“We’re ready Isaac,” said Ben coming to the front. He was in the process of taking off his coat. “You’re going to need this though.”
“No, Ben. Keep it, I’ll be fine.”
“You won’t make it in just your uniform, Isaac,” said Indigo and her voice of reason. “What about if we take turns. Every twenty minutes, someone can take a turn without a coat. Except for Luke and Ava of course. We’ll need to keep their body temperatures up.”
Everyone agreed, and I received a few pats on the back. Their concern and comradery warmed me more than a jacket ever could.
“Okay, great idea,” I said.
We set off. I went at a good pace, keeping the iPhone as far above my head as I could so that it lit as much as the surrounding terrain as possible. I didn’t want to think about how much battery life it had remaining. It was at about 32% when we left, and I knew it wouldn’t last long with the display on constantly, but the fact was, we needed the light. There was no point saving the battery if it meant increasing the danger of a fall for one of us.
I thought about what might be happening back at the facility. They would be on high alert by now and I knew that Leahy wouldn’t just let us walk away. The only question was, who would he send after us? Randall’s men or his own? Well whoever it was, they couldn’t go around us, so the narrow mountain trail gave us a good chance of holding them off with our firearms.
I decided not to think too hard about it until I knew for sure that we were being chased. For now, we needed to concentrate on putting as much distance between us and them as we could. In the meantime, I told Ben, who was bringing up the rear, to be vigilant for signs of pursuit.
As scary and demanding as the walk into the Drake Mountain facility had been, the walk out was worse. We had to pause several times to rest on the undulating path. It was cold and miserable and none of us was used to vigorous physical activity, having been cooped up inside the facility for so long.
Even worse than the physical aspect of our flight was the psychological one. Besides the threat of our captors pursuing us, when the path narrowed and the black chasm beside us came into full view, there was no way to tell how far one would fall if they happened to slip. It could be a few feet or a thousand. If anything, not being able to see anything but the inky blackness was worse than looking down on a thousand-foot drop where you could see the bottom.
As much as I concentrated on watching the path ahead, every five minutes or so I would bring everyone to a halt, lock the iPhone screen and look behind us, watching for the tell-tale sign of flashlights. Of course, they could have night vision goggles, in which case the stops were pointless, but it made me feel better. Every twenty minutes we stopped and did a coat swap and I must say, despite my reluctance to take it when he had first offered it, after my first twenty-minute stint coatless, taking that coat from Ben was the easiest thing I had ever done.
After an hour of hiking, we still hadn’t spotted any sign of pursuit and I began to breathe a little easier. Perhaps the Professor had decided to cut his losses and let us go.
By that time the battery was down to 5% and, being optimistic, that would give us about thirty more minutes before it went flat. The iPhone’s clock said it was 05:23. I had no idea what time dawn would break, but I knew that first light would be at least an hour and a half away. We pushed on.
Twenty minutes later the battery died. Luckily, we had just gotten to a spot where the track had widened into a kind of rocky recess, the walls of the mountain towering over and around us, providing natural protection. Before the light blinked out, I saw it also had a scattering of small and large boulders which would at least give us some shelter from the cool wind.
In the almost complete darkness, I was only able to make out the barest of shapes. We all joined hands as I led the way to the back of the recess. My hand waved back and forth in front of me like I was playing blind man’s bluff at a birthday party. I heard someone trip and swear behind me and I felt a push in the back. We managed to stay upright and after what seemed like an age, my outstretched hand brushed the rocky wall in front of me.
“Okay, we’re at the back of the recess. Everyone sit down. You may as well try and get some sleep if you can. I’ll keep watch.”
I heard a few more curses as everyone found their way to the ground and settled into a comfortable spot. Well, as comfortable as rocky ground could be. I thought about trying to find Indigo so that I could sit near her, but it would be pretty obvious to everyone what I was up to if I did that. I heard Allie next to me, and Paul to the right. He was comforting his sister, telling her it wouldn’t be much longer now. At first, like typical teenagers, we sat with some distance between us, but as our bodies cooled we all huddled closer together.
