Shadowmark (The Shadowmark Trilogy Book 1) (18 page)

Mina trudged after Doyle, who moved through the foliage far ahead. Sometimes she lost sight of him for minutes at a time, but she refused to ask him to slow down. So she would hike faster, her pack bouncing on her shoulders as she tried to keep up. She hadn’t yet figured out how to keep it from bouncing. Bushes and vines grabbed at her legs as she walked, trying to follow Doyle’s path through the dense undergrowth and keep from tripping on unseen obstacles.

She would need to stop soon. More than once over the last two days, Mina had wished she could pee against a tree like a man instead of ducking for cover behind a rock or in the undergrowth. She chided herself for the thought.
It’s not an issue. Don’t make it a big deal.
 

And then there was the gun. She always sensed it back there. It weighed more than her whole pack. Mina had tried adjusting it so her pack wouldn’t press it into the small of her back, but even when she moved it to the side, it bothered her. She wanted to toss it into the woods and never think of it again.
 

Doyle seemed undisturbed by her issues. He kept to himself and didn’t ask questions. When he was close enough to talk at all, he spoke only of hiking. Not that Mina typically had much energy left for talking—she always collapsed at the end of their long days.
 

Mina took a detour to some boulders, carefully checking for snakes before hiding behind them to relieve herself. When she emerged, Doyle was nowhere in sight. Terrified he would leave her behind, she called out to him to slow down while she tried to heft the backpack higher on her shoulders. To Mina’s relief, Doyle turned and walked back to her.

“Give it to me.” He held out his hand for the pack.

“Thanks! I didn’t know how much longer I could carry it.” She bent over to catch her breath. Doyle glanced at her, then adjusted the straps before handing it back. She looked at him, bewildered.

“What? You thought I was going to carry it for you?”

Mina blushed and shouldered the bag once again. No, she hadn’t expected him to carry it for her. She’d simply misread him. Once the pack was over her shoulders, Doyle cinched all the straps, securing the ones across her waist and chest.

“There. Like that,” he said when he finished. “All the weight should rest on your hips, not your shoulders. Got it?”

Mina already felt the difference. “Yes,” she replied.

“Okay then.” He set off again at the same pace as before. Mina took the opportunity to try to hike beside him.

“Can we build a campfire tonight?” she asked. Doyle had been adamant about not building one for the last two nights.

“What is it with you and fire?”

Mina sighed. “It’s warm, for one thing. And I’m tired of being blind from dusk to dawn.”

“The more time you spend in the dark, the faster your eyes will adjust.”

“I thought that was a myth. Is that why you see so well in the dark?”

Doyle nodded.

Mina panted slightly, timing her words with her breathing. “Do you really think the Glyphs will see it?” She practically ran to keep up with him. He wasn’t even sweating.

“Always a possibility.” He sped up. Mina’s pack still bounced around as she tried to keep pace, but not as badly as before.

Doyle smirked. “Marathons, huh?”

“Ever run one?”

“No.”

Mina thought of a couple snarky responses, but she didn’t have the breath to continue the conversation.
 

They hiked the rest of the day, stopping to make camp on a gently sloping shelf near the bottom of the mountain. Frogs croaked somewhere below them.

Doyle set his pack on the ground while Mina sank down against a tree and closed her eyes, waiting for her heart rate to slow. Doyle retrieved a small hatchet from his pack. “Still want a fire?”

Mina looked at him through bleary eyes. “Sure.”

“Would you rather gather kindling or chop up that small fallen tree over there?”
 

Mina looked toward where he pointed with the ax. The tree wasn’t so small. “Kindling.” She’d need all night if she had to chop the wood.

Doyle walked over to the tree and began lopping off the first branches with a single stroke. The sharp crack of metal splitting wood carried through the forest. Mina stood on shaky legs. At the rate he was working, Doyle would have the firewood ready before she removed her pack. She sighed, unbuckling the straps, and looked around for kindling.

Beech and elm trees surrounded the area, and the ground was littered with an abundance of old dry leaves. Mina gathered armfuls and carried them to their campsite just as she had when making her own fires.

