Cruel World(91)

“Mama?”

“It’s okay, buddy. She’s okay.”

The four-wheeler revved and crashed through a stand of brush a hundred feet below.

Quinn undid his belt and probed Alice’s pant leg until he found an entry and exit hole wet with blood. He laced the belt around the wound and gently tightened it, tucking the loose end beneath itself.

A man yelled in the hollow. Something about blood.

Quinn took two deep breaths and slung Alice over his shoulders before grasping Ty’s hand again.

They climbed.

Quinn’s legs began to ache. Then they burned. But still they climbed. The top would never come. He kept looking at the ridge, its distance seeming to multiply with each glance. He focused on his breathing. This was nothing more than hanging a hundred feet above the black rocks of the Atlantic, waiting to find the next hand or foothold. Muscles on fire, but to quit meant death.

Ten more steps.

Five.

Three.

One.

They crested the hill, and he nearly crumbled beneath the pain and exhaustion. He allowed himself a ten count of breathing before leading Ty to the right.

The dome of the hill was covered in a layer of dry reed grass that shushed with their passing. Quinn brought them past two oak deadfalls and found a natural plain that descended the opposite side of the rise in a diagonal cut. They rushed down it and entered a sprawl of pine trees. Sounds of pursuit fell away behind them, buffeted by the evergreens. Quinn clasped Alice’s legs tighter to his chest and readjusted her weight. His shoulder was numb where she rested.

“Quinn?” Ty asked.

“Shh, we have to keep going, champ. Just a little farther.”

A rash of younger balsams spread out at the base of the grade, their squat forms growing so thick their branches intertwined.

“In here,” Quinn gasped. The last of his energy was nearly gone. His legs were pillars of lead, lungs full of barbed wire.

They pushed through the first dozen balsams and found three larger trees surrounded by some smaller growth. Quinn wrestled them below the biggest of the three, holding up its lowest branch so Ty could sit down. He knelt and lowered Alice to the ground, letting the branches snap back into place behind and above them. He turned his head in every direction, but there was no way to see out of the hiding place, which meant there was no way to see in.

Gathering handfuls of dead needles, Quinn built a small mound beneath Alice’s head and then leaned close to her, feeling her breath on his face. He checked her pulse. It was fast but steady. When he felt the wound on her leg, there was no new blood soaking her pants. He loosened his belt so that it wouldn’t cut off circulation completely and waited, his fingers over the exit and entry holes.

The wound had clotted.

Quinn lay back between Alice and Ty, his breathing slowly coming back to normal. Far away, someone yelled and an engine grumbled, but it sounded as if the noises were growing fainter.

“Is my mom okay?” Ty asked when they had rested minutes that felt like hours.

“Yeah. Her leg’s a little hurt, but she’s fine.”

“Are they going to find us?”

“No. We lost them good, buddy.”

“Do you promise?”

“I promise.”

“Quinn?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m really sorry.”

“For what?”

“I lost my walking stick you made for me.” Ty’s voice constricted. “We were getting the new car and then mom said the monsters were coming, and I didn’t have it with me. I left it in your car.”

“Hey, hey, it’s okay. I can make you a new one.”

Ty sniffled, and he shifted on the ground.

“But the other one was special.”

“I know. But the thing about possessions is you can replace them. Even though they’re special, you can get something different and then that thing becomes special in its own way. But do you know what you can’t replace?”

“What?”

“People. It’s okay that you left the stick behind because you and your mom are safe, and that’s the most important thing.”

Ty sniffed again. “And you too,” he murmured.

Quinn opened his mouth but then shut it because his own throat had closed up.

The night deepened around them, sounds of the congregation fading into silence that broke apart with frog song. There was water nearby. That was good. They might need it sooner rather than later. He hadn’t had anything to drink since the woman had basically water boarded him in Archer’s home. Quinn shifted on the ground and brought Alice’s legs up over his own, elevating the wound. The warmth and pressure of her against him sent a shiver through is body. He swallowed and tried not to think of her face so close to him, how white her skin was, the slenderness of her wrists. But the single, overwhelming fact wouldn’t leave him be. She’d come back. Somehow, despite the cutting and hardened exterior of who she was, something had gotten through.