Shot Down (2 page)

The Captain pressed the wool hat he kept in his pocket against his sweaty brow. His grin showed rows of teeth like unripe corn. “Well, Malik, with sea salt and some nacho cheese, they are
dee
-licious.”

He strung the fruit up with a tug and squinted into the horizon. “What I could really go for is some hash browns. I wonder sometimes if there's still a diner up and running somewhere. The Diner at the End of the World. No tellin' what kinda shape the southern hemisphere's in right now, but I tell ya, I'd trade this balloon some days for a hot cup of real coffee...”

I felt the wind change directions as I frowned at the Captain.

“This is one of those times we talked about,” I said, “where you think we're having a two-person conversation, but I don't understand most of—”

The crackle we heard next could have been anything. To us up in the air, anyway. It could've been a tree falling or a thunderclap, I thought at first. But the sky was blue and the ground below was still. Above our heads, the balloon's patched-together envelope started to buzz like a swarm of wasps as air rushed out of it. And before I had time to wonder if we'd been right to jump from the basket, I was underwater.

CHAPTER THREE

W

e gathered up everything we could find from the crash, everything we could carry. Then we headed uphill. The Captain talked without stopping as we put more distance between us and the river.

“Looks sorta rocky up here, but all these trees'll keep us covered. Protect us.” He stopped for a moment and eased his shoulders forward when the envelope holding the hissing burner started to slip down his back. “Coulda been an accident, of course...”

“The shot?” I asked.

“Yeah, the gunshot.”

“But you don't believe that.”

“Malik,” the Captain said, “I
believe
we shouldn't take that chance. We lay low, as much as we can. These days, people tend to get defensive.”

Defensive of what?
I wondered. Most of what I saw around me was winding trees and green bushes, a few big chunks of rock rising out of the ground. But I'd grown up in a place that was hidden by woods. I tried not to trust everything I saw.

“You said it was a rifle that did it?” I said as the Captain leaned against a rock behind me. He'd been sweating hard since we'd started the climb.

“Yeah,” he said. “Think so. Meeeaan weapon.”

As we started to walk again, I kept thinking about who might've shot us down.
Why
they might've shot us down. I didn't know that much about what was out there in the world. Not really. That was part of why I'd said I'd travel with the Captain. Maybe they'd had a good reason, whoever did it. Though I couldn't believe they'd had trouble come from hot air balloons before.

I thought about the people I'd met since leaving home, too. I'd been attacked more than once: different people, different places. But of anyone I'd met whom I came to trust, who wanted more than to take something from other people—they never just attacked first. They wanted to trust people too.

The Captain got a rush of energy as the sun started getting lower, around the same time his coat dried out and started to stink. He shuffled between stones along a path made from the shade of broadleaf trees. I kept my head down, watched the ground, and followed his heavy footsteps 'til he stopped.

“Look there,” he said. He pointed sideways to a long rock overhang. It lay like a small cliff over a short stretch of hillside. Beneath the overhang was flat patch of grass and dirt stretching a few body-lengths back into the face of the big hill.

“That's our campsite for the night,” the Captain continued. “All the protection from the elements that a cave offers, without the risk of accidentally tripping over a sleeping bobcat.”

We agreed to no fire for the night. Either the flame or the smoke could give us away to whomever might be looking. I told the Captain that in the morning I'd use the Matterhorn guide and go see if I could find any plants we could eat.

“Worse places to be shipwrecked than Kentucky,” the Captain said as he started to fade. “Assumin' this is definitely Kentucky. There's probably no place around that still makes bourbon, but a man's gotta have dreams...”

• • •

I woke up sore in the morning. I couldn't get a sense of how long I'd slept for, but the sun was high. A few lengths away, the Captain was still out. He opened his eyes to a gun's thunderclap.

The sound wasn't near, but it burst out from someplace closer than when we'd been flying. I yanked up my backpack, and half the stuff inside dropped out the top: spare clothes, the duct tape. The Captain pulled together everything around him but didn't move his feet. We looked to each other, silent, and waited for another shot. Somewhere a dog howled.

