The guard building's door opened a few inches and stayed open. Two more minutes passed. I glanced at Hayden in time to see a bead of sweat slide down his temple despite the cold before he reached up and dragged his hoodie’s sleeve across his forehead.
Suddenly, our building’s door moved out of Hayden’s hand. At the same time, Mike and Harvey reappeared before us.
Mike grinned, his eyes tired but relieved. “Done.”
I blew out a long breath. “Good job, guys.” Maybe we’d actually get out of this place alive after all.
Hayden turned towards the rest of the group and gave the thumbs up.
Muffled whoops and whispering broke out as parents rushed to find their children and remove the drugs from their systems. I hurried to the back end to find my dad intently watching Pamela, the female healer who had fixed his concussion, as she bent over a tiny blonde version of herself. When the little girl woke up and said “Mommy!”, Pamela’s teary smile brought tears to my own eyes. Dad grinned too, but his eyes still looked worried.
Pamela wasn’t the only happy parent as more kids were detoxed. But the relieved parents’ smiles didn't last long.
“What's the matter with Mommy?” one little girl asked as she joined the group.
She was the kid who had been leaning against her mother while her baby brother or sister died.
Pamela, who held her hand now, froze then crouched down beside her. “She's still asleep, honey.” Then she looked to Hayden, her eyebrows raised.
Wanting him to decide whether to wake up the girl's mother into a living nightmare.
The hint of Adam’s apple in his throat worked as he swallowed hard, and my chest ached. No one should be forced to make this decision. Who would want that woman to ever wake up and have to deal with such a loss?
“Detox her only enough for her to be able to walk,” Hayden said, his voice gruff. Then he glanced down at me and caught me staring. “It’ll be safer and easier on everyone if the mother doesn’t have to be carried out completely. And this little girl needs her mother at least semi-awake too.”
But there was a haunting tightness around his eyes. Was he worried that he was making a mistake?
I slipped my hand into his. He stared at me for several long seconds, then squeezed my hand.
Pamela touched her sister’s wrist. After a couple of minutes, two men helped her sister to her feet. She was obviously woozy, her eyelids only half raised, her eyes unfocused. And yet she still never let go of the bundle in her arms, even as she reached out to take hold of her daughter's hand.
Hayden’s jaw muscles clenched and unclenched as he took a few deep breaths and seemed to assess our group. “Everyone ready to get out of here?”
Nods all around as families joined hands with their loved ones, all of them looking to Hayden to lead the way out.
“Then let's get out of here.” He opened the door wide and stepped out into the lights that flooded the camp like a football stadium, blinding me and forcing me to raise my free hand to shield my eyes until they could adjust to the radical change in light. He continued to hold my hand, guiding me while I couldn’t see. My dad shuffled behind me, the heel of his left shoe squeaking with each step in a reassuringly familiar way.
After a lot of blinking, my eyes finally started to adjust. As we walked across the rocky, hard ground towards the gates, I looked back over my shoulder at the massive exodus of people following us to freedom. There must have been at least a hundred people in our group, maybe more, and every single one of their faces was so eager and hopeful. And all because of Hayden. In that moment, I had never felt so much pride for someone as I did for Hayden.
Again he caught me looking. One corner of his mouth hitched up as his eyebrows rose in question.
“You did it,” I told him, wondering if he had any idea just how huge his actions tonight were, what they meant for all these people here.
One corner of his mouth tightened in a half grin. “Nah. It was really Mike and John who got us in here. And then all the healers helped out once they were awake. Not to mention how that guy Harvey really saved our butts with the freezing spell. All I did was buy a few flashlights and some bolt cutters.”
I shook my head. He was just being modest. If not for him, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that we would all still be drugged out of our minds in that building, prisoners here until either the government changed its collectively crazy mind about descendants and outcasts or found a way to stop their magic. Or maybe killed all the outcasts instead.
Hayden had saved us. And I had a hunch I wasn’t the only one here who would never forget it.
