The Book of Kell by Amy Briant

Author:Amy Briant [Briant, Amy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781642471045
Publisher: Bella Books
Published: 2020-02-05T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-two

You Will Not Be Harmed

Down the hill was the freeway, which was our best chance of finding Segundo. So where did I run?

Up the hill.

Sigh.

Stupid, maybe, but instinct told me to run up the hill, so that’s what we did. We were under the trees in the thick of the forest in just a few seconds. There was no clear pathway, but I made a path, crashing through the undergrowth in full-blown flight mode, dragging East along behind me. After about five minutes of that, my brain kicked back in, coincident with my lungs giving out. I wasn’t completely back from the fever yet.

Huffing and puffing, the two of us huddled behind a tree. I was trying to listen for the drone, but couldn’t hear anything over my own heart pounding and gasps for breath for a minute or two. I strained to hear the whine or any other giveaway noise, but the forest was eerily silent, except for the blustering of the wind.

“Do you hear it?” East whispered, her face taut.

I shook my head.

“What’s the plan?”

I looked at her, trying to think. We’d been taught that the drones were spies. I didn’t know if this one had been on a routine patrol or if the smoke from the chimney had drawn it. Either way, we were moving on. The drones had cameras and computers onboard. The one that had just flown over the cabin had no doubt already reported back to its masters. We wouldn’t want to be there if and when they came. It wouldn’t take much to blow up such a little place. One well-placed grenade ought to do the trick.

The drone might now be looking for us, but I still didn’t hear anything. It might have been recalled by whoever sent it, or continued on its rounds. There was no way for us to know. Maybe it hadn’t seen us at all, but there was no way it had missed the cabin with the telltale smoke coming from the chimney. If we were really lucky, they would deem the cabin unimportant and not send anyone at all. If we were a little lucky, it would take them a day or a week or a month to send somebody. And if we were unlucky…

The staccato beat of a helicopter’s rotors was coming in our direction.

“Oh, fuck,” I said.

East looked terrified. She clutched the front of my ginormous parka with both hands, but didn’t say anything, her eyes huge. I looked around us, but saw nothing but trees and more trees. There was nowhere to run. No time to run. I could hear the chopper hovering. I assumed it was over the cabin and was glad the clearing was too small for them to land.

“Get under my jacket,” I told East, shrugging out of my pack and holding the extra-extra-large dark green parka open. I thought her beige coat would be too easy to spot from the air. We huddled together under the parka. I threw handfuls

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