Page 39 of Trade
“I’ve always been lucky,” he says. “My very first woman, and she’s a queen.”
I make a barfing noise, and he chuckles, pleased with himself. “Do you know which direction is south?” he asks.
I don’t, but I’m not admitting it. I focus overhead, looking for a handhold. I’m spoiled for choice. This is almost the Platonic ideal of a climbing tree.
I haul myself up and up and up. At one point, as I’m considering my choices, Dalton calls up, “Make sure the branch is thicker than your bicep.”
“Thanks for the tip,” I call down. I can hardly see him through the foliage. The next branch I pick creaks a little, so I quickly hoist myself to a stronger one.
“Make sure it’s thicker thanmybicep,” he calls.
“Yeah, yeah.” I’ve hit a point where there is a gap in the leaves and the valley unfolds in front of me. Even though I’m winded, my breath catches. The greens. The silvers. The blues. I never could haveimagined.
“If you turn your head ninety degrees to the right, that’s south.”
I pretend I didn’t hear him and turn. It takes me a second to find the building from the Before. He was right. It’s nearly covered in vines, but there are a few patches of gray concrete visible once you pick the square shape out of the wilderness around it. Only the walls remain. It’s being reabsorbed by the earth.
I’m about to ask Dalton if he knows what purpose the building served, but distant movement catches my eye. Much closer than the building, but still at least a mile away, a hulk of metal creeps along where the grasses meet the woods, heading away from us, toward the mountain. I catch glimpses through the growth. Glass. Wheels.
“Dalton,” I call down. “I can see a truck.”
“Down. Now,” he barks. Instantly, he becomes the man I met outside the bunker. As I climb down, he’s unsheathing his machete. When I’m about ten feet from the ground, he snaps. “Stop. Stay there. Keep silent until I come back. You have your knife?”
I nod, suddenly filled with icy dread. Despite the hard mask he’s wearing, I know him now, and I can see the flicker of fear in his eyes.
“Anyone finds you, you run, understand?” he hisses. “If they catch you, use the knife. Aim for the soft shit. Eyes. Throat.”
I crouch on a branch, holding tight with shaking hands. “Don’t go,” I whisper, matching his lowered voice.
“If I don’t come back, take the pack and go back to the mountain,” he says, and without another word or glance, he disappears into the trees as silent as a ghost.
ChapterEight
My thighs get tired first from crouching on a thick branch about ten feet up in the air. They burn, and then they shake. Pretty soon after that, my calves cramp, and I have no choice but to climb down as silently as I can with all my joints locked up. All the while, my heart is pounding like a drum.
Once I hit the ground, I hide in a clump of bushes and make myself as small as possible, holding my knife while I stare at Dalton’s pack ten feet away that I didn’t bring with me, too scared to go back into the open to get it.
I huddle there for what feels like forever. The sun disappears from the sky overhead and shadows lengthen.
A new bird shrieks in the distance. It sounds big. And close.
An illustration comes to mind. Charles R. Knight’sLife Through the Ages. A saber-toothed tiger defends his kill from a giant winged beast with a bald head and black ruff.
Life has obviously come back. But what kind?
The shriek sounds again, louder, directly overhead. My head shrinks into my shoulders. I don’t look up. That would be worse—to see its claws coming.
What do I actually know about what can kill me out here? We haven’t come across anything bigger than a squirrel, but Dalton is armed to the teeth.
I know I’m ignoring the obvious threat—the men that Dalton went to investigate—but that danger is too real, too present, so I worry about prehistoric birds instead and remember that Smilodon baring his canines as he loomed over that dead camel in a ditch.
By the time Dalton returns, my nerves are hanging on by a thread. The second he calls out, “Glory?” I tear from my hiding place and race to him where he stands staring up into the maple tree. I didn’t even hear him come back. I’m totally defenseless out here.
“What was it?” I demand.
“Glory, why aren’t you in the tree?”
“I’m thirty-nine, Dalton. I can’t sit in a tree for five hours.”
