“I’ll do what I have to do.” Emotion flickers across his face before he turns away. “Or haven’t you heard?”
He’s doing his best to intimidate me with his reputation, but the way his shoulders droop makes me feel a pang of sympathy for him in spite of everything. It sucks when every stranger has a fully formed opinion of you. It makes you feel like who you are doesn’t matter nearly as much as what they think of you.
A thought hits me out of nowhere: What if that’s what this is about? By rescuing me like some lost little girl, Ian could be hoping to prove to the world that he’s not the monster everybody assumes he is. It’s the only thing that makes sense. People don’t just go out of their way for strangers. Not unless they want something in return.
The possibility that Ian is using me to make a point burns, but then it does something much more useful.
It gives me an idea.
“I’ll make you a deal,” I say, before I can change my mind. “You say the town isn’t safe. I say the road is gone. How about we see who’s right?”
Ian frowns. “What are the terms?”
My brain flies into overdrive. “We get to higher ground. Somewhere with a decent view. If that storm is still hanging over the town, I’ll agree that it’s a lost cause and we walk back to what’s left of the road.”
Ian’s eyes narrow. “And if it’s not?”
I lift my chin. “You guide me back to Fort Glory.”
Ian palms the bill of his hat. The gesture is second nature. I doubt he even knows he’s doing it. “There’s a ridge a quarter mile southeast of here that should work,” he says at last. “We could be there in half an hour.”
Southeast? “But that will still take us back toward the road,” I say quickly.
Ian shrugs. “It’s the only easy climb within a mile. I’ll agree to your terms, but only on this condition.”
I frown at him. I could call his bluff. Start walking toward Fort Glory and force his hand. But then I’d be no better off than I was before. Ian has a pack full of supplies. More important, he knows these woods. I’ve got a better chance of making it to Fort Glory with him as a guide, even if it means taking a minor detour.
When I nod, Ian looks relieved. Like he wasn’t exactly sure what his move would’ve been if I’d said no.
Eager to get going, I grab a rope and spool it around my arm. Something moves in the corner of my vision. I spin around. The terror of last night returns to me along with a cold sweat. “Did you see any signs of the person?” I ask. “The one who scared off the bobcat?”
Ian pauses in the middle of folding the tarp. “I couldn’t find any tracks, but that doesn’t mean we’re alone.”
Newspaper headlines from the past few weeks run through my head. The murders. The violence. The riots. If someone else is out here with us, there’s a good chance they aren’t friendly.
Ian stamps out the fire without waiting for the embers to burn down. This place must be giving him the creeps too, because we finish packing up camp in no time and start working our way southeast.
Every step sends a stabbing pain through my knee. To distract myself, I hum a song in my head. The one Mom used to sing to us every night before bed. I can still remember the last time I heard it. It was after Dad disappeared, but before everything fell apart. Mom said we needed to go somewhere nobody knew us. Somewhere we could reinvent ourselves into whoever we wanted. She was like that back then. A million songs and half-realized ideas in a shell of beautiful disappointment.
But it was more than that. I saw the truth in the way she searched the face of every passing stranger. She was still hoping to find him. I was only thirteen, but already I knew this was an invitation for more pain. Memories fade for a reason, and when things disappear, they don’t ever come back.
Back to the song and the last time I heard it. I remember it was that quiet hour just before sunset that brings out the dreamy shades you never notice during the day. Mom was hanging the wash out on the line. Clothes flapped, and she sang that song to herself, and the world stopped to admire the picture my mother made.
A man walked over. He took off his hat and gestured at Rusty’s broken taillight. My mother smiled at him, and I knew that our taillight would be fixed by tomorrow. That we’d be seeing a lot more of this man before we moved on. I didn’t like the look of him.
Guys like this crawled out of the woodwork wherever she went. She’d accept their help in exchange for kind words and attention, never letting them get too close. Never letting them see the emptiness behind the smile.
