55
Jacob held the dead phone in his hand. For a moment he could hardly process what he had heard, he was so paralyzed with terror and confusion. He had given them the address. They would release his parents. That’s all he could think about for a moment: that they would now let his parents go.
“I heard everything,” said Dorothy. “They’ll be here in five minutes. You’ve got to get out now.”
“Who are they?”
“They’re the traders I told you about. They tracked me down.” She spoke calmly. “This is all my fault, another terrible mistake I’ve made. Do just what your father said: put on your jacket, go out that door, and head into the hills. Run. Just keep going, staying away from any roads or trails. Go as far as you can and then hide.”
“What about you?”
“I’m staying here, of course.”
“I can’t leave you here.”
“You’ve got to. They want me, not you. Once they have me, you and your family will be safe.”
“No. I’m taking you with me.”
“Absolutely not!”
“Try and stop me.”
Dorothy swung around and started to run away, a jerky movement, her arms flailing to keep her upright. Jacob lunged at her, but she managed to skip to one side, dodging him, and ran down the hall toward the kitchen, like a clumsy toddler. He got up and ran after her, but before he reached her she tripped over a doorsill and fell down headfirst, with a big clunk.
Jacob grabbed her.
She flapped her arms. “No! Stop! This is a terrible mistake!” She struggled, thrashing around, hitting him with her hands. But the robot was weak, and the servomotors in her arms whined ineffectually when he pinned her. He carried her, protesting, back into the living room, laid her down on his blanket, and began rolling her up.
“Stop! Please! Listen to me!”
Her voice became muffled as he finished swaddling her and tucked her under his arm, gripping her hard.
“They’ll kill you!” she cried.
“Not if they can’t find me,” he said.
From the living room window, Jacob could already see a pair of headlights tearing up Digges Canyon Road. They vanished momentarily behind some trees and reappeared, turning in at the long driveway to the house. He grabbed his backpack with his other hand, threw the flashlight into it, slung it over one shoulder, and went out the back door with the robot bundled under his arm. She was still making muffled sounds of protest. As he exited, the rain and a chilly wind hit him in the face. A dark, grassy ridge rose up behind the house, where, in past years, before his accident, he and Sully had run and played. He ran up it, his legs churning through the soaking grass, the rain splattering on him. Almost immediately his bad foot began to hurt. He paused for a moment, but the car now appeared at the end of the driveway, pulling into the turnaround. As it did so, the headlights swept across him, illuminating him up on the ridge.
He turned and continued running uphill, stumbling in the heavy, wet grass, heaving with the effort. He could feel Dorothy wriggling in the blanket, making muffled protests.
“Shut up and quit that!”
She shut up. Gasping for breath, his foot lanced with pain, he reached the top of the ridge and glanced back. The car had now pulled up to the house. He heard a shout and saw two men with flashlights running out the back door, the screen door banging shut, the beams playing on him as they began pursuing him up the ridge.
He spun around and stared down the brushy slopes into the blackness of the draws on the other side. He knew the area well. Those little valleys all led down to Locks Creek and the flower and pumpkin farms down there. That would be a good place to hide. That was where he had to go. He plunged down the far side of the ridge, in his panic slipping and falling in the wet grass. The blanket with the robot went flying, flew open, the robot tumbling out. She tottered to her feet. Jacob sat up, temporarily dazed.
“You’ve got to leave me here!” Dorothy shouted.
“I told you to shut up.” Jacob grabbed the robot and bundled her back up in the blanket while she continued to yell. He lurched to his feet and continued half-running, half-slipping down the hill, trying to keep the weight off his bad foot. About a hundred yards away stood a dark line of trees. If he could reach the trees before the men came over the ridge, he might just lose them. If he could only get over the second bare ridge, he would be on Locks Creek itself. Past the old hop kilns was a large flower farm with greenhouses, barns, and a million places to hide. If he could only reach it.
He heard another shout, turned, and saw flashlights up on the ridge. A beam of light swept past him, snapped back on him, and there was a sudden, loud crack! He dove to the ground and rolled, still clutching the blanket-wrapped robot. They were shooting at him. The reality sank in hard: they really were going to kill him.
He lay in the grass, gasping, overwhelmed by panic, his foot on fire with pain. The beam of the flashlight skipped over him again. He couldn’t let them catch up. He had to get up, keep going, and reach the trees.
At least Dorothy had shut up.
He jumped up and started running.
Crack crack!
He zigzagged one way and then another as the flashlight beam skipped around him from behind, trying to gain a fix on him.
Crack!
