Silas (18 page)

“
No,” said Christa. “That
doesn’t have to be true. If you survived this, maybe they’d let you
go. This has got to be punishment enough, doesn’t it?”

I spoke up. “When we get out
of this, we don’t even have to go to the authorities, you know. You
two can go off on your own if you want. I don’t see why we have to
turn you back in.”

Emmett was ripping the
sleeve off of his flannel. “But then no one will know about what
Rolf’s doing. He’ll be free to do it again and again.”

“
He won’t do it again,” I
said.

“
Why not?” said
Milo.

“
Because I’m going to kill
him,” I said.

* * *

We walked towards the power
lines. It was slow going, mostly because of Milo, who
didn
’t have much energy and was in a lot of
pain. He could barely keep the pace.

More than once, I thought that we
should leave him behind.

He was right when he said he was going
to die. That was no reason to get the rest of us killed as
well.

But I didn’t say anything
out loud about it, because I thought of the way Christa acted last
night when I confessed that killing didn’t bother me. If she was so
appalled by that idea, what would she think of me if I suggested
leaving a wounded man to die?

She’d hate that.

Not that she wasn’t
confusing as hell, trying to grope me last night.

Normally, a girl would not be all up on
my dick in a situation like this. It was weird. It was kind of
disturbing.

Still, she was kind of
right.

I did want her, and if we
weren’t out here in danger, I probably would have let her touch
me.

Thinking about that made me feel a
little bit aroused.

Damn it. I needed to stop thinking
about that.

I put it out of my head,
focusing on Milo. I helped him along, letting him lean against me
while we walked.

He was quiet. His face had
turned an unnatural shade of white. His lips had lost almost all of
their color. The only noise he made was an occasional moaning
sound. It wasn’t loud, and it wasn’t in protest. It was almost
involuntary, as if the pain was simply too much for him.

Milo and I went first. Christa and
Emmett went behind us.

We walked.

And walked.

And walked.

Periodically, we stopped to
rest. Mostly for Milo. The rest of us could probably have quickened
the pace and gone much longer without stopping. But, even though
Milo didn’t say anything, we could all tell he needed the
breaks.

On one of our little rest
stops, Emmett found some nuts growing on one of the trees. He and
Christa busied themselves with picking as many as they could.
Emmett said it would be a good idea for us to have a store of food
for when we couldn’t catch or kill anything.

I helped Milo eat a few of
the nuts. He couldn’t get the shells off without
assistance.

I plucked some of the meat
of the nut out and put it in the palm of his good hand.

“
Thanks,” he said, stuffing
it into his mouth.

Bang
.

The shot whizzed past me and
burrowed itself in Milo’s stomach.

He screamed.

Blood burst out of the
wound.

I dropped the nut I was
holding.

“
What was that?” Christa.
She was coming back towards us, her hands full of nuts.

“
Run!” I shrieked at
her.

She gave me a confused look.

“
Run!
”

I scooped up Milo, so that I was
practically carrying him.

He was making a funny
gurgling noise. I could feel his hot blood spilling onto me,
soaking through my shirt.

Christa took off into the
underbrush. The nuts she’d been carrying scattered
everywhere.

I was right behind her.

I could see that Emmett was ahead of
us, also running.

We followed him.

The forest reached out to grab at us,
the landscape careening into our faces and limbs. We tore through
it, fast as possible, running half blind through the
undergrowth.

There was the sound of more shots
behind us.

I clutched Milo closer and
dove underneath a low hanging branch.

In the distance, whoops and
laughter. “Got ‘em on the run now!” yelled a male voice.

Fuck them for having fun
while this was happening. I was holding a bleeding man. He was
choking out his last moments as we rushed through the woods. They
were laughing about it.

Ahead of us, another noise.

Water. Rushing.

Then I noticed a bright spot ahead. The
woods cleared up there, and the sun was pounding through, lighting
up the leaves.

Emmett lurched to a stop.

I nearly collided with
Christa trying to get stopped behind them.

We were at the edge of a
waterfall.

The clearing in the woods
allowed a rush of water to cascade down over a set of rocks—white,
frothing, bubbling water. The water was about five feet across. It
wasn’t a raging river by any stretch of the imagination, but it
also wasn’t so small that we could leap it.

It was a barrier.

The hunters were behind us.

The waterfall was ahead of
us.

Emmett turned back to look
at me, his eyes wide, his hair plastered to his forehead with
sweat.

CHAPTER TWELVE

“
They shot Milo?” said
Emmett. He was winded.

I nodded.

“
Again,” said Milo. “They’re
trying to finish me off.”

“
You’re going to be fine,”
said Christa. She gave him a fierce look. She turned to Emmett. “We
have to jump.”

I peered down the waterfall. It was at
least a two-story drop, and I seriously doubted that the water was
deep down at the bottom.

Well…

On second glance, maybe it
did sort of gather in a pool down there. But I didn’t know if that
meant anything at all. If this was the same stream that I’d been
fishing in, it was really shallow. I could stand up in it, and it
only reached my knees.

