“HOW come you’re so big?” Ronnie said in wonderment from the dining room. He stood on top of his chair to try to measure up to Chase, but still fell drastically short.
“I eat lots of vegetables,” Chase lied, eliciting an encouraging thumbs-up from Mary Jane. “You mind if I sit here?” He’d chosen a seat that backed against the wall so that he had a clear view of the room.
“Nope,” said the kid.
“Use your manners, Ronnie,” said Mary Jane. I was helping her set the table.
“No, thank you,” said Ronnie.
She laughed nervously. “I mean, sit down please. Over here, by Mom.” She clearly wanted her son—the only one who seemed comfortable with the dinner arrangement—between his mother and father. Which left me relegated to the stranger’s side of the table with Chase.
I hated that Patrick hadn’t taken us straight to Lewisburg. His earlier friendliness had washed away, and he now gave off the distinct impression that he regretted asking us inside.
And to think I’d banked on just such kindness when I’d tried to run away.
We gathered around the table, and Ronnie gave the slowest rendition of Johnny Appleseed I had ever heard. The tension thickened. Finally we were eating, focused on something other than each other. I had hardly swallowed the first bite of pot roast before jamming the loaded fork back into my mouth. I told myself to eat as much as I could; we didn’t know when we’d get the chance at another hot meal.
I let Chase do most of the talking: He was more skilled at lying than I was. He embellished on his story about his family relations in Lewisburg, never saying enough to draw suspicion. I was impressed at how much he talked. He hadn’t said that much to me in the last week.
While they were focused on him, I snuck a bread roll into my pocket for later.
As the conversation turned to Ronnie, the signs of Chase’s exhaustion became more obvious; his eyes seemed to focus on nothing, he hunched over his bowl. How much had he slept in the last few days? Last night, barely any. The night before we’d been on the run. Before that, who knew?
And tonight he wouldn’t sleep, either. Our next minute alone would be spent deciding to stay the night or sneak out. Either way, there’d be no relaxing.
The mood remained uneasy for the rest of dinner. Unless Ronnie was telling some story, no one spoke. I began to feel more trapped by the second. The threat of a curfew violation and the morning’s ride to Lewisburg were the only things holding me to my seat.
In response to the strain, Mary Jane turned on a countertop radio, and I joined her in the kitchen while she washed dishes. The crackling sound reminded me of the MM radio in Chase’s bag. I hoped for music but was not so lucky.
The newscast had already begun. The reporter, a woman named Felicity Bridewell, clipped the ends of her words with an annoying sense of self-importance. She was talking about an increase of crime in the Red Zones and the FBR’s decree to boost their presence at the borders.
I remembered the highway patrolman with a shiver.
The men’s voices in the other room paused, and I knew Chase was listening now, too. I stood by in anxious silence, my mouth dry.
“… investigating the murder of another FBR officer in Virginia earlier today. Authorities have determined this to be the second victim of whom they are now referring to as the Virginia Sniper. No witnesses have yet come forward….”
A sniper killing FBR officers… was this linked to the stolen uniform truck in Tennessee? I felt an odd tingling in my chest. It wasn’t right to wish for violence, but people were fighting back, and that made me feel hopeful.
Before my mother was taken, I’d accepted how ingrained the MM was in our lives. I didn’t like it, but the truth was that not everything they did was bad. The Reformation Act had instituted soup kitchens and mortgage freezes, things we might have died without. But since the overhaul, my views had begun to refocus. It now seemed blatantly obvious that those programs were just leverage, making us dependent on the very machine that oppressed us. The schism between the government and the people had never felt wider.
The MM had taken away my life. I couldn’t go back to school; I couldn’t go home. I might never see Beth or Ryan again. For the first time since the War, I envisioned what things would be like with no MM. With no Red Zones and curfews. No reform schools and Statutes. And I realized I could survive, because Chase and I were doing it right now.
I shook my head to clear it. I was the one who held things together, not the person who stirred up trouble. Joining a resistance was crazy. Irresponsible. And it didn’t even matter—not when I had to find my mother.
“…execution-style killing in Harrisonburg, Virginia. The deceased is an unidentified Caucasian male in his mid-forties.” A pause and the shuffle of paper. “We’re now receiving word that the Federal Bureau of Reformation has linked this death to the Virginia Sniper. Again, this constitutes the third serial murder in a chain throughout the state of Virginia. As always, citizens are strongly encouraged to stay out of evacuated areas and observe the Moral Statutes.”