He reached for the gates' control box and hit the green buttons. Both gates started to slide open with a loud clatter of metal. This was it. We were free and taking everyone with us!
Jeremy would be so jealous. He was always talking about how much luck and determination it took to be in the position of having a firsthand account of an event like this. I glanced around me, wanting to remember every single detail so I could describe what this moment was like to him. He’d be able to write one heck of a story about it.
“Hey!” a man shouted from the opposite end of the compound.
Hayden dropped my hand as we both spun around to find a perimeter guard running around the buildings towards us.
Then the two at the prisoner building entrance stumbled back to life.
A fourth emerged from the guards’ building, sleepily rubbing his eyes.
Either the freeze team had missed a few guards, or the freeze spell wasn’t lasting nearly as long as our guy had expected. Whatever the reason, we were all totally screwed.
“Stop or we'll shoot!” one of the guards yelled.
Three of the guards raised their rifles. The fourth froze then took off for the officer tent. Probably to call for backup.
Hayden burst into a sprint towards the tail end of our group, yelling, “Everyone run! Get out of here now!”
Then he started throwing energy orbs from both his hands at the remaining three guards.
I wanted to run, knew Hayden was right and I should turn and lead everyone through the gates as fast as we could go. But I was paralyzed. I couldn’t look away from Hayden, his face set with determination and complete focus as he fought the guards single handedly with his magic.
His energy orbs started hitting his targets. One guard went down. Then another.
A sharp crack rang out, and that’s when I saw the gun raised in the third guard’s hands. Oh God. They were shooting at Hayden!
Hayden turned and threw two orbs at the shooter, one from each hand, driving the soldier to the ground unconscious.
Hayden lowered his hands, watching the downed guards, probably to make sure they didn’t get back up again. Then he turned towards the tent and tried to raise his hands as if to hit it with energy orbs or another of his spells. But his hands were only halfway up before he groaned and fell to his knees, his right hand darting up to clutch at his left shoulder. Eyebrows pinched, he looked down at his hand as it came away covered in blood.
“Hayden!” I screamed, finally able to move.
I ran around the stunned group of prisoners to Hayden, noticing two of our men also take off running towards the tent, hopefully to finish what Hayden had started. My pulse boomed in my ears like a car stereo system's subwoofer turned up too high as I reached Hayden’s side a second before he began to topple over sideways. It took all my strength to hold his weight and ease him the rest of the way to the ground.
I knelt beside him, brushing aside his hand so I could see his shoulder. Red bloomed through the cotton hoodie, rapidly spreading down the sleeve. “Oh God. Hayden, your arm.”
“The tent—” he groaned, his eyes rolling wildly.
“They’re taking care of it.”
I unzipped his hoodie, peeled back the now soaked layers of his jacket and shirt, and the blood bubbled up to the surface like a natural spring, robbing me of the ability to breathe.
&nb
sp; “We've gotta go,” Hayden choked out. “Are there any military trucks?”
“What?” Was he insane? He was hurt! How could he still be worrying about getting us out of here?
Dad joined us, crouching at my side to rest a hand on my shoulder. But he wouldn’t be any help. He was a scientist. Hayden needed a real doctor right now.
The prisoners had also figured out Hayden was hurt. They gathered around us, muttering. Then Pamela pushed through the crowd and knelt at Hayden’s other side. Immediately she called for someone to find a first aid kit, sending more men scattering.
“Trucks.” Hayden tried to sit up. I pushed him back down, scared for him to even move until we got the bleeding to stop. “We gotta get these people out of here.”
“I'm on it,” a man said from somewhere towards my right. He took two guys with him at a jog.
“Uniforms. For the men,” Hayden muttered as Pamela ripped the bottom two inches off her sweatshirt, using part of the strip as a compress against his wound. She wrapped the rest of the strip around his shoulder to hold the wad of fabric in place.
“And those…those walkie talkie things. On the necks…” Hayden added.
