Isolation (Shadowmark Book 3)

by Alex Bratton

  “I saw them,” she said finally.

  Doyle sat across from Mina and stoked the fire, adding the log. The warmth encouraged her.

  “The Glyphs. My plane had just landed. They were everywhere. Attacking, burning, k—” The word stuck. “People ran, but it didn’t matter.”

  Mina looked at Doyle, waiting. He finished with the fire and lay down again, staring at the sky. Irritated, Mina lay down, too, but she didn’t go back to sleep.

  Doyle’s breathing was light. Maybe he wasn’t asleep, either. She used the opportunity to ask him a question that had been weighing heavily on her mind.

  “Are the guns for the invaders or hunting?”

  Doyle gave her a deadpan look, regarding her as if he couldn’t quite believe she had asked the question. Finally, he answered. “I don’t think guns will have any impact on the Glyphs.”

  “How do you know?” Mina wanted to know if he’d fought them, to confirm her theory that he might be military. Was he a deserter?

  “I thought you just told me you’d seen them?” he asked incredulously. “The guns are for people, Mina, and some hunting. Does that bother you?”

  “Yes, it bothers me.”

  “Well, then, I’ll just leave them here and let someone else pick them up.”

  “You don’t have to be a jerk about it.”

  Doyle sat up. “Why did you ask me a question you already knew the answer to?”

  Mina sat up, too, squaring her shoulders. “I wanted to know who I was aligning myself with.”

  Doyle snorted. “What’s that old saying? Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t?”

  Mina shook her head. “I don’t think you’re the devil. I just don’t like guns.”

  “Why not?”

  “They scare me.”

  “The guns shouldn’t scare you.” His dark eyes seemed to look right through her. “Only the people.”

  Mina had told the truth. Doyle wasn’t the devil, and he didn’t scare her. How could he after all he’d done to help her? It didn’t make her feel better about the guns, though.

  They remained in the valley for a few days, looking for food. Doyle knew which plants to eat and which ones to avoid, and he usually found something to add to the dwindling supply of granola in their bags. Three nights later, Mina successfully started the fire on her own. Satisfied with herself, she smiled at her own accomplishment but stopped short of voicing her enthusiasm to Doyle.

  The next day, Mina was adding Doyle’s iodine drops to stream water when he told her he was going to hike up the ridge to look around. Mina stood. “I’ll go with you.”

  Doyle tightened the laces on his boots. “You’ll just slow me down.”

  “You could slow down for me.”

  Doyle shot her a look but otherwise ignored the comment. He finished lacing his boots and took off up the mountain. Mina thought about following him, but what was she was trying to prove? He already knew he could outpace her on his worst day.

  After he left, Mina searched for the bright blue flowers of chicory root Doyle had shown her yesterday with no luck. The day warmed a little, and the sun overhead cheered her. At the stream, Mina took off her shoes to soak her sore feet in the icy water.

  Emboldened by her temporary solitude, Mina decided to bathe and wash her clothing. She stripped to her underwear and forced herself back into the water, gritting her teeth to stop them from chattering. Within seconds, her whole body shook with cold. She screwed up her courage and dunked herself under the surface. Her body screamed with biting pain, but Mina ignored it as she furiously scrubbed off days’ worth of filth and mud.

  When she couldn’t stand still for shivering, she climbed out of the pool on rubbery legs to wrap herself in her blanket. Then, she raked her clothes over the small rocks in the stream a few times before laying them on larger rocks to dry in the sunshine. After working through the tangles in her hair, Mina wrung out her disheveled coils and sat in the sunshine next to her clothes. She drew her arms in close to her body, shivering violently. Dunking herself in the freezing water was probably stupid, but she would dry in the sun long before evening. In the meantime, she was clean.

  As the afternoon wore on, Mina’s hair dried, but her clothes remained as wet as ever. The sun sank behind a mountain, so she lit another small fire at the last night’s campsite, hanging her clothes out next to it. The heat dried them quickly. She had just finished dressing and was twisting her hair up on top of her head when Doyle headed down through the trees. Without a word, he walked over to the fire and stamped it out with his foot.

