Strikers (13 page)

By the time Cassi and Jovan come to relieve us on watch, the sun is at its mid-afternoon strongest in the hard blue sky and the wall has grown almost warm from soaking up its rays. It’s still cool, but nice.

At my almost absent-minded turnover of the watch Jovan gives me a look of concern, then shoots a hard look at Jordan as if he might be the cause of my distracted demeanor. It’s true, but not the way Jovan thinks. I wave his look away and give him a smile, though a somewhat weak and unconvincing one.

What I really need is time to go over all that I’ve learned and make sense of it. Though I know there’s no way I’ll be able to fall asleep, I’m looking forward to lying down and being alone with my thoughts. Maybe then I can process everything when there’s no expectation of my interacting with others.

Maddix and Connor are lying near each other, both with an arm flung over their faces to shield them from the bright light leaking in through all of the broken windows and doors. With their straight hair and similar sleeping postures, there’s no mistaking them for anything but brothers.

My little nest is waiting for me so I lie down without saying anything more to Jordan. He seems to understand because he doesn’t press me for conversation and simply sends a whispered “Sleep well” my way. I don’t respond to it other than to give him a quick nod.

Sleep seems miles away, though I know the night will be a long and hard one of walking on terrain I can barely see. I should at least try to drift off but it’s not happening. The concept of a brother keeps rolling around in my head. Jordan told me he looks a bit like me and, like me, has a problem with smart talk when he’s upset. The way he smiled while he talked about him, this ten-year-old named Quinton, brought a flush of feeling over me that I recognized as jealousy.

I think it’s only natural to feel some resentment. Quinton has spent his whole life with a mother and a father, both of whom love him and provide him a safe home. What have I had?

That’s not a good place to go so I shake it off, my deep exhalation blowing a little cloud of dust up in front of my face. As shocking as the idea of a little brother is, everything else he said is even more shocking.

Yes, there are wild lands to the north and there are people there to avoid, but to the east—not that far east if he’s to be believed—the land is no longer dry. To the east of us is the rain line, past which the rain is more plentiful and water not hard to find. Texas has places like that too, south of Bailar, but I’ve never seen them. Those are places for people with more to offer than we cattle breeders and ranchers here in the north.

He says there are cities and normal life and opportunity. Other than the wild lands to the north, the land is divided into territories: the East, the Southeast, the Northeast, the Gulf Cooperative and Florida. Not all of them are friendly with each other but one thing they all share is enmity toward Texas. He told me that there’s too much to explain until we get somewhere safe because I’ll never believe him until I see it with my own eyes.

He ended our talk with the enigmatic words that all those lands were one huge nation long ago, that Texas was the cause of the breakup, and that the threat of loosing whatever weapon Texas used the first time—the one that made empty ruins of the cities—is what keeps the other lands at bay.

It’s a lot to take in. Too much, really. Instead, I focus on what comes next. That’s something I can understand and work toward. We’re going past the rain line, past the flat lands and to Jordan’s home far away near a forest. To a place called River Oaks where I will find a home and a brother waiting for me.

I’m starting to think that Jordan, who I’m still leery of calling Dad, is right about soldiers coming after Jovan to bring him home.

The night has been long and frightening. Even with the pace we’ve been keeping, we’ve not made it to the Benton outpost. Between hiding in brush while vehicles with searchlights go past and spending a breathless hour dug into the sandy soil so that only our noses and mouths were clear, we’ve fallen behind schedule.

It’s near dawn and we’re starting to run out of time. We need to find a place to lay low during the day because we have no chance of remaining hidden in this flat land without cover. There are a few old barns ahead but those are obvious and sure to be searched.

I’m so tired and thirsty that I’ve stopped being hungry. All I want to do is lie down, shake the sand out of my boots and sleep.

“I’ve got an idea, but I don’t think you’re going to like it,” Jovan says quietly out of nowhere.

Jordan, who is far enough ahead of me that he’s just a darker shadow, answers. “Anything is better than what we’ve got now.”

“Let’s just bury ourselves again. All day.”

