Article 5 (23 page)

“I’m sorry,” I managed weakly.

“Wait. I didn’t…” Kneeling, he reached to grasp my shoulders but drew back at the last second, not trusting himself to touch me. I put one hand over my mouth, hugging my elbow with the other. My eyes squeezed shut.

“Did I hurt you?” His voice was strained.

I said nothing, only shook my head quickly. I wouldn’t open my eyes. I couldn’t stand to see the soldier when I’d allowed myself to lay with someone else.

“I’m so sorry. I … I didn’t know. It was a dream.” The words rushed out, and I could hear in them the precarious balance between fear and self-loathing.

His hands were so close to my body I could feel the heat from them. Very slowly, his fingertips skimmed over my damp cheek. Reflexively, I shrunk from his touch, however gentle it may have been.

He shuddered. Then, without another word, he shoved on his boots, grabbed his jacket, and went outside.

*   *   *

I SPENT
the hours staring into the darkness, confused, at times afraid, while Chase paced outside the tent. I thought of running again, but I knew I would certainly end up lost in the forest in the middle of the night.

After a while, I became aware of the quiet that had replaced his footsteps. The sudden fear struck me that
he
had left. I couldn’t let that happen. Despite how much I didn’t care to admit it, I was now relying on him to help me find my mother. I needed him.

I clambered out of the sleeping bag and crawled to the exit. My frozen fingers fumbled with the zipper before I pulled away the nylon barrier.

The darkness had lifted some, but it wasn’t yet dawn. Chase was sitting against a tree, ten feet away, keeping watch. I sat back onto my heels, relieved that he was still there.

The temperature had plummeted; the pine needles on the ground were glimmering with iced dew. By the time I made it outside he was standing. Like an old man, he stretched his back, stiff and half frozen. A rush of irritation inflamed me. Why had he not just come back into the tent? I would have given him space. Our discomfort with one another was a lot better than him dying of hypothermia.

But as I got closer, my irritation warped into concern. Bright red patches of skin lit his cheeks, and his lips were chapped and nearly blue. Though he wore a coat, it had done little to shield him from the elements, and it crinkled loudly with each violent shiver. His breath did not fog in front of his face as mine did. There was no warmth left within him.

I ran back to the tent and returned with the sleeping bag. He didn’t object when I threw it over his shoulders, but when he tried to grasp the material, it slipped from his numb fingers. That was when I saw that the knuckles of his right hand were swollen and bruised. A line of blood stained his fingers down around to his palm.

“Your hand!” I exclaimed.

He stared at the ground, intentionally avoiding my scolding glare, like a child who’d been caught stealing.

“I’m f-f-fine. You can g-get some more sleep.” Even his throat sounded as if it were glazed with ice.

I crossed my arms over my chest and raised my brows expectantly.

He stretched the fingers with a wince.

“I got in a fight,” he said with a small smile. “With a tree,” he added when he saw my distress.

My eyes widened. “I guess you lost.”

“You sh-should have seen the tree.”

I laughed in spite of myself, now feeling the cold penetrate my clothing. How had he managed out here without moving?

He began stomping his feet as his blood warmed. This was mildly reassuring.

“I’m s-sorry, Ember.”

I was taken aback by his use of my name. He’d said it when giving me orders, or in anger, even in surprise, since he’d come back. But the broken way he spoke it now made my chest hurt.

“And I’m sorry about yesterday, w-what I said. I didn’t-t mean it. And everything else, too. Reform school … and everything. I never thought … God, look at your hands. And I know worse stuff has happened to you. I can see it. I wish … I’m so sorry.” He kicked the ground, then winced as though he’d broken a toe.

I’d known he had noticed the scars from Brock’s whip, and my unease around his gun, but I was surprised at how they plagued him. He hadn’t mentioned anything earlier.

Unable to stand it any longer, I moved closer, not retreating when he backed away. I rubbed his arms, carefully avoiding his wound. I wasn’t sure what to say. His apology had caught me completely off guard, and I didn’t know if I could trust it.

