Jeff Hirsch - The Darkest Path

Bear trembled in my lap. A blur of trees passed outside our window and then switched to a high steel fence. I leaned forward and saw the outline of a control tower and a few small private planes and helicopters.

“Get off the road!” I shouted, grabbing at the bars between us.

“What?”

“Get off the road now!”

“Why?”

I pointed out ahead. “Because of that!”

The entrance to the airport appeared in front of us. Parked outside were three Path Humvees and ten or fifteen soldiers. Nat’s father jerked the steering wheel and the car fell off the roadway and down an embankment.

“If there’s an airport, it’s the first thing the Path seizes,” I said as we bounced over the field. “They’ll have the place surrounded in an hour.”

Nat’s father cursed, then conferred with someone on the radio. We ended up on a dirt road, eventually meeting up with a small convoy of evacuees deep in the woods and out of sight of the Path. There were police and civilian vehicles as well as a single yellow school bus. All of them were parked with their lights out just off the roadway. Nat’s dad pulled over and got out of the car, leaving us inside with the engine running.

He joined a crowd of men, including Limon and his buddy, who were gathered around an older man consulting in low tones. All of them were armed, but I didn’t see anything heavier than AR-15s and shotguns. Dozens of terrified civilians surrounded the officers. They were a mix of young and old, men, women, and children. Entire families bunched together.

“This is because of me,” Nat said, staring darkly out of the window. “This is for what happened at the checkpoint.”

“You don’t know that,” I said. “They’ve hit the town before.”

“Not like this.” I started to speak again but Nat cut me off. “Tell me what happens next.”

“Once they have control of the town, they’ll gather everyone together and give them the Choice.”

“And my guess is the people who refuse to join up don’t really go to cozy little concentration camps to wait out the war.”

The windows of the yellow school bus were full of the faces of children, most of them younger than us. I thought of a little boy holding a toy out to me in the middle of the California desert, his relieved family smiling behind him.

“No,” I said. “They don’t.”

Ahead of us, the sheriff was arranging the armed men into teams, pairing them off and pointing them toward vehicles.

My God , I thought. He’s going to try to take the airfield.

The door was locked and there was no catch or door handle on the inside, so I threw my shoulder against the window, making a racket until Nat’s father noticed and returned to the cruiser.

“You can’t do this,” I said as he pulled us out of the car. “All you’re going to do is get yourselves killed.”

He grabbed the cuffs attaching me and Nat and worked a key into them. “We don’t have a choice.”

“You do,” I said. “Surrender. Say you make a choice for the Path. All of you. They’ll take you, but no one has to die. It’s the only way.”

He popped the cuffs off of us and then stared down at me. “Son, these people murdered my wife and tonight they put my town to the torch, killing God knows how many people in the process. Every person here will fight them until we don’t have breath left in our bodies. Anybody who’d do different is a coward.”

He waved another cop over.

“Get them on the bus,” he said. “Now. We move out in five.”

“Dad!” Nat shouted. She tried to go after him, but the other deputy held her back and started herding us toward the bus. Bear was on him immediately, jumping up and digging his paws into the man’s leg. When the deputy turned to swat Bear away, Nat twisted out of his grip and sprinted back to her father’s cruiser. I followed, jumping into the passenger seat as she slammed the driver’s-side door shut.

“Nat, what are you—”

She threw the car into reverse and took off, barely giving me time to close my door. She sped out of the field and onto the roadway. I looked back at Bear barking after us.

“Whatever you’re planning isn’t going to work,” I said. “We need to get your Dad to—”

“What?” Nat said. “He’s not going to surrender, Cal. This is my fault. I’m not just letting it happen.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I think you’ve got a little less than three minutes to figure that out.”

Nat gripped the steering wheel as the road to the airport vanished beneath us. Up ahead the tree cover thinned and the airport’s perimeter fence appeared. Nat reached over and opened a compartment under the dash.

“See what we have to work with.”

I rooted around inside, pushing aside papers and pens until my fingers hit steel. I pulled out another pair of handcuffs and a gray case that sat beside them. I dropped the cuffs in my lap and opened the case.

“Pull over.”

“Cal, we don’t have time to—”

“Just do it.”

Nat cut her speed and moved us off to the side of the road. The airport entrance was just visible a couple miles down the road. I lifted the taser out of its case and held it up between us.

“Okay,” I said, suddenly calm. “Here’s what we do.”

The .50 cal gunner on one of the Humvees fired a warning volley and I brought the cruiser to a halt in the middle of the road. There were three Humvees sitting in the revolving blue and red of our dome lights, one dead center in front of the airport entrance, with the other two on either side. Four soldiers stood in the space between them, three with weapons pointed at us, and the other, a compact man with a steel-gray crew cut, watching grimly.

“He’ll be the one in charge,” I said, keeping my eyes forward, not looking at Nat slumped in the passenger seat beside me. “You sure you’re ready for this?”

“I just hope my dad is paying attention back there.”

“Yeah. Me too.” I swallowed a lump in my throat and stepped out of the car slow, careful to keep my hands where the soldiers could see them. No one reacted, so I went around to the passenger side and pulled the handle. Nat rolled out of the seat, her hands cuffed in front of her. I took her arm roughly and pushed her out ahead of me as I approached the checkpoint.

“Not a place you want to be right now, son,” the sergeant announced. “Got no quarrel with kids, but if you don’t want to get yourself shot, you better get in that car and drive back the way you came.”

“You’re here because of a raid on an outpost on Route 84,” I said. “Five soldiers killed, two Humvees and a supply truck destroyed.”

There was a brief pause. “You seem well informed,” the sergeant said.

I shoved Nat onto her knees in the gravel.

“This is the one who led the raid. Her mom was a Fed ranger. She got some of her buddies to help out.”

“And who am I to thank for this out-of-the-blue bit of good fortune?” he asked, his tone as dry as dust.

“Call sign’s Bloodhound,” I said. “I report to Captain Monroe, commander of Cormorant Base just outside Yuma, Arizona. I was detached about a month ago to infiltrate Fed territories. Ended up here on a fluke.”

“You’ll forgive me if I find it a little hard to believe that someone who looks like they should be in day care is working special ops for Cormorant.”

“Uh, yeah,” I said. “That’s kind of the idea, Sarge. Look, you want her or not?”

The sergeant’s eyes flicked over to two of his subordinates.

“Cuff them both; we’ll figure it out later.”

“Wait!” I cried. “I told you, I’m with Cormorant special—”