I gripped my hands together so that they didn’t shake.
The MM was blaming their own kill on the resistance—on this sniper, whoever he was.
Mary Jane was babbling about how dangerous the country was becoming and how thankful she was for the FBR. I wanted to scream the truth at her but knew I couldn’t. I froze completely when the radio snagged my attention again.
“…Jennings, who defected from the FBR earlier this week, should be approached with caution as he may be armed and dangerous. Any information on the whereabouts of this criminal can be called in on the crisis line. That concludes the nightly news. This is Felicity Bridewell.”
I’d missed the story! What had been said? Mary Jane had talked over most of the report!
I couldn’t look at her; she’d see the truth right on my face. And if we ran now, the Loftons would know we were guilty. So I fixed my eyes on the window, staring at the tear tracks down the glass left by the earlier rain, and I nearly screamed when Chase’s hand came to rest on the small of my back.
“Dinner was great, wasn’t it Elizabeth?” he said with a hollow smile, interrupting my panic. I knew it was for show, but the touch comforted me enough to maintain my role.
“Delicious,” I said. The muscles in my legs were already working.
The next minutes seemed to pass in a fog. The next thing I knew, Chase and I were standing in a guest bedroom across the hall from Ronnie’s room. An Amish quilt covered one wall; the intricate pattern of colored squares made my eyes cross.
Chase shoved open the window, but it was reinforced by steel bars. Keeping out thieves. Keeping in criminals.
I swallowed a deep breath.
“I don’t think they know,” I said unsteadily. Chase shook his head, grave now that his acting stint was finished. “Maybe Patrick didn’t hear me say your name outside.”
“He was a little preoccupied.” Chase closed the window delicately, a line furrowed between his brows. He transferred his weight from foot to foot.
“What do we do?” I asked. “I don’t want to wait until the morning.”
“They’ve got a van in the front of the house, and there’s the bike, but we can’t risk the roads after curfew.” His tone was heavy. “We’ll hike out after they go to sleep.”
Which meant we were prisoners until the family went to bed.
WHILE Chase washed up, I tiptoed through the hallway, curious when I didn’t hear Mary Jane or Ronnie. Bedtime reading, I guessed. That seemed like a normal thing to do. In fact Patrick, who was still in the living room, was doing the same. His feet were up, and he was wearing glasses now. I swallowed some resentment, remembering home, and how my mother and I used to read on the couch after curfew.
My heart rate slowed. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Not that I could tell.
When I slipped back into the guest room I found Chase sitting on the edge of the bed, elbows on his knees, face in his hands. He was so still, I thought he might be asleep.
I watched him just for a moment, unable to draw my eyes away.
He seemed to have become distracted in the midst of changing. He still wore his jeans and his boots, but his clean shirt lay untouched beside him on the bed. The lights worked on account of the generator, but he’d lit a candle to combat the shadows instead, and the hard lines of his jaw and neck were accentuated in the flickering flame. From this angle, I now noticed several raised scars on his back that I hadn’t seen in the house on Rudy Lane. They angered me, those scars, cut at a diagonal like the swipe of a claw. I wanted to know who had hurt him like that. I wanted to protect him. If such a thing was even possible. I felt sort of powerful thinking it might be.
Still, his scars, combined with the serpentine wound now visible without the bandage covering his shoulder, made him all the more dangerous.
He was, to me, terrifyingly beautiful.
All the nerves that had been crackling inside of me seemed to transform and redirect toward Chase. My body trembled with anticipation. What energy remained sparked in the air between us like electricity.
I wanted to move to him, but my feet were nailed to the ground. I opened my mouth to speak, but there were no words. I thought of the letters that he’d kept, of what they could mean if he let me in, and was confused again.
He remained as still as I was, then sighed softly, and my heart clenched. Something was wrong. That had been a noise of pain, not of exhaustion.
“Does your arm hurt a lot?” I asked. He jumped up, not having heard me approach. I’d forgotten that I’d been tiptoeing so as not to disturb Patrick.
He shoved on his shirt, a little too forcefully, I thought. I eased the door shut behind me.
“It’s just… that kid. He’s just a child. He could have been shot.” The shame was so thick in his tone that it nearly choked him, and I sagged back against the wall, staggered by how much it affected me. “I didn’t even think about him. He’s what, six? Seven? I almost walked away and let him die.”
