Bear and I led the way, running until we were nearly out of sight of the road. I took one last look behind us and saw Mitchell on his back, arms thrown up over his head, his weapon on the ground next to him. Dark figures, silhouetted in the Humvee fire, were crossing the highway toward us.
Gunshots zipped through the air, slicing into branches and rocks all around us. There was a clear trail dead ahead, but I led the others off of it and into heavier woods. We ran over dark and uneven ground, crashing to the earth and pulling each other up again and again until the firing behind us finally died down.
We came out of the woods and entered a shallow valley that was filled with a pall of gray smoke heavy as fog. Explosions made deep bruises of red and yellow within it, and the rattle of gunfire came from every direction. Seeing no other alternative, Bear and I led the others into the smoke, trudging across ground that was a mix of torn grass and ankle-deep mud. It was like walking underwater.
I kept us as close together as I could, but there were moments when I’d look back and someone would have evaporated into the gray, only to reappear seconds later. Only Bear stayed by my side, but he was limping again and cringing at the rattle of fire. Every time we paused I dropped my hand to his side, petting him to try to still his shaking.
We’ll get them in sight of the airfield, I thought, willing it to somehow bridge the gap between us. And then they’re on their own. We’ll find the highway east and mix in with the evacuees.
We moved on, catching bits and flashes of the fighting through the haze. Men and women grappling hand to hand. Scattered, torn bodies facedown in the muck. Ranks of artillery like smokestacks vomiting fire and smoke into the sky. Once, we all dropped into the mud and watched as a company of tanks passed within feet of us. Close up, they were massive, their flat gray hides making them seem like something mythological — eyeless creatures clanking and grinding and spewing fire.
More than anything else we saw our own mirror images — ghostly scores of refugees shambling half blind in every direction. I shuddered to see them, feeling a sudden bone-deep terror that said there was no airfield at all, only this smoke and this battlefield, and we would all be out here wandering in the gray forever.
The base of a hill emerged from the smoke and I waved everyone to it. We all dropped to the ground, exhausted. Bear cringed against my leg, trembling at the blasts that shook the ground without a pause.
Kate and Reese looked to be the worst off, pale and blank eyed, their clothes torn and weighed down with muck. Reese’s wound had stopped bleeding but his face and neck were covered in blood. Christos looked unhurt but he was strangely listless, sitting draped over his knees and breathing shallow. Diane was as dirty and worn as the rest, but she seemed sharper than she had been before, more focused. She was crouched beside me, searching the hillside methodically. There were pockets of other refugees all around us — men, women, families — all of them clinging to the hillside like it was a life raft.
“Look.”
Diane pointed about a half mile above us just as the wind shifted, revealing a thin road that rose up the hill and, at the end of it, a small island of light. Within it I could make out the rotating lights of a control tower and a tall steel fence.
Diane moved forward, but I held her back. We weren’t the only ones interested. Muzzle flashes bloomed along the length of the hill, like strings of firecrackers.
“What do we do?”
I looked to our right where the ground ran straight and clear along the base of the hill and into the woods. The highway east was only a few miles on the other side of those trees. This was my chance.
I heard my instructions to them in my head — Keep your eyes on the lights of the airport. Keep running. Don’t stop no matter what. But when I turned back, Reese and Christos and Kate and Diane were all watching me. Behind them some of the other refugees had drifted down around our circle, all of them waiting.
“Cal,” Diane said. “What do we do?”
Bear was on the ground in the center of our group, turned in a ball, his head tucked into his belly. I placed my palm on his back and felt his warmth move through me.
“You follow me.”
Bear and I sprinted up the hill toward the road. Kate and Reese were behind me, followed by Diane and Christos. The other refugees were spread out below us, like links in a chain. Two or three at a time, spaced thirty seconds apart.
The hillside was a slurry of mud and debris that sent all of us down into the muck every few feet. Each time, though, we dug in and got back up and kept running, focusing on the lights of the airport and trying to ignore the sounds of the valley being ripped apart behind us.
I hit the road and made it halfway up before I was stopped by a roadblock of Humvees. They raised their weapons and shouted, but we darted off the track and back into the trees. An instant later I heard the swoop of a helicopter, and the roadblock was obliterated. The shock wave sent me into the mud. Bear dug his snout into my side, urging me up. I pushed him aside and started to move.
“Cal!”
Behind me, Diane and Christos were running up the hill to Reese and Kate. Kate was standing but Reese wasn’t. He was on his back, conscious but moaning and clawing at the mud. When I reached him I saw that his leg was shattered midway down his shin.
“What do we do?” Kate asked, her eyes electric with fear.
“Keep going,” I said and pushed her up the hill. “Christos!”
Christos left Diane and dropped by his friend’s side. Reese was sweating and pale, covered in mud. He gritted his teeth to try to keep from screaming.
“I’ll get his arms,” I said to Christos.“You take his knees.”
“But his leg—”
“Do it!”
Christos hooked his arms under Reese’s knees, and I slipped my elbows beneath his armpits. Reese shrieked as we lifted him, the veins in his neck bulging, his skin going scarlet. It got even worse when we began moving up the uneven ground and I was climbing backward, slipping and stumbling. He screamed until his throat was shredded and then he passed out.
We hobbled up the hill that way until the sky went bright around us. At first I thought it was another explosion, but then I saw my feet move from mud to asphalt. Floodlights were beating down on us. I looked over my shoulder and saw the open gate of the airfield. Kate and Diane had run ahead out onto the tarmac, where a single plane waited. Christos and I made it through the gate and then hit the ground when we couldn’t take another step. Bear rushed to my side, digging his nose into my arm.
He flattened to the ground when a drone shot over the airfield with a scream. It loosed its munitions on the valley. Where they fell, it was like a seam had been ripped into the earth and you could see all the way down to its molten core.
Two of the other refugees came over the lip of the hill at a run and moved Christos and me out of the way as soon as they saw us. They took Reese in their arms and brought him the rest of the way toward the plane. Its engines were spinning now, filling the air with their urgent whine.
Diane returned for Christos and then someone tugged at my arm.
“We have to go!”
Kate’s violet eyes were electric in the floodlights. She knelt down beside me and covered my hand with hers.
I looked over her shoulder at the gleaming white of the jet as the refugees filed inside. I saw myself in one of its seats, strapped in and climbing into the night sky, leaving behind the Path and the Feds forever. It should have made me feel like I was being sprung from a prison, but it didn’t. It was like there was a stake running through my body and deep into the earth and if I tried to leave, I’d be torn apart.