Shot Down (5 page)

After a few nervous breaths, I started to smell smoke. One of the horses grunted below. “Almost there,” I whispered down to the Captain.

As the wood began to crackle, I forced my arms forward and heard the stick snap behind me. The thrust sent me forward. I wheeled my hands back the other way, taking a foot off the Captain's shoulders and wrapping myself around the pole. One foot after another, I worked my way down, then undid the Captain's bonds.

“I'm impressed,” he whispered. He took a step toward the yard outside, and I turned to the two-headed horse, not following.

“You got ridin' experience, Malik?” the Captain asked. I shook my head.

“Then now's prob'ly not the best time to learn. Let's get outta here before that guy smells the smoke an' wakes up.”

The air outside the stable was cool, and the lights were out inside the house. I tugged at the Captain's shoulder, then tilted my head toward the house. “Our stuff,” I whispered. “Do we risk it?”

“Absolutely not!” he hissed. “This time you are over
ruled
.”

“That shed, then,” I said, pointing to four tiny walls behind the house on the yard's far side. “We check it, then head out.”

The Captain nodded his head and raised a finger to his mouth—
Be quiet
—in case I hadn't already known to.

We made an arc around the back corner of the house, stepping toward the shed. It felt like the longest walk I ever took—slow, silent steps, looking up to check the house's windows after each one.

The inside of the shed was dark, and its door faced away from the moon. I moved my hands along the wall, feeling for tools, 'til I felt the prick of a saw's tooth. I plucked the saw from the wall while the Captain grabbed a box of matches and a bundle of wire and then stepped back outside.

The Captain and I edged around the rim of the backyard, aiming to run for the long roads and then the woods, once we'd made it beyond the front lawn. We'd made it to the far side of the house when a glow caught my eye from a side window. I stopped for a breath and squinted in—and met the eyes of the woman, Georgine. She wore a heavy-looking bathrobe and carried a candleholder.

I waited another breath for her to scream. When she didn't, I made the same dumb be-quiet motion that the Captain had just made, pleading. Her face was blank, very still. She set down the candle and left the window for a moment. She showed up again a moment later, holding an archer's bow. The
thwip
of the bowstring cut through the air, and an arrow knocked the matches from the Captain's hand. He and I stumbled into each other, shouting out, as the awakening horses moaned from over in the stable.

CHAPTER TEN

I

t was foolish to go back the way we came, maybe. We knew that Carter and his family knew those woods. But in the other directions the rolling fields went on for as far as we could see. No telling how long we'd be in sight for—or from how far away one of them could pick us off. In the woods we were covered, at least.

The Captain and I didn't stop 'til nearly dawn, except for a few nervous moments to catch our breaths. Stayed on our feet. We reached the river before the sun came up—that or some stream that ran into the bigger river or out of it. The water's flow was wide, and the current seemed strong.

The Captain hunched over his shaky knees, a ring of sweat around his neck.

“That saw ya took,” he said. “Can we put it to use? You know how to build a raft?”

“Huh?”

“Like a log raft, I mean. There wasn't sumpthin' in yer guidebook about it?”

“I think so, probably, but I never had any reason to try it. Do you know how to build a raft?”

The Captain shook his head. “Nah.”

“You built a
hot air balloon
.”

“That's different! The balloon has fuel, and controls, a tarp...a balloon is not a raft, Malik.”

“Everyone in Iowa called you
the Captain
.”

“Why did you bring a saw if you weren't thinking of making a raft?”

“It was the first thing I grabbed!” I said. I pictured the roll of duct tape inside my bag, inside the family's house. “That coil of wire you took—maybe we could start by tying some logs together.”

We agreed to switch on and off. Whoever wasn't sawing at low branches was trying to bind the wood together. My hands began to tighten up after sawing off the first few logs. I yanked the saw back and forth, but more and more slowly, even when I tried to keep the same speed. Water. That's what I'd been missing. I tried to remember the last time I'd had a drink.

