Among the Brave (8 page)

Mark didn’t answer, just pointed at a pair of headlights far down the road, coming right at them.

Chapter Twelve

Turn onto a side street! Hide!” Trey screamed. Without thinking, he grabbed for the steering wheel. Mark shoved him away with one hand, as easily as he might brush aside a fly.

“Ain’t another road for miles,” Mark said. “Want to end up in the ditch? Just wait—”

The headlights drew closer. Mark seemed to be speeding up, and Trey had a moment of insane hope. How fast would the truck have to be going to just jump over whatever vehicle—whatever danger—was coming their way?

But that was childish thinking, based on a comic book his mother had let him read once when his father thought he was studying Latin. Real trucks couldn’t jump.

“Hmm,” Mark murmured. “It’s old Hobart.”

“Who?” Trey asked.

Mark put his foot on the brake.

“What are you doing?” Trey screamed.

“Shh,” Mark said.

The truck slowed, then stopped, as the other vehicle— another pickup—drew alongside them. Trey could only stare in paralyzed horror as Mark began slowly rolling down his window. The other driver did the same.

“Hey,” Mark said.

“Hey,” the other driver said. In the near-dark, Trey could tell only that it was an old man. His grizzled white hair and beard glowed eerily in the green light of the dashboard.

“Whozat you got with you?” the old man asked.

“My cousin,” Mark said calmly. “He was here visiting when—you know. Hobart, this is Silas. Silas, this is Hobart”

Trey guessed he was supposed to be Silas. He nodded awkwardly, even though it was probably too dark for Hobart to notice. They was glad of the darkness. It’d make it impossible for Hobart to ever say exactly whom he’d seen.

“Now, I’m so old, it don’t matter no more what happens to me,” Hobart said. “That’s why my family sent
me
to town to see if we got any money left in the bank. But, a couple of young scamps like yourselves—where are you off to in such a hurry that it’s worth risking your life to go there?”

Trey held his breath. Mark wouldn’t dare answer that question, would he?

“I’m not driving that fast,” Mark said.

Hobart chuckled. It was a grim sound in the dark.

“Fast, slow, it don’t matter. These days, leaving your house is like asking to be killed. I heard tell they was shooting anyone who even tried to drive into Boginsville. And over in Farlee, they’ve got soldiers patrolling the streets, telling people to turn out their lights, or turn on their lights, or cook them supper, or dance walking upside down on their hands—whatever the soldiers want, the soldiers get, or else they pull the trigger. And sometimes, they pull the trigger just for fun, no matter what the people do,” Hobart said. “Best thing you two could do is just turn right around and go on home."

Trey gulped and waited for Mark to answer.

“Looks like
you
survived, being out,” Mark said.

“Soldiers haven’t made it out to Hurleyton,” Hobart said. “Yet.”

“Was the bank open?” Mark asked. Even Trey, who could never detect subtle innuendo in any conversation, could tell that Mark wasn’t just making idle chitchat

“Nah,” Hobart said. ‘Whole town’s shut down tight.”

“It generally is at five in the morning,” Mark said.

“You questioning my story, boy?” Hobart growled. “I came out yesterday afternoon. When I couldn’t get into the bank, I spent the night at my nephew’s house in town.”

“Playing cards and gambling and drinking,” Mark said.

“So? They haven’t made that illegal yet too, have they?” Hobart practically whined.

“They will if your wife starts telling the soldiers what to do,” Mark said.

Hobart laughed, and Trey was surprised. Hobart and Mark had seemed to be on the verge of an argument, but suddenly it was like they were best friends sharing a private joke.

“Tell you what, boy,” Hobart said. “You don’t tell no one you seen me, I won’t tell no one I seen you.”

“Deal,” Mark said.

“Okay, then,” Hobart said. But he didn’t drive away yet. He peered straight at Mark and Trey, and for a second Trey was certain that the old man’s glittering eyes had taken in the contrast between Trey’s flannel shirt and his stiff servant pants. Trey even feared that the old man could see through the dusty seat to the papers Trey had taken from the Grants’ and the Talbots’ houses.

“I don’t know what you two are up to,” Hobart said. “But you be careful now, you hear? Don’t do nothing I wouldn’t do.”

“Well now, that don’t restrict us much, does it?” Mark teased back.

Hobart chuckled and began rolling his window up. Slowly, he drove on.

Trey let out a deep breath. He felt dizzy—now that he thought about it, he wasn’t sure he’d let himself breathe the whole time Mark had been talking to Hobart.

Mark was rolling up his window now, too, and expertly shifting gears to get the truck going faster and faster.

“Can we trust Hobart?” Trey asked in a small voice that seemed to get lost in the sound of the truck’s engine. He

was trying to decide if the question was worth repeating, when Mark answered.