  “Hey!” she asked indignantly. “Why’d you do that?”

  “No fire tonight.”

  “Are you going to tell me why?”

  Doyle sat next to a tree and shook a rock out of his boot. Mina kicked at the fire herself before hunkering down inside her blanket. A fine cloud of ash rose into the air.

  “Bathing wasn’t smart,” he said abruptly. “Hypothermia can set in surprisingly fast out here.”

  Mina stiffened. “Were you watching me?”

  “No. You smell better.”

  “It’s really none of your business.”

  Doyle shrugged and sat back. “Just a bit of advice.”

  “I considered hypothermia.”

  “Then why risk it?”

  Mina sniffed. “At least I would have died clean.”

  They didn’t speak again all evening.

  Mina woke sometime in the middle of the night, shivering so hard her teeth chattered. The air had turned cold again, and her blanket wasn’t keeping her as warm as she thought it should. She curled up into a ball, pulling the woolen fabric over her nose, keeping as much warm air inside as possible.

  Unwilling to admit that Doyle had been right about bathing, Mina tried to stay quiet as she rubbed her arms to generate heat. Within a minute, though, she heard Doyle’s frustrated sigh.

  “How bad is it?” he asked.

  Mina contemplated playing dumb, telling him she’d been sleeping, but he was too smart for that. Now wasn’t a good time to let her pride get in the way of warming up.

  “Pretty bad,” she admitted through gritted teeth. “I can’t stop shivering.”

  “Shivering means your body is trying to make its own heat.”

  “I know that.”

  “Too bad we can’t use that intelligence of yours when it comes to bathing, huh?”

  Mina ignored the jab. “Are you sure we can’t light a fire?”

  Doyle sighed. “I’m sure.”

  Just then, the faint smell of wood smoke drifted through the trees. Mina only caught a whiff, but it was enough to make her sit up and gasp. “Do you smell that?”

  “Yes.”

  The invaders must have been close. Either that, or someone had let a campfire get out of control. With Doyle’s insistence about their own campfire, Mina didn’t think it was an accident.

  Wrapping her blanket around her, Mina drew her knees to her chest. She still shivered, but the smoke gave her something else to worry about. The mountains were supposed to be a safe place to hide. Why were the invaders here?

  “Were you always this much trouble?” Doyle asked after a minute.

  “What?”

  “Before the invasion, were you always so high maintenance?”

  “No one has ever said that about me,” Mina said, irked. “I’ve always been self-sufficient.”

  “Hmm,” he said as if he didn’t believe her.

  “What do you want me to say? That you were right about the water, and I’m an idiot?”

  “It’s a start.”

  “Well, I said it. Don’t expect to hear it again.”

  Doyle mumbled something that didn’t sound like words of comfort.

  “What did you say?” she asked. “I didn’t quite catch that.”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “If you’re waiting until I pass out before helping me, don’t bother. You can just leave me here in the morn
ing, frozen to death next to the cold fire. The fire you could have started to save my life.”

  Doyle snorted. “All right.”

  With a surge of panic, Mina thought he was going to light the fire. Even though she was giving him a hard time about it, she didn’t want to attract the invaders. But when Doyle got up, she heard him walk over to her, not the fire pit. The tarp beneath her shifted as he sat next to her.

  Mina shifted uncomfortably, but it had nothing to do with the cold.

  Doyle scooted closer. “It’s obvious now I can’t let you die next to a cold fire pit. We can’t light it, either. I’m the next best thing. Do you want to warm up or not?”

  Since Mina couldn’t feel her toes or nose, she didn’t see the point of arguing. She lifted the blanket, allowing another cold shock of air to whoosh in. Throwing his jacket over her legs, Doyle tucked himself next to her with his arm around her shoulders and threw his blanket over both of them.