Before the next gunshot came a weak hum of voices. No clear words—too far away—but it was people speaking. Another crack from a gun filled the air. The voices grew, but just barely. I stayed as still as I could and tried to figure out the how far they were away, what direction they were coming from. Then came the sound of running, louder from moment to moment. One person, rushing closer.

The Captain and I kept silent and stepped deeper under the overhang. Somewhere to my left, above us, I heard the runner's feet crush twigs and bushes until he fell with a grunt. A breath later, we saw a man begin to limp across the ground in front of us, underneath the edge of the overhang.

For a moment he stopped and stared. The man was middle-aged, with dark eyes and a cracked face. His beard was black with streaks of white, and black curls ringed the back of his head. He wore torn clothes, with one pale-blue shirtsleeve dangling under an armpit. Gasping for air, he took his hands off his bleeding shin and shook them, whipping his head from side to side.

I understood: stay quiet.

From down the runner's path I could start to make out voices:

“I think you dinged him, Dad!”

“Sssh! Pay attention now, Kyle! As long as he's alive, you stay on your guard. We've already let him out of our sight...”

Fear flashed through the panting man's eyes. One more time, he begged in silence for us to stay quiet. He didn't look like a danger to anybody. As the voices got closer, he took a last look at me and the Captain and then skipped off to my right, favoring his good leg.

The Captain and I stayed as far back as we could under the ceiling of the overhang, sticking to the wall of rock behind us. I closed my eyes and heard a final shot. A clipped but savage scream trailed over from the runner's path. And then a kid's voice, a boy's:

“Nice shot, Pop-Pop!”

A grown man's voice responded, warm and rich. “I think he's down now. I meant each word of what I told you, son. When I was your age, your grandfather taught me everything I know. And he can still shoot like the best of them!”

The men were close enough that I could hear the soft crunch of the bushes or branches they pushed out of their way. Three of them, maybe four. Somewhere above us, behind the overhang. The distances away steadied for a while—they were walking a straight line through the trees toward the body, not curving around the top of the overhang. They'd miss us, more than likely.

The man spoke up again.

“Kyle, I want you to wait here with your pop-pop. Past that ledge, the hill can get steep. You can hold the rifle if you like.”

“But Dad, I wanna help you find the kill!”

“That's why we bring these guys, remember?” the man said. “This is when we release the hounds.”

CHAPTER FOUR

T

he Captain gripped my shoulder. His paw of a hand twitched.

“Ah jeez, Malik,” he said, “they're manhunters!”

A howl came over our heads from somewhere deeper in the hillside woods. The dogs were loose.

“Bloodhounds, I'd bet, or something like 'em. Trackers. Let's hope they stay on that other poor guy's scent.”

“Do we run?” I whispered.

The Captain bit his lip and thought.

“I dunno,” he said. “No. Even if the dogs miss us, we're close enough that those men might spot us. We stay.”

The hounds scampered in the distance toward the running man's body. I heard light leaps, from maybe two of them, mostly in my left ear and then mostly in my right. The Captain rested the back of his head against the rock wall and sighed heavily.

Then the leaping stopped. Somewhere above the overhang, the dogs slowed to a walk. Quick, scattered steps sounded against the ground. I began to hear them wheeze and snort—sniffing out something new. From closer and closer to us.

“Dad!” the young boy called out. “Why did Maybelle stop?”

The older man hesitated before answering.

“She and Maggie might have caught a different scent.” He paused again. “Kyle, you and Pop-Pop stay here.”

At what sounded like the edge of the overhang, one of the hounds stopped, sniffed furiously, and let loose a long howl. One level below the dog, the Captain and I looked to each other. We traded uneasy nods. Then we ran.

We started downward, the rock overhang maybe keeping us out of sight 'til we were out of shooting range. I pulled my backpack onto my shoulders as I stumbled between rocks and logs. The Captain and I had needed the length of an afternoon to make it up the steep hillside. I wondered how long the dogs would continue to give chase.

