C. Redwine: Deception

The afternoon tunnel crew approaches as Ian hammers the last tooth into place. I flip the power switch, and the machine instantly hums to life. Chugging forward, it digs into the wall of soil in front of it and spews dirt out of the pipes, nearly hitting me in the face.

I step back as the tunnel crew leaps into action. We need to tunnel another seven hundred yards into the Wasteland to feel truly safe. I just hope we don’t run out of time.

“Ican do it this time.” I slide the arrow into place the way Rachel showed me and slowly pull the wire taut, my elbow perfectly parallel to the ground.

At first, it was nice having Rachel teach me how to use a bow and arrow to hunt. We headed south out of Baalboden immediately after lunch, carefully climbing over the slabs of steel and stone that litter the ground in front of the remains of the gate. I’d taken an extra moment to double-check that the explosives we’d removed from the compound and laced along the gate as a defensive measure were still in place, but I hadn’t lingered. With Drake in charge of the camp, and an entire crew of men working in the tunnel, I figured I’d take down my first rabbit, and then we’d have plenty of afternoon to spare for . . . other things.

Five misses later, I’d adjusted my description from “nice” to “somewhat unpleasant.”

Eleven misses after that, I’d decided the best word to sum up the experience was “humiliating.”

“Turn your left shoulder toward the target,” Rachel whispers.

“I did.”

“Not enough.” She nudges me to make her point. The rabbit in my sights freezes. “Now,” she breathes against my ear. “Shoot now.”

My fingers curve around the wire, and I quickly run through the steps in my head. One vane turned away from the bow. Body perpendicular to the target. Feet shoulder width apart. Relaxed tension—whatever that means—in my stance.

“Logan, now .”

The rabbit will run when I shoot. The faint noise of the arrow launching from the bow will send it scrambling for safety. Which way will it go? I’ll need to compensate. Aim slightly to the left, to the spot where it first nosed its way out of the undergrowth? Or to the right in case it sprints forward?

Probably to the left. He’ll try to return to what he knows is safe.

The rabbit jerks its head up, ears swiveling. I try to find the anchor point along my cheekbone in time to shoot with any sort of accuracy. I release the wire, and the arrow wobbles slightly as it sails toward its target.

The rabbit dodges safely to the left.

That’s what I get for ignoring logic.

I hook the bow over my shoulder and move forward to collect my arrow. Sunlight filters in through the oak branches above me and hangs in the air like golden mist before disintegrating into the deep shadows that stretch across the forest floor.

“I should’ve torqued my shot to the left,” I say as I bend to dig the arrow out of a bush where it has gallantly speared a handful of thick green leaves. “I knew it was going to run.”

“Well, of course it ran. You gave it a good ten minutes’ notice that you were going to shoot it.” Rachel steps to my side as I brush the last of the leaves off of the arrow’s chiseled copper tip.

I stare her down. “I was double-checking the steps you gave me.”

“You’d already done the steps.” She crosses her arms and taps her fingers against her elbow. “You were wasting time.”

I speak with as much dignity as a man who’s missed seventeen shots in a row can possibly speak. “I was making calculations.”

“You were doubting yourself.” Her eyes meet mine. “Hunting with a bow and arrow isn’t science, Logan. It’s poetry. Let me show you.”

“It’s a specific algorithm of speed, mass, and velocity.” There’s nothing poetic about that, unless you appreciate the beauty of a well-defined mathematical equation. Which I do, but that isn’t the point. The point is that hunting with a bow and arrow isn’t some romanticized communion with one’s inner poetic instincts. It’s cold, hard science, and there’s absolutely no reason why I should continually fail at it when I understand science better than I understand anything else.

Maybe even better than I understand Rachel.

She leads me to the edge of a little clearing, the towering oaks of the Wasteland circling us like silent sentries. Twigs crunch softly beneath our boots. A handful of sparrows scold us vigorously as we stop beneath their tree.

I’m still arguing my point.

“You calculate the angle between yourself and your target, factor in wind speed and direction, account for the prey’s instinctual flight, and—”

She steps behind me and slides her hands over my hips to position my body, her fingers pressing against me with tiny pricks of heat.

“And what?” she asks as she reaches around my back to pull my arms into position.

I swallow against the sudden dryness in my throat and try not to dwell on the fact that her chest—her entire body—is leaning against me.

“Logan?” The wind lifts a long strand of her fiery red hair and slides it against my face. “You were giving me your list of Things That Must Be Taken into Account Before One Dares to Shoot an Arrow. What’s next?”

“I don’t—” I clear my throat. “I don’t remember.”

“Oh, really?” Her voice is low. “Maybe you wanted to warn me to always multiply the force of the arrow with the probability that the prey will jerk to the left?”

“That doesn’t . . .”

She hooks her fingers around my hand and together we nock the arrow, one vane pointed away from the bow. Her skin is smooth against mine, and I try hard not to imagine anything more than her hands.

“That doesn’t what?” she asks, her voice nothing but a whisper against my ear.

“That doesn’t make sense. You can’t multiply force with . . . whatever it was you said.”

“With a probability?” Her body is molded to mine, our hands are inseparable, and my heart feels like a hammer pounding against my chest.

“I—yes. That. Exactly.”

We stand in silence for several excruciating minutes, waiting for more prey to appear. The scolding birds subside into cheerful chirping. The leafy canopy above us rustles like paper made of silk. She leans against me, and I force myself to review the proper method for creating a battery just to give my mind something other than Rachel to think about.

Assemble copper coins, silver coins, and paper discs cut to coin size.

Heat radiates from her body onto mine.

Stack them up—copper, paper, silver—eight times. Secure with copper wire.

I want to take her into my arms until both of us forget why we’re even here.

Dip the stack in salt water.

She shifts her weight, and I close my eyes.

Connect the wire to the terminals, copper on one end, silver on the other.

“There.” She breathes the word against my neck, and my eyes fly open. We turn six degrees to the right and see another rabbit hopping slowly along the edge of the clearing. Our fingers relax away from the wire, and the arrow streaks across the space to bury its tip into the rabbit’s side.

“Got it,” she says, and her lips brush the side of my neck.

All thoughts of assembling batteries fly out of my head.

I spin away from the rabbit, toss the bow onto the ground, and pull Rachel against me before she can open her mouth to tell me she was right—for once, poetry was the answer instead of math.

Kissing Rachel is like discovering a new element—one that turns my blood into lava and sends sparks shooting straight through every logical thought still lingering in my head. Forget math and poetry. Especially poetry. This is much more fun.