Two more people, overhearing their new leader’s probably insane ramblings, took it as an order and ran towards the guard building.
I shook my head in disbelief. He was badly wounded, slurring every word, barely able to talk from either shock or the pain, and still trying to boss people around. Yep, he was definitely a Shepherd.
“And food…and water…” Hayden said, his voice growing fainter now.
“Okay, Hayden,” I said. “Relax now. Everyone's working on it.”
He squinted at the sky and said something that sounded like “'S it gonna rain?”
“Rain?” At first, I thought he was delusional. Then I realized what he meant when I heard the thunder-like rumble too. “Oh. No, that's the trucks.” The men were driving two military trucks around from behind the guards’ building where the vehicles must have been parked out of sight.
Pamela partially lifted Hayden, checked the back of his shoulder and grumbled. “The bullet went straight through.”
“Is that good?” I asked, thinking, Please let it be a good thing.
“Yes and no. There’s no bullet to dig out, and it missed all his organs. But it means twice the holes to lose blood from.”
Hayden tried again to sit up but was so weak I was able to hold him down with a single hand on his good shoulder.
“I found some uniforms and those communication thingies,” someone reported in.
Hayden tried to look in that direction. “Get everyone…on the…”
“Hayden, I said we've got it!” I honestly didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. He seemed determined to die a true Shepherd, still mumbling out orders like a general on the battlefield. Couldn’t he just rest and let us figure out what to do?
“Don't forget food. And water.” His eyelids began to droop.
“Hayden, shut up already!” I finally had to say, exasperated beyond measure. “You've been shot, you idiot!”
He made a face that would have been comical if not for the fact that he could be dying from blood loss. “Well, that sucks.”
And then his eyelids drifted closed and stayed that way.
“Hayden?” I tapped his cheek, getting no response. “Hayden!”
CHAPTER 8
“Hayden’s right, we’ve got to go,” Pamela muttered even as she pressed her hands to the front and back of Hayden’s wounded shoulder and closed her eyes.
“We can’t move him while he’s pouring out blood.” Why did I feel like I was the only sane one around here all of a sudden? Couldn’t this woman see how hurt Hayden was?
“I’ve slowed the bleeding already. I can heal him more in the back of a truck while we’re putting some miles between us and this place.”
Dad pressed a heavy hand on my shoulder. “She’s right, Tarah. I’m pretty sure that guard had time to send out a request for backup. This place is going to be crawling with a fresh wave of soldiers soon.”
I blew out a long breath through puckered lips then nodded. “Fine. Let’s go.”
I supported the heavy weight of Hayden’s head while Dad, Pamela, and two men carried the rest of his weight over to one of the two trucks they had parked close to us. Getting him up into the high back end was another matter, though, requiring Pamela and me to climb in first and both hold the tent-like flaps open as well as guide Hayden’s head and shoulders in while several men lifted his body from below. I was scared so much movement was going to reopen his wounds, but Pamela didn’t seem concerned at all. Maybe she knew she could reheal him if necessary. Or maybe she didn’t know him, didn’t really care whether he lived or died, and just worried about getting herself and her family out of here.
All I could think about was making sure Hayden was going to be okay. Thankfully the others had heard Hayden’s orders and were following them, grabbing all the water, meals-ready-to-eat, and blankets in the camp. Four men dressed themselves in soldier uniforms and took over the driving. Mike made a big sacrifice, leaving behind his car he claimed he’d never liked anyway and driving Hayden’s truck instead behind the bigger khaki colored military trucks. I had no clue why Hayden would care about his truck, but Mike insisted he would when he recovered. Maybe it was a guy thing. Or maybe Mike just wanted a chance to drive Hayden’s hot off the line hybrid truck.
I couldn’t care less about the stupid truck. All I cared about was seeing Hayden wake up.
Except he didn’t.