With a patch of grass in front of me, I glanced back to see a second hound join the first atop the overhang. The two animals had mangy brown coats. They looked long and lean. They stared at me and the Captain and gave sharp barks, then skittered down either side of the overhang.

The more I ran, the harder it was to know how far the Captain and I had gone. I saw tree after tree after tree when I looked up, a blur of dirt patches and loose stones when I looked down. My soreness hadn't left, and my legs burned with each step. Another glance back showed the hounds rushing between trees—well below the overhang. Above them, on the rocky edge, was a small figure—the father of the boy?—staring down, standing stiffly. He had yellow hair and green and brown clothes. He didn't look to be following the dogs down. Just watching.

“Aagh! Huffff—”

A few lengths in front of me, the Captain had tripped across a stone that stuck out at an angle from the ground. He landed on his side and rolled forward, trying to regain his footing.

“Ah! Burner! The burner!” he said as the lump inside the balloon's envelope dragged along the ground, tied to the Captain's overcoat at his shoulder.

I grabbed his collar as I passed and yanked up, not stopping. My arm jerked straight and my feet kicked in the air as I lost the grass underneath them. My hip hit the ground first with a dull thud. The Captain righted himself and stuck out a hand.

“Not yer fault,” he said. “We're in different weight classes.”

Behind us, the hounds were getting larger. They wove through trees and bushes like they'd memorized a map.

The Captain started to jog ahead of me as I got my bearings. With one hand he held the wrapped-up burner at an arm's length, and with the other he waved in front of us. A narrow ledge jutted out in both directions, clinging along the hill from left to right as far as I could see.

“We find a way farther down, past that,” the Captain huffed, “an' maybe the dogs can't follow...”

Or maybe we get trapped
, I thought, running again. The ledge looked sixty strides away, maybe seventy. The dogs would reach it a few moments after we did. More sharp barks sounded throughout the trees.

I stepped out onto the short cliff a few breaths before the Captain.

“Where was this when we headed up?” I shouted.

“We musta climbed around it. We run along the edge for long enough and there's gotta be a path toward the river!”

The Captain waved for me to take lead, and I picked left. After twenty or thirty strides it sounded like the hounds had touched down on the ledge. I stole a look back and saw nothing, then turned in time to hit a fence. No—not a fence. A lean-to.

The sheet of sticks and leaves lay stretched across the narrow path. “Get behind this!” I told the Captain.

“Wha—?”

“It's a lean-to—a shelter. We weren't the only ones making camp.”

We pushed the lean-to sideways on the path between the dogs and us and braced ourselves. And waited.

“You think the man we saw running was hiding out here too?” I asked.

“He looked like he mighta been out here for weeks,” the Captain said. He looked up and down the lean-to. “Think this'll hold?”

“I wasn't sure your balloon would ever leave the ground, but that worked.”

He thought about that for a moment and shrugged. “Here they come.”

The dogs bounded around the corner side by side. They didn't slow down as they approached the lean-to. I held tight to the long branch that ran across the top and closed my eyes.

I opened them again and hopped backward with both feet, keeping my arms stretched forward to hold the lean-to in place. A glance to my right showed the Captain had done the same. Both of the hounds snarled and bared their teeth. Their heads were stuck between different pairs of up-and-down poles. On the other side of the lean-to, the dogs tried to twist free, hind legs kicking up dirt and pebbles. One hound snapped its jaws in fury an arm's length from my waist.

The Captain looked to the bodiless heads of the trapped dogs and then to me.

“I'm about to propose somethin' I'm not very proud of, Malik.”

“Propose it fast!” I yelled.

“It's a few steps to yer left before the big drop-off—”

The dog nearest the Captain wiggled its neck back, then drove its head forward again, toward his groin.

“—an' if we don't want these dogs on us in another minute, we gotta push in that direction.”