by Amy Briant
“No, East—they might be landing on the highway and coming up the hill for us right now. We gotta book, all right?”
That got her moving. She followed me silently as we fled up the hill. My plan, half-assed as it was, was to climb up and over the peak, go down the other side, then circle back to the highway when it looked safe.
After a rapid and panicky hike of only ten minutes, we stumbled across the other area where the helicopter had hovered. I knew this because it looked like a blast zone. Pine needles and snow had been blown about, exposing the topsoil beneath. Why had the chopper hovered here? What had they seen? My inner alarm bells were going off. I stopped short, trying again to simultaneously catch my breath and listen. East bumped into me and shot me an irritated look. I pulled out the gun, holding it down by my side.
“Now what? Why are we stopping already?”
I looked around us carefully. Nothing but trees. No one in sight. No sounds but forest sounds and wind.
“What?” East said again, this time with an edge.
“The helicopter hovered here as well,” I told her quietly. “Why?”
“They saw us,” she said with a strong element of “duh” implied.
“Right,” I agreed. “And they hovered right over us when they found us. I think they saw our heat. So what were they hovering over here?”
“Maybe it was a deer.”
Oh. That made sense. I didn’t know if their technology could tell the difference between people heat and deer heat. If it hadn’t been a deer, though…
I scanned the area again, trying to use my vision like Gabriel had taught me back home. To look for what was out of place. Or what was missing. But it was all so windblown and torn up, nothing was standing out to me. The urge to continue our flight up the hill was strong—but was there another enemy in the forest? Waiting for us? Or worse, watching us now?
Fear was welling up inside me, threatening to blot out rational thought. It was fear of the unknown, I recognized, trying to push it back down. There was no imminent danger at the moment, although that could change in a heartbeat. I took a deep breath and pulled myself together, trying to think it through. There might or might not be someone else in the forest. If there was, and he or she had any sense, that person would be hightailing it out of there to get away from the black helicopter and any soldiers who might or might not be coming up the hill behind us.
The bottom line was standing still was not an option. We simply had to keep going, balancing speed and caution. Keeping our eyes and ears open for potential enemies behind us and ahead of us. A tricky proposition, but not impossible. Not all that different from every other day in the recent past, come to think of it.
Another half an hour and we were over the top, scrambling down the back side of the slope. It was only a hill, after all, not a mountain. A steep, rocky, treacherous hill that descended into a region marked by deep ravines and stony hummocks.
We camped that night in a well-hidden spot in a canyon. Despite my fears, we had not encountered any other people during our flight. East had hardly spoken to me all day, nor was she making much eye contact. She seemed dispirited and sad. I wasn’t feeling all that awesome either, but at least we were still alive, I told myself. Again. And we still had our gear, with the addition of some much-needed Tucker box food and supplies.
At our lower elevation, we’d left the snow behind, but the evening was still bitterly cold with the wind continuing to howl. We could have used the warmth and comfort of a fire, but I didn’t want to give away our position to anyone who might be looking. We huddled together in the tent wearing most of our clothes, eating cold MREs with the baby lantern providing the only light while I attempted to strike up a conversation.
“I can’t believe they didn’t blow up the cabin,” I said. Not the cheeriest of subjects, perhaps, but it was on my mind.
East gave me a dark look. I didn’t think she was going to say anything, but she did. “You know winter is coming, Kell.”
I did know that since we were freezing our asses off, but I merely nodded encouragingly.
“We could have survived all winter in that cabin,” she said resentfully.
“And had the storm troopers in for tea?” I responded with a little too much sarcasm. But it’s hard not to be sarcastic when that’s one of your strongest talents.
“You don’t know that they came back!” she fired back angrily. “For all we know, we could have lived there forever. You don’t know anything. You don’t even know where Segundo is! You’re going to get us killed out here, Kell!”
