I felt like screaming. “This is Salvation, Idaho. Please help us. Federal agents have attacked us. They shot and killed a woman trying to surrender. This video is proof.”

  Yates linked up the video, and the undeniable truth blasted into cyberspace. “Let them try and cover this up,” he said.

  A moment later, the globe stopped spinning and faded from the screen. “The tower’s dead,” Yates said, handing me the phone.

  I swung my arm back, ready to pitch it into the dark.

  Yates took the phone out of my hand, and I let him zip it into my pocket. “You did the best you could,” he said.

  “But it didn’t make any difference. They killed Maggie, and now they’re probably going to kill everyone else.”

  “Not if help arrives. And you’ve guaranteed that they won’t get away with what they did here tonight. The world will know what happened.”

  The gunshots slowed. “Come on,” Yates said. “We need to get out of here.” He bent down and pulled on his pack.

  I felt like lying down in the snow. Lying down and going to sleep and never waking up.

  Yates eased the pack straps over my arms and fastened them across my chest, then he took my hand and walked me to the other side of the ridge.

  92

  We started down. I began to count the seconds between gunshots like a kid listening to thunder cracks.

  “We can turn on our headlamps,” Yates said. “They won’t spot us in the valley.”

  The second I flicked mine on, I wished I’d kept it off. The slope fell straight down. “Oh, no.”

  “I know it looks bad,” Yates said, “but I think once we get down about three, four hundred feet, it flattens out.”

  Pines dotted the slope, so I couldn’t see the bottom. “I hope you’re right.”

  We sank in the deep snow and our feet slid with each step. The lamp on my forehead swept like a searchlight over Yates, the snow, and the trees. Everything inside me felt floaty, disconnected. My legs swam through the snow, while my thoughts circled my body.

  My mouth was dry and my throat hurt. “Can we stop? I’m thirsty.”

  “Sure. But let’s get a little lower, find someplace flat.”

  Yates took a step, and I heard the loud scrape of metal meeting rock. Yates flung out his arms, but he was already falling.

  “Yates!”

  Snow exploded like surf, throwing him forward into the air. His headlamp beam flashed—off on off on—as he tumbled. Head, then feet, over and over, I saw him swept away in a roar and rush of white until he finally disappeared in the darkness.

  “Yates!”

  He must have stopped, because I couldn’t hear him. His headlamp had been torn off and lay in the snow below me.

  “Yates!”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Yates, why aren’t you answering me!” I stood completely still, listening hard, but I didn’t hear a thing.

  I plunged down the hill, following the churned-up snow. “Yates, answer me!”

  Maybe he got knocked out. Maybe he’s buried. I have to get to him. He could be suffocating.

  I knew I should be careful, but I couldn’t slow down. I passed one of his ski poles. His hat. The half-buried headlamp. I fought the spinning in my head, and the fear tearing at me.

  Then I saw the end of his trail: a thick black pine half buried in snow. He’d plowed into its branches.

  I felt like I’d hit the tree.

  He’s dead.

  I staggered toward the tree, its silence killing me. No! He’s not! He can’t be. He can’t be!

  “Yates? Yates, where are you?”

  His moan was so short, so quiet, I almost missed it. “Yates?”

  I saw where he hit. That side of the tree was clean, the snow that caked the branches had shaken free.

  I bent down and swept the dark with the lamp until I saw him. Yates was caught in the branches, splayed out like an insect in a spiderweb. His head was shoved back and his face was a road map of blood and snow.

  His hand was close enough for me to reach out and touch. “Yates, it’s me. I’ll get you out of here.”

  I dropped my pack and untied the folding shovel. I dug down until I got to a hollow under the tree. I crawled in, and looked up. Yates was woven into the branches farther up than I could reach, his right foot twisted at a bone-breaking angle.

  Moving him’s a bad idea. Ms. A’s first aid lessons stressed waiting for the paramedics, because moving people who are injured can make the injury worse. I don’t have a choice. If I left Yates in this tree, he would freeze to death before I could get help.

  Hol
y crap. How am I going to untangle him? His pack and snowshoes have to come off, but one wrong move could send him crashing.

  The quiet magnified every sound. Yates’ moans. The creak of the branches above me. The gargling cough that set my heart into shock.

  I scrambled out of the hollow. Blood streamed from Yates’ nose and the gash above his right eye.

  I flattened out on the snow and stretched onto the web of branches. It gave beneath me as I gently reached out to turn Yates’ head. I hesitated, brushing the snow off his hair. If his neck’s broken, I could paralyze him, but if I don’t …

  Please, I begged as I turned him. Please be okay. Blood gushed from his nose and more dribbled from his mouth. He coughed and his hand jerked. Thank God. He couldn’t stay there, but if I pulled him out onto the slope he’d sail down it like a runaway sled.

  I’ve got to dig a ledge. Set up a snow shelter like Maggie taught us. A vision of her last minutes flamed in front of my eyes. No. No. Can’t think about that now. I have to take care of Yates.

  I shoveled on my knees, cutting a shelf into the hill, trying to ignore the cold burning through my pants. The shovel got heavier and heavier, and I knew I should stop and eat or drink something, but how could I when Yates was hanging there like a smashed Christmas ornament?

  “Avie?”

  I whirled around, not sure if that was really Yates or just a voice in my head. “Yates?”

  “What happened?”

  “You hit a tree.”

  “You okay?”

  I reached out and squeezed his hand. You’re asking if I’m okay? “Yeah, I’m fine. I’m getting you out of there.”

  Yates tried to bend forward. “Shit. My ribs. Feels like somebody beat the crap out of me.”

  “You hit the tree pretty hard. What else hurts?”

  “My leg’s okay, a little beat-up, but I think my ankle’s wrecked. Ow, crap, my hand.”

  Broken nose, ankle, ribs, smashed-up hand. Yates was alive, but he wasn’t in great shape. “Give me a minute. I need to figure out how to get you out of here.”

  I studied him and the pack like I was making a last move in Jenga. A branch was wedged between his back and the pack. The pack had to come off. I couldn’t pull that much dead weight. But if I unhooked the straps across his chest and hips while the others were on his shoulders, the pack could drag him down. With his feet tangled up like that, it could snap his leg.