by Jeff Hirsch
“We have to go back!” she screamed. “We have to get Alec!”
There was a crash behind us and I turned, expecting a squad of Path soldiers. It was Mitchell. He raced down the hill and dropped to his knees in front of me.
“Took us too long to get here,” he said, panting as he freed a spent magazine from his rifle and tossed it aside. “Drone took Rashad’s Humvee and now there’s movement everywhere. Path. Fed. I don’t know. You have to get them moving. Head west.”
He seized, digging one hand into his side. It came back shiny with blood.
“Sergeant—”
He knocked my hand away. “The plane is on an airstrip two klicks west,” he said. “Last we heard, no one controls it yet. You have to get there before they do. Get to it and get on it, all of you.”
“But you’re—”
“Go!”
Mitchell slammed a fresh magazine into his rifle and ran back toward the hill. Bear was barking again, wild and high-pitched, mixing in with the chatter of weapons fire and crackling flames coming from the road. Reese was the only one still on his feet, so I grabbed him first, turning him to face me.
“We have to go. Get Christos. Do you hear me?”
Reese nodded and lurched away. Kate was on her knees, slumped over with Diane at her shoulder. I took her arm but she thrashed away from me.
“We can’t just leave. We have to get Alec!”
“He’s dead, Kate.”
She looked up at me, eyes wild, uncomprehending. There was no time for this. I glanced at Diane, and she jerked Kate up without a word and got her moving.
Bear and I led the way, running until we were nearly out of sight of the road. I took one last look behind us and saw Mitchell on his back, arms thrown up over his head, his weapon on the ground next to him. Dark figures, silhouetted in the Humvee fire, were crossing the highway toward us.
Gunshots zipped through the air, slicing into branches and rocks all around us. There was a clear trail dead ahead, but I led the others off of it and into heavier woods. We ran over dark and uneven ground, crashing to the earth and pulling each other up again and again until the firing behind us finally died down.
We came out of the woods and entered a shallow valley that was filled with a pall of gray smoke heavy as fog. Explosions made deep bruises of red and yellow within it, and the rattle of gunfire came from every direction. Seeing no other alternative, Bear and I led the others into the smoke, trudging across ground that was a mix of torn grass and ankle-deep mud. It was like walking underwater.
I kept us as close together as I could, but there were moments when I’d look back and someone would have evaporated into the gray, only to reappear seconds later. Only Bear stayed by my side, but he was limping again and cringing at the rattle of fire. Every time we paused I dropped my hand to his side, petting him to try to still his shaking.
We’ll get them in sight of the airfield, I thought, willing it to somehow bridge the gap between us. And then they’re on their own. We’ll find the highway east and mix in with the evacuees.
We moved on, catching bits and flashes of the fighting through the haze. Men and women grappling hand to hand. Scattered, torn bodies facedown in the muck. Ranks of artillery like smokestacks vomiting fire and smoke into the sky. Once, we all dropped into the mud and watched as a company of tanks passed within feet of us. Close up, they were massive, their flat gray hides making them seem like something mythological — eyeless creatures clanking and grinding and spewing fire.
More than anything else we saw our own mirror images — ghostly scores of refugees shambling half blind in every direction. I shuddered to see them, feeling a sudden bone-deep terror that said there was no airfield at all, only this smoke and this battlefield, and we would all be out here wandering in the gray forever.
The base of a hill emerged from the smoke and I waved everyone to it. We all dropped to the ground, exhausted. Bear cringed against my leg, trembling at the blasts that shook the ground without a pause.
Kate and Reese looked to be the worst off, pale and blank eyed, their clothes torn and weighed down with muck. Reese’s wound had stopped bleeding but his face and neck were covered in blood. Christos looked unhurt but he was strangely listless, sitting draped over his knees and breathing shallow. Diane was as dirty and worn as the rest, but she seemed sharper than she had been before, more focused. She was crouched beside me, searching the hillside methodically. There were pockets of other refugees all around us — men, women, families — all of them clinging to the hillside like it was a life raft.