Still he ran, leaping and zigzagging. He reached the trees, a scattered stand of eucalyptuses, and kept going, stumbling in the darkness, fighting through piles of bark and prickly coastal scrub. On the hillside there had been just light enough to see, but in the eucalyptus woods it was black. He tried to feel ahead with his hands, but there were a lot of downed branches and brush. He kept getting hung up, but he didn’t dare turn on his flashlight.
“I can see in the dark,” came Dorothy’s muffled voice. “Put me on your shoulders.”
“Only if you promise to stop arguing.”
“I promise.”
He pulled her out of the blanket, tossed it, and put her on his shoulders. She wrapped her plastic legs around his neck and grasped his hair with her tri-clawed hands. “Go straight.”
He walked straight.
“Veer to the left … a little more … Now straight … You can go faster … Left a little more…” She continued with a stream of directions while he moved through the woods, slowly at first, then faster as he gained confidence.
Flashlight beams lanced through the trees, striking the trunks above his head.
“Run,” said Dorothy.
He broke into a run as the beams roved through the trees around him.
“They’re catching up,” Dorothy said. “Go faster.”
Jacob tried to go faster, but his foot felt like it was about to split apart. He was limping badly, and he was making a lot of noise pushing through the piles of bark. He could hear his pursuers, too, crashing along behind him.
“Go hard right,” said Dorothy, “down the steep slope.”
Jacob turned right and headed down the slope, slipping and sliding, entering a denser forest of fir trees.
“Stop!” she whispered. “Quiet!”
The sudden change of direction along with the stop seemed to work. He seemed to have temporarily lost their pursuers, who continued along higher on the slope.
“Keep going, but slowly and quietly,” said Dorothy. “Straight.”
The slope they were descending got steeper and more slippery as it went down toward the creek, with loose needles and duff. At least it was more open at ground level than in the eucalyptus trees. Jacob slid blindly down the incline, almost out of control, as Dorothy whispered instructions. Suddenly, above them, the beams came flashing back.
“Go left!”
Jacob stumbled to the left, but the flashlight beams found him. He tried dodging, but the slope was too steep to allow him to maneuver quickly.
Crack crack!
He heard one of the shots whack the robot, snapping her head forward and knocking off bits of plastic, which went spinning off into darkness.
“Dorothy!”
No answer. Her grip was loosening. She was going to fall off. He grabbed her as she slid off his shoulders. He continued struggling down the steep pitch, blindly now, his left arm in front, protecting his face, his other arm wrapped around the robot. The vegetation got much thicker, with brush and weeds. The flashlight beams danced around him as their pursuers struggled down the steep slope.
Bam! Jacob hit a heavy branch with his head and went down on his butt, skidding out of control down the slick hillside, almost dropping Dorothy but managing to clutch her leg as he barreled down the steep hill. Trying to dig his feet in to arrest his slide, he flipped himself over and tumbled down the rest of the way, rolling over and over, still dragging her along with him, faster and faster, until he suddenly wedged up hard under a thicket of juniper bushes. He lay there for a moment, stunned, all scraped up, with the wind knocked out of him. He finally caught his breath and opened his eyes. All was black. He could hear, below him, the running creek and the sound of the rain falling in the forest. Feeling around, he realized he was jammed deep into a narrow space underneath a prickly juniper bush, on soft ground, cushioned with a thick layer of duff and needles. Where was Dorothy? He felt around some more and found her hung up in the bushes next to him.
Even as he waited, breathing hard, he could hear voices on the slope above. Someone swore in a foreign language, and the flashlight beams flickered through the trees, playing about this way and that.
They seemed to have lost him again.
He pulled the robot in and wedged her next to him, then reached out and began sweeping up the thick layer of duff and leaves, packing it all around him and finally covering himself and Dorothy up, burying his head last. He lay there, completely covered by the wet duff, terrified, his heart pounding, breathing the suffocating scent of dirt and decaying needles. Rainwater dripped down his face and neck.
Now he could just hear the two men working down the hillside, the snapping of twigs, thrashing sounds as they pushed through the vegetation, their loud, angry conversation. They were getting closer. He could hear their hard breathing and grunting. Once in a while one would mutter an angry word, a curse, in a guttural foreign language.
Jacob felt almost paralyzed with terror. Those men had been shooting at him. He was just a kid. And they had shot Dorothy. What had they done to his parents? Had they let them go, like they’d promised? This thought added more fuel to his terror and panic, and he tried to stop thinking about all of it and just lie still. He was so frightened his foot stopped hurting.
The footfalls were getting ever closer, making a crunching, mushy sound. They sounded like they were coming straight toward him. There was a murmur of conversation, another torrent of angry swear words. They couldn’t be more than ten feet away. Even though he was covered, he was sure they could see the pile of stuff he was underneath. He tensed up, waiting for the shot, hoping it would be quick. He vaguely realized that he was wetting his pants. He didn’t care.