Nat pushed me away and rolled over onto her hands. Her back heaved and she vomited into the roadway. When she was done I helped her up and we went around the truck to get Bear. He jumped into my arms, shaking, and I held him tight.
“Come on,” I said to Nat. “We’ll meet up with the others and walk across the border.”
Nat was bent over her knees. She shook her head. “No, we need what’s in the truck.”
“Nat—”
“I’m not doing all of this for nothing!”
Down the road, Carlos and the others were already on their way back to us. The fire raged behind them, lighting up the sky for nearly a mile. Even if no one got a signal out, the Path was going to see the fire and send help. We didn’t have much time and certainly couldn’t afford to walk out.
“Start unloading,” I said. “Fast.”
I left Bear with Nat and ran into the dark toward Wade’s truck. When I got there, the hazards were still going, flashing yellow in the ditch. I got in and cranked the engine, but then it was like my brain locked down. I sat there, my hands on the wheel, the engine idling. My fingers were ice-cold. I kept seeing that dead soldier’s eyes, blank as a doll’s.
The world outside the truck was spinning madly, a flickering show of darkness and flames. I closed my eyes and breathed deep, but it did nothing. I bit down hard on the side of my lip, and the world snapped back into focus. I spit blood out onto the road and got moving.
By the time I got back, a fire had started in the supply truck’s engine. Flames overwhelmed the front of it, but Nat and the others had the cargo laid out on the road. Cardboard boxes and wooden crates were stacked four feet high. I brought Wade’s truck to a halt and they packed all they could into its bed.
“Move over,” Nat said. “I know the way.”
I shifted over to the passenger side. Nat let Bear in, then got behind the wheel. He was shaking badly, his tail between his legs. I pulled him close to me and he curled up, burying his face in my leg. Nat made sure Carlos and the others were in the bed and then drove away.
She slowed to navigate through the wreck at the checkpoint. Flames tore through the last remaining Humvee, putting off intense heat and billowing smoke. Its charred black skeleton was clearly visible inside, along with other dark shapes I made myself look away from. I tried to tell myself that the people inside were Path, that they would have killed us if they could have, but it didn’t seem to matter. My stomach roiled.
I turned to Nat to tell her we had to go but her eyes were blank and locked on the burning vehicle.
“Nat?”
I touched her shoulder and she snapped out of it with a gasp. Nat steered delicately around the wreck and then stepped hard on the gas, hurtling us down the highway as fast as she could.
No one said a word for the rest of the trip.
15
Nat pulled Wade’s truck into the parking lot of a sprawling building and slid out of the cab. I was frozen in my seat, astonished, staring at the banner by the front doors.
WAYLON HIGH SCHOOL. HOME OF THE WYOMING WILDCATS.
“We did it, I whispered into Bear’s ear, my hand clutching his back. “We’re out.”
“Cal!” Nat called. “Let’s move it!”
Bear leapt out of the seat, and I followed him. Nat grunted as she grabbed the truck’s back gate. Her arm was slick with blood from her shoulder to her elbow. I went to help, but she pushed my hand away. The gate fell and the three boys jumped out. One of them switched on a big flashlight and drew it around the truck’s bed.
I expected weapons, but what I saw was box after box marked as carrying medical supplies: bandages, surgical instruments, drugs, antibiotics — an entire hospital’s worth crammed into one truck.
Nat straightened up and squared her shoulders. “We did it, guys,” she announced. “Everything we needed. Good job. Now let’s get this stuff unloaded and to the people who need it.”
“Then we sit and wait for the party they’re going to throw us,” Hector said. “Right, Nat?”
Nat smiled, but it seemed forced. “Yeah, right,” she said. “Bet my dad’ll give us the keys to the city.”
They loaded their arms with boxes and began ferrying them across the parking lot and up to the school’s front doors. I winced as Nat dropped a box into my arms and pushed me into the school. Bear stayed close through a maze of locker-lined halls until we came to a crowded gymnasium.
The air in the gym was dense with the stench of blood and decay. The floor was packed with rows of steel-frame cots. Medics in stained smocks tried to minister to the men, women, and children who filled them, but there were too many wounded. Some of the inhabitants were still, but others were thrashing and moaning. Every few moments, there was a scream that burrowed into my spine. Bear whimpered and pressed his body into my leg.
“Drone strike,” Carlos said quietly beside me. “Right in the middle of town. Path mostly ignores us out here, but every now and then, they like to make sure we know they’re still around.”
“Enough chatter, ’Los,” Nat said. “Let’s get this stuff where it needs to be.”
“You got it, boss.” Carlos and the others fell to it immediately, ducking out of the gym and jogging toward the truck. Nat set her boxes down and waved over one of the medics.
“Truck’s out in the lot,” she said. “Send everyone you can spare.”
“But your arm,” the medic said. “You’re—”
“I’m fine,” Nat said. “Go.”
The medic withdrew, pointing everyone in sight out the door and into the parking lot. The few who stayed behind tore into the boxes as they were delivered and then sprinted across the room, delivering what was inside to the patients.
When I turned back, Nat was gone, mixed in with the rest of the citizens of Waylon. If there was a time for me to disappear, it was probably right then. The Path would almost certainly retaliate for her strike, and I needed to be long gone before that happened.
I scanned the room for Nat, wanting to at least thank her for helping to get us out. I found her sitting beside a cot a couple rows away, leaning over someone’s body. I took a step forward but stopped when I saw that she was crying.
Bear kept going, though, dodging through the rows of cots and piling into Nat’s side. He thrust his head underneath her arm and I expected her to push him away, but she wrapped her arms around him instead.
The boy in the cot next to Nat was unconscious. A partially bandaged burn, red and crusted black, ran from his chest to his forehead on his right side. From the way the blankets fell over him, I could tell he was missing his right leg and most of his right arm.
Nat kept her arm around Bear as she talked quietly to the boy on the cot. She ran her fingertips along his good arm and then set her hand in his, bending his limp fingers around it so it was like a seed curled up in soil. When a medic appeared with an IV stand, Nat jerked her hand away. She wiped her tears and moved into the aisle as he ran a line into the boy’s arm.
Bear looked back at me, and I nodded him ahead. He followed Nat across the gym and through one of the back doors.
I looked to the door as medics and civilians raced in and out. Sitting on a table nearby, there was a stack of sterile dressings and a suture kit. I grabbed them and crossed the gym toward the back door.
I found Nat in an empty science lab, leaning against a large marble-topped workstation, Bear on his side in front of her. When I pushed the door open, Nat whipped around, sniffing and wiping her eyes with the back of her hand.
“Sorry,” I said, my voice overloud in the little room. “I can get Bear and go if you—”
“No,” she said. “It’s fine. I mean, if you don’t mind. He can stay.”
I let the door close behind me and stepped inside, squinting at the harshness of the fluorescent lights. Nat looked different now that the aura of command that surrounded her at the checkpoint had evaporated. She seemed younger. Smaller too. She sat quietly examining one of Bear’s paws, pushing him away if he tried to
