The Darkest Path

by Jeff Hirsch

  “Where you going?” James asked sleepily.

  “Just for a walk.”

  “Want me to—”

  “No,” I said. “I’m okay.”

  Outside, the night was full of the rhythmic call of insects and the wind in the trees. The front gate opened with a squeak and I stepped through and out into the street. I didn’t remember the names of roads, so I followed a kind of muscle memory. I’d reach the end of one road and wait to feel a tug one way or another, following what felt like a compass that had been buried inside of me years ago. Most of the houses I passed looked empty but a few were lit, spilling their yellow glow out into their yards. In a few the bluish lights of TVs shone and voices came out onto the street.

  The roads wound through trees and hedges, like the turnings of a knot. More than once I felt sure that I had become hopelessly lost, but every time I was about to turn back and go home I’d feel that tug and I’d press on. I followed a meandering lane through the yellow pools of streetlights until it came to a chain-link fence. I could hear cars passing on the other side.

  There was a strange scent on the wind, something clean and mineral. It was like two hands had grabbed me by the shoulders and were pulling me along. I hopped the fence and crossed a string of two-lane roads. On the other side, there was a curtain of trees with a sign among them that said no trespassing after dark. I passed it by with a laugh, remembering all the times James and I ignored it when we were kids.

  I ran across a parking lot and then more grass and I was there. I stripped off my shoes and socks and my feet sunk into sand and wind-smoothed pebbles. The air was full of the salty smell of decay and the breeze blowing across the top of rippling water. I dropped onto the sand and looked out across the face of Cayuga Lake.

  The shores on either side of me, rolling hills against the dark sky, stretched into the distance, embracing water that was like a black mirror reflecting the moon and the stars. The red and white running lights of a few distant boats bobbed on its surface. The only sounds were the small waves crashing at my feet and the night murmurings of insects and frogs. I picked up a handful of pebbles and threw some out into the water, where they landed with a gentle plunk.

  How many times had James and I come here after school? How many times had I stood in this exact spot, looking at this exact view? I almost expected I could turn and see another me standing there. A little boy with his brother by his side, their parents laughing on a park bench just up the hill.

  As familiar as it all was, though, the restlessness that had forced me out of the house hadn’t faded. It was like a ragged edge running straight through me, keeping the contentment I had expected to feel to be back in this place, the rightness of it, at arm’s length.

  I wondered where Mom and Dad were right then. Were they lying awake and thinking of us? Did some part of them think we would appear at any moment as they turned a corner or walked down an unfamiliar street? Or had they moved on, forcing themselves to accept the fact that their only sons were never coming back?

  A cold weight settled in my stomach. James and I had been gone for more than six years without a word. Was it possible that Mom and Dad thought we were dead?

  And worse, did they blame themselves, sure that if only they hadn’t sent us west, it never would have happened? I sat there on the shore, trying to imagine the torture of believing that day after day, but it was too big, too awful.

  I let the rest of the stones in my hand spill out by my side. When I looked across the lake again, its waters seemed flat and gray. The distant shores nothing but black swells in the land. It was like a painting of another time, perfectly made and impossible to touch. I hadn’t come all this way for these things. James was right; the path I was on stretched far beyond this place.

  I stepped into my shoes and walked away from the shore, striding into the dark without another look back.

  28

  “Careful. You’re going to cut my arm off.”

  “Not if you stop squirming.”

  My arm was laid out on the kitchen table. James jockeyed for position until he found the best angle and then slipped the teeth of the garden shears beneath the dirty plaster of the cast.

  “You sure about this? Maybe the hacksaw would be better.”

  “Do it.”

  James put all his weight into it and the plaster cracked. He made it past my wrist and then across my palm, backtracking to cut through the thumbhole. When he was done he dug his fingers into the seam and pulled. The plaster crunched and then snapped in two.

  I lifted my arm out of the debris. It was pale as milk, and the skin felt damp and puckered. I flexed my fingers and turned my wrist in a circle. There was a deep ache still, but the relief to have it free again was so great it was almost unbearable. James tossed the shears onto the table.

  “There you go,” he said. “Free at last.”

  James went out into the living room and pulled one of Dad’s old flannels on over his T-shirt. I was amazed it fit as well as it did. A month’s worth of rest and food had done him good. He had put on weight and when he walked, his hand no longer went instinctively to the scar at his side. He picked up his backpack and stuffed a pair of jeans inside.