“Are you okay, Luke?” I asked, not really sure where he was.
“Yeah,” he said directly from in front of me, in a voice that said pretty clearly that he wasn’t fine. “My wrist hurts like a bitch…but at least I can’t feel my hand.”
“Okay. Everyone should try and get some sleep, I’ll keep an eye on the path behind us for any sign of pursuit.”
“Don’t think I can,” came Brooke’s voice. “But I’ll give it a try.”
Silence fell over our little camp. I huddled with them too, but I would get up occasionally to blindly feel my way back to the trail and look back the way we had come. There were no tell-tale flashlight beams and it made me feel better, even though I knew that didn’t necessarily mean someone wasn’t following us. It was my turn to be sans jacket and I felt the night’s chill even worse now that we had stopped moving, but at least I wouldn’t fall asleep. I was way too cold for that. Famous last words.
21
I’m not sure how long I dozed, but when I awoke with a start, the sky was kissed by the faint glow of dawn. The soft luminosity below the horizon to the east colored the low clouds a faint pink and yellow and shed enough light for me to see my fellow escapees. I cursed myself. I guessed I had been asleep for an hour or so. More than enough time for pursuit from the facility to catch up with us.
I sprung to my feet and went to the edge of the recess and looked back down the path. In that soft predawn light, I was able to see about two hundred feet. There was no one pursuing us. Not that I could see, anyway. I looked over the edge. The path was on the edge of a steep canyon, and while it wasn’t bottomless, the floor of the canyon was littered with scree and jagged rocks and it was a long, long way down.
When I got back, Indigo was looking around. Whether it was the breaking dawn, seeing Indigo or just a feeling of wellbeing at escaping the facility, I felt a strange feeling of elation.
“Good morning!” I said, cheerily.
She turned her head sharply. “Isaac? I wondered where you were. Were you awake the whole time?”
“Um…”
While I didn’t want to lie to her, I didn’t want to admit that I had fallen asleep on my watch either. A little white lie wouldn’t hurt, would it?
“I dozed for a minute or two, just got up when I saw the sky start to lighten. The good news is, it looks like they’ve decided it’s too much trouble to bring us back.”
She came over to me, pulling off her coat.
“Here, you must be freezing.”
I was going to protest but as she reached me and opened the coat, so I could slip my arm into the sleeve, I closed my mouth. When she was close I sometimes forgot how to speak. She zipped up the coat like I was a little kid and on the spur of the moment, I enveloped her in a lingering hug. I don’t think I’d ever felt happier to be alive.
The others in the group had started to rouse and I heard someone groan.
“Are you two at it again?” asked Ben, with a grin on his face.
We laughed and disengaged, heading back over to them. Soon everyone was sitting up in various states of wakefulness. I found my backpack and pulled out the jerky I had pilfered from the storeroom. It certainly wasn’t bacon and eggs, but no one refused the tough, salt
y offering. The canteens of water that we had were also passed around.
“Shit!” I said, when I spied Luke’s hand. I almost wished for the dark of night again. It looked like a latex glove that someone had tried to blow it up like a balloon. The swelling was bad, but the color was worse—a horrible dark shade of purple. Luke looked at me and I waited for a wisecrack that didn’t come. He was clearly suffering.
Indigo went to him.
“Is there anything we can do?”
“Yeah, cut if off.”
No one laughed.
“I mean it. My hand needs to be cut off. My wrist is shattered. Pretty soon necrosis is going to start.”
“What’s that?” asked Allie. “It doesn’t sound good.”
“It’s when your tissue begins to die because the blood supply is cut off.”
“Are you sure?” I asked.
He nodded and smiled grimly.
“Unless you think it’s a good idea to go back and knock on the door of the facility, so I can get treatment?”
I kicked a stone in frustration, my good mood suddenly dissolving into worry for my friend. Luke knew enough about these things to know what needed to be done.
“When?”
