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“SHH. IT’S ME.” BENJAMIN’S voice.
Immediately she stopped struggling and threw herself at him, putting her arms around his neck. “I thought I’d lost you,” she whispered. She was fighting back tears, then lost the fight. Until that moment, she didn’t know how worried she’d really been, how hurt, how terrified. The relief his voice brought was overwhelming, but it was the other, bad feelings, let free from their bonds, that had her momentarily a wreck.
His arms tightened on her for a moment, then he pushed her away. “We need to move.”
“Right,” she managed to say. Her bandana was around her neck, and she yanked it up to wipe away tears before getting it back in place over her mouth and nose. “There’s aspirin back—”
At the same time he said, “We need to get to the cave.”
“Knives, simple over the counter drugs, empty sacks, back at the cabin.” She was speaking in a near-whisper, and so was he.
“We can’t risk running into anyone. Bad enough we have to get close to get the path to the cave. Besides, no key.”
“I’ve learned to pick locks.”
She felt him grab her arm and squeeze it. “You’re amazing. But there’s more at the cave. We have to get going before one of the men wakes up. Jim already went out about an hour ago to the outhouse. Who knows who’s next?”
“What about the donkey? I was thinking he might carry us faster than we could run.”
“No. Shouldn’t risk the noise.”
Coral was glad to hear her thoughts confirmed. She had missed that so much, talking things through with him.
“Cave first. Let’s see if we get that far. Then we’ll talk more.”
A thin blue light flicked on, and Coral realized he had a flashlight. He went ahead of her, and she fell into step. He turned the light off, but in a few minutes flipped it back on for a second. He did this twice more, and it let them move more quickly by not drifting off the trail. When they were close to the compound, he left it off and whispered, “take hold of my jacket.”
In silence, she followed him as he took a turn through the pitch black night, and another. In another hundred paces, he risked flipping on the flashlight again. They were on a different path, one Coral wasn’t at all familiar with.
Using occasional flashes from the torch, they walked up an incline, and soon found themselves at a rock formation similar to the one where they’d found the suicides further east.
He flipped on the flashlight and shone it into a dark spot on the wall. “Took too long getting here. We need to get away,” he said. As he talked, he tore away at the flashlight, and the light grew stronger. She realized he’d found duct tape and had taped the end so that only a thin beam of light was visible. Now that the light was full, it was shockingly bright in the night. He pushed through the entrance and into a space perhaps ten feet wide, thirty feet long, and she followed.
“No way could they all have survived in this,” she said.
He pointed the flashlight toward the back of the space. “There’s a low hole there, see it? And another space beyond, and a third one. That’s where they waited it out. But everything we need is right here.”
“How did they force the donkey in there?”
“No idea.” He set the flashlight on a crate and began pushing things around. Without looking back, he said, “Our old stuff is still getting sorted. The rope is over there, I think, on the floor near the entrance.
She turned and found a number of their things—a few picked-over tools, blankets, the nylon rope she’d grabbed at the Walmart, the plastic water bottles, and her fishing gear. She made a noise and lunged for the pole. “I can’t believe it.”
“Yeah, grab those, too. He tossed a stack of empty burlap bags over. “Pack however you can for now. We’ll get it done better tomorrow morning.”
“Right.” She checked her fishing line, then broke the rod down and made a compact bundle of it. The tackle box was here, and after snapping it open to make sure everything was still in there—it was—she pushed it into the bottom of one of the burlap sacks. “Blankets?”
“Roll them all up and tie them. Make straps, so I can wear it, would you?”
“Where are the backpacks?”
“Up at the landing site, so forget them.” The tone he put on the words let her know she’d been an idiot to ever consider that he might have gone over to the cult. “Toss me a sack, would you?”
She tucked away the last of the bottles and brought him a sack.
“Hold it open, please.”
She did, and watched as he took a handful of dark red paper cylinders, in bunches of six, that looked a lot like giant rolled coins, and dumped them in the sack. But then she caught sight of the fuses. “Uh, Benjamin, are those dynamite?”
“Yeah. They mostly used C4 up there to blast out the rock. That’s what the cabins are made of, you know, the rock from the blasting.”
“No shit.” They may have been crazy as bedbugs, but you had to give them points for organization.
“But there’s also this, and this might help us get away.”
“How? You going to blow up the men’s cabin?”
He stopped and glanced at her, his eyebrows raised. “Hadn’t thought of that.” His eyes drifted away as he considered it. “No. We’ll take it with us.”
