Through the bouncing branches, Jon looks up to the edge of the cliff in time to see Ryan and Keith leap off the edge, their arms and legs flailing like they are still running as they fly towards the tree in which Jon his hanging. He doesn’t have long enough to begin contemplating what might happen to his perch before Ryan’s mass connects with the top. He hears a crack, and he is falling once more.
The white and black speckled ground rushes up to meet him as he bounces between progressively larger branches, each knocking more and more of what little breath he has left in his lungs out of him. Soon there are no more branches left. He tries to inhale to get enough air to scream, but the ground is far too close. He feels a solid presence connect with his body, and then everything goes black as his mind drifts away from his body.
Chapter 11
Foothills of the Western Mountains
A University Campus
The cold cuts through the layers of her coat as if she isn’t even wearing the thick down contraption. Fortunately the ditch where she is lying offers some protection from the stiff breeze blowing across the parking lot. Above she can hear the shuffling footsteps of the patrol as they wander through the sparse cars scattered about the lot.
Sara buries her head deeper behind the small bush that is clinging to the hard earth, trying to make herself as small as possible. She silently curses the weather; the low hanging clouds, which could have felt like a comforting blanket thrown over the town, instead feel like the solid lid of an ice chest closed snugly to ensure that everything freezes.
The footsteps get louder and then stop. She tries to slow her breathing, afraid that even in the shadowed ditch the tiny cloud of steam would give her away. A gust of wind blows in from the north, sending the fine pellet snow swirling up and onto the pavement of the parking lot where, once the wind shifts direction again, it will blow back into the ditch, bringing with it more of its kind.
The cold numbing Sara’s mind must be having the same effect on the men of the patrols, because before another gust can wipe away the tracks that she left climbing down into the ditch, the man standing directly above her hiding place turns back and begins shuffling off to rejoin his fellows, muttering about rabbits.
The clouds and the gentle snowfall seem to muffle all sound except Sara’s pounding heart; over its thundering drum roll she can hear nothing but the whisper of the breeze as it fluffs the snow, so serene is the parking lot. The hiss of the flakes brushing against each other sounds like the rasp of static released by interference on the airwaves. She forces herself to take several deep, measured breaths, filling her lungs with the sharp air, each breath feeling as if a thousand tiny knives are poking her in the chest.
Hopeful that the patrol has moved on, she crawls up to the top of the slope and peers through the snow-covered ornamental grasses. The patrol is still in sight. Only several parking stalls away, two bundled forms stand huddled under a street light as if it is giving off heat. Both have their backs turned towards her so she can see the rifles they have slung over their shoulders but is unable to see their faces.
The one on the left stamps his feet and bounces up and down, clearly trying to encourage some circulation. She decides this one must be a man, because only a guy would take the time in his warming ritual to scratch at his crotch despite the thickness of his baggy snow pants. She smiles a little to herself at how predictable they can be sometimes, which sends her thoughts back to the two prime examples of this standardized behavior with whom she’d been hiding out for the last few weeks. Even facing an uncertain future and a certainly dangerous present, hiding from soldiers who were hunting them and being shot at, they’d managed to stumble over themselves trying to impress her. Holding doors open, insisting that they’d get her an extra coat if she needed one, offering to take her turn on watch. She smiles partially at her remembrance, but it turns partially to a grimace as she thinks of the insanity of it all.
Even before they ended up as fugitives, Jon and Ryan had spent significant energy trying to woo her, and while she certainly had enjoyed their company and the resulting free beers, neither of them had particularly stirred up any sort of internal fire.
She slides back over the edge of the ditch with a smile on her face as her recollection continues.
Both were pretty cute and were certainly fun to hang out with, and if she were to rate them they’d certainly score higher than some of the boys she’d dated in the past. But for some reason she’d had no interest in pursuing either any further. At first it had been fun to play them off each other a little, but then that plan had nearly backfired catastrophically. Confined together with little space, she feared it would have only been a matter of time before one of them got up the courage to ask her out, and she didn’t want to have to awkwardly turn either down and potentially ruin the friendships they’d been developing.
So when they had run into her friend Leticia and her old advisor Keith hiding out with a bunch of others playing the role of bandits, she had welcomed the distraction. She and Leticia had been friends since their earliest days of school when together they had been the stars of their local basketball team, until when they were twelve and were just starting to develop some real level of skill, Leticia had tripped on a member of the other team, and as she fell she destroyed most of the ligaments in her knee. The resulting surgery had mended it well enough that she could walk, but the resulting limp for Leticia and trauma for them both had meant the end of their basketball careers. In the end their friendship had grown stronger as they spent more time outside of the structure of a sports team, more time getting into all the mischief adolescents are prone to.
Once they showed Sara the wanted bulletins they’d collected for everyone in their hiding spot but her—even Jon and Ryan were included—she practically jumped at the opportunity to slip off and scout out an escape route for them all, freeing herself to think without continually trying to watch her tongue. Even among friends, the pressure to appear as expected was tiring. Some solitude and fresh air should certainly help reinvigorate her. She probably should have said goodbye to the two boys, but it’s too late for that now. Let them worry and wonder a bit, it should teach them for being so overly protective: She is hardly some damsel in distress. With a shiver she questions her sanity but grins nonetheless; it’s good to be free.