I could feel my brows draw together. A shiver went down my spine when I thought of Chase walking out into that field.
“But you didn’t.”
“Because of you.” He looked up then, eyes black and filled with pain. “That guy was swinging a pistol toward a kid, and all I could think of was you. That he was going to hurt you. That I couldn’t let him. Those guys, those stupid guys in Hagerstown. And that highway patrol… I could have… What’s wrong with me?”
I swallowed, but it was hard because my throat was so tight. His stare returned to his hands. They didn’t look like a fighter’s hands now. They looked big and callused and empty.
That same knot twisted inside of me. If I had told him to forget the MM, to stay with me when he’d been drafted, he would not be broken now.
“You look out for people, you always have—” I began, but he shook his head, dismissing my modesty.
“You’re the only thing that’s tying me down.”
“Well, I’m sorry I’m ruining all your fun,” I said, appalled.
“Fun?” he said weakly. “You think… Ember, you’re the only piece of me I have left. Everything else—my family, my home, my soul—they’re all gone. I don’t know who the hell I am anymore. If it weren’t for you… I don’t know.”
His voice went thick again and he stared at the floor, bewildered and ashamed. Though my mouth was open, I had no idea what to say. I wished that I could reassure him that he was still Chase, and reassure myself, too, but what if he was right?
“Come here.” It was my voice. My request. But it surprised us both.
Nothing happened for several long seconds, but then some magnetic force took over, drawing us slowly to each other. His face was speculative, confused. I could tell he did not want to come closer, that he couldn’t understand why he was already so near.
He tore away from my eyes and, to my shock, tentatively nuzzled his face into my hair. I could feel his breath warm my shoulder. He smelled of the woods and faintly of soap. My whole body tingled.
I moved my cheek to brush against his neck, and the feel of his skin sent aching waves through me. No one made me feel the way Chase did. He was my anchor in the hurricane, yet at the same time, the hurricane itself, so that I nearly always felt safe and afraid simultaneously. There was nothing in the world as confusing and powerful as being close to him. Could he feel it? Did he know?
“I saw the letters,” I confessed. “The ones I wrote. I saw them in the bag.”
His head jerked up, his eyes pinning me in place, irritation instantly coating his raw exposure. They burned into me with an intensity I didn’t understand.
And then they went out.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that,” he said.
He took a step back. Then another. He shoved his hands in his pockets and swallowed a shallow breath, as though there weren’t enough air in the room.
He was sorry for touching me. He regretted it, even. I felt small and unworthy and mad that he could see me as so insignificant when I cared for him so much.
Well, I wasn’t insignificant. I was important. Maybe not to him, but to someone.
I didn’t immediately know how to respond. My eyes burned with tears, but I wouldn’t let them fall. I lifted my chin as proudly as I could and tried to keep my voice steady.
“You should get some sleep, Chase. You look tired. I’ll stay up and keep watch. You don’t need to worry about that.”
I turned away and sat on the bed, still in my clothes. He didn’t move for a long while. Finally, he laid on the floor, his knife in the palm of his hand. He didn’t even open the sleeping bag.
I ROSE up on my elbows, positioning myself on his chest, looking down at his face. His finger grazed my jawline, teasing my hair to the ends.
“You won’t forget me, right?” I tried to play it light so maybe he wouldn’t see just how scared I was for tomorrow.
For a second, the corners of his eyes pinched. Then he sat up, and I backed onto my knees. His hands straightened my T-shirt, tugging it down.
“No,” he said. His face darkened. “I don’t think it’s possible to forget you.”
The slow, heavy weight of his breath, the seriousness of his tone, made everything too real. I didn’t want it to be real. I didn’t want him to leave. And if I opened my mouth, I’d ask him to stay. Ask him and ruin his whole life.
My eyes stung. A great lump had formed in my throat. I turned away and held my breath and tried to stop my shoulders from trembling, but he saw, and when he touched my arm I jerked away because it hurt even more that he wasn’t angry about leaving. That he was being kind to make it easier for me.
I hated the MM. My mother was right: They took away everything good.
There was too much uncertainty. What if I never saw him again? Everything seemed beyond my control. And then I thought, crazily, maybe if I could just make this part go faster, he’d come home again. It would be like ripping off a Band-Aid, but then he’d be back.