“Hobart’s terrible about cheating at cards," Mark said. "But if he says he won’t tell nobody about us, he won’t."

And Trey
wasn’t
sure whether to be relieved or disappointed. If Hobart had insisted on telling Mark’s parents—maybe even dragged Mark and Trey straight back to Mark’s house—their dangerous journey would be over practically before it started. Trey could have said, “Oh,
well, we
tried,” and given up with a clear
conscience.

But the way it was now, he felt guilty for wanting to quit.

And he was still heading straight into danger.

Chapter Thirteen

The Grants’ house was on the outskirts of a huge city miles and miles away from the Talbots’ mansion and Mark’s family’s farm. That meant Trey had hours of sitting in the pickup truck, regretting every revolution of the wheels beneath him.

Mark provided no conversation to distract him. Trey wondered if the fear was catching up with Mark as well, because his face seemed to grow paler and paler the farther Trey went his skin seemed to stretch tighter and tighter across the bones of his face.

At least Trey saw no other vehicles after Hobart’s. Indeed, the landscapes Trey traveled through seemed utterly deserted, utterly devoid of any signs of life. Trey wondered if Hobart’s tales of soldiers everywhere were mere figments of his imagination; he wondered if the news reports of riots were lies as well. Riots required people, and there appeared to be no people anywhere.

Finally, when Trey had lost all track of time, and all sense of how long Trey’d been traveling and how much farther Trey had to go, Mark suddenly veered off the road.

“Wha—Mark! Wake up! You’re driving crazy!” Trey screamed, convinced that Mark had fallen into a trance of sorts as well.

“I’m going this way on purpose, stupid,” Mark hissed through clenched teeth as he steered the truck down a steep dirt slope. A river lay directly ahead.

Trey clutched the dashboard and squeezed his eyes shut. This wasn’t the way he’d expected to die.

The truck stopped suddenly Trey hadn’t felt any dramatic leap over the riverbank, and he felt no water lapping at his feet, so he dared to look again.

They’d stopped in a small woods. All he could see through the windshield now were thick branches and leaves, jarringly red and orange and yellow.

“Has there been some sort of nuclear contamination here?” Trey asked.

“Huh?” Mark said.

“The leaves,” Trey said. “They’re—not green. Is there radiation? Is it safe?”

Mark’s jaw dropped, ever so slightly.

“It’s October,” he said. “Fall. Didn’t nobody never tell you that leaves change colors in the fall? Didn’t you ever notice?”

“Oh,” Trey said. He remembered now. He’d seen pictures in books, of course, but the autumn leaves had never looked so bright and gaudy in pictures. “I was never outside until last December," he said defensively. Mark was staring at him.

“Let me get this straight,” he said. “You never once stepped foot outdoors until last year?”

“No,” Trey said.

“Didn’t you ever even peek out a window?”

“No. It was too dangerous.”

Mark’s jaw was practically dragging the floor of the truck now, he looked so stunned.

“I think.
. .
,"he started. “I think if I’d never seen the outdoors, I’d keep my eyes open once I was in it.”

“I do!” Trey said.

“No you don’t. You had your eyes closed practically the whole way here.”

“No I didn’t!”

“Yes you did! I bet we passed dozens of trees with turned leaves. Why didn’t you ask if any of them was contaminated?”

Now that Trey thought about it, he remembered a few swirls of colors along the way. But he wasn’t going to admit to Mark that his way of looking out windows was mostly by way of quick, fearful glances. He
had
kept his eyes open, but he’d mainly been looking at the dashboard.

“Never mind,” Mark said suddenly, in a rough voice. “It don’t matter.” He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “I was thinking, we’re almost there. If we hide the truck here and go the rest of the way on foot, we won’t stick out so much.”

‘We
don’t want to be conspicuous,” Trey agreed. So he didn’t know anything about trees and leaves—so what. At least he could supply Mark with a better word than “stick out so much.”

“Uh, yeah,” Mark said. “I have maps for getting over close to the city, and Peter—Smits
...
whatever you want to call him—he told me where his house was. So I know where to go. But, um...”

Trey waited, but Mark didn’t seem inclined to keep talking. He just sat there, staring out the windshield at the branches and brilliant leaves.

“What?” Trey prompted.

“We was on back roads up till now,” Mark said. “I avoided every single bit of civilization I could. But now... I ain’t never been in a city Is there anything I should know? So I don’t make any mistakes, I mean?”

Trey looked at Mark, in his flannel shirt, faded jeans, and heavy work boots. Under his dusty cap, Mark’s face held a mix of fear and hope. He looked like he really thought Trey could give him good advice.

