“Somehow,” said Max, “I have the feeling it’s the same all over.”
Mandy stepped closer to him, and Max put his arm around her back, his hand on her side, pulling her closer to him.
They were alive. But it was a long walk back to camp.
27
Dan had to act quickly. There wasn’t much time.
He was in a complete panic. He was trapped. He had to act but he couldn’t.
What could he do?
There wasn’t any way he could get free without being noticed.
He gazed off into the distance, his eyes unfocused, as the pickup drove through the streets.
By pure chance, he happened to glance at the other prisoner, the woman. She looked right back at him and to his surprise, she began blinking rapidly at him.
He stared back at her.
She kept blinking.
What did it mean?
Then he noticed that the pattern of her blinks was changing. She was trying to communicate something. Some form of code.
The only code Dan knew of was Morse code. And he didn’t actually know it. Sure, he was familiar with SOS.
Was that what she was doing? Giving him the SOS signal? It sure seemed like it. Three slow blinks, three fast ones, the pattern repeating over and over again.
Dan knew that wasn’t actually the pattern. But he also knew that a lot of people didn’t know it. Maybe this was the woman’s approximation of it.
But Dan already knew she was in trouble.
What was the point of telling Dan that?
They were both in trouble and they weren’t like to get out of it.
But when she started directing her eyes pointedly over to the soldier, Dan started to think she might have been trying to communicate something else.
What was it?
She wanted Dan to do something, most likely. What other reason would there be to communicate with him?
Dan couldn’t move. He couldn’t attack the man.
The only thing he could do was speak.
In the action movies he’d seen, one crucial element was always “the distraction.” If you couldn’t fight, you could distract the bad guy.
Maybe that was what she wanted him to do.
Of course, it seemed pointless.
It wasn’t like she could do anything herself. She was tied up.
But Dan figured he had nothing left to lose.
“Hey, buddy,” said Dan, calling out loudly to the soldier.
“What’s up, kid?”
“I was wondering if you’ve always been this ugly.”
“What’s that?”
“You heard me,” said Dan, speaking loudly and clearly. “I was asking if you were always this ugly. Or if it’s something that happened to you after the EMP. You know, all this rough living and be hard on someone’s looks, if they’re, you know… delicate.”
“I’m not delicate, kid. You’d better watch your mouth and shut the hell up. I’m the one with the gun, remember.”
“Yeah,” said Dan. “But I also know I’m supposed to be some child laborer in a mine somewhere. If you don’t deliver me alive, you’re not going to get your reward, whatever that is. Maybe you’re dumb enough to think money still means something.”
That was too much for the soldier. He was growing reddish in the face. He stood up, a little wobbly on his feet, since the truck was, after all, moving.
He moved rapidly towards Dan.
Maybe it hadn’t been the best plan.
At the last moment, right before the soldier reached Dan, the woman sprung up.
Somehow, she’d gotten out of her ropes. They lay, torn apart, on the metal bed of the truck.
She sprang up and forward, throwing herself against the soldier, like a vicious, wild animal.
She knocked him down and they fell together.
A gunshot rang out.
But the movement didn’t stop.
Dan couldn’t see what was happening. They were a tangle of bodies.
The soldier screamed.
He stopped moving.
The woman rolled off from on top of the soldier, revealing the soldier’s bloody throat with a slit running right across it from end to end. The woman held a bloody knife and her arm was bloodied. She’d been shot in the upper arm.
She crawled over to Dan quickly.
She cut the ties that bound him rapidly.
“Did they hear the gunshot?” she whispered. Her voice was frantic.
Dan shook his head. He was stunned.
But not too stunned to act.
“We’re still moving,” he said, glancing down again at the dead soldier. “They would have stopped if they’d heard it.”
Dan didn’t know how they couldn’t have heard it. But there wasn’t time to figure that out.
“We have to jump,” he said.
The woman nodded at him.
“We don’t have much time. You go first. I’ll follow.”
They were at the very edge of the bed, looking down at the pavement rushing beneath them.
“I need you to push me,” she said, glancing up at Dan with fearful eyes. “I can’t do it myself.”
After slitting a man’s throat and not being fazed by getting shot in the arm, she still couldn’t jump.
There wasn’t time to wait until they slowed down to take a corner.
They had to act now.
Dan put his hands on her, his palms against her shoulder and her back, and he shoved.
He didn’t wait to see what happened to her. He jumped too. Maybe he could roll with it, like in the movies. Probably not, though.
He hit the ground hard, his shoulder ramming into the pavement.
It hurt. But not as much as he’d expected.
Maybe it was the adrenaline keeping the pain away.
He didn’t wait to see if the truck was stopping.
The woman was lying on the pavement, face down. Dan grabbed her and pulled with all his might, trying to drag her.
But he couldn’t do it. He wasn’t strong enough.
“Come on,” he hissed at her.
She was groaning in pain. But somehow, with Dan pulling on her, she managed to push herself up into a standing position.
Dan seized her hand and pulled hard as he rushed to the side of the road.
It didn’t seem like they were in the city, but the homes were close together. They were small and run down, with peeling paint and decorative shutters that had long since fallen off and disappeared.
The only thing Dan could think about was getting to cover, getting between two of the houses, out of sight of the truck. It still hadn’t stopped, but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t.
“Come on,” hissed Dan, pulling harder on the woman’s arm. She was dragging her feet. Maybe she’d hurt her ankle in the fall. Her face was bloody, and the blood ran into the hair that fell around her face. She’d probably broken her nose.
Finally, they were at the house, having made it down the short driveway.
Dan pulled her down. She couldn’t go any farther, so they sat there, side by side, backs against the cheap siding.
Dan was breathing hard, completely exhausted.
He listened carefully for the rumble of the military truck and for any sounds that would indicate that the pickup was coming back for them. But the rumble faded gradually down the street.
“They’re not turning around or stopping,” said Dan.
The woman didn’t answer.
“How hurt are you?” said Dan, kneeling down in front of her to examine her.
“I’m… alive…” she said. “I’m… OK…”
“You saved my life,” said Dan.
The blood made her face and nose look worse than it was. It was probably just a broken nose. It’d be fine on its own.
“Are you injured anywhere but your arm?” said Dan, tearing the sleeve of her shirt apart with his fingers to get a better look at the wound.