Rae's Arc

Chapter 3 of 5

Rae climbed down from the tower with the ledger under her arm and the boy's hand in hers. Marcus followed, quiet, his breath heavy. The hunters still groaned in the dirt behind them. Rae kept moving until the tower shrank between the trees. She needed a safe place. She needed her daughter. And she needed to warn the one man she had been avoiding. He was waiting by the strange tree near the base of the fallen redwood. Rawlings. Marcus's twin, father of Rae's second child, thicker in the face and shorter in patience. He had a small camera up already, snapping a winged sausage as it flapped off a low branch. "You brought the whole tower down on us and I get a photo of dinner," he said. He grinned at Rae like nothing was wrong. Rae stopped short. She had not told Rawlings she was coming. "You followed me." "Marcus texted." Rawlings shrugged. "Said you'd need a second pair of hands. Or a fat head to throw at somebody." He tapped his own skull and laughed. Marcus almost smiled. For one strange moment the fear lifted off Rae's chest. The boy tugged her sleeve. His glowing gold hands lit up as a winged frank drifted down and landed in his open palms. He laughed for the first time. The little creature chirped and wiggled its stubby wings. Rae felt something crack open inside her. She had spent two chapters running scared. Now a freed child was laughing under this odd tree, safe, for a breath. "Hold that," Rawlings said, raising the camera. "That's a good one." He took the picture. Then he tossed the camera to Rae. "Now you. Get me and the little guy." Rae caught it and laughed, really laughed, and snapped Rawlings squatting beside the boy with a sausage on his shoulder. They passed the camera back and forth. They took foolish pictures. For a few minutes they were not hunted. They were a family under a tree full of flying meat. Then Rae looked at the last photo. Behind Rawlings, past the branches, a shape stood on the ridge. A tall man. Watching. He held something small and dark to his eye. A camera of his own. Rae's stomach dropped. She turned. The ridge was empty now. "He saw us," she whispered. "The leader. He got our faces. He got the boy." Marcus stepped in front of the child. Rawlings stopped laughing. Rae looked at the ledger in her arm, then at the two men, then at the boy's glowing hands. "We can't scatter," she said. "He'll pick us off one by one. We need one place. Hidden. Ours." She gripped the camera hard. "A home he can't find. For my kids. For this boy. For every mother out here running." Marcus nodded. Rawlings, for once, said nothing. The plan had a shape now. So did the danger.