The Darkest Path

by Jeff Hirsch

  “Thanks,” she said, and bit off a corner.

  I chewed slow, drawing the chocolate over my tongue, savoring it until it dissolved. I suddenly remembered the smell of fallen leaves and chimney smoke.

  “After my brother and I went trick-or-treating, we’d trade candy and I made it my goal to get every one of these he had.”

  “Did it work?”

  I laughed. “He was easy,” I said. “He loved Nerds. You know? The fruit things?”

  “Right.”

  “So I pretended that I did too — in fact, I loved them so much he was going to have to trade me two or three chocolate bars to get just one box. Worked every time. Sucker.”

  “I always looked for those caramel things. The ones on a stick?”

  “A Sugar Daddy.”

  “Right,” Nat said. “A Sugar Daddy. Every cavity I ever had as a kid can be directly traced back to a Sugar Daddy. So where’s your brother now? Still at home?”

  I felt a twinge and forced an image of James out of my head. “Still at Cormorant.”

  “Why?”

  “He’s Path now.”

  There was a distant buzz as another cell block opened somewhere in the building. Nat turned on her side and drew herself up to the bars.

  “I didn’t just happen to get thrown in jail,” she said. “I stepped outside for a reason. Two reasons actually. First, Carlos knows a guy who can get us fake IDs that say we’re eighteen. We’re going to get them, then head to a recruiting station in Casper to enlist.”

  “Why are you telling me—”

  “Because you’re coming with us.”

  “No, I’m going home. Your dad is calling the Feds. Once they get here I’m going to talk to them and—”

  “Whoa,” Nat said, holding up her hand. “Hold on a second. Do you think they’re going to help you?”

  I stared at her through the bars.

  “You’ve been living with the Path. You worked for them.”

  “They made me work for them. I ran away.”

  “After six years,” Nat said. “They’ve converted half the country, Cal. Do you think our government is just going to take your word that you’re on our side now? Once the MPs finish questioning you, they’ll put you in jail for treason.”

  “No, that’s not—”

  “If you’re going to live here, you’re going to have to seriously get up to speed. But look, don’t worry, I can talk to my dad. Once he’s cooled off, he’ll listen to me and then he’ll go talk to the sheriff. He won’t let the MPs take you. And I know you’re trying to get home, but you know the Path. You lived with them. We could use you. I mean, if you want your brother back one day, if you want to stop them from taking anybody else, you have to fight.” Nat had risen to her knees and was grasping the bars.

  If I say no to her, I thought, I’m never getting out of here.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Okay. Let’s do it.”

  “Perfect! I’ll talk to my dad tomorrow morning. Once you’re out we’ll—”

  There was a buzz and the door to our cell block swung open. Two silhouettes stood in the doorway. Keys jangled as they approached with loose-limbed staggering gaits. I could smell beer from ten feet away.

  “What’s this?” I whispered through the bars.

  Nat moved from the cot onto the floor. “The other reason I got myself thrown in jail.”

  A flashlight snapped on, blinding me.

  “Not much to him,” one of the men said. “Is there?”

  “There’s enough, I guess,” said the other, earning himself a laugh.

  “Hey, guys!” Nat yelled from her cell, startling the two. “It’s me! Nat!”

  The flashlight beam slid from me to her. I grabbed the blanket off the cot and took the opportunity to slip into a dark corner.

  “Nat,” one of them said, surprised and trying to steady his slur of a voice. “I didn’t know you were here.”

  “Karl brought me in for pissing Dad off.”

  “Oh, well, we were just—”

  “Save it, Limon,” Nat said. “You came here for a game of bounce the Pather off the wall. Right?”

  “We—”

  “Relax,” Nat said. “Dad was going to let me go in the morning anyway, so how about you guys give me a little early release and then you can stay and have your fun. Seriously, something I don’t see is something I don’t have to tell my dad about. And if I don’t tell him, he doesn’t tell Sheriff Jeffords.”