Breathing deeper once more, she exhales and crawls back to the top of the slope. The patrol has moved off into the distance and is nearly lost from her sight amongst the scattered cars. They are meandering, occasionally stopping to peer under one of the cars or to kick at a piece of garbage that has blown in their way. Scanning the rest of the parking lot, she sees nothing but dirty piles of snow and abandoned cars. Behind her the buildings of the campus rise against a backdrop of cold gray clouds menacingly looming. She crouches in the ditch, cold and alone, but across the parking lot, beyond the stone wall that separates the campus from the town, she can see the welcoming hodgepodge of buildings that is her destination.
Hoping that the feeling of being watched is only a product of her imagination, Sara half crawls half lunges towards the closest vehicle. Crouched behind its rear, she glances around to see if her new position reveals any new threats. Seeing none, she peeks around the corner of the vehicle’s fender to locate the patrol. The two figures are still making their way slowly towards the small shack at the parking lot’s entrance, presumably where they’ll sit and complain about the cold until they have to wander around the asphalt patch again.
Furtively she dashes to the next car. Staying low, she uses her hands to propel herself around snow drifts and the larger pieces of trash that litter the spaces between the vehicles. This is almost fun, she thinks as she skids to a stop behind an unmarked panel van. She feels almost like a kid again, playing hide and seek. True, she is not worried about being tagged and forced to be “it” next round; instead it is more likely she’ll be shot and her body will be dragged off to some government incineration facility. But there is something liberat
ing about taking her own life in her hands and doing something physical, something productive and tangible. Even if it is as simple as crossing a parking lot without being shot; the clear, tangible, and challenging yet still attainable goal feels more right than any of the ”challenges” she had grown used to before all of this happened.
Glancing around the van, she spies the ditch that will lead her to the freedom of the narrow streets lined with dive bars and overpriced restaurants. This oasis lies just beyond the wall that marks the edge of campus. She bares her teeth in a feral grin as she sucks in a lungful of crisp air. Her primal appearance is only heightened by a flush brought on by the cold and blowing snow. With only her face peeking through layers of insulation, it is not hard to imagine her with a flint-tipped spear in hand stalking some primeval beast.
It is three quick strides to the edge of the ditch. She clears the first two easily, her feet crunching through the stiff snow. But the third step, right at the edge of the parking lot, proves troublesome as the small gully along the curb meant to direct the runoff towards a safe outfall is filled with a thick layer of ice. She is already moving quickly and, not wanting to get caught in the open, she maintains her momentum, hoping to skate across the uneven yet slick surface.
She slips, fighting to shift enough of her weight forward to allow her to jump the low line of bushes that lines the top of the ditch. It is a study in futility. Her foot collides with the curb, twisting her ankle as her foot turns to make room for the rest of her body. Her knee buckles, robbed of its strength by the oblique angle of her lower leg, and she pitches forward into the bushes. She twists as she falls, managing to land on her shoulder instead of her face, and rolls down the slope until a large snow-covered rock stops her with a blow to the ribs.
Most of the shock is absorbed by the thick layers of insulation that have been losing a slow war of attrition against the cold. She lets out a sigh. The primal joy she had felt at being alive, being free, seems to have been knocked out by the fall. At least nothing seems to be broken, she thinks while curled around the rock. Untangling herself, she lets out a small gasp as she straightens her torso.
Lying on her back, she prods her ribs and stomach. Still nothing feels too badly damaged, but there should be quite the bruise covering most of her stomach and chest. Hopefully she won’t be faced with an occasion to wear a two piece any time soon. The absurdity of this thought elicits a chuckle, which is cut short by the enveloping pain that results from flexing her abdominal area.
Sara rolls over onto her hands and knees, pauses for a shallow breath, and then pushes herself up, slowly bracing on her thighs to lessen the strain in her core. Moving deliberately, she starts down towards the bottom of the ditch. Her step is still sure, but it lacks the spring it held before the tumble down the slope.
The snow is drifted deep where the low winter sun’s rays have not been able to shine through the towering wall that surrounds this portion of the campus. It pulls at her feet, and it is like trying to run through shallow water. Her light jog quickly tires her to the point where she has to walk, the cold air burning her lungs as she breathes heavily.
Despite the ditch seeming to stretch on forever, she makes it to the double culvert that will enable her escape. She sees to her relief that at some point, the padlock securing the metal grate across the opening had been broken, undoubtedly to allow freer passage for the transient population who call these ditches home in the warmer months.