  “Sure you don’t want to wait another day? They say the fighting is dying down a bit,” I said. “Maybe—”

  “Border’s gonna get tighter,” he said, filling a water bottle at the kitchen sink. “War’s not even over and the Path is already building a wall. If I want to get across, I have to move now.”

  “Okay, but you should take the car.”

  “Nah, you keep it.”

  “What? You’re going to walk the whole way? You’re really pushing this whole biblical prophet thing.”

  James set the bottle by his pack. “I never learned how to drive, Cal.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  I pulled a small box from my pocket. It was wrapped in the comics section of an old newspaper with twine ribbon. “I got you this.”

  “What is it?”

  “A going-away present.” James hesitated. “It’s not a bug, I promise.”

  James took the box and unwrapped it. When he saw what was inside, he sat back against the edge of the sink.

  “Got it before we left the base,” I said. “Good thing about those Feds is that they’re pretty easy to bribe.”

  James reached into the box and pulled out a white asthma inhaler with a pale-blue stopper.

  “Got a couple replacement cartridges too but they wouldn’t fit in the box.” I waited for him to say something but he was stuck, staring at the inhaler. “James?”

  “I haven’t had an attack since that night in the desert.”

  “And you won’t,” I said quickly. “Just think of it as a — Look, I don’t know what you should think of it as; just put it in your pocket and forget it’s there, okay? For me? Your big brother?”

  James looked up and smiled. “Thanks, Cal.”

  He pocketed the inhaler, then went over everything he had in his pack and zipped it closed. I expected him to head for the door, but he stood looking out the window at the back garden. With little else to do over the last month, James and I had cleaned it up the best we could. The grass was cut and the weeds had been pushed back so the flowers had a little room to breathe. We even managed to get the hammocks repaired and rehung, which naturally led to a discussion about sleeping in them instead of our cramped bedroom. In the end, we decided that nostalgia was a thing you could take way too far.

  “You don’t have to do this,” I said.

  “I know.” James settled the pack onto his shoulders. “When you find them…”

  “I’ll explain,” I said. “It’ll be all the ammo I need to finally be declared the good son.”

  I followed James through the house and out into the front yard. He stood at the gate, looking across the street at sidewalks and trees and empty houses before pushing it open and stepping through. He looked back at me, his brown hair light in the morning sun as it r
ose. He waved one last time, then he turned to go.

  Even though I had been preparing myself for weeks, standing there in the moment of James’s leaving was overwhelming. Every part of me wanted to follow him, but I held myself steady, eyes shut, and listened as he climbed the hill to the main road. His footsteps slowly faded away. After he was gone, there was a long silence. The emptiness around me seemed impossibly vast. I told myself that he’d always be out there, like a jewel in a box, or a heart beating in the darkness. No matter what happened I’d be able to turn south and for a moment feel like we were together again.

  I drifted back through the empty house, my lone footsteps echoing off the bare walls. I moved from room to room, gathering up anything I thought I could use — matches, food, a half-dull kitchen knife — then pulled a crumpled road map out of my pocket.

  Wellesley Island was circled in red ink, a speck of land on the Canadian border. I ran a finger along the route, feeling the lonely grind of the miles there and then all the ones that would come after. I had no way of knowing how long it would take me to find Mom and Dad, or even if I could. The only thing to do was start, but there was something that held me in place. It was this feeling like I was standing in a half-finished room, or the way a song, shut off before the end, stays inside of you, anxious until it can resolve.

  I folded the map and stuffed it in my pocket. There was no sense dwelling on it. I reached for my pack, then remembered that I had traded the clothes the Feds had given me for some of Dad’s shortly after we arrived. I figured I could use the old ones as spares.

  I found them in a pile in our room. The shirt was sweated through and full of holes, but the rest was worth taking. I stuffed the jacket into the backpack and then reached across the floor for my old jeans. There was a soft jangle of metal as I pulled them to me.

  My heart lost a beat when I heard it. I reached inside and pulled out a thick pink band with a black buckle and a silver tag. I didn’t breathe as I drew the collar across my shaking hands. The collar felt impossibly heavy, as if all of those months and all the hundreds of miles had been compressed into its fibers. Bear. I traced the letters of his name with my fingertip and then held the tag in my hand until the metal grew warm. I could feel the heat of his fur and remembered his summery smell.