I knew she was upset. That was the easy part. Figuring out how to calm her down was not so easy, especially when there was a lot of truth in what she was saying. But getting angry myself was not an option—there was no point in tearing each other apart. We were all we had. So I swallowed my temper and spoke softly to her.
“You know what? You’re right, East. I don’t know. We may never find Segundo. We might miss it, or they might have moved on…or they might all be dead…”
My voice broke on that last word, but I continued.
“But what I do know is we have to try. We have to, East.”
There was more I wanted to say, but my throat closed up on me. Dumb throat. Hot tears prickled my eyes. I looked over at East and saw there were tears on her face too.
“Look,” she said with a catch in her voice, “I’m a Pioneer, right? That’s my Aptitude. So all I want to do is find a safe place and settle down. But you’re a Messenger. You’re never going to settle down. You’re just going to keep going and going until you go off and leave me like my brother did.”
“I’m not going to leave you,” I protested. “And you’re not a Pioneer and I’m not a Messenger. We can do whatever we want with our lives, East. We don’t have to do what they told us.”
She looked at me without saying anything, then busied herself with laying out the sleeping bag.
“Come on,” I said. “Like I’m really going to accept their stupid Aptitude?”
“Maybe I don’t think it’s stupid,” she said sharply. She pulled off her hiking boots more forcefully than was necessary. I’d count myself lucky if she didn’t chuck one at my head, the way the conversation was going.
“You really think we should follow our Aptitudes?” I asked her, but without the sarcasm.
I couldn’t see her face since she had crawled into the sleeping bag and turned away from me. It wasn’t that late, but there wasn’t much to stay up for on a pitch black, icy cold night with the wind howling and nothing to do but argue.
Then I heard her crying.
“Oh, East,” I said, my heart breaking for about ten different reasons. I turned off the lantern and joined her in the sleeping bag.
“I just want to go home,” she said with a sob. “I just want this to be over.”
“I know,” I said softly, stroking her hair and holding her close in the dark as she began to cry in earnest. “I know.”
Chapter Twenty-three
Never Name Your Food
The next day was a challenging hike over hill and dale. Just when it seemed like the land might be leveling out, we would come across yet another hill to climb or another canyon that might lead somewhere or might be a dead end. I did my best to keep us moving in a more or less northwestern direction, figuring that would get us back to the freeway eventually.
Thankfully, there was no sign of the helicopter or any other human threat. The countryside we passed through seemed uninhabited and might have been farmland or pasture for grazing in the past. At least it was getting a little warmer as we slowly made our way down toward a distant valley we had glimpsed from the rolling hills behind us. The weather was still cold but not freezing.
East and I resumed our habit of only discussing “safe” subjects. I thought of one I had overlooked as I reached for her hand to help her across a small but energetic creek, quick with snow melt.
“Thanks for taking care of me back there,” I sai
d as we paused to fill our water containers. “At the cabin. When I was sick, I mean.”
“I know what you mean, Kell,” East said, with a wry smile she sometimes used on me. It always made me feel about eight years old.
“Sorry. I should have said that before.”
“It’s all right. You would have done the same for me. I mean, heck, you take care of me all the time, right?”
“I guess we take care of each other now.”
We glanced at each other, crouched together at the side of the boisterous, rushing little creek and shared a smile.
And then I heard it. A piercing cry that cut through the white noise of the stream. We both jumped to our feet.
“What the hell was that?” East said, the whites of her eyes showing as she nervously glanced about.
Before I could answer, the banshee wail came again. It sounded like it came from farther down the hill from where we were. The creek curved around a corner and disappeared from view downstream.
“Is it a person?” she whispered.
“Sounds like it’s in pain, whatever it is,” I said.
Part of me thought we should just ignore it, be on our way and not go looking for trouble. But what if it was a person? A person who was hurt and needed our help? Or would that be the oldest trick in the book, to lure in two dumbass teenagers?
What if it was the person I suspected might be following us? If it was, I wanted to get a look at him. Or her.
