The Children and the Blood (10 page)

Rocks skittered beneath him as he finally arrived at the base of the mountain. Reaching up, he helped the little girl down the last few feet with arms that felt like month-old Jell-O. Breathing hard, she looked ill as he set her down, and tears leaked from the corners of her eyes.

“You okay?” he asked.

She nodded jerkily, determination flickering through her nauseated expression.

He shook his head. Tough kid. He felt like collapsing.

Drawing a breath, he checked around. Several hundred feet to the left, the bridge arched over the orange-lit water, while on the right, the river curved out of view, following a serpentine path through the mountains. On the opposite side of the water, a steep service track descended through the trees, leading from the main road to the river. Bushes crowded the base of the slopes around them, petering away a dozen feet shy of the banks to leave only gravel, dirt, and smoldering detritus from the fire.

He exhaled slowly. Beneath the firelight and what remained of the stars, they’d be easily visible near the water. But Keller and his friends were nowhere to be seen, and if the two of them moved fast and made it up the service road to the bridge, they could hide in the brush till the cops arrived.

“Come on,” he said quietly. “Stay near the bushes, okay?”

He studied the river as they drew closer to the bridge, his confidence faltering. Babbling loudly, water rushed by, and sharp rocks showed amid the turbulent surface. Being seen was only part of the problem. Being swept away to drown was an equal issue.

Headlights appeared on the service road and hurriedly, he motioned for Lily to hide. Following, he crouched behind the bushes as two black SUVs crept down the hill and then pulled up by the base of the bridge.

Four men climbed from each vehicle, and Keller was one of them.

Lily let out a small whimper.

“Shh,” he whispered, not taking his eyes from them.

Keller motioned toward the water. Fanning out, the men began searching the riverbank.

Feeling as though he was going to be sick, Cole watched them make their way closer and then glanced back, trying to map a course through the underbrush that would keep them from being spotted.

Lily flinched and he looked to the riverbank.

Red and blue strobe lights flashed as a police car wound down the service road. Reaching the riverbank, two cops got out of their vehicle and approached Keller and his men cautiously.

Unable to decide between relief at the police presence or fear for their safety, Cole held his breath.

One of the policemen said something, and over the rushing water, Cole couldn’t hear a word. But Keller pulled his wallet from his pocket calmly, and showed it to the nearest cop without a shred of concern in his posture.

Taking it carefully, the policeman reviewed the contents, and then nodded, caution fading. The cop called back to his companion and then turned, apologetically shaking Keller’s hand before walking with him toward the riverbank.

Cole stared, incoherent thoughts tumbling through his head. The cops were in league with the bad guys. It felt like a B-grade horror movie. But if he went to them now and accused their new best friends of murdering people, Keller would probably just turn around and make the police believe Cole’d actually been the one behind it all along.

Or that he was psychotic. He’d seen enough bad movies to know how that usually went. He’d be locked up and interrogated by the cops till the glowing freaks showed up and made him and the little girl disappear.

Which raised another point…

“Lily,” he hissed, his voice barely audible above the rushing water. “Are any of those men, um…
glowing
to you?”

Her alarmed expression was answer enough.

“Never mind,” he said, grimacing.

With a quick glance to the police, Cole pulled Lily’s arm, drawing her farther into the brush. Near the base of the mountain slope, the undergrowth thinned and, keeping to the shadows, they crept away from the men on the opposite riverbank. The babbling of the water covered the small sounds of their passage, and even though he checked back repeatedly, there was no sign the others noticed them slipping away.

Cautiously, they followed the curve of the river, until the slope obscured the men completely. Orange light still reflected from the water, and overhead, the fire continued down the eastern ridge of the mountains for as far as his eyes could see.

Holding the girl’s hand tightly, he left the bushes. “Run,” he ordered.

They took off down the riverbank.

Gravel crunched as they ran, and his breath was desperately loud to his own ears. Clinging to his hand, Lily stumbled along without making a sound. Exhausted from climbing, his body bewailed every motion and as the minutes passed, he found his legs slowing despite his efforts to keep moving.

