Wiping my sweaty palms on my shirt, I grab my pack’s frame. I know running for it is a better idea than waiting for the truck to drive away and leave us exposed, but my hands shake at the thought of leaving cover for the open ground between us and that ditch. Nothing to shield me from the Red checkpoint but a trailer and an old doctor pulling nails from a box one by one.
But even worse, leaving this last bit of civilization for . . . Outside. With Kamari soldiers bent on finishing the invasion they started so many years ago and Wood Rats gnawing on the remains they leave behind.
I clench my jaw and roll out from underneath the trailer into a crouch. As I slither through the dead grass toward the ditch, Dr. Yang’s curses and banging equipment cover the noisy crackle of grass under my hands and knees.
When I get to the trench, I slide over the edge and fall onto something soft. The bank sinks into the ground much deeper than I expected, about seven or eight feet down and three or four wide. Howl’s pack slips over the edge, narrowly missing my head. He follows, landing in a crouch beside me.
He grabs his pack and starts to walk, picking his way through the rocks and exposed roots. I bend to grab my things, but lurch backward the moment I set eyes on the ground. The “something” I landed on is actually a someone.
Bloated lips and cheeks distort the face in a gruesome mockery of a person who once lived and breathed. I stumble off the body, clapping both hands over my mouth to keep the gasping retch boiling in my throat from bursting out.
Howl doubles back when he realizes I’m not following. My pack lies next to the dead man, touching his muddy jacket and shirt, which have been ripped open by my boots. Broken and decaying flesh spill out from the jagged tears. Three ribs jut out of his side, writhing with insects. A dark brownish red stains the ground all around the corpse.
Howl grabs the metal frame of my pack and shoves me in front of him, herding me away from the body. Tripping over each step, I run.
When Howl catches up with me, he puts a finger to his lips, pointing up. I know they might hear us, but I can’t make myself move any more slowly away from the body. I point back to make sure he saw it, wondering how he can be so calm. He just shrugs and whispers, “It doesn’t matter. We have to get away from here.”
The smell will never wash off my boots. Or hands. I can feel it sinking into me, burrowing under my skin and drilling into my bones. I can’t let myself think about the man on the ground. How my feet dug into him. His ribs breaking like twigs under my feet.
We walk until darkness begins to fall in waves around us. Every ten yards or more we find another body, sometimes more than one. I can’t look at them, giving each as wide a berth as the ditch will allow.
Howl touches my arm, pointing to the stunted, bowed trees lining both sides of our trench. “I’m going to climb up and take a look around,” he whispers, fumbling to unfasten the pack’s clasps across his chest and hips. “You okay?”
I shrug, not sure how to answer.
“How are your ribs doing? They hurting?”
My ribs have been complaining the whole way, even though more doses of Da’ard have made it possible for me to move without wanting to extract my ribs and leave them behind. There isn’t much more we can do about it. “I’ll survive.”
Howl props the pack up against the dirt wall, running his fingers over the crumbly surface before he starts to climb. Watching him scale the eight-foot wall leaves me a little unsettled. How is it that a boy slated for laboratories and test tubes can climb like that? Most of the Firsts I came in contact with were much more inclined to watch than do.
Pausing at the top, Howl peers over the lip before hoisting himself up. I can hear him crawling through the scrub, each dry leaf crumbling under his boots sending alarm signals down the mountain.
His head pops back over the edge. “I don’t see anyone, and we’re in a good spot to make a break for better cover, but we’ll have to be quick. Hand up your pack.”
I slide the bulky frame up the wall until he can reach the pack to pull it over the edge. After I hand off the second pack, I climb before he can come back, throbbing ribs screaming each time I reach up. I force myself to keep climbing, pulling myself higher and higher until Howl’s hand reaches out to grasp mine and haul me out of the ditch. Out of breath, I curl up on the ground around the pain, breathing in and out slowly.
Howl drags our bags into the scraggly cover and waits, as if he’s not quite sure what to do. Finally, he kneels next to me and leans over, whispering, “I know it must hurt, but we’ve got to get off the road. Can I carry you?”
I roll over and raise myself to a crawl, going a few feet into the weeds next to the ditch before Howl lifts me to a hunching walk across the road. But as soon as we leave the road’s clean slice into the mountainside, the hill is steep, and my feet slide with each step. Howl straps his pack on and drags mine behind him, half propping me up with his other arm until we come to a flatter portion of ground.
“So, what’s the plan, Howl?” I finally ask, attempting to stand up straight. My whole side seems stuffed to capacity with jagged edges and points, a firestorm of pain that leaks out through my skin in a cold sweat.
“Get farther away from the road. Find a place to camp tonight near the river. Dr. Yang got us past most of the farms below the City, but there’s still a ways to go before we’re off City patrol circuits.” He looks at the glowing horizon, the sun already halfway gone. “I think we’ve got about an hour until full dark. Let’s see how far we can go.”
“Go . . . where? We lost our guide. What about Dr. Yang?” I voice the question both of us must have been thinking.
“Dr. Yang can take care of himself.” Howl starts to walk again.
“Yes, but can we?”
Howl holds a branch back to let me pass. “He knows where we got off and will be in contact with help as soon as possible. I can’t think that our trail will be difficult to follow for Reds or Outsiders. It will just be a matter of who finds us first.”
I shiver at his words, pain blocking my capacity to ask for more. What kind of help could Dr. Yang bring?
The mud on the ground is crusted with ice, footprints of men and women long gone still preserved in sharp ridges that crunch under my feet. Scrubby trees give us a little cover until we make it to where the true forest starts. Before we descend into the trees, I look up at the terraced rice paddies beneath the City, hundreds of sinuously curving steps cut into the mountainside. My last look at home.
A white-water rush of river flows down between us and the farms, and we stay low until the trees twist and curve over us like ancient umbrellas, some wide enough that it would take four or five people holding hands to completely encircle. Even the closely cultivated orchards in the People’s Garden look like malnourished children compared to these giants.
When the last touches of sunset are smothered by night, Howl drops his pack under a tree that twists around itself like a girl’s long braid, the naked branches spreading out over the wide spot in the river. The dead man’s touch still itches away at me, sending me over to the water, the current much slower here than up by the farm. I pull off my boots and set them in the rocks at the edge, where the water can run over them but won’t wash them away. Stepping in leaves me gasping for breath, the freezing water stealing the last bits of heat still left inside me.
I grit my teeth and kneel on the riverbank, determined not to leave any trace of the dead man from the ditch on me. Submerging my hands and splashing water on my face isn’t enough, so I start scrubbing with sand from the bank. Howl’s hand appears in front of my face, holding a bar of soap. He crouches next to me in the water, cupping his hands to splash water through his hair and across his face.
I scour my hands, wishing I were brave enough to go after my hair. The dead stench will never come out, will follow me everywhere I go. The cake of soap is thin enough that after one use, it’s almost gone. I set it next to me in the rocks.
“Never seen a dead body before?” Howl’s voice echoes loudly against the quiet that blankets the forest.