belong to no one, like it don’t matter that it’s Viola’s.
That bag so full of stupid and useful things.
My chest clenches and I cough painfully.
I can’t seem to stand so I crawl forward, gasping at the pain in my back and head but still crawling, Manchee barking, worried, “Todd, Todd,” all the time, and it takes forever, it takes
I find the scalpel in her medipak and cut the bandage in two. I put one part on my head, holding it till it sticks, and reach around slowly and put the other on my back. For a minute it hurts even more as the bandage material, the human cell whatever the hell she talked about, crawls into the wounds and makes a bind. I clench my teeth thru it but then the medicine starts to work and a flush of cool flows into my bloodstream. I wait for it to work enough till I can stand up. I’m wobbly when I first get to my feet but I can manage to just stand for a minute.
After another I can take a step. And then another.
But where do I go?
I’ve no idea where he took her. I’ve no idea how much time has passed. He could already be all the way back to the army by now.
“Viola?” Manchee barks, whimpering.
“I don’t know, fella,” I say. “Let me think.”
Even with the bandages doing their thing I can’t stand up straight all the way but I do my best and look around. The Spackle’s body is on the edge of my vision but I turn myself so I can’t see it.
I sigh and I know what I have to do.
“There ain’t nothing for it,” I say to Manchee. “We have to go back to the army.”
“Todd?” he whines.
“There ain’t nothing for it,” I say again and I put everything outta my head but moving.
First things first I need a new shirt.
I keep the Spackle to my back and turn to the rucksack.
The knife is still thru the cloth of the rucksack and the book inside. I don’t really wanna touch it and even in my haze I don’t wanna see what’s become of the book but I have to get the knife out so I brace the sack with my foot and pull hard. It takes a few tugs but it comes out and I drop it to the ground.
I look at it on the wet moss. There’s blood all over it still. Spackle blood mostly but my blood brighter red at the tip. I wonder if that means that Spackle blood got into my blood when Aaron stabbed me. I wonder if there are extra special viruses you can catch directly from Spackle.
But there’s no time for further wondering.
I open the rucksack and take out the book.
There’s a knife-shaped hole all the way thru and out the other side. The knife is so sharp and Aaron must be so strong that it’s hardly ruined the book at all. The pages have a slit running thru them all the way thru the book, my blood and Spackle blood staining the edges just a little, but it’s still readable.
I could still read it, still have it read.
If I ever deserve to.
I push that thought away too and take out a clean shirt. I cough as I do and even with the bandages it hurts so I have to wait till I stop. My lungs feel filled with water, like I’m carrying a pile of river stones in my chest, but I put the shirt on, I gather what useable things I can still get from my rucksack, some clothes, my own medipak, what ain’t been ruined by Mr Prentiss Jr or the rain and I take them and my ma’s book over to Viola’s bag and put them inside cuz there’s no way I can carry a rucksack on my back no more.
And then there’s still the asking, ain’t there?
Where do I go?
I follow the road back to the army, that’s where I go.
I go to the army and somehow I save her, even if it’s changing my place for hers.
And for that I can’t go unarmed, can I?
No, I can’t.
I look at the knife again, sitting there on the moss like a thing without properties, a thing made of metal as separate from a boy as can be, a thing which casts all blame from itself to the boy who uses it.
I don’t wanna touch it. Not at all. Not never again. But I have to go over and I have to clean off the blood as best I can on some wet leaves and I have to sheath it behind me in the belt that’s still around my waist.
I have to do these things. There ain’t no choice.
The Spackle hovers on the edge of my vision but I do not look at it as I handle the knife.
“C’mon, Manchee.” I loop Viola’s bag as gingerly as I can over one shoulder.
Don’t deceive me. Never leave me.
Time to go.
“We’re gonna find her,” I say.
I keep the campsite behind me and head off in the direkshun of the road. Best to just get on it and walk back to ’em as fast as I can. I’ll hear ’em coming and can get outta the way and then I guess I’ll see if there’s any way I can save her.
Which might mean meeting them head on.
I push my way thru a row of bushes when I hear Manchee bark, “Todd?”
I turn, trying to keep from seeing the campsite. “C’mon, boy.”
“Todd!”
“I said, c’mon, now. I mean it.”
“This way, Todd,” he barks and wags his half-tail.
I turn more fully to him. “What’d you say?”
He’s pointing his nose in another direkshun altogether from the one I’m going. “This way,” he barks. He rubs at the bandage over his eye with a paw, knocking it off and squinting at me with the injured eye.
“What do you mean ‘This way’?” I ask, a feeling in my chest.
He’s nodding his head and pushing his front feet in a direkshun not only away from the road but in the opposite direkshun from the army. “Viola,” he barks, turning round in a circle and then facing that way again.
“You can smell her?” I ask, my chest rising.
He barks a bark of yes.
“You can
“This way, Todd!”
“Not back to the road?” I say. “Not back to the army?”
“Todd!” he barks, feeling the rise in my Noise and getting excited himself.
“Yer sure?” I say. “You gotta be sure, Manchee. You gotta be.”
“This way!” and off he runs, thru the bushes and off on a track parallel to the river, away from the army.
And towards Haven.
Who knows why and who cares cuz in the moment I’m running after him as best as my injuries will let me, in the moment I see him bounding away and ahead, I think to myself,
27. ON WE GO
