Outbreak

by Tarah Benner

  I jump as another bullet cracks the window and lands in the upholstery just inches from my head. Eli pushes my shoulders down and reaches behind me, dragging out two rucksacks and flinging one into my lap.

  “Come on. We’re gonna make a run for those rocks.”

  I didn’t see where Eli pointed. I can’t think. I can barely move.

  Fighting every natural instinct to stay in the rover, I push the door open with some difficulty and nearly fall out onto the pavement. My hands are shaking so badly I can’t get the rucksack over my shoulder. Instead, I run after Eli on wobbly legs, dragging it by the strap.

  I hear another gunshot and jerk down automatically, but we’re too far away for the shooter to hit his mark.

  Dry brush clings to my pant legs as I scrabble up the embankment after Eli. My limbs feel clumsy and uncoordinated, and I trip several times before I reach the cover of the orangish-red rocks stretching up toward the sky.

  My vision has narrowed in on the path right in front of me, and somehow I lose sight of Eli.

  I glance around in a panic and yelp when a hand shoots out of nowhere and locks around my arm.

  “It’s okay,” says Eli, his face swimming into view.

  My heart is pounding so fast I’m amazed it hasn’t given out yet. My breaths are coming in uneven gasps, and it’s hard for me to focus on his face.

  “Are you hurt?” he asks.

  I think I shake my head, but then again, every part of my body is shaking. Eli’s rough hands roam my arms and torso anyway, checking for gunshot wounds. I have the sudden, inappropriate urge to laugh, but it’s on the verge of a sob.

  “You’re just in shock,” murmurs Eli.

  Those deep blue eyes pull me back to reality. Eli is staring at me with such intensity and concern that it grounds me in place and helps my breathing return to normal.

  “We can’t stay here,” he says, glancing up at our rudimentary hiding place. “They’ll come looking for us.”

  “Right,” I say, clasping my hands together to keep them from trembling.

  “You’re okay,” he murmurs, rubbing his hands down my arms again.

  I give a shaky nod and hoist the rucksack over my shoulder.

  I realize neither one of us is wearing a mask, but I guess it doesn’t matter if Sawyer’s correct about our superhuman radiation resistance. We can’t return to the rover anyway.

  I’m not sure how far we are from the town where Owen was headed, but we don’t really have any choice but to keep moving.

  Eli tugs on my arm, and we start to jog along the highway, staying in the shadow of the rock formation. It’s difficult to move gracefully with the weight of the overstuffed pack on my shoulders, and I stumble several times on the uneven terrain.

  “How far behind us were they?” I pant.

  “Hard to tell. But the town’s not too far off,” huffs Eli, tugging on the straps of his pack and picking up the pace a little.

  Thankfully, the looming wall of solid rock opens up to a narrow pathway, and Eli leads us through. The reddish glow of the sunlight reflecting off the rock creates a hypnotic effect in the shelter of the cliff, and I follow Eli without noticing if we’re even moving in the right direction.

  Something about being enveloped between two enormous sheets of rock gives me a disproportionately high sense of security. But then the gap between the cliff and the outshoot of rock narrows, and Eli swears.

  I nearly careen into his back as I round the bend. Eli is standing at the end of the tunnel in front of the opening — a fissure in the rock no more than six inches wide.

  “Shit,” he mutters, glancing behind us for the approaching drifters.

  “Should we go back?” I pant.

  He shakes his head, looking panicked. “If they followed us, we’ll run straight into them.”

  But he squeezes past me anyway and starts moving back through the tunnel. At first I think he’s doubling back to face them head-on, but then I notice his eyes are fixated on the top of the rock formation some forty feet above us.

  “There,” he mutters, pointing to something I can’t quite see.

  “What?”

  Eli pulls me closer and moves my chin to where he’s pointing — a break in the cliff about halfway up the wall. I squint harder and see a narrow ledge that runs for about four feet before disappearing into a small opening.

  “We’re going to wait this out,” he says.