“Not now. We’ll need a fire.” He held up one of the sharpened butter knives. “This would do it, but a longer blade would be better. And we’ll need a fire or alcohol to sterilize the instrument. A fire would be best because afterwards my…my stump…needs to be cauterized.”
I knew what this meant. I remembered watching an old movie called ‘The Vikings’ with my dad one Saturday afternoon. A slave had his hand severed by sword as punishment. One of the onlookers had used a flaming torch to burn the end of his arm. My dad had told me it was called cauterization and was a way to seal and sterilize the man’s wound at the same time. Even in the non-graphic way they showed violence in those old movies, it had made me wince when the actor shrieked in agony.
To think of having to hack Luke’s hand off with a knife and then somehow use fire to seal the wound made me feel sick. I felt Indigo’s hand find its way into mine and squeeze.
“I’ll help, don’t worry.”
I nodded, and Luke laid back down, nursing his oversized hand against his chest.
“We’ll set off for the final walk to the lodge in five minutes, does anyone need to go to the bathroom?”
Allie put her hand up as did Brooke. I gestured to the largest boulder in the clearing. It was to the left and closest to the wall of the canyon.
“Okay, girls over there. Boys that side.”
“Me first!” called Paul, perhaps feeling the same happy energy that had come over me with the new morning. He shot to his feet, looking more carefree than I had ever seen him.
While I hadn’t forgiven him entirely for betraying us, I knew his reasons had been all about Ava’s wellbeing. He’d only done what he had, to help his sister.
His close friends Beau and Toby also seemed to have forgiven him, they jumped up and began to wrestle and race him to reach the gap between another large rock and a kind of fissure in the wall that I had pointed out for the boys to use. The fissure, almost a kind of tall cave, looked deep enough to afford anyone using it some privacy. I thought Ben might find it a little harder to forgive Paul, he watched the boys’ horseplay expressionlessly.
“I better go too,” Indigo said, delivering a kiss to my cold cheek. Suddenly the cold seemed a whole lot warmer.
Toby, the stronger of the three, pushed the other two back without too much effort and Paul and Beau gave up, mucking around as their friend went around the rock and into the fissure. I looked at Ava. She was sitting up too and smiling at her brother’s shenanigans. Apart from Luke’s injury, it seemed as though we might be in pretty good shape. I was still looking at her when I saw her face change. Her mouth dropped open and she began to scream.
Almost in slow motion I turned. It was Toby. He was bent backwards at painful angle, an arm locked around his throat, taking jerky steps towards us. Over his shoulder I saw the grim, determined face of Mr. Ragg. Paul gave a hoarse shout of “No!” and ran to protect his sister. Beau, like me, stood in shock, as if not quite comprehending what he was seeing. Ben tried to stand but got his legs tangled in Luke’s and went down in a heap.
I hadn’t even had a chance to move when Toby stiffened and opened his mouth to scream. I wanted to scream too as the blade of a knife emerged from his mouth like an obscene, silver tongue. His hideous, gurgling scream ended abruptly when Ragg twisted the knife and mercifully ended his torture.
Several things happened then. Girls screamed. Beau rushed at Ragg and an off-balance Ben fired his gun, the loud report sending an echo reverberating around the canyon as chips of rock exploded behind Ragg’s head.
Ragg, even though he was bruised and bloody, was as fast as ever. He twisted Toby’s dead body around as a second shot rang out. The bullet struck the dead boy in the chest with a meaty thud and suddenly he appeared to come to life as he rushed headlong at Ben, who struggled to rise to his feet.
I was moving too now, running at Ragg even as he propelled Toby’s body - one hand gripping the knife in his neck, the other on the small of his back - at Ben. Beau got there before me and hit Ragg in a heavy tackle just as the older man jerked his knife out of the spine of his victim, allowing momentum to carry the dead weight into Ben. My friend groaned as the breath whooshed out of his body and his gun spun away on the rocky floor of the clearing.
I paused, standing over Ragg as Beau rained punches down on him.
“Isaac!” Luke yelled.
