Heartwood Box, page 23
“Later.” I try to play off my extreme reaction as I get to my feet. “Stay away from the timeslips.”
Derek keeps sliding me looks when he thinks I’m not paying attention. I don’t respond as we close on the third device. My freak-out means the scientists have already moved on, but the guards are probably closer behind us.
They’ve planted this damn thing on a small hill in the middle of the water. It’s not deep, but it’s nerve-wracking looking for a solid path in the dark. I’m scared of the sudden drop-off that Logan mentioned, scared of getting sucked in and drowning in this algae-topped water.
“Let’s make a chain,” Tamsyn suggests.
It would be better if we had rope, but we don’t, so we all join hands and pick our way slowly toward the rise. Reptiles and amphibians scatter, bubbling the water around us, and the smell—
My foot slips, and I nearly slide into the water, but Kimala pulls hard, yanking me back toward the rest of them, and they catch me in a messy group grab. I lean for a few seconds, heart racing.
“Okay, let’s keep going.”
“You okay?” Derek asks.
“Eh.” That answer is relative. My legs are trembling, and I almost dropped my backpack. Losing the box means failing this mission and letting Oliver die.
Tamsyn gets us to solid ground at the base of the hill. “We’ll wait here. You two got this?”
Jackson has the shovel; I’ve got the sledge. I glance at him to check, and he nods. “Yeah, we’re good.”
He helps me scramble up the slope, and as I’m about to take out the heartwood box, I see the orange tip of a glowing cigarette. Oh shit, there’s someone here.
Frantic impressions bombard me. Dark clothing, guard, not beta team. What’s he doing here?
The man raises his arm—weapon or radio—I don’t know, but we can’t fail. I rush toward him, and everything else is instinct. With the hammer, I knock whatever he has out of his hand, and then I swing again, as hard as I can, right upside his head. His body goes flying, tumbling down the hill and into the water with an ominous splash.
I … killed him?
It all happened so fast. Jackson is frozen, clutching the shovel as I stumble down the other side of the hill. No sign of the man I bashed. If I knocked him out, he must be drowning.
I can’t breathe. Drowned, neither can he.
Suddenly Jackson is there, hands on my shoulders. “Calm down. I’ve got his radio. Now we can listen to their movements.”
I killed someone to keep him from reporting in. He wasn’t trying to shoot us.
Oh God, now I know how Oliver feels.
46
I can’t even throw up.
It would spatter inside my helmet and make my life a living hell. My stomach feels queasy, but I choke down the bile. I can’t think as Jackson shoves me back up the hill, his gloved palms flat on my back, crinkling the plastic of my suit. I’m not sure the others know what happened yet.
The radio crackles, and Jackson juggles it, nearly dropping it in his startlement. I can see how wide his eyes are through the clear visor.
“Where are you, Charlie Tango? Come back.”
We trade looks as I try to decide if we should risk responding. I gesture at the walkie-talkie. Jackson cocks his head, and I finally shake mine. Better to stay quiet. We don’t know what the guard’s voice sounded like, so we can’t try to match it.
A gusty sigh crackles through the unit. “Keep it up, asshole, and I’m reporting these unauthorized smoke breaks.” A pause—he’s giving his coworker one last chance. “Well, screw you too. This is going in my official sitrep, right to Doc Bruner. Proceeding to the next checkpoint without you.”
Here’s what I know about the man I killed—he was a smoker, known for slacking off. He might have a wife and kids, waiting for him to come home. When I let my thoughts wander that way, I could crack, here and now. Regret and revulsion sweep over me, and I hear the dull thud of the sledge smashing into his skull.
No. I clench my jaw. I can’t do this. Not now, there’s no time. I take a breath, then another. Through sheer will, my nerves settle a little. No matter what, we still have a job to do. Jackson silently turns the radio off, as it will give our location away. He doesn’t need to tell me to get busy.
I pluck out the box and walk a circle atop the hill. It reacts toward the far side, close to where the guard was standing. “Here.”
