Escape from Eden (18 page)

“You’re enjoying this,” I said to him.

“Enjoying?” he said. He took our arms and shepherded us away from Grizz. “You make me sound like a sick bastard who likes violence and near-death experiences.”

I raised an eyebrow at him.

Gabriel pulled me along. “Do you think you can walk and dissect my psyche at the same time? I’d prefer not to die today.”

“Die?” Juanita said, following alongside. “They aren’t going to hurt us, they just want us back in Edenton.”

“Then why did they have guns?” I asked.

Juanita didn’t answer my question, she stared at her feet. I saw the struggle within her, the hesitancy in her limbs as she walked.

Gabriel led us into the mangled trees and brush at the edge of the dirt road. “If we can make it to the road, maybe a car will pick us up. But on the GPS, it looked like San Sebastian wasn’t too far away.”

“How far?” I asked.

“Seventeen or eighteen miles.”

“I thought San Sebastian was ten miles away from Edenton!” I looked down at my dainty shoes. My feet throbbed.

“Ten miles as the crow flies, probably,” Gabriel said. He led us to the edge of the dirt road wending between the trees. His voice dropped to a whisper. “One of them may have doubled back to the main road, so stay alert.”

We walked in silence, moving as quickly and quietly as we could along the edge of the muddy road. If we heard a noise, we slipped behind a tree and tried to melt into the darkness. Gabriel, in his black clothes, faded into the shadows with a deft swiftness. I followed his movements, surprised at how ungraceful I felt slinking along behind him. Juanita, her mass of hair shielding her face, took tense step after tense step, watching her feet, occasionally looking back down the road as if waiting to be saved.

We reached the mouth of the dirt road, where the mud met the asphalt. The heat of the road’s surface bled through the soles of my flat shoes. Unlike the damp air, it hadn’t cooled off yet.

“We were driving that way,” I whispered, pointing up the road.

Gabriel and I started in that direction, but Juanita didn’t move. We turned back to her in unison. Although the moonlight was faint, it was enough to let me see her features. I couldn’t see her eyes, but I could see the furrow between her eyebrows.

“I’m sure if we talked to Thaddeus,” she said quietly, “let him know we’re scared, he’ll help us.”

“He won’t,” I whispered fiercely to her, losing my patience. “He did this to us, Juanita. We’re here because of him. I saw him back there in that, that place where they took us. He knew we were being drugged. He knew what was happening to us. Get it through your head, Juanita. They don’t care about you.”

Gabriel shot me an angry expression then took her hand. “Come with us to San Sebastian. I know you’re scared, but he won’t help us. Not in the way you think.”

She glanced back over her shoulder. “How can you be so sure? I know you told me to trust you, Gabriel, and I do. But the more I think about this, the more I’m convinced that Thaddeus, or anyone in Edenton for that matter, wouldn’t hurt us. I can’t explain what happened to us back there, but—”

A beam of light suddenly arced out from the dirt road behind Juanita, her red dress shining like a beacon in the night. I lunged back, into the shadows, and watched, paralyzed, as she released Gabriel’s hand and turned, waving her arms over her head.

“Thaddeus!” she called into the light. She held a hand up to shield her eyes. “I’m here and we’re fine. We want to come home—”

A sharp noise—like a crack of thunder–split the air.

Juanita reeled back, falling onto the asphalt. Her head hit the hard surface and bounced, once, before it fell sideways, away from me. The beam of light remained trained on her, and an oval of darker red expanded on the fabric of her red dress.

I clapped my hands over my mouth and stifled a scream.

For a long, awful moment I stood staring at Juanita on the ground, the watery fringe of the blood darkening the red of her dress. A tug at my waist caused me to blink out of my haze. Small things surrounding her came into focus: the frayed hem of her dress, a smudged black mark on the road next to her knee, tiny pebbles glittering like gemstones in the light.

The light.

From the shadows, the light shining on Juanita shifted and bounced. A person holding a flashlight walked toward her. Toward us.

Gabriel dropped something that clattered to the ground and the noise snapped me awake. I glanced down to see the gun he’d been holding now lying at our feet. He yanked my dress.

“Run,” he whispered fiercely in my ear. “Run!”

