by Chris Bostic
“I’m not,” she said, but quickly broke into a laugh. “Maybe I am. I’m getting delirious.”
“It’s better than the alternative. Anyway, I’m gonna get really crabby if we don’t get the heck outta here.”
“I know.”
“You do, do ya?”
She held up a hand to shush me. “Here they come.”
“Finally.”
Spotted Owl was back in the lead of an overloaded procession. Buckets were in both of his hands, meaning he was undoubtedly disappointed at having to leave the machine gun behind. It would have been nice to have brought the extra firepower, but the huge number of buckets was somewhat encouraging in their own scary, painfully heavy way.
He took our group past the shower house to a narrow gravel road. All the while, I wondered why he hadn’t kept the whole group together rather than splitting into two groups long before the shootout at the bridge.
“I don’t want to hear any complaining,” Spotted Owl said, which spelled imminent bad news to me. “We’ve gotta stay on the roads as long as we can. We’re weighted down something fierce, and it’ll take forever to get there cross country with this crew.”
“He means you,” Austin whispered to me.
If I’d had a free hand, I would’ve smacked my brother. Instead, Austin skipped safely past. Of course, Mouse was right behind him.
“Wait up, Big A,” she called. The poor thing seemed more like who Spotted Owl had been talking about initially. She had both hands on a bucket, but looked like she needed four more. She leaned forward as if she was fighting a stiff wind, and was turned to the side so severely that I thought she would be dragging the bucket before they made it halfway back to the highway.
Remembering there were fourteen buckets, I quickly inventoried the rest of the group as we hiked. Spotted Owl, John, and Austin each had two, just like me. Katelyn’s dad also had two, but that was it for the doubles. Both of the women and Katelyn were managing with one a piece, though I suspected my mom could handle two. As Katelyn had said earlier, she was one tough lady.
That left the prisoners with none, which seemed foolish to me. I totally understood that Noel seemed to be in no condition, but James was in perfectly good shape. The military had him physically fit, and I thought that made him a flight risk. No one had a free hand to train a weapon on the kid, so he could easily slip off into the woods before someone could drop their bucket.
I slowed to settle into my spot at the end of the line. As James tromped past, I stepped out to cut him off. “You got two free hands. Go grab that bucket from little Mouse.”
The kid looked up at me somberly. I didn’t think he had anything to be moping about. Maybe he’d lost some buddies at the bridge, but it sure didn’t sound like he was that close to any of them. If anything, he’d made it sound like he didn’t even like them.
Then again, I could appreciate both sides of the situation. I certainly didn’t have any love for the soldiers, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t feel remorse. Unlike James, I hadn’t known them at all.
“Go on,” I said, frustrated the kid wasn’t moving to help out. “Get her bucket.”
“They told me I couldn’t have one.”
I picked up the pace to hurry after him. “Who?”
“The guy in charge.”
That seemed short-sighted on Spotted Owl’s part, I thought. I gazed ahead to see Austin and Mouse faltering. They’d already been passed by the two moms, and we weren’t even back to the highway yet.
No matter Spotted Owl’s concerns, I knew Mouse would be far more helpful scouting than worn out from lugging around a load half her weight. “Just go take it. I said so.”
I watched as the kid hurried on ahead and tried to take the bucket. She refused at first, but relented when Austin said something to her. She handed it over, but ended up sharing the handle on one of Austin’s. It was almost like they were holding hands, though balancing forty pounds of highly combustible material. Much like their potential relationship, I thought with a chuckle.
The sun had fully set by then, leaving at most twenty minutes of a deep, dusky brown. Worse yet, there was nothing to like about being out along the road. Thanks to an eternity of monotonous hiking, I took the time to overanalyze the situation.
Of course, I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were defenseless, but no more so than in the daylight, I supposed. Either way, whenever the jets or helicopters came boiling up out of the valley, we would have to drop our loads and sprint—again. But at least it was far easier to hike along the edge of the road than deep in the forest. Especially at night.