The grate is stiff at first from ice built up in the hinges, but after raising it slightly there is a loud crack, and it opens the rest of the way easily. Fearful that the noise might have been heard by the soldiers in their cozy guard shack just up the slope, she slips into the culvert and quickly lowers the grate again. Her heart sinks as she realizes that her trudge down the bottom of the ditch has left a clear trail that even the most oblivious guard couldn’t help but notice. There is no way she is going to go back out there and brush her tracks over. Leaning against the closed grate, trying to think of her next move, her heart still pounding in her ears, she breathes a sigh of relief as a light breeze picks up some loose snow and blows it into the holes left by her feet. In the shelter of the pipe, she is thankful for the breeze that had before been so chilling when she was exposed.
Hoping that her tracks will be completely obscured before the patrol makes another round, she pivots. Staying low since her hat is already brushing the concrete top of the culvert, she starts into the darkness. She had always pictured these structures as full of trash, muck, and standing water—generally filthy and disgusting—but this one is relatively clean. Only a few small stones and a snowdrift near the entrance litter the floor. Several weeks ago, climbing down into a drainage ditch and being grateful for the sanctuary of what she’d assumed was a dirty culvert would have been unthinkable. Now with no other option she doesn’t think twice.
The culvert isn’t particularly long, needing only to pass under the wall surrounding the parking lot. When she emerges on the other side into a ditch very similar to the one from which she entered, she is relieved to see the lights of the shops and restaurants in the business district that abuts the campus still illuminating the night.
She is surprised to see so many people out despite the late hour and the biting cold. Following the crude map that her friend Leticia had drawn through the tunnels beneath the campus had seemed to take forever. With the deserted feel of the parking lot and the lackadaisical way the guards had been patrolling, she had assumed that it was some time in the early morning. With no timepiece left, she had listened to the way her subconscious had read what she had seen. The handful of pedestrians strolling along the sidewalks is enough to make her modify her initial assumption. Typically there would be a densely packed crowd that would make it easy to disappear into when she had visited this part of town before. But given that it is a Monday evening and campus has been completely locked down by the military, she’s surprised anyone is even out at the bars that typically serve overpriced cheap beer to the students who stumble in after class.
Moving to where some short scrubby bushes line the edge of an embankment, she begins to climb up to street level, using their gnarled branches to avoid sliding back down the slope. It isn’t a particularly difficult climb, but the combined excitement of moving furtively and dodging the patrol and escaping the well-meaning yet stifling company of Jon and Ryan leaves her breathless at the top of the slope. She can’t remember any time before when she felt quite as liberated; true she is supposed to be scouting an escape route for all the others, but there are no other instructions, no progress checkups. She is free to go about it however she wants. The only other thing she has to worry about is not getting caught, but the element of danger just makes it more fun. She is free to live for the first time in her memory.
She scans the road and, seeing no one, is about to leave the shelter of the bushes in which she is crouched when the door to one of the boutiques almost directly across from her opens. Four girls stumble out, clinging to each other and nearly collapsing en masse when one of them gets caught on the shop’s door. Their shrill, drunken laughter and skirts short enough that they disappear under the bottom edges of their designer jackets mark them as students enjoying the hiatus from class brought on by the military quarantine. Never one to drink quite as excessively as some of her peers, Sara can’t help but sneer a little thinking this probably isn’t an unusual Monday night out for this group. She just can’t understand how some people can justify throwing away that much money on an “education” that they just piss away.
The shrill group passes by, loudly insisting that one of the group has been making eyes at someone called Sam, which seems to be quite humorous for the rest of the group judging by their laughter. Once the way is clear, Sara slips out of the bushes and dusts off her pants, hoping to make it look less like she has been crawling around on her hands and knees all day.
She ambles down the sidewalk casually looking in the shop windows, her heart be
ating furiously as she uses each pause to glance up and down the row of shops for any sign of pursuit. The chattering group of girls has rounded the corner, taking with them their noise and leaving the street deserted. Sara pauses in front of the shop the group just left when she thinks she hears something overhead, a distant droning. The window’s display grabs her attention. It would seem that they sell high fashion lingerie and vintage costumes, neither of which has ever been particularly high on her list of priorities. However over in the corner of the window, one of the mannequins is wearing a particularly fun looking light blue ensemble that manages to straddle the line between underwear and costume. She smiles for a second, imagining the fun she might have in a situation in which she was wearing that.
Her smile is short lived though as the breeze picks up and sends a chill down her spine. She hunkers down in her coat and turns away from the window display; she has little hope for any situation in which she might get to wear something like that. Not that she really had great prospects before everything went sideways, but at least the fantasy seemed less laughable.
Pushing the thoughts of any potential love life aside, she continues down the street that leads straight away from campus, walking casually, trying to blend into the knots of people who are walking briskly between the buildings. After several blocks, the sidewalk, covered in discarded chewing gum and mysterious dark stains, ends at a crosswalk with a light. The road ahead runs straight into a line of waist-high bollards, each one painted a vibrant hue. Beyond the concrete stumps, the sidewalk gives way to a flagstone-paved courtyard that is relatively teaming with people, considering the day of the week and temperature.
Seeds to the Wind (The Medicean Stars Saga Book 2) Page 9
