Page 65 of Duty Preserved

Sarah glanced toward the other fire. “I think that might be wrapping up. She’s tired of putting up with his shenanigans.”

We watched them for a moment. Alyson’s lively gestures. Cole hanging on her every word.

“You think Cole’s interested in her?” Sarah asked.

“Cole’s a great guy.” I picked up a twig and turned it over in my fingers. “He’s just got a lot of walls.”

“Don’t we all.” She watched the fire for a moment. The camp settled around us, everyone finding their spots for the night. Somewhere along the perimeter, one of the rangers on watch had a radio playing, the tinny sound of music drifting across the clearing. The cattle had settled inside the boma, the occasional sound from the herd the only reminder of what was penned thirty feet away.

“When we lie down…” Sarah said. She was looking at the fire, not at me. “I can sleep farther off. So nobody⁠—”

“No.”

She turned her head.

“No,” I said again. “You sleep right here. Next to me.”

“People will see.”

“I don’t care who sees.” I held her gaze. “And if something happens in the night, I want to be able to reach you.”

She was quiet. Her face did something I couldn’t read, as if she was wrestling something around in her mind. Her eyes went bright for a second. Then she blinked and it was gone.

“Okay,” she said.

We lay down next to each other. Everyone around us was too far gone to notice where anyone settled. The only people staying up were the rangers taking first shift, making enough noise and keeping the fire alight to ward off predators.

The ground was hard under my back. The sky was absurd, more stars than I’d ever seen. I could hear the rangers moving on the perimeter, the deliberate coughs and conversation that kept the predators at a distance. The cattle shifted and breathed inside the boma. Something popped in the fire then settled.

Suddenly, Sarah’s hand found mine.

Her fingers slid between mine and held. She didn’t turn toward me. I didn’t turn toward her.

I didn’t try to name what was happening or figure out what it meant. I held her hand and let sleep come.

It came.

Something woke me.

I was on my feet before I knew what it was. My body had registered a threat and responded while my brain was still catching up. For a stretched-out second, I stood in the firelight and didn’t know what had pulled me out of sleep.

Then the sound registered in my mind.

It was the cattle. The whole herd, moving at once inside the boma. A low, restless surge that built fast, hooves churning packed earth. The animals were pressing against one another and thus pressing against the walls. I’d heard fear in animals before. This was it, multiplied by every head of cattle in the enclosure. All of them reacting to something beyond the perimeter that I couldn’t see.

My hand went to my sidearm.

No. Can’t shoot at something in a boma. Nobody around me was reaching for a weapon. The rangers on watch were already moving, already responding, and not one of them had a rifle up.

I put myself between Sarah and the open ground beyond the fires, did it without deciding to. She was still getting to her feet behind me, and my body had already made the choice.

The rangers knew the protocol, and I didn’t. So I did what they did.

Two of the men on watch were feeding the nearest blaze, throwing brush onto it until the flames climbed high enough to light the ground twenty meters out. Others moved along the perimeter, banging sticks against the earth, shouting, filling the night with noise. They made themselves loud and unmistakable. They were aiming for presence and volume. Hopefully creating a wall of human sound between predator and prey.

I grabbed a branch and swung it against the hard-packed ground. Yelled into the open. Added my voice to the racket.

And Sarah was right there with me. Whatever I’d done, putting myself between her and the open ground, she’d already moved past it. She was up and working, banging her stick and shouting toward the perimeter with everything she had. Andrew was on his feet at the far fire. Cole too. All of us doing the same job the rangers were doing.