“How big a blast will it make?”
“No idea.”
“Great.” But she was smiling as she said it. Things were back to normal. To New Normal, at least, with her and Benjamin on the same side, blundering along and surviving.
“I was thinking about the donkey. What if we let it out of its pen? If a couple of them had to chase it down, that would be a couple fewer chasing us.”
“And the goats, too.”
“How many are there?”
She was surprised he’d never seen, but then, the sex segregation was strict, so there’d have been no reason for him to go down the path to the animal pen. “Two. Both female.”
“I was thinking we’d kill the goats for meat.”
She winced.
“You haven’t gotten attached.”
“No. Or yes, but that’s okay. I’d rather have the meat than the pet. We can kill them.”
“There’s still some meat here, in the second chamber, hanging up.”
“If you don’t mind, I’d prefer this—also, it won’t squeal when you kill it.”
“I figured killing the goats would make life harder for them, is all.”
“It might. They were planning on doing it anyway, when they felt the grain-milk equation was no longer on the goats’ side.”
“We’ll leave from here, then, forget the animals. Probably easier to lose ourselves in the rocks to the east than go west, past the animals, to lower ground.”
West. Boise. “Benjamin, I talked to a guy on the radio.”
He was done loading the dynamite, or as much of it as he wanted, about a third of a sack full. “Where’d they put the damned hatchet?” He looked around, then glanced back at her when her words had registered. “What radio?”
“There’s a shortwave radio in a room behind the kitchen. Run off a battery, and a stationary bike.”
“And you got it working?”
“The night they left me in there without a jacket. The night they shaved my head.”
“Bastards,” he said, tossing gear aside with more force.
“Don’t worry about it. I don’t give a shit about my hair, and it let me talk to this guy in Canada.”
“And what did he say?”
“Something about Boise, but the interference was too strong...and then I lost him.”
“Anything else of use?”
“He said it—The Event—was meteors, two of them, maybe one split into two, bang-bang.”
Benjamin glanced at her. “Could be right. But how would we know for sure? It’s not like you can flip on CNN and verify it.”
“I know. We still have to survive somehow, no matter what caused it.”
“I think we can be sure it wasn’t super-intelligent aliens reaping their brethren.”
“I’m with you on that.” She still felt better for having an explanation, though it didn’t help her eat or stay warm.
“Aha!” he said, standing up and holding out the hatchet. “Cut me off a piece of rope so I can tie this to my belt loop. It may be the only weapon we have, except for the dynamite.”
“I have my pocket knife, still.” She reached in and drew it out, slid out a blade, and cut him off a foot-long length of rope. “And there are kitchen knives, as well as the drugs, if we go back to the cabins.”
“No. I want to move, and now. I’m going to cut down a chunk of meat, and please get the blankets set up as a backpack for me. Pack away anything else you see of use. Five minutes, we’re gone.”
She turned and looked at the supplies, much messier now that they’d been digging through them. “Do you know where our saucepan is?”
“No.” He took the flashlight and went back to the rear of the cave, bent, and crawled through the hole to the inner chamber.
She lit her candle and, with her knife, the nylon rope, and the blankets, rigged up a bedroll that would fit on Benjamin’s back. She did the same thing for her backpack. By the time she was done, Benjamin had taken two trips in and out of the back cavern, bringing up a bag of carrots, and a whole quarter of an animal, surely over a hundred pounds worth.
“How are we going to carry that?”
He took the hatchet and swung it sharply, aiming at the fat end. A chunk of meat fell, and he tossed it to her. “Eat it.”
Raw? Well yes, raw, idiot. Not as if they had four hours to fiddle around with making a stew. She used her knife and cut bite-sized pieces off.
Benjamin chopped off another piece, a few pounds’ worth and said “Throw that in with the dynamite and cut me another piece of rope, a couple feet long.”
She did. It left a hank of rope much thinner than it had been, but still probably twenty or thirty feet long. “Is that all the rope you need?”
“Yeah, I think.” He caught the rope length she tossed over and tied it tight around the meat, then knelt down and pulled his blanket roll over and shrugged into it. “Keep eating.”
She took a piece of meat and offered it to him.
“Stick it in my mouth, would you?”
She did and took another for herself. It was cold but not frozen. She’d much rather have it cooked, but she knew why they were doing this, to fuel up for a race away from the cult.
Benjamin was adjusting the straps of his bedroll. He tried it on again, gave a grunt of satisfaction, and then set about lashing the meat to it.