My fists shook in my lap. “We don’t need him. I can do it. I can fix the light.”
It wasn’t until Charlie answered that I realized I’d spoken out loud.
“She knows you can.”
“Then why?”
Charlie didn’t ask me what I meant. He knew.
Charlie always knew.
“Because it’s not the taillight that needs fixing, Rosie.”
Ian clears his throat. It takes me a moment to realize we’ve stopped walking.
“I thought you might need a rest,” Ian says to break the awkward silence.
“Yeah. Okay.” But he just keeps standing there, staring at me. “What?” I demand.
“You were singing.”
My cheeks are instantly on fire. I must really be losing it if I let my guard down like that.
Now that it’s down, I’m having a hard time pulling it back up.
Images run through my head. My mother in the kitchen, forearms coated in flour. Waves of white fabric crashing around her ankles as she danced with Charlie strapped in the sling across her chest.
Suddenly, I miss her so much it hurts. The mother who would brush my hair, sing me songs, and let me walk around in her high heels.
My throat burns, and then I’m blinking much too fast.
“My bunkmate used to sing in his sleep,” Ian says abruptly. “At least you can carry a tune.”
It surprises a small smile out of me. Then the full meaning of his words sinks in. “How long were you—?” I backtrack in a hurry. “Sorry. It’s none of my business.”
Ian shrugs off my apology. “Eighteen months. It happened. It’s over.” He takes in my sweaty face and nods toward a massive tree stump a few feet away. “Sit. Before you keel over.”
Too tired to disagree, I collapse onto the stump and wrap my arms around my waist. It’s not even December, but already the weather has taken a sharp turn toward winter. My heart gives a little squeeze. Charlie’s green hoodie will be useless against this cold.
I stretch out, and Rowena’s bandanna slips down my knee, making me wince.
“What’s wrong?” Ian asks over my shoulder.
“It’s—”
“Nothing?” He recycles my words from last night. “Let me see.”
I let my hands fall aside. Lines form around Ian’s eyes. “You should’ve said something.” He digs through his pack for gauze and rubbing alcohol before he kneels in front of me.
“Don’t.”
Ian’s hands still a few inches from my knee, and it’s like that moment in the diner all over again. “This needs to be cleaned,” he says slowly. “It’s going to hurt like hell.”
“I’ll do it.”
“It’s hard to inflict that kind of pain on yourself. It’ll be easier if you let me.”
He’s being kind. Just like he was a few minutes ago when he tried to distract me with that story about his bunkmate. The last thing I want is to throw that kindness back in his face, but I am not my mother.
If something’s broken, I want to be the one to fix it.
“This is my mess. I’ll clean it up.”
Ian’s eyes meet mine and hold.
Slowly, he leans forward to lay out the supplies on the stump beside me. His arm brushes mine, and my pulse races. He stands quickly—almost like he can hear it. Without a word, he backs away to give me space.
While I clean the wound, Ian studies scraps of sky through the
trees. I wonder if he’s thinking the same thing I am. A town vanished into thin air while the world was watching. Where are the helicopters? Where are the drones doing flyby missions? These woods should be swarming with activity, but we could easily be the last two people on earth.
I’m bandaging up my knee when Ian drops down beside me.
“How much farther?” I ask. I’m already starting to regret this bargain I’ve made. Every step we take away from Fort Glory increases the tightness in my chest. Deal or no deal, if we don’t get there soon I’m going to have to find a way to ditch him.
“Not much.” He presses the tip of his switchblade into the wood and starts to carve. An intricate design takes shape under his hand. It takes me a moment to realize what it is. A pattern like the one on the back of my compass.
“It’s weird, right?” I ask. “This quiet?”
A flicker of surprise shows in his eyes as they slide sidelong to me. “It’s usually not a good sign when the animals run for cover.”
The sun rises behind the canopy as we set out again. Ian gradually increases his pace until I’m forced to jog to keep up. My lungs are starting to burn when he finally turns around.