Once the Captain and I swapped tasks, I stepped over to the large stream. A long fish glided through the water, shining green-black scales, with one eye mounted above its mouth. Another fish glided behind it, the same.

I wondered if it was a trick of light, like something the guide had mentioned—how fish in the water are always in a slightly different place from where you think you see them. I must have been wide-eyed when I turned to the Captain, because he nodded his head.

“Yeah,” he said. “You're not seein' things. Might be one of those mutations that guy in the barn was talkin' about.”

“There aren't fish like that?”

“Not supposed to be. Not cyclops fish. Back when you were prob'ly just a little kid, there was talk of nukes goin' off...there was
already
junk in the air, in the rivers. But yeah, 's not natural. Maybe stay away from drinkin' the water a little longer if you can. We'll boil some, sometime soon. Might be a
little
safer, anyway.”

He took the saw, moved toward a branch, and started speaking more to himself: “Be some kind of justice if that family started sproutin' tentacles a generation down the line...”

A glare fell on the water as the morning stretched out. I turned away and tried to bind the logs together, remembering wrong a bunch of knots I'd learned from
Matterhorn
and starting over a couple of times. So far we had a row of five logs tied up—enough for me to sit on pretzel-style, but not enough to carry me and the Captain. Taking a length of wire, I tried to line a sixth log up against the rest, forming a loop with the wire, forming another one, putting the end of that through the first loop...My mouth was dry and I couldn't swallow, and I looked back toward the water.

“Hey, Captain. Do we know where the river goes? Which way out of here?”

“No,” he said. “Sun's up from the east, which I guess is over there, water's movin' the opposite direction...if it keeps goin' that way, no major kinks or turns, after a while we'd end up in, jeez, maybe Indiana? Ohio, if it veers north? The-places-formerly-known-as.”

“But we don't know if it goes that far. Or even out of these woods.”

The Captain set down his saw and frowned. “I suppose it could be emptying out into a lake or sumpthin'. I'll go follow it along for a while, check it out. In the meantime, you wanna act like you know we've been doin' sumpthin' smart? Saw some more logs if you run out?”

I nodded.

The noise by the water grew louder once the Captain left. The stream hissed along the rocks, and birds shook up ash-tree leaves. My own breathing sounded pained and uneven once I started to pay attention to it. With the Captain's logs, the raft was a body's-length long, but the whole thing creaked and curved near the center when I tried to move it closer to the water. Where was the saw? Maybe the raft needed logs underneath the logs, some supports.

I got to another tree with low branches, but I was sitting down there before I realized it. The shade hung over the ground where I lay, and my eyes went shut. Too hot. My hands hurt. My neck hurt. I had let go of the saw, and I picked it up again but my legs felt weak.

I don't know much of the morning passed before I opened my eyes again. A gun's thunderclap brought my head forward, and I looked to see bird feathers falling to the ground a few lengths in front of me, dropping one at a time into the stream.

“Warning shot!” a voice called out, echoing off the steep hillside from somewhere high above. “The hunt is on!”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

I

was running again. I couldn't see anyone from the family up above and didn't look for long. I rushed off, away from the raft, away from where the Captain had wandered to. If they got me, they wouldn't get him too without working for it. When I glanced back at the raft every few strides, it didn't seem to get farther away. I jerked my legs forward, step after step, but the ground's pull got stronger.

They could probably see everything. I touched the back of my neck as I ran, where I imagined their eyes falling, like my hand would stop the bullet.

After hustling between trees for a while, I noticed a narrowing of the stream nearby. I took a few steps across the shallow water over to the stream's other side. The trees were thicker, and I started to double back toward the raft.

I couldn't even see the top of the steep hill where the shot had come from through the leaves and branches above my head. Either the family had moved on, looking for another way toward the river, or they had started down, hidden. But I was hidden too. I wiped my wet shoes into the dirt beneath me, slapped some mud across my shirt, and then pressed two fistfuls of leaves onto the mud. I could wait until they gave up, I thought. Or until I passed out.