“Good thing there aren’t bears any more. You’re walking bear bait.” She cut open the sack of vegetables he’d dragged out—carrots—and tossed a few handfuls in her sack.
“I wish I had been able to get to a rifle,” he said. “I’d make myself bear bait if I thought we could get a bear’s worth of meat.”
She swallowed another chunk of half-chewed meat. “I can’t eat more.”
“Toss the rest in your bag. Get ready to go. We’ve taken too long at this as it is.”
She didn’t see how they could have taken any less time—not if they wanted to survive out there. As it was, she was going to miss an awful lot of their stuff she hadn’t found. She hefted her sleeping bag onto her back, made sure her boots were tied tightly, and as Benjamin finished with his job, took his flashlight and looked around the cave one last time. She was hoping for their cooking pot, but she didn’t find one. How would they melt water? Food, maybe she could eat raw. But all the water out there in the world existed as ice, except for a few hot springs, and there was no way they could count on ever seeing one of those again.
She finally saw something that might be useful—a stack of aluminum cake pans, those disposable things—and went to check them out. The top one had dried something or other in it, something for construction, maybe. But at the bottom of the stack were two that were pretty clean. She took them and tossed them on top of her sack, just as Benjamin was tying his own sack off.
With a grunt, he lifted it and slung it over his shoulder. “Can you manage the flashlight?” he said.
She nodded. Blowing out the candle stub, she pocketed it and hefted her own sack, doing as he’d done and tossing it over her shoulder.
“Ready?” he asked. When she nodded that she was, he said, “Let’s leave this awful place.”
Coral was more than ready. She led as they climbed the path leading away from the compound. Looked like the guys used an area back here as a second latrine, with patches of yellow snow dotting the edges of the path.
To her left were more rocks, rising to well above head height. To her right, the ground sloped down again. She shone the flash up. “Think we can climb up that?”
“I think it’d be good to try, maybe confuse the trackers. But let’s get out the rope again. We can tie it to the sacks, and haul them up. You go first. Take the rope.”
Coral let her sack drop to the ground and handed over the flashlight in exchange for the remaining nylon line, which she wound around her waist, under her jacket. “I’ll do my best. Stand back, in case I fall.”
“You won’t fall,” he said, shining the light on the rocks. The rock face was shot through with diagonal lines, weathered cracks in the rock. The rocks themselves were well worn, light gray in color, with an occasional line of glittery white stuff running through them. It wasn’t a cliff, but if she fell at the top, there’d be twenty or thirty painful feet of fall, bouncing off rock along the way.
Better to die that way than stay here and be captured, though. She began to climb. The first ten feet were easy—and not only because she knew a fall from only this high was survivable. But as she went further, there were fewer handholds. Finally, she leaned into the rock, took her gloves off with her teeth, and then shoved them in her pockets.
“What are you doing?” he hissed.
“Better to risk frostbite than falling,” she said. She jammed her fingers into a crack, just long enough to pull herself up another foot to a better handhold. When she yanked her fingers out, she felt the skin being scraped off. The cold air began to numb the minor pain almost immediately.
The next few steps were easier, but as she neared the top, the rocks were smoother, with fewer handholds, and harder to get a grip on. The flashlight wasn’t as bright up here, and her own body shielded most of the light.
“Are you okay?” he said, his voice far below her now.
“Great,” she said. She lifted her right foot and let it scrape down, until her boot caught a small crack. She patted the rock as far overhead as she could reach, trying to find a small crack, a ledge, anything. Her left foot was secure and she hated to give up that solid perch.
She couldn’t stand here all night dawdling. She jammed her right foot down on the crack, pressed up and stretched one arm up, reaching, reaching, finally finding something, a lump really, a smaller rounded node on the larger rock. She grabbed it and pulled, hauling herself up. Her left foot wasn’t finding any good place at all to land, and her arm was aching as she hung on. Her other hand found another bump of rock and grabbed it. She glanced up and saw the dim light above her hands disappearing, realizing that the rocks were sloping away. She was almost to the top. She shoved her free boot against the sheer rock face and pushed hard, at the same time pulling with all her might.
Her teeth clanked against the rock as her right foot lifted off its small ledge and she pulled for all she was worth, scrabbling with both feet, getting a two-inch boost from it, and finally getting her chest up to the point where the rocks sloped back more. She wriggled forward like a worm, until half her weight was on top, and then she reached out and found a new grip, yanking herself forward the last crucial foot.
