“What’s that?” Loni asked.
Brandon looked in the direction she was pointing. There was something to the left, through the trees. Something manmade. It was white, or at least had been once. A cabin, or perhaps a shed.
“Everyone wait here for a moment,” he said.
“Something wrong?” Miss Collins asked.
“I want to check something.” He looked down at Ellie. “I’ll be right back, okay?”
She didn’t look happy but she nodded and let go of his hand.
As he ran toward the structure, he heard someone following him. He glanced over his shoulder to find Loni keeping pace with him a couple yards back.
“I want to see what it is, too,” she said.
He contemplated telling her to go back, but decided there was no reason to, so he ran on.
The structure turned out to be neither a cabin nor a shed, at least not in the traditional sense. It had once been a mobile home, but now was a wreck. Three quarters of the roof had collapsed, and an entire sidewall was lying on the ground in pieces. Holes from shotgun blasts covered much of the walls that were still standing.
It had been a long time since anyone had ever called this place home, Brandon thought. He scanned the small clearing surrounding the trailer. How had it arrived here? For that matter, how had the people who lived here gone to and from civilization? There had to be a road, one wide enough for the trailer.
He finally spotted an opening in the trees on the other side of the clearing, and jogged over. Though the forest had started to reclaim it, signs of the old road were still there.
He looked back at the trailer. It could be a passable shelter, but if the Project Eden people spotted it, they would check it for sure.
The road, though, would provide an easier route through the forest, and allow them to get farther faster.
“Come on,” he said to Loni as he started running back to the others.
A click of a tongue.
Judson looked toward the noise. One of the men ahead of him had paused and was waving for him to come over.
“What is it?” he whispered when he got there.
The man pointed at a broken branch on the ground. Judson bent down for a better look. It had been snapped cleanly in two, as if someone had stepped on it.
Excellent, he thought as he rose back up. He knew it wouldn’t be long now. The Ash kid and his buddies couldn’t be more than seven or eight minutes ahead of them.
He pointed ahead, and the team started out again.
Where are they? Josie wondered.
Chloe and Miller should have been back by now. Josie had heard something a few minutes earlier, grunting and what sounded like feet scuffing the ground, but after that, nothing. The problem was that she couldn’t see a thing. The truck was not only blocking the road, but also her view of everything on the other side.
She stood there, frustrated, torn between her promise to Chloe to remain where she was and her desire to know what was going on.
Maybe she could move down until the truck was out of the way. She’d still be in the forest, so that wouldn’t be breaking her promise, right?
Staying within the woods, she crept forward until the truck was no longer obstructing her view. She could see the house now and the two vehicles parked in front. The front door of the home was open.
As she looked around for Chloe and Miller, she spotted the lower half of two legs lying on the ground, sticking out from between the cars.
Miller? she wondered.
Fear squeezed her heart.
Where’s Chloe?
She whipped her head around again, but Chloe was nowhere to be seen, so she looked back at the feet. If the cars mostly hid one body, they could easily be hiding two. And if Miller and Chloe were dead, it would be up to Josie to save her brother.
Deciding her promise was no longer valid, she shot out from the cover of the trees and crossed over to the body, not daring to breathe again until she was safely between the two cars.
The dead man was not Miller. Nor was there a second body.
Her relief was tempered by her concern about where Chloe and Miller were. In the house? It seemed awfully quiet there. If they were confronting the rest of the Project Eden squad, wouldn’t she hear something?
What if they were in trouble?
What if they needed help?
Her father had been training her and Brandon to handle these kinds of situations. She did know how to shoot a gun. True, she had never shot at a person before, but if someone she cared about was in trouble, she knew she could pull the trigger.
She glanced down at the dead soldier, at the rifle lying beside him.
Another tongue click, this time from the man farthest to the left. He was pointing at something hidden in the trees, not too far off.
A building, Judson thought, smiling. The kind of place a group of kids might think was a good place to hide.
Using hand signals, he redirected his team toward it.
Chloe held up her hand, stopping Miller. She’d heard something, a noise. Kind of like the sound a woodpecker would make if it hit a tree only once. She had no idea if woodpeckers ever came to this part of the country, but she was pretty damn sure one wouldn’t be knocking away at a trunk during the winter.
She waited, hoping to hear it again, but there was no reprise.
She nodded in her best guess of the direction it had come from. “That way.”
Judson cursed to himself.
The structure, which turned out to be an abandoned mobile home, was empty. He’d been so sure he was going to find them there.
“Sir,” Williams, one of his men, whispered over the comm.
Judson turned away from the trailer.
“Footprints,” Williams said.
He was at the edge of the clearing near a gap in the trees. Judson walked over.
Williams pointed at the ground. “There, sir.”
In a patch of loose dirt were several footprints, all of them too small to belong to an adult. They were aimed toward the gap in the trees.
Not only a gap, Judson realized. A road.
“This way,” he said, going through the opening. “Double time.”
“I’m tired,” one of the kids shouted.
Before Brandon could react, Loni said, “Quiet.”
“Can’t we stop?” another asked.
“We have to keep going,” Brandon said.
“Why?”
“We don’t want the bad men to find us.”
“Brandon,” Miss Collins said. “They need to rest. Just for a little bit.”
He could see all the kids looked beat. Even Billy and Carter seemed to be dragging. He stopped. “Five minutes. Then we gotta go again.”
Most of the kids plopped down right where they’d been standing.
Miss Collins walked over to Brandon. “They can’t keep going like this. They’re too young. They don’t have the strength you do.”
“Just a little longer,” he said. “I’m sure we’ll find someplace we can hide.”
She looked around, her expression a mix of compassion and resignation. “Where?”
Before he could answer, Ellie, who was still beside him, said, “I need to go potty.”
“I’ll take you, sweetie,” Miss Collins said.
Ellie shook her head. “Brandon.”
“Actually, I think it’s better if Miss Collins takes you,” Brandon said.
Ellie looked doubtful.
“It’s okay. I’ll be right here,” he told her.
Reluctantly, she let go of his hand and went with Miss Collins.