“What is that?” Mike asked.
But Gregory ignored Mike and looked straight up at Dinah. “Hello, little one.”
The piercing gaze held her momentarily in place. None of this made sense. Who was this? How did he know her?
“Mike…” Michelle said with a tremor in her voice.
The dog perked up and growled, but not at Gregory. The dog’s attention was fixed on a line of thick brush. Something moved. Two somethings. More men emerged, both holding crossbows that they raised and aimed.
“Get down!” Dinah shouted. She grabbed Michelle by the arm.
They scrambled down the rocks and out of the line of sight. Michelle was screaming. Dinah yanked her along toward the cover of trees. She heard the dog barking. Gregory was shouting “Now! Now! Now!”
A crossbow bolt flew past, thunking into the dirt. Dinah grabbed it by the end and plucked it from the ground. They had just made the trees when a second bolt shot past. From there Dinah saw they could break for the woods uphill. Or at least she could.
Michelle stopped and looked around one of the trees. “Where’s Mike?”
Dinah pulled her back as a missile struck the trunk where her head had been.
Gregory shouted, “Don’t hit her!” Maybe he was talking about Michelle, but Dinah didn’t think so.
“We have to go.”
But Michelle would have none of it. She clung to the base of the tree and started to make a mewling sound like a newborn kitten. Again she had that distant look on her face, like something in her brain wasn’t processing what was going on around her.
One of their attackers screamed in pain, and a series of curses followed. Dinah took a chance and broke cover. She made it to the tree she had slept in the first night and climbed up to the big branch for a look. Both ambushers were out on the boulder face keeping Roger at bay. One man had dropped his crossbow. Roger lunged at one of them and knocked him over, and the man’s arm was in the dog’s mouth. Gregory and Mike had squared off by the fire, Gregory in a fighting stance with a long, thin knife in one hand. Mike looked like he was about to make a run for it, but instead he grabbed the iron pan and splashed its contents at Gregory. The tea wasn’t hot enough to do much more than distract. Gregory sneered and lunged forward. Mike swung the pan and batted Gregory on the arm. The force of the blow knocked him back. Gregory fell to one knee.
Mike advanced on him, the pan raised high. Gregory pitched a handful of dirt into Mike’s face. He followed with a quick thrust of his knife hand.
Mike gasped. He looked down with surprise at the blade buried in his midsection. The pan fell from his hands and landed in the fire with a puff of embers. Gregory pulled the blade free and pushed Mike aside. He then pointed straight at Dinah.
A long second passed as she looked down at Gregory. His blue eyes seemed to burn with a cold fire. Mike writhed about in the mud at his feet. After a moment, he stopped moving. Dinah’s jaw trembled and she bit down on a scream of rage. Any doubt in her mind was gone. These were the men from the farm. These were the ones who had killed Uma and destroyed her life. But all she could do was run.
She slid down the tree and ran back to Michelle.
“Mike’s dead,” Dinah said. She didn’t know if Michelle had seen it from here. But there was no time to wait. She tugged at the woman’s arm, but met resistance. Dinah let go and ran. She couldn’t stop to see if Michelle was following. Her pack and all her stuff were still by the pool. She had nothing save the sensor in her pocket.
Dinah put as many trees behind her as she could as she ran up the hill. An odd itch started in her back, as if someone was aiming a crossbow in her direction. Her muscles strained, and in no time her chest squeezed and her breathing came hard as she pounded across dry roots and undergrowth. All of the lush vegetation grew downstream, and now a brown world again surrounded her. Each footfall crunched and popped, and she was not alone. Michelle followed just behind her.
Tears had left trails running down the woman’s dusty face. She panted and wheezed and held a hand against her side, but she kept up. Her limp appeared less pronounced than before. Perhaps the wound on her leg had mended. Perhaps the panic gave her the strength she needed to ignore the pain.
After running uphill for what seemed like an eternity, Dinah paused to get her bearings.