At first, all the rest of the group cared about was getting as far away from the camp as fast as possible. But once Pamela stabilized Hayden, I was able to calm down enough to start thinking more clearly about a long term solution for our group.
We stopped after an hour at a bus station, where roughly half the outcasts left us. Apparently they had their own plans for where to hide. But the rest of them didn’t have the money to escape, or else they had nowhere safe to go. Even those who had contacts didn’t want to risk endangering those relatives or friends by asking for their help.
They might be free, but for so many of our group, these prisoners were still just as trapped by the situation as they had been before escaping the internment camp. They were lost refugees with no one else to turn to for help or hope. And for some strange reason, they seemed to believe that Hayden had some sort of plan to get them to safety, judging by how they kept whispering and staring at him with a combination of gratitude and desperation. Maybe it was because he'd gotten them out of the internment camp. I was guessing it was because of who his dad was, though. They probably thought he could pull some strings with Senator Shepherd to get all their names cleared.
Considering all that they had been through already, I didn't have the heart to tell them the truth, that Hayden was just as lost and on his own as they were. He was the only hope they had left. How could I take that away from them?
So I made the difficult decision to tell everyone the tiniest of lies.
“Uh, to be honest, I don’t know if Hayden’s going to be able to get his dad to clear our records,” I said, wincing as fear returned to make their already pale faces even paler. Several women hugged their children closer, pressing kisses to the little ones’ heads or turning their faces into their husbands’ shoulders.
“But, um, I’m sure Hayden does have a place for us to go where we can figure it all out,” I stammered, praying I wasn’t getting us in too deep here. “I’m just…not sure where it is.”
“He had to have written down the address somewhere,” someone cried out.
“Uh, right,” I said, mentally scrambling now. This was why I always tried not to tell lies. It was too hard to cover my tracks. The truth was so much easier. “Can someone radio Mike and ask him to check Hayden’s truck? Maybe we can find something there.” He had to have a phone with a list of friends and relatives or something.
“What about this?” Pamela held
out a thin black leather wallet. “One of the guys said it fell out of Hayden’s back pocket while we were loading him.”
Holding my breath, I sent a silent apology to Hayden for violating his privacy then dug through the wallet, nearly weeping when I found a credit card wrapped in a piece of paper with the name "Grandma Letty" on it plus an address and phone number. It was worth a shot at least.
“Anybody got a phone?” I asked.
Dad surprised me by holding up a hot pink phone that looked suspiciously familiar. “Apparently the soldiers had a huge pile of all our personal belongings stashed in their building. Including your phone. We left the others, assuming they would be traceable by now. But since they just nabbed you tonight…”
I hesitated, weighing the odds and the risk. But we had to have a place to go to, and no way was I going to tell the drivers to take us across multiple states without first making sure we would be welcome.
Taking a deep breath, I made the call.
A few minutes later, I could breathe a little easier. Smiling, I tapped the screen to end the call and said, “Tell Mike to plot us out a new course. Looks like we’re headed north.”
Our truck full of weary passengars erupted in cheering.
Having heard my entire side of the conversation with Grandma Letty, Dad didn’t need any filling in. While Pamela used the walkie-talkie neck band things to relay the address to our caravan’s lead driver, Dad cleared his throat and leaned in closer at my other side.
“You have noticed there’s still approximately fifty, or more, people in this group, right?”
I nodded, focusing on making sure the blanket rolled up beneath Hayden’s head by my hip was still in place to protect him from the hard, cold metal truck bed.
“Just where do you think his grandma’s going to put all of them?”
“You mean us.” I hadn’t realized I was going to say that until I actually did.
Dad’s eyes blinked behind his glasses like an owl’s in the flashlight’s indirect beam for at least twenty seconds. “No. You are not going with them. And neither am I. As soon as we have them headed in a new direction, you and I are getting on a bus and heading straight back home before your mother goes nuclear.” At my raised eyebrows, he added, “I read her text messages that you missed. She’s worried sick about the both of us now.”
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