He nods. The digging takes on a more ominous note this time, as if we’re exhuming the body I sent tumbling into the bog, but Jackson doesn’t unearth pale corpse flesh or even dry spindly bones. That’s my imagination going into overdrive, as he drags out the third device. I don’t hand over the sledge this time. It seems more fitting for me to destroy it myself, considering how grim my actions here have been.
“You sure?” he asks.
I nod. “Back up. I’ve got this.”
True, the shaking has settled. I don’t even want to hurl anymore; I’m resolved and numb. I could rationalize what I’ve done tonight—that guard had to know he was working for terrible people—but the truth is, when my fight-or-flight instinct kicked in, sheer impulse drove me forward, reaction, not rational decision. I might even do the exact same thing if I was given time to consider.
I wind up and slam the sledge into the cylinder. Like Jackson, I bash it repeatedly to destroy functionality, but unlike him, I keep swinging until my arms are sore and the thing is only dented bits of broken mental. Part of me expects him to comment because he doesn’t strike me as the patient type, but he only buries the evidence, then heads back down to where the others are waiting.
“The guards are close again,” Kimala says. “What took you so long?”
A glance at Jackson, but he says nothing. It’s up to me, I guess. Well, I won’t lie. “There was a guard slacking off up top. I … took care of him.”
Tamsyn has already turned, but that stops her in her tracks. Her head whips around, and even in this faint light, I can read her shock. “Does that mean—”
“He won’t follow us,” Jackson cuts in. “We’re halfway there, so let’s not stop now.”
Kimala nods. “Fair. We’ll talk later.”
The group is dead silent, though, as we move through the swamp, just the splashing of our feet in shallow water. I can’t stop thinking about the noise the body made as it plopped into the pond. Since we didn’t weigh him down, he’ll surface as the body starts decomposing, releasing buoyant gasses. That means the other guards will find him soon, unless the beta science team stumbles on him first.
Depending on how long he’s in the water, it may be hard to tell why he ended up there. It’s so macabre, but I hope the fish and frogs eat the skin to hide his head wound. If they have to do an autopsy to inspect his skull, establishing cause of death will take longer. I might even hope they’ll be too busy to bother checking into it.
Mechanically, I assist in the search-and-destroy for the one remaining swamp device. We’ve got this down, now, and we don’t run into any more slacking guards. The beta team still seems to have no idea we’re moving in their wake. So far, so good.
“Only one more,” Tamsyn says, with a tired stretch.
We’ve come a long way, pure physical distance, at this point, five miles at least. And there’s a trek ahead of us too. My thighs are burning, and the sun is coming up, fiery yellow and orange with streaks of crimson. I can’t remember the last time I saw a sunrise. Lack of sleep is catching up with me too, as my eyes are blurred and gummy. I can smell myself inside the suit, fear sweat mixed with regular perspiration, and it’s almost as bad as the swamp.
Still, it’s good to be back on dry ground. My shoes are caked in mud, so each step is heavier than when we started out. Hopefully Dr. Perry hasn’t been detained yet. I wonder if they’ll interrogate him when they realize their field generators have been smashed. Bruner may have replacements ready to go, but installation will take time. I’m counting on Dr. Perry to prevent that. We’re on the other side of Fairhaven now, crossing an open field. My nerves are tight, and I think it’s unanimous.
“Are we close?” Derek asks.
The lack of cover is bothering me. I never thought I’d miss the trees, but the shadows may save our lives. I quicken my pace as Tamsyn practically snarls, “You could thank me for getting us this far.”
“Listen,” Derek starts.
But Kimala gives them both a hard look, shutting that shit down before it can escalate. Thankfully we reach the edge of the woods soon after, and the canopy of fall leaves hides us from watchful eyes. Checking the time will only agitate me more, so I don’t get my phone out. This will take however long it takes.
There’s no sign of the beta team as we approach installation six. That bothers me, but maybe they don’t check all the equipment at the same time? Whatever, as long as we complete the smash and scramble, that’s all I need. Jackson rushes us through this removal, and then Tamsyn sets off for the final stop.