“Look.”
Diane pointed about a half mile above us just as the wind shifted, revealing a thin road that rose up the hill and, at the end of it, a small island of light. Within it I could make out the rotating lights of a control tower and a tall steel fence.
Diane moved forward, but I held her back. We weren’t the only ones interested. Muzzle flashes bloomed along the length of the hill, like strings of firecrackers.
“What do we do?”
I looked to our right where the ground ran straight and clear along the base of the hill and into the woods. The highway east was only a few miles on the other side of those trees. This was my chance.
I heard my instructions to them in my head — Keep your eyes on the lights of the airport. Keep running. Don’t stop no matter what. But when I turned back, Reese and Christos and Kate and Diane were all watching me. Behind them some of the other refugees had drifted down around our circle, all of them waiting.
“Cal,” Diane said. “What do we do?”
Bear was on the ground in the center of our group, turned in a ball, his head tucked into his belly. I placed my palm on his back and felt his warmth move through me.
“You follow me.”
• • •
Bear and I sprinted up the hill toward the road. Kate and Reese were behind me, followed by Diane and Christos. The other refugees were spread out below us, like links in a chain. Two or three at a time, spaced thirty seconds apart.
The hillside was a slurry of mud and debris that sent all of us down into the muck every few feet. Each time, though, we dug in and got back up and kept running, focusing on the lights of the airport and trying to ignore the sounds of the valley being ripped apart behind us.
I hit the road and made it halfway up before I was stopped by a roadblock of Humvees. They raised their weapons and shouted, but we darted off the track and back into the trees. An instant later I heard the swoop of a helicopter, and the roadblock was obliterated. The shock wave sent me into the mud. Bear dug his snout into my side, urging me up. I pushed him aside and started to move.
“Cal!”
Behind me, Diane and Christos were running up the hill to Reese and Kate. Kate was standing but Reese wasn’t. He was on his back, conscious but moaning and clawing at the mud. When I reached him I saw that his leg was shattered midway down his shin.
“What do we do?” Kate asked, her eyes electric with fear.
“Keep going,” I said and pushed her up the hill. “Christos!”
Christos left Diane and dropped by his friend’s side. Reese was sweating and pale, covered in mud. He gritted his teeth to try to keep from screaming.
“I’ll get his arms,” I said to Christos.“You take his knees.”
“But his leg—”
“Do it!”
Christos hooked his arms under Reese’s knees, and I slipped my elbows beneath his armpits. Reese shrieked as we lifted him, the veins in his neck bulging, his skin going scarlet. It got even worse when we began moving up the uneven ground and I was climbing backward, slipping and stumbling. He screamed until his throat was shredded and then he passed out.
We hobbled up the hill that way until the sky went bright around us. At first I thought it was another explosion, but then I saw my feet move from mud to asphalt. Floodlights were beating down on us. I looked over my shoulder and saw the open gate of the airfield. Kate and Diane had run ahead out onto t
he tarmac, where a single plane waited. Christos and I made it through the gate and then hit the ground when we couldn’t take another step. Bear rushed to my side, digging his nose into my arm.
He flattened to the ground when a drone shot over the airfield with a scream. It loosed its munitions on the valley. Where they fell, it was like a seam had been ripped into the earth and you could see all the way down to its molten core.
Two of the other refugees came over the lip of the hill at a run and moved Christos and me out of the way as soon as they saw us. They took Reese in their arms and brought him the rest of the way toward the plane. Its engines were spinning now, filling the air with their urgent whine.
Diane returned for Christos and then someone tugged at my arm.
“We have to go!”
Kate’s violet eyes were electric in the floodlights. She knelt down beside me and covered my hand with hers.
