Desolation Point

by Cari Hunter

  She sealed two of the artificial sutures into place and then added a third for good measure. Sarah’s hand jerked a little as the final suture made something in her abdomen twinge, and the flashlight she had been holding for Alex to work by shifted its beam by the slightest fraction. She heard Alex’s sharp intake of breath and knew without looking what had caused it. For the past two days, Alex had been ignoring the scars twisting the skin of Sarah’s abdomen. She had dressed the gunshot wound and taken pains not to touch or allow her gaze to linger anywhere else. Now, kneeling so close that Sarah could feel the warmth of her breath flutter across the damaged flesh, there was no way for her to pretend that she hadn’t seen them.

  Acutely aware of Alex’s proximity, Sarah battened down the almost overwhelming urge to cover herself and waited for the inevitable question. It came only after Alex had carefully rearranged Sarah’s sweater to cover her, and it wasn’t the one Sarah had been expecting.

  “Did someone hurt you, Sarah?” Sorrow and anger fought for dominance in Alex’s voice. Sarah shook her head fervently, wanting to say something reassuring but unable to speak through the tears that were choking her.

  “Oh no, c’mere.” Alex sounded mortified.

  Sarah felt Alex reach for her, and for a fleeting second, she stiffened, before her resistance crumbled and she sagged bonelessly into Alex’s arms. The suddenness of her capitulation took them both onto the ground, the flashlight slipping from her fingers to plunge them into a silver-limned darkness. Smothering her cries against Alex’s jacket, she squeezed her eyes tightly shut and finally broke beneath the misery that months of loss and loneliness had forced her to bear.

  *

  “Molly was my half sister. I don’t really remember my dad. He died of cancer when I was five, and Mum married Richard ten years later.” Sarah cradled her mug in both hands and took a tentative sip of her cocoa. There was a series of snaps as Alex broke up kindling to feed into their small fire, and Sarah watched the smoke curl up from the fresh wood. When she began to speak again, her voice was still hoarse from weeping.

  “I don’t think they planned to have a child, but Molly was born while I was at university. Mum used to call her their ‘happy little accident.’” She tried to smile but shook her head instead as fresh tears made the fire shimmer in her gaze. “She had just turned seven, and she was such good fun: full of mischief and utterly fearless. Last summer, I was teaching her to swim, and that afternoon my mum had come to the pool to watch her attempt her first length. Mum was driving us home. She’d let Molly sit up front because she’d done so well.” She closed her eyes, felt tears break and run down her cheeks, and tasted salt when she licked her lips. “A drunk driver hit us, flipped our car over. The police said that Molly and my mum died more or less instantly.”

  Alex’s warm hand took hold of hers, and Sarah turned toward her, unable to keep the pain of that day from her expression.

  “I don’t remember much of the next month.” She made a vague gesture toward her abdomen, and that was enough for Alex to nod her understanding. “But I remember the look on my stepfather’s face on one of the few occasions he came to visit me. He held the funerals while I was still in the ICU, sold our house, left me the money from it, and went to Italy. I haven’t seen or heard from him since.” She set her mug down, no longer able to stomach the sweet smell of the chocolate. “He blamed me,” she said, something inside her loosening with the simple release of saying the words aloud. “If I’d been sitting in the front seat of the car like I usually did, Molly might still be alive.”

  She lowered her head, but Alex cupped her chin and raised it again.

  “You know it’s not your fault, don’t you?”

  “I know that,” Sarah whispered. “Most of the time, I know that.”

  Physically and emotionally worn out, she lay back on their makeshift bed of plastic sheeting and musty blankets. The plastic crinkled and dipped as Alex lay down beside her.

  “I still dream of that day, over and over,” Sarah said into the darkness.

  “I know.”

  Something awful in Alex’s tone told Sarah that the response hadn’t been merely a platitude. She shivered, thinking of the scars she had seen on Alex’s back. Alex shifted closer to her, the warmth from their bodies gradually chasing away the cold that was seeping through the plastic. Sarah’s eyes drifted shut, and when she spoke again she wasn’t sure whether she was awake or sleeping.