“Don’t.” His tone lacked conviction. “You shouldn’t…”

“Touch you? Don’t worry. I won’t tell anyone,” I said, stung.

“I’m not who I was,” he said. “Don’t be nice to me.”

I wondered what he’d done that had been so terrible that he wouldn’t accept even an ounce of kindness from another person. It seemed impossible just then that I could ever hate him more than he hated himself.

Very gently, as though I were made of glass, he pushed me away. I knew he was scared to hurt me again, but all the same, I felt the bite of rejection.

“I would have let you come back inside,” I said.

“I know.”

I looked up at him. There were dark shadows beneath his eyes.

“So why…”

“I promised I’d never hurt you.”

I felt my neck. There were no reminders of his grip; he’d detached his hand too quickly. I’d been scared but not hurt.

As if his guilt and embarrassment hadn’t been enough, he’d sought punishment by the elements and his own strength, accepting pain with the twisted logic that he deserved it—something I knew he’d picked up in the MM. I found myself wishing I could muster the anger to berate him for it, but found none. What I did feel—sympathy—I could not share, because I knew he would only use it to fuel his shame. So when I felt the renewed desire to wrap my arms around him, I held back. I settled for standing close while he slowly defrosted, hoping he knew by my presence that his penitence was over.

*   *   *

THE
day warmed, though not much. The freezing temperatures made our path slippery and the fog obscured our way; it mandated we travel at maybe half of the previous day’s pace. Each step took double the concentration and effort.

Two days passed, and in them we ate, slept, and talked little. Time was dwindling down. By the time the sun rose on Monday, a strained urgency had taken us. We had less than a day to find the checkpoint.

That wasn’t our only problem. We’d rationed what we had, but still run out of food in the early morning and hadn’t come across a stream to refill the canteens since the previous day. My stomach felt empty.

As we got closer to civilization, the trash littering the ground returned with increasing volume. Chase kicked through the scraps, cans, and faded Horizons-brand refuse for supplies we might use. The prospect of eating garbage didn’t seem as revolting as it had in the past.

It was late in the afternoon before we heard it: tires on asphalt. A single car had driven by, somewhere near.

“Did we pass the state line?” I asked, pushing by him in an effort to see evidence of our progress. As much as I hated to reenter the roaming spotlight of the military, I knew we had no choice.

The woods gave way to a thicket of gray-green brush, which crept wildly onto an empty dirt road. Beyond it stretched an open field, surrounded by barbed wire and edged by trees. A cockeyed red mailbox announced a twisting dirt road a half mile down the way. The car, wherever it had come from, was gone.

Chase hauled me back into the bushes and went out to scout the way. From my hiding place I saw him retrieve the map from his pack and look up the road. Then down. Then up at the sky.

This is what my life has come to,
I thought, watching him.
Taking cues for survival from a guy who is clearly waiting for some kind of sign from the universe.

Beth would have found this hilarious. Ryan would have found it highly impractical. It helped a little, thinking of what my friends would do. Their presence in my mind made me feel stronger, even if for a split second I imagined them doubting me. Thinking I must have done something really bad, something they didn’t know about, to be in the position I was in now.

No. They would never change.

But Chase had changed.

“We’re running southwest, parallel to the highway by a couple miles,” he said when he returned. “But we’re farther from the checkpoint than I thought. We need to step it up.”

A shimmer of anxiety passed through me. My legs were so stiff they could barely bend, and the blisters on my feet were damp with blood, but still we pushed harder. We could not miss this carrier. We had to get away from the MM and find my mother. Again I felt as if our survival would somehow even validate the sacrifice of that poor murdered man in Harrisonburg.

After a while, Chase took out the last bit of food, half of an FBR-issued granola bar, and handed it to me. I broke off the corner and handed it back to him, appreciating the gesture but knowing he had to be just as hungry.

I had just opened my mouth to ask him about his wounded arm when we heard voices filtering through the trees. Instinctively, we both ducked, but it became apparent after a moment that they weren’t moving toward us, they were blocking our path.

“From the house?” I asked, remembering the mailbox.

