green forests and the crash of waterfalls, but the memories were slippery, gone as soon as they came.
Diane said something and as I opened my eyes and turned to her, a blast of yellow light erupted on the road ahead. The sound of the explosion followed a half second later, tearing through the inside of the van like a tidal wave. I bent over my lap, clapping my hands onto my ears. The world outside spun wildly and then there was the squeal of brakes, and the next thing I knew, the side doors were flying open. The world outside the van was lit in flickering yellow and orange.
“Everybody out,” the private ordered. “Move move move!”
He pulled Diane out first, followed by me and Kate. I reached for Bear but the private shoved me away and went back for Reese and Alec. Mitchell was at the rear of the van, his rifle locked into his shoulder, firing into the tree line. Christos crashed into me and I stumbled farther into the road, where I saw the Humvee lying on its side, consumed within a wall of flames.
“Across the road!” Mitchell yelled over the gunfire. “Run!”
Diane and Christos blew past me, but I turned back for Bear. I made it to the corner of the van just as Alec and Reese were jumping out the door. Reese hit the asphalt and dodged away, but as the private reached up for Alec, a volley of gunfire exploded from the tree line. The private crumpled to the ground and when Alec tried to jump past him, there was another roar. He took the full force of a blast in his chest and was pitched back into the van.
Someone screamed behind me but I couldn’t move. Alec was half in and half out of the van, his legs hanging out of the door, still. The private was on the ground in front of him, his chest torn, surrounded in blood.
“Run! Get across the street!”
Mitchell pushed Kate into my arms. We tangled together as she tried to get past me and reach Alec. It was like time started up again. I shoved her away and kept her in front of me as we ran. We made it halfway across the road when I saw Bear. He was between the van and the Humvee, claws dug into the asphalt, barking at the gunfire that was pinging off the roadway. I handed Kate off to Reese and sprinted across the street. Terrified, Bear sank his teeth into my arm when I grabbed him but I held him tight and raced into the trees.
I found the others at the bottom of a hill. Reese was holding himself up with one hand braced against a nearby tree while with the other he mopped at blood pouring from a gash on the side of his face. Christos was on the ground, his face ghost white, his body limp. Kate was deeper in the woods, wailing, her fingers sunk into the flesh of Diane’s arms.
“We have to go back!” she screamed. “We have to get Alec!”
There was a crash behind us and I turned, expecting a squad of Path soldiers. It was Mitchell. He raced down the hill and dropped to his knees in front of me.
“Took us too long to get here,” he said, panting as he freed a spent magazine from his rifle and tossed it aside. “Drone took Rashad’s Humvee and now there’s movement everywhere. Path. Fed. I don’t know. You have to get them moving. Head west.”
He seized, digging one hand into his side. It came back shiny with blood.
“Sergeant—”
He knocked my hand away. “The plane is on an airstrip two klicks west,” he said. “Last we heard, no one controls it yet. You have to get there before they do. Get to it and get on it, all of you.”
“But you’re—”
“Go!”
Mitchell slammed a fresh magazine into his rifle and ran back toward the hill. Bear was barking again, wild and high-pitched, mixing in with the chatter of weapons fire and crackling flames coming from the road. Reese was the only one still on his feet, so I grabbed him first, turning him to face me.
“We have to go. Get Christos. Do you hear me?”
Reese nodded and lurched away. Kate was on her knees, slumped over with Diane at her shoulder. I took her arm but she thrashed away from me.
“We can’t just leave. We have to get Alec!”
“He’s dead, Kate.”
She looked up at me, eyes wild, uncomprehending. There was no time for this. I glanced at Diane, and she jerked Kate up without a word and got her moving.
Bear and I led the way, running until we were nearly out of sight of the road. I took one last look behind us and saw Mitchell on his back, arms thrown up over his head, his weapon on the ground next to him. Dark figures, silhouetted in the Humvee fire, were crossing the highway toward us.
Gunshots zipped through the air, slicing into branches and rocks all around us. There was a clear trail dead ahead, but I led the others off of it and into heavier woods. We ran over dark and uneven ground, crashing to the earth and pulling each other up again and again until the firing behind us finally died down.
We came out of the woods and entered a shallow valley that was filled with a pall of gray smoke heavy as fog. Explosions made deep bruises of red and yellow within it, and the rattle of gunfire came from every direction. Seeing no other alternative, Bear and I led the others into the smoke, trudging across ground that was a mix of torn grass and ankle-deep mud. It was like walking underwater.
I kept us as close together as I could, but there were moments when I’d look back and someone would have evaporated into the gray, only to reappear seconds later. Only Bear stayed by my side, but he was limping again and cringing at the rattle of fire. Every time we paused I dropped my hand to his side, petting him to try to still his shaking.
We moved on, catching bits and flashes of the fighting through the haze. Men and women grappling hand to hand. Scattered, torn bodies facedown in the muck. Ranks of artillery like smokestacks vomiting fire and smoke into the sky. Once, we all dropped into the mud and watched as a company of tanks passed within feet of us. Close up, they were massive, their flat gray hides making them seem like something mythological — eyeless creatures clanking and grinding and spewing fire.
More than anything else we saw our own mirror images — ghostly scores of refugees shambling half blind in every direction. I shuddered to see them, feeling a sudden bone-deep terror that said there was no airfield at all, only this smoke and this battlefield, and we would all be out here wandering in the gray forever.
The base of a hill emerged from the smoke and I waved everyone to it. We all dropped to the ground, exhausted. Bear cringed against my leg, trembling at the blasts that shook the ground without a pause.
Kate and Reese looked to be the worst off, pale and blank eyed, their clothes torn and weighed down with muck. Reese’s wound had stopped bleeding but his face and neck were covered in blood. Christos looked unhurt but he was strangely listless, sitting draped over his knees and breathing shallow. Diane was as dirty and worn as the rest, but she seemed sharper than she had been before, more focused. She was crouched beside me, searching the hillside methodically. There were pockets of other refugees all around us — men, women, families — all of them clinging to the hillside like it was a life raft.
“Look.”
Diane pointed about a half mile above us just as the wind shifted, revealing a thin road that rose up the hill and, at the end of it, a small island of light. Within it I could make out the rotating lights of a control tower and a tall steel fence.
Diane moved forward, but I held her back. We weren’t the only ones interested. Muzzle flashes bloomed along the length of the hill, like strings of firecrackers.
“What do we do?”
I looked to our right where the ground ran straight and clear along the base of the hill and into the woods. The highway east was only a few miles on the other side of those trees. This was my chance.
I heard my instructions to them in my head —
“Cal,” Diane said. “What do we do?”