“I’m up,” she called down.
She couldn’t see much at all up here, but she felt around until she had a mental picture. There was a good-sized rock where she could brace her feet when she hauled the bags up. She unwound the rope, put her gloves back on, and called down, “Rope coming.” Then she tossed one end out over the rocks.
The flashlight flipped back on and she leaned over as far as she could dare, shaking the rope out to keep it from catching up on a rock.
“It’s about eight feet too short,” Benjamin said.
“Can you carry the sacks, one at a time, up to the rope? It’s pretty easy climbing the first few feet.”
“I’ll try,” he said.
She heard his grunt as he hefted a sack, and then the sound of him beginning the climb. “Don’t fall,” she said.
“Mmmb nnn,” he said, and she realized he must be holding the flashlight in his mouth.
She waited, impatient, feeling the seconds tick off, and worrying about what was happening back at the cult compound. Had someone awoken and noticed her or Benjamin missing? Snow had continued to fall, but lightly, and she feared they could be tracked by footprints in the new snow.
Another flashlight-caused mumble came from below and she felt the rope move. He was tying the bag on.
“Got it. Haul away,” he said.
She braced herself and hauled hand over hand, as quickly as she could, pausing once to coil the rope around her arms, taking up the slack. The bag slithered over the lip of rock and she pulled it a few feet away from the edge, untied the rope, and tossed one end down again.
She wondered, belatedly, which bag had the dynamite in it. Could you bang the stuff around and blow yourself up, or was it pretty stable? She had no idea. She supposed she’d find out.
Benjamin had the second bag tied on in no time, and again she hauled it up.
When it was halfway up, she heard him say, “I’m coming.”
“No,” she called. “Wait for the rope. It’ll be easier at the top if I can help you.”
He mumbled something that sounded like a complaint, but he waited for her to untie the bag and toss the rope back over.
“Tie it around your waist or under your arms,” she said. “Do it now, before you get to the hard part.”
She leaned over and watched as he started the climb. As he neared her, she wrapped the rope securely around her wrists and took hold, not pulling yet, but keeping the slack out so that if he fell, it wouldn’t be the whole way down.
“Mmm,” she heard him say.
“You to the hard part?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“Okay, I’ll start hauling you in ten, nine, eight.” She kept up the countdown and braced her legs, then began to pull.
He was a good deal heavier than a sack, but he was helping when he could, taking some of his weight off the rope. Her arms were killing her, but she refused to give in to the pain and kept hauling, grunting with the effort.
The flashlight’s glow grew stronger, and then she could see his gloved hands appear, reaching, gripping. He pulled himself up the sloped section and the stress on the rope disappeared.
He spat out the flashlight. “Jesus, how did you get up those last few feet alone?”
“I was highly motivated,” she said.
“Thanks for the help.” He untied the rope and took the coiled part from her, opening a sack long enough to toss it in. “Let’s move. Take the flashlight and go first. We’re looking for higher ground, a ridgeline.”
Coral picked a line through the rocks, which looked like stone mushrooms peeking from the snow. She had to go several hundred feet before she had a sense of where the ground was rising, slightly right of the line she had taken, and she shifted their course that way.
More than once, they slipped on the rocks and fell, but they picked themselves up without comment and kept going, as quickly as they could move. As many times as both sacks had been dropped on the rocks, she figured dynamite wasn’t all that unstable, or they’d have been blown to bits by now.
After an hour of fast hiking, the rocks gave way to smooth snow. She stopped. “I’d like some water.”
“Yeah.”
“Let me get out the smaller bottles. We’ll pack ‘em with snow and let our body heat melt them.”
“Won’t be much water.”
“Better than nothing.” She was already opening her sack, which was indeed the right one—the non-dynamite one—and felt around for the bottles. As she packed hers with snow, she said, “Think they know we’re gone yet?”
“If not now, very soon now. The men’s cabin had so many in it, at least a couple of them got up every night to go out. Only takes one to notice I’m not there.”
“When it gets light, we can run.”
“If we’re up for it. They didn’t hurt you, did they? When they did the hair thing?”
“No. They took my clothes—most of them, I mean—and left me to freeze, but I didn’t. It was nothing.”
“They wouldn’t let me come. I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s fine. You would have had to put on an act.”
“Not sure I could have kept it up, either.”
“God, Benjamin, for a minute there, I was worried they’d turned you.”
“Turned—like converted me?” He barked a laugh, and then grew sober. “You’d think that of me?”
