The Power of Six

“Put me down,” Sam finally says.

“Are you okay?” I put him down.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” Sam is a little unsteady. Sweat beads his forehead, and he wipes it away with the sleeve of his jacket and takes a deep breath.

“Come on,” Six says. “They aren’t going to let us go that easily. We have ten minutes, fifteen at the most, until we’re hiding from a helicopter.”

We make for the hills, Six in the lead, then me, then Sam struggling to keep up. He moves much faster than when we ran the mile in gym class a few months ago. It feels like years ago. None of us looks back; but as soon as we reach the first incline, the howl of a bloodhound fills the air. One of the officers has brought a police dog.

“Any ideas?” I ask Six.

“I was hoping we could hide our stuff and go invisible. That would elude a copter, but the dog will still pick up our scent.”

“Shit,” I say. I look around. There’s a hill to our right.

“Let’s get to the top and see what’s on the other side,” I say.

Bernie Kosar zips ahead and disappears into the night sky. Six leads, stumbling wildly up. I follow behind her; and Sam, who is breathing heavily yet still moving swiftly, brings up the rear.

We stop at the top. Faint outlines of more hills as far as I can see, nothing more. Very softly I hear the trickle of running water. I spin around. Eight sets of flashing lights line the highway, sandwiching Sam’s father’s truck. In the distance, coming from both directions, two more cop cars are speeding towards the scene. Bernie Kosar lands beside me and turns back into a beagle, tongue dangling. The police bloodhound barks, closer than before. There’s no doubt that it’s following our scent, which means that officers on foot can’t be far behind.

“We have to get the dog off our trail,” Six says.

“Can you hear that?” I ask her.

“Hear what?”

“The sound of water. I think there’s some kind of stream at the bottom of this. Maybe a river.”

“I hear it,” Sam chimes in.

An idea pops into my head. I unzip my jacket and remove my shirt. I wipe it across my face, my chest, soaking up every bit of sweat and scent I might have. I throw it at Sam.

“Do what I just did,” I say.

“No way, that’s disgusting.”

“Sam, the entire state of Tennessee is hot on our trail. We don’t have much time.”

He sighs but obeys me. Six does too, unsure of what I have planned but willing to go along with it. I put on a new shirt and slip on my jacket. Six tosses me the soiled shirt and I rub it over Bernie Kosar’s face and body.

“We’re going to need your help, buddy. You up for it?”

I can hardly see him in the dark, but the sound of his tail thumping excitedly on the ground is unmistakable. Always eager to assist, happy to be alive. I can sense within him the odd thrill of being chased, and I can’t help but feel it myself.

“What’s your plan?” Six asks.

“We have to hurry,” I say, taking the first steps downhill towards the running water. Bernie Kosar again turns himself into a bird and we race down, occasionally hearing the bloodhound bark and howl. It’s closing the gap. If my idea fails, I wonder if I might communicate with it and tell it to stop following us.

Bernie Kosar waits for us at the bank of the wide river, which has a still quality to its surface that tells me it’s much deeper than it sounded from the top of the hill.

“We have to swim across,” I say. There’s no other choice.

“What? John, do you understand what happens to the human body when it’s in freezing water? Cardiac arrest from shock, for one. And if that doesn’t kill you, then the loss of feeling in your arms and legs will make it impossible to swim. We’ll freeze and drown,” Sam objects.

“It’s the only way to get the dog from following our scent. At least we’ll have a chance this way.”

“This is suicide. Remember for a second that I’m not an alien.”

I drop to a knee in front of Bernie Kosar. “You have to take this shirt,” I say to him. “Drag it across the ground as fast as you can, for two or three miles. We’ll cross the river so the bloodhound loses our scent and follows this one instead. Then we’ll run some more. You should have no trouble catching up to us if you fly.”

Bernie Kosar transforms into a large bald eagle, takes the shirt into his talons, and speeds off.

“No time to waste,” I say, gripping the Chest in my left arm so I can swim with my right. Just as I’m about to jump into the water Six grabs my bicep.

“Sam’s right; we’ll freeze, John,” she urges. She looks afraid.

“They’re too close. We have no other choice,” I say. She bites her lip, her eyes sweeping the river, and turns back to me, giving my arm another squeeze.

“Yes we do,” she says. She lets go of my arm, and the whites of her eyes glisten in the dark. She pushes me behind her and takes a step towards the water, then tilts her head in a gesture of concentration. The bloodhound barks, closer than before.

She exhales slowly. At the same time she lifts her hands out in front of her, and as they come up, the waters of the river begin to part right there before us. With a loud rushing sound, the water foams and churns as it recedes upward to reveal a muddy path five feet wide that cuts across to the other bank. The water hovers, looking like a wave ready to crash. But instead it hangs suspended while icy mist coats our faces.

“Go!” she orders, her face strained in concentration, her eyes on the water.

Sam and I jump down from the bank. My feet sink and the mud comes nearly to my knees, but it still beats swimming in forty-degree temperatures in the dead of night. We tramp through it, taking big steps and struggling to lift our feet from the heavy mud. Once we’re across Six follows, rotating her hands as she passes through the massive waves ready to crash into each other, waves of her own creation. She climbs up the bank and then lets it go. The waves smash down with a deep hollow thud as though someone has just done a cannonball into it. The water rises and falls, and then looks no different than it did before.

“Amazing,” Sam says. “Just like Moses.”

“Come on, we have to get into the trees so the dog can’t see us,” she says.

The plan works. After just a few minutes, the dog pauses at the riverbank and sniffs wildly. He circles several times and then rushes after Bernie Kosar. Sam, Six, and I take off in the opposite direction, just inside the tree line but near enough to still see the river, going as fast as Sam’s legs will permit.

The sound of men’s voices yelling to one another reaches us for the first few minutes until we outrun them. Ten minutes after that we hear the first whir of a helicopter. We stop and wait for it to appear. A minute later, a spotlight shines high in the sky a few miles away in the direction Bernie Kosar has flown. The light sweeps the hills, shining one way, rushing the other.

“He should have been back already,” I say.

“He’s fine, John,” Sam says. “He’s BK, the most resilient beast I know.”

“He has a broken leg.”

“But two healthy wings,” Six counters. “He’s fine. We have to keep going. They’ll figure it out soon, if they haven’t already. We have to stay ahead. The longer we wait, the closer they’ll get.”

I nod. She’s right. We have to keep going.

After a half mile the river takes a sharp turn to the right, back towards the highway, away from the hills. We stop and huddle beneath the low branches of a tall tree.

“Now what?” Sam asks.

“No idea,” I say. We turn in the direction in which we had just fled. The helicopter is closer now, its spotlight still sweeping back and forth across the hills.

“We have to leave the river,” I say.

“Yes, we do,” Six says. “He’ll find us, John. I promise.”

We hear an eagle’s scream high in the treetops not far off. It’s too dark to see where he is, and perhaps too dark for him to see us. I don’t think twice about it, even if it will give away our position-I aim my palms towards the sky and turn my lights on, letting them shine as brightly as I can for a full half second. We wait, listening with our breaths held and heads craned. And then I hear a dog’s pant, and Bernie Kosar, changed back into a beagle,