Unknown - The_Growing_589064

Sprinting among the trees, leaping the tussocks of undergrowth that bar their way, Kirsten pants, “Y’know—I’m—not sure—that’s—all—about us.”

“I don’t think it is,” Koda answers without breaking her stride.

“They want—what I think they want?”

“Yeah. And Ari’s—” Koda pauses to duck under a low branch that bars their way—“got the Oedipal thing bad. Gonna overthow papa.”

Ahead lies the main drive to the lodge. Koda pulls up, motioning Kirsten and Asi to halt, and listens. The shouting of the idiot posse comes to them through the trees, along the side path that leads to the cabin. Faintly, from the tarmac that leads past the headquarters-cum-palace, comes the sound of running feet. A dozen or so, coming on fast. Shit. Koda pumps a round into the chamber of the 30.06; Kirsten, her mouth drawn in a grim line, pulls back the slide on her pistol. “Ready?”

“Ready,” Kirsten answers, and they burst out of the trees onto the road just as Tanya and Elaine, three other armed women behind them, come pelting around the bend of the road.

But Tanya yells, “Go!” motioning them across the road with the sweep of her arm. “I’ll deal with them!”

With a salute of thanks, Koda and Kirsten, Asi loping full out beside them, sprint across the road and into the deep woods. Behind them gunfire erupts in a rapid exchange. The sound fades as the trees, towering pines and spruce, close about them, fallen needles silencing their steps as they become shadows in the darkness only, running ahead of the sun.

*

At evening, they camp on the shoulder of the Medicine Bow Range. The Platte runs blue below them, its course marked with brilliant splashes of color: the scarlet of Indian Paintbrush, golden yellow columbines, lupines in rose and purple. Snow blankets the high ridges of the mountains that rear toward the sky behind them. A faint breeze, chill from its passage over the latest fall, winds about them as they sit by the remains of their fire, their pots scoured and stowed, their supper of jerky and tinned beans lying comfortable if not tasty in their bellies. Asi, oblivious, lies snoring in the warmth.

“I’m going to get up any minute and get into the tent,” Koda says, smoothing Kirsten’s hair against her shoulder. “Any minute now.”

“Mmmm,” says Kirsten. “Just drag me in after you.”

After a moment, Koda says, “Those are pretty big mountains. You wanna go over or run parallel to ‘em down into Colorado?”

“You’re supposed to be the trusty native guide. Which way’s quicker?”

“Over, probably.”

“Over it is, then.

“Know something?”

“What?”

“I’m never gonna say something’s no skin off my ass again. I’m almost scared to take my pants off and look at the damage.”

“Want me to take ‘em off for you?”

Koda flashes her a grin. “Why, Ms. President. I thought you’d never ask.”

*

“Looks like rain soon,” Kirsten observes as she looks up at the sky and its rapid gather of clouds like guests to a party they absolutely cannot miss. Her breath comes hard and fast from the exertion of climbing nearly (to her) vertical grades with not a level plane in sight. She walks with the aid of a stout stick nearly as tall as she is. Asi lopes along happily, occasionally darting off the game trail they are following to investigate something interesting to his dog senses. Wiyo easily paces them high above, riding the currents of the increasingly chilly air.

They have made good time since The Elk Mountain Incident—as Kirsten is coming to call it, capital letters and all. They’d managed to scare up a couple of mountain bikes that had gotten them a good long way before a blown out tire ended that adventure for good. Not that it would have mattered soon anyway. The grades they were now climbing were too steep to even entertain the notion of riding a bike, unless one was Greg LeMonde, a title neither of them claimed.

Cars, of course, were out. Even if gas hadn’t been a problem, which it was, and they had been able to find one that would start after sitting idle for six or more months, which they hadn’t, riding in a moving vehicle might as well have painted a target on their heads, together with a sign reading “KIRSTEN KING IS HERE!!! COME AND GET HER, BOYS!!”

Androids do not drive cars.

While continuing her easy, long-legged stride, Koda cants her head, nostrils flaring as she scents the air. “Not rain,” she murmurs. “Snow. And a lot of it by the look of those clouds.”

“Not that I’m a weatherman or anything,” Kirsten replies, chuckling, “but in case you’ve forgotten, it’s July, love. It doesn’t snow in July.”

“Up here it can. Weather patterns are different up this high. A July snowstorm isn’t all that uncommon. People can get tricked up here sometimes, and come unprepared.”

“If you start making Donner party cracks,” Kirsten states with a nervous chuckle, “I’m gonna start running back down this damn mountain as fast as my slowly blistering feet will carry me.”

Koda smiles. “We’ll be alright. We’ve got a little time yet to find shelter.”

Kirsten looks around, seeing nothing but trees, trees, bushes, and more trees. “Um…I don’t want to sound alarmist or anything, but I haven’t seen anything even remotely resembling a town for hours. Hell, I haven’t seen anything resembling a house for hours.”

“We’ll find something. C’mon.”

With an exasperated sigh, Kirsten trudges on, every so often taking a wary glance at the clouds continuing to build and stealing the last of the bright blue of the sky.

*

Heavy flurries are threatening to turn into a full-out blizzard as Dakota leads them deeper into the forest. Her eyes constantly scan, ears primed for any sounds of danger. Asi ranges back and forth in front of them, nose to the ground and tail held at stiff attention. Though Kirsten trusts Dakota with her life, her old childhood fears of being lost in the woods have sprung to the surface with the turning of the weather, and though a chill wind is now blowing, a greasy sweat dots the exposed surfaces of her skin, dripping into her eyes and causing them to sting.

Suddenly, Asi’s haunches stiffen and he lets go a volley of barks that almost sends Kirsten into orbit. She steps closer to Dakota as a huge flock of birds rises, screeching their displeasure. To her surpise, her lover seems quite relaxed, even smiling as she eyes the angry birds. “I don’t see what’s so funny,” she snipes, angry more at herself for her jittery nerves than at her partner’s seemingly inappropriate sense of humor. “For all we know, he could be barking at a grizzly.”

“It’s no grizzly,” Koda replies, still smiling as she meets her lover’s eyes. “Birds wouldn’t be roosting around a bear.”

“So…what is it then?”

“You’ll see.”

“It” turns out to be a shack, though to use the term does great disservice to shacks everywhere. Short and squat, perhaps eight feet to a side if that, it has the faintly listing look of a party-goer after one too many shots of Cuervo. The only window peers out at the world through shattered glass, and the door, or what’s left of it, hangs forlornly from one rusted hinge. The roof, minus most of what passes for its shingles, is slightly canted and the rocks from a fireplace chimney rise from it like a strangely shaped mushroom.

To Dakota, it looks like nothing so much as a long abandoned ice-fishing shanty, though she knows that the nearest body of serviceable water is miles away in any direction. Still….

“Well, it’s not the Watergate, but it’s got a roof.”

At this point in time, Kirsten is all in favor of anything that involves protection from the hard-driving snow and the wind that cuts through her light windbreaker like the blade of a knife. She takes a step forward, only to be held back by Dakota, who unshoulders her rifle and aims for the door.