“Oh god,” Michelle rasped. She fell to her knees, gasping for breath.
Dinah wanted to do the same. Her head had started pounding. But the three strangers had come up all that way just to find her. Was it the water that led them to her? The noise from Mike and Michelle? Or was it something else that allowed this Gregory to track her no matter where she went? The thought chilled her.
“We have to keep moving,” Dinah said.
Michelle just nodded. Dinah led them further. They made a series of turns through the trees to get as far away from the camp as possible without running in a straight line like a hunted animal.
An hour later they came to the top of the ridge. By then neither could do better than a slow trot. Dinah found a shaded place for them to rest. A late morning sun beat down on the ridge.
“Five minutes and we keep going,” Dinah said.
She examined her arms and legs. They had run straight through several dense patches of broom and anise and at least one dried thicket of blackberry vine. She had numerous red welts. Michelle hadn’t fared better, as she had twigs and thorns in her hair and a bleeding cut above one eye. She sat numbly as Dinah pulled the larger bits off of her.
“We have nothing,” Michelle said.
Dinah had little to add. Her throat felt too raw to give a pep talk.
Something came running toward them.
Roger the dog appeared, white foam frothing at the corners of his mouth. He whimpered. Michelle pulled him close and hugged him. Dinah stayed focused in the direction of where he had come. Nothing appeared to be following him, at least not yet. Michelle’s hand came away bloody from Roger’s coat. A long slice ran along his side. A crust of blood formed around the wound, but it still seeped red in his cream-and-brown fur.
“Time to go,” Dinah said.
***
An hour later, they rested again. Dinah felt dizzy from exhaustion and dehydration. The day felt hotter than any in recent memory. She couldn’t muster enough spit to clear the dust out of her mouth. Her lips felt swollen and cracked. Amazingly, Michelle had kept up. She flopped down on a fallen tree once she saw Dinah had stopped.
Roger brought up the rear, padding along with his head bowed low and his tongue lolling out as if to lick the dirt at Michelle’s feet.
One defiant thistle with a red flower head grew in the midst of a patch of dead grass. Dinah yanked it out by its base. With her knife, she sliced at the bottom of the stalk. She put her mouth to the cut end and sucked at the few drops of juice. It tasted wonderful.
“Here.” She handed it to Michelle. The woman took the thistle eagerly. She sounded like a baby goat drinking from its mother as she worked the last bits of moisture from the plant.
From their location Dinah could see the ridge continue further north. She could also see the peak of the mountain behind them. They had come up an eastern slope and could continue heading west down toward the coast, but there would be little prospect of finding another spring except by luck, and foraging would be difficult since she didn’t know the area. If only she hadn’t left her traps behind. And her pack. And her fire-starting kit. And her new pan.
She felt an irrational flush of annoyance toward Michelle. If she and her man hadn’t led those people to her and made all the noise, Dinah would still be at her spring, comfortable and alone. Even if Gregory would have found her eventually, Mike and Michelle had contributed to her letting her guard down.
“Could they still be following us?” Michelle asked.
“We made good time. Mike and Roger slowed them down. The more we move, the harder it will be for them to follow.”
Michelle nodded. Then she gave out a choked s
ob. “Mike,” she whispered. “Oh god.”
Dinah went over and hugged her. It was an awkward, feeble gesture on her part, one not well practiced, but Michelle clung to her with a strength Dinah didn’t know she had. After a moment, she broke free of Michelle’s embrace. She took out her device and put the pin into the air. It beeped, but the small screen display showed nothing. She began to wonder if she even knew how to use the thing. Maybe it was what Gregory was tracking.
Roger the dog whimpered. He barked once.
“What is that?” Michelle asked.
“Just a gadget I found long ago. I don’t think it will help us now.”
“It’s just like the one the man that killed Mike had. Did you take yours from one of them?”
Dinah raised an eyebrow. “No. I’ve had this for years.”
“Are they after you?”
“Look, I have no idea who they are. I’ve never seen them before.”