  “Every time I have the dream, I’m in the front seat…”

  Chapter Nine

  Alex held her numb fingers out to the fire and tried not to pay attention to the throbbing in her right temple and the nagging ache that a cold, damp night and extensive bruising had left in her knees. Beside her, stirring a pot of simmering oatmeal, Sarah looked about as rough as Alex felt. Her face was pale and dirt-streaked in the early morning light, with dark shadows beneath eyes that were puffy from crying and too little sleep. She had been subdued since waking, though Alex suspected that had more to do with her dread of the day to come than anything that had been said the night before. The continuous stress of being hunted and the physical stress of the hiking were slowly but surely wearing them both down.

  A quick appraisal of their supplies had made them halve their breakfast rations, but even so, at their current pace, they were likely to run out of food before reaching Ross Lake. Despite the headache, Alex forced herself to eat the small portion of oatmeal that Sarah handed to her. A bottle of water was passed over next followed by two Tylenol pressed into her hand without comment.

  “No, I don’t need them. I’m fine,” Alex said, holding the pills out to Sarah.

  “If you were ‘fine’ you wouldn’t be hobbling around and you wouldn’t look like you were about to throw your breakfast back up.” Sarah sighed. “Just take the damn pills. Please.”

  Alex withdrew her hand and stared at the pills resting on her palm. “How many do we have left?”

  “Enough,” Sarah answered, concern making her voice sharp. She shook her head apologetically. “Enough for you to take those.”

  Without another word, Alex unscrewed the water bottle and washed the pills down.

  “We’ll get more water on the way past the stream,” Sarah said, already starting to break the camp and pack their gear. “The sky’s clearing. Rescue parties will be out looking for us. They might even be able to get a helicopter up.” She stopped midway through folding a blanket and dropped to a crouch at Alex’s side as if to emphasize the importance of what she was saying. “We just have to keep going.”

  Sunlight was beginning to filter through the highest reaches of the forest canopy. Alex shaded her eyes to look up at her. She looked back, unblinking, and Alex couldn’t help but smile at the sheer determination on her face.

  “Got a real fucking headache,” Alex admitted quietly.

  “I know,” Sarah said. “I’m guessing your knees are playing up as well.”

  “If that means aching like sons of bitches, then yes, they’re playing up.”

  “The Tylenol should help, now that you’ve actually bloody taken it.”

  Alex chuckled. “I was trying to be brave.”

  “You are brave,” Sarah said, her tone sincere. Then she grinned. “How about you let me play the butch today, huh?”

  Alex nudged her with a shoulder. “Gonna carry the heavy bag?”

  Sarah’s own laughter abruptly faded. “Oh hell, I don’t think I’m ready to go quite that far.”

  *

  The trail leading away from the small clearing had been all the easier to spot for being the only possible option. Merrick had found the route the previous night, and then slept soundly in the certainty that not only was he on the right track, but he was also managing to gain ground. The early morning mist was already thinning and rising as he cooked breakfast, but he wasn’t worried that they had slept late. When Beth returned from the stream, he smiled and she blushed prettily. She pulled her hair into a loose braid before sitting
by his side and giving him a kiss on his cheek.

  “Smells good.” She nodded toward the pot of oatmeal.

  “Maple syrup makes all the difference,” he said with a wink. It was easier to humor her than tell her it was nothing but cheap, processed crap.

  They didn’t have a future together. He was under no illusions in that regard. It had been four years since she handed him a discreetly designed flyer at a gun show. Always eager to make contacts, he had gone to one of the rallies listed on the leaflet, stood in a crowd of sweating, seething white supremacists, and listened to the ferocious rhetoric of the unassuming-looking man on the stage. It had not taken long to decide that that man would be a very useful contact indeed. As the crowd roared their approval and bayed for the blood of anyone who didn’t abide by their particularly limited world view, Merrick had spotted Beth standing close to the stage. He had wandered over, flirting aimlessly with her at first. Then she had proudly named the man on the stage as her uncle, and Merrick had realized that she was his way in.

