forward and saw that the dash directly in front of the pilot was covered in a dark slick of blood.
Windows were smashed, and there was a long gash on his left side. Blood covered his hands and was pooling in his lap.
The air shuddered with explosions all around us.
“Strap in!” the pilot yelled.
Once back in my seat, I dragged Bear up into my lap, pulling the harness over both of us and fastening it tight. He struggled and whined, but I just pressed harder. The ride grew wilder by the second as the pilot struggled to keep us in the air as long as he could, constantly pulling us up out of sudden plunges while the helicopter pitched from side to side. The world outside the window spun madly and the smoke inside the cabin grew thicker, choking me and burning my eyes. The warning sirens screamed on and on.
I spared a look at Nat and she was terrifyingly still, huddled up like a child, not lifting her face from between her knees.
“We’re going in!”
The engines strained one last time and then a sea of green came at us from below. I grabbed Bear and held on as we went belly first into a stand of trees. Everything in the cabin pitched forward, loose bits hitting the windshield like bullets and smashing the glass. The belt around my waist cut into my middle and I screamed out in pain. Bear howled but I refused to let him go.
The helicopter tumbled onto its side, momentum carrying it through the trees, their limbs slamming into the helicopter’s steel hide over and over, sending body-rattling booms through the space around us. Glass shattered and metal tore. Nat began to scream, long and high. The still-turning rotors snapped as they tried to cut through the assault of trees.
When we finally came to rest, I lay over Bear’s body, panting, arms aching, but too terrified to move. He was still, but his heart thudded heavy against my thighs. There were a few metallic groans as the helicopter settled into place and then it was astonishingly quiet. Even the distant booms of the war were wiped away.
Every muscle in my body burned as I sat up. Nat was breathing but unconscious. A gash dripped blood down one arm. The window next to me was shattered by a heavy bough. What remained of the window was splattered with blood. I let go of Bear and touched my cheek. My fingers came back stained bright red.
I unhooked the belt around my waist and eased Bear over between me and Nat. He went to her, his small legs unsteady, sniffing at her neck and her torn arm. I grabbed the edge of the front seats and pulled myself forward into the cockpit.
The pilot was unconscious, hands at his sides, slumped against the harness across his chest.
“Hey,” I said, unnerved by the sound of my own voice breaking through the silence. I pushed at his shoulder. “We gotta get out of here.”
He didn’t move, so I dragged myself up farther into the passenger seat.
“Hey.”
I turned his head toward me and that’s when I saw a shard of glass as big as my hand buried more than an inch into his throat. Blood, thick and black, covered his chest. I don’t know how long I sat there staring at him. I didn’t seem to be able to move until Bear’s whine turned me around.
His paws were up on the helicopter’s door, scrabbling to get out. I looked into the sky behind us, and even though it was clear now, we couldn’t afford to wait around. We had to move. Nat was still unconscious, so I reached over her to force her door open. Bear jumped out first, stumbling when he hit the ground but quickly righting himself. I followed, crawling over Nat, then leaning back in to undo her harness.
She moaned. Her head, bloody from a spray of glass, lolled to one side. Her eyes opened, surveying the damage around her.
“Can you move?”
Nat looked at me but said nothing. Twin sonic booms split the silence above the tree line as two fighters streaked past. I dug one arm behind Nat’s back and the other beneath her knees. A knife of pain shot through my busted wrist, but I lifted her up and out of the helicopter anyway, easing her weight onto my chest.
I got us away from the helicopter, then set Nat down at the base of a hill. The forest seemed to stretch out endlessly on all sides. Were we in Wyoming still? South Dakota? I squinted up into the sky, hoping to orient myself off the sun, but a blanket of gray clouds were in the way. Without knowing north from south or east from west, I could walk us right into the Path and not have any idea until it was too late.
Nat stirred, drawing her knees up to her chest and hugging them close. She started to cry, her chest convulsing. I moved toward her but she shied away, hiding her face.
Gravel tumbled down the side of the hill we were on. I looked up to see Bear nearly at the top. Maybe if I got up higher, I could get some idea of where we were.
“I’ll be right back,” I said. Nat didn’t move.
I dug my fingers into the trunk of a tree and pulled myself up. Once I made it to my feet, my body wavered like smoke in a breeze, so I held on and waited for it to pass. I moved from tree to tree, grasping branches to hold myself steady. Every injury, old and new, gnawed at me as I climbed. Eventually the shock of the pain faded, leaving just an endless and dark exhaustion. It was as if there was a hole in the center of me and I was slowly draining away. My head reeled, and bursts of lights seemed to dance with shadows in my field of vision.
Whenever I felt like I had nothing left, I looked back at Nat. She grew smaller behind me, a single body nearly lost amid the rock and elms. If I didn’t find us a way out, we were done. The peak of the hill drew closer by inches. Bear sat at the top, his dark body outlined in the gray sky.
At the top of the hill was a rocky platform studded with scrub pines that held a commanding view of the land below. I slid down the side of a tree and sat beside Bear.
Below, for as far as I could see, was an unbroken expanse of trees, rising and falling as they climbed hills and fell into valleys, like a mossy blanket laid over the earth. I turned in every direction and that’s all there was, wilderness stretching out to the horizon. I imagined we could have sat where we were a million years in the past and seen the exact same view. I searched for the sun to try to at least find our bearing but the sky was still too overcast.
Even if we mustered the will to walk a hundred miles, we might discover we were going in the wrong direction the entire time. Instead of finding civilization, we would only end up deeper and deeper in the gradually darkening woods, more and more alone.
I thought of Nat lying below and told my legs to move, to walk anywhere, in any direction, but the commands grew cold somewhere along the way. I fell back into the dirt and watched as night enclosed us.
I was lying in the dirt, barely conscious, when I heard the footsteps.
I tried to open my eyes, tried to move, but it was as if I had been lashed to the forest floor, half in and half out of a dream. Bear growled low beside me.
A hand grasped my shoulder. “Hey. You okay?”
It was a man’s voice. I opened my eyes, but my vision swirled and it was like I was seeing him from very far away. All I could make out was brown hair shining in a flashlight’s beam. Wind blew in the trees around us and a sleepy warmth moved through me.
“James?” I said, my voice a woozy drawl.
Another voice came up the hill. “Someone else down here.”
Thunder shook the earth somewhere far away. “There’s a storm,” I said. “We have to go in now. We have to…”
There was a blast of radio static and then another voice. “Pick them up. We’ll take them with us.”
It was another man’s voice, deep and strong from somewhere nearby. I opened my eyes and saw a tall man with dark skin.
“Grey?”
I struggled weakly as hands dug beneath me and lifted me up. Bear barked, but the sound of it was distant and dreamlike. My consciousness slipped away as they bore me off. I swayed in their hands, drifting back and forth as though I was on the deck of some great sailing ship.