Breathing hard, Lily came to a stop and looked up at him questioningly. He glanced around. The men were nowhere to be seen and the fire on the eastern mountains meant they couldn’t be up there waiting. The water seemed slower here too, and the slopes on the opposite side of the river didn’t appear as steep.

“Okay,” he said to Lily as he tugged the cell phone from his pocket to spare it a bath. “We’re going to cross here. Just hang onto me, alright?”

She nodded. Taking a ragged breath, he hefted the girl up and then started into the hip-deep water.

Ice would have been warmer.

Gasping, he kept walking as the river sucked at his feet, trying to pull him from the slick rocks. In his arms, Lily whimpered as the freezing water swept around them, and the sound galvanized his tired muscles. Tightening his hold on her, he forced himself to move faster as he gritted his teeth against the bone-numbing cold.

He stumbled onto the banks, shivering uncontrollably. Quickly, he checked upriver, but the mountainside still obscured the police and Keller’s men. Lowering the girl down next to him, he wrapped an arm around her and chafed her shoulder to keep her warm.

“You okay?”

She nodded, the motion barely discernible amid her shivering.

He hesitated, and then pulled off his hooded sweatshirt, distantly grateful for the dark fabric and his equally dark t-shirt beneath. The bullet hole could pass as a tear, and in the heat of the small cave, the bloodstains had mostly dried as well.

“Here,” he said, handing it to her. “Put this on.”

Wordlessly, she pulled the sweatshirt over her pink pajama top. His high school logo hung somewhere around her stomach, and the sleeves flopped past her hands.

“Thanks,” she whispered, bundling the long sleeves into her fists and hugging them to her chest.

Nodding, he glanced away. “Come on,” he said between teeth clenched to keep them from chattering. Drawing her after him, he started for the slope.

The underbrush was a mass of shadows beneath the trees, but as they came closer, he hesitated. A post protruded from the bushes, and a number was roughly carved on its wooden surface. Fatigue slowing him, he stared for a heartbeat before realizing what it was.

A trail marker.

Blinking, he looked down at the brush. A rotted log backed up against hardened gravel and dirt, and past the bushes, he could just make out another log higher up the slope.

Pushing back an incredulous laugh at the scrap of crude civilization in the midst of this nightmare, he started up the stairway.

His legs hated him when they reached the top, but he refused to listen. With a quick look to make sure Lily was still standing, he started down the overgrown path, trying to draw some comfort from the fact it didn’t look like anyone had come this way in quite a while.

Their jeans slowly transitioned from ice to warm clamminess as time crept by. Gradually, the shadows thinned as the sun inched toward the eastern horizon and the morning birds filled the air with their chirping. If his legs hadn’t felt ready to give way and his heart hadn’t hit his throat at the slightest sound, it would have been practically relaxing.

“Where are we going?” Lily asked, her voice faint.

Cole looked down. Beneath the tangles of her black hair, her face was alarmingly pale and dark circles hung under her eyes. As she clutched his fingers, her grip trembled, and when they stopped walking, she looked ready to simply fall down.

He hesitated, not wanting to admit he had no idea what to do now. They were lost in the middle of a forest in Montana, a state with more than its fair share of empty spaces and an apparent dearth of roads. The cell phone didn’t have signal, though if it had, he didn’t know who he’d bother to call. The cops were cohorts of Keller’s group, or at least weren’t remotely suspicious of them.

And thus, he’d run out of options on how to handle the situation.

“Just a little farther,” he told her, starting forward again.

Too tired to protest, she followed.

Desperation started to gnaw at him as the forest continued, unchanging. Maps from half-forgotten geography classes played through his head, showing the continental swath of the Rocky Mountain range in sharp and uncompromising relief. Even if a road was within a couple miles, he wasn’t certain either of them would have the endurance to reach it.

They needed to rest till he could figure this out – and to eat something before they both starved. After everything, the stupidity of collapsing in the wilderness would’ve infuriated him if he’d had the energy.