“I’m sorry. But he told me so, and I started reinterpreting everything, putting the worst possible spin on it. I should have trusted you.”
“No, I get it. You were under a lot more pressure than I was.”
“I’ll never doubt you again.”
He gave her one of his rare smiles. “Never say never.”
“Never,” she said, adamant.
“Let’s get going.”
They lifted their bags again and hurried into the night.
* * *
A FEW HOURS LATER, they agreed to stop for a short rest. They drank the mouthful of water the snow had melted into, and refilled the bottles again. Coral could see him wince as he put the frigid bottle inside his jacket.
“Is it almost dawn, you think?”
“I’m not seeing any light, but it must be getting close,” he said.
After catching their breath, they got to their feet again and hiked on. Soon, light did begin to fade into the gray sky. Another day was dawning. She turned off the flashlight, which was getting dim anyway, and tucked it away.
“I can see a ridgeline, I think,” said Benjamin. “Head over to your right more.”
“I think the snow has stopped.” That was bad news. It hadn’t snowed enough to fill in their tracks. That they had pursuers, both of them took for granted. “Think they’ll just shoot us from a distance, or take us back?”
“I think they’ll shoot me,” he said, giving her a look.
She understood. They’d want her alive. “Could you kill me with the hatchet, do you think, before they captured me?”
“I’m damn sure I couldn’t.”
“I wish we had a gun.”
“So do I, but not for that reason.” He reached over and took her arm, making her stop. “Where there’s life, there’s still hope. If they do recapture you, stay alive. You’ll get another chance to escape.”
“Maybe we should split up?” She didn’t want to, but it would be harder to chase two people than one. And she would bet that if they had to choose, they’d come after her.
“No way. I have a plan. Sort of a half-assed plan, but I have one. We need to get over that ridgeline first.”
“I’m up for jogging. How about you?”
“The sacks aren’t going to make it any easier.”
“I’ll try hugging mine to my chest.” And she did that, and while her running was an ungainly, barely-balanced thing, she was able to get more speed than the night’s trudging. Benjamin grunted but ran alongside her, cradling his own sack of supplies.
When the land rose more sharply, they had to slow to a walk again. They climbed for long minutes before they reached the ridge. Standing there, she could see the sharp line of snow moving off ahead, following the ridge, until it faded into the gray haze of the ashy air.
“Let’s go down a few feet, walk parallel to the ridge, okay?” Benjamin said.
“Fine.” She wasn’t up for more running. It was hard enough to get sufficient oxygen through the mask, and she was growing weary. She’d keep walking all day, though. Anything to put more miles between her and the cult.
It wasn’t fifteen minutes later that they heard a sharp report in the distance.
“Rifle fire,” said Benjamin.
“Was it a signal, do you think?”
“Someone may have found our trail.”
“How far away?”
“A ways, at least a mile. Maybe more.” He looked around and shook his head. “Not here. Let’s keep going.” His voice was quiet, though surely no one could hear them from that distance. He took off in a rapid walk, and she struggled to keep up. Every few minutes, he motioned her to stop, and he climbed alone back up to the peak of the ridgeline. Four times, he trotted back down, shook his head, and moved off again.
The fifth time, he stood at the crest, nodded, and said, “Here.”
“Here what?”
He loped back down the slope. “We make a stand here. If they did find our tracks, we can’t run forever. We’re loaded down, and I bet you they aren’t.”
“So what’s your plan?”
“Dynamite,” he said, and he put his sack on the ground and began removing items. When he had the dynamite unpacked, he repacked everything else. He picked up one of the six-packs of explosive, hefted it, and looked at her. “You should go on. I’ll wait for them.”
“No,” she said.
“Coral—”
“Never again. I won’t be separated from you ever again. You’re my family, Benjamin. I’ll kill first. I’ll die first.”
He looked at her for a long moment, and then said, “Back at you, kiddo.” His voice was tight with emotion.
“Then tell me what to do.”
“Dig us a cave.”
“Really?”
“Not for sleeping, for protection from the blast. Look for a place protected by rocks, and dig down behind them. When this stuff goes off, it’s going to toss some rocks around. If it goes off.”
“You don’t know that it’s any good?”
“Nope. But surely some of it is. We’ll trust to luck this once.”
“We’ve had a lot of luck, considering. Like the soup. That was lucky.”
“It was. Speaking of which, let’s have breakfast. Can you chop some meat up while I get this set up?”
