Hugh Howey - Half Way Home

She was right. The people were milling about as if confused, not running or acting organized. Still, a sense of urgency welled up inside me that threatened to turn into a full panic.

“Let’s go,” Kelvin said. He pushed off in the direction of the farms. Tarsi and I ran after him, and I began to wonder who had spotted us and sounded the alarm. Why hadn’t they yelled for us to stop, or fired a warning shot?

We were halfway to the farms when I figured it out—or at least thought I had. Oliver would have seen it as a sign from the gods: a bright streak of light fell from the heavens, exploding in a shower of sparks. It was a burning limb from the canopy, more falling debris from the earlier missile firing. I slowed my pace and looked up at the small ring of fire above me. Inside the orange circle of embers loomed a crisp hole of darkest night peppered with bright, winking stars.

And satellites, I thought.

Then it hit me—the timing of the canopy-clearing after someone had escaped. I gazed up at the glimmering pinpricks and continued to jog forward, slamming into Tarsi who had come to a stop to search the exposed heavens, looking for more falling debris.

“So beautiful,” she said.

I pulled her along as I searched the darkness ahead for Kelvin.

Tarsi stumbled, clutching at my shirt. “I can’t stop looking at it,” she said.

“Yeah,” I huffed, trying to catch my breath, “The problem is—I think it’s looking back .”

As we crossed over the fallow fields and approached the dump, the klaxon fell silent. The end of its blaring brought little relief, however. Our hunters could now be heard shouting throughout the base as they organized our capture. I glanced their direction as I ran, expecting shots to be fired. The worklights went out, and for a moment I wondered if the tactic would make us easier to spot. But then, over the shouts and barked orders, I heard the hum of the electrified perimeter become louder. All the precious juice had been routed to the fence—more betrayal from the very things meant to protect us.

And more to come, as I heard the tractors roar to life and realized our own sleep-home was going to be used to hunt us down.

The three of us paused by the dump to catch our breaths. Tarsi clung to me and I could feel her shaking. All of us had physically deteriorated since leaving the vats, slowly wasting away on poor sleep and a poorer diet. Even if we somehow escaped capture, we had begun our sojourn poorly by burning precious calories before we even got beyond the fence and started eking out some sort of life on our own.

One of the tractors revved angrily; the lights from its cab moved out past the modules and toward the break in the fence.

“We need to hurry,” Tarsi said, her breathing labored.

The three of us ran for the spot where Mica and Peter had gone through. To the side, I could see the two tractors rumbling across the clearing, one of them clearly heading to the old break. Kelvin increased his lead, disappearing into the darkness as we neared the inner ditch, the berm beyond, and the tall and buzzing fence.

Tarsi and I shuffled down through the steep rut and scrambled up the berm. Kelvin cursed and fumbled in his pack for something. The fence hummed furiously above us; I crawled up even with Kelvin to see what was taking him so long.

The fence had been patched.

Solid replacement bars were welded across the breach. None of us had heard plans made for the repair that day, nor had anything been put on the timetables for the work. We had brought along insulated cutters and wire in case we needed to make our own hole, but there seemed little time with the klaxon and search party. Looking back toward base, I saw the tractor halfway to the fence already, lumbering along with a menacing roar.

“What do we do?” Tarsi asked.

I started to suggest we follow the ditch, sneak back into camp, blend in with the search party and pretend we were never attempting to flee. Then, figures materialized out of the darkness, coming for us along the ditch. And I realized it was too late.

“Porter? Tarsi?” Jorge scampered up the berm toward us—the fear in his eyes marking him as a fellow escapee, not a warden on the prowl. Several other shapes materialized in the ditch, more people converging on yesterday’s exit.

“Make the cuts!” I yelled back to Kelvin, who had already begun doing just that. I ran down the berm and helped several others up, watching the tractor and people on foot make their way toward us. Cones of light splayed out from a few of the walkers as they scanned the ground with flashlights.

The klaxon went off again, hopefully a sign Kelvin had made the first cut, not messing with the wires. Three other people scampered up past me. I looked back and saw a pathetic, trembling crowd huddled by the fence, waiting for a way out. But the tractor and the men were going to get to us before we made it through. The machine’s headlights illuminated the ground just a hundred feet from us, but that distance was steadily decreasing.

My feet made the next decision, rather than my head. They led me out of the ditch and straight toward the headlights—my resolve laboring to catch up. When it did, I found myself running to meet the tractor and the walking, searching silhouettes. Over the buzzing of the fence and the revving of the engine, I heard Tarsi yell out for me, but even that didn’t shake me to my senses.

As soon as I hit the edge of the tractor’s lights, a set of shouts rang out from ahead, our pursuers barking with excitement at having made contact.

I turned to the side and ran parallel to the fence, hoping to draw the light away.

I drew gunfire instead.

A loud pop shot out over the hum of the tractor and something whistled through the air above my head, another reversal of the bombfruit sounds.

Again. Bang and whistle.

I ducked my head reflexively and churned my legs. After the next pop, a fountain of dirt erupted ahead of me. I had to force myself to not slow down, keeping in mind a moving target would be harder to hit. When I neared the edge of the tractor’s cone of light—almost back into darkness—I heard more shouting. Directions were yelled. The light turned, keeping me in its sight, taking us both away from the hole in the fence.

The pops started coming in groups, the buzzing and plumes of dirt surrounding me. I had pressed my luck too far. I veered back toward the perimeter, sprinting hard for the ditch as the tractor’s headlamps illuminated the high fence beyond. Diving for the edge, I tumbled inside, my small pack of supplies flying loose and spilling across the dirt. Like a fool, I clutched for a few of the precious items. I felt my flashlight rolling through the dirt and grabbed it. I groped for other items, then the thumps of running feet jarred me back to the danger behind.

Keeping my head low, I ran back toward the hole in the fence, wondering if I’d given Kelvin half the time he needed. I had almost reached the edge of the tractor’s lights when I heard grunts behind me—enforcers spilling into the ditch. Another pop and the berm erupted with a shower of soil. I had no idea if I was getting lucky, or if they just had horrid aim. I had no idea how difficult it was to operate a handgun while on the move.

With no need to hide any longer, I kept my head up so I could run faster, and I saw over the lip of the ditch that the first tractor was backing up and making a slow turn to follow. The second machine bore down on the breach in the fence; the pursuit was converging on the most logical point of escape—the same bad idea that had brought us all together that night.

After another flurry of pops sounded from behind, I felt something pinch my thigh. I hobbled for a few steps, thinking I’d been shot, but the pain wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be. Ahead of me, the dark shapes of my fellow escapees came into view, and then the floodlights of the second tractor lit them up like what I imagined raw unfiltered daylight to be like.