The agonized wordless cry came once again. East raised her eyebrows at me.
“Oh, shit,” I said. “Let’s go check it out. But we have to be careful.”
The bawling continued as we crept through the brush. The closer we got, the more I was convinced it wasn’t a person. It definitely sounded like an animal. An animal that was hurt or trapped or otherwise in distress. The desperate cries were heartrending. And also not smart, since they might draw the attention of creatures more dangerous than East and myself. I was still wary, knowing that one of the most important components of any trap is the bait.
At the bottom of the hill, the creek fed into a large pond in a meadow dotted with tiny yellow wildflowers. The edges of the pond were well-trampled. It was clearly the watering hole for the local wildlife. On the far side, the dirt became a morass of sticky mud. And there we saw not a banshee, but a cow, stuck in the mud nearly up to its neck. It looked pitiful and exhausted. I guessed that it had been thrashing to try and get out of the mud, but was now reduced to just mournful moos.
“Ohhhh,” East exclaimed, her voice filled with sympathy.
“Shh,” I told her, a finger to my lips. I was still on the alert for a trap. Could that crazy Matteo really have followed us all this way and organized a devious cow-in-a-mudhole plot? Probably not. Still, I made East follow me as I carefully circled the pond at a distance, making sure there was no one lurking in the trees.
Nope. It was just us and the cow. East and I sat on the bank and studied the poor creature. It stared back with its great brown eyes, too worn out to be afraid of us.
“Poor little cow,” East crooned to it, then turned to me. “How are we going to save it?”
I must confess, I was thinking more about pot roast than rescue at that juncture. The cow was firmly mired in the mud. It would have been cruel to simply leave it there. On the other hand, I was loath to waste a precious bullet on a mercy killing. I also didn’t want to announce our presence to the neighborhood by firing a gunshot. Slitting its throat would be messy, but effective. My brain juggled the two puzzles: how to kill the cow in the most humane way possible and how to break the news to East that we had to kill the cow.
The cow bawled again, but halfheartedly. It seemed to be weakening. East poked me in the ribs. I jumped.
“Ow. What?”
“Come on—how are we going to get it out?”
Getting it out looked like a lot of filthy hard work. Which meant a whole lot of time and energy expended, and for what? A half-dead cow? I wasn’t entirely sure we could do it even if we tried. I made a face and looked back at East without saying anything.
“Kell! We have to help it.”
She stood up suddenly, putting her hands on her hips while staring down at me belligerently. The breeze ruffled her long hair slightly. Her eyes grew darker, yet blazed at the same time.
“Kell,” she said again, commandingly, and held out a strong, slender hand to pull to me to my feet.
“All right, all right,” I said, giving in. Again. I took her hand. I knew I was caving, but I couldn’t help it. Maybe I felt like I owed her for taking care of me when I was sick. Maybe I just couldn’t say no to her when she had that look on her face.
“What do we do first?” she asked.
I looked at the sky, which was a pale, washed-out blue. It was mid-afternoon already.
“First, we set up camp,” I told her decisively. “Over there looks like a good spot.”
“But the cow—”
“The cow will be fine for a little while longer. Cows are tough, East. We need to make sure we’re set up for the night, then we can rescue the cow.”
I had never seen her work so hard and fast at setting up camp. As I pulled the entrenching tool I’d got from the Tucker box out of my pack, I gave East her next assignment.
“Find some branches that can form a path for it to walk on once I’ve got it out of the mud, okay? The bigger, the better. Something to give it a little purchase.”
“And what are you going to do?”
I unfolded the entrenching tool. It was essentially a small shovel, a very useful tool in many different ways. Like the obvious.
“I’m going to dig.”