The winding road that led from the horse camp grew steep right before it met the main highway. I was huffing and puffing as loud as an old locomotive. I should’ve been chilled with the sun fully gone, but my insides were boiling like a steam engine. The body armor wasn’t helping, and I was sorely tempted to shed the vest and helmet along the way.
“Keep going,” Spotted Owl encouraged between labored breaths of his own.
Based on what I’d seen before, I didn’t think there was any way Noel could keep up. I looked over my shoulder expecting to find the man had already dropped out. Surprisingly, he was keeping up rather well. Though he still leaned to one side, his left leg dragging in the gravel, he was hanging in there. If anything, I thought he looked stronger than before. And that only made me more suspicious.
The explanation Noel had given to the others about hiking along the highway had seemed flimsy at best. Granted, he’d had a couple days to walk that far, so I figured it hadn’t been an impossible distance, even in his current condition. Even hiding in the horse camp made some sense, though it was far enough off the road that it seemed a little too coincidental. But Noel had explained that away by saying he’d seen the helicopter troops rappel to the bridge, and he’d diverted off the highway and just accidentally run across the campsite.
My helmet couldn’t hide the deep frowns creasing my forehead.
“What?” Katelyn asked.
“I just don’t trust that guy,” I whispered, then cringed realizing I might be shouting thanks to what sounded like the buzzing of a million mosquitos in my ears. “Was that too loud?”
“No. But which guy? Noel or James?”
I hadn’t noticed James dragging behind us. I turned back around and saw him plodding along right behind Noel.
“Who’s watching those guys?” I uttered.
“I thought John was.” Katelyn looked ahead to find her brother way up near the front by Spotted Owl. That guy seemed to be her brother’s new best friend, which I didn’t completely understand either. While I didn’t dislike the older man, I found Spotted Owl a bit abrasive at times. Perhaps because he seemed a little too bossy, and I had little use for authority.
I felt like my mother would have been better suited to taking the lead, but assumed it had something to do with her unfamiliarity with the terrain. My dad had been the one who could read a map backwards and forwards, and generally kept her on track. While he had provided the directions, she provided the motivation. In that moment, she seemed lost to me, but not just in the literal sense.
I stopped well short of the highway and waited for the two stragglers to stumble past.
“Get on up there.” I had a feeling Katelyn was going to chide me about falling behind the rest of the group, so I added, “And hurry up. We need to stick together.”
Noel nodded weakly as he filed on ahead. James remained sullen, and didn’t look at me. That didn’t sit well. I called out a couple more times for them to catch up to the others before realizing that I was being the authoritarian. No wonder they didn’t have anything nice to say to me.
Finally, we hit the highway pavement. I’d just about closed the distance behind the rest of the group, though I was completely spent from the effort of lugging around the buckets. My shoulders burned. The ligaments had stretched out until they wouldn’t possibly shrink back where they belonged.
Noel didn’t
look much better than I did, though he had no heavy load to complain about. His leg was clearly bothering him, yet he soldiered on. If the injured, or supposedly injured, guy could go, I wasn’t about to admit defeat.
Spotted Owl barely looked over his shoulder long enough to see if we were keeping up, and kept right on going. At least the terrain had flattened out. We stuck to the shoulder of the roadway, tired feet scuffing in the gravel.
My feet ached. My back had stiffened up to the point that I could barely bend over, but the real pressure was on my hands. Blisters had most definitely formed where the thin plastic handles of the buckets threatened to cut my palms in half. I would’ve done anything to have padded my hands, but didn’t have a scrap of fabric to borrow.
In not time, my shoulders felt like my arms were permanently pulled out of the sockets. But still I trudged on, no longer caring about the two prisoners, or whatever they were.
“Where’d Austin go?” I suddenly realized, but could answer my own question when I noticed Mouse had disappeared too.
