Away (12 page)

“First thing we need to do is scout for sentries.” Peter crouched down, gesturing for the others to join him. “The wall will be guarded.” He pointed east. “I can check that way. Fisher, you can go west. Pathik can stay here with Nandy and Rachel. Once we've checked as far as we can and knocked out any we find, we come back here.”

Pathik nodded. Fisher and Peter vanished into the dark. Nandy, Rachel, and Pathik waited, crouched silent in the chill. Rachel strained to hear any noise, any indication that either Fisher or Peter had found a guard. All she could hear was Nandy's soft breathing.

Then, a shuffle of leaves on the forest floor, a twig snapping, and Fisher appeared, breathless.

“One down,” he panted. “He never even saw me. I hit him on the head and stuffed his mouth with my scarf. Tied his wrists too.” Fisher looked around. “Where's Peter?”

As if in answer Peter returned, as breathless as Fisher had been.

“Nothing.” He looked at Fisher. “Did you find one?”

Fisher nodded. “Not too far.”

“I went pretty far.” Peter shook his head. “No way to know if there was more than one on this side of the camp, but I'm betting not.”

“We move in, then.” Pathik rose. “I just wish we knew where the cage was.”

“We do.” Nandy pointed to the trees, where Nipper was emerging. “At least one of us does.”

The Woolly slunk up to Nandy, rubbing against her knees briefly. Nandy leaned downed and scratched Nipper's forehead.

“Can you lead us, Nipper? Take us to Daniel?”

Nipper reared up and batted at Nandy's hair. He sat down and gazed up at her.

“Hrrrmmmmmm.” Nipper sounded troubled.

“I know.” Nandy stroked Nipper some more. “But we have to get him out.”

The Woolly growled low in his throat. He snuffled at Nandy, nudging her hand. Finally he sighed, as if he knew he wouldn't be able to change her mind. Then he leaped away, looking back once before moving slowly west toward the low wall.

The group followed.

The low wall was formed from what looked like mud bricks. They cleared it easily, after peeking over it to see what they could of the camp. There was little light, just the smoky embers from a large central fire pit. There were huts here, but they were nothing like the huts in Indigo's camp. These were tiny, sloppily built, and ill-kempt. Some looked deserted. There was no sign of a cage.

“Nipper?” Nandy whispered the Woolly's name.

Nipper strode back to her and rubbed her knees again. Then he walked away, toward the fire pit.

“Malgam said he saw the fire at a distance.” Nandy stopped to think. “The cage must be on the other side of the fire pit, the other side of camp.”

“Nipper may be able to walk right through their camp, but we stay low, next to the wall. We'll skirt the camp as best we can to get to the other side.” Pathik began to move along the wall in the direction Nipper had gone.

They edged along, trying to stay as low and stealthy as possible. The wall began to curve away from them, and as they rounded the bend, the cage rose before them. There was no sign of any guard.

The cage was smaller than anything designed to hold a human, and divided into three cells. It looked like a picture Rachel had seen in a book—one of the old-fashioned, real books her mother liked so much—of a cage in a zoo. Like the zoo cage had been somehow set down in the middle of the clearing. Rachel wondered if there had been a zoo here once, long ago, long before the bombs and the Line and Away.

The back wall of the cage was built up on the outside with rocks, just as Malgam had seen. Each cell was completely exposed to the weather; there was no roof besides the bars, and no shelter within the cells. As they drew near, a break in the clouds allowed the moon to shine through, and Rachel could make out a crumpled shape on a dirt floor in the first cell. It looked like a pile of old rags. She approached with a sense of dread, which quickly became horror.

A skull gleamed in the pale moonlight. Its cheek rested on the perfectly preserved bones of a hand, in an oddly comfortable way, as though the former owner had curled up for a nap there. There was long, brown hair still attached to the skull. Rachel gasped when she saw it. For a moment she wondered if it belonged to her father. But the bones had been picked clean by some sort of scavenger long ago, and Malgam had seen through her father's eyes only yesterday.

“Nipper, old boy.” A whisper, scarcely louder than a breeze.