Doyle dumped freshly spliced logs on the ground and shook his head. “We’re starting a fire, not sending smoke signals. You need small dry twigs—lots of them.” He kicked at the pile of leaves and stomped off to collect more wood.
 

Mina huffed and searched for twigs, carrying back what she could find. When she returned, Doyle showed her how to build the fire slowly from the kindling by lighting it with a ball of moss and twigs he had woven loosely together. He gradually added larger pieces of wood until they had a decent, hot blaze.
 

Mina smiled, holding out her hands to absorb the heat. Something as simple as a campfire could be so reassuring. “So where are you from, Doyle?” she asked in an attempt to lighten the mood.

“Have you ever been camping before this?”

“No,” she answered quickly, taken aback. She expected Doyle to ask her more, but he only looked into the fire.

“I guess you’re not going to tell me where you’re from then,” she shot at him.

“We can both get some sleep tonight—no need to keep watch.” Doyle stretched out on the ground, using his backpack for a pillow.

“How do you know?”

He didn’t respond.
 

“Shouldn’t we be hanging our food in a tree or something?”

“Why?”

“Because of the bears.”

“Bears won’t bother me.”

Mina scoffed. “They might bother me.”

“Then hang the food in a tree—I don’t care.”

Mina looked up into the tall trees surrounding them. None of them had low branches she would be able to reach. She sighed loudly, willing herself not to vent her frustration at Doyle. He had helped her, and antagonizing him would likely end with Mina on her own again.

He slept immediately. Mina was enjoying the fire too much to sleep yet, so she contented herself with thinking about the last few days. Anything further back than that prompted the familiar tight feeling in her chest.

But her mind drifted there anyway.

How her world had changed in a few short weeks. Cities burned, people murdered, gangs running around with guns. Before the invasion, Mina had been comfortable, happy. Now everything and everyone she knew was in danger.
 

Blood was rushing to her head. She shifted around so she was lying on her back,with her head uphill from her feet. What had happened to Karen and Tom? Were they out there somewhere, surviving like Mina? Where was her mother? Had she lived through the attacks? Her stomach churned. No, she wouldn’t waste time worrying about a woman she hadn’t seen in twenty-two years. A woman who had abandoned her family.
 

Mina sniffed and watched her breath mist in the cool air.

The fire had burned low by the time she finally slept, wrapped snugly in her blanket. She dreamed about the face again, the one that had rescued her at the airport. The man had been covered in ash, she realized now. Then smoke obscured him momentarily. When it lifted, the face had changed into the specter at the creek, its terrible eyes calling out to Mina. The orbs pulled her closer, insisting.
 

Mina jerked awake. She must have called out in her sleep because Doyle woke as well. He leapt to his feet so quickly, gun in hand, that Mina assumed he had not been sleeping after all.

“Sorry!” She sat up. “Bad dream.”

Doyle glared at her, holstered his gun, and picked up another log for the fire.
 

Mina could not shake the image now. The original dream came back to her. The airport. Someone had been there.

“I saw them,” she said finally. Doyle sat down across from Mina and stoked the fire, adding the log. The warmth encouraged her. “The Glyphs. My plane had just landed. They were everywhere. Attacking, burning, k—.” The word stuck. “People ran, but it didn’t matter.” Mina looked at Doyle, waiting. He finished with the fire and lay down again, staring at the sky. Irritated, Mina lay down, too. But she didn’t go back to sleep.

They remained in the valley for a few days, looking for food. Doyle knew which plants to eat and which ones to avoid, and he usually found something to add to the dwindling supply of granola bars in their bags. By the third night, Mina successfully started the fire on her own. She smiled at her own accomplishment, satisfied with herself, but stopped short of voicing her enthusiasm to Doyle.

The next day, Mina was adding Doyle’s iodine drops to stream water when he told her he was going to hike up the ridge to look around. Mina stood up. “I’ll go with you.”

Doyle tightened the laces on his boots. “You’ll just slow me down.”

“You could slow down for me.”

Doyle shot her a look, but otherwise ignored the comment. He finished lacing his boots and took off up the mountain. Mina thought about following him, but what was she was trying to prove? He already knew he could outpace her on his worst day.