  Immediately, the warmth from his body began spreading to Mina. She sighed in relief, relaxing a bit. Doyle pulled her closer. He smelled like the forest—dirt and leaves—mixed with something else she couldn’t quite place. Not sweat, exactly. Something she couldn’t describe.

  The position was awkward. If Doyle hadn’t radiated heat like an oven, she would have felt uncomfortable with their proximity. The extra body heat was too welcome for Mina to worry about it. In a betrayal to those thoughts, she thought that if she were really hypothermic, Doyle should hug her close.

  Mina wasn’t that cold.

  It wasn’t that Doyle was unattractive. If he didn’t always wear an exasperated expression on his face, he would have been nice to look at. Mina had noticed more than once. When he was just hiking and not making snide remarks, he had a handsome face. Strong, a little harsh, but softened by the short beard. Mina had not gotten any farther than that. He always did something to irk her, sending her spinning into a silent tirade.

  Snuggling under the blankets hadn’t exactly been the next step to getting along. Mina smirked, wondering what Doyle was thinking. Probably the same thoughts about her. She knew she irritated him. She didn’t do it on purpose… most of the time.

  The extra heat had warmed Mina so much that her arm facing him was growing hot. She wanted to turn, but any other position was likely to be even more awkward.

  “How are you so warm?” she asked.

  “I didn’t jump into the creek this afternoon.”

  “I bet that snark has always endeared you to people.”

  “It certainly adds to your charm. Why not mine?”

  Aggravated, Mina pursed her lips.

  "Why are you so determined to keep things the way they are?” he asked.

  “You mean, why did I worry about being clean? It wasn’t from a desire to be civilized.” Mina shrugged. “I just wanted to feel fresh.”

  “And for that, you would risk exposure.”

  “I had counted on the fire.”

  “Your symptoms are relatively mild.”

  “I’m so glad I have your expert opinion on these things,” she snapped. “What is it you said you did before the invasion?”

  “I didn’t.”

  Now that the shivering had subsided, Mina was beginning to feel a bit too warm. She didn’t have time to comment, though, before Doyle shifted. When he did, she caught a sudden glimpse of stars… and fire.

  Startled, she sat up straight, looking around. The vision disappeared, the smell of smoke remained the same, and neither stars nor fire were visible in the dark woods.

  Doyle tensed. “What’s the matter?”

  “Dreaming again.” Mina shook her head. “If you can dream while awake.”

  “You must have dozed off. Warmer?”

  “Yes. Thank you.”

  Doyle moved, leaving the extra blanket and jacket with her. When she heard him resettle on the other side of the fire pit, she asked, “You don’t want your jacket?”

  “No. We have to leave soon. Try to get some sleep, Mina.”

  Ever since their argument, Nash was unhappy. Lincoln sensed they would argue again, but he couldn’t have reacted any differently. The Interface Labs team had been fortunate to get out of Boston. By remaining in West Virginia, they were giving up hope of ever finding out what happened to their families. Lincoln didn’t doubt that Mina was gone, but what about Alvarez’s mother or Nelson’s dad? Nash needed to know where the boundaries were. Given the chance for a do-over, Lincoln would respond in the exact same way.

  He also sensed that he had crossed a line, so he hunkered down to work, determined to prove that he and his team were valuable.

  At night, Lincoln poured over maps and data sheets by candlelight, tapping a pen against his thigh. While everyone else slept, he remained alone in the hospital tent. The man and woman who had been in the tent when Lincoln had arrived had been treated for dehydration and left to set up their own camp at the edge of the military encampment. They weren’t the only ones. At least twenty others had come down out of the surrounding mountains looking for food and protection. Nash had set another guard around their food stores and ordered both soldiers to shoot anyone who tried to get in without authorization.

  Lincoln stopped tapping and scrubbed a hand over his face. None of this puzzle made sense. Why here in West Virginia? What was the silo for? Were there more? They had no way of knowing the answers. They would have to work with what they had.

  Lincoln needed to open that locked door in Corridor A. Maybe the previous research was sealed inside.