“I want to say good-bye now,” I said, my voice finally breaking. “I changed my mind. I don’t want to wait until morning.” I couldn’t look at him. So what if I was a coward.
His touch, this time gently moving aside my hair. His lips, brushing my ear.
“I won’t forget,” he said again, quietly.
I slumped miserably back against his chest. He pulled me closer. His arms crossed over my body; his knees rose on each side of mine. I felt him breathe in, press his lips against the base of my neck.
“I promise I’ll come back. No matter what happens.” Though his voice was only a whisper, there was a fierceness behind it. I believed him completely.
“I’ll wait for you,” I told him.
I turned my head and buried my damp face in his shoulder, and he held me until finally my breathing slowed. After a while, he laid down beside me and said, “Sleep easy, Ember.” And when I woke in the morning, he was gone.
CHASE did sleep, silent and dreamless, while I stayed awake with my burning thoughts. The urge to move on was stronger than ever. I began wondering just how likely it would be that an MM cruiser would catch us at night. We could be perfectly fine. We could get all the way to Lewisburg, find the carrier, and be in South Carolina by tomorrow.
If I was being honest with myself, it wasn’t just my mom that had me chomping at the bit to get out. What had passed between Chase and me would surely turn to awkwardness, and I was looking for any way to avoid it. He was obviously still planning on leaving when we got to the safe house, and maybe that was better. If I wasn’t enough to make him stay, I didn’t really want him around anyway.
I chewed my thumbnails and hated that I cared.
After an hour I tiptoed down the hallway, only to find that Patrick’s light was still on. I could hear him shift on the couch, hear him turn the pages of that infuriating book. Why wouldn’t he just go to bed? I had a feeling he was staying up on purpose now, guarding his house to make sure we didn’t steal anything.
I didn’t entirely blame him.
I was on my way back to the room when I heard another creak in the floor, this time from the opposite end of the hallway. I ducked into the guest bathroom and waited. And then I heard the rattle of the basement door.
“Billings here?” I heard Mary Jane whisper. So she was in the basement, probably with the boy. I felt stupid for thinking them so naïve; they’d been down there since dinner. It was where the family went when there was danger.
Billings. Who was Billings? The answer came to me slowly. Patrick had said his name earlier. He was their buyer. The person who took the cattle to the slaughterhouse.
“Not yet. Should be soon though. Keep the door locked.”
“You’ll be careful?” she asked in a small voice. “If he really is that guy on the radio, he’s dangerous. I can’t believe you brought them inside. And with Ronnie…”
“Don’t talk to me about Ronnie,” Patrick snapped, then sighed heavily. “Look, I don’t like it, either, but we got a thousand dollars for the last soldier. This one, he’s got to be more, what with the law after him and all. And who knows, maybe they’ll kick in a bonus for the girl. That would be enough to keep us here through the summer. We wouldn’t have to move to the city, like we talked about.”
My stomach felt like I’d swallowed a bag of thumbtacks. Everything became implicitly clear.
The Loftons had placated us with hospitality just to keep us here. I’d known something was off the moment we’d seen the inside of their house. A generator? Toys for the kid? Why hadn’t I trusted my intuition? Now we didn’t even have the gun.
Billings, whoever he was, was coming. The soreness in my body was forgotten. I had to get Chase, and we had to leave. Immediately.
I didn’t wait to hear any more. Silently, I hopped across the hallway back into our room and grabbed Chase by the ankle. He sat up quickly, but it was so dark that I could barely see him.
“What’s wrong?” he said, instantly alert. “Are you okay?”
“We’ve gotta go—they called someone. The boy and the mom are downstairs, and Patrick’s playing prison warden,” I told him in one expelled breath.
Chase was up in flash. He slid the baton into the waistband of his pants and pressed his knife into my hand.
“Here,” he said, shoving the backpack toward me.
“How are we getting out?” I asked. “Patrick—”
“Leave him to me. Ember, listen, all right? You go out through the back. Get to the woods and head for the road. I’ll be right behind you.”
“You’re not coming with me?” I’d heard it in his voice. He was going to make sure I wasn’t followed, whatever the risk to himself. I felt a little light-headed.
His hands cupped my face, his thumbs grazing along my cheekbones. He was close; I could feel the air move before my mouth when he spoke.