“Maybe. Stay behind me.”

We crept forward. Ten yards, and the volume of the voices increased. Men, two at least, shouting at each other. Twenty yards, and the undergrowth thinned.

“Get off my property!” one yelled.

“I’ll shoot you if I have to!” countered another. “I don’t want to! But I will!”

Shoot you?
The words injected fear straight into my bloodstream.

I was close enough now to see three people. My eyes went first to a wiry man, thirty feet away in a cattle field, with dark hair that turned silver at his temples. He was wearing jeans and an old green army sweatshirt and had a baseball bat swung over one shoulder. His movements were awkward; I realized after a moment that he only had one arm. To his right were a bearded drifter with a silver handgun and a smaller figure dressed in rags. As my breathing quieted, I could hear her sobbing. On the ground between all of them was a dead cow.

Poachers.

Chase gripped my arm. He nodded for me to back up. In his hand I saw the glint of his own weapon. He kept it ready, thumb over the safety, but aimed at the ground. I could tell that he did not want to make this our fight.

I was torn. It seemed right that we should help the rancher, clearly trying to defend his livelihood with only a baseball bat. But at what risk to ourselves?

Just then a shot rang out, cracking against the trees and reverberating in my eardrums. The drifter had fired over the rancher’s head, but not scared the brave man away. An image of the carrier’s legs on the kitchen floor flashed before my mind. Defensively, Chase raised his weapon, pushing me all the way down to the ground.

A cry pierced the air. The closeness of it startled me: I almost thought that I was the one who’d made the noise. I turned my head to the side, straining to hear over my raking breaths. It couldn’t have been the woman—she was too far away—and the sound was much too high for a man.

I could hear whimpering now. Nearby. My fingernails scraped the earth, ready to run. I sprang up to my haunches and saw him.

A child. No older than seven.

He had parted brown hair and a sniveling nose that matched his tomato-red sweatshirt. I knew immediately he must be with the rancher; he was too well dressed to belong to the couple. He was hiding, terrified, watching as the thief aimed a gun at his father.

My breath froze its rapid assault to my lungs, and without thinking I jerked out from under Chase’s grasp to crawl toward the boy’s hiding spot, ten feet to our right.

“Ember!”
Chase hissed.

The gunman’s voice hitched before us. “Yeah, sure, I had a house once, too. A house and a job and a car.
Two
cars! And now I can’t even feed my family!” I could hear the thief crying now. His desperation was ramping up. Both Chase and I tensed in response.

The boy sobbed loudly. The thief spun in our direction.

“What’s that? You got someone else out there? Who’s there?”

“No one!” the rancher said forcefully. “It’s just us.”

“I heard someone!” He began stomping toward us.

I froze. My knuckles sank into a damp patch of leaves. The boy was still five feet away, but he’d seen me now. He was covering his mouth with both hands. His face sparkled with tears.

I moved one trembling finger to my lips, desperately trying to shush him. Why hadn’t we backed up like Chase had wanted to?

The deliberate crackling of undergrowth snapped me out of my trance. For a brief second I caught Chase’s eyes and recognized the soldier’s hardened stare. Then, to my shock, he dropped the pack and stood to his full height. He had never looked more formidable.

“Who the hell are
you
?” yelled the thief, aiming the gun right at Chase’s chest.

My head reeled.
What is he doing?
I tried to grab Chase’s ankle so that I might still pull him back and make him see reason, but it was too late. He was covering for the child, I realized. Showing himself before the gunman started shooting at random into the forest. The prospect of Chase being harmed crushed me with powerlessness.

“Hey, easy. Put the gun down,” I heard Chase order calmly. The thief hesitated and backed up several steps.

“Who
are
you?”

“A traveler, just like you. Damn cold, isn’t it? That’s the worst part, I think. The cold. Listen, I know you’re hungry. I’ve got some extra food I’ll share with you tonight, and we’ll think of a plan, all right?”

“Back off!”

The rancher’s eyes were darting between the two armed men, then toward the woods, where his son was hiding. The evening air bristled with static.