“Sure.” She took the piece of meat from earlier, the fat end of the leg he’d hacked off, and set about making strips. Like jerky, but raw and frozen. While Benjamin disappeared over the ridge with the dynamite, she wrapped it all up in her bandana and shoved it under her sweater. Damn, it was cold. But at least they could eat defrosted meat for breakfast in a few minutes.
When he returned, they ate together, and he said, “We shouldn’t talk from now on.”
She said, “Can I see what you did, first?”
“Let me make sure no one is coming.” When he clambered up to the peak of the ridge, he scanned around, and then waved her over. He pointed down the slope, speaking softly. “I’ve put dynamite every few feet, in among the rocks. You can see a bit of it there, by the double rock that looks like Coneheads?”
“Okay,” she said.
“If I see them coming, I’m going to stand up and let them see me.”
“What if they come from behind us? If they follow our tracks exactly, they’ll come up the ridge back there a bit.”
“I’ll make myself known before they do that. They’ll come right at me when they see me, I think.”
“And then?”
“And I wait until they’re part way up, and I light the dynamite.”
“Benjamin, if they’re that close, they can shoot you!”
“I’ll take that chance. Besides, I picked this place because the rocks provided some cover.”
She pressed her palms to her temples. “This isn’t a great plan.”
“No. But it’s the only one I could think of, using the tools I could get to. If I had a rifle, I could pick them off from here, one by one. But I don’t.”
She groaned.
“And I won’t let them get that close. I want to bring rocks down on them, not blow them up directly.”
“How long do the fuses burn?”
“Not a clue.”
“Maybe we should test one.”
“The noise would bring them quicker.”
“I mean, can we pull a fuse out, light it, and watch how fast it burns? Make sure it burns at all.”
“I’d hate to pull the fuse out of the one stick that works.”
“If only one stick works, that won’t do us much good. C’mon, humor me. Test a fuse, at least.”
“Okay, okay,” he said. “Loan me your pocket knife.”
She handed it over and watched him climb down, cut a fuse, and bring it back to her.
“Got those matches? I was afraid I’d have to try and light these with the fire-starter on your knife. Matches are better.”
She opened the matches and checked—there were still more than a dozen—and gave him the pack.
He lit a match, said “Ready?” and when she nodded, he lit the end of the fuse.
It sputtered, and as it began to burn she counted aloud, “One thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three.” She could smell the burning fuse as the fire hissed along the length. She reached “one thousand twenty-six” when the fire reached the end and it sputtered out.
“Call it thirty seconds.”
“Can you light them all that quickly?”
“They aren’t placed that far apart.”
“I’m worried about this.”
“I won’t blow myself up.”
“I’m going to pound down a path from there to the ditch I dug. At least you won’t have to run through fresh snow.”
“And you’ll promise to stay down there, protected?”
She nodded.
“I don’t think the blast will come over the ridge anyway. As long as I get over that.”
“I’m going to stomp you down a path anyway,” she said, and proceeded to do so.
“Thanks.” He said, “I’m going to keep watch now. No more talking.”
She tramped down snow. Her throat was dry and she was horribly worried. So much could go wrong. The dynamite could be damp or old. The fuses could go out. The cultists could shoot Benjamin. He could blow himself up. She had to figure out a way to help.
What if the dynamite failed to get them? He had the hatchet, for all the good it would do. She wouldn’t be able to defend herself very well with her knife. She could throw rocks at attackers, and from a higher position, she might be able to hold them off for a moment. But the best thing for her to do would be to take the longest knife blade out and cut herself at the juncture of thigh and torso. If she could get her femoral artery, she’d bleed out, and at least she wouldn’t have to suffer the fate the cult had planned for her. If she knew beyond a doubt that Benjamin was dead, she’d do just that.
She had the path ready, and the shelter dug, and a half-assed plan in mind. She had run down the path a half-dozen times and thought it was doable in ten or fifteen seconds. Maybe ten, if you knew dynamite was about to explode behind you. She glanced at Benjamin and he was motioning to her—stay down, stay down.
They must be coming.
Well, screw it. She wasn’t going to wait back here—it felt far too useless. She ran back up the path and threw herself down at his side.
“Get back,” he hissed.
“I will when you go to light the fuses,” she whispered. Inch by inch, she pushed her head up. She could see them, three men, in the distance, unidentifiable at this range.
“I’m getting up in a second. You go back.”
“Sure,” she said.
“Coral.”
“Benjamin,” she said in the same tone.