“Stay out of sight. Follow the road to Lewisburg and find the carrier. There’s money in the bag, enough to pay him off. Make sure you don’t show him all of it until you get to the safe house.”
“I won’t….” I was frightened now. My hands had covered his and were squeezing his fingers. I couldn’t believe he was saying this. I could not imagine leaving him here in such danger.
“Be careful who you talk to; keep your head down. You know what to do. Just don’t trust anyone.” His words tumbled out so quickly they nearly connected.
“But what about you? I can’t leave you here!”
“Yes you can!” he insisted. “Ember, I’m sorry for screwing everything up. I never meant to hurt you. There’s so much more…”
And suddenly his lips were on mine. Warm and demanding. Angry and afraid. Filled with everything his words could not say.
He pushed me back but then pulled me in once again, deepening the kiss, thrusting his hands through my hair. My fists knotted in his shirt, torn between shoving him away and refusing his dismissal. My head was spinning.
He ended it too soon, kissing me once more on the temple. Then we were gently pulling open the door, tempering the urge to rip it back off its hinges. I couldn’t believe I was preparing to escape without him. He’d have no money, no supplies. Everything within me told me this was wrong.
He’ll follow, I told myself. If he can.
I crept into the hallway, Chase right behind me. I would have to pass the living room to get out through the back door. Patrick was likely back on the couch, maybe with a weapon, reading. Watching. The lights would be on, damn the generator. He would see everything.
I passed the basement door and wanted suddenly to kick it as hard as I could. Had she been the one to call this Billings? Or was it Patrick? Yes, probably him. He could have done it while Chase and I cleaned up for dinner. All this, after we’d saved their child.
Chase passed me, his thumb grazing over my lips once more in the darkness. His good-bye, I knew, and felt the touch shoot straight through my core.
He walked into the living room, and I heard Patrick scramble up suddenly.
“Don’t get up,” Chase said in a low voice. “I was just going to grab a glass of water if it’s all right.”
“Sure. Here, let me,” Patrick offered. I caught one more sight of Chase’s back as he disappeared into the kitchen, and I prayed that it would not be the last. I snuck through the foyer, back toward the laundry room, but paused once my feet hit the linoleum.
If I opened the door, they’d be able to hear it from the kitchen. Chase knew this. He wasn’t going to let Patrick follow me. What that would entail, I didn’t know.
I listened briefly to the sound of water in the sink and muffled conversation. Every nerve within me felt live and raw. I gripped the door handle until my knuckles went white and it rattled under my grasp. The next time I heard voices, they were coming from was the living room.
Why isn’t he running?
But I knew: He was giving me time. He hadn’t heard me open the back door yet. I cursed him under my breath.
I gathered every ounce of courage within me, and raced around the corner, entering the kitchen from the opposite side. The lights were on, blinding my eyes, but the room was empty. I went straight for the fridge, grabbing all the keys from the black ceramic bowl beside it, and returned to the back door.
I opened the door as quietly as I could and bolted outside on numb legs. The freezing air slapped against my face, stealing my breath. I ran for the only thing I thought might help.
The generator. Just outside the kitchen window. Maybe if I could turn off the lights I could give Chase a chance to get out.
I slammed on the brakes in front of the humming metal box, searching desperately through the darkness for the switch. I didn’t have time to get the flashlight out. Every second mattered now.
In my silence I heard another sound break through the night and froze. Footsteps. They were far off; I thought for a moment it might even be the cows in the field. My spine went rigid when I heard low human voices, when the footsteps drew closer.
It couldn’t be Patrick and Chase: They were inside, as were Mary Jane and Ronnie. This had to be Billings.
I listened as hard as I could, but the noise from the generator blocked me from picking anything up. There were definitely men arriving at the house, but how had they gotten here? I hadn’t heard a car approaching.
It didn’t matter. Chase was still inside.
I felt down the serrated metal sides of the power source in a panic. Something burned my hand, and I bit back a cry. Finally I found the switch, flipped the protective sheath back, and shut down the machine.
My ears rang in the sudden presence of silence. The kitchen window above me went black.
There was a great deal of commotion from the darkness inside, and with the fear taking over, I ran blindly. I stumbled over the rocks and raised patches of grass. The moonlight cast an ethereal silver glow over the pasture, and I felt the dull eyes of the cows in the field upon me.