  I shake my head, lost for words. “Eli . . . how the hell are we going to get up there?”

  “We have to climb.”

  Now I know he’s completely lost it.

  “It’s okay,” he says, correctly interpreting my panicked expression. “I used to do some free-climbing with my dad and Owen. It’s not a big deal.”

  I open my mouth to say that it’s a very big deal, but I don’t see another solution. If we stay where we are, the drifters are sure to find us.

  Eli has already started searching for something to grab on to. “I’m going to climb up first and tell you where the handholds are.”

  “What?”

  I’ve never climbed a rock wall in my life — let alone a fucking cliff. But as I watch, I see what he’s talking about: There seem to be small crevices and imperfections in the otherwise smooth rock formation. Eli’s hands and feet find the cracks easily, and he slowly propels himself up the wall.

  At one point, he gets stuck and has to backtrack to find a new path. That’s when I hear footsteps and faraway voices echoing off the cliff.

  Eli freezes on the face of the rock, sprawled like a spider with one arm extended over his head and one leg poised for his next ascent.

  I can’t make out what the drifters are saying or how close they are, but if they followed our path on the other side of the tunnel, it’s only a matter of time before they double back and find the path we took.

  The pool of light spilling from the opening in the rock suddenly darkens, and my heart thunders in my chest. I hold my breath, and the drifters leave. Unfortunately, I can’t tell if they’re still nearby or if they kept moving toward town.

  A scuffing sound draws my attention back to Eli, and everything slows down as I watch his leg slip off a protruding rock.

  I clap a hand over my mouth to muffle my gasp and watch in horror as Eli fumbles to find his footing. He’s hanging by his arms and breathing hard, legs flailing uselessly in midair. I can’t fight the terrifying images that come to mind, and when his forearms flex, I worry he’s going to lose his grip.

  “Harper!” he gasps, still unable to slow his momentum as he swings against the wall. “Can you see another foothold?”

  Scrambling over to stand under him, I spot a small bump near his left foot. “Up and to the left,” I whisper.

  His foot clumsily searches for the bump, but after a minute, he makes contact and rights himself.

  Taking a second to breathe, he reaches up for the ledge and hoists himself over.

  “There’s a cave,” he calls in a loud whisper. “Hurry.”

  Glancing down the tunnel for any sign of the approaching drifters, I reach for the first handhold Eli used and pull myself up. I find the first few protruding rocks easily with my feet, but halfway up, my brain falters.

  “Up and to the right,” calls Eli.

  Suddenly, I hear voices bouncing off the cliff again, and my heart speeds up.

  Focus, I tell myself. Don’t think about them.

  Careful not to shift my center of gravity, I crane my neck to search for the handhold Eli is referring to.

  I can just make out a tiny hole in the rock. It’s barely big enough for three fingers, but it provides some stability as I shift my right foot awkwardly to the next rock jutting out about an inch from the cliff.

  The voices in the tunnel are growing louder.

  “Hurry!” Eli hisses.

  “I’m trying,” I choke, floundering as I reach for the next crack with my left hand. Eli reached it easily during his climb, but he’s much taller
; I can’t even brush it with my fingertips.

  “Stretch!”

  “I can’t reach,” I say in a shaky voice.

  I’m starting to lose it. The adrenalin from the shootout, my tiring muscles, and the stress of being spotted are a bad combination. I’m quivering against the rock, completely frozen as I will a crack to appear.

  Jayden’s words echo in my mind. Being stuck out there with this one . . .

  It doesn’t matter what Eli says. No matter how pure his intentions were, there still must have been some small part of him that thought I was incompetent as a partner. And maybe I was, but I’m not going to be weak anymore.

  The drifters’ individual voices are discernible now, echoing loudly in the tunnel. I don’t have much time.

  Craning my neck, I finally spot another tiny imperfection in the rock — a gap just big enough to slide my hand through. I get a good grip, but when I place my right foot, it slips right off the tiny ledge.

  My right cheek smashes into the rock as my downward momentum throws me against the cliff. The sharp handhold cuts into my left hand as all my weight shifts to my arms.