Michelle leaned around Dinah, clearly interested. She tried to take the device. Dinah pushed her back.
“Let me see it,” Michelle said.
“No, it’s mine. It’s also none of your business.”
Michelle had a height and weight advantage. She grabbed Dinah and tried to wrestle the device away. However, Dinah had the advantage of having worked on a farm, and she’d had a sparring partner named Rosalyn. When pushing Michelle away failed to work, she bit her arm.
“Yeeeow!”
Just then, Roger began barking frantically, bouncing in the dirt and looking toward a bank of high weeds. She heard a crunch as something broke through the foliage toward them.
The bird.
It bounded out of the shadows. Ignoring the two women, it pounced squarely on Roger. With one single blow it drove its beak down onto the dog’s head. Roger yelped once. The bird struck again several times, opening Roger’s skull, and blood and brains poured out. It let out a triumphant honk and then turned toward Dinah and Michelle.
Michelle began to scream. She clawed at Dinah and pushed her away. She fell to the ground and pushed herself backward, but the bird paid her no mind. It began to eat her dog.
Dinah got up and stepped away from the bird. Here in the full light of noon it appeared taller than before, perhaps a head and a half taller than Karl, with his hat on. It wasn’t a dainty eater. When it finished the brain, it moved on to the rest of the dog, savaging its eyes and ripping into the belly.
“So dog does it for you,” Dinah said. “Sorry, Roger.”
Michelle bolted. Dinah followed her, both of them almost tumbling downhill into a steep trough filled with a nest of dead trees. Dinah caught up with her and grabbed her arm. “Stop. Where are you going?”
Michelle’s wide eyes looked at Dinah and through her. Dinah thought she might attack, but she didn’t. Michelle was wheezing now. Her lips quivered as if she were trying to speak.
“The bird’s been following me for days,” Dinah said. “I think it’s because the device I have makes noise. I don’t have any other explanation. But we need to stick together if we want to survive.”
Or at least, you’ll need to stick with me.
“It killed Roger.”
Dinah nodded. She tried to swallow. She wanted a drink of water so bad it hurt.
“I think our only chance is to go east back down into the valley. There might be farms that haven’t been attacked.”
“But the bird. And the others.”
“I can’t shake the bird. I don’t think we can outrun it. Stay close to me, and maybe we can ward it off with my device. At least for now we have enough distance on the men that attacked us. They don’t have vehicles up here. I don’t think the device that guy Gregory had has much range. Otherwise they might have found me earlier, if it’s even me that they’re tracking. If we keep moving, it will improve our chances. What do you say?”
Michelle nodded wearily.
“I have one more suggestion I want you to think about. I want to go back up the hill and take what’s left of Roger, because the bird won’t eat it all.”
But when Dinah saw the look on Michelle’s face, she decided to drop it.
***
“It’s still out there,” Michelle said, although Dinah hadn’t seen or heard any sign of the bird.
“Yeah, it really likes following me. I thought I got away from it when I made it to the spring, but it found me there while I was swimming. It chased me up a tree.”
“You could have warned us.”
“About what? A giant bird? Had you ever heard of anything like that?”
“Nothing that isn’t extinct. But with the rumors of what some people were doing with genetics, anything is possible.”
Michelle grew sullen as they plodded along and said no more. She was back in her pouty mood again, and that suited Dinah just fine. Dinah was tired. She found them a relatively level place to rest for the night. Michelle collapsed on a thin bed of pine needles and didn’t move. Dinah took the time to sweep the area with the crossbow bolt she had taken, pushing aside as many leaves and as much branch debris as possible. None of the thin pine trees were suitable for sleeping in.
“No fire?” Michelle asked after a while.
“Stuff was in my pack.”
Dinah scouted the nearby area for anything obvious to eat but didn’t find anything. When she returned, Michelle had gotten herself sitting up with her back against a tree. She stared at the swept dirt as if it were a fire, as if the sticks would miraculously arrange themselves and ignite.