  It had taken several months of dinner dates, church services, and standing reverently at Nicholas Deakin’s hate rallies before Beth finally introduced Merrick to the rest of her family. He and Deakin had been kindred spirits, not necessarily in their politics but in their desire to get a job done as efficiently and cost effectively as possible. Deakin and the other trusted groups he put Merrick in touch with had offered contracts worth thousands of dollars, and Merrick had closed on every one of the deals he had made…

  “You not hungry, Nate?”

  Except for this one.

  Merrick tasted the over-sweetened, over-salted, lukewarm cereal. He forced himself to swallow it and then to smile.

  “Just thinking, babe,” he said.

  This deal had been valuable enough to force Nicholas into taking an unprecedented risk, that of organizing the jailbreak that would enable Merrick to see it through to its completion. Nicholas’s motives were his own. For Merrick, the outcome would be far simpler: the opportunity to leave the country and retire in luxury on an absolute fortune.

  He finished the last of his breakfast and washed the taste away with a mouthful of water. He was tired of living like an animal, tired of the shitty food and wearing the same stinking clothes. As he kicked the smoldering ashes to extinguish the fire, he thought of the girl who had caused him so much trouble and wondered whether today would be the day they caught up with her.

  “She better fucking run,” he said to no one in particular, but he saw Beth cringe away from the tone of his voice. “She better fucking run.”

  *

  “I love my love with an F, because she is fabulous…” Sarah took hold of the hand Alex offered to her and stepped onto the wobbly rock in the center of the fast-flowing stream. “Thank you.”

  “My pleasure, ma’am.” Alex gave a little bow and kept her steady as they made the next step together. “One more,” she murmured, tilting her head to one side to weigh their options. “That one doesn’t look too bad.”

  “Yep. You going first?”

  Alex smiled. “You mean, are you going in first?”

  “Well, yes, of course that’s what I mean.” Sarah’s tired eyes flashed with amusement.

  With the sigh of one long accustomed to being tormented, Alex hopped onto the rock and then quickly onto the bank. “It’s fine, not slippery at all.” She held her arms out regardless for Sarah to grab on to, but Sarah landed without incident.

  “Okay then.” Alex made an onward gesture. “So why do you hate fabulous Freda?”

  For the last hour, they had been distracting themselves from their myriad aches and pains by playing silly word games. They had already been through the alphabet naming candies and desserts, and this latest was one that Sarah’s sister had taught her.

  “Hey!” Sarah protested. “I’d not even given her a name yet.” She shrugged. “But I suppose Freda’s as good as any. Okay, I hate my love with an F because she is…”

  Alex glanced over her shoulder in time to catch Sarah furrow her brow in contemplation and then start to giggle.

  “Because she is flatulent,” she concluded. Her shoulders shook as she laughed.

  “Oh my God.” Alex stopped in her tracks and turned to face her properly. “Please tell me you’ve never had a Flatulent Freda as a girlfriend.”

  “Hell no.” Sarah sounded appalled. “Although Ash did once set me up with someone whose main selling point was her ability to burp ‘God Save the Queen.’”

  “You’re shitting me.”

  She shook her head with exaggerated sorrow. “I only wish that I was.”

  “And I thought I’d had it tough with Meg,” Alex said, surprising herself with her ability to mention that disaster of a relationship with such equanimity. But then she found Sarah incredibly easy to talk to. In spite of the exertion, the discomfort, and the constant fear, there had been many occasions during the past two days where she had forgotten all of it and just enjoyed Sarah’s company. It had been a long time since she felt comfortable enough with anyone to lower those barriers that she had firmly established since Meg, but she had quickly become that comfortable with Sarah. She chanced a surreptitious look behind her, but Sarah caught her peeking and waved at her.

  “I’m still here,” Sarah said, sounding only slightly out of breath. “We’re up to G and it’s your turn.”