I began to walk in a small circle around a cluster of trees, checking for movement in each direction and trying not to cramp up.

If I died it would be like disappearing. No one would bury me. No one would even know—maybe the Captain, if he stayed alive. I wondered if Carter or his wife kept a record somehow. A wall with shoes or scraps of clothing hung up, or a row of marks on a pole.

When the sun rose high enough to mark the end of morning, I began to hear someone crying out. Faraway shouts from across the stream. It was the boy, Kyle.

I stepped quietly closer to the water and peered forward. The boy lay several body-lengths back from the other side of the riverbank. One leg stuck forward, one leg was bent back. Behind him was a steep incline covered in mud and rock. His shouts grew louder: “Help! Dad, Pop-Pop, help! I fell!”

The boy was red-faced, and he didn't move from his spot on the ground. Maybe he couldn't. Every few breaths he started again: “Da-aad! Help me! I'm hurt!”

This was a trap. The boy's father was in a tree nearby, maybe, with a rifle pointed at the ground. Or somewhere on a ledge, the grandfather would pull back a stick that held a rock in place and it'd come falling on my head. It was a trap—unless it wasn't. I looked at the squirming boy and shook off some of the leaves on my shirt.

It was several dozen steps to Kyle, not even counting the stream between me and him. If there were guns ready, I might know before I even reached him.

• • •

The boy was resting up against his backpack when I got close. His right leg was still bent behind him, but there were no rips in his pants, no blood. His face lost its color when he saw me, but I couldn't read it. He was afraid, or embarrassed. Or guilty.

For a few breaths, neither of us spoke.

“Where are you hurt, kid?” I said.

He pointed with a shaky hand to where his right leg was bent. When I took another step forward, he moved the hand to his mouth and let loose a broken whistle. He stayed silent once he'd finished, his face getting whiter still.

CHAPTER TWELVE

I

lingered for a moment, too tired to sprint off. His father must have been far enough away that I didn't hear the gallops until a few breaths after the boy whistled. Even then they were quiet. Kyle must not have expected me to stay even that long—I wouldn't have either—and he met my glare with fear, confusion.

“I—I didn't think you'd try to help,” he said. “That's never worked before.”

“There's different kinds of strong,” I said. “Putting people before yourself—that's one your dad didn't tell you about.”

I rose up to run, and the boy held out a canteen, his hand still shaking. The body was hard, part metal. A heavy thing. Water sloshed around inside. I hung its strap around my neck and started back toward the stream.

“If this is poisoned,” I called back, “you got me twice.”

The sound of horse hooves got louder as I crossed the water again. Carter was heading to the spot where Kyle had whistled—that must have been how they planned it. I wove through trees, gulping water as I went. In the blur to my left, I glimpsed the boy's father riding the other way.

After the gallops disappeared, I thought I heard a rustling somewhere closer, in front of me. I slowed my run, then stopped completely.

“Captain?” I whispered.

“Malik!” He stepped out from behind the tree. “Thank goodness! They haven't caught you, huh?”

“No, but they're out there.”

The Captain nodded. “I heard the shot.”

“I got lucky,” I said. “The man's headed the other way. Thinks he found one of us, but he might've already turned around.”

“What about the raft? Far as I can tell, the river just keeps going.”

“Good for a solid one and a half passengers? Our only way out of here.”

“Alright then, let's go,” the Captain said. We both started back in the direction I'd been running, the Captain shuffling behind me.

“You don't have the usual spring in yer step, Malik. You look tired,” he said.

“You too.” I tossed him the canteen. “Take a drink. It's a gift from the little kid.”

“What?”

• • •

The woods around us were still—not even a strong breeze. The raft lay where we had left it near the bank. The Captain nudged it with one foot.

“It's gonna be wobbly,” he said. “But maybe it'll be enough to get us headed outta here.” He smelled his tattered T-shirt under one armpit. “Once we've put some distance between us and the wackos, first thing we do is find a way to get some changes of clothes.”