  The officer with the light laughed. Limon leaned in close to the bars, drunkenly grinning, his pale moon face just inches from Nat’s.

  “Who do you think sent us, Nat?”

  Nat said nothing and Limon laughed, clearly pleased to have stunned her. He turned away, but Nat grabbed his sleeve before he could go.

  “He helped me, Limon,” she said, dropping her sarcastic lilt. “Jenny is in that gym too, right? She’s going to get antibiotics because of him.”

  Limon tore away from her. “My wife wouldn’t be in there in the first place if it wasn’t for Pathers like him.”

  “He’s not—”

  “Enough talking,” the other officer said. “Let’s do it and report back.”

  “But he doesn’t know anything!”

  Limon unlocked my cell door, then made way for the officer with the light. As soon as he stepped inside, I sprang out of the corner and threw the blanket into the air between us. It hit the officer in the face, blinding him for the second it took me to dodge around him. I pivoted toward the still-open cell block door and it was almost within reach when something slammed into my back, knocking me to the ground.

  He turned me over with his boot, then stood over me, grinning, a black baton in his hand. He kicked the cell block door closed with a dull boom. “Get him up.”

  “Limon!” Nat called out from her cell. “Stop it!”

  The other officer hauled me into the cell and put my back against the wall. Limon strutted in behind him, slapping the baton in his palm.

  “Guess this is where your path gets you, kid. So unless you can tell me the Path’s plans for this region…”

  “I don’t know anything. Honest. I’m just a—”

  He pistoned the tip of his baton into my gut. Pain exploded through me and I started to crumple, but the other officer held me up to the wall.

  “Okay, let’s try another one. What are the locations of Path safe houses along the border?”

  “I told you! I don’t—”

  The baton struck again, this time a stinging blow to the side of my arm.

  “Limon, stop!” Nat yelled.

  “What are the codes for incoming Path bombing runs?”

  Before I could say anything, the baton slammed into my side, pinging off a rib. The pain was electric. I bit down on a scream, knowing that it would only get his blood racing faster. Limon pinned me to the wall with the baton, the tip of it grinding into my shoulder. He leaned in close.

  “Now,” he said. “I want to know the numbers of Path forces on the other side of the border.”

  “A hundred,” I said weakly, feeling unconsciousness tug at me.

  “What?”

  “A thousand,” I breathed. “A thousand men. And artillery. A Stryker brigade.”

  Limon took my chin in his hand and turned my face up to his, examining me with watery, bloodshot eyes.

  “Your friends murdered twelve of my buddies, kid. Damn near killed my wife. So if you think I’ve even begun hurting you, you’re mistaken.”

  “I don’t know anything.”

  Limon glanced at his partner. “Well, too bad for you, I guess.”

  He stepped back and raised the baton over his head.

  “Limon, no!”

  He let it fall, but before it could strike, there was an explosion just outside the station. The floor of the jail shook violently, sending us all to our knees. Limon scrambled for the baton, but I kicked it into a corner and made for the door. The other officer grabbed my ankle and pulled me back
just as the cell block door flew open.

  “Natalie!”

  Nat’s father stormed in, grabbing at the keys on his belt.

  “Dad! You have to help Cal!”

  Nat’s father stopped short when he saw the jumble of bodies in my cell. He reached into the cell and yanked Limon out by his arm. “What are you two doing? Get to your stations.”

  He shoved Limon out the cell block door and then came back for the other one. Sirens were going off outside now, whooping shrieks that reverberated off the walls and steel bars.

  “Get to your vehicles and sober up,” he said as he tossed the second officer out of the cell. “We’ve got Path incoming.”

  The floor shuddered with another explosion. I struggled up onto the cot to catch my breath, my body vibrating from the beating Limon gave me. My cell slammed shut.

  “Dad! What’s going on?”

  There was a rattle of keys and a door opened. “Mayor gave the order to evacuate.”