A whistling noise broke the dull torpor of his thoughts and brought him to a halt. Motioning Lily to stay put, he crept forward, alertness returning as he searched for the source of the sound.

The road appeared beyond the trees, and as he came closer, he caught sight of a rusted pickup truck on the gravel shoulder. Furniture and mismatched junk filled the rear, and ropes lashed to high wooden slats on the truck’s sides restrained the mess. Tarps draped in haphazard fashion over the contents, and more ropes strapped the coverings down. The cab was unoccupied, but farther along the road, he spotted the source of the tuneless whistling. A man stood just beyond the trees by the roadside, peeing into the bushes.

Cole grimaced and glanced back at the truck. He hesitated.

“Hurry,” he whispered to Lily, snagging her hand as she came closer. Drawing her after him, he rushed toward the pickup. As she started to look toward the whistling, he made a cautioning noise. “Come on.”

Brow furrowing in confusion, she obeyed.

At the rear of the truck, he pulled back the edge of the tarp and then hoisted Lily over the tailgate. With a quick check to make sure the man hadn’t seen them, Cole climbed in after her and squeezed between the piles of junk inside.

“Stay still,” he told her quietly, tugging the covering back into place.

Curled up beside him, she didn’t move, her eyes on the sliver of light between the tarp and the wall.

A minute slid by. Footsteps crunched over gravel, and Cole held his breath, waiting. Hinges creaked loudly and then the truck shook as the driver’s door slammed.

The engine roared to life. With a jerk, the truck shifted into gear and then started down the shoulder. Furniture shuddered as the vehicle bumped back onto the road, but restrained by the ropes, nothing fell.

Cole exhaled. “You okay?”

Lily shrugged, and then twisted to look at him. “Where are we going?”

“I’m not sure,” he admitted tiredly. “Some place safer than here, I hope.” He glanced down. “Get some sleep, okay?”

Her brow furrowed uncertainly and the ghosts of old protests rose in her eyes, but after a moment they faded. Twisting back around, she pillowed her head on her arm and, in only a few heartbeats, he could feel her breathing slow.

Exhaustion weighing on him, he watched the trees flash past the sliver of space between the tarp and the truck, and tried to think of what to do now.

*****

For a lifetime she wandered, till her feet carried her back through the forest by her home. The world flitted past in a series of broken images, disconnected and surreal, and each immersed in a numbness that reduced them to irrelevancy.

Because this wasn’t happening.

A pile of smoking timbers lay where the gray farmhouse had stood. To one side, the farmhands’ home still burned in fits and starts, spewing occasional sparks into the sky. On the far end of the field, the barn was a heap of smoldering rubble, and only the distant sound of popping embers broke the stillness.

Like a sleepwalker, Ashley stepped from the line of trees.

In the distance behind her, fires still raged on the mountainside, painting the sky above the forest with a patina of orange. On the horizon ahead, the first hint of sunrise fought the haze. Winds swept past her as she crossed the field, stirring her dark hair, while all around, ash drifted like snow.

But none of it was real and didn’t matter anyway.

Fear and pain had been locked up long ago, imprisoned behind walls of glass like toothless predators in an archaic zoo. And sometime soon, reality would return to give them their rest. She would open her eyes to see the sun pouring through her windows, and to feel the warm blankets draped over her bed. Lily would be up already, playing with her crafts and creating new designs. Her dad would be sipping coffee, getting ready to leave while discussing the next planting season with Jonathan and Rose.

And everything would be alright.

By her feet, something clinked, and she looked down. Two thin metal tubes, their painted sides bubbled and blackened, were all that remained of the wind chimes. Gingerly, she bent and picked them up, soot staining her fingers as she turned them around in her hands.

Tears, foreign and unwanted, stung her eyes. Cautiously, she retreated from the feelings, fighting to continue keeping them at bay.

Only moments now. She would wake up. Everything would be alright.

Her gaze lifted to the wreckage of the farmhouse.

Everything would be alright…

Hand clutching the wind chimes, she waged a silent war against the tears while she waited for reality to change the destruction before her eyes.

Something brushed against her leg. She flinched and glanced down.