So close. Maybe we should check the radio? Nah, safer to leave it off. It might have a tracking device embedded in it. So I don’t say anything as we creep through the woods. Tamsyn silently signals a ghost light, and we all drop to the ground, quiet as death until the timeslip rolls by. The routine feels almost normal now—I scan with the box and Jackson works with shovel and sledge.
We did it.
Maybe it’s because we’re all so damn tired, but nobody hears the engines until they’re almost on top of us. Guards in black uniforms burst into view, bounding over rough terrain on ATVs. They’re shouting orders, and we don’t have an escape plan. Those are real weapons, live rounds slamming into the ground behind me. I dive behind a tree, tearing at my hazmat suit. This thing has served its purpose and will only slow me down.
“Scatter!” I shout.
Then I run for my life.
47
Bullets pepper the trees behind me, sending up a spray of splinters.
The others don’t waste any breath on a response, and besides, anything we say could be used against us. We can rally later, scrub away all traces of the mission, and regroup in chat.
I hope we’re all fit enough.
Men are shouting in a mixture of German and English, commands for us to stop and surrender. Yeah, that’s not happening. They’re using automatic weapons, good for nothing but efficient slaughter. Dark camo fatigues, military berets. Bruner has damn special forces patrolling these woods.
“The one in the black hat is getting away! Break west!”
Black hat, that’s Tamsyn. I can’t stop to see how everyone else is doing, but I hear someone rushing up behind me and closing fast. Must be one of us, if they’re not riding an all-terrain vehicle. Risking a backward glance, I see Jackson sprinting as hard as he can. Didn’t he hear me? Sticking together isn’t smart. It’ll make it easier for them to run us down, and they have ATVs.
This time, I can’t count on Dr. Perry pulling me into his hunting blind, and there’s no tree house to hide in either, just an endless stretch of trees. Dry branches snatch at the tatters of my suit, but it doesn’t matter if it rips further. I’ll leave slashes of plastic all along my path and call it a good sacrifice, as long as I get away.
“Jackson, don’t! I’ll be fine. You should save yourself.”
Maybe he’s not sticking with me to help; possibly we chose the same direction and he’s dodging bullets, same as me. I note movement in my peripheral vision, an ATV tracking us through the trees, about twenty meters behind, gaining fast. Soon they’ll be able to peg us like the assholes who shoot “hunting” videos, taking down deer from a moving vehicle. I never wondered what a fleeing animal feels like. Now I know.
“Stand down! You will be taken alive if you don’t resist.”
Sure we will.
I’m sure Dr. Bruner has questions, and she won’t kill us until she gets satisfactory answers. She’ll want us to name who we’re working with, for starters. She suspects Dr. Perry, but she doesn’t know for a fact that he’s behind our actions today. There might be other moles or dissenters to root out.
We can’t let them take us.
None of us can withstand a painful interrogation. We’re not spies or soldiers. I wanted to do this, and I convinced everyone else, and now—I can’t breathe, the fear is so intense. I snatch glimpses of the guards getting closer, closer. Their ATVs are too damn fast, and they’re confident on them.
My heart thunders in my ears as more bullets spray the area. I get stung on a ricochet and a sharp pain slices across my calf. Shit, it hurts. My speed drops, and I wave Jackson on. He hesitates, and in that split second, they unload with another furious burst. He takes a shot to the gut, presses his hand to his stomach, and stares at it openmouthed when it comes away red.
I know it’s too late—I know that—but I can’t leave him. Limping toward him at top speed, I try to catch him when his knees buckle, but I’m not strong enough. The momentum of his body topples me backward, and we go tumbling down a wooded slope, slamming against hidden rocks and fallen branches. I come to a stop at the bottom of a crevice too big to be called a ditch, smaller than a ravine, and spot a small opening, overhung with roots and leafy weeds. With all my might, I haul Jackson toward the grotto, likely some animal’s burrow, and then hide us with a pile of sticks, dirt, and fallen leaves.