  “What about Cal? You can’t just leave him here!”

  “He’s a prisoner! Now come on!”

  Nat’s father had them halfway to the cell block door when the biggest explosion yet sent Nat crashing into his back. They both hit the ground. Nat was up first, digging for something on her father’s belt. The next thing I knew, my cell door was being thrown open. I started to run, but Nat pushed me back. There was a clatter of steel as she fumbled with something between us. Cold metal slapped against my wrist.

  “What are you doing?”

  Nat’s father appeared at the cell door. “Natalie, we don’t have time for this. We have to go right—”

  Nat stepped to the side and her father stared openmouthed at the handcuffs that now secured my wrist to his daughter’s. Nat tore another key off the ring she’d stolen from him and threw it down the drain of the sink behind us.

  “Sorry, Dad,” she said. “Looks like it’s both of us or none.”

  • • •

  The three of us ran through the police station. It was packed with a torrent of officers tearing up and down the hall, and the noise from outside was nearly deafening now. Emergency sirens wailed all around us.

  “Is it drones?” Nat asked.

  “Not this time. Manned bombers and ground troops on the way.”

  The crowd parted and the front door of the station appeared before us. I stopped dead.

  “Bear,” I said. “Where is he?”

  “No time!” Nat’s father said. “We have to go now. There are trucks waiting outside.”

  Nat turned, darting down a hallway, dragging me with her by our cuffs. Her father yelled after us, but then he was on our heels as we ran down the cell block.

  “Here!” Natalie threw herself against a door and we found ourselves in the midst of a kennel full of furiously barking dogs in cages.

  “Bear!”

  “At the end,” Nat’s father said. “Last row!”

  Nat and I ran for it as her father started opening cages to free the other dogs. Bear was cowering at the back of his cage, too terrified to bark. I got the gate open and he jumped into my arms.

  “Okay, buddy, let’s get out of here.”

  I pinned Bear to my chest with my cast and we all ran back out into the station and toward the front door. Outside, vehicles were already pulling away. Another officer appeared to lead the police dogs into a van as Nat’s father led us to a parking lot where one police cruiser still remained. I barely had time to push Bear into the backseat before Nat’s father was gunning the engine and pulling out. We left the station and tore through the town of Waylon.

  The Path’s bombing run seemed to have subsided, leaving a ruined town in its wake. Everywhere we looked, there were fires. The frames of houses trembled within coronas of flame, and scores of trees burned, throwing off showers of sparks in the kicked-up winds. All around us, people were fleeing however they could. Cars careened through the streets, mixing with families on foot, loaded down with their possessions. Injured and dead lay on the sidewalks, some wept over, some abandoned. Nat’s father ignored them all, weaving through the streets, trying to avoid craters that pitted the roadway.

  “Where are we going?” Nat shouted, but her father ignored her. He steered us around a traffic jam, half of the car on the road, half on the shoulder. We shot across a grass divider and onto a service road, where he shut off his headlights and sirens and pushed the speedometer to seventy.

  Bear trembled in my lap. A blur of trees passed outside our window and then switched to a high steel fence. I leaned forward and saw the outline of a control tower and a few small private planes and helicopters.

  “Get off the road!” I shouted, grabbing at the bars between us.

  “What?”

  “Get off the road now!”

  “Why?”

  I pointed out ahead. “Because of that!”

  The entrance to the airport appeared in front of us. Parked outside were three Path Humvees and ten or fifteen soldiers. Nat’s father jerked the steering wheel and the car fell off the roadway and down an embankment.

  “If there’s an airport, it’s the first thing the Path seizes,” I said as we bounced over the field. “They’ll have the place surrounded in an hour.”

  Nat’s father cursed, then conferred with someone on the radio. We ended up on a dirt road, eventually meeting up with a small convoy of evacuees deep in the woods and out of sight of the Path. There were police and civilian vehicles as well as a single yellow school bus. All of them were parked with their lights out just off the roadway. Nat’s dad pulled over and got out of the car, leaving us inside with the engine running.