After he left, Mina looked for the bright blue flowers of chicory root he had shown her yesterday, with little luck. The day warmed a little, and the sun overhead cheered her. At the stream, Mina took off her shoes and put her sore feet in the water. Then she yanked them out as the cold water bit her skin.
 

Emboldened by her temporary solitude, Mina decided to bathe and wash her clothing. She stripped to her underwear and forced herself back into the water, gritting her teeth to stop them from chattering. Within seconds, her whole body shook with cold. She screwed up her courage and dunked herself under the surface. Her body screamed with biting pain, but Mina ignored it as she furiously scrubbed off days’ worth of filth and mud. When she couldn’t stand still for shivering, she climbed out of the pool on rubbery legs. Wrapping herself in her blanket, she raked her clothes over the small rocks in the stream a few times before laying them on larger rocks to dry in the sunshine. She worked through the tangles in her hair, then wrung it out and sat in the sunshine next to her clothes. She drew her arms in close to her body, shivering violently. Dunking herself in the freezing water was probably stupid, but she would dry in the sun long before it set. In the meantime, she was clean.

As the afternoon wore on, Mina’s hair dried, but her clothes remained as wet as ever. The sun sank behind a mountain, so she lit another small fire at the last night’s campsite, hanging out her clothes next to it. The heat dried them quickly. She had barely finished dressing and was twisting her hair up on top of her head when Doyle headed down through the trees. Without a word, he walked over to the fire and stamped it out with his foot.

“Hey! Why’d you do that?”
 

“No fire tonight.”

“Are you going to tell me why?”

Doyle sat next to a tree and shook a rock out of his boot. Mina kicked at the fire herself before hunkering down inside her blanket.
 

“Bathing wasn’t smart,” he said. “Hypothermia can set in surprisingly fast out here.”

Mina stiffened. “Were you watching me?”

“No. You smell better.”

“It’s really none of your business.”

Doyle shrugged and sat back. “Just a bit of advice.”

“I considered hypothermia.”

“Then why risk it?”

“At least I would have died clean.”

They didn’t speak again all night.

Mina woke to Doyle shaking her roughly. The moon had set behind the mountains and the campsite was pitch-black.

“Whassa matter?” she asked, heart pounding.

“We have to go.”

“Now?”

“Hurry and find your gear,” he said.

Mina had nothing to pack but the blanket wrapped around her, having gathered everything else before going to sleep. They ate granola in silence. In a few minutes, the predawn light made it possible for her to stumble after Doyle who led the way up the mountain.

“Why are we leaving?”

“Shhh.”

They left the valley and climbed over the ridge. Peaceful green mountains stretched out before them in all directions. Mina could not remember the last time she had felt so secure, even though Doyle seemed to be on edge, taking only one short break the entire day. Once, a whiff of smoke reached them on the wind, but the sky remained clear. Mina looked at Doyle to see his reaction. He ignored her. Tired of his rudeness, Mina didn’t say anything either.
 

They didn’t encounter anything that day except for a small black bear that ambled away from them, and Mina wondered why more refugees had not sought the protection of the mountains. But as the days wore on, Mina guessed they never encountered other people because Doyle expertly avoided them. A few more times he broke camp or woke her before dawn to leave, never explaining why. Mina learned not to ask about these sudden urges to travel, since he only responded with exasperated silence.
 

And Mina was hopelessly lost. At first, she tried to keep track of their route by using the sun as a guide, but their hikes through the forest only led them into wilder territory, making the idea of walking in one direction laughable. She had no idea if they were walking toward Atlanta or away from it.
 

We’re going to be okay, right?
 

When Dad passed from the same type of cancer as Aunt Julie, Lincoln was in his second year at MIT. He flew with Mina to see Karen and Tom, and arranged for Mina to move in with them, later visiting as often as he could.
 

The two of them had always struggled on, helping each other when possible.
 

Guilt returned, reclaiming its heavy place inside her chest, pressing into her heart.
Have I abandoned Lincoln?
She should suggest to Doyle they walk south.