Rachel saw Nipper at the third cell, poking his nose through the bars. A filthy, bloody hand reached out, trembling, and ruffled the fur on the Woolly's head.

Pathik motioned to Fisher and Peter to keep watch and scrambled to the cell. Rachel stayed where she was, suddenly frozen.

“Daniel?” Pathik barely breathed the words.

“Pathik.” The voice sounded so weary.

“How do we open it?” Pathik ran his hand over the bars until he located a lock.

There was no reply for the longest moment. When it finally came, it was bereft of hope.

“You don't. I've tried every way.” Daniel laughed softly, the sound colored with anguish. “They have a key somewhere for that lock, but who knows where. I told Malgam not to come.”

Rachel saw his hand—her father's hand—take hold of Pathik's wrist.

“You need to go, Pathik. You and whoever else came, get out of here as fast as you can. They have patrols out at night. If they find you . . . Just go.”

His voice sounded so broken, nothing like the voice Rachel had so often imagined in her daydreams.

“We're not leaving you, Daniel.” Nandy crept forward so Daniel could see her. “How bad are you hurt?”

“It doesn't matter. I can't get out of this cage, Nandy. The bars are steel—” Daniel fell silent and stared at the lowest corner of his cell, where a line of light traced its way across the bars. The light bloomed in the night.

“That's a laser saw!” Daniel forgot to whisper.

“Shhh.” Pathik looked behind them, then turned back to Daniel. “Yes. We . . . we thought we might need it.”

Daniel lowered his voice. “Where did you get a laser saw? Who's the girl?” Daniel lowered his voice even more, to a confidential whisper meant for Pathik alone. “Is she from the Roberts? They're . . . Pathik, they're doing some things with the government, things we hadn't even suspected.”

Rachel looked up at that, and stared at her father. He was crouched in the cage, unable to stand. He looked back at her, the way a person looks at someone they don't know, and don't trust.

He didn't know her.

But then, why should he. She wouldn't have known him, not the way he looked now. She went back to work on the bars.

Pathik didn't waste time trying to explain. “Right now we just need to get you out of here, Daniel. We can talk later.” He eyed Daniel's bloody hands, and the bruises mottling his face. “Can you walk?”

“I can
run,
if you can get me out of this cage.” Daniel grinned, but he shook his head at the same moment. “I may need some help.” He edged toward the bar Rachel was working on and grasped it below the top cut she had made. He grimaced as he closed his hand around it, pain from his injuries twisting his face.

“It might clang if it drops, once you finish that bottom cut.” He met her eyes. “I'll hold it so it won't.”

Rachel nodded, but she didn't speak. She didn't want her voice to betray the emotions she was feeling. She didn't even really know what they were. Daniel pulled the section of bar carefully away when she finished her cut and laid it on the ground.

Time surrounded Rachel, pressing at her, pushing in, making her hand shake when she tried to cut the next bar. She felt it like a change in the air pressure, the need to hurry, the urgency of the situation. She adjusted her grip on the laser saw and took a deep breath.

“You're doing great.” Pathik was smiling at her when she looked at up. He reached out and touched a bar. “Just to here, don't you think?”

She looked; it was only one bar out from the one she was about to tackle. It did look like a man—especially a man as gaunt as Daniel appeared to be—could wriggle through the space three cut bars would make. She nodded at Pathik, and smiled as she realized he had given her the moment she needed to recover her composure. She applied the laser saw to the second bar with a steady hand. Time receded, leaving her to her work, and the world beyond the glow of the saw dimmed to a set of indistinct shapes.

When she made the last cut and her father laid the last section of bar in the dirt, it felt to Rachel as though there should be some sense of relief, but there was only fear. Her father was alive, his escape from horrible peril imminent, but he could be taken from her all over again, this time in front of her own eyes. She moved away from the opening in the bars and looked up at him.

“Come out,” she whispered. “Come out now, and be careful. Be
careful
.”

Daniel gazed at her, puzzled. He didn't move. The strength of her emotion reached him; he felt it in all its heat. The cadence of her voice sang to him, like the memory of some other voice. He knew it; he knew it was . . . something.

