Chapter 17

“Let your jaw loose. Roll your shoulders. Breathe.”

Red evening light washed over the murky forest. Enough sunlight still reflected off the pink Rings above, but soon even that would diminish. Still, Dan and Andrew ran. Ruined cars and shattered buildings flew by. Dan’s burns ached, now bearing blisters and spots all across them. But the oncoming cancer was the least of his worries, now. He’d never run so far. He couldn’t go on. Not with the bruises on his shoulders or the scabbed blood on his lips. Not with such little food. He slowed, grasping at Andrew’s shirt. Andrew wouldn’t stop without the reminder. He refused to move on his own, and he drifted if he wasn’t steered.

The sprinting had cut their breath short. And although Dan suspected the financier would’ve run forever if he’d been asked to, Andrew’s breaths were downright ragged. Probably never ran a day in his life. Raw adrenaline had kept him moving, nothing more. Here, where the guard rail had faded back into the dirt, Dan could see the end of the mountain’s winding road. Only a few patches of endelwood forest remained, checkered between squares of fields and towns in the flat plains ahead. It was solid ground, straight to the shore, with not so much as a hill or a ravine in between.

Andrew’s knees buckled, sending him to the dirt. He moaned in exhausted defeat.

“There’s a few houses up the road,” Dan said, sitting on one of the fallen trees. “Water, too. Creek meets the road under a little bridge. Good?”

Andrew dry heaved on his hands and knees.

“Right,” Dan said. A breeze rattled the dead branches above, making them clack like shivering teeth in the distance. “Then—we’ll stop.”

Andrew slowly sat up against a branch. He kept his eyes closed.

“You—alright?” Dan asked. No response. “Alright. C’mon,” he said, lifting Andrew by the shoulder. “I’ll stay up tonight.”

He walked Andrew across a winding mess of overlapping endelroots, which still bore healthy brown bark. Somehow, Dan thought, the wood had survived. Would probably start to send out saplings soon, too. The men stopped when Dan could just barely make out the road over the root-piles. Andrew fell on a mound of clothes that Dan had laid in the crevice between two trees. His eyes stayed wide open.

Dan ignored Andrew. He forced himself to look away and not think about it. Not think about the blood. Or the face Andrew had made when he lunged at her. Or the way she’d screamed. Or how warm the blood must have been when it came out, and how nobody could put it back in—how helpless she was when her life drained on the ground. There was nothing he could do for her anymore. There was so much he could have done. But she was a corpse, now. Meat for the maggots. And Andrew had just stared. Dan shook his head. He pinched his own arm and let the pressure in his head drain away. He could still feel his heart straining in his chest, but he forced his eyes closed and made himself smile.

With that, he sat at the crook between two thick trees and admired a bright green offshoot from one of the roots. His smile faded. Father once said that endelwood bark wouldn’t hold a flame, but Dan hadn’t realized the trees would start growing so quickly. After all, Father said that if you planted endelwood when you were a baby, it would be fifty meters tall by your tenth birthday. He said that a hundred brand new saplings could sprout in a weekend, no matter the season. Father used to talk about trees so much. A droll fascination for a droll man. He had a leaf collection, and any time he went away he brought back a new one. In the end, he scattered those leaves all around his feet, along with a hundred empty, shattered bottles. The blood seeped all over them. Don’t be a messy boy, he’d said. Beggars are messy, you know.

Mother had blamed Dan, of course. Father had blamed him too. But Dan had watched, and Dan knew. Father did it to himself. Everyone did everything to themselves. And everyone deserved everything. No use blaming your problems on the world. But Kalei lay at the bottom of that cliff, didn’t she? Blood all over her. They’d never be able to bury her. She was too far away. She’d rot. All that soft skin would tear away. The rain would take it, if insects didn’t. Did she deserve it? He didn’t know anymore—she had to, somehow. If life wasn’t fair, he might as well have been an Anarchist.

Bad faith, Mother called it, chaos.

The moon raised high. Looking down, Dan saw that his watch read three o’clock. Seven hours had passed. And through all that time, his mind had just drifted back and forth. In and out. You just get in and out. Close the door, ignore the packs—grab Andrew first, then the packs. Run away. Grab the packs, Andrew throws the girl, run away. Get Andrew off the girl. Pull him away. Get the packs.

Run.