I stop in my tracks, about to tell him exactly how stupid that is when Cassi does it for me. “Uh, no. What if one of us rolls over in our sleep or has to pee or something? It’s wide open here.”

We trudge a few more steps in silence. I can’t imagine trying to stay like that for the whole day. It’s still cool but the sun is strong and I’ll be fried crispy red by the end of the day. How could any of us stay still for that long?

I suck in a breath when I see Jordan turn on his flashlight again, his hand carefully cupping the lens so the light streams toward the ground. We’ve not been passed in about an hour, but we have no way of knowing if there might be a vehicle, dark and silent, lying in wait just down the road.

“There,” he says, and I follow the thin line of light to a shallow depression. From here it just looks like a fold in the ground and not like something that would hide us, but at this point, my feet are hurting enough to make me believe anything will do. Even an anthill.

The noise level rises a little as we hurry across the loose ground toward it. While it isn’t yet dawn, the pre-dawn twilight is almost upon us and we have very few choices left.

It’s just as I thought. Some long-dry remnant of a streambed littered with old stones and a few scraggly short bushes drying out slowly between rains. It’s perhaps four feet deep at its deepest and ragged along its length.

Jordan tosses his bags into it and scrambles down, a rain of pebbles and loose rock coming down behind him. He grabs a few loose handfuls of grit and grins up at us. “This will do.”

“No!” Cassi exclaims. Even her sunny nature has been overcome by stress and exhaustion.

I feel the same way as she and I barely suppress a groan. There’s no way this will work.

Jordan looks at our faces in the dim glow and then turns off the flashlight, turning us into shadows again. His words come out as a harsh whisper, meant to convince us as much as instruct us. “Come on, get down here. This whole area is loose and rocky. No one’s going to bring a horse across here. They’ll cross further down, where the ground is firmer. Come,” he says, and motions for me to join him.

I slip off my pack at the bottom and he smiles encouragement. He digs out our last water carrier and holds it out to me. “Drink up, but not so much that you’ll need to pee.” To the others, he says, “If you think you might need to go, go now and then lie down. Break up your patterns with dirt and rocks. Get as comfortable as you can because once you’re down, you need to stay still unless we’re absolutely sure it’s safe.”

All of us disappear a little way away from the streambed for a moment of privacy and then drink again. When I upturn the carrier for one last drink, the temptation to wipe my face clean is almost unbearable, but in this case, the dirt will work for me and I resist. The feeling of grit in my teeth and on my tongue is at least relieved by that last drink and a sigh escapes me.

When I hand off the carrier to the next hands, I look up to see Jovan smiling down at me as he lifts the carrier to his own lips. The twilight has begun and his face is defined in shades of gray. His throat bobs when he drinks and for some reason I can’t explain, it’s a fascinating sight I can’t seem to tear my eyes away from.

The moment is broken when Jordan grips my hand from below and urges me down into the shallow ravine. I settle, then shift and dig a sizable field of small stones from beneath me until it’s bearably flat. The moment I nod, he tucks my pack near my arm as a brace and then piles sand and pebbles around and on top of me to break up the pattern of my body. It’s a terrible feeling, like being buried alive, and I’m not sure how I’m supposed to bear this during the long day to come. My only hope is that we find it’s clear often and long enough that we can get up and move now and again.

The first rosey hints of dawn are showing on the horizon when the last of us is covered and still. I can feel the press of Cassi’s foot next to my calf. She’s stretched out opposite me, her head somewhere beyond my feet.

A torn piece of burlap covers my face, the natural color blending into the surrounding soil enough so that I can open my eyes and breath through the rough weave. I’m not sure where everyone is specifically, except that Jordan is on the other side of the body next to me. I find it disturbing and a sudden need to sit up and catalog everything around me makes my breath come faster and my heart pound. I can hear it, harsh and rasping, but I don’t seem to have any way to control it.

The sand shifts next to me and I feel the touch of warm fingers through the cool grains of sand. They aren’t rough like Jordan’s, but the hands are big, the fingers long as they coil around mine until we’re palm to palm. It’s Jovan, I realize, as the fingers squeeze my palm to his. In the space of a few minutes, as the light filtering through the burlap brightens with a new day, I feel calm seep into my body through our linked hands.

