inDIVISIBLE (24 page)

The woman quit singing
, and the couple had long since disappeared. T’s hand began moving again, but his fingers were tight, his mind elsewhere.

“Do you think they’ve come looking for us yet?” I asked.

He nodded.

“You don’t think they’ll look here, do you?”

He nuzzled his head deeper into my hair. “I’m afraid they’ll look everywhere.”

“These people are innocent. We can’t put them in harm
’s way.”

T
pulled me tighter to his side. “The Alliance won’t hurt them like they will us. They prefer to pretend these people don’t exist—for now.”

“What will happen when they come looking?”

“First of all, we’ll be gone.”

“Good.”

“Second, these people like the Alliance about as much as we do. They won’t be cooperative. They’ll protect us.”

“How?”

“By saying nothing.”

“We saw those guys shoot Cray in the back. They
lack compassion.”

His fingers slipped under the hem of my shirt and my skin tingled, making it hard to concentrate. “
You’re right, but they don’t want to stir up these settlements either. They’re not ready to take them over just yet.”

My hand moved to his abs, firm beneath my palm and his strength gave me comfort.
“I don’t want anything bad to happen to them.

“Me neither,” he said. “And I don’t want anything bad happening to you either.”

His free hand trailed up my arm until it met with my shoulder, his fingertips tingling as they moved from my collarbone up my neck, straying to my cheek. His fingers wove around my jaw, entangling in my hair. I looked up. His eyes were slits, his mouth only barely parted. My heart thumped, and I allowed him to pull me closer, just enough to feel his breath on my lips when rotors thumped in the distance.

“They’re coming, T,” I whispered.

He held me there, so close we could feel each other’s pounding hearts. “They’ll wait until morning to search the settlement.”

I moved away so I could see his eyes and asked, “How do you know?”

“The men were talking while you bathed. The Alliance comes by about once a month, searches the buildings, takes some of the fruit … then they leave. As long as the people here are cooperative, nobody get s hurt.”

As long as they’re cooperative?
I thought of Summer and her unborn baby. If they laid a hand on her … “What if they’re not cooperative?”

He pulled away, sat and wrapped his arms around his knees. “They’ve never killed anyone.”

I sat beside him. “Is that supposed to comfort me?”

“I don’t know what it’s supposed to make you feel,” he mumbled. He looked away where a spotlight from the helicopter lit the
cliff-side several miles away. It looked further away than I’d imagined, and I hoped we’d put enough distance in to at least make them wonder where we ‘d gone.

“They’ll know,” I said.

He nodded.

“I hope they don’t hurt any of these people.”

T turned toward me, his face taking on a new energy. “There’s something we can do.”

“What?”

He pulled a gun from his waistband and set it on the ground between us. “I stole this off of one of the officers, the one I cut … I can cause a distraction, buy us some time and hopefully save these people some grief.”

My mouth went dry as I looked down at the gun, thought about all the ways he could use it as a distraction. Did he even know how to use it?

“What are you thinking?” I asked.

“I’m an
Olympic athlete,” he said. “I’m fast.”

I could testify to that.

He pointed toward the helicopter, to the cliff wall on the opposite side of the copter. “If I run for it, I can get on the other side of that helicopter before they stop searching for us tonight. I’ll take a shot at them, draw their attention—”

“Bad plan,” I cut in. “They’ll have bigger guns on that thing. They’ll kill you.”

“It’s dark,” he said.  “And you’ve never actually seen me run.”

“You’ve been running for days.”

He shook his head. “Not really.”

“You’ve hardly been eating.”

“I got filled today.”

“
Listen to me, T. You’re all I’ve got left. Don’t do anything stupid.”

T picked up the gun, placed it back in his waistband
and stood. “Staying here until morning would be stupid.”

“Then what
will you do? Running right back here isn’t going to help.”

He pulled me up and gathered our blankets. Then he motioned for me to stay still while he jogged to
the fruit trees to retrieve a few apples. “I’ll need something for recovery afterward.” He dropped them in the backpack and handed the pack off to me.

“I don’t think we should split up,” I whispered, our feet sounding loud in the now quiet streets.

“We don’t have much choice, not if we’re going to survive,” he said. “And especially not if we’re going to keep these people safe.”

We’d reached the last of the buildings, the ground ahead of us a jumble of shadows and silhouettes
, like stepping into another world. He pointed toward a bulging hillside to our left, several miles into the dark. “There’s an old mineshaft in that hillside. It goes deep and it’s dark, but it will eventually emerge high in the hills. Find it. Follow the tunnels and when you get to the top, walk opposite the North Star. I need you to go directly south.”

I nodded, f
ear creeping into the back of my throat and making it hard to swallow. I’d be hidden while T ran for his life from a helicopter capable of shooting him into oblivion in seconds.

“I’ll find you,” he said.

I took his hand. “Not good enough. Where? Where will you find me? We have to establish a location.”

“We don’t have time,” he said, pulling his hand away and taking me into his arms. “I know where that tunnel comes out. As long as you’re walking south, I can find you. Keep a straight line, but don’t stay near the mineshaft. They’ll be checking areas like that.”

T pulled back, yanked his shirt over his head and handed it to me, then spun and jogged away.