  With every ounce of strength I have, I stretch my leg up to find the slippery bump again, but I’ve fallen too far and don’t have the strength to pull myself up.

  I can hear the scuff of the drifters’ boots. They’re going to see me. I just know it.

  I’m in the worst spot imaginable — too high to jump down and make a run for it, but too low to make the final ascent to the ledge.

  A shout reverberates off the rock — just a few yards down the tunnel.

  Then a warm hand grabs my wrist and tugs.

  twenty-two

  Eli

  With my body splayed across the narrow ledge, I’m just tall enough to reach down and grab Harper by the wrist. I’ve hooked my foot around a rock inside the cave, but my position isn’t good. If I slip even an inch, there’s nothing to stop me from sliding off the ledge and pulling Harper down with me.

  The drifters are right around the bend, and she’s too short to reach the last good handhold.

  “Harper, listen to me,” I pant. “I need you to pull yourself the rest of the way.”

  When she finally responds, her voice sounds very small. “I don’t have anything to grab on to.”

  I let out as big a breath as I dare and tighten my hold on her thin wrist. My grip definitely isn’t strong enough to support her full weight, and there isn’t room on the ledge to hoist her up and over.

  “Listen,” I whisper, closing my eyes and trying to conjure up a mental picture of the cliff. “There’s a rock a couple inches above your right hand. I’m going to pull, and I need you to let go and grab it. Can you do that?”

  “I . . . I don’t know.”

  Harper’s arm trembles. She must be losing her grip.

  “You have to try. It’s not that far. Then you can put your left foot on the rock by your hip and push yourself up to the ledge.”

  How I plan to pull her up that far when I’m splayed on my stomach is beyond me, but our options are limited.

  “Okay,” she chokes.

  “One . . .” I squeeze her wrist.

  “Two . . .” I clench every muscle in my core and brace my foot against the rock holding me to the ledge.

  “Three!”

  In one motion, I yank Harper up as hard as I can. My knee screams in protest as I raise up awkwardly on my little rock shelf, but Harper doesn’t scream, and I don’t hear the telltale scuff of her boots floundering against the cliff.

  Cautiously, I peer over the ledge. She reached the small, slippery rock, and her left foot has found purchase on another bump. She grits her teeth, and I pull. Sweet relief flares through me when I see her upper half clear the ledge.

  We nearly bump heads as I half pull, half fall back toward the cave. She gets a knee on the ledge, and I immediately look down.

  From our lofty position, I see the drifters round the bend. There are three men toting guns, moving down the tunnel to where we just were.

  “They aren’t here,” says the man leading the group.

  “Well, they didn’t disappear.”

  Don’t look up. Don’t look up. Don’t look up.

  “I said . . . They. Aren’t. Here.”

  “Well, we gotta keep lookin’, then, don’t we?”

  I freeze on the ledge, afraid to pull Harper into the cave. There’s a layer of dust and small rocks covering our path, and one wrong move could make a noise that catches the drifters’ attention.

  I hold my breath, watching them deliberate.

  Finally, the men turn around and start heading back down the tunnel. I wait until they disappear around the cliff and the sounds of their voices fade into nothingness.

  When they’re gone, I shift my grip to Harper’s upper arm. She’s frozen on the ledge like a bird on a wire, and I have to give her a gentle tug.

  Once Harper starts inching toward me, I scoot back into the cave and pull her down to duck inside. She’s breathing hard and looks a little shaken, but other than that, she’s okay.

  I can’t believe how quickly everything unraveled. Less than half an hour ago, we were cruising along in the rover. Now, thanks to me, we’re stranded in a cave with a good twenty miles of desert between us and the compound.

  Looking around, I’m surprised to see that it isn’t completely dark. I’d thought the opening was just a hole in the cliff, but there’s light filtering through from the other side.

  Crouching low to avoid scraping my head, I start climbing over the rock jutting out of the cave floor.