“We should’ve seen the ridge by now.”
“Are you sure?” I ask.
“We’ve been walking southeast for almost two hours. Even if we missed the ridge, we should’ve crossed the road.”
Not willing to get into that particular argument again, I let it pass. “Do we head back to the stream? Retrace our steps?” On jelly legs, I stumble over to an old stump and crumple.
“I don’t know.” Ian finds the lump at the back of his head. “Things aren’t how they should be.”
While he contemplates our next move, I attempt to catch my breath. My fingers brush over something grainy on the wood. It’s rough and textured. Like sawdust or pencil shavings, or …
The hairs on my arms rise straight up in the air.
“Ian. Come here.”
“I need to find a landmark,” he says to himself. “Something to pin down our location.”
“I’m serious. You need to look at this.”
He walks over, and I know the moment he sees it. His whole body goes rigid.
There. Under my left hand. A delicate series of lines. The carving is so fresh, the depressions in the wood are still green.
“We’ve been walking in circles,” I say.
ELEVEN
“That’s impossible.” Ian stares at the lines as if he could force them to make sense by sheer strength of will.
“Then how do you explain this?” I run my hands over the carving.
“I must’ve gotten turned around.” Ian grabs the bill of his cap. His hand stays there a solid thirty seconds before he lets it drop. He’s making a conscious effort not to scare me. It isn’t working. My gut tells me Ian is too careful to have led us in a giant circle. Just like it’s telling me we shouldn’t be here now.
That feeling is back. The itch between my shoulder blades that insists something is very, very wrong here. It makes me want to drop everything and sprint the rest of the way to Fort Glory, screaming my brother’s name. Only, now I have no idea which direction to run.
“Hold up.” I reach into my bag for my compass. At the sight of it, the uneasy feeling inside turns into something sharper. “This doesn’t make sense,” I say as I watch the needle turn round and round. Round and round. “This compass is old, but the last time I checked, it still worked.”
“It isn’t working now.” Ian leads us through the forest, down the exact same path we took before. The signs of our passage are everywhere. Broken ferns. The shells of Ian’s sunflower seeds. We’ve been going for about an hour when Ian stops so suddenly, I plow into the wall of his back, getting a noseful of cotton that smells of bleach, and rain, and boy.
I peek around his shoulders and there it is. An old stump with a series of graceful lines freshly carved down the center.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
“I don’t know.” Ian’s admission makes things real in a way they weren’t before. I scan the woods and fight a growing sense of hopelessness. I’m used to uphill battles, but this is different. This feels like the entire universe is conspiring against us.
“I grew up in these woods.” Ian fiddles with the straps of his pack. “We should’ve reached the road by now. Even if the road is gone, we shouldn’t have circled back here. It’s almost like—”
“Like what?”
“Like we’re stuck in a cage without bars.”
Ian waits for me to freak out. Maybe that’d be a normal reaction to something like this, but I don’t need a compass to tell me we shouldn’t have passed this spot twice. We’re stuck here—wherever here is. Having a meltdown isn’t going to change it.
Ian’s pack thuds to the ground, making me jump inside my skin. He strips off his jacket until he’s standing there in a tight gray T-shirt and climbing harness, a spool of neon cord in his hand.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
He approaches a towering tree. “I need to get higher. It’s the only way to know for sure about the road and the town.” Ian attaches a weighted clip to the rope. In one fluid motion, he tosses it toward the lowest branch, some thirty feet above our heads. It’s an insane throw. Like trying to thread a needle at a distance. Ian hits it on the first try. The clip sails over the branch and back down to us. Ian attaches one end of the rope to the front of his harness before looping the other around the line leading up into the tree, making not one, but two devilish-looking knots.
Pain shoots through my knee. A reminder of my recent fall from Devil’s Tooth. This tree is higher than that. A lot higher. My legs wobble as I measure the distance to the nearest branch. “Is this safe?” I ask.