  I imagined him in a cabin, safe and well fed, and wondered if it was home to him now or if he still thought of me. Did he wonder why I left him even now? And did he lie among the woman and her family, awaiting the day I’d come back for him?

  The map rustled as I flattened it out on the floor. I found what I was looking for in a corner of Montana way out on its own. Bull Lake. A dot of a town next to a blue patch of water. I pulled the pen out of my pack and circled it in red.

  Looking at both of the marks on the map, Bull Lake and Wellesley Island, I felt something snap into place, like my path had emerged before me, clear and straight.

  I left the house with an old song turning in my head, its melody bright but distant. I hummed it out loud as I got into the car and set my pack and Bear’s collar on the seat next to me. I looked down the road and then I started the engine and drove away.

  MAP: SEPTEMBER 2026

  Acknowledgments

  Like with every book, I’d be absolutely nowhere without the peerless agenting of Sara Crowe, and without the fine, fine folks at Scholastic, especially Cassandra Pelham, David Levithan, and Lauren Felsenstein. For early and absolutely essential constructive criticism, thanks to Eliot Schrefer (if you haven’t read Endangered yet, go get it!), Phoebe North (if you haven’t read Starglass yet, go get it!), Ken Weitzman, and Ryan Palmer.

  Thanks also to every teacher and librarian who invited me out to their school this past year. One of the best parts of this job is getting out there and meeting the next generation of readers!

  Beyond these usual suspects, an awful lot of new folks helped me out on this one. Appropriately enough they largely fall into one of two categories — military folk and animal folk.

  As for the military folk, who fielded questions big and small from this hapless civilian, I want to say thanks to Sergeant Major Kevin Spooner, U.S. Army; Specialist Heather Zenzen, U.S. Army Reserves/Minnesota National Guard; and Chief Aviation Electronics Technician Daniel Bramos, U.S. Navy (retired).

  On the animal side, thanks to Jeff Hiebert, President of Search and Rescue Dogs of the United States. Also, huge thanks to all the nice folks at Pets Alive in Middletown, NY, for rescuing a little mini pinscher with gigantic ears from the side of a highway in Puerto Rico. If they hadn’t, my wife and I would have missed out on an awful lot of fun this past year and I never would have had the inspiration for Bear. It was pretty awesome to spend a year writing this book with my inspiration cuddled up to me every day.

  Talking with these folks got me thinking about how much great work they do and how they can always use a bit of a hand. If you’d like to join me in lending one, I hope you’ll consider making (or pestering your parents until they make) a donation to Pets Alive (www.petsalive.com) or Operation Homefront (www.operationhomefront.net).

  About the Author

  Jeff Hirsch is the USA Today bestselling author of The Eleventh Plague and Magisterium. He graduated from the University of California, San Diego, with an MFA in Dramatic Writing and now lives in New York with his wife. Visit him online at www.jeff-hirsch.com.

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  Copyright

  Copyright © 2013 by Jeff Hirsch

  All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Press, an imprint of Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920. SCHOLASTIC, SCHOLASTIC PRESS, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Hirsch, Jeff.

  The darkest path / Jeff Hirsch. — 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Summary: Since he was captured by the Glorious Path, a militant religion based on the teachings of a former soldier, fifteen-year-old Cal has served the Path in its brutal war with the remains of the United States government, and tried to survive and protect his younger brother, but when he kills an officer to protect a stray dog, Cal is forced take his brother and the dog and run.

  ISBN 978-0-545-51223-7

  1. Dystopias — Juvenile fiction. 2. Militia movements — Juvenile fiction. 3. Cults — Juvenile fiction. 4. Survival — Juvenile fiction. 5. Escapes — Juvenile fiction. 6. Brothers — Juvenile fiction. [1. Militia movements — Fiction. 2. Cults — Fiction. 3. Survival — Fiction. 4. Escapes — Fiction. 5. Brothers — Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.H59787Dar 2013

  813.6 — dc23

  2013004367

  First edition, October 2013

  Cover art & design © 2013 by Phil Falco

  e-ISBN 978-0-545-51225-1

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.

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