There’s no way I can carry him to safety with the guards nearby. They’ll come looking, and the best I can do is keep us safe until they give up. Or find us. Shivers wrack me from head to toe, and this narrow space reeks of copper: my blood and his. Jackson reaches for me with bloodstained hands—wait, no, he’s trying to get his helmet off. I yank the tape that seals the suit together, and he gulps in deep, gurgling breaths. That sounds bad. He needs a hospital, now, but we won’t make it unless I’m clever and careful.
“Araceli…”
This time, I’m not mistaken. He reaches for my hand, and his is so cold, scary cold. The light’s dim in here, shaded by the underside of a great tree growing into the hillside, but I can tell he’s far too pale. Hiding won’t help. I have to make a move, or I’ll lose him, but my mind is blank. What am I supposed to do against trained guards equipped with automatic rifles? I won’t get lucky again like I did in the swamp, and besides, Derek has the sledge, my weapon of choice.
I hear them now. They must’ve ridden the ATVs down, and they’re scouring the area for us. Footsteps crunch over dead leaves, the heavy tread of those who have no doubt they’ve got you outnumbered and outgunned.
“I know they came this way.” German accent, curt delivery.
“I’m looking.” Local help, impatient with being bossed around.
Did we leave a blood trail? Maybe I can ambush them from behind, grab a weapon and take out the other one, then load Jackson on the vehicle. If we get out of the woods quick enough, maybe a doctor can save him. I can even picture myself doing those things, action-movie style, but I’m quivering when I crawl toward the exit.
I’m probably going to die.
A weak hand snags my ankle just as I’m about to exit the overhang. I try to pull free, but Jackson has me in a death grip. Literally. “Don’t do it,” he breathes. “They’ll kill you.”
“You’ll die if I don’t try!” Keeping my voice soft doesn’t diminish any of my anguish. First Logan, now Jackson? No. I can’t just hide if there’s any chance of saving him.
His fingers tighten, digging into my ankle bone. “This is a bad risk. Stay still. You can make it out if…” Jackson releases me on a sudden intake of breath, and he bites down on a stick to muffle his cries.
“Please don’t ask me to watch you die.” I’m begging.
This can’t be real. None of it is. Please let this be an uncommonly vivid dream. I want to wake up in my bed.
I even try pinching myself, but it doesn’t help. The scene remains static—dying boy collapsing in my arms. Jackson’s head falls against my shoulder, so to leave, I’d have to drop him, and I can’t do that either.
I’m in hell. This is hell.
His voice comes out liquid with blood and breathy from his struggle for air. “When you find Eunsoo … tell her that I was thinking of her at the end.”
“Don’t talk like that. You’ll be fine.” Even I don’t believe what I’m saying.
Jackson gives me a sad smile, his teeth stained with blood. “Funny, my grandma’s here. I really … didn’t expect to die like this.”
He goes limp in my arms then, and I try, I try my best, but I’m only playing at CPR. I don’t know what I’m doing. His heartbeat doesn’t return when I press on his chest, and my mouth on his is only a heartbreaking goodbye kiss as the last of his breath trickles out. I tilt my head against his, silent tears scalding my scratched cheeks.
Jackson’s blood is all over the soil and the stones, staining my hands and the suits he made to protect us.
48
I don’t know how long I crouch in that cave.
The men are still scouring the area, but I don’t hear them right outside anymore. This might be my only chance to escape. I hate leaving Jackson’s body here, but I can’t transport him. Not now. I’ll have to come back later, once I make it out.
That’s what I’ll do.
It still doesn’t feel right, but my choices are bad and terrible. With a heavy heart, I crawl toward the front of the overhang and peer out through the detritus I raked up, checking for the guards. I don’t see anyone, but there’s an ATV right in front of me. I’ve never driven one, but it can’t be too much different than a car.
Before I make a conscious decision, I take off, running toward the vehicle as fast as I can, considering my injured calf. Okay, it’s different than a car, no pedals, but it has a throttle like a motorcycle, and I’m not sure where the brakes are. I don’t have time to study the controls. The guards will be back soon. I start it up, and the engine noise draws the guards, who are searching the trees behind me.
“There’s one of them! Stop her, any means necessary!” The raw fury of that command sends a chill down my spine.
