Danger is ahead of me and my legs are really pumping, and it feels good, for a minute, to be stretched out upright again, and to be running. A hundred paces later, though, I know I’m at the last of my strength.
I slow to a jog, then pause and listen hard to the dark. I can make out their noises behind me. They don’t take the wrong fork in the road; they must have heard or seen which way I went. I go from standing to sprinting again, the quick, light thwaps of their feet behind me on the tarmac.
The sound his voice made, deep, reaching, is echoing weirdly down in my bones. It reverberates, it is visceral.
Mam and Maeve, they’ve prepared me for nothing.
I’m near panic, but I get as far as the corner and past it, and I dive into the side of the road. I made too much noise, but I haven’t much in the way of options at this stage. There’s loud breathing and feet slapping and then a small figure, mostly shadow in the early morning, comes careering around the corner, slowing when it doesn’t see me. I get ready. My breathing is slowing and I’m fully alert. I dig my toes into the ground and I feel for my knives. I draw my favorite, the one right at my hip I’ve the most use of, and take aim, and I settle better into my crouch. I might have to run again when the bigger shadow comes around the corner, which it probably will, and very shortly. With another crack of pain I get my back a little straighter, pull my knife to my ear, and get ready to let fly.
The small shadow has stopped almost straight in front of me, and it—no, I see with a burst of relief it’s a she—she’s peering around in the inky blackness, trying to see me. She must have guessed that I stopped, or else she’s waiting for the bigger shadow, the man, to catch up with her. Either way, here’s my chance, so I steel myself to aim properly for her face the next time she looks toward me. The placement of my feet, the movement of my body are smooth and mechanical, just like I’ve been trained.
The knife has all but left my fingers when the shadow speaks.
“Hello?”
Her voice is soft and light, and I realize then how young she is—younger than me. Tall, but a child.
I try at the very last to hold on to the blade, but it goes from my fingers. It doesn’t hit her hard, at least, and only hilt first, then clatters onto the road beside her.
My position is gone so I leap forward, my back crying out in agony. I run at the girl and get to her fast, and she is surprised when I shove her. I do it hard and nearly regret it because she’s so light, she goes flying. I can almost feel her little body being cracked against the road, and I hear all the wind leave her lungs and the surprised, pained, childish-sounding cry all in the half-second or so it takes for me to be going. I don’t look back, but my hands are burning with the puniness of her fragile body.
Now that I am not going to kill her—or not on purpose anyway—I don’t have a plan. I’m just running away, because there’s a man and because they’re chasing me, hoping to draw them from Maeve. Every step I take is another I’ll have to take back again. Unless they have knives, I suppose, and my back crawls in readiness to feel one enter it, slice through it, bring me down. In the meantime, I may as well keep running.
I hear the child’s voice again over the noise of my own breathing and running, and I feel relieved. She sounds all right. I strain my ears but can’t understand what she’s saying over the noise of my own breath. I hear her shout out again, to stop. I can only try to run harder, but I’m so tired, I have been going on nothing for so long now. Failing to prepare is preparing to fail, Maeve’s voice rings in my head, but before the thought has even come out fully, I have tripped over my own feet and landed, hard, at the side of the road.
I lie there with my arm under me awkwardly and my feet in a knot and take maybe three breaths before clambering back up to get going again. I think about Mam, how she’d want me to keep going. My heart seems to contract and then go outward and then, stupidly, tears come. I’m angry about that, but since there doesn’t seem to be much I can do to stop them, I let them be and concentrate instead on putting one foot in front of the other.
I know that they’ll catch up with me, and there doesn’t seem to be much I can do about that either.
Just keep on.
Danger appears from nowhere to run beside me, and I won’t stop to think about why, but I am sobbing now, crying so hard that my whole body is racked, and it makes me even slower. What a failure this is; how weak I am. I’m going slow now, slow enough to let one hand graze against Danger’s soft head, and against his wet nose when he lifts his eyes to look at me.
“Good dog,” I try to get out through spittle and snot.
The girl cries out again, and I hear the word, full and clear.
“Stop!”
There is such a note of pleading in it that I nearly do. When she calls again, shouting “Please stop,” in a high clear pitch, I glance over my shoulder.
Then I hear the man’s voice again. When he tells me to stop, it is like an order and I feel a glorious spike of anger. I wonder if I could kill him, and I think if he weren’t with the little girl, the child, I could. I would.
They’ll catch me, though, and they’ll do whatever it is they’re going to do and that will probably be painful, and they’ll kill and eat the dog. I’ll never get back to Maeve, we’ll never get to Phoenix City, and she will turn, and no matter how much running I do, there is no getting away from that solid miserable fact.
My story will end here and better here than at home. At least I have put my eyes on things, at least I got off the island. I did that much for myself.
There must be one good action left, one choice still that I can make that will have been for the best. I click my tongue against my teeth, struggling between breaths, till Danger is looking up at me again and then I use the hand motion that is meant to show he’s to go on ahead, flicking a wrist off in front of me. He runs a few paces out but then waits till I’ve caught up again.
Behind me, the steps of the man and girl are closer, and the girl’s shouts, telling me to stop, are louder and more urgent. I try to block them out and flick my wrist ahead of me again. Danger won’t leave me.
“Stupid dog,” I hiss out between gritted teeth, and I smack him on his oily-haired rump. He runs a little ahead of me and I slow, hoping he’ll go farther, but he only looks back and slows again.
I reach for a knife, expecting to feel the man’s fingers on my shoulders every moment. He hasn’t shouted again, but he has gained on me, outstripping the girl, and his heavy footsteps are just behind me. There isn’t a second to lose. There isn’t a second to think, which is maybe a good thing. I grip the knife hard and, trying not to slow too much, lean over toward the dog—my back crying out in pain—and I plunge the tip of the blade hard but not deep into the fleshy part of Danger’s shoulder. He howls and leaps away from me just as I hoped he would and keeps going, and I watch him and think, Thank you, thank you.
I slow, and once I’ve lost my momentum, my feet stop knowing how to go forward and I go down hard. I feel my head bounce off the road. There is a crack like the world is coming apart, and a clear lucid moment of nausea while the world explo—