I watched him until he disappeared, his navy shorts blendin
g into the night, his bare back glistening just a little longer. I pulled off the backpack, folded his shirt and slipped it inside. But before I slung it onto my back, I unzipped the pouch where T had stuffed the notebooks and map. He’d opened one of the books to the page with the interpretations, had marked the first checkpoint with a star drawn in pencil—a pencil he must have borrowed while I bathed.

Next to the star, he’d written a note, but the clouds over the moon
obscured the light too much to make it out. I slipped them back into the pack and pushed my arms through the straps.

I no longer heard his footsteps. I no longer saw his back.

I’d never been so alone.

CHAPTER 28

There was no trail to the mineshaft, or at least I didn’t find one until I got within five feet of its entrance. By then I’d already tripped over a dozen stones and kicked at least one cactus, my toes still stinging from the barbs I’d torn free. I eased onto the trail, a thin, spindly thing that barely cut through the sage and stones that had been hauled from the deep recesses of the hillside.

The shaft gaped open as I neared, a sandy hole supported by rotten beams of wood. One side of the support structure had already collapsed, proving its construction could not stand the test of time. I braced myself on one of the support beams and pulled my shoe off, peeled away my sock and cringed as another barb ripped free of my big toe. The stinging that replaced it hurt worse than the barb
, and I wondered if I should just leave the others intact. I reached down, found half a dozen more imbedded into my other toes and made them bleed as I ripped out the rest of the cactus. I felt my sock for anything sharp before pulling it back over my foot, my toes on fire.

I picked up my shoe and paused, scanning the horizon for any signs of movement. Other than the swaying of a couple of junipers, the desert lay still. Further out, the rotors beat faintly, almost imperceptible
, and I prayed T had made it across the valley. There’d been no gunshots, at least that I’d heard, and I was sure they’d be noticeable even over the thumping of the blades. How long had I taken to get here anyway? I assumed at least an hour. Had that given T time to make it to the other side, where he’d create his distraction? He said he was fast but so much time had passed … maybe the gun didn’t fire as loud as I imagined. Maybe the boom had gotten lost in the distance.

I couldn’t see the searchlight from my position, which meant they wouldn’t see me, and I wanted to keep it that way. I jerked my shoe on, wiggled my toes into place and tied the laces.
Ducking under the beams, I entered blackness like I’d never imagined and I stopped, my hands reaching out to touch the cool walls and spider webs.

A chill wind blew inside the shaft and
goose bumps prickled across my skin. I wrapped my arms around my torso and took a deep breath.

How are you T?
I wondered.

I ducked back out into the moonlight, one more searching gaze along the horizon before I plunged ahead.
Please, T, be safe …

I ducked back inside as a dozen rounds
erupted from the helicopter to the valley floor below. I fell back, into the wooden beam. The light now flickered across the ground miles away—right to left. They wouldn’t stop until they found him, and what would I do without him?

Another burst of gunfire scattered across the valley
, and I jumped, rushing back into the tunnel. I’d go like he said, and I’d wait for him, somewhere to the south. That’s where he’d find me. I just had to believe it.

CHAPTER 29

I’d never been inside a mine before, and even as I walked deeper into the recesses, I realized I’d probably never see one either. I did know that the ground contained divots and rises, the walls consisted of jagged stones designed to pulverize intruders and the ceiling did not like the idea of staying contained behind whatever wood remained to hold it in place. I knew this because the earth groaned to break free while the wood splintered and creaked as if complying. I wanted a light, any kind of light … anything to help me see what lie ahead, what beckoned in the dark.

I tried walking through the middle of the tunnel, but couldn’t tell which direction to travel and ran into the wall. It seemed safer to have that wall to guide me so I trailed my fingers along it as I moved deeper into the moaning abyss. Each ste
p echoed with creaking, each crack precluded clattering. I rushed my steps to stay ahead of a collapse that would make this space my coffin and tried to push out the taste of dust raised in the battle for support versus destruction.

Even as I hurried, I cringed at what crept along the walls, what critters I’d displace while running my hands
through their homes. The webs grew thick. The sticky and stringy webs clung to my wrists, fingers and forearms, the tingling of real or imagined spiders creeping up my arms and along my spine. I tried to shake off the feeling when I plowed through another web, this time the strands stretching from one side of the mine to the other so as to leave a film across my entire forehead. I scraped it away and smashed a spider attempting to hide in my hair before I squatted down, pulled my hair over my shoulder and braided it. I tied it off with a strip I ripped from the hem of my shirt and flung the braid over my back.

I didn’t dare breathe through my mouth, afraid something may crawl into it
, and the idea of eating a living creature made me just as nauseous as the creaking above. I hesitated. Would I really be safer sneaking through this cavern or should I escape now and hike around? With gunshots, the helicopter would stay on the other side of the valley, wouldn’t it? Maybe tonight. But what about tomorrow? Clambering up shale and dirt would leave a trail I couldn’t hope to hide. From the air tomorrow, it would be as good as leaving a note telling them where to find me.

Still, I looked back.
I could no longer see that scab of blue where the mine opened to the valley floor. I could see only black in every direction and knew that to take my hand from the wall now would be suicide. I could wander in this tunnel until I died if I got disoriented. I blinked to rehydrate my eyes and mentally focused on the trail ahead.

Something scurried to my right
, and I flinched, afraid to jump to the side or back up because I couldn’t tell where the greatest threat waited. It squeaked and I pushed forward, imagining the critter scrambling over my toes—my stinging, aching toes—or maybe even crawling up my pant leg.