Alex Miles's Arc

Chapter 3 of 3

The creek bed cut a shallow line between the stubble fields and the wooded ridge ahead. Alex moved first, Locke six paces back. They had gone half a mile when Locke clicked his tongue and pointed up. Through a gap in the brush, Alex saw a saucer parked on the next rise. Two reptilian pilots stood beside it on the dirt road, a checkpoint set across the only gravel track to the ridge. One held a cracked tablet. Green names crawled down its screen in tight columns. Alex went flat against the bank. He knew his name was on that screen. He had seen it scroll past at the first checkpoint two days ago. The pilots would not need him to speak. They had his face, his rank, and a list. He patted his chest pocket out of habit and felt the hard shape there. A weathered badge with an oak leaf, leather backing worn soft. Locke's badge. Locke had pressed it into his hand at the creek and told him to hold it. Alex had not asked why. Now he understood. If a patrol stripped him, that badge tied him to Echo team, and Echo team was on the list too. "Give it back," Alex whispered. He held the badge out. Locke shook his head. "Keep it. Means you came from me. If I don't make the ridge, someone needs to." Alex stared at him. "They'll match my face before I open my mouth. I can't walk that road." Locke's jaw worked. He drew a small folded map from his sleeve and tapped a mark west of the gravel track. "Then don't. There's a draw a quarter mile back. Fallen oak across it, big around as a truck. Rotted hollow. Goes under the ridge line for thirty yards. Comes out past their sight line." "You've been through it." "Once. Yesterday." Locke folded the map. "Ferns over the mouth. Stay low. Don't crawl fast. The wood's soft." They backtracked along the creek until the draw opened on their left. The log was where Locke had said. A wall of green hung over the opening, ferns spilling from the top of the trunk. Alex pushed the ferns aside. Inside, the hollow ran straight and dark, wide enough for a man on his belly. He went in first. The wood gave under his elbows in soft flakes. He smelled wet rot and something sharper, like old urine. Halfway through he saw a three-toed print pressed into the punk wood. Fresh. He kept moving. He came out on the far side in a stand of young pine, the ridge above him, the checkpoint behind. Locke slid out a minute later and brushed bark from his sleeves. They had gone around. The list had not seen them. But the print in the log meant something else had used the same tunnel, and it had come this way first. Alex put his hand on his sidearm and started up the ridge.