Buck snorted. “I will punch you one of these days.”
Christopher still didn’t smile, but a trace of his old voice returned. “You gotta get across first. I’ve got fifty you don’t make it without dunking like a donut.”
Buck grabbed Ken’s hand and edged out onto the gate. Unlike Christopher, he slid rather than walking, his feet pushing through the water so it didn’t explode but simply sluiced around him.
He couldn’t reach all the way without letting go of Hope or Ken, so he dropped Ken’s hand and walked the last two steps. A bad moment when it looked like he was going to pitch sideways, but Christopher danced his way back out and grabbed his elbow.
“I just gave up fifty bucks for you, old man.”
Buck muttered something under his breath. But he made it to the other side. He passed Hope to Christopher, then reached out over the gate, his longer arm going nearly halfway over.
Ken passed Maggie to him. She was never without contact. She smiled at him as she went.
Then Ken. No one on this side to help him. But he never worried about falling. Not now.
Maggie was still smiling as he stepped onto dry ground.
Then the smile waned. Her face drew tight.
Ken didn’t have to look behind him to know what she saw.
The others were after them.
62
The field beyond the canal smelled like onion.
Ken had seen scallion fields before, but always from the confines of the family car, passing the fields of foot-tall spires in their neat rows that seemed to flip like pages in a book as they drove by.
Now, standing among them, the smell was almost overwhelming. The rain that pounded down made the mud slippery as they ran.
There was nowhere to hide.
The scallions stood only as high as his shins. Clusters of green that sprouted from the dark earth in leafy spike-clusters that whipped past the group as they ran. The field went on for hundreds of yards. Ken wished he and the others were in a corn field, though it was the wrong season for it. Something they could get lost in, could weave around and lose sight of the person – people? – following them.
He had the impulse to drop to the ground. A futile gesture, but one that was nearly overwhelming nonetheless. Like ostrich DNA was built into some central part of him, the need to bury his head in the sand rearing up at the worst possible time.
He forced himself on. But held back at the same time. He could have outpaced the others, especially Maggie and Buck, but they all ran in a tight group. They had been separated once, and none of them were willing to part again.
He risked a glance back.
A huge form leaped across the irrigation canal. Elijah. Either he hadn’t seen the bridge they used to ford the water, or simply hadn’t deigned to use it.
He landed on the other side of the bank. A prodigious jump that probably would have made Ken start clapping in admiration in any other circumstances. Now, though, it just made him feel leaden with fear.
The rain drowned everything in mud. It dragged at their feet. Leeched their speed away.
And, unfortunately for Elijah, it also wore away the bank of the canal. He barely landed before his feet fell out from beneath him. His arms wheeled a single time, a huge pair of circles that seemed like he was trying to take the air. A giant bird that had suddenly and unexpectedly been stripped of its ability to fly.
He fell backward. Dropped out of sight into the canal. Ken saw a single hand raised – a hand that was quickly swept downstream with the current.
The hand disappeared.
This time Ken came even closer to clapping. But he almost stumbled, and that brought him back to the reality of the fact that they were still running for their lives.
Worse, he realized that another form had made it across the gate. Smaller. So surefooted it seemed like he wasn’t balancing but simply walking across the water.
Ken’s group already had a good lead. The rain obscured things.
But there was only one person who moved like that.
Aaron.
63
“Guys,” panted Christopher.
“I see it,” said Ken.
“See what?” said Buck. He glanced back. “Oh.” That was all he said, but the single syllable conveyed a wealth of worry.
Maggie said nothing. Nor did she look back. She would not waste the effort. She was totally zeroed in on the only job that mattered to her: putting one foot in front of the other, adding inch after inch, yard after yard to their flight.
The rain slammed down, then lightened a bit, then pummeled them again. Ken was reminded of sparring matches he’d been in with some of the better fighters. People so good they could toy with him. They pounded him, then backed off long enough for him to regain his breath, then went back on the attack.
Toying with him.