All they had seen so far in their mountain journey had been a handful of Annies and a couple of ransacked gas stations and abandoned houses. Some of the houses showed signs of not actually being abandoned, footsteps in the snow, sections of porch suspiciously swept clean. They avoided those houses. If the people living there didn't want to make themselves known, then he wasn't going to force the issue. You could get a man killed knocking on a door out here, and he wasn't in the mood for any of that shit. The gas stations had been looted down to the SPAM long ago.
At night, two men stood watch, just in case any Annies came out of the woodwork. Night duty was the worst part of the trip besides the cold. You had to stand with your back to the fire to preserve your night vision, standing in the snow in the middle of a road, watching for any signs of movement in the dark. And there was movement. That was the crazy thing. Deer skirted their camp every night and other things. One night, while he had taken his turn on watch, he had heard the distinct growl and snuffling of something large in the woods. Tejada didn't think it was anything that his rifle couldn't have handled, but in the dark, it made him feel a little less confident. The sergeant had toyed with the idea of breaking out his night vision, but he figured he would save the batteries on that for when it mattered. He assumed it was a bear, maybe a bobcat.
For now, they trudged up a steep hill that ended with the road curving to the right.
Behind him, he heard the cough of Hope. She had developed a hacking cough at some point over the last two days. At first, it had just been a cough, but as they went on, it had become more and more frequent. He worried about the girl. There wasn't much they could do for her at the moment. They either kept moving, or they risked dying. To try and stay in the mountains for any length of time would be a disaster. Their food stores were dwindling, and as far as he could tell, unless they shot some game, they would be out of food in a week or two. With nothing to scavenge in the immediate vicinity, that would put them in a bad situation. Unless they liked boiling pine needles and tree bark, they couldn't spare the time to let the little girl rest and get better. It was a hard truth, but one that he had shared with Rudy when the boy had addressed his concerns about the little girl's health.
"I don't like it any better than you do," he said. "But we knew this whole trip was going to be a risk."
"But she's just a little girl," he whispered in the darkness, away from the campfire.
"Age doesn't have nothing to do with it. We got a lot of people here, and all our lives matter. We wait for her, we're putting everyone's life in jeopardy."
Rudy hadn't liked that conversation, but it was one that had to be had. Tejada still hated himself for saying the words, but hell, no one ever said that being a leader was going to be easy.
They took turns carrying the little girl. If she walked on her own, she had a heck of a time catching her breath. Up and up they rose, sweating in the cold air. It must have been 29-degrees that day, the wind only slightly like a knife cutting across his face.
When they reached the top of the hill, they stood gasping, looking at what lay ahead of them… another damn hill.
"Jesus Christ, where does it end?" Gregg said, falling to the ground.
"Alright, let's take a break," Tejada said. He flopped to the ground as well, sitting in the snow, his knees pulled up and his head down as he gasped for air. They melted water with the camp stove, putting snow into a pot and letting it warm to the point of being disgusting, but they drank it down warm and hot, letting the warmth spread through their bodies as they caught their wind. It would have been nice if they had some hot chocolate to put in it, maybe even some instant coffee. But these things were luxuries, and they couldn't devote the limited space in their packs to luxuries.
When they stood up to move on, the little girl didn't get to her feet.
"Come on, Hope. We gotta get moving," Amanda said.
"I can't," the little girl said.
Tejada watched with dread as Amanda squatted down next to the girl and put a hand to her forehead. She was dying. Tejada knew that. Everyone knew it. They had watched her energy dwindle without remarking upon it.
Amanda picked the girl up in her arms. She was bundled from head to toe, wrapped in a blanket. Tejada didn't know how long Amanda could carry the girl like that, but he supposed they could take turns.
They trudged forward, the road less pitched. They rounded a tall rock outcropping, and they beheld the jagged tear where the road had been. A hundred-yard gap split the road in half. It was impossible to pass. To their right, a rock cliff rose upwards, maybe thirty or forty feet, but Tejada had no intention of taking all these people mountain climbing.
He walked to his left, knowing that there were only two directions they could go, down the side of the cliff or back towards Portland. At
