Jeff Hirsch - The Darkest Path

Bodies pressed in all around me, pinning my arms to my side and dragging me along. I managed to look behind me and saw a band of gray uniforms, unbroken except for a single dot of white making her way through them toward Hill.

Nat was twenty feet out and closing quickly. I tried to push through the crowd, but there were so many people. Hill appeared and disappeared in the confusion, reaching out to grasp people’s hands, to embrace them, to kiss them, tears in his eyes. But then there was a gasp and the movement of the crowd ceased moving and a hush fell.

I pushed through the final layer of bodies until I saw Hill, barely five feet away from me. A young novice, overcome with emotion, had thrown himself past Hill’s security to fall at the man’s feet. Hill touched the novice’s arm and drew him up. Once he was standing, Hill embraced him and then turned the young man around for all of us to see.

The novice beamed up at Hill, his face rosy, joyous. Hill smiled, lost in the moment, but then his eyes fixed at a point across the circle. Everyone turned to follow his gaze and came to a lone companion who had just stepped out of the crowd.

Nat’s face was bare of her veil, but no one was looking at her face. Every eye in the room was locked on her right hand and the silver cylinder that rested in her palm.

There were screams and then the rush of security as they swarmed through the crowd and raised their weapons. I recoiled, anticipating a roar of fire, but then Nathan’s voice rose over the crowd.

“Stop!”

The soldiers hesitated. Hill lifted his hand, then slowly lowered it until it rested once again on the boy’s shoulder. As one, the guards returned their weapons to their sides. The crowd pulled back, but I stayed where I was, ending up alongside the first line of soldiers, Nat to my left and Hill to my right.

Nat’s eyes were red and swollen, moving from Hill to the novice boy in front of him.

“You’ve been crying.”

As soft as Hill’s voice was, it filled the Lighthouse. Nat didn’t move, didn’t take her eyes off him. Her hand was out before her like a lance. The room felt very small as everyone in it except Nat and Hill and the boy seemed to fall away.

“People you love have been killed in all of this,” Hill said. “Haven’t they?”

I moved behind the front line of the crowd, drifting closer to Nat.

“Let him go,” she said.

“Was it your parents?”

“I said let him go!”

“Were they soldiers?”

The muscles in Nat’s jaw stood out like bands of iron. “My mother was a soldier.”

“And your father?” Hill asked. “A firefighter? No. A police officer.”

Nat said nothing and Hill nodded, sadly.

“My dad was a cop too,” he said. “He was killed in the line of duty after patrolling a neighborhood in Dallas for twenty-five years. I didn’t really know my mom. Your parents were killed trying to protect you. Weren’t they?”

Nat nodded, uncertain. A line of sweat was breaking out on her brow.

“They gave you an amazing gift,” he said. “Why would you reject it now?”

Her hand began to tremble and tears had started to form at the corners of her eyes. Nat gritted her teeth to hold them back, but they came anyway. Hill eased the boy into the crowd and then waved them all back to a safe distance. He took a step closer to Nat.

“Kill me if you want to kill me,” he said. “The Path will go on.”

As if on cue, the canvas walls shook like they were caught in a sudden gust. A jet flew overhead and then another. I slipped closer to Nat, my eyes on her thumb as it hovered over the trigger.

“Would your family want you to die defending a world that was already gone?”

Nat’s fingers went pale around the metal cylinder. Her thumb rose over the trigger.

“I don’t give a damn about the world.”

I leapt out of the crowd and hit Nat hard, throwing my arms around her waist and knocking us into a pile on the floor. There were screams above us and a rush of bodies. Nat struggled to get out of my grip, finally managing to lift her hand free and bring it up between us. The trigger flashed. Her thumb fell toward it, but I wrenched it out of her hand before she could press it.

Hands fell on my arms and back and I went flying away from her. A black mass of security grabbed Nat and pulled her away while she thrashed, eyes wild, screaming.

“What did you do?! What did you do?!”

The soldiers tossed me aside and I crashed into the floor on the other side of the Lighthouse. I felt a hand on my shoulder, pulling me up, and I suddenly found myself staring into the wryly smiling face of Nathan Hill.

“My hero,” he said.

A soldier appeared at Hill’s side. “Sir, the Feds are heating up at the front. If they know you’re here—”

“Take the girl to Shrike with us,” he said. “We’ll talk to her there. Our hero is coming with us too, so make room.”

“Yes, sir!”

Hill clapped me on the back. “Can’t let anything happen to my rescuer, can I?”

Another soldier appeared to hustle us off toward the exit. The battle sounds outside were louder now and closer. I looked over my shoulder as we ran. Rhames and the other security guards had Nat on her knees, her robe and bomb vest stripped off, her hands cuffed behind her back. Her eyes burned through the air at me. I turned and followed Hill.

A line of vehicles was idling behind the Lighthouse — two Humvees with .50 cals on top and a Stryker armored personnel carrier. A soldier patted me down thoroughly, then pushed me into the back of the Stryker. I settled onto a bench and watched out the open hatch as the horizon north of Kestrel lit up with tracer fire and the glare from artillery strikes. A flight of Apaches and Kiowas spun up and lifted off their pads, angling out toward the front.

Hill conferred with a group of soldiers just out of earshot. He talked to them quietly and slowly, turning his attention to each in turn. Behind them, Rhames and a scrum of soldiers dragged a bound Nat into an armored Humvee. I imagined her sitting in the back of it, a would-be assassin surrounded by soldiers who looked at her target as only one step removed from God. Hill told them he wanted to talk to her, but that would only keep her alive a little while longer. My plan had bought us some time but if we were going to get out of this, I had to stay focused.

Once Nat was locked away, Rhames broke off from the group and came toward Hill. I pushed myself into a dark corner, out of sight.

Had Rhames recognized me? And if he had, would saving Hill’s life be enough to keep me and Nat alive until I could get to the next part of my plan?

The back hatch of the Stryker slammed shut. I looked up to find Nathan Hill was sitting on a bench directly across from me. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. His hands, surprisingly thin and small, were clasped in front of him. Scars stretched from his knuckles up into his sleeve.

“So,” Hill said with his ever-present, gentle smile. “Why don’t you tell me about Benjamin Quarles.”

I stared at him, openmouthed, without words.

“Sergeant Rhames told me his version. I’d like to hear yours.”

Anything I said could cause those hands clasped in front of him to reach out and take me by the throat. I grasped for a lie but nothing came.

“Callum?”

“I… found a dog,” I said. “Quarles was going to kill him. Me too.”

“And so you killed Quarles first.”

I swallowed back a dry spot in my throat and nodded.

“How did you feel?” he asked. “After you killed him?”

I saw Quarles lying there on his belly and smelled the sunbaked dust of the market mixing with the metallic stink of his blood.