I looked over her shoulder at the gleaming white of the jet as the refugees filed inside. I saw myself in one of its seats, strapped in and climbing into the night sky, leaving behind the Path and the Feds forever. It should have made me feel like I was being sprung from a prison, but it didn’t. It was like there was a stake running through my body and deep into the earth and if I tried to leave, I’d be torn apart.
“Come on,” Kate said. “It’s over.”
Her hand slipped from mine as I backed away. Kate called out to me but I had already turned and started running. Bear’s claws scrabbled against the tarmac behind me, racing to keep up. I heard Kate’s voice one last time as we ran through the gate and turned east toward a patch of trees where the land dipped down into the valley. We hit the edge of it just as another bombing run completed out in the valley. The ground shook and my foot hit thin air, sending me tumbling down the embankment.
Rocks and twigs raked my arms and back as Bear and I went spinning down the face of the hill. We hit the bottom with a jolt and rolled into a thin stream of icy water. I lay there buzzing and numb, holding my breath against the rush of pain I knew was coming.
Far above me, there was a swell of engines, loud even over the sounds of the battle, and then the jet’s running lights appeared as it strained against gravity and rose into the sky. Trails of tracer fire chased it but they fell short. In seconds the jet was swallowed up by the dark.
I imagined all of them looking down at fires in the valley and then the snaking lights of the evacuees on the highway, relieved to see them grow smaller and fade away. I wondered how cold that relief would feel when they looked back and saw the place where Alec was meant to sit.
There was a whimper behind me and I turned to find Bear lying in the water, dazed and still.
“Bear?”
I crawled across the ground, grimacing from the pain, and reached out for him. Bear’s teeth flashed as he snapped at my finger.
“Hey. It’s me.”
Bear kicked himself back into the muck near the stream, coiling up and eyeing me warily. He growled when I went for him again, so I held up my hands and eased back onto my knees to examine him from a distance.
“Shhh. Shhhhh.”
There was a shallow gash on his belly and another on his side, but it was one of his front legs that was the real problem. It was bloody from a deep cut that ran nearly its length and the paw was badly swollen. It was the paw he had been avoiding on and off for days. It looked like one of the thin bones just back from his claw had snapped. I looked down the length of the ditch. It had to be a mile or more to the highway.
The fighting was still raging in the valley behind us. We had no choice. I plunged my hands in the scummy water of the ditch and scrubbed the soot and sweat from my face before drinking deep to purge the acid from my throat.
Bear growled steadily as I reached for him. Moving as slow as I could, I got one of my hands on his side and held it there. His fur was hot and his heart was racing. His growl rose in pitch as I moved closer. He snapped again, drawing blood, but I managed to get my hands hooked under his front legs and lift. My wrist throbbed and he yelped in pain but I got him up onto my shoulder, holding him steady and letting him settle as the icy water of the stream coursed around my feet.
When I felt his head fall to my shoulder I held him tight and started moving. I stayed as low as I could, stroking Bear’s back and whispering in his ear as I crept the length of the ditch. We finally came to a place where the water ran into another concrete pipe. I could hear honking horns and idling engines just above us.
I climbed the embankment around the pipe, awkwardly leaning forward so Bear’s weight wouldn’t throw me off balance and send us tumbling backward. He began a steady whine in my ear. The sound of it gutted me. I wanted nothing more than to stop and hold him until it passed, but I kept pushing us on, focused on the highway sounds ahead. A couple feet from the top, I set Bear down and belly-crawled the rest of the way until I could peek between two thin trees.
The highway was choked with a river of cars and trucks stopped dead. Horns and voices blared and miles of brake lights glowed bloodred, from where I stood out to the horizon. Bear stood watching it all, his injured paw held tight to his chest.
“Hey! Over here!”
A rusty Chevy sat a few cars down from us. The passenger-side window was open and a gray-haired woman was leaning out of it and waving us down. Bear lifted his head and then hobbled over to her. When he reached the car, he jumped up on his hind legs and hooked his one good paw over the window. The woman produced a bag of crackers and fed them to him one by one.
“This your puppy?” the old woman asked.