“Compared to what?” Ian adjusts the bill of his cap and faces me. “Don’t move from this spot. I’m serious, Rose. If you’re not down here when I get back, we’re going to have some real problems.”
If this had happened an hour ago, I would’ve been hatching an escape before Ian’s feet even left the ground. Things are different now. At some point, we stepped out of reality and into one of those Twilight Zone episodes Charlie and I used to watch back when our TV still worked. If I cut and run for Fort Glory now, there’s a good chance I’ll never find it.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“Hold this.” Ian loops a spool of extra rope over my shoulder before he turns to the tree.
He leans back in the harness and wraps both his hands around the bit of free rope hanging loose from his elaborate system of knots. He yanks with all his strength. The rope shortens manually, catching on the knots and lifting him up several inches. Muscles strain in his forearms as he arcs his back and jerks the rope again.
Pull by pull, he works himself up the trunk. I’ve never seen anybody move like that. Didn’t even know it was possible. Ian climbs as if the rope is an extension of his body, and for a moment, I completely forget about the yards of empty air stretching between him and the ground.
Ian reaches the first solid branch and anchors himself to it. From there he moves faster, relying less on the rope and more on his own strength and agility to work up through the branches. He disappears into the canopy, and the danger of this plan hits me all over again. I might not be the one fifty feet high, but I still feel vulnerable down here. Exposed.
My scalp prickles. I search the forest. Nothing but trees in every direction.
A dull buzzing reaches my ears. It’s soft at first, but grows louder by the second. It reminds me a little of the whistling I heard back in Maple before things went south. Only, this sound is layered. So vibrant it’s almost … alive.
I take a step backward. My breath comes out in a rush as my spine slams against the trunk.
I’m about to call out to Ian, when the buzzing erupts in an explosion of feathers. Hundreds of birds shoot through the forest. I throw up my arms to shield my face as they dive past, stirring my hair with the
ir wings.
Leaves and twigs rain down on my shoulders as the flock passes through the branches overhead. Ian’s muffled curses echo above me.
The bird cries have barely died down when the next wave begins. An army of squirrels, rats, and other forest creatures. They dart out of the trees in a blur of tails and gleaming eyes, all coming from the same direction. North.
From Fort Glory.
Claws pinch my foot as something scuttles over my sneaker. My cry echoes through the forest.
“Rose! Are you okay?” The rope jerks as Ian abruptly starts back down.
Before I can answer, a flash of activity draws my eyes deeper into the woods. A herd is on the move. Elk. Hundreds of them. A few are bulls with racks that could total a truck.
And they’re headed straight toward me.
I scan the forest. There’s no shelter in sight. No rocks or fallen logs to use for cover.
Branches strain above me. “Stay there!” There’s a flash of leg as Ian emerges from canopy. “I’ll lift you up!” Muscles glide under his shirt as he works his way down to me fast—much faster than is safe.
It’s still not fast enough.
Ian is less than twenty feet away, but it might as well be twenty miles. Musk clogs my nostrils. The strike of hooves becomes a thunder rolling straight through my chest.
I run.
The forest blurs in my peripheral vision. Leaves tickle my arms and branches rake across my face as I sprint through the trees, desperate to outpace the herd at my back.
Sweat drips into my eyes. I don’t know how long I’ve been running when a tree root comes out of nowhere to snag my ankle.
I hit the ground on all fours. There’s a boulder a few feet away. I drag myself over to it and prepare to be trampled by a thousand hooves. But the thunder of the herd doesn’t get any closer. It pulls farther and farther away. As it fades, another noise rises up to take its place.
The rush of water.
I think I’m hallucinating until I smell the river. A blast of silt and brine on the breeze. I stumble to my feet.
The growl of running water turns into a roar as I lurch forward. Within moments, the river has drowned out every sound but one.
Before I Disappear Page 9