I turned, smoothly catching the knife he had thrown. I turned back and tensed. In the instant I had been distracted, Beau had been flung a few feet away, his nose bleeding, and Ragg was climbing to his feet, his rabid eyes locked onto mine, the bloody knife still gripped in his hand.
He looked a nightmarish sight. He no longer wore the glasses that I had smashed from his head earlier. There was had a large bleeding welt on the right temple where I had struck him, and the eye on that side, while not closed completely, was puffy and badly bruised. He was limping, but surprisingly the butt wound that Luke had inflicted on him with the spear had not put him out of action. I had seen the force that Luke had used, and I knew it would have incapacitated most men. Ragg was clearly not most men. I could see the crazed fire in his eyes and knew that was what had fuelled him to get this far. A strange quiet fell over the clearing.
I was aware of Ben struggling and swearing, trying to push the dead weight of Toby off him. Nearby Beau was moaning, holding his head. Paul was rocking back and forth, comforting Ava and crying at the loss of his friend. I didn’t dare take my eyes off my adversary, but I could hear the other girls weeping behind me.
“You can take him down, Isaac.”
It was Luke. He spoke calmly and quietly, but without a hint of doubt in his voice. I didn’t feel that same confidence. While my chances now were better than they had been three hours or so ago, Ragg, despite his injuries, still seemed to have more than enough strength and twisted willpower to best me… and I knew he had the skill.
I relaxed and tried to slow my breathing as Ragg came to a standstill in front of me. Even though he was standing up straight, I got the impression of coiled steel ready to spring at any moment. He held the army issue knife in a relaxed grip by his side. I transferred the knife Luke had thrown me to my right hand. It had been sharpened so much that it resembled a long, thin dagger and I decided right then it would be better as a puncture weapon than a cutting one. I closed my hand around it so that the blade protruded a couple of inches from the bottom of my fist.
I barely had time to set myself when Ragg stalked towards me. I waited until the last possible moment and then skipped backwards and to the left, out of his range, making him pivot off his injured side as he followed me. He barely winced and as I prepared to pull the same move again, he anticipated it and suddenly ran at me bringing his knife up between us.
He didn
’t collide with me this time, I managed to dodge to the left again as he jabbed his hand at me in two quick stabbing motions. The first one missed, the second one scratched my side, just below my ribs. I felt a line of fire where it struck and waited for him to come after me again. He didn’t. Just circled me from a safe distance. That surprised me, he’d managed to strike me and should have tried to follow it up immediately. Either he was wary of me…or, more disturbingly, he wanted to draw this out.
I put my left hand to the fresh wound. It was superficial only, and even though my fingers were bloody when I held them up to look, there wasn’t a lot. Taking advantage of even that slight distraction, he ran at me again. Again, I was a little too slow to elude him completely and his fist caught me above the right ear as I tried to dodge him. The blow sent me stumbling onto the hard ground and I braced myself for impact as I scrambled desperately to my feet. Again, the expected attack didn’t come. I stood up, swaying a little as I recovered from the stunning blow and looked at him.
“What are you waiting for?!” I yelled, the ringing in my ear now joining the melody of pain introduced by the knife wound.
Ragg didn’t say anything. Just watched me. I think I knew what he was doing. He was trying to get inside my head. It was working. Suddenly he rushed at me again, front on. This time I was ready… kind of. I raised the fist with the knife in it and hammered it down with all my might as he struck me in the chest with the top of his head, the full weight of his body behind the blow.
I remember flying backwards and landing heavily on my back, my head ricocheting off the ground with a crack. I lay there for a moment staring up at the clouds, winded and possibly concussed, unable to get my breath back, almost willing him to finish it. Someone was screaming.
“Get up, Isaac! You got him!” Indigo’s voice seemed a long way away. What was she saying?
“Get up!”
She seemed closer now, her voice more urgent. Was it her that inspired me to get up? I’m not sure, but I know I didn’t want to let her down. I didn’t want to let any of them down. As my senses came back to me, I made a supreme effort to roll over and fought my way to a crawling position.
America Falls (Book 3): Cold Comfort Page 14