by Tarah Benner
Bernie was still shaking her head in disbelief, and Lark felt a sharp stab of guilt. Portia could be dead for all she knew, and it was entirely her fault.
“Man, I can’t wait to get out of here,” said Bernie.
Lark nodded.
“What did Soren want?”
“To apologize,” Lark murmured. “I told him about Levi.”
“No shit?” Bernie’s eyebrows shot up. “What did he say?”
“He said it wasn’t my fault . . . that it didn’t change the way he felt about me. And then we kissed.”
“What?” Bernie squealed. “He kissed you and you waited until now to say something?”
“Shh!” said Lark. “Keep your voice down. We’re supposed to meet him at the river tomorrow. He said to bring as much food —”
“Arrrrg! Who cares about the escape plan!” cried Bernie. “I want to hear more about this steamy kiss you two shared!”
“I didn’t say it was steamy,” Lark mumbled.
“Oh, please! I know it was. You haven’t gotten any in five years, and you’re practically panting right now just thinking about it.”
“I’m not panting,” said Lark. But an uncontrollable smile was spreading across her face.
Bernie gave her a hard nudge that sent a surge of pain down Lark’s left side. “Don’t hold out on me, woman! I have to live vicariously through you.”
“Not for long.”
“Oh, yeah,” she said with an eye roll. “I’ll be on the run in Mexico, and I don’t speak a word of Spanish. I’ll have so many dates lined up.”
Lark grinned despite her cracked lip. “Soren’s a good kisser,” she admitted, her skin still tingling where he’d touched her. “A really good kisser.”
“Holy shit!” Bernie hissed, giving her bruised arm a little slap for good measure. “Did you guys rip each other’s clothes off? Did you —”
“No,” said Lark, feeling her face heat up. “We didn’t get the chance. God, you’re such a perv.”
Bernie’s face contorted into a mock offended expression. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
“You need to get your hands on some extra food,” said Lark, trying to refocus the conversation on their looming escape. “They aren’t gonna let me anywhere near the mess hall.”
“How much?”
Lark shrugged. “As much as you can get.”
“Are we really doing this?” Bernie asked suddenly. “If we get caught —”
“Getting caught isn’t an option.”
Lark thought back to the prison she’d stayed in while awaiting sentencing and shuddered. She couldn’t go back there. She wouldn’t.
“If you want out of this, you just have to say so,” Lark whispered.
“I’m going,” said Bernie. “We’re in this together.”
“Still,” said Lark. “You don’t have to come if you don’t want to.”
“Stop trying to get rid of me,” said Bernie, cracking a smile. “I’m in. You’re gonna need me out there, you know.”
Lark let out a long sigh. “I know.”
“Listen . . . I trust you,” said Bernie. “The question is, do you trust him?”
Lark took a deep breath and looked away, trying to keep the glowing feeling inside her chest from clouding her judgement. She barely knew Soren — that was the truth. People had tried to escape from San Judas in the past, and all of them had failed. And yet, despite all this, she was willing to risk everything on Soren’s plan.
“I trust him,” she said finally. “I’d trust him with my life.”
Bernie wasn’t one to make a lot of promises, but when she did, she always followed through. Lark spent the next day trying to lay low, watching Bernie covertly and waiting for her signal.
By evening mess, rain was still coming down in a light drizzle, but Bernie ate alone at a table under an old bur oak tree. As the mess hall started to clear, she ducked inside to talk to Kira.
Lark waited with her heart in her throat, and a few minutes later, Bernie emerged. She dropped a lumpy sack into a pile of broken crockery and let out a low whistle. Lark darted out from her hiding place, vaulted the low courtyard wall, scooped up the sack, and ran straight for the woods.
Denali followed her at an excited gallop, showing his teeth so it looked as though he were smiling. He seemed totally relaxed, but Lark’s nerves were stretched to the breaking point.
She stopped at a hollowed-out tree stump about twelve paces into the forest, looked around, and pulled out the large canvas rucksack.