There were plenty of fallen tree boughs on the ground nearby. East stayed close to the pond, each of us in sight of the other, while she gathered enough for the planned pathway. The mud was cold, sticky as molasses and it didn’t smell that great either. Being several hundred pounds lighter than Bossy, I didn’t sink into the mud more than a few inches. The cow eyed me with trepidation as I approached, but seemed resigned to its fate. At least it had stopped mooing. It wasn’t long before I was covered with just as much mud as the bovine. I managed to free up one of its front legs and it started heaving and moving, trying to get out.
“East, get the cord from my pack!” I called to her. “Let’s put a rope around its neck, okay?”
I didn’t want the damn thing running off into the forest the moment my hard work had sprung it from the mud. Maybe I wasn’t going to have steak for dinner that night, but it seemed silly to just let it get away.
East was not eager to wade into the mud with me and a hyperactive cow, but she at least found the cord and tossed it to me. I tied a quick slipknot and draped the loop over its head, during which it managed to bump into me and knock me on my butt in the slimy cold mud. Shaking my head at my own foolhardiness, I gathered up the rest of the line and tossed it back to East who secured it around a stump near the water’s edge.
Another half of hour of digging with the entrenching tool and the cow was nearly free. East had finished laying down the tree limbs to form the path. The cow was not impressed with our impromptu sidewalk and continued to flounder around with no success. Finally, after dumb luck resulted in its two front hooves striking a solid surface, it seemed to warm to the plan. It bucked and lunged and with a mighty push from me on the hindquarters suddenly freed itself from the mud with a loud sucking noise and staggered up the pathway onto dry land, where it stood, head hanging low, wobbly with exhaustion.
East strode over, patted its broad back, beamed at me and said, “I think we should call her Nancy.”
“Oh, no, no, no!” I retorted, scrambling up the bank to join them. “You never name your food, East. My grandmother taught me that.”
“Food!” she said indignantly. “We can’t eat her. Not after all that. And I mean, literally there’s no way you and I could eat a whole cow. Ninety-five percent of it would go to waste. What would your grandmother say
about that?”
I was pretty sure Gran, if she had been there with us, would have said, “Where’s the barbecue sauce?” but I let that pass. East did have a point. We would eat extremely well for one night, maybe two and then have to walk away from about a thousand pounds of rotting meat. It was also a lot of work to butcher a cow and I was pretty wiped out from Operation Banshee Rescue. I wiped a muddy hand across my muddy forehead and sat down to think.
“Besides,” East went on, “I think she’s a girl cow. Maybe we can milk her!”
She started to sluice the mud off the beast with pond water she’d collected in our plastic jug. She rinsed off the rear end first, which took several jugs worth, then moved on to the middle. While she was busy with that, I rinsed off as best I could at the water’s edge, then changed into clean (well, cleaner), dry clothes.
Out of the bog, “Nancy” was undoubtedly female. With East’s help, she was transforming from a dark brown to a pleasing black and white combo. The cow shook her mud-spattered head vigorously, then lowered it to the ground to take a mouthful of scrubby grass. Munching contentedly, she flicked her tail and gave me a look out of her big brown eyes, which were framed by ridiculously long lashes. If I didn’t know better, I might have thought she was trying to tell me something. Maybe all our time together in the mud had meant something to her. The cow blew heavily down her nostrils, snorting and twitching her ears.
Jesus. I had bonded with a cow. Now I couldn’t eat her.
“She’s beautiful, isn’t she?” East said, admiring her work. “Aren’t you, Miss Nancy?” She poured another jug of water over its back, then pulled up a fistful of grass and offered it to the critter.
“Why, East?” I asked in mock despair.
“Why what?”
“Why Nancy?”
“Oh. Well, I had a doll when I was a little girl and she had beautiful brown eyes and long lashes. And that’s what I called her—Nancy. The name sort of popped into my head just now. It’s funny. I haven’t thought about that doll in years. My mother gave her to me…”
Her voice trailed off. She was still for a moment, then seemed to shiver. She said nothing, but returned to sluicing off the mud, which was thickly clumped around the cow’s neck.