“I don’t know,” Trey said. He’d grown up in a city, of course, but what had he ever seen of it? “Just don’t say ‘ain’t’ anymore, okay?”

“Uh, okay,” Mark said, but he looked like Trey had slapped him. Trey wanted to take his words back Trey were two ignoramuses going into danger Trey couldn’t even imagine. What did a little strangled grammar matter?

Mark shoved his door open, banging it on a tree branch.

“Help me cover the rest of the truck so nobody sees it from the road,” he said gruffly.

Following Mark’s instructions, Trey broke off branches to drape over the back of the pickup, where it stuck out the most. Even Trey could hear the edge in Mark’s voice as he patiently told him that everything Trey tried to do was wrong.

“No, Trey, you can’t break off a ten-inch-thick branch with your bare hands—you’d need a saw for that....”

“No, Trey, if we just pull off a leaf or two at a time, this is going to take hours....

When Mark was finally satisfied that the truck was hidden well enough—even creeping back up to the road to see for himself—he and Trey got out some of the food Trey’d taken from the Talbots’ house and sat down in the brush to eat

“Eat the heaviest stuff first,” Mark told him. “We’ll carry the lighter food with us.”

And then Trey had to compare. Was a banana heavier than a peach? Was a bag of peanuts heavier than a box of raisins? Mark watched him in disgust.

“Just eat whatever you want,” Mark said. “We’re strong enough to carry it all. Or—I am.”

Trey wanted to say, “Why are you bringing me along? What good am I if you don’t even think I can carry a knapsack?” But he swallowed his words, along with the peanuts. Both stuck in his throat.

Their meal was a quick affair. In a matter of minutes, Mark was on his feet again, pouring food into the knapsack. Trey climbed back into the cab of the truck and pulled out the papers he’d taken from first the Grants’ house, then the Talbots’.

“Put these in there too,” he said.

Mark hesitated.

“I don’t know,” he said. “If anybody stops us—if Trey search our bag..

Trey knew what Mark meant The papers could make them look like thieves. How could he explain where he’d gotten them? But the papers were all he had left. He had nothing from his life with his parents, nothing from his life at Hendricks. The papers were the only link he had to any point in his life when anyone cared about him.

“I’ll carry them myself then,” Trey said. He stuffed the most important Grant papers—and a few of the Talbots’ papers he’d grabbed blindly—into an inside pocket of his flannel shirt. He wanted to take everything, but it wouldn’t fit without bulging. He knew he couldn’t push his luck too far. He shoved the leftover papers back into the slit in the seat.

Mark’s eyes looked troubled, but he didn’t object. He turned away and rearranged the branches over the truck one last time.

“I thought we could walk along the river,” Mark said quietly. “If we’re lucky, there’ll be trees the whole way.”

Trey nodded, but panic clutched him. Trey were leaving the truck behind. For all Trey knew, the Grants’ house might still be miles away. Did Mark really expect Trey to walk that far
outdoors?
And once they arrived, they had no guarantee whatsoever that Lee would be there too.

“Are you sure this is the best way?” Trey asked. “What if—what if the phones are working now? Shouldn’t we at least check?”

“You see anyone standing around offering us a free call?” Mark asked mockingly. “Would you trust anyone who did?”

“No,” Trey whispered.

Mark turned and started off walking. Trey scrambled to keep up.

Walking, Trey found, was possible as long as he stayed right behind Mark. He kept his eyes on the gray plaid of Mark’s flannel shirt, and didn’t look up or down or side to side. This made Trey stumble every so often, and he probably looked like a total fool, always lifting his feet too high, just in case there were any logs or undergrowth in his path. But Mark didn’t say anything about it, just looked around every now and then to make sure Trey was still nearby.

After they’d gone a few yards, Mark whispered back over his shoulder, “Down!” When Trey didn’t respond right away, Mark grabbed him by the arm and jerked him toward the ground. Trey lay flat, his right ear pressed hard into the dirt. Was he hearing tramping feet or just the beating of his own heart?

“We’ll crawl from here on out,” Mark whispered.

Trey didn’t ask why, just silently panicked. How could he keep his eyes on Mark’s shirt if Trey were crawling?

Mark was already sliding away from him. The toe of Mark’s boot disappeared over the edge of a branch, and suddenly Mark was out of sight. Trey was alone again.

“Wait!” Trey whispered urgently, and dived over the branch.

Mark was right there, waiting in a hollow of dirt and leaves. Silently he started moving once more, and Trey followed, terrified of losing sight of Mark again.

What they were doing couldn’t properly be called “crawling.” It was more like slithering. Mark had the grace of a snake, slipping unseen through the brush. Trey broke branches and crunched leaves. An elephant, he thought, could not have been any louder or clumsier.