He made an exasperated sound. Then, after a moment, he threw his arm around her and gave her a squeeze. The men were aiming off to the left, toward their tracks, starting up the hill. “Ready?” said Benjamin. “Set.” And he shot up and yelled.
She watched as they saw him, and then she could hear one of them shout, too. They veered off and came straight for Benjamin. It might be Pratt, and Calex, and maybe Lorne.
“Go back,” Benjamin said, and she knew he meant her.
She slid back, out of sight, and waited for a count of ten, and then peered back over. Benjamin was climbing among the rocks, staying low. At least he was trying to protect himself. She didn’t want him to sacrifice himself for her. She might not survive alone, and she wouldn’t really want to try.
The men marched forward, climbing, climbing. One of them shouted, “Do you have the woman?” She pulled her pocket knife out and opened the blade, gripping it tightly, ready to kill herself before she let herself get caught.
Benjamin was still hunkering down, no doubt at one of the packs of dynamite.
The front man lifted a rifle to his shoulder, took aim, and fired. A split second later, the sound of a gunshot. She could hear the bullet ping off rock. Another man veered off a few feet to get a clear shot and fired his rifle. The third man was scanning all around as he trod up the hill. They came closer, and closer. The first man fired at Benjamin again.
Now or never. She stood up, and waved her arms. “Hey, you assholes. Shoot at me, why don’t you?” She danced to the right, staying up on the ridge. She wanted them aiming their feet at the right direction, toward the hidden explosives. She would have spoken up to Benjamin, offered herself as a decoy while he waited, hidden, in the rocks, but she’d known he would never have accepted that deal. “Catch me if you can, you fuckin’ loons.”
When she saw them hurrying faster up the hill, toward her, she shouted louder. With more and more foul language, insulting their brains and their masculinity and their idiotic religion, she tried to keep them focused on her and not on Benjamin.
He burst out of his hiding place and came careening up the hill, not much more than a hundred feet ahead of the cultists. He wove and dodged and screamed, “Go, go, go!”
She turned and ran back down the path, her boots pounding on the flattened snow, hearing another rifle shot as she ran, and she threw herself into the pit she’d constructed behind the rocks. Scrambling around, she raised her head, looked back and saw Benjamin pounding over the ridgeline, running hard. Another gunshot split the air.
“Get down!” he yelled, and she watched him for another moment, looking beyond to the ridgeline as Benjamin ran toward her, but the men weren’t there yet. She crouched down, and he came flying over the lip of the rocks she was behind, just as the blast wave hit, the roar of the explosion right on its heels. He landed on her and they both grunted, and a second later, rocks began raining down on them. “Shit,” he said.
Her ears rang with the noise of the blast. The thump of falling rocks hitting rock tapered off. If the cultists were still alive, and talking or yelling, her ears were ringing too hard to hear them. “Did you get them?”
“You crazy woman,” he yelled, rolling off her. “What were you thinking?”
“That I wanted them thinking about me, not about you.”
“You did that, all right.”
“Should we go look? See if you got them?”
“Maybe you should. I seem to be a little bit....”
“A little bit what?”
“Well, you know. Shot.”
“What? Where?” She scrambled up and began patting him all over. “Tell me. Oh my god! Where? Are you bleeding?”
“Just my arm. But I am feeling weird.”
“You’re sure they didn’t hit your head?”
“No. Arm.”
“It’s probably shock, then.”
“Check the slope first. Are they still coming?”
She was torn in two. She wanted to tend to him, but he was right. She had to see what had happened, and if they were going to have to fight or not.
She ran back up the path, strewn now with rocks from the blast, and looked over the crest. One figure moved, a few hundred feet down, on hands and knees. As she watched, it collapsed and rolled down the hill another few feet, landing face down. There wasn’t even a sign of the two others. She looked at the debris on the ground. No body parts, no blood. Her debate with herself was brief. She scrambled down the slope, noticing the shocking sight of the new hole blasted in the mountain, and stopped at the now unmoving form. She grabbed a big rock and brought it down with both hands on the man’s skull. And then again. And again and again, smashing the head over and over.
She was panting when she was done. She saw, a dozen feet upslope, his—or another one’s—rifle, and she grabbed it. Scanning the hillside, she saw no sign whatsoever of the other two men. In pieces, she hoped, or buried forever. She started to run back up the hill but then thought better of it, and turned back to the dead man. She unzipped his jacket, felt under his sweater, found a cotton shirt, and brought out her knife. Slicing away at the sides of the shirt, she yanked it hard, cutting when it resisted her, and in seconds she had a fistful of bandage material, not as clean as she’d like, but what other choice had she?