I didn’t go to the woods. I ran toward the barn. I had the keys. I might be able to get the gun and then find Chase and… I couldn’t think any farther ahead than that. I was just pulling open the huge wooden door when I heard someone behind me.
No!
I spun toward the house but was unable to see in the darkness. Crouching into the shadows, I held my breath, knowing whoever had followed might not see me in the faint light if I didn’t move, but if I ran, they could track the sound.
The steps didn’t stop, and a great shadow blocked the moon. Then strong arms lifted me bodily from the ground and hauled me inside the barn. I opened my mouth to scream, and one large hand clamped down over it.
Chase.
I sobbed for joy when I realized it was him. He didn’t speak. He set me down once inside and ran to the back, looking for the rear exit. It was locked and chained. He kicked it, and the wood splintered. He kicked it again, and the chain fell to the ground. Too much noise!
“Keys!” I whisper-shouted, and revealed to him everything that I had stuffed into my denim pockets.
He searched through them briefly. I thought he was looking for the key to the gun cabinet, but he wasn’t. He let the remaining rings fall to the ground with a clatter and heaved me toward the motorcycle.
An instant later I was mounted behind him. He turned the key and squeezed the clutch with his left hand. The bike hummed softly, but did not yet growl like I knew it would.
I did not hesitate like I had a year ago. I slid close behind him, fit my knees into the backs of his, and wrapped my arms tightly around his body. I couldn’t hear anyone following yet.
“Keep your head down,” he ordered. “And hold on.”
I nodded, my cheek pressed hard into his back.
We pushed out the back door of the barn, which faced the woods. Chase steered right, walking the bike toward the far side of the darkened house. My heart thumped through my chest into Chase’s ribs. We were almost there. Almost to the driveway.
Finally, we could see down the gravel path curving toward the main road. Two cars were parked on the street, but both were empty. They’d left them there in order to surprise us.
A knife of fear punctured my lungs, and I could barely breathe. Not just cars. FBR cruisers.
Billings was a soldier. The FBR bought the Loftons’ cattle.
The government owned most of the major food-distribution plants now. Horizons had bought out all the big brand names during the War. Of course Patrick would sell beef to them.
Chase grabbed my hand on his chest, squeezed it tightly, and rammed his foot down on the pedal. An explosion of growls filled the air. The sound would definitely be heard within the house.
I gritted my teeth and held on.
We hit the road in a spray of gravel. I don’t know if Patrick and the soldiers came outside. I didn’t look back.
We didn’t stop until we reached the road. It took Chase less than thirty seconds to swing his leg over the front of the bike, jump off, and puncture the tires on both vehicles before we were off again.
WE rode toward a town called Hinton; I saw the name dimly shimmer on a green metallic road sign and felt the crushing blow of defeat as we passed the exit to Lewisburg. We had to. The Loftons would have told the MM they’d planned on taking us there.
We were going to miss the carrier.
As the adrenaline wore off, I began to tremble, though I didn’t know if it was from the freezing air clawing through my clothing, or from the fear.
We were out on a road after curfew with only the occasional flash of the headlight to guide us. The rumbling of the motor screamed in my ears, calling out our location to anyone nearby. I could feel Chase concentrating hard, trying to maintain a rushed pace, but swerving to avoid the debris from the woods that popped up in our path.
I pinched my eyes closed. The Loftons had reported us. Even after we’d saved their son. Don’t trust anyone, Chase had said. He was right.
How long did we have before the MM pursued? They had certainly already called in for backup. If we were lucky, we’d bought ourselves some decent lead time by slashing the tires. If we were really lucky, whoever came next would follow the lead to Lewisburg. Was it worth the hope?
The darkness unsettled me. I imagined eyes all around, watching us from the roadside. Each time Chase twitched, seeing a new obstacle in the road, I jumped.
We drove for the longest half hour of my life, finally passing a sign indicating that Hinton was only eight miles farther. Chase helped me off into a shadowed ditch on the side of the road and drove the bike straight into the bushes. We buried it silently and efficiently beneath the brush and pine needles and covered our tracks. Then we disappeared once again into the woods. I couldn’t help but feel fortunate we’d survived this long. Then again, there was still time before sunup.
Chase had taken the backpack and was creeping ahead of me, parallel to the road. The sickle moon barely provided enough light to guide our way.
And then I heard the sirens.