When I wake, it’s to Jovan’s hand squeezing mine with enough force to hurt and the sound of a quiet “shh.” In the distance, I can hear loud voices exchanging shouted words and the harsh jangle of tack on many horses.

The shouts aren’t the urgent ones of discovery but rather of people communicating over distance with no concern about being heard. It can only mean they haven’t seen us yet.

At my leg, I feel Cassi’s foot press into my calf but other than a brief patter of falling grains of sand and small pebbles, I hear no sounds of movement in our dry streambed.

“We checked every one of the barns and Bravo just radioed in that they’ve got 100% completion in Benton. They aren’t here. Anywhere,” a deep voice shouts.

There’s a beat of quiet after that, then the sound of a horse being walked in a slow circle, the clop of shod feet against old asphalt and stone. It’s the sound of someone on horseback thinking and looking. I can only hope he isn’t looking as hard as he’s thinking.

The same voice as before calls, “They could be long past here by now. We still haven’t found the jumper they took. They’re probably long gone.”

“No,” the other voice calls in a more thoughtful tone. I don’t recognize the voice but Jovan must because his fingers twitch against mine. “The jumper would have died somewhere between Wicha and here. We just haven’t found it. Unless they’ve been going without stopping at all, they should be no further than the north side of Benton.”

“How do you know the jumper wouldn’t make it to the border? It can go that far and more on a single charge,” the first voice challenges.

“It was a half charge or so,” the second voice says.

“How do you know? There were no witnesses.”

Jovan tenses next to me and I think I know why. We left the two soldiers alive and well. I try to remember if Jovan was coherent enough when we made our exit to be sure of that fact, but all I keep coming up with is his unfocused eyes and daft smile. Does he think we killed them? Did Jordan tell him what he told me about them coming after him?

I can almost feel him thinking about getting up, announcing himself and sending us all to our deaths. Panic twists my stomach into knots. I breathe the words as softly as I can through the burlap. “Please. No.”

“The time of death is how I know,” the other voice answers. “Go put the sign up like I said, then get the rest of Alpha team back to Wicha. Search everything.”

There’s no more talk and the sound of hoof-beats speeding away in different directions is all we’re left with. Eventually, they too, fade away. I can tell one of them is going north on the asphalt while the other goes west, toward the barns we’d barely dismissed as a good spot to rest.

The fingers tighten on mine again and it hurts. I can’t just fling the hand off without giving away our position. The voices were too close for that, perhaps fifty feet away at best. I grit my teeth and tap his thumb with mine, loosening the hold my fingers have around his. It works because I hear Jovan exhale slowly, like he’s trying to calm down. The feeling returns to my fingers as his grip loosens. Our hands still lay palm to palm but the touch feels accidental now.

I’m pretty sure I’ll never be able to get back to sleep. My bladder feels uncomfortably full, my mouth is paining for a drink and the entire back side of me is one long ache. Through the burlap I can see the sun, small and hard and bright, just past its peak in the sky. It hurts to leave my eyes open with it staring down at me so I close them and wait for the afterimage to disappear.

We’ve got hours left here and I have no idea how I’m going to survive it without jumping up and screaming. It’s contrary to reason, but I have to focus so hard on not jumping up that time passes more quickly, rather than more slowly like I think it should.

Whatever trance I’ve put myself into is broken by a small keening during the long afternoon. It’s quiet but urgent and desperate. It’s Cassi.

“I can’t stand it anymore. I have to stand up. I have to!” she whines in a high, pained voice. It’s not quiet enough. Anyone within twenty feet would hear the sound of a human over the low breeze and find us.

“Shh, Cassi. Just breathe,” I whisper.

All I hear in return is the sound of her crying, but at least it’s less noisy, if no less desperate. An hour or more passes before the last hitching cry dies away and doesn’t return but we all lie there and listen to it without moving for that endless hour. It’s a terrible thing to have to do and it makes the pain in my body more intense. I want so much to comfort her.