Cruel World(90)

They ran to the side and leapt over the curtain of fire. Smoke threatened to choke him, but then the air was clear and clean and he sucked it in, tasting it, drinking it. Alice stood beside him, the brightness in her eyes receding again. Her hand twitched and spasmed.

“Where? Where do we go?” Quinn said, gripping her upper arm. She looked at him, and when the fogginess of her gaze didn’t clear, he slapped her hard across the face. “Where?”

“This way,” Alice said, her voice thick and groggy. She jogged forward as a gunshot cracked somewhere behind them, and Alice cried out, falling to her side in a heap.

“No,” Quinn said, dropping down beside her. Her right leg was tucked up close to her chest, and her hands were wrapped around her calf. Blood shone in the firelight. Another shot whistled past them, and Quinn yanked the AR-15 from around her shoulders, finding the outline of a man beyond the pyre.

Quinn emptied the magazine in his direction, and the man dove to the side, uttering a guttural cry as he landed. He didn’t get up.

“Come on; we gotta go,” Quinn said. He slung the rifle over his shoulder and then hauled her to her feet. She grasped his arm, and they ran across the grounds to where the fence stood.

There were two boards missing along the closest section, and they darted through the gap as more gunfire shattered the night. Rounds blasted through the boards to either side of them, splinters flying like shrapnel. Ahead, the shape of a vehicle gathered, and they raced toward it.

“Ty’s inside,” Alice said through a jaw locked by pain.

When they reached the car, he realized it wasn’t the Tahoe. It was built lower to the ground and had narrower windows. Along the side of the fence was a dirt path that ran down a steep hill in one direction and up a substantial grade in the other. Quinn found the rear door handle, intent on simply getting Alice inside, when a round hummed through the air beside him and punctured the SUV’s rear tire.

“Shit,” he said, turning and pulling the trigger, but the rifle was empty. Quinn yanked the rear driver’s side door open, and Ty leapt into his arms.

“Quinn?”

“Let’s go,” Quinn said, dragging them away from the vehicle as more shots lanced its side.

“The water, the food,” Alice breathed.

“No time.”

They hobbled away into the welcoming shadows. Alice’s hand was an iron band around his arm, and he squeezed Ty’s hand so hard he had to force himself to lessen the pressure. The trail beside the fence became rockier with savage holes and channels that tried to turn their ankles as they ran. The stars brightened as they left the glow of the fires behind, and the forest to their right thickened into something primordial.

The air beside Quinn’s head heated up and then he heard the shot a moment later. Without slowing, he guided them off the trail and into the woods. A thicket of dead vine and wild raspberry cane met them, tore at their skin, as they burst through it. Ty uttered a small cry, and Quinn hoisted the boy up and over a fallen log in their way. They tore on, Alice limping beside him, Ty beginning whimper.

A hollow opened up below the side of an incline studded with mature trees. Starlight filtered through the branches, stippling the ground with dagger shadows. A darker, round shape appeared before them, and he pulled Alice and Ty behind the massive boulder, hunkering down behind its protection. He chanced a look back the way they’d come.

A dozen flashlight beams cut the darkness, their swaths ripping across trees and ground a quarter mile away.

They were coming closer.

Quinn slid down the boulder, his breath burning as he gulped it down. When he could speak he said, “We have to get up and over this hill. Can you guys do it?”

Ty nodded in the weak light, and Alice closed her eyes, her face pale as talcum. Men’s voices floated to them, and when he glanced around the side of the stone, a long flashlight flickered in the place where they’d left the path.

“Okay, let’s go.”

He hauled them to their feet, and they set off up the hill. Twigs and leaves crackled beneath their feet, but the noise of a four-wheeler growling along the path below covered the sound. Halfway up, Alice staggered to a stop, her hand loosening on his arm. Quinn turned to her, about to ask if she needed a rest, when she tipped backward in a faint.

He managed to snag her wrist as she fell, and she crumpled at his feet instead of plummeting down the side of the hill.

“Alice,” Quinn hissed in a whisper, kneeling beside her.