“No time.”
They hobbled away into the welcoming shadows. Alice’s hand was an iron band around his arm, and he squeezed Ty’s hand so hard he had to force himself to lessen the pressure. The trail beside the fence became rockier with savage holes and channels that tried to turn their ankles as they ran. The stars brightened as they left the glow of the fires behind, and the forest to their right thickened into something primordial.
The air beside Quinn’s head heated up and then he heard the shot a moment later. Without slowing, he guided them off the trail and into the woods. A thicket of dead vine and wild raspberry cane met them, tore at their skin, as they burst through it. Ty uttered a small cry, and Quinn hoisted the boy up and over a fallen log in their way. They tore on, Alice limping beside him, Ty beginning whimper.
A hollow opened up below the side of an incline studded with mature trees. Starlight filtered through the branches, stippling the ground with dagger shadows. A darker, round shape appeared before them, and he pulled Alice and Ty behind the massive boulder, hunkering down behind its protection. He chanced a look back the way they’d come.
A dozen flashlight beams cut the darkness, their swaths ripping across trees and ground a quarter mile away.
They were coming closer.
Quinn slid down the boulder, his breath burning as he gulped it down. When he could speak he said, “We have to get up and over this hill. Can you guys do it?”
Ty nodded in the weak light, and Alice closed her eyes, her face pale as talcum. Men’s voices floated to them, and when he glanced around the side of the stone, a long flashlight flickered in the place where they’d left the path.
“Okay, let’s go.”
He hauled them to their feet, and they set off up the hill. Twigs and leaves crackled beneath their feet, but the noise of a four-wheeler growling along the path below covered the sound. Halfway up, Alice staggered to a stop, her hand loosening on his arm. Quinn turned to her, about to ask if she needed a rest, when she tipped backward in a faint.
He managed to snag her wrist as she fell, and she crumpled at his feet instead of plummeting down the side of the hill.
“Alice,” Quinn hissed in a whisper, kneeling beside her.
“Mama?”
“It’s okay, buddy. She’s okay.”
The four-wheeler revved and crashed through a stand of brush a hundred feet below.
Quinn undid his belt and probed Alice’s pant leg until he found an entry and exit hole wet with blood. He laced the belt around the wound and gently tightened it, tucking the loose end beneath itself.
A man yelled in the hollow. Something about blood.
Quinn took two deep breaths and slung Alice over his shoulders before grasping Ty’s hand again.
They climbed.
Quinn’s legs began to ache. Then they burned. But still they climbed. The top would never come. He kept looking at the ridge, its distance seeming to multiply with each glance. He focused on his breathing. This was nothing more than hanging a hundred feet above the black rocks of the Atlantic, waiting to find the next hand or foothold. Muscles on fire, but to quit meant death.
Ten more steps.
Five.
Three.
One.
They crested the hill, and he nearly crumbled beneath the pain and exhaustion. He allowed himself a ten count of breathing before leading Ty to the right.
The dome of the hill was covered in a layer of dry reed grass that shushed with their passing. Quinn brought them past two oak deadfalls and found a natural plain that descended the opposite side of the rise in a diagonal cut. They rushed down it and entered a sprawl of pine trees. Sounds of pursuit fell away behind them, buffeted by the evergreens. Quinn clasped Alice’s legs tighter to his chest and readjusted her weight. His shoulder was numb where she rested.
“Quinn?” Ty asked.
“Shh, we have to keep going, champ. Just a little farther.”