C.E. Murphy - Mountain Echoes

“She still looks like death warmed over, Joseph.”

“Her aura’s stronger.”

Morrison’s sigh matched the last beat of the drum. I opened my eyes, unable to focus on the dark cave wall beyond Petite’s windshield. I wasn’t sure I felt better. I didn’t feel worse, though, and I could wiggle my toes with a reasonable confidence that they were still attached. It would have to do. I said, “I’m good,” and hoped I sounded more convincing to the men than I did to myself.

I swung my legs out of the car, stood up, and swayed as hunger galloped through me. Morrison made an alarmed noise and I shook my head, hanging onto Petite’s roof a minute. “No, I’m okay. I am. Just getting my feet under me. How long was I out this time?”

“Another hour. Not enough,” Morrison opined. I had no argument there, but it was astounding the military hadn’t found us yet as it was, so we really couldn’t waste any more time. I wobbled out of the little cave and glanced back.

Petite barely fit in it, honestly. I supposed it was ever so slightly possible that when the military came around using radar, or whatever they might be using, that her big back end would make the whole stretch read as solid rock. It would be better, though, to hightail it into the mountains, find the missing tribe, and finish this thing before it turned into a new round of Indian wars. I tried concentrating on that idea instead of my stomach gnawing on itself as we headed into the hills.

Helicopters and Humvees were audible in all the hollers, their engines echoing even when the vehicles were far out of sight. Dad maintained the shields, though every once in a while I noticed them shivering as his concentration lapsed. I fell back a few steps to walk with Morrison, murmuring, “He’s not all that good at this.”

“Give him a break, Walker. Apparently it’s impossible.”

“Yeah, well, I’m a little worried. I’m still tripping over my feet, and if something nasty comes out of the hills—”

“Then you’ll flatten it and pay the consequences later.” Morrison didn’t sound especially happy about the prospect, but he did sound like he understood it was exactly what would happen. “Are you going to kill yourself setting this straight, Walker?”

“I hope not.”

“If it comes down to it?”

He meant if it came down to me or Aidan, and we both knew the answer to that, so I didn’t reply. We walked for hours, very slowly, because I absolutely couldn’t move faster than I was doing. We stopped for water occasionally, and Dad found some of last fall’s apples. I didn’t even pretend to object when he and Morrison both passed their shares to me. I wolfed them down, burped the early warning of a cramped tummy, and didn’t care. The hint of food made me need more, but I felt a little better anyway, and we were all able to pick up the pace. Dad knew where he was going, and we were content to follow along.

Just before nightfall, Dad dropped the shields. “We’re almost there.”

I figured they’d be hunting for us with infrared at sundown anyway, so the shields didn’t seem to matter “Almost where? Is this some kind of retreat plan that’s been in place for decades, or something?”

“In a way. It started out as a game, with some of the young people trying out their woods skills. A few of them were interested enough to ask the elders what they knew or remembered. A while ago it started to become a rite of passage for the ones whose heritage was important enough to them.” Dad deliberately didn’t look at me. I wanted to kick him, but refrained for fear of losing my balance. “There’s territory out here that nobody lives on, nobody camps on or explores. It’s hard to imagine when you think how close we all live together, but there’s a lot of land to live off still, if you’re willing to do it. Kids started coming out here for summers, and some of them, when things went bad at school, came out for the winters, too. There are always a few adults who keep an eye on the place, to make sure nobody gets hurt or in trouble, but we mostly let them get by on their own. They hunt and fish traditionally so nobody wonders about gunshots in the mountains. They do a good job.”

I still felt like I was being reprimanded, but kept my mouth shut. I’d explored the hills some, but never gone this deep or imagined camping out for whole summers at a time. “So it’s the kind of place that people who were inclined to walk away from government interference in the Qualla would already know about.”

“Yeah. I’d guess there’s probably four or six hundred folks out here, if they’ve left town.”

I thought about Cherokee town’s population. “That’s not very many.”

“It’s as many as rebuilt the tribes after the Trail of Tears.”

I was definitely being rebuked. Lucky for Dad, it took enough energy just to grind my teeth that I thought I’d better save what spark I had for what was coming, rather than snarling at him. “The military’s not looking very hard, if they haven’t found them. That many people would show up like a wildfire on infrared.”

“You think they don’t know that? You think they’re not taking steps to avoid being found? Kids shelter in cave systems out here, or old mines. Hunters pack themselves with mud. We’ve got a lot to lose, Joanne.”

I pressed my lips together, reminding myself I was unwilling to be drawn into an argument, particularly one I basically agreed with. If the escapees were out here living off the land through traditional methods I had nothing but respect for them, and didn’t think it was any of the government’s business. Especially since I was pretty confident there was no zombie apocalypse going on. Hunting the refugees down would only emphasize the level of control the federal government still held over reservations, rather than providing any level of actual help.

For one crazy moment I wondered if this mess could help the Native cause in America. If it would provide a rallying point that would bring all the tribes together to make a stand that would give them the autonomy that had been stripped away centuries ago. Then reality kicked in. With the bleak magic Aidan was wielding, if they made a stand it would turn into a slaughter. Political protest would be swept aside in the bloodshed, and when it ended, there would be no more pesky Native population on thousands of acres of American soil. We weren’t going to let that happen.

Danny Little Turtle stepped out of the forest with a silence and expression so like the Cherokee warriors Morrison and I had encountered that if it weren’t for his trappings—a riflpinittle Ture, jeans and a T-shirt instead of leathers and spears—I would have thought we’d fallen through time again. Moreover, those warriors had intended to capture us. Danny looked like he’d be happy to put a bullet in each of us, and a butterfly-fluttering sense of alarm awakened in my stomach. Back then I’d been confident of stopping their arrows and spears. Right now I wasn’t at all sure I could stop flying bullets.

“Give me an excuse,” he said, and a goddamned military chopper buzzed us.

I think the only thing that kept Danny from shooting us right then was the probably unbased fear the rifle’s report would be heard above the chopper’s blades. We all hit the ground, dampening our heat signals with leaves and mud. I folded my white coat under myself, cringing at the exhaustion that left me unable to protect it with the thin magic sheen I’d used before. The chopper skimmed past us, treetops whipping and snapping with its passage. Danny snarled, “That’s an excuse,” but my father snaked a hand out and wrapped it around the rifle’s muzzle.

“We’re not your enemies, Dan. You know that.”