He couldn’t believe he was even thinking this stuff. If Tia escaped, if he helped her, went to the authorities with her and turned on his friends, he’d be to blame for all of those deaths—almost five hundred souls.
But the boys. His boys. God, he knew it was going to hurt, leaving them. But he’d left them lots of times, each time he’d gone on an excursion, and he’d counted on the familiarity of that pattern to get him through the worst of the grief at their loss. By the time the six weeks passed and forever started, he’d thought, there would be distance enough to dull the ache. For all of them. But there had been moments on this trip when understanding rained down on him—I’m holding a gun on these people! This is happening! I’m never going to see Ian and Colby again!—and his chest got tight, his airways seemed to narrow. June had told him: Live your life. Be normal, whatever that is. She’d said: You can’t put yourself on hold for us. For this. Because I don’t know how long the wait will be. I don’t know exactly how we’ll need you. Your job for now is to keep your head down and keep us in your heart. That’s what I ask of you. Keep us in your heart.
He had. He had. But when he’d become a father, his for-now life had become a real life.
He could convince Tia not to go to the authorities back home. They’d go to Quarantine with some story. He drank more water, feeling a second wind. A road gang, marauders. You heard about them. He and Tia barely escaped with their lives. Everyone else dead, they presumed. Tia had lost nothing so far, really. And she had blood on her hands. She’d back him up. It would be like none of this had even happened. He’d quit the OLE job and be there for his boys. Ruby City could hang on a while longer—not saved, maybe, but at least not leveled by marine firepower—and if June let the hostages go, well, Andy would cross that bridge when he came to it. There might be time enough to get Beth and the boys and flee somewhere.
It could work.
Later, he would wonder: Would he have really gone through with it? It seemed, for a few moments, that he would. Relief had flooded him. His knapsack felt lighter. He wiped his sweaty palms on his jacket, first one, then the other, maneuvering the gun carefully and then resettling his fingers around the pistol grip and hand guard. He registered a flicker of pleasure at the thought of disarming Roz—gruff, know-it-all, dog-drowning Roz. (Could she sic Tauntaun and Wampa on him? He would shoot them if he had to. He, too, could be cruel, if left no other recourse.) He thought about what Hakim had said about showing him his purpose. This was, he’d think later, the tragedy of his life, if tragedy wasn’t too strong a word for the sadness of a man like Andy: if not for Hakim and June and Ruby City, Andy would probably have killed himself years ago. If not for the dream of his secret life, Andy wouldn’t have been around to meet Beth. And even his and Beth’s first date, their courtship, their marriage—did he not owe Ruby City its share of credit for the success of their relationship? Ruby City had been his ace in the hole, his mistress. Beth had been intrigued by his distance, he knew. More certain she wanted him because she was less certain she was wanted. He told himself this each time he felt his guts twist at the thought of all the lies he’d told her.
But the boys were innocents. Ian, seven years old with a lighter shade of Beth’s sandy blond hair and Andy’s broad feet and blunt toes, sensitive, still young and sweet enough to hold his mother’s hand at the grocery store. Five-year-old Colby, Andy’s little look-alike, who crawled into Andy and Beth’s bed during thunderstorms and slept with his sweaty cheek against Andy’s chest, knees tucked up against Andy’s rib cage. How could Andy have thought himself capable of abandoning him? Even for the sake of a village? Even for the sake of the world?
Tauntaun, just out of sight, howled. Wampa answered with a yank so ferocious that Roz nearly toppled over, and Andy had to take a hand off his gun to steady her.
“Must be the girl,” Roz said. She went after the dogs at a trot, swift despite her bulk, and Andy, seeing his moment, raced ahead. He had no plan. He only knew that he had to reach Tia before Roz closed in—look her in the eye, then make a decision about where to point his gun. Tauntaun hadn’t stopped barking, and there had been no gunshots. Maybe this was a good sign.
He scrambled, with feet and hands, over a washout of rocks, topped a rise, saw the dog first. It paced off a half circle, stopped to keel back on his hind legs. Barked. Then paced another half circle back in the opposite direction. Its attention was directed at the base of a tree, and Andy, letting his finger slide into the curve of his gun’s trigger guard, made out the figure of a person. Head against the tree, a few feet above the ground. Dark, short-cropped hair. Not moving. He drew closer. A dozen meters. Ten. She wasn’t flinching when Tauntaun barked. No reaction at all.
He pulled up his gun and sighted her, close enough now to make out Tia’s sprawled legs, the scattered contents of her pack. The shape of what he thought had to be her gun, on the ground a few inches from her right hand.
“Tia,” he called. No response.
Tauntaun, noting Andy’s presence, stopped his pacing, sat, and barked sharply again. Behind him, Wampa answered the bark, and Roz yelled, “Tauntaun, to me.” A bag rustled—the dog’s jerky treats—and Tauntaun cheerfully obliged. Then, to Andy, Roz said in her coarse, thoughtless way: “What’s she doing? Dead?”
Andy didn’t answer.
A few feet away from the figure slumped under the tree, he thumbed on the gun’s safety and slung it over his shoulder. Her eyes were wide open, unfocused. Mouth slack. A tremor of grief gripped him, and then—
She blinked.
“Tia,” he repeated breathlessly, dropping to his knees beside her. He cupped her face in his hands, and her staring eyes filled with liquid. “Oh, jeez,” he said then, understanding dawning on him. “Oh jeez, oh jeez.” He touched her neck, and her pulse pounded madly under his middle finger—such frantic, determined life. Like there was another creature inside this still, dead skin, squirming to burst free. And the smell of her, too. Her unwashed body, the two days’ exertions, sour, yeasty, again so goddamn scarily alive. He had heard about Shreve’s so many times. He had never seen it for himself. The horrors he’d be warned about didn’t prepare him for the reality.
Close enough now that he could kiss her, if he were to lean forward, he could hear her faint, shallow exhalations. Hih. Hih. Hih. She blinked, and the tears made matching trails down her cheeks, cutting through a skim of dirt.
He took her hand, and it spasmed in his grip.
“Well, there you go,” Roz said from behind him. “I guess she won’t be bashing any more heads in.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Andy said. There was a sob inside him, wriggling toward the light, and he bit his lip against it.