All impulse and nerves, I spun and darted up the road, legs pushing and pushing, blindly leading me away from Juanita. I didn’t feel I was moving fast enough, like running in deep sand. I drove harder and kept going until my knees gave out from sheer shock.

They shot her.

Shot.

If it weren’t for Gabriel, I would have fallen on my knees on the black asphalt. He held my arm and swept me to the edge of the road, so we could flee beneath the cover of the trees.

“Don’t look back,” he said in my ear.

“I shouldn’t leave her,” I said, a tremor of fear in my voice. Hearing my broken tone made everything real. Horribly real.

“They have her now.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Keep moving.”

A riot of arguing voices rose up behind us, but I couldn’t make out any words over my own rushing breath. We sped up, cresting a small hill on the road.

Running footfalls slapped the pavement somewhere behind us.

“Faster,” Gabriel said.

I ran, full speed, my feet protesting with every step. Minutes swept by and I focused on the pain from my dainty shoes, the burning ache of my muscles, to keep from thinking about Juanita, about the men stalking us. I thought about the clamminess of my dress, sticking to me like my bathing suit did after a swim in the cove beach; the moisture collecting at the roots of my hair; the dry sandiness of my mouth. I was so thirsty. Still I kept running. A quick glance over my shoulder proved we were still being followed. The men’s flashlights swept through the heavy air in intersecting beams.

From above, I heard the deep whomph of helicopter blades. Wide leaves flapped overhead, peeling away to reveal us dashing along the edge of the road. No searchlight circled us, though. Instead, it shone on some point behind us. The helicopter swept past. With the onslaught of cutting air, the skin on my back and neck became chilled and over-sensitive. I expected a bullet to hit me any second. The wind slowly faded as we sprinted away. It sounded like the helicopter landed in the road.

We followed a wide curving bend.

“This way,” Gabriel said and tugged me off the road, through the trees.

The brush was thick, thistles and branches slicing into the skin of my calves, but I followed, concentrating on the brightness of the pain. It was dark under the canopy of leaves. I only saw tall columns of dull black surrounding us, like endless corridors. Each tree we passed was thicker than the last. The hem of my skirt caught on a branch. I pulled it free and plowed forward, trying to gain as much ground as I could. Gabriel ran as fast as before. I’d been able to keep up with him so far, but now the pain searing the skin of my legs, my breath sawing in and out of my lungs, made it more difficult.

Keep going for Juanita. Get to the police in San Sebastian and save her.

“Stop!” someone yelled from the road into the jungle that surrounded us.

But I didn’t hear the telltale crunch of underbrush behind us. They weren’t following us into the trees. I listened hard and heard one of them complaining of snakes.

Gabriel came up short, throwing his arm out to the side to keep me from moving forward. I saw a sudden break in the jungle. Light from a distance revealed another road. This one was gravel.

I turned and peered through the darkness behind us. The men’s voices collided as they argued. One didn’t want to proceed. The other shouted, “That’s an order,” over and over again until I heard the sound of flesh hitting flesh. One beam of light flickered between the dead-still leaves. Underbrush snapped as the man broke the boundary of the jungle. The footsteps were slow as he picked his way carefully through the gnarled, thick growth covering the ground. He was coming toward us.

“What do we do now?” Gabriel asked, breathing hard.

I glanced up and down the road. “There!”

Headlights approached. I darted to the center of the road and waved my hands over my head. The truck skidded to a sudden stop a few feet ahead of me, kicking up gravel as it did. I rushed to the driver’s side window, which was already open, revealing a man and a woman dressed in identical white shirts. Some kind of uniform.

“Will you take us to San Sebastian?” I asked in Spanish.

The man’s eyes took me in and I looked down to see what he saw. My dress, tattered and sweaty, hung around my scratched and bleeding legs. I swiped the hair out of my face in hopes of appearing a little less psychotic.

The man glanced at Gabriel standing in the illumination of the headlights, and looked momentarily worried. Gabriel looked strung out and tense, hands balled into fists. His shirt hung open at the neck and his skin was slick and glistening. But his blazing eyes probably frightened the man the most.

“Hey,” I hissed to Gabriel in English, “try to look less lethal!”

Gabriel swung his hand in the direction of the jungle. “We need to get out of here, now.”

“Señor,” I said to the man. “We need help. Please.”