“Scouting,” Katelyn confirmed. “Spotted Owl sent them on ahead while you were kinda zoned out there.”
“Me? Zoned out?”
“Like a zombie, babe.”
“I know. I kinda wish I was one.”
“So you could eat people?” It was hard for her to play act while carrying the bucket, but she gave it her best stagger, and repeatedly mumbled, “Brains. I need brains.”
“Better to not have a brain,” I said.
“Don’t be so sure. I remember a couple guys like that. There was the one boy in Spanish class who totally couldn’t take the hint.”
“The hint?” I narrowed my eyes at her. “From you?”
“Well, it was a little more than just him. Some super cool football guy kept trying to ask me out. I don’t know how many times I had to say no, but it was getting ridiculous.”
I hadn’t shared any classes with her, but I really wanted to know more. I certainly wasn’t surprised that someone had asked her out. As far as I was concerned, every guy in the school had probably been after her. In a way that almost made me appreciate getting to spend every minute of every day with her, not that I was the jealous or overbearingly needy type.
“Oh, really,” I said, failing at hiding my curiosity. “Who was that dude?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“C’mon. Humor me.”
“Fine.” She turned to me and whispered, “Billy Dickins.”
I nodded knowingly. “Yeah, the name says it all. He was a total-”
She cleared her throat to interrupt me. “Anyway, I don’t want to talk about him…or school.”
“I hear you. I won’t miss a lot of those kids, but I can’t help but wonder about some of ‘em.” I looked to the sky and exhaled loudly, thinking about my old friend Joe and the others. “We’ve been here so long now, with no real clue what’s going on out in the real world. I’ve just gotta wonder…”
“It doesn’t do much good, does it?”
“Not really, but I can’t quit thinking about what it’s like back home…and if we’ll ever get there.”
“We will,” she said. “I’ve gotta believe it.”
“I hope so,” I mumbled, and focused back on the present. “Anyway, so who’s carrying Austin’s buckets?”
“Your mom has one. I think they took the other one with them.”
“Better hope he doesn’t have the blasting caps,” I said. “He’ll light one up just to see what happens.”
“I’m pretty sure Spotty still has those.”
I grinned. “Spotty?”
“Why not? Everyone needs a nickname.”
“Okay, Rocky.”
“Exactly, Bull-twinkle.”
“Very funny.”
“I know,” she said. “It helps keep my mind off this bucket. Good God it’s heavy.”
“Can you imagine the boom this thing’s gonna make,” I said. “I have no idea how we’re gonna use them, though. Won’t we have to get super close to the building or vehicles or whatever to make it work?”
“Probably,” she said. “Or maybe we just leave them along the road.”
“Like a roadside bomb,” I said. “That’s, uhm…wow. If they didn’t think we were terrorists before, they really will now.”
“I guess so,” she said softly. “But what choice do we have?”
“None,” I admitted. “But I don’t like it.”
Katelyn looked at me curiously, but held back on a response.
I had a hard time putting my concerns into words, and finally said, “It’s one thing to blow bridges and keep them out, but I’m a bit, uhm, worried…no, concerned about, uh…”
“You have issues about fighting back?” she asked, betraying no opinion of her own.
“I guess so. Is that weird?”
“Not really. I don’t like it either, but they fired the first shot. Or shots.”
“And bombs, and rockets, and pretty much everything else.” I took a deep breath that had more to do with the anxiety than the exhaustion, though I was about ready to drop if Spotted Owl didn’t let us rest soon. “I know I shouldn’t feel this way.”
“I think it’s perfectly normal to worry about other people. If more people did that, maybe we wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in right now.”
“That makes more sense than anything I’ve heard in a long time.”
“I’m not so big into peace and love and all that stuff…at least not now,” she said, which perfectly echoed my thoughts. “But I like to think I have a neighborly streak in me, as my mom would say. If we cared a lot more about our neighbors, even total strangers, then this world would be a whole lot better place.”