I nodded and dropped down beside Bear. “You know there’s Path just on the other side of those trees.”
“Yep,” she said. “Saw ’em a ways back and they waved us right by. Word is they decided that it was better to hand the Feds a refugee crisis than deal with it themselves. Say one thing about those Pathers — they ain’t dumb!”
She cackled, then turned to the man driving the car and exchanged a few words. Bear moved down the length of the car, sniffing around the backseat where an old mutt was curled up among their things. He lifted his head when he heard Bear and pressed his nose against the glass.
The woman leaned back out the window and waved me over. “Listen,” she said, her voice low. “The rest of these jerks are more than happy to leave people like you behind but we got room and, sorry to say, but you two don’t look so hot. Why don’t you jump in? We’re heading to my sister’s lake house out in Bull Lake, Montana. You guys can snuggle up with Roscoe back there. Rest a few days with us before moving on.”
I shook my head. “We’re heading to New York.”
Bear hopped back to us, and the woman continued to feed him, watching me over his shoulder.
“Not my business,” she said. “But I can’t say I like your chances, son.”
I looked down the miles of road that lay ahead. How many of them could I walk with Bear on my shoulder before we fell over? The woman’s offer made sense — go to Montana, rest, then continue on — but thoughts of Grey Solomon loomed. Surely these people would hit a Path checkpoint eventually. What if they were still looking for an escaped novice traveling with a dog? Did I want to see this woman lying by the side of a road too?
I watched as Bear devoured the food from the woman’s hand. Despite our time at Alec’s house, his ribs still stood out under his coat. He was filthy too, caked with mud and the blood from his injuries. I could only imagine what kind of infection was working itself into him from the filth of that sewer ditch.
Brake lights blinked off and the cars far down the line started to move. I looked back again and Bear was panting happily as the woman rubbed his ears. I felt a suffocating weight pressing down on my chest and imagined that my voice was something separate from me.
“Can you take him?”
The woman stilled Bear with one hand on his shoulder and looked over him at me. “You sure?”
As if he sensed something in the air, Bear came dow
n off the car and limped over to me, pushing his nose into my leg. It took everything in me not to look down at him.
“Got a long way to go yet,” I said, fighting the hitch in my voice, trying to get it out before I stopped to think. “And he’s hurt.”
People behind us started to honk as the cars just ahead of the woman’s began to pull away. She said something to the man at the wheel and then reached behind her to pop the back door.
I threw my arms around Bear’s neck and pulled him close to me. I closed my eyes, burying my face in his side. He yipped and wiggled, his whimper growing sharper and more distressed. The cars ahead moved down the road. The honking grew louder.
“A cabin sounds pretty great,” I whispered into his ear as he squirmed and whined. “It’ll be better. Okay? There’s a long way to go still, and I don’t know if I can take care of you.”
“Rup!”
His anguished bark hit me like a punch to the chest. As much as I wanted to keep my arms around him, the honking horns were growing more insistent. People had begun to shout for the couple to move their car. I swept Bear up in my arms as an awful pressure built in my chest.
“Rup! Rup rup rup rup!”
The woman’s dog cleared out to the far side of the car as I laid Bear onto the backseat. Bear jumped up, barking, but I slammed the door before he could get out.
“We’ll take good care of him. I promise. Son?”
I couldn’t look at her. Couldn’t look at Bear. I ran toward the tree line to escape the sound of his claws scrabbling madly against the raised window.
“Rup! Rup rup rup! Rup! Rup! Rup!”
His barking grew louder and more broken-sounding, mixing with the angry horns of the piled-up cars. All I could do was keep moving, stabbing my boots into the unsteady gravel as fast as I could to get away, into the safety of the trees.
“RUP! Rup! Rup rup rup rup rup rup!”
The woman’s car drew alongside of me and then the engine thrummed as they pulled down the highway. Bear’s barking peaked into an anguished wail as they passed and then it faded and I was alone.