The bag had been a Christmas present from Bernie. It was fashioned from old seed bags and broken leather belts, and she’d lined the interior with an old waterproof tarp.
Inside was Lark’s copy of Medical Plants of the Mountain West, a homemade knife, some rope, a beat-up tin pot Bernie had lifted from Salvage, and nearly every article of clothing they owned.
Lark added the food to their supplies and cinched the top of the bag. With Bernie’s bounty, they had enough food to last three or four days. Clean water would be their biggest problem. The river was too contaminated with agricultural runoff, and the well was too exposed for Bernie to fill more than a couple water skins without attracting attention.
They were supposed to meet Soren a few minutes past sundown, and Lark was ready to go. Denali seemed to know they were waiting on Bernie. He was sitting on his haunches and peering through the trees, tail wagging happily in anticipation.
As the sky turned from gray to black, Lark’s heart rate picked up. She’d only been waiting for half an hour, but it felt like days.
“Come on, Bernie,” she muttered, staring through the darkness for any sign of movement.
Violent images kept flashing through her mind, making her stomach curdle with dread. Lark knew that the daughters would have loved nothing more than to catch Bernie sneaking off to the woods to bring Lark food and water.
Finally, she heard the slap of feet on dirt, and she let out a breath of relief. Bernie was running toward them, carrying both water skins under her arm.
“Any trouble?” Lark asked.
Bernie shook her head, looking excited. “All good.”
Lark gave her arm a quick squeeze, but she didn’t allow herself to bask in their small victory. The hardest part was still ahead of them, and they couldn’t afford to let their guard down.
Their footsteps seemed dangerously loud as they made their way through the forest. Bernie didn’t spend half as much time in the woods as Lark did, and she moved through the trees like a nervous elephant.
Lark was glad when the rush of the river grew loud enough to drown out the noise they were making. Her eyes scanned the opposite bank for Soren, but she couldn’t see anything through the light drizzle.
“He’ll be here,” said Lark, more to reassure herself than Bernie.
It had been dark for at least fifteen or twenty minutes, so it didn’t make sense that Soren wasn’t there yet.
He wouldn’t have left without them, would he?
Lark pushed the thought out of her mind as quickly as it had come. She couldn’t afford to think like that. She had to trust Soren.
“Up and over?” asked Bernie. She was staring at the chain-link fence with an apprehensive expression.
“Up and over,” Lark agreed. She rifled around in the rucksack for the makeshift harness she’d fashioned for Denali and tossed the bag to Bernie. “Use this to push down the razor wire.”
Bernie gave a shaky nod, threw the bag over her shoulder, and started to climb.
Lark bent down and pulled Denali toward her amid a low whine of protest. He didn’t like being restrained, but Lark couldn’t carry him over the fence.
Instead, she fitted the crude rope harness around his chest and middle. Denali looked extremely uncomfortable, but he seemed to sense that this was important. He stood perfectly still as Lark secured the ends of the rope around her shoulders and slung him over her back.
Lark groaned. Denali was a lot heavier
than she’d anticipated, and every breath she took caused a sharp stab of pain to erupt in her chest. He couldn’t have weighed more than forty pounds, but dangling from Lark’s battered frame, he might as well have weighed a hundred.
Trying hard not to think about how she was going to hoist them both over the razor wire, Lark started to climb.
Between the dark and the rain pelting her face, it was nearly impossible to see what she was doing. The metal wire was cold and slick, but she managed to reach the top in just under a minute.
Bernie had left the rucksack slung across the coil of razor wire, so Lark hoisted herself and Denali up and swung one leg over.
Denali let out a noise somewhere between a yawn and a whine, but Lark’s arms held steady as she found a foothold in the chain links and swung her other leg over.
Unfortunately, the added weight was messing with her center of gravity, and she slipped several inches down the fence. The rucksack slid off the razor wire, and Lark just managed to catch herself.
“Shit!” she gasped, struggling to keep a grip on the fence as her ribs screamed in protest.