  Finding another exit would be ideal. For one thing, it would help us avoid a possible ambush from the drifter search party down below. But more importantly, I don’t think we’ll be able to descend from the cave the same way we climbed up.

  The sound of shifting rocks makes me jump, but it’s just Harper coming up behind me. We follow the light back about ten yards up a steep incline to a two-foot-wide opening that’s beckoning us to freedom.

  I climb through the hole and emerge on a flat slab of rock, grateful for the burst of fresh air against my cheek. I breathe deeply and try to take everything in, but the view is too magnificent to absorb all at once.

  “Wow,” murmurs Harper.

  That’s an understatement.

  What I’d thought was a protrusion in the cliff from down below is actually another rock formation entirely. The one we’re standing on is taller, but the cliff closest to the road continues for another five hundred yards.

  The winding ribbon of highway cuts through the rugged brown landscape, disappearing where the desert meets the breathtaking blue sky. There are about two miles of open land between us and the town, and I can just barely discern the shape of buildings on the horizon.

  In another life, I’d be thinking about how beautiful the desert is. Maybe Harper and I would have climbed up here to admire the wide expanse of nothingness and gorgeous sandstone rock formations. We wouldn’t be thinking of the men down below who want to kill us or the minefield of danger surrounding the small town.

  Harper is studying the cliffside with the same wary admiration. A few strands of hair have come loose from her ponytail, and when they blow back, I can see my own anxiety reflected in her luminous gray eyes.

  Now that we’re out of immediate danger, I realize just how thirsty and exhausted I am. We have plenty of water right now, so I settle down on the cliff, pull out my water bag, and drink greedily.

  Harper follows suit, and for several minutes, we just sit there in silence.

  “How are we going to get down?” she asks finally.

  I glance over the edge. We’re about thirty feet up, with nothing but jagged rocks and rough brush below us. It’s possible we could climb down, but one slipup would be catastrophic. Shifting to my hands and knees, I crawl to the edge of the cliff and peer toward the ground.

  On the other side, there are a couple tiers of rock leading down to the base of the cli
ff. This descent looks much less treacherous.

  “We can make it down over here.”

  Harper gives me a look that can only be described as pitiful, and I settle against the large rock I’ve been using as a backrest. “In a minute.”

  She nods gratefully and continues to sip her water. I can tell she’s exhausted. She’s got a nasty skid mark across her right cheek from where she slammed into the cliff and dirt all over her hands and knees. Yet even in her bedraggled state, she still looks so pretty.

  Watching her triggers a pang of regret in my gut. I can’t believe I almost left the compound without her.

  Who was I kidding anyway? I wouldn’t want anyone else for a partner. I just hate that she had to find out that I tried to trade her in for someone new.

  After a while, she seems to return to her old self. I tighten the drawstring on my rucksack and move toward the edge of the rock formation.

  Choosing my handholds carefully, I grip two rocks protruding from the ground and lower myself down to the first ledge. Harper follows, and I watch her closely to make sure she doesn’t slip.

  The next two drops aren’t as easy. The surface of the ledge we’re standing on is smooth and flat, which makes getting a firm grip next to impossible. But Harper’s looking up at me with that heart-wrenching “What now?” expression, which forces me over the edge and gives me the last push to drop to the next rock.

  The protrusion was narrower than I thought, and it’s all I can do to stop myself from stumbling right off the edge. I swear loudly and steady myself on the uneven surface, feet aching from the jump.

  “Eli!”

  Harper’s panicked face appears above me.

  “I’m all right,” I call, forcing myself to breathe normally. “It’s just a little narrow. You’re gonna have to dangle and let yourself drop. You’ll feel like you’re going over the edge when you land, but you won’t.”

  “I don’t know . . .”

  “You’ll be fine.”

  “You barely made it.”

  I sigh and drop my head, debating what I should tell her. It’s a dangerous jump — no doubt about it — but there’s no time to look for another possible descent point. We’ve already lost hours. Owen could be on the move right now, and every moment we waste is a moment we risk losing him for good.