Rhodda gave a short nod, lips pressed together. A story there, if Hallie had to guess. One for another time.
“If we can get the radio fixed, we could use it to call for back-up?” she suggested to Girard. His radio phone hadn’t worked on the few occasions he’d tried it. She didn’t want to mention either its existence or the signal failure in front of Rhodda. The woman seemed mostly straightforward, but there were things she wasn’ttelling them, and it seemed dangerous to admit that Girard had an additional means of contacting the Conclave.
But the Reunion radio had worked, until a handful of days before, and Rhodda had admitted that she’d hidden the means of fixing it. So they might be able to get a message through to the Conclave and director and get back-up on the way. The helicopter had taken a couple of hours to get them here, Hallie remembered, flying fast across the ocean. That was the best case scenario, she told herself, stomach twisting with unease as she remembered the storm. It had passed by the island but might still be blocking any transport from Daydawn.
“That’s a good suggestion, although we’d need to find a way of dealing with the warrimel,” Girard reminded her. Hallie grimaced. She really didn’t want to face another swarm. “We can’t outrun them on foot, but we could with an ATV. I suspect there are more ATVs around New Hope. If we could, ah, borrow one of those, we could get back and fix the radio much more quickly,” Girard said. He was watching Rhodda as well.
She flinched. It was a tiny movement, but it was definitely there. Unease crept across Hallie’s skin. From the way Rhodda had been talking, she’d assumed that the woman had been aligned with Reunion - the new settlement - and not with either the principal or this governor. But now Hallie wondered.
“I need to find my people,” Rhodda said. She took a step away from them, as if she was planning to leave and head out on her own. Hallie frowned. Rhodda was stronger than she had been when they’d met her, but far from in good health. There had also been the faintest of hesitations before the wordpeople. As if Rhodda had been about to say something else. All the same, Hallie didn’t sense an outright lie. The woman was concerned about whoever she considered to be her people.
“The other people from your settlement?” Hallie asked. “Didn’t you say that the gunners took them? So they’d be at NewHope?” Which made Hallie wonder why Rhodda would flinch at the idea of going to the original settlement.
“Maybe. Maybe not.” Rhodda wasn’t telling the truth again.
“You think at least some of them were taken by this other person. The governor?” Hallie asked, feeling her patience wearing thin. Only a few moments before the thought of compelling an answer out of Rhodda had made her feel sick. Now, with the woman’s evasion, it was becoming more tempting. And that made Hallie feel sick all over again. She didn’t want to have this kind of power over anyone.
“Rhodda, you need to tell us what’s going on. We will do our best to help, but we need to know,” Girard said, the calm, quiet manner gone and in its place a sharp, focused air of command that Hallie hadn’t seen from him very often.
Before Rhodda could answer, Hallie heard something else, outside their circle.
“Engines,” she said to Girard, urgency taking hold. “I can’t tell what kind.”
“They’re looking for us,” Rhodda said, and all her evasion had disappeared into raw fear.
“Who?” Hallie asked, voice sharper than she’d intended, aware of an impulse to shake the other woman in the hopes of getting a straight answer out of her. “The principal or the governor?”
“I don’t know. Don’t let them take me,” Rhodda said, making her appeal to Girard, voice a harsh whisper. “Please don’t.”
“We’ll do our best. We need to hide,” Girard said, glancing at Hallie. “We can’t hold off a group.”
“Agreed,” Hallie said, glancing around. They were far enough away from the road that no one should be able to see them, surrounded by what looked to her to be dense forest. But they could be found by anyone following the trail she and Girard would have left as they followed the faint path Rhodda hadmade. They needed to move, and quickly. “Do they have tracking dogs?” she asked Rhodda. The other woman shook her head.
“Right. We’ll head further into the trees,” Girard said. “Hallie, give me your pack. Go into the forest that way. Don’t worry, I’ll find you.” That last was directed to Rhodda in response to her panicked, inarticulate cry.
Hallie handed her pack over to him and then took Rhodda’s arm, gently steering the woman further into the forest, in the direction Girard had pointed.
“Don’t worry, he will find us,” Hallie said, echoing Girard’s words, with as much patience as she could manage. With the weight of the pack gone, she could feel the burden of the weapon she carried, along with the spare ammunition.
“What’s he doing?” Rhodda hissed.
“Hiding our stuff,” Hallie answered tersely. She was quite certain that she didn’t want either the principal or the governor getting hold of the contents of her pack, even though it was mostly her clothes. She was quite sure that Girard felt the same, and his pack had food, water and the radio phone. Far more valuable. Things Hallie definitely didn’t want to lose. Besides which, they could move far more quickly and quietly without the weight.
The engines she’d heard were getting louder. They must be coming along the road. She risked a look back over her shoulder, but she couldn’t see anything apart from forest. And the trail that she and Rhodda were leaving through the undergrowth. A trail that a child would be able to follow. She swallowed the lump of fear in her throat and kept going. Girard would have had a reason for sending them this way. But that didn’t mean she had to just rely on him. She needed to come up with a plan of her own.
Further into the forest, the undergrowth thinned out so that they were walking on bare earth and the trail they had beenmaking disappeared. Hallie heaved a sigh of relief, and then realised she couldn’t hear the engines any longer. And she didn’t think it was because they were too far away. The vehicles - perhaps other ATVs - had stopped. Probably when they reached the crash site.
Her mind spun. Were the newcomers looking for Rhodda? Or for Hallie and Girard? Or something else? She and Girard hadn’t searched the overturned ATV, but it seemed unlikely that anything of value had survived the crash. There was a body, though. Would the principal send men out to recover the body of one of his gunners? Or perhaps they had been sent out to recover the ATV? That made sense to Hallie, used to living in low city where resources like vehicle parts were precious. Even burned and buckled, there would be parts of the ATV that could be stripped and re-used.
But that assumed it was the principal who had sent the newcomers. If it was the governor that Rhodda seemed so frightened of, that changed things. Someone who kept an eye on transport to the island would absolutely have seen the giant black helicopter that had dropped her and Girard off. They might not have known exactly where, and there had been a storm the day before, so perhaps this was the earliest chance the governor had had to send people to investigate.
Loud voices sounded, stopping Hallie in her tracks. Too far away for her to make out the words, but she could hear the anger in one and the calm in the other. She thought she recognised the calm tone as Girard and her stomach sank. Someone had found him, or he’d shown himself to the new arrivals. Impossible to tell from where she was.
Then the flat crack of a gunshot made Hallie flinch and drop to the ground. She looked around, hearing another shot. There was no one in sight. So whoever it was must be shooting at someone else. Girard. There was more shouting, the tone still angry.Hallie’s mouth went dry. She was quite sure Girard would not have fired first, no matter the provocation. So the newcomers were firing at him.
She got to her feet, hesitating a moment, torn between heading further into the forest with Rhodda, to keep the other woman safe, and heading back to make sure Girard was alright.
A small sound of pain and protest from Rhodda snapped Hallie’s attention back to her. Hallie had stopped now, but before she’d been striding through the trees, almost running, trying to put distance between them and the road, and realised that Rhodda had been struggling to keep up, her hand pressed against her side again, fine lines fanning out across her face, expression pinched with pain.