To stop herself from falling, she’d grabbed the only thing she could reach, slicing her palm on the thin strand of wire. Blood was gushing from her hand, and Denali had started to fidget.
“Hang tight,” she growled, ignoring the excruciating pain in her hand as she gripped the fence and let her feet guide her back down.
“Easy,” called Bernie. “Easy!”
Lark let out a huff and tugged the rucksack down after them. Bernie’s anxious tone wasn’t helping.
After a minute, Lark looked down and saw that she was only a few feet from the ground. She let herself drop the rest of the way, landing on the muddy bank just beside the river.
“Ouch,” said Bernie, seizing Lark’s bloody hand. “That looks bad.”
“I’ll be fine,” said Lark, gritting her teeth and ripping off a section of her shirt. Bernie untied Denali from her back as Lark wrapped her hand, and when they were finished, he looked exceptionally happy to be back on the ground.
“Ready?” Lark asked in a weak voice, turning toward the river.
Bernie swallowed. “So I’ve been meaning to tell you . . . There’s this little, uh . . . It’s stupid, really, but —”
“What?”
“I uh . . . Well . . .”
“Bernie!” snapped Lark.
“I can’t exactly . . . I mean, I never learned how to, uh . . . swim.”
“You don’t know how to swim?” Lark repeated. “And you waited until now to say something?”
“It’s not like people haven’t tried to teach me,” she said. “I just have this mental block —”
But Lark was too busy kneading her face in frustration to hear what Bernie said next.
“I thought maybe once I was in the water . . .” Bernie continued. “I’d, er, sink or swim, so to speak . . .”
“It’s okay,” said Lark, jarring her brain back into problem-solving mode. “Denali can swim across on his own, and you’ll hold on to me.”
Bernie looked doubtful.
“It’ll be fine,” said Lark. “Come on.”
Fighting off a shiver, Lark stripped off her jacket and boots and secured them inside the rucksack. Once she added Bernie’s, the boots stuck out a little at the top, but the rest of their clothes would stay warm and dry.
Lark waded slowly into the river, and within seconds her legs had gone numb. Bernie followed at a sluggish pace, eyeing the water warily as if it might rise up and drown her in its wild depths.
Denali paddled across quickly, struggling a little where the current was the strongest.
Once the freezing water reached their shoulders, Bernie grabbed on to Lark, and Lark kicked off from the bottom. Mud squelched beneath her toes, and as soon as she touched off, the added weight of Bernie and the rucksack nearly dragged her beneath the surface.
Lark bobbed in place for several seconds, Bernie shifting her weight to make things easier. Her legs burned as she kicked and her lungs were on fire, but she managed to keep both of their heads above water as she started out across the river.
“You have to kick!” she yelled to Bernie.
Bernie obliged, but somehow it didn’t seem to help. If anything, the awkward flailing just pulled them farther off course and made it harder on Lark.
The water was much colder than Lark had anticipated. Within the first thirty seconds, her teeth had started to chatter, and her chest ached from shivering. The cold water slowed her movements and dulled her senses, making it even more difficult to paddle.
While Lark was still floundering a third of the way across the river, Denali reached the opposite bank and shook out his coat. He watched Lark apprehensively, barking as she sank down to her nose.
Meanwhile, Bernie was whimpering loudly in Lark’s right ear. Lark dipped under the surface once, interrupting a steady stream of “Ohgodohgodohgod!”
Lark opened her mouth to tell Bernie to shut up, but a sudden splash sent another deluge of fishy-tasting water down her throat. She coughed and kicked harder, but as they approached the middle of the river, things went from bad to worse.
The current there was much stronger than it was near the bank, and Lark felt herself being pulled downriver rather than moving straight across.
The moment she realized what was happening, the current seemed to accelerate.
They were caught — no longer moving in a controlled fashion, but being swept away.
Denali galloped along the bank with them, barking like a maniac as Lark was pulled underwater.