“Get in the back.” He jerked his thumb toward the bed of the truck. “We’ll take you.”

We clambered in as quickly as we could. The bed of the truck was empty except for a large box crisscrossed with bungie cords strapping it in. We sat between the box and the rear window of the cab. I heard the man and woman mumbling to each other.

The truck sputtered out on the gravel. The man drove like someone had yelled
Go
! I clutched the side of the pitching truck to keep from toppling out. I looked wide-eyed at Gabriel. He shot me a grin.

Even over the rumble of the truck, I heard the man who’d been chasing us break out of the trees. With the box as a shield, we ducked down and peeked over the edge. He glanced around in confusion, then saw the lights of the truck. He started running. But we were already too far for him to catch up and he stopped abruptly, sliding through the gravel.

The empty road stretched before us. Above, billowing clouds moved over the slivered moon. I curled my legs to my chest, wrapping my arms around my knees, trying to catch my breath. In the semidarkness, all I could see was Juanita, her head bouncing on the hard asphalt of the road. Bouncing. That jerk of her head, how it ricocheted off that unforgiving surface, seemed unnatural. Unsurvivable.

We heard the thwack-thwack of the helicopter circling again. The man in the driver’s seat ducked his head out the window and peered into the sky, still speeding along the gravel road. He met my gaze in the rearview mirror and examined me with suspicious dark eyes. He leaned over and mumbled to the woman in the passenger’s seat. She half-looked over her shoulder at us, but said nothing.

“They’re coming after us,” I said to Gabriel as quietly as I could. I wasn’t sure if the couple spoke English.

Gabriel glanced up at the helicopter. “I don’t think so,” he said, pointing. “No searchlights. Looks like they’re following the other road. I wonder why they aren’t pursuing us.”

“It sounded like they were arguing. Maybe they didn’t mean to …” I sucked in a breath but it sounded like a sob. I refused to cry. Juanita was not dead, she didn’t need my tears. “Maybe shooting her was a mistake and they took her to the hospital in San Sebastian.” I could only hope that was the truth.

The helicopter buzzed off on its determined route, leaving us barreling down the gravel road, rocks spitting from the tires in our wake.

I stared at the lights disappearing in the distance. “Do you think she’s still alive?” I asked Gabriel in a small whisper.

He placed his hand on my shoulder. “Yes.”

I felt the heat of his skin through the fabric of my dress. I hadn’t realized how cold I’d become with the wind whipping around us in the back of the truck. It felt good, safe. The simplicity of that touch grounded me for a moment. I smiled at him.

A look of confusion washed over his features. He jerked his hand from my shoulder. I fought down a stab of disappointment. Touching me wasn’t so terrible before, at that strange and ethereal party.

“What are you doing out here?” The truck driver called back to me through the window. He sounded concerned and almost fatherly.

I hesitated. Did I tell him the truth? Make up a lie? If so, what? After a few moments of indecision, I said, “We’re from a place called Edenton. We—”

“Edenton?” the man exclaimed and the truck lurched sideways.

For a moment I went weightless, as if lifted into the air. A bruising force cinched my arm, and before I’d realized it, Gabriel pulled me back into the truck, fingers digging into my arm as he tucked me tight against his side.

“Jesus,” he breathed, lips parted, eyes wide and dark. “Mia, you almost—” he searched my face.

“Why aren’t you in Edenton?” The man yelled back to us, oblivious that I’d nearly been thrown from his truck like an untethered box. Worse, his tone was now devoid of any friendliness.

Gabriel released me with surprise and scrambled to the other side of the flatbed. Breathing hard, I stared at him, unsure what to say. I rubbed my arm and mouthed, “Thank you.” He nodded, once.

Through the cab, the woman’s shrill and frightened voice rang out. Complaining. She was complaining to the man. They never should have picked us up.

The truck began to slow.

I tore my gaze away from Gabriel’s and began pleading with the couple not to dump us here, on the side of the road, words tripping off my tongue in frantic, sharp syllables.

Once the truck stopped, the man turned and threw his elbow over the seat. “Why aren’t you in Edenton,” he repeated to me through the open window, but peered at Gabriel, as if he’d dragged me from Edenton like some kind of chest-thumping caveman. “The Reverend does not allow his Flock to wander.”