THE LONG WALK NORTH

CHAPTER FIVE

MARA

Eli's hand is on my sleeve. "Mara."

I'm already awake. I smell it before my brain fully understands it. Smoke, thin, and under it something sharper. Fuel.

On the ramp a whistle blows. Two blasts. A third starts and stops in the middle.

"Fire," Eli says.

"Quick Eli, get on." I say my voice trembling slightly.

I get him on my back, his arms around my neck, his legs hooked on my belt. He weighs next to nothing. I pull the pack on over him. The knife is in my hand.

Light comes down the ramp, orange and moving. At the top, Teague's two men are on the ground. One is still moving. Then the horses.

Four of them, then five, riding between the pillars with torches held out to the side. White cloth over their faces. A black R on every sleeve. One throws a bottle. It breaks on a tarp room and the whole wall goes up at once.

Behind the last horse somebody drags a truck across the top of the ramp and sets it alight. That's the only way out.

People are running. Ten or twelve go for the ramp anyway. Two riders turn and ride them back down.

A man runs at a rider with a pot. The rider cuts him without looking at him and the pot rolls. It's full of boiled roots. The horse steps through them. They ride past the stove, past the cans stacked against the wall, past a whole bundle of coats. They don't touch any of it.

One of the riders leans out of the saddle and takes a girl by the back of her shirt. Nine, maybe. She kicks. He drops her across the saddle in front of him like a sack and rides on.

Then another. A woman holds a baby over her head. The rider takes it and leaves her standing with her arms up.

Then another.

They're only taking the children.

"Hold on tight," I say.

Eli doesn't answer. His arms tighten.

I go for the inner stairs. The smoke is low now and I keep to the wall, under it, where the air is still a bit fresh. A horse goes by close enough to feel. Its rider has a rope in one hand and a burlap sack tied to his belt. He doesn't see me. I'm too big to be what he's looking for.

The stairs.

Bean is on the landing between two and three. He's on his feet with a length of pipe in both hands. Pim is behind him against the wall, the sock doll in her fist. A rider is on the stairs above them, a hook on a pole in his hand.

"Mara," Bean says.

I don't stop. I'm on the stairs. I'm past them.

I hear the pipe hit something. I hear Bean grunt. I hear Pim start to scream, one long note, and I'm on the next flight, and behind me the note leaves the floor. She's been picked up.

I look back once. Bean is on the steps with his hands over his stomach. His mouth is open. He's trying to say something. The rider steps over him.

I go down.

The lowest level is dark and the smoke hasn't reached it yet. The well. The bucket on its rope, swinging a little. The lamp is still lit in the clinic.

Doc is in front of his tarps with a table leg. Behind him, in the dark, I can see some of the people from yesterday. The man with the swollen wrist. The woman with the baby. Mrs. Aldana, with both hands over her mouth. They've come inside and they're pressed against the shelves. The boy from the bucket is holding the jar of three pills.

Doc sees me. He doesn't lower the table leg.

"Go," he says.

Two riders are coming down the stairs.

"Go," Doc says again, and steps into the middle of the floor to meet them.

I run. Behind the well, behind the sump, to the pipe. Behind me wood hits wood. Doc says something sharp and short. Then I don't hear his voice.

The pipe is the width of my shoulders. I go in on my knees with Eli on my back and the pack catching on the ceiling.

Wet. Cold. Black. I was in here once, at twelve. It was a lot smaller then. I push with my hands and drag with my knees, and the rust takes the skin off my palms where the rebar already did.

Something comes down overhead. I feel it more than hear it, a long shudder through the pipe and the wall and my knees, and then the roar. Dust comes down the pipe after us like breath. I cough into my sleeve. Eli coughs into my neck.

"Keep going," he says.

I keep going.

The grate is where I left it. I put my shoulder to it and it swings without a sound. We fall out into the creek bed. Cold water to the ankles. Sky.

It's gray. Not morning yet.

I carry him up the bank into the dry grass and lie down with him on top of me. Behind us the garage is a black mouth with smoke coming out of it. The ramp isn't there anymore. Where the ramp was, there's a hill of debris now.

A rider comes along the top of the bank, leading a second horse. I put my hand over Eli's mouth. He's already coughing into my coat. I hold his face against me until the horses have gone by.

In the first gray I see the rest of them on the north road. A line of riders, and behind them two carts with canvas stretched over the beds. The canvas moves. They go up the hill at a walk and over it.

Then the sounds come out of the ground. Not shouting now. Voices. A lot of them, some far down. A man calling a name over and over. A woman sobbing.