That he had indeed had a practice in Detroit at one point. And that he’d closed it down and moved out here—for reasons he still hadn’t told me.
I, on the other hand, had opened up to him about absolutely everything, finding a certain sort of comfort in being able to talk about my background to someone who actually understood what it was like to have been there. To have those memories stuck in my head. To be unable to forget the color of blood on the pavement.
The scream of people dying.
It was way more than I’d intended to tell him. But while I might have foregone the training on how to interrogate people, he’d obviously had some sort of training in that particular art form. Either that or he was such a naturally good listener that he somehow made you tell him your entire life story without seeming to encourage you at all.
I was smiling when the sun came up, though, despite the immense pressure our day was about to impose on us, and I felt freer than I had in years.
“Thank you,” I told him genuinely. “For listening to me. For not judging.”
He put a hand on my shoulder and squeezed me in a fatherly sort of way. “There’s nothing to judge,” he said, his tone just as genuine. “None of us chose what happened to us in the field, or what we had to do to protect ourselves and those around us. Very few of us deserve to shoulder the blame for what happens during war.”
And I appreciated that too: the acknowledgement that though some people had gone out of bounds with their duties, most of us had just been doing our jobs. It was something that only a military person would have understood.
Whoever Marlon had been in another life, I wanted to know more about him in this one. But not yet. For now, on this morning, we had an entirely different battle to fight.
“To the river?” he asked, reading my mind.
“It’s the next logical step,” I replied.
Then I got to my feet and went to wake Angie while Marlon got started on what he was calling a breakfast of champions.
I hoped it was enough to see us through the day. By tonight, if we were lucky, we’d be in Ellis Woods and, if not warm or well-lit, then at least secure and surrounded by people we knew were friends.
19
It took me about half an hour to get Angie’s sled ready again, and by the time I was done, Marlon had what passed for breakfast ready. He’d managed eggs and toast, and God only knew how he’d done it. I wasn’t asking—and I wasn’t complaining. Angie and I wolfed down our share of the food, and I had no doubt that her mind was in the same place as mine was.
We had a river to find. And once we found it, we needed to figure out a way to get either over it or down it, depending on whether it was frozen or not already.
“What do you think our chances are of finding it frozen?” I asked Marlon as we packed up our goods.
“About fifty percent, max,” he replied quickly enough that I figured he’d already been doing the math in his head.
It was a disappointing percentage. I’d been hoping for higher. “That low?”
He snorted as he shoved things into his pack. “That’s a generous percentage, honestly. It’s early enough in the season that we haven’t had consistently low temperatures.”
“So you don’t think there’ll be enough ice to walk on, and even if there is, we’ll need to worry about whether that ice is thick enough to be safe,” I said, jumping to my own set of conclusions. The optimism I’d started the day with was quickly beginning to wane. “You’re right, those don’t sound like very good odds.”
He clapped a hand on my shoulder and gave me half a smile. “They’re not perfect, sure,” he said quickly. “But I’ve seen worse. Hell, I’ve lived through odds that were a whole lot worse than that. Whatever we find, we’ll figure it out. And that’s a promise.”
I decided to take him at his word, there, because what was the point of arguing? He knew the area better than I did. Hell, he probably knew exactly what the river looked like, how deep it ran, and what day it generally froze every year.
In fact, all of that information was probably, if I was reading him right, contained in a file that he’d been given when he moved to the area. With whatever reasons he’d been given for needing to move here.
Yeah, I liked the guy. Trusted him, even. That didn’t mean I’d stopped thinking there was a whole lot I didn’t know about him.
“How far do we have to go, do you think?” Angie asked suddenly. She had her exoskeleton brace already strapped to her leg and was doing up the belt by herself, having actually thrown my hands off her when I offered to help.
She was nothing if not stubborn, that woman. But I was glad to see more color in her cheeks today, more spunk in the set of her shoulders. I knew she was in a lot of pain—more than I would ever want to experience, myself. That leg was still broken and uncasted, and though Marlon had stitched up her wound, she was doing all of this without pain medication. I was shocked she wasn’t delirious with it, honestly.
But her will had always been stronger than anyone around her realized. And she was putting it to good use now. I would be very lucky if I kept her in the sled until we got to the river. After that, it was going to be an absolute battle.
“We’ve still got around two miles ahead of us,” Marlon answered. “It’s a straight shot from here to the river, and I know there’s a trail that will take us there. No new snow last night, so we should be able to travel at least as quickly as we were traveling yesterday. Two hours, I think, and we’ll be there. Two hours and we need to be there. This night out has cut into our lead time, and I don’t want Randall and his men to catch us when we’re in the middle of some tricky crossing-the-river operation. I don’t want them to catch up to where we entered the river until we’re long gone.”
“That makes three of us,” she said bluntly. “John, let’s get me into that sled. The sooner we’re gone, the better off we’ll be.”
“Hear, hear,” I answered, going to lift her up and carry her to the sled, where I’d already piled several of the quilts as a bed for her.
I took the sled first, and Marlon had been right about us making quicker time this morning. We left the cave with the sun barely peeking over the horizon, and this gave us two advantages: First, the semi-darkness made it easier for us to move without being easily seen, and second, the early hour meant that there was a layer of ice across the snow—which made it easier to tow the sled. I was able to nearly run in some places, the toboggan sliding quickly across the ice behind me, and when we decided to switch jobs after an hour, I barely felt like I’d done any work.
“Good,” Marlon said when I mentioned it to him. “Conserve your energy. We’re going to need it for crossing the river.”
He started running forward without saying anything else, leaving me to bring up the rear and keep my eyes and ears out for anyone following us.
Within an hour, we were getting close to the river, according to Marlon, and I could hear the relief in his voice.
“I’d hoped we’d make it here by this time, but I honestly hadn’t been counting on it,” he huffed. “If we assume that Randall and his men had to stop and find shelter last night, like we did, and we further assume that they’re at least half a day behind us, and we further assume that they’re lazier than we are and didn’t get such an early start…”
“Then we get to hope that we’ve got at least some breathing space,” I finished. The relief I felt at that—even when the statement was full of assumptions—was akin to warm water suddenly washing over me, and I breathed out fully for the first time in who knew how long. I’d been chased before, yes. And chased by people a whole lot more dangerous than Randall and his men.