When he came to, they were back in the woods. “Bryan,” Fausto said, his words distant, “Bryan, come on, buddy. Open your eyes.”
Norton did. Fausto Ruiz and the two rescued men hovered above him. “We need you to run, Bryan. I know it hurts, but we might only have a minute or two before these woods will be crawling with bulls.”
Norton turned his head, straining to process his surroundings. “Okay,” he muttered, the pain a spike between his eyes. “Okay—I can…I can do this.”
They fetched him up, the men they’d rescued taking a position on either side of him, his arms spread across their shoulders. In that fashion they pushed deeper into the woods.
Soon, they were indeed being pursued. The sounds of the hunt were faint at first, but they steadily grew louder as bulls fired their weapons into trees, ripping apart brush in their quest to avenge the deaths of their brethren.
“Who are you?” one of the rescued men asked Ruiz when they’d stopped to rest on the banks of another creek, their backs pressed against a fallen log. A cold rain was beginning to fall, hundreds of gentle dimples appearing on the surface of the water. Norton thought they maybe had another twenty minutes of light left in the day.
“I’m Fausto. This is Bryan Norton.”
“Eric Blaylock,” the man replied. The rain had rinsed the blood from his face. He had red hair and fair skin, a grid of freckles over his cheeks and nose and a firm handshake. His sharp green eyes were filled with raw admiration for the man who had rescued them.
“And you?” Fausto said to his partner.
“Bill Boyce. Goddamn, that was really something back there.” He shook his head ruefully. “I shouldn’t even
Fausto whistled appreciatively. “Very impressive, Bill. Are you familiar with this field?”
“Not well enough. I did Labor in Phoenix eight years ago for my first—little Angie. Our boy’s name is Ryan. I pulled his Labor here four years ago; honestly, I don’t recognize much.”
“We’re searching for an angel. You know anything about that?”
Boyce shook his head. “Naw. I heard there’s a couple in here, though. I thought it was all a bunch of bullshit. Urban legends.”
Fausto nodded. “Probably is. Still, we have to hope.”
Gunfire popped in the distance, shaking the men from their conversation. They stood, stumbled across the shallow creek and pushed into the woods. After a short time the rain let up and, inexplicably, the clouds parted over the western horizon. The men stopped at the crest of a wooded hill, watching the sun trace its path beyond the ocean.
“It won’t be our last,” Ruiz said. “Come. We shouldn’t stop here. There will be plenty more sunsets for all of us. Come.”
The three men started down the hill, but Bryan lingered another moment. Would there be another sunset? Would he and Eli ever have the chance to watch the end of the day together?
It was a shimmering torch, that sun, a beacon of blinding orange light that cast a single tree in silhouette. It was beautiful, and he savored it a moment longer before plunging down the hill in pursuit of his allies.
It didn’t take long for the light to fail, and soon they were feeling their way from tree to tree in darkness.
Twenty minutes later they arrived at a small clearing. The smoldering remnants of a campfire lingered at the center of the clearing; Bryan took a step toward it and Fausto jerked him back violently.
“Wait,” he hissed.
He found a pine, reached into its lowest boughs and tugged a dead branch free. He packed it back to the clearing and tossed it onto the apron of the fire ring.
A whip-saw twang sounded like a sour note on an old guitar and a nylon-mesh net shot out of the loose soil and into the branches of the closest Sitka Spruce.
The trio of men fixed their gaze on Ruiz. “How in the hell did you know to do that?” Blaylock said.
“It’s just caution. It keeps us alive,” Ruiz replied. “We’ve got to move quickly now; I need the three of you to gather tinder. Pick up anything that’ll burn. I know they’ve raked theses woods, but they can’t get all of it. This was a mistake on their part. They should have used a digital obstacle instead.”
He turned into the woods and began to pick his way through the ferns, searching for dry, organic matter. The others followed suit and before long they had a sizable pile.
Ruiz crept into the clearing, knelt and blew on the dying fire. After a few minutes he’d stoked a honeycomb of red coals on the tip of a small branch back to life. He brought it over to the pile of tinder and got a roaring little fire going.
“Damn that feels good,” Boyce said, warming his hands on the edges of the flame.
“Enjoy it another minute. With a little luck, we can use it to put a little more distance between us and the bulls,” Ruiz said. He rubbed his hands, crowding the blaze with the damp cuffs of his blue jeans.
He tore one of the sleeves from his shirt and wrapped it around a longer branch. He plunged the tip into the fire, where it quickly ignited.
“That rain we had earlier is no help to us. Still, we have to hope.”
Norton appreciated the man’s optimism. He’d made the same proclamation a half dozen times since they’d cleared processing.
Fausto strode back into the forest, Eric and Bryan following him. Boyce was trying to light his own torch.
“Under the canopy, things are much drier. Scoop up those pine needles, Bryan.”
Norton knelt and began to pile them at the base of a huge group of ferns.
“Good,” Fausto nodded, touching the flame to the base of the pine needles. The pile began to smoke and then, with an audible poof, the ferns caught, the fronds curling quickly in the flame. Soon, there were flames licking the lower branches of a couple of the smaller junipers.
Boyce threw his branch into the fray and the men searched frantically for more flammable material to keep the blaze going until the junipers caught. It took some time—time that felt dangerously short to each if them—but soon the junipers were alight and tossing plumes of smoke into the night sky.
Fausto grinned, the expression devilish in the orange light. It completely changed his features, that grin. “Now we run, boys. We run for our salvation. This’ll keep them busy for a spell.”
He turned and trotted into the darkness. Norton, Boyce and Blaylock, each of them now smiling as well, regarded each other confidently and gave chase.
Though they heard gunfire in the woods, it seemed far behind them. Its repetitive din was now just another facet of the landscape, like the rumble of traffic on the interstate. It was a shock, then, when Chancellor Carson’s voice boomed through the woods. It emanated from the trees, surrounding the men.
“Congratulations on successfully navigating your first eight hours of Labor! In sixteen hours, you will be reunited with your family. As many mothers can attest, the deepest hours of the night are often the most uncomfortable. In an effort to ensure a measure of equality, the Authority has taken steps to make your evening in the Labor field difficult.”
A bank of lights suddenly slapped on, bathing the woods in a wash of bright yellow light, the men shielding their faces from the intensity of the glow.
In that moment, a platoon of bulls dressed in brown and black camouflage and night-vision goggles rappelled from the towering trees around the quartet. Norton was the first to register their descent.
“Bulls!” he shouted, just as the soldiers opened fire. Fausto tugged him to the ground by his collar, folding him into a roll in the same efficient motion. Norton watched Eric Blaylock’s head explode in a film of blood and gore.
Fausto shoved him behind the base of a huge spruce tree and then both men were scrambling into a hunched run, zigging and zagging through as bullets chased them into the woods like shrieking hornets.
An anguished cry echoed through the woods—Bill Boyce. “My leg! Oh god, my leg!”
Ruiz and Norton hurtled a fallen oak, their backs to the skirmish. It didn’t seem that the bulls had given