  He blew out the candle and lay down. The sky was already lighter. Maybe they could go in another way. As he drifted off to sleep, he remembered he had already found another entrance by accident. His team could start at the second entrance and work their way back down with light this time.

  Lincoln closed his eyes, relieving the aching that he had ignored for the past several hours. His thoughts drifted to Mina, and he opened his eyes again. Think of something else. He couldn’t think of his sister dying. Not yet. Not now. Not with the mountain looming over all of them.

  The mountain no longer scared Lincoln. He viewed it as just another puzzle. He had always liked puzzles, the rush of frustration followed by the relief of accomplishment. Like a work of art, the individual clues were seldom beautiful by themselves, but eventually, they came together to create something magnificent. Lincoln had always thought of himself as much an artist as an engineer, but this puzzle presented itself differently. When finished, the pieces and fragments would reveal something hideous, not beautiful, and Lincoln could not stop himself from putting it together.

  Mina woke to Doyle shaking her roughly. The moon had set behind the mountains, making the campsite pitch-black.

  “Whassa matter?” she asked, heart pounding.

  “We have to go.”

  “Now?”

  “Hurry and find your gear,” he said.

  Mina had nothing to pack but the blanket wrapped around her, having gathered everything else before going to sleep. They ate in silence. In a few minutes, the predawn light made it possible for her to stumble after Doyle, who led the way up the mountain.

  “Why are we leaving?” she asked.

  “Shh.”

  They climbed over the ridge. Peaceful green mountains stretched out before them in all directions. Mina could not remember the last time she had felt so secure, even though Doyle seemed to be on edge, taking only one short break the entire day. She was learning to enjoy the safety of isolation. It meant nothing was trying to kill them. Once, a whiff of smoke reached them on the wind, but the sky remained clear. Mina looked at Doyle to see his reaction, but he ignored her. Tired of his rudeness, Mina didn’t say anything, either.

  They didn’t encounter anything that day except for a small black bear that ambled away from them, and Mina wondered why more refugees had not sought the protection of the mountains. As the days wore on, Mina guessed they never encountered other people because Doyle expertly avoided them. A few more
times, he broke camp or woke her before dawn to leave, never explaining why. Mina learned not to ask about these sudden urges to travel since he only responded with exasperated silence.

  Mina was hopelessly lost. At first, she tried to keep track of their route by using the sun as a guide, but their hikes through the forest only led them into wilder territory, making the idea of walking in one direction laughable. She had no idea if they were walking toward Atlanta or away from it.

  We’re going to be okay, right? As a fourteen-year-old child, she’d asked Lincoln this question after Dad had passed from cancer. He’d told her yes. Lincoln had been in his second year at MIT, her only family since their mother had run off years before. Lincoln had flown with Mina to see her godparents and had arranged for Mina to move in with them. He’d visited as often as he could. Suddenly burdened with the death of a parent and then taking care of a younger sister who depended on him, he’d had to grow up fast. The two of them had always struggled on, helping each other when possible.

  Guilt returned, reclaiming its heavy place inside Mina’s chest, pressing against her heart. Have I abandoned Lincoln? She should suggest to Doyle they walk south.

  After the third hastily abandoned campsite, Mina reminded Doyle she wanted to find her brother.

  He shrugged. “Yes, I remember.”

  I should be able to leave, to take care of myself.

  The weight sank deeper into her chest. Mina hated to admit she was entirely dependent on Doyle for her survival. Yet, the more she observed him, the more Mina understood how woefully ignorant she was, and she resented him for it.

  A new pang of remorse shot through her. Doyle hadn’t requested anything beyond Mina “pulling her weight,” as he had called it. Build the fire, keep watch some nights, and boil water. Doyle found the food. A simple system. Mina should be grateful.

  One night, Mina couldn’t shake the shame. They had hiked all day, and she’d had nothing to relieve her thoughts as she jumped over fallen trees and scrambled over rocks. Although tired, she lay looking up at the stars, wide awake. Doyle was as silent as always, but he wasn’t sleeping, either.