She broke the surface again, coughing and blinking furiously to clear the water from her eyes. Bernie was squealing in fright, and if they didn’t make it to shore soon, Denali’s barks would wake every inmate in San Judas.
Lark kicked harder, using her arms to propel them through the current. For the first few strokes, it seemed to be working, but then Lark realized she was just managing to move them diagonally downriver.
Her body felt heavy and exhausted, and every stroke just seemed to make things worse.
“I’m sorry, Lark!” Bernie spluttered, having just emerged from another violent dunking.
Lark panted but did not respond. She had no energy left to speak — no energy left at all.
“We’re not — going — to make it,” said Bernie, gulping down some water in the process.
Lark let out a tortured battle cry. It was all she could manage.
She wanted to tell Bernie that they were going to make it — that they had no choice. At that moment, she wanted to yell at her for neglecting to mention that she couldn’t swim. She wanted to grab Bernie by the hair and bang her head against a wall. She wanted to cry and tell her that she couldn’t imagine doing this without her. And then Bernie was gone.
Lark felt the weight lift off her shoulders instantly, and when she kicked, the force propelled her several feet through the water.
She twisted her head over her shoulder, too stunned to realize what had happened. Then she saw Bernie disappear beneath the water’s surface.
“No!” Lark screamed, not caring that someone might hear her.
She threw herself toward the spot where Bernie had vanished, grabbing desperately for an arm or leg, but her fingers just grasped at empty water.
Lark dived under the surface, staring into the greenish-gray abyss, but the water was too dark to discern anything.
Coughing and spluttering, she came back up for air, scanning the surface for a glimpse of blond waves.
Lark heard someone call her name from very far away, but it didn’t sound like Bernie.
She was crying and fighting her way through the water, growing more hopeless every second that Bernie would somehow be all right.
And then she saw something — or rather, someone — running along the bank. She couldn’t tell for sure this far away, but she knew it had to be Soren.
He was calling to her and waving wildly, but all Lark car
ed about was finding Bernie. She fixed her gaze back downstream, her legs growing heavier as she fought to stay buoyant.
Then she heard a splash.
Terrified and exhausted, Lark peeled her eyes away from the place where Bernie had vanished and saw someone cutting through the water with the ferocity of an Olympic swimmer.
Lark shook her head, too tired to call out a warning, but then she saw something bobbing several yards away. It looked like a gnarled, half-rotten log sticking out of the water, and someone was clinging to it for dear life.
Lark realized what it was and called out to Bernie, but Soren had already spotted her. He beat Lark downstream, peeled Bernie off the wet log, and swam with her like a lifeguard toward the shore.
Lark worked her arms furiously, and she felt her feet touch down on cold, soft mud. She fell forward through the water — clawing more than swimming — and collapsed onto the bank next to Bernie.
Bernie was coughing and spluttering as though she’d swallowed half the river. Her lips had turned an alarming shade of blue, and she was shaking uncontrollably.
Lark opened her mouth to speak, but before she could, Denali bounded up and started licking her face. Normally she would have swatted him away, but she was so numb from shock that she just let it happen.
Soren was still kneeling next to Bernie, soaking wet and staring at Lark as though she’d gone insane.
“What the hell was that?”
Lark was still too shocked to answer. She watched in a daze as a shirtless Soren got up and came around behind her. He tugged the rucksack off her shoulders and draped her in a warm, dry coat that smelled like heaven. Then he dug around in the bag and pulled out Lark’s jacket to swaddle Bernie.
For several seconds, Lark just sat there. She was so rattled by Bernie’s near-death experience that she couldn’t string two words together as Soren stripped off his wet pants and changed into dry clothes.
Bernie was the first to recover. “Ho-ly shit.”
“You can say that again,” said Soren, shaking out his sodden hair and throwing Lark a reproving look. “Care to explain why you almost drowned yourself back there?”
Lark raised both eyebrows, so incensed that it jolted her out of her stupor. “Excuse me?”