  He joined a crowd of men, including Limon and his buddy, who were gathered around an older man consulting in low tones. All of them were armed, but I didn’t see anything heavier than AR-15s and shotguns. Dozens of terrified civilians surrounded the officers. They were a mix of young and old, men, women, and children. Entire families bunched together.

  “This is because of me,” Nat said, staring darkly out of the window. “This is for what happened at the checkpoint.”

  “You don’t know that,” I said. “They’ve hit the town before.”

  “Not like this.” I started to speak again but Nat cut me off. “Tell me what happens next.”

  “Once they have control of the town, they’ll gather everyone together and give them the Choice.”

  “And my guess is the people who refuse to join up don’t really go to cozy little concentration camps to wait out the war.”

  The windows of the yellow school bus were full of the faces of children, most of them younger than us. I thought of a little boy holding a toy out to me in the middle of the California desert, his relieved family smiling behind him.

  “No,” I said. “They don’t.”

  Ahead of us, the sheriff was arranging the armed men into teams, pairing them off and pointing them toward vehicles.

  My God, I thought. He’s going to try to take the airfield.

  The door was locked and there was no catch or door handle on the inside, so I threw my shoulder against the window, making a racket until Nat’s father noticed and returned to the cruiser.

  “You can’t do this,” I said as he pulled us out of the car. “All you’re going to do is get yourselves killed.”

  He grabbed the cuffs attaching me and Nat and worked a key into them. “We don’t have a choice.”

  “You do,” I said. “Surrender. Say you make a choice for the Path. All of you. They’ll take you, but no one has to die. It’s the only way.”

  He popped the cuffs off of us and then stared down at me. “Son, these people murdered my wife and tonight they put my town to the torch, killing God knows how many people in the process. Every person here will fight them until we don’t have breath left in our bodies. Anybody who’d do different is a coward.”

  He waved another cop over.

  “Get them on the bus,” he said. “Now. We move out in five.”

  “Da
d!” Nat shouted. She tried to go after him, but the other deputy held her back and started herding us toward the bus. Bear was on him immediately, jumping up and digging his paws into the man’s leg. When the deputy turned to swat Bear away, Nat twisted out of his grip and sprinted back to her father’s cruiser. I followed, jumping into the passenger seat as she slammed the driver’s-side door shut.

  “Nat, what are you—”

  She threw the car into reverse and took off, barely giving me time to close my door. She sped out of the field and onto the roadway. I looked back at Bear barking after us.

  “Whatever you’re planning isn’t going to work,” I said. “We need to get your Dad to—”

  “What?” Nat said. “He’s not going to surrender, Cal. This is my fault. I’m not just letting it happen.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I think you’ve got a little less than three minutes to figure that out.”

  Nat gripped the steering wheel as the road to the airport vanished beneath us. Up ahead the tree cover thinned and the airport’s perimeter fence appeared. Nat reached over and opened a compartment under the dash.

  “See what we have to work with.”

  I rooted around inside, pushing aside papers and pens until my fingers hit steel. I pulled out another pair of handcuffs and a gray case that sat beside them. I dropped the cuffs in my lap and opened the case.

  “Pull over.”

  “Cal, we don’t have time to—”

  “Just do it.”

  Nat cut her speed and moved us off to the side of the road. The airport entrance was just visible a couple miles down the road. I lifted the taser out of its case and held it up between us.

  “Okay,” I said, suddenly calm. “Here’s what we do.”

  17

  The .50 cal gunner on one of the Humvees fired a warning volley and I brought the cruiser to a halt in the middle of the road. There were three Humvees sitting in the revolving blue and red of our dome lights, one dead center in front of the airport entrance, with the other two on either side. Four soldiers stood in the space between them, three with weapons pointed at us, and the other, a compact man with a steel-gray crew cut, watching grimly.