“Hmm. You’re pretty smart.”
“I know. I get that a lot.” Katelyn said it so seriously that I had to turn to look. She grinned back at me. “When I’m joking, I smile too.”
“Good to know.”
“Keep it down back there,” Katelyn’s mom said from somewhere in front of us. Evidently, she’d slowed a little bit, and had fallen behind the two straggling prisoners. If she was that tired, I figured it was no wonder she was a little snippy, but I didn’t dare say that out loud.
“Spotted Owl says we’re getting close,” Spotted Fawn added between labored breaths.
“Hey, Rocky. Spotty says we’re getting close,” I told Katelyn just so I could use my favorite new nicknames.
“You talking about my mom?” she asked.
“I guess she’s a Spotty too, huh?”
“Yeah, we might need a new nickname for her.”
Katelyn’s mom turned around again. “You kids need to keep it down. I’m not telling you again.”
I pinched my lips shut. I wasn’t usually one to go against authority, and aggravating my girlfriend’s mom was really low on my list of things to do.
“That was a little rude,” Katelyn whispered. “How about we call her Snotty?”
I covered up a laugh with a fake cough, which only served to have Katelyn’s mom turn around one more time. Her dark eyes gleamed in the moonlight like a raven’s.
“Do I have to separate you two?”
“No, ma’am,” I said. “We’ll be quiet.”
“You think you’d take this a little more seriously…”
Her admonishment faded away. I didn’t need to be reminded about the severity of the situation, but wouldn’t dare talk back. Instead, I stewed inside thinking how Snotty couldn’t possibly know how I was feeling.
In a way, the anger served me well. We probably hiked a half mile, and I didn’t once notice the pain in my hands. We’d made it up a shallow incline and back down the other side, as well as past a couple sharp turns. We rounded a particularly sharp curve to the left, and Spotted Owl sunk to a knee with a hand raised.
Once everyone had gathered around him, he whispered, “We’re really close now. Mingus Trail is up on the right.”
“I haven’t seen any signs of bomb crat
ers,” John said.
“Mouse is up ahead checking it out.” Spotted Owl pointed off to the woods where a creek babbled alongside the road. “We should hop the creek and wait for them up by the trailhead.”
“That sounds like a plan,” John said. He picked up his two buckets with a grunt and gestured with his head for everyone to move out.
I was less enthusiastic, but it sounded like we’d get a quick break if we just made it a little farther.
“We can do this, Rocky,” I told Katelyn.
“We have to, Bullwinkle.”
“I still don’t even know what that means.”
“Me, either, but I like it.”
I frowned, and grumbled, “That makes one of us.”
My back complained as I stooped over to pick up the buckets, but I was able to stifle a groan. Following Spotted Owl, we slid down the road slope toward the creek, and somehow managed to not topple all the way into the stream. As much as I thought a break might feel heavenly, I knew any relief would be temporary. There would be no actual rest until the night was over. If we lasted that long.
I stumbled across the creek. As soon as we’d gathered up on the other side in a secluded little flat spot where we could watch the road, I dropped my buckets. I sat on one and tapped the other for Katelyn. She sat next to me without a word.
The longer I sat there, the heavier my eyelids became.
I was too tired to move. Right before I could pass out, shadows came rushing through the woods toward us.
CHAPTER 26
As soon as I knew there was nothing to be alarmed about, my eyes closed. They refused to reopen despite the voices swirling around. Seconds or minutes later, I was rudely awakened having forgotten that our scouts had returned.
“Psst, Bullwinkle!” Katelyn whispered. “Oh, forget it.” She shook me. “Wake up, Zach.”
“Wh-what?”
“Your name’s too long.”
“I’m awake, Ma,” I mumbled. I rubbed the sleep from my eyes, expecting to find myself back home in my bed, probably late for school. When my eyes cleared, I saw Katelyn’s face shining in the moonlight. “Wait…what?”