  Alex turned back hurriedly in an attempt to hide her guilty smile. Sarah’s face had been flushed with effort and sweat was sticking her hair to her forehead. She was streaked with dirt, and at some point during the day, something had scratched her cheek and scored an angry red mark across it. And yet, right at that moment, Alex wanted nothing more than to kiss her long and hard, and then see what happened next.

  “I’m going to hell,” she muttered beneath her breath. She clenched her fingers and attempted to slow her rapid pulse. “Okay,” she said, once she was sure she could speak without giving the game away entirely. “I love my love with a G because she is gorgeous…”

  Twenty minutes later, as Sarah struggled to find a suitably positive adjective beginning with Z, Alex stopped walking.

  “Jesus.” She made a grab for Sarah’s jacket and wrapped the material in her fist to hold on to it tightly. The force of her effort made Sarah stagger, and she let out a small squeak of protest before she looked up.

  “Oh shit,” she whispered.

  Without needing to be prompted, she stepped back cautiously at the same time Alex did.

  A yard in front of them, the mountainside had simply fallen away. Torrents of storm water had eroded the fragile infrastructure of snow-worn rock and crumbling dirt. The force of the landslide had uprooted trees and vegetation and smashed them into pieces. Alex could see where the trail resumed on the other side of the devastated slope, but there was a vast impassable tract between it and the point at which they stood. To either side of them, the forest clung to the mountain. The ground was steep and comprised the same unstable matter that had just collapsed beneath the force of the storm. She was afraid that their own weight on those weather-ravaged slopes would be disturbance enough to cause further slides, and she had no desire to be caught in the middle of one.

  She stared down at the GPS in her hand. The red arrow they had been following pointed ahead with unswerving insistence. For hours now, she had assumed the lead, being in better physical shape than Sarah and more familiar with the terrain. Without the issue ever having been discussed, it was Alex who had navigated, who had suggested rest breaks and set their pace. For the first time, she felt the weight of that responsibility bearing down upon her.

  “I don’t…” She looked up again, a sense of hopelessness gradually engulfing her. “I don’t know what we should do,” she admitted quietly. She felt Sarah’s chilled fingers entwine with her own, and she squeezed them gently, grateful for the unspoken absolution.

  “Neither do I,” Sarah said, “but I don’t think we can get over that gap.”

  “No.”r />
  Even now, there was the intermittent clatter of stones as they were loosened by the water still running down the mountainside. With no protective gear, any attempt to navigate the slope would put them at risk of serious injury.

  Sarah pulled Alex farther away from the edge. “Here, sit down for a minute.”

  “We should keep going,” Alex muttered, even as she sat and laid her head on her folded arms.

  “Yes, we should and we will,” Sarah said, “but not until we’ve figured out where.”

  Alex heard a rustling noise as Sarah searched through her pockets. A series of muttered curses was punctuated by a quiet whoop of triumph, and Sarah passed her a slab of something pale brown that smelled sweetly of mint.

  “I knew I hadn’t eaten it. Here, can’t walk straight if you can’t think straight.”

  Alex managed a weary grin. “You want me to make the obvious gag or shall I leave it to you?” She nibbled at the edge of the candy. “What exactly am I eating here?” Whatever it was was tooth-achingly sweet and melted agreeably on her tongue.

  “Kendal Mint Cake,” Sarah said. “Staple diet of English hill walkers. It’s basically sugar, glucose, and peppermint. It’ll rot your teeth, but it’s a great energy boost.” She handed Alex another piece, tucked the remainder away, and unfolded their map. It took both of them a good few minutes to cross-reference their coordinates on the GPS and work out where they were.

  “That stream’s not marked,” Sarah commented absently, her finger tracing over a small grid on the map.

  “What stream?”

  “It was about half a mile back, cutting down through the trees. I wonder if we could go back to it and scramble downstream about three hundred yards. The stones don’t fall that far. Then we could use the GPS to work our way back toward the landslide but cross it at a safe level.”

  Alex followed her logic through. “And then hope we get lucky and find another stream on the other side to climb back up and regain the trail.” It certainly sounded easier than wandering down a mountainside that was liable to collapse at the slightest encouragement.