I shook my head. “No way,
Christa.”

“
We can’t stand here talking
about it.” She turned back to the waterfall.

“
Wait,” I said.

But she didn’t listen. She
just leaped over the edge of the cliff, feet first.

I held my breath.

Down, down, down she fell, the white
water falling right next to her.

And then she splashed into the pool
below.

I waited for her to
resurface.

And waited.

She didn’t.

Another gun shot. It whizzed over our
heads. I could feel the disturbance in the air.

Emmett and I both ducked
instinctively.

Then I looked back down at the
pool.

Still no Christa.

Emmett cast a glance back
the way we’d come. “Well, they’re coming.” And he jumped over the
side of the cliff too.

Milo disentangled himself from me and
stumbled towards the edge.

“
Wait,” I said. “We can’t
know if—”

He hurled himself over.

I watched them both fall.

I watched the water swallow them
up.

Christa still hadn’t
resurfaced.

Neither had the others.

A voice in the distance.
“Shoot ‘em all!”

I jumped too.

My stomach tangled up with my throat as
I fell, hurtling down towards the water.

The pool at the bottom
rushed up at me. Closer. Closer. Close—

I plunged down into icy
water.

I braced myself to hit the
bottom, for my bones to crunch so badly that I was trapped and
couldn’t swim.

But I didn’t hit the
bottom.

Instead, I kept going down. Further and
further.

How deep was this
pool?

I kept sinking, cutting
through the water quickly because I’d fallen from so
high.

I struggled to stop my
movement, to swim back up, but I had nothing to push off of,
nothing to grab onto. All I could do was thrash ineffectually in
the water, hoping that my frantic attempts to swim upwards would
slow me down.

If I kept going down too
far, I’d run out of breath.

I was in fairly good shape,
but I didn’t often practice holding my breath. Swimming wasn’t one
of my exercise activities, just something I did in the summer for
fun. I wasn’t sure how long I could hold my breath. I remembered
once—when I was a kid—Sloane and I playing a game where we timed
each other to see who could hold their breath for longer. She
always won.

I redoubled my
efforts.

I thought that I’d stopped
going down.

I thought.

Wasn’t there a thing that
could happen to you underwater where you’d get confused about which
way was up and which way was down?

Or did that only happen in the ocean
when you were scuba diving or something?

I knew which way was up.

I’d gone into the water feet
first. My feet were pointing down.

My head was pointing up.

Okay, my lungs were starting
to niggle me. I needed to breathe. It wasn’t absolutely imperative
yet, but it was going to be.

I kicked my legs and used my arms to
stroke through the water, propelling myself upwards.

I moved, but much more
slowly than I’d fallen.

Still, I persevered, kicking my way
towards the surface.

My lungs started to protest.

My body started to get
tired.

My lungs started to scream.

And then, finally, I
resurfaced.

Christa, Milo, and Emmett were all
already paddling in the water, all out of breath.

I looked up to the top of
the waterfall. I couldn’t even see the woods from here.

“
They won’t be able to see
us down here if we stay close to the falls,” wheezed
Emmett.

“
Oh,” I said.
“Good.”

“
Nice move, Christa,” said
Emmett, smiling at her.

Wearily, she smiled back.

* * *

I wrenched Milo up onto the
shore of the stream. About twenty feet from the waterfall and the
deep pool we
’d fallen into, it got
relatively shallow again. I’d been holding Milo up for the past
half hour or so, because he barely had the strength to keep himself
afloat.

I hoisted him onto dry land.

He winced.

He was bleeding pretty bad.

I hauled myself out of the
stream.

“
You’re going to have to
leave me behind,” said Milo.

“
No, we’re not leaving you.”
I looked up at Christa, seeking her approval.

She nodded in agreement.
“You’re coming with us. We’re going to get to the power lines, and
we’re going to get help. And then you’re going to be just
fine.”

Milo tried to laugh, but he
ended up coughing instead. His wound pulsed out crimson blood as
his stomach contracted.

“
Hey,” I said. “Take it
easy.”

“
I’m not going to be okay,”
said Milo in a small voice. “It’s a matter of hours for me. I’m
only going to slow you down.”

I happened to agree with
him.

But Christa knelt down next
to him, shaking her head furiously.

And the look on her face let
me know that there was no way she would ever agree to leaving him
behind. So I wasn’t going to say that he was probably
right.

“
Who cares if we’re slow,”
said Christa. “We’re not leaving you behind.”

“
They’ll get all of you
too,” said Milo. “And I don’t want them to hurt you, Christa.
You’ve been nice to me. And you got Silas looking after you. You
got a real chance of getting out of this alive. I don’t want to
mess that up for you.”

She squeezed his hand. “You
won’t. Don’t talk like that. You’re going to be okay, Milo. Once we
get to a hospital—”

“
You don’t have to lie to
me,” said Milo. “I know what’s happening. I can feel
it.”

Emmett was trudging away
from the stream, into the woods. “You guys coming?” he threw over
his shoulder.

Together, Christa and I helped Milo to
his feet.

We started after Emmett.