Dinah found her own tree to lean on. She could sleep sitting upright if she had to. It wasn’t great, but at least it would keep her hair off the ground. She also had an issue with bugs crawling into her ears.
“Can’t you start a fire by rubbing sticks together?” Michelle asked.
“It’s not that simple, and I’ve never done it. It also takes too much time and energy. Besides, any smoke might attract the people chasing us.”
“Chasing you.”
“They’re chasing both of us now, but whatever.”
Michelle made a show of looking around at the darkening forest. They had descended a large hill and had good cover. They had crawled through plenty of brush, avoiding the obvious game paths and dry streambeds.
“They might not see it,” Michelle said.
“Well, I’m not making a fire. Knock yourself out. But before you even try, remember that it’s not just them seeing the fire, but smelling it.”
Michelle clenched her jaw. Dinah could tell she clearly wasn’t used to being spoken to like this by a teenage girl. The woman probably was used to having some sort of position down in the valley, her husband working an important job, with plenty of folks that would see it in their best interest to treat them with respect. But her husband had just been killed. So had her dog. Dinah could have been nicer. Maybe she should apologize. But she was physically spent and hungry and past her normal sheen of civility. Maybe it was her inner Rosalyn.
She put her head against the tree and feigned sleep. She listened to Michelle shifting about. She asked something about bugs, but Dinah didn’t answer. Soon enough, Dinah was asleep.
***
Fog rolled into the valley the next morning, and it brought a chill to the air not felt in quite a while. The thick ribbons of white even obscured the tops of the trees. Dinah shook Michelle awake. While Michelle grumbled and began a slow-motion show of getting up, Dinah once again scoured the forest floor. She found a few crickets and a couple of worms. She ate them.
At least it was something. She forced herself to ignore the taste of dirt in her mouth as she swallowed. More little somethings would give her enough strength for the day, so she continued her search for creepy-crawlies. When she was done, she saw Michelle was still sitting, now with her head on her knees.
“Let’s go,” Dinah said.
Wordlessly, they continued the march downhill. The morning stayed cool. With gravity helping them, walking required little effort. Michelle only stumbled onc
e, and when Dinah went back to help her she waved her off.
It might have been noon when they came across a house. They passed through three rows of dried-up grapevines that grew around the back end of the property. The home was a single-level hovel with no door and shutters that drooped off their hinges, as if the home itself were tired. The roof consisted of thatch and a couple of sheets of thin metal.
Michelle was about to walk up to the front doorway when Dinah stopped her. Michelle started to say something, but Dinah put up a finger. She listened. The lack of sound didn’t mean no one was home. But she also didn’t smell anything like food, garbage, or sewage. This place looked and felt abandoned. She went inside.
“Hello?”
It didn’t take long to look through the single-space living room/kitchen and the two bedrooms. Besides a bit of rubbish there was nothing. It was hard to tell if animals had brought in the small twigs and drifts of leaves, or if it had just been the wind. Michelle waited for her outside.
At least she’s watching the way we came from.
If anything or anyone followed them, it would have to cross some open ground. But Michelle went inside once Dinah came out.
Dinah opened the house’s compost bin. It only held a packed-down layer of hard soil. The home had a well with no bucket or rope, and Dinah couldn’t tell if there was water. She checked a collapsed shed. Empty but for a few ruined tool handles. She tried the outhouse. Even the flies had abandoned it.
She walked along to where the rows of vines ended at a narrow dirt road that descended further down toward the valley. Around the front of the house, the former occupant had formed small stones into a long rectangle. The raised bed within the stones might once have grown vegetables. Now there were only dead weeds. She searched through the dry vegetation and dug up a trio of small carrots that looked nearly mummified.
Michelle came out of the house holding something wrapped in a white cloth napkin. By the size of it, Dinah thought it might be a sandwich. Michelle unfolded her find and showed Dinah six silver forks, all tarnished, the metal the same milky color as the sky.
Nineveh's Child Page 8