“Come on,” Kate said. “It’s over.”
Her hand slipped from mine as I backed away. Kate called out to me but I had already turned and started running. Bear’s claws scrabbled against the tarmac behind me, racing to keep up. I heard Kate’s voice one last time as we ran through the gate and turned east toward a patch of trees where the land dipped down into the valley. We hit the edge of it just as another bombing run completed out in the valley. The ground shook and my foot hit thin air, sending me tumbling down the embankment.
Rocks and twigs raked my arms and back as Bear and I went spinning down the face of the hill. We hit the bottom with a jolt and rolled into a thin stream of icy water. I lay there buzzing and numb, holding my breath against the rush of pain I knew was coming.
Far above me, there was a swell of engines, loud even over the sounds of the battle, and then the jet’s running lights appeared as it strained against gravity and rose into the sky. Trails of tracer fire chased it but they fell short. In seconds the jet was swallowed up by the dark.
I imagined all of them looking down at fires in the valley and then the snaking lights of the evacuees on the highway, relieved to see them grow smaller and fade away. I wondered how cold that relief would feel when they looked back and saw the place where Alec was meant to sit.
There was a whimper behind me and I turned to find Bear lying in the water, dazed and still.
“Bear?”
I crawled across the ground, grimacing from the pain, and reached out for him. Bear’s teeth flashed as he snapped at my finger.
“Hey. It’s me.”
Bear kicked himself back into the muck near the stream, coiling up and eyeing me warily. He growled when I went for him again, so I held up my hands and eased back onto my knees to examine him from a distance.
“Shhh. Shhhhh.”
There was a shallow gash on his belly and another on his side, but it was one of his front legs that was the real problem. It was bloody from a deep cut that ran nearly its length and the paw was badly swollen. It was the paw he had been avoiding on and off for days. It looked like one of the thin bones just back from his claw had snapped. I looked down the length of the ditch. It had to be a mile or more to the highway.
The fighting was still raging in the valley behind us. We had no choice. I plunged my hands in the scummy water of the ditch and scrubbed the soot and sweat from my face before drinking deep to purge the acid from my throat.
Bear growled steadily as I reached for him. Moving as slow as I could, I got one of my hands on his side and held it there. His fur was hot and his heart was racing. His growl rose in pitch as I moved closer. He snapped again, drawing blood, but I managed to get my hands hooked under his front legs and lift. My wrist throbbed and he yelped in pain but I got him up onto my shoulder, holding him steady and letting him settle as the icy water of the stream coursed around my feet.
When I felt his head fall to my shoulder I held him tight and started moving. I stayed as low as I could, stroking Bear’s back and whispering in his ear as I crept the length of the ditch. We finally came to a place where the water ran into another concrete pipe. I could hear honking horns and idling engines just above us.
I climbed the embankment around the pipe, awkwardly leaning forward so Bear’s weight wouldn’t throw me off balance and send us tumbling backward. He began a steady whine in my ear. The sound of it gutted me. I wanted nothing more than to stop and hold him until it passed, but I kept pushing us on, focused on the highway sounds ahead. A couple feet from the top, I set Bear down and belly-crawled the rest of the way until I could peek between two thin trees.
The highway was choked with a river of cars and trucks stopped dead. Horns and voices blared and miles of brake lights glowed bloodred, from where I stood out to the horizon. Bear stood watching it all, his injured paw held tight to his chest.
“Hey! Over here!”
A rusty Chevy sat a few cars down from us. The passenger-side window was open and a gray-haired woman was leaning out of it and waving us down. Bear lifted his head and then hobbled over to her. When he reached the car, he jumped up on his hind legs and hooked his one good paw over the window. The woman produced a bag of crackers and fed them to him one by one.
“This your puppy?” the old woman asked.
I nodded and dropped down beside Bear. “You know there’s Path just on the other side of those trees.”
“Yep,” she said. “Saw ’em a ways back and they waved us right by. Word is they decided that it was better to hand the Feds a refugee crisis than deal with it themselves. Say one thing about those Pathers — they ain’t dumb!”
She cackled, then turned to the man driving the car and exchanged a few words. Bear moved down the length of the car, sniffing around the backseat where an old mutt was curled up among their things. He lifted his head when he heard Bear and pressed his nose against the glass.
The woman leaned back out the window and waved me over. “Listen,” she said, her voice low. “The rest of these jerks are more than happy to leave people like you behind but we got room and, sorry to say, but you two don’t look so hot. Why don’t you jump in? We’re heading to my sister’s lake house out in Bull Lake, Montana. You guys can snuggle up with Roscoe back there. Rest a few days with us before moving on.”
I shook my head. “We’re heading to New York.”
Bear hopped back to us, and the woman continued to feed him, watching me over his shoulder.
“Not my business,” she said. “But I can’t say I like your chances, son.”
I looked down the miles of road that lay ahead. How many of them could I walk with Bear on my shoulder before we fell over? The woman’s offer made sense — go to Montana, rest, then continue on — but thoughts of Grey Solomon loomed. Surely these people would hit a Path checkpoint eventually. What if they were still looking for an escaped novice traveling with a dog? Did I want to see this woman lying by the side of a road too?
I watched as Bear devoured the food from the woman’s hand. Despite our time at Alec’s house, his ribs still stood out under his coat. He was filthy too, caked with mud and the blood from his injuries. I could only imagine what kind of infection was working itself into him from the filth of that sewer ditch.
Brake lights blinked off and the cars far down the line started to move. I looked back again and Bear was panting happily as the woman rubbed his ears. I felt a suffocating weight pressing down on my chest and imagined that my voice was something separate from me.
“Can you take him?”
The woman stilled Bear with one hand on his shoulder and looked over him at me. “You sure?”
As if he sensed something in the air, Bear came down off the car and limped over to me, pushing his nose into my leg. It took everything in me not to look down at him.
“Got a long way to go yet,” I said, fighting the hitch in my voice, trying to get it out before I stopped to think. “And he’s hurt.”
People behind us started to honk as the cars just ahead of the woman’s began to pull away. She said something to the man at the wheel and then reached behind her to pop the back door.
I threw my arms around Bear’s neck and pulled him close to me. I closed my eyes, burying my face in his side. He yipped and wiggled, his whimper growing sharper and more distressed. The cars ahead moved down the road. The honking grew louder.
“A cabin sounds pretty great,” I whispered into his ear as he squirmed and whined. “It’ll be better. Okay? There’s a long way to go still, and I don’t know if I can take care of you.”