Jeff Hirsch - The Darkest Path

Diane moved forward, but I held her back. We weren’t the only ones interested. Muzzle flashes bloomed along the length of the hill, like strings of firecrackers.

“What do we do?”

I looked to our right where the ground ran straight and clear along the base of the hill and into the woods. The highway east was only a few miles on the other side of those trees. This was my chance.

I heard my instructions to them in my head — Keep your eyes on the lights of the airport. Keep running. Don’t stop no matter what. But when I turned back, Reese and Christos and Kate and Diane were all watching me. Behind them some of the other refugees had drifted down around our circle, all of them waiting.

“Cal,” Diane said. “What do we do?”

Bear was on the ground in the center of our group, turned in a ball, his head tucked into his belly. I placed my palm on his back and felt his warmth move through me.

“You follow me.”

Bear and I sprinted up the hill toward the road. Kate and Reese were behind me, followed by Diane and Christos. The other refugees were spread out below us, like links in a chain. Two or three at a time, spaced thirty seconds apart.

The hillside was a slurry of mud and debris that sent all of us down into the muck every few feet. Each time, though, we dug in and got back up and kept running, focusing on the lights of the airport and trying to ignore the sounds of the valley being ripped apart behind us.

I hit the road and made it halfway up before I was stopped by a roadblock of Humvees. They raised their weapons and shouted, but we darted off the track and back into the trees. An instant later I heard the swoop of a helicopter, and the roadblock was obliterated. The shock wave sent me into the mud. Bear dug his snout into my side, urging me up. I pushed him aside and started to move.

“Cal!”

Behind me, Diane and Christos were running up the hill to Reese and Kate. Kate was standing but Reese wasn’t. He was on his back, conscious but moaning and clawing at the mud. When I reached him I saw that his leg was shattered midway down his shin.

“What do we do?” Kate asked, her eyes electric with fear.

“Keep going,” I said and pushed her up the hill. “Christos!”

Christos left Diane and dropped by his friend’s side. Reese was sweating and pale, covered in mud. He gritted his teeth to try to keep from screaming.

“I’ll get his arms,” I said to Christos.“You take his knees.”

“But his leg—”

“Do it!”

Christos hooked his arms under Reese’s knees, and I slipped my elbows beneath his armpits. Reese shrieked as we lifted him, the veins in his neck bulging, his skin going scarlet. It got even worse when we began moving up the uneven ground and I was climbing backward, slipping and stumbling. He screamed until his throat was shredded and then he passed out.

We hobbled up the hill that way until the sky went bright around us. At first I thought it was another explosion, but then I saw my feet move from mud to asphalt. Floodlights were beating down on us. I looked over my shoulder and saw the open gate of the airfield. Kate and Diane had run ahead out onto the tarmac, where a single plane waited. Christos and I made it through the gate and then hit the ground when we couldn’t take another step. Bear rushed to my side, digging his nose into my arm.

He flattened to the ground when a drone shot over the airfield with a scream. It loosed its munitions on the valley. Where they fell, it was like a seam had been ripped into the earth and you could see all the way down to its molten core.

Two of the other refugees came over the lip of the hill at a run and moved Christos and me out of the way as soon as they saw us. They took Reese in their arms and brought him the rest of the way toward the plane. Its engines were spinning now, filling the air with their urgent whine.

Diane returned for Christos and then someone tugged at my arm.

“We have to go!”

Kate’s violet eyes were electric in the floodlights. She knelt down beside me and covered my hand with hers.

I looked over her shoulder at the gleaming white of the jet as the refugees filed inside. I saw myself in one of its seats, strapped in and climbing into the night sky, leaving behind the Path and the Feds forever. It should have made me feel like I was being sprung from a prison, but it didn’t. It was like there was a stake running through my body and deep into the earth and if I tried to leave, I’d be torn apart.

“Come on,” Kate said. “It’s over.”

Her hand slipped from mine as I backed away. Kate called out to me but I had already turned and started running. Bear’s claws scrabbled against the tarmac behind me, racing to keep up. I heard Kate’s voice one last time as we ran through the gate and turned east toward a patch of trees where the land dipped down into the valley. We hit the edge of it just as another bombing run completed out in the valley. The ground shook and my foot hit thin air, sending me tumbling down the embankment.

Rocks and twigs raked my arms and back as Bear and I went spinning down the face of the hill. We hit the bottom with a jolt and rolled into a thin stream of icy water. I lay there buzzing and numb, holding my breath against the rush of pain I knew was coming.

Far above me, there was a swell of engines, loud even over the sounds of the battle, and then the jet’s running lights appeared as it strained against gravity and rose into the sky. Trails of tracer fire chased it but they fell short. In seconds the jet was swallowed up by the dark.

I imagined all of them looking down at fires in the valley and then the snaking lights of the evacuees on the highway, relieved to see them grow smaller and fade away. I wondered how cold that relief would feel when they looked back and saw the place where Alec was meant to sit.

There was a whimper behind me and I turned to find Bear lying in the water, dazed and still.

“Bear?”

I crawled across the ground, grimacing from the pain, and reached out for him. Bear’s teeth flashed as he snapped at my finger.

“Hey. It’s me.”

Bear kicked himself back into the muck near the stream, coiling up and eyeing me warily. He growled when I went for him again, so I held up my hands and eased back onto my knees to examine him from a distance.

“Shhh. Shhhhh.”

There was a shallow gash on his belly and another on his side, but it was one of his front legs that was the real problem. It was bloody from a deep cut that ran nearly its length and the paw was badly swollen. It was the paw he had been avoiding on and off for days. It looked like one of the thin bones just back from his claw had snapped. I looked down the length of the ditch. It had to be a mile or more to the highway.

The fighting was still raging in the valley behind us. We had no choice. I plunged my hands in the scummy water of the ditch and scrubbed the soot and sweat from my face before drinking deep to purge the acid from my throat.

Bear growled steadily as I reached for him. Moving as slow as I could, I got one of my hands on his side and held it there. His fur was hot and his heart was racing. His growl rose in pitch as I moved closer. He snapped again, drawing blood, but I managed to get my hands hooked under his front legs and lift. My wrist throbbed and he yelped in pain but I got him up onto my shoulder, holding him steady and letting him settle as the icy water of the stream coursed around my feet.

When I felt his head fall to my shoulder I held him tight and started moving. I stayed as low as I could, stroking Bear’s back and whispering in his ear as I crept the length of the ditch. We finally came to a place where the water ran into another concrete pipe. I could hear honking horns and idling engines just above us.