molten. I glanced out the side window. The cruiser had pulled even and was moving ahead.
“Hold on to Bear,” I said.
“What? Cal—”
I jerked the wheel, hurling us into the side of the cruiser. There was a shriek as metal hit metal and then a split second of weightlessness before the seat belt yanked me back. James’s screams, mixed with the glass and steel crash. Everything was lit by the red and blue of the police lights until they winked out and everything went dark.
We ended up sideways in the middle of the road. The windshield was a spiderweb of fractures, and smoke poured out of the hood. James was slumped in his seat, dead pale with his arms clapped around Bear.
The cruiser was twenty feet down the road, flipped upside down at the end of a trail of shattered glass and torn metal. The windows were smashed and I couldn’t see anyone moving inside.
“James? Are you okay?”
He moaned. I pushed open my door, but my legs were useless. I collapsed the second they hit asphalt. I lay facedown, every nerve in my body buzzing at once.
Bear was as dazed as James, whimpering and shaking as I lifted him out of the truck. I checked him for injuries but found only cuts and scrapes. I set him down by the side of the road, then undid James’s seat belt. He fell into my arms and I eased him down beside Bear and grabbed our backpacks. I got mine on and staggered out into the roadway.
“Come on,” I said, draping the backpack over James’s shoulders. “We have to go.”
“No,” he mumbled, nodding listlessly toward the wrecked MP cruiser. “We have to stay. Have to help them.”
I stared at the cruiser. There was still no movement inside. No sound.
“They’re fine,” I said. “Let’s go. Bear, come on.”
James tried to pull away from me but he was too weak. I threw my arm around his shoulder and drew him away from the side of the road. Bear trailed along behind us as we moved into the desert.
I dragged James along until the flat land fell away and we found ourselves at the crest of a ravine. There was a narrow trail heading down into it, but it was impossible to see how far it went or if it would even support our weight. I looked around for another option and found none. I pulled a single chemical glow stick out of my pack and cracked it. Any light was risky, but taking the trail blind was sure to be suicide.
I headed down first, stepping slowly into the chem stick’s pale green glow. James came next, with Bear sniffing along behind us. Now that the shock of the crash had passed, every step sent waves of pain through my body. The bones in my wrist felt like they were grinding together. Soon, exhaustion began to nip at every muscle, settling over my thoughts like a fog. The dark of the chasm yawned beside us as the trail grew more and more narrow. We had to find someplace to rest, and fast.
It was an hour or more before I let James sink to the rocky floor and then sat down beside him, struggling to catch my breath and wishing away every stabbing pain throughout my body. When I could summon the strength to move again, I cracked another glow stick and looked around.
We were on a small shelf of rock just wide enough for the three of us. Bear sat panting, eyes shining eerily in the chemical green. The gash on his side was still sealed, but he yanked one of his front paws away with a yelp when I tried to look at it. He tucked it close to his body and licked at it.
James was beside me, bent in half over his knees, with his back to me.
“James?” He didn’t turn, so I reached for his shoulder. “Listen to me. I—”
He fell into the light and I saw that his mouth was open wide and he was gasping soundlessly, tears streaking the sides of his face. Both hands were clasped over his chest, clawing at his lungs.
I dropped the light and tore through my pack, nerves screaming as I searched through clothes and useless gear. I found the inhaler, dropped it, grabbed it again. James started to thrash in the middle of the trail, pounding at the dirt with one fist, his face streaked with panic. I pulled him to me and set the inhaler to his lips, but one hand flew up and knocked it away.
“Don’t need,” he insisted in a tortured rattle. “Don’t… need…”
“Yes, you do. Now take it before you pass out.”
I forced the inhaler into his mouth and clamped his jaw shut around it. I triggered a blast of medicine into him and then another.
I watched as he struggled, and timed the next blast for the tiny intake he could manage. With each puff from the inhaler, I felt the rigid muscles in James’s back yield. The wheeze faded and James settled into a halting, staticky breath. His arms were limp, and even in the green glow, I could see the palor of his skin and the sheen of cold sweat all over him. I dropped the inhaler and wiped the sweat from his forehead.
“You’re okay,” I whispered. “You’re going to be okay.”
Bear appeared in the dark, sniffing at him with great concern. James managed to lift one weak hand and pat his side. He took a shaky breath, then pulled himself into the deeper shadows on the opposite side of the platform. Bear followed, standing halfway between the two of us. He looked over his shoulder at me.
“Look,” I said to James’s back. “You need time to adjust. Okay? Once we get away from them, you’ll see.”
I stopped at the faint sound of James’s voice.
“James? I can’t hear you. What are you saying?”
I moved closer until I was at his back. I put my hand on his shoulder and turned him around.
“… consecrate my life to the Glorious Path. I am the light in the darkness. The hand offering guidance to those who have gone astray. I am the rod that falls upon the backs of the defiant….”
My hand fell from his shoulder as I backed away. The glow of the chem stick faded and I was left there in the deep dark with nothing but the sound of my brother praying.
8
I spread our map out on the ground the next morning and bent over it.
Path states were bordered in gold, Fed in blue. I used a pencil to sketch out the western and eastern fronts. The closest Federal territory was California, but that was a pipe dream. California was a major prize for the Path, second only to the new Federal capital in Philadelphia. Fighting along the border had been intense for years. James was right; we could never cross there.
I moved my finger over the map to Nevada and Oregon, which, with California, made up the Federal- controlled land in the region. Nevada was a slightly better bet, but it was still westward, the wrong direction, and the word for the last few weeks was that Idaho was probably going to fall any day. If we were in Nevada when that happened, it’d close off our only route back to New York. We’d be trapped on the West Coast until the end of the war — forever if the Path came out on top.
The only possibility left was Wyoming, which seemed insane. Between us and Wyoming were more than eight hundred miles of Path lands in Arizona and Utah. On top of that, Salt Lake City sat too close to the Utah– Wyoming border and was among one of the Path’s major strongholds. Two scruffy-looking kids and a dog trying to walk anywhere near that city would be in jail before they took two steps.
I kicked the map away and sat back against a rock. It couldn’t have been more than eight o’clock in the morning and the sun was already intense. I wiped a film of sweat from my forehead and reached for our canteen but stopped before taking a drink. It was almost a thousand miles to Fed territory and we had one canteen and a handful of food. I set the water back down.
James was at the end of the trail, knees hugged to his chest, watching without expression as Bear splashed about in a thin stream of water. James and I hadn’t said a word to each other since we’d woken up at dawn.
I rummaged in my pack and threw an MRE down to him.
“You should eat,” I said. “We’ll leave as soon as it gets dark.”