He was tired. He was half starved. He'd been beaten daily for weeks. He didn't know the name of the song he was hearing. Still, it stunned him, and he crouched in his cell, motionless.

“Daniel.” Pathik reached through the opening and took hold of Daniel's arm. “Time to go.” He pulled. And Daniel blinked, released from his reverie. He shook himself, more a shudder than anything, and lowered his head to the opening of the cell. In seconds he had wriggled through to freedom.

Pathik took one arm and Rachel the other, and they supported him as he stood, for the first time since he had been locked in the cage. He stumbled; his legs were leaden and numb. They took small steps and he seemed to gain some strength. He cried out on the third step and grabbed his leg. Rachel could see blood seeping through his pant leg. But he straightened, determined, and went on. After they had covered a few feet he stopped them.

“The saw.” Daniel looked at Rachel. “Get it out.”

She had put it back inside her jacket. She reached for it, brow furrowed.

“Why?”

“It'll cut flesh as well as steel. We may need to cut some.” Daniel whispered the words, but Rachel could hear the hatred in them.

Rachel shook her head and closed her jacket. She looked at her father's bloody hands and his bruised face. She wondered how many beatings it would take before she felt the kind of hate she heard in her father's voice.

“He's right.” Peter appeared behind them. Fisher was with him. “Give it to me, Rachel, if you don't want to use it.”

Daniel turned and stared.

“Peter?” He squeezed his eyes shut tight, then opened them again. He blinked rapidly. “Peter?” He turned to Rachel, a stunned expression on his face.

“Did he call you Rachel?” The words were faint, but Rachel could see her father looking at her as though he might know who she was, might remember her after all the long years, might see a three-year-old child in the girl standing before him. Might see his daughter.

“We have to get out of here,” said Pathik. “Rachel, you and Nandy run and tell them we're coming. See if they can rig a pallet of some sort so we can carry him back to camp. We'll be right behind.”

Rachel carefully transferred her father's arm to Peter, letting go only when she was sure he was firmly supporting Daniel. She shook her head at Pathik.

“You go ahead of us. We'll make sure nobody follows.” With a pointed look at Peter she took the laser saw out from her jacket and held it tight, her finger on the activator button.

Pathik started to protest, but Nandy cut him off.

“She's right—they could pick you right off. Just start moving, and we'll watch the rear. We need to get out of here
now
.” She dropped behind Rachel, taking out her knife and holding it low and close. Fisher joined her, unsheathing a similar weapon.

With Peter and Pathik in the lead supporting Daniel, they made slow, painful progress through the darkness. Rachel held the laser saw with both hands, and it still shook. She walked sideways, holding the weapon out toward the rear, scanning the blackness for any sign of someone following. Nandy and Fisher did the same.

They tried to be silent, but failed. Every footstep seemed to land on a branch, every breath rasped in Rachel's ears. Daniel cried out once, and they all froze in place. Six sets of ears strained to hear the sound of footsteps; six sets of eyes strained to see as far behind them as they could. After a long, tense interval, they set off again. The stench of the Roberts' camp hung heavy in the night air. They stopped occasionally, when Pathik raised a hand, to let Daniel rest. No one spoke.

Daniel did not cry out again, though his face twisted in pain. As they put more and more ground between them and the cage, Rachel felt her shoulders lower, and her breath came easier. She began to think maybe they would make it, maybe they would get back to the others safe. She looked at Fisher, and then at Nandy, trying to see their eyes in the gloom, to see if they felt the same sense of hope. She couldn't really tell.

Then she heard it.

It was fast, and worse, it was close. Pounding feet, hitting packed dirt, and the crackle of brush as men broke through it not far away. There were no shouted threats, no other sounds at all.

“Go!” Fisher gestured to Pathik and Peter. “Take Daniel and go. Hurry!”

Pathik hesitated. He looked at Rachel, torn.

“Pathik, please, get him out of here!” Rachel turned away as soon as she saw him start to move.