“It was freezing cold, and I was scared if I didn’t die by gunshot, I’d die falling out of the tree and breaking my neck.”
“You’re safe now,” Lily said.
“Do you have a gun?” Jackson asked.
“I don’t,” Lily said.
“What about him?”
Scott assumed this referred to him. He looked back over his shoulder. “I have a gun,” he said. “I hope I don’t have to use it.”
“The guys who are after me have guns,” Jackson said. “DJ forced me to come with him by threatening to shoot me.”
Scott looked past Jackson to Lily. His gaze met hers, and she raised both eyebrows, eyes wide.
He faced forward again. “We’ll just have to avoid the people with guns,” he said. And night vision scopes and who knew what else.
“I could call for help on my satellite phone,” Lily said. “I should call your dad and let him know you’re okay.”
“That’s a good idea,” Scott said. “Where are you going to tell the cavalry to meet us?”
She glanced around them. “We can give them our GPS coordinates, right?”
“My phone battery died sometime last night,” he said. “What about yours?”
She fumbled with her pack and pulled out her phone. “I turned it off last night to save battery.” She pressed the button on the side, but nothing happened. “I can’t get it back on.”
“Below-freezing temperatures drain batteries,” he said.
“Maybe they can triangulate our location from the sat phone signal,” she said. “Or we could tell them we’re headed to Pandora and they can meet us there.”
“That’s not a bad idea,” Scott said. “We can probably make it to Pandora in three or four hours.” He didn’t think they were far from the last ridge before the ghost town, but it would take a while to make that climb. “Are you up to walking that far?” he asked Jackson. The boy looked dead on his feet.
Jackson lifted his chin and squared his shoulders. “I’ll walk as far as I have to to get away from those guys.”
Lily took out the satellite phone and switched it on. “At least this battery hasn’t died,” she said after a moment when the phone lit up. She waited, frowning at the screen. “It’s searching for a signal.”
“You may have to wait until we get out of these trees to make a call,” Scott said. “Satellite phones need a clear line of sight to the sky.”
She continued to study the phone. “It says it’s unable to connect.”
“Switch it off, and you can try again when we’re on the ridge, without as much tree cover,” Scott said.
They trudged on, heads down, not talking. Lily tried warming her cell phone next to her body, but if still refused to turn on. They made slow progress, all three of them too exhausted to hurry. She kept an eye on Jackson, who walked just in front of her. The boy stumbled from time to time, practically asleep on his feet, but he refused any suggestion that he needed help.
Scott had an old-fashioned compass to navigate, and kept them headed toward Pandora. They began to climb the ridge that separated the old mining town from this more wooded terrain, and the tree cover began to thin. Lily tried not to think what a target they might present for anyone watching them through binoculars—or a spotting scope.
“Let’s stop a minute and have some more food and water,” Scott said after a while. He halted in the shelter of a car-sized boulder, and they crouched behind it, hidden from view. Within a minute, Jackson was shivering again, and Lily removed the extra clothing she had brought with her from her pack and handed it to him. “I’m sorry I didn’t remember before now,” she said.
He removed his jacket to pull on the sweatshirt, and as he did so, the sleeve of the fleece top he wore beneath his jacket slid up, revealing a purpling bruise. “What happened there?” she asked.
He shoved the sleeve down over the bruise. “I refused to go with DJ, so he dragged me along.” He rubbed at his side. “He jammed the gun pretty hard in my ribs. There’s probably a bruise there, too.”
“How did you cut your finger?” Lily asked.
“I was trying to start a fire by rubbing sticks together. I’ve read about it, but it’s a lot harder than it looks. I jammed a sharp stick into my hand and never did get a fire going.”
Lily took his hand and examined the injury. “You can’t let that get infected. Let me get the first aid kit.” She pulled out the first aid supplies and began tending the hand.
