August Ansel - Shadow Road

“I got up to pee, and checked on him,” said Renna.

“And found me derelict,” Arie said.

Renna briefly squeezed Arie’s wrist. “We’re all exhausted,” she said.

It took only a cursory touch to know the boy was feverish. Arie laid his head back and opened the buttons on his shirt. The blankets around him were already loose and disheveled, something he’d done himself as his temperature rose during the night. The feel of his skin, so dry and hot, was alarming.

“Renna, will you soak a couple of rags? Let’s mop this fever down, if we can.” She bit her lip and began to unwind the sheet from Kory’s leg. More light had filtered into the dawn, and Arie had to stifle a moan when she exposed the wounds. Curran was awake now, and Arie heard his intake of breath behind her.

The swelling was grotesque, so pronounced that the skin from knee to foot looked stretched taut as a drum. There was almost no definition of shape between his ankle and calf. The most alarming thing, though, was the discoloration. What had looked like red and purple branching when Arie had last wrapped the leg was now a dark, murky cloud; below the knee, Kory’s entire leg was the terrible color of a catastrophic bruise. The smaller lacerations had wept a bit of fluid at their corners, but the sutured gash was a sticky, suppurating mess.

“I’ll clean this up as best I can,” said Arie, “and we have to get him out of the weather. Make the pallet, quick. Make it sturdy.”

The men carried the travois, Handy at the head and Curran at the foot end to lend his strength to keeping Kory’s leg stable. Try as they might, though, there was no way to avoid jostling him. Each time it happened, the boy groaned through clenched teeth.

They hiked as the crow flies, making their way through a two-mile scruff of random thicket, overblown pasture, and straggly secondary trees. Renna walked ahead, using her stick to move trip hazards. Each time she reached a brushy patch, she stabbed at it repeatedly, terrified they’d stumble into another set trap.

Their progress was dismally slow. After almost an hour of haphazard trudging, they’d barely gone a mile. Arie tried to keep her attention everywhere at once: Kory’s haggard face, the terrain they were crossing, and a raft of darkening clouds that was surely going to dump rain.

Suddenly, Handy stumbled hard to his left and came within a whisper of going down on one knee. The stretcher lurched forward, and this time Kory cried out. Talus, walking alongside, whined and licked his hand.

“Stop,” said Curran. “Renna, take my end.”

“It was a damned gopher hole,” said Handy, looking back over his shoulder at Kory. “I’m sorry, buddy.”

“We should keep on,” said Arie, glancing at the sky again. “We don’t dare get caught out in this when it breaks.”

“Please, Renna,” Curran insisted. “Take it.”

The travois was made with one of the sleeping bags and two long willow poles. While Curran and Renna had packed their things and Arie doctored the boy, Handy had cut and bucked the branches. With no time to finesse construction, he’d had to cut slits in the bottom of the bag to put the poles through.

Renna took the handles from Curran, carefully, one at a time.

“Got it?”

“Yeah, got it.”

“Okay, hold it still as you can.” Curran rolled his head side-to-side in a quick stretch. Before anyone could object, he had slid his arms beneath Kory—one under his shoulders and one under his thighs—and lifted the boy into his arms.

“Easy,” Arie said when she realized what he was doing. “Slow, Curran.”

Curran said nothing, just brought Kory up to his chest. Once he had him pressed close, he slowly straightened. The boy moaned again, though not so loud this time. The dark rings around his closed eyes lent his face a disturbing skull-like quality that made Arie’s heart stutter.

Curran looked at her, his face grim but settled.

She turned to Handy. “Get us there. Now.”

Tough as the cross-country travel was, once Curran began to carry the boy their pace improved. After a second hour of hard walking, they broke through onto a paved road. Kory was by no means an insubstantial bundle, and Curran’s face showed the strain of carrying him for nearly two miles. Even with a raw wind blowing, his brow and neck were damp with sweat.

They stepped over the weedy guardrail and caught their breath. “You look about used-up,” said Handy. “Want me to take him?”

Curran shook his head. “We’re close. I don’t want to jostle him any more than we have to.”

Arie put the back of her hand against Kory’s face, but she knew at a glance that his fever was worse. She spun the lid off her water bottle and held it near his badly chapped lips. “Kory,” she said. “Wake up, dear heart, and have a drink. Can you open your eyes for me?”

He moved his head slightly and muttered something incoherent, but did not open his eyes. Arie wet his mouth with a few drops, hoping the sensation would rouse him to consciousness, but he had no response at all.

She couldn’t risk trying to make him swallow in his current state. Instead, she soaked her bandana. First she mopped his face and neck, then she laid the wet cloth under his chin with a dripping twist between his lips. “Maybe he’ll suck on that and take a little water by instinct,” she said. She turned to Handy. “Please tell me we’re close,” she said. She could hear the pleading note in her own voice. “I ought to tend this leg of his, but I hate to unwrap it out here.”

“Very close,” he said. “We’ll bear to the right here. Up that little hill and around the corner we’ll start hitting the outskirts. It’s not more than a quarter mile. First likely place, we’ll stop.”

“Another hill,” said Renna. “Wonderful.”

“Ready?” Arie asked Curran.

“Yeah.”

They trudged up the center of the asphalt, dodging a few abandoned cars—all blessedly empty, Arie was relieved to note. Renna walked right in front of Curran and pointed out humped cracks, loose debris, and any other trouble she spotted. After sticking so close to Curran all day, Talus finally began ranging ahead and then working her way back to the group. She zigzagged from one side of the road to the other, making her own discoveries with her nose. She had clearly gotten a second wind while the two-legged ones dragged along, heads bowed as if it was near evening, though it hadn’t yet cleared noon.

A faint, spitting rain began to fall as they reached the corner at the top of the low grade. Renna and Curran, out in front by a few yards, rounded the bend first, following Talus. There would definitely be no time to hesitate over accommodations—the first house with four walls and a roof would have to do.

“FAR ENOUGH,” came an amplified voice.

Its tinny, unnatural volume landed like a physical blow and seemed to reverberate out through the forested gully that fell down on the far embankment. Talus started barking. Handy looked at Arie, eyes wide, and broke into a run. Arie hurried right behind him, heart pounding, all her weariness disappearing in a colossal burst of alarm.

THE ROAD AHEAD was bisected with a massive blockade fence. It ran across the pavement, into the trees on either side, and out of sight. This wasn’t an explosive pile of rubble but a feat of intentional engineering. Twin rows of dead vehicles parked masonry-style, formed the first barrier. Inside that, a herringboned line of sawhorses was strung with noisemakers, mostly empty cans and glass jars. Behind all that towered the fence itself, made with sheets of steel roofing, wooden telephone poles, and clouds of razor wire.

Curran, Renna, and Handy were bunched together on the ghost of the yellow line, heads craned back to stare into a pair of huge Douglas firs. Arie, breathing hard, stopped short and followed their gaze. Talus barked once more, but quieted when Renna took her by the collar.