Jeff Hirsch - The Darkest Path

Claws scraped my side. I recoiled to find Bear beside me, ears back, eyes wide with fear. I shoved him away and got to my feet, staggering deeper into the desert. Bear returned a second later and I hurled a clump of dirt at his feet.

“You can’t follow me anymore. You have to go!”

Bear growled and started forward again but I kicked up a shower of sand, forcing him back.

“Go, you stupid dog. Just get away!”

Bear shadowed me as I took off again, alternating between angry barks and a pained whimpering that cut into me almost as keenly as the image of Grey falling. Every time he got close, though, I whipped around, stomping at the ground between us and ordering him off. Each time he’d look up at me bewildered and hurt, but I persisted until the chime of his tags and the padding of his paws grew distant. Soon it was swallowed up in the thick of the night. Gone.

I pressed on alone, an ache clamping down through the center of me. Someone would find him, I told myself. And even if they didn’t, he was better off without me.

The temperature dropped fast as the night deepened. Pinprick needles of wind tore through my clothes. Images of Grey dogged me, and soon they were joined by others — Quarles and Connery and Dr. Franks. Even James. Because wasn’t he just as dead as the rest of them? I saw that day six years ago when the Path officers led us from our aunt and uncle’s car. They were taken one way and us the other. When they put the Choice to me and James, I didn’t hesitate. I killed us both and didn’t even know it.

I tried to drive it all away, tried to tell myself that I wasn’t to blame. Grey could have sold me out, but he decided not to. Each man walks his own Path , I thought, sickened to feel Monroe’s words in my head.

Exhausted, I collapsed again, onto my knees and then my back. The sky above me was choked with stars. I listened for Bear, expecting that any second I would hear the clink of his tags coming out of the dark. But there was only a low moan of wind and the distant tread of the war out on the front.

After the Path had taken us, we were loaded into the back of a truck. James and I sat trembling side by side with the other captures, while a beacon patiently explained what our new lives would hold. He said we had been given an opportunity to find a new life and a new purpose. He told us that the way would be hard and painful and most of all uncertain, because a man never knew what he would find when he looked deep inside himself. The only promise he could make us, he said, was that our Paths would inevitably lead us to one of two things — what we desired or what we deserved.

The moon arced over the vast emptiness of the desert and my body grew slowly numb in the cold.

I thought I finally knew where mine had been leading me.

I didn’t expect to see the dawn but I guess the desert wasn’t done with me. I woke the next morning to the sun beating against the land. Shards of glass seemed to lie in my bones and muscles. I forced myself up with a groan, making my head spin and my vision collapse to a dark tunnel. I breathed deep until it passed, then I looked around, squinting from the glare.

I expected to see a field of sand, but instead there was a plain as flat as glass and blazing white, like I was sitting in a field of snow. I thought it was a trick of the heat until I lifted my hand from the desert floor. White flakes crumbled from my fingertips and fell away like ash. I brought my fingers to my lips and touched them to my tongue.

Salt . Not snow. Salt. I was in the middle of a salt flat that stretched nearly to the horizon, the crystals glittering, broken only by a range of bare mountains in the far distance. There was no cactus or brush as far as I could see. I might as well have been on the surface of the moon.

I turned toward a metallic chime and found Bear sitting tall amid the white, watching me, his tags gleaming in the sun. As soon as he saw me looking, he turned away like I was beneath his notice.

“I told you to go,” I said. My throat felt coated in sand, the spiny granules shredding my flesh as I spoke. How long had it been since I’d had water? Twelve hours? More?

I searched for my backpack and found it a few feet behind me. The second I had it in my lap, my heart fell. It was empty. At some point during my flight from the Path, the zipper had come open and all of my supplies — food, water, Grey’s map — were now scattered between where I sat and a highway that was lost somewhere in the distance. I reached around behind my back and wasn’t at all surprised to find the revolver gone as well.

I threw the pack away with what little strength I could muster, then looked out at the barren plain around me. I wondered if Grey would still have saved me if he knew how pointless his sacrifice would be.

There was a rustle as Bear crossed the salt field. He stuck his nose into my side and I reached out to push him away. When my hand brushed his side, everything inside of me went still. I took his collar and drew him back. His fur was wet. I moved my hands over his ears and paws and found them all covered by a thin film of water.

“Where’d you find it? Where’d you find the water?”

Bear jumped back with a growl, confused at first, but then he wheeled around and flew out across the desert. I somehow found the energy to chase after him, stumbling and weaving, and after a few minutes, the salt beneath my feet disappeared and we were back on hardpacked sand. A few ancient-looking shrubs appeared. They were little more than gnarled trunks and spindly branches, but they meant that water had to be somewhere nearby.

Bear disappeared over a hill, and when I came down the other side, I saw a circle of reeds and grasses rising around an oasis no bigger than a manhole cover. Bear dropped to his belly and lapped at the water.

There was a scummy haze of algae clinging to the edges of the pond, and tiny bugs flitting over its surface, but I was too thirsty to care. I cupped one palm awkwardly and filled it with the dark water. When that was too slow, I simply leaned over the edge and slurped the water up. Together, Bear and I nearly drained the pond. When he began chewing on the thin grasses around the water, I followed suit, pulling up handfuls of the bitter roots. My stomach tried to rebel but I forced them down. When I had eaten and drunk all I could manage, I fell into a heap beside Bear.

The water and food lifted some of the fog that had settled around me. I looked across the span of sand and sky. Mountains rose in the west, and to the east a few outcroppings of cacti reached up toward the sun. I studied their curves and the tan horizon behind.

The roadblock had forced Grey to drop us early so I could only guess where we were. I was sure that Bride Creek was still to our northwest, but how far was impossible to say. As close as sixty miles? As far as a hundred? More? And all of that through solid desert. The closest city was almost certainly Salt Lake City. In all likelihood it was just out of sight to our east, possibly as few as thirty or forty miles distant. Of course, being close didn’t change the fact that landing in a Path jail meant my death just as surely as starving in the desert.

But what if I’m smart? I wondered. Move at night, fast and quiet. Could I slip through the cracks and cross the border?

Bear squirmed onto his back, rubbing himself against the torn reeds with his feet in the air. I could still hear his bark as it echoed through the back of Grey’s truck. How was I supposed to sneak through the stronghold of Salt Lake City with him by my side?

And there’s more too , I thought, recalling the voice on Grey’s radio as we waited at the roadblock. They’re looking for a kid. A kid and a dog.