She ran back up the hill, down the path, and made it back to Benjamin, laying down the rifle, within arm’s reach. “Take your jacket off.”
When he was slow to respond, she began yanking at it. He said, “I can do it,” and slowly began peeling it off.
She didn’t want him bare-chested for long in this cold, but she had to see the wound. “Take it all off, then drape the jacket back over your shoulders. Can you?”
“Yeah, yeah,” he said, peevishly.
She could see the blood on his sweater, and her heart was pounding in fear at the sight of it. She willed him to hurry. She had to see the wound.
When he had his clothes off, she took his arm and scrubbed the blood off with snow. She saw the bullet wound, in his bicep, and turned his arm, thought she saw a second hole. “I think we’re in luck,” she said.
“One of us more than the other,” he said.
“Granted. But I think it went right through your arm. If there were a bullet in there....” She shuddered at the thought. “Let me get it bandaged. What I’d give for a bottle of alcohol.”
“I don’t drink anymore.”
“Disinfectant,” she said. “I should have gone back for the aspirin, too.”
“I’m fine,” he said. “Are they dead?”
“One is, for sure. I killed the bastard. I didn’t see the other two. Dead, or buried, I think.”
“We should check for sure.”
“I will, in a second. Let me get your bleeding stopped.” She hoped she could. The wound was bleeding freely from the exit wound, but maybe that was good. How dirty were bullets? Infection could kill him. Hell, shock could kill him, too. “Are you with me?”
“Where would I go?” he asked.
“I’m making sure you’re mentally here.” She ripped the shirt she’d taken off the dead man into strips.
“As much as I ever am,” he said, then “OW! Shit, Coral,” as she bound his wound.
“Sorry.” She finished tying the fragment of shirt over the arm. “I want that up in the air. You lie down flat, the arm in the air. Hold it up there with the other arm.”
“Yes, doc.”
“Do you think more of them are headed this way?”
“I sure hope not. I used up all the dynamite.” He lay down and she covered his chest with his sweater. He held his arm in the air as she’d instructed.
“But do you think?”
“Maybe they went out in different hunting parties. They might not have found our trail for a while. Maybe others were searching for us in other directions.”
“I hope.”
“They’ll know something’s up when these three don’t come back by dark.” He dropped his arm. “We should go now.”
She lifted his wounded arm back in the air. “Not until you stop bleeding. We have that much time.”
In silence, they sat together, catching their breath. After a few minutes, she checked the bandage. Blood was still seeping out, but more slowly. “Are you okay?”
“Hurts some.”
She took that to mean it hurt a lot. “Dizzy? Confused?”
“Hungry.”
“That’s a good sign, I think.”
“Thirsty, too.”
Yes, he’d need more fluid than the mouthful of melted snow could provide to replace what his body lost through bleeding. She’d have to find wood and build a fire. Could it wait until later? No, best to try and find fuel now, let him recover while she melted enough drinking water to see them through to nightfall, and walk as far as he could manage before night.
“If you think you’re okay, I’m going to go strip the body. You’ll be able to use that sweater he had on. Maybe I can turn the jeans into a splint, so your arm isn’t bouncing around so much.”
She checked Benjamin’s eyes and color, decided it was safe to leave him for a few minutes, and climbed back over the ridge to plunder the body of the cultist. She hadn’t been paying attention the first time, but this time, she saw it was Calex, though his face was pretty torn up. She stripped him, pawed through his pockets, and searched in a wide circle around him for anything else he might have had. There was no backpack, nothing else. Maybe one of the others had more gear, but she would start a fire first before searching through the rocks for their remains. There was no sound or movement anywhere, so she thought—hoped—they were dead.
She’d find fuel nearby and build a fire next, get plenty of water into Benjamin and they’d manage to move another few miles in before dark. She’d have to carry both sacks, and probably the meat, but somehow, she’d manage.
With any luck they’d get a hard snow tomorrow, or the next day, and by the time a search party tried to come after Calex and the others, she and Benjamin would be long gone and untraceable.
They had fewer supplies than they’d had before their capture. But they had a fortnight’s meat and the fishing gear and a rifle. As long as he recovered from the gunshot wound, they just might make it for two weeks. And after that? Only time would tell.
The End
The tale is concluded in Gray, Part III
