A rash of younger balsams spread out at the base of the grade, their squat forms growing so thick their branches intertwined.
“In here,” Quinn gasped. The last of his energy was nearly gone. His legs were pillars of lead, lungs full of barbed wire.
They pushed through the first dozen balsams and found three larger trees surrounded by some smaller growth. Quinn wrestled them below the biggest of the three, holding up its lowest branch so Ty could sit down. He knelt and lowered Alice to the ground, letting the branches snap back into place behind and above them. He turned his head in every direction, but there was no way to see out of the hiding place, which meant there was no way to see in.
Gathering handfuls of dead needles, Quinn built a small mound beneath Alice’s head and then leaned close to her, feeling her breath on his face. He checked her pulse. It was fast but steady. When he felt the wound on her leg, there was no new blood soaking her pants. He loosened his belt so that it wouldn’t cut off circulation completely and waited, his fingers over the exit and entry holes.
The wound had clotted.
Quinn lay back between Alice and Ty, his breathing slowly coming back to normal. Far away, someone yelled and an engine grumbled, but it sounded as if the noises were growing fainter.
“Is my mom okay?” Ty asked when they had rested minutes that felt like hours.
“Yeah. Her leg’s a little hurt, but she’s fine.”
“Are they going to find us?”
“No. We lost them good, buddy.”
“Do you promise?”
“I promise.”
“Quinn?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m really sorry.”
“For what?”
“I lost my walking stick you made for me.” Ty’s voice constricted. “We were getting the new car and then mom said the monsters were coming, and I didn’t have it with me. I left it in your car.”
“Hey, hey, it’s okay. I can make you a new one.”
Ty sniffled, and he shifted on the ground.
“But the other one was special.”
“I know. But the thing about possessions is you can replace them. Even though they’re special, you can get something different and then that thing becomes special in its own way. But do you know what you can’t replace?”
“What?”
“People. It’s okay that you left the stick behind because you and your mom are safe, and that’s the most important thing.”
Ty sniffed again. “And you too,” he murmured.
Quinn opened his mouth but then shut it because his own throat had closed up.
The night deepened around them, sounds of the congregation fading into silence that broke apart with frog song. There was water nearby. That was good. They might need it sooner rather than later. He hadn’t had anything to drink since the woman had basically water boarded him in Archer’s home. Quinn shifted on the ground and brought Alice’s legs up over his own, elevating the wound. The warmth and pressure of her against him sent a shiver through is body. He swallowed and tried not to think of her face so close to him, how white her skin was, the slenderness of her wrists. But the single, overwhelming fact wouldn’t leave him be. She’d come back. Somehow, despite the cutting and hardened exterior of who she was, something had gotten through.
Ty edged closer to him, and he put an arm around the boy who rested his head on his chest and drifted off within seconds. Quinn fought sleep’s advances for as long as he could but succumbed sometime in the middle of the night, his rescuers breathing quietly on either side.
Chapter 20
Lost
He woke to bitter cold and the sound of wind pushing through treetops.