The Runaways

Chapter 18

Hailey

We ran until our legs caught fire, until our bodies flickered out into tired ashes and left us breathless under an angry sky.

Even the stars were in hiding tonight, and the low rumble of not to distant thunder warned of heavy Virginia rains on the horizon.

Caleb and I stumbled out of the mouth of a rotting tunnel, the cold sweat on our hands hardly holding us together. He kept me close for what felt like miles, the two of us sprinting arm and arm through the rat filled underbelly of the slaughterhouse.

I didn't let him go. Not once.

I couldn't. There were so many reasons, so many stupid, thoughtless reasons why I kept running, but only one stood out. The loneliest parts of who I was, the most secret and desperate parts in me needed Caleb the way I needed my father.

But Caleb was the contrast, the man with the missing pieces, the kid who was me in so many ways but worlds away from the life I’d come from.

My dad made so many holes in me. Little doors and rabbit holes he’d never seen or cared to see. Common sense said I should’ve run back to the police and put miles and the military between me and the Evans family.

But if Caleb wasn’t lying about my dad, all the common sense in the world wouldn’t keep me safe. Maybe he could.

We crawled out into the middle of an empty crop field surrounded by silhouettes of crosshatched fences and the shadows of lonely trees. My legs gave way the second I stepped out of the underground and gravity sent me crashing into the hard packed dirt.

I struggled to suck in enough air to take the sting off the stones lodged into the skin of my knees. If the police gave chase now, I couldn’t outrun them. Neither of us could. But we lost them halfway through the tunnel.

They’d been steps away from catching us both when the shouting and gunfire went quiet. Neither of us knew what happened, neither of us asked why, we just kept moving, that’s all we could do.

Caleb limped over to the side of the tunnel entrance, too distracted to stop and catch his breath. He looked grisly to the point where he was nearly unrecognizable. Every line and groove from his forehead down had hardened in the dark and he hid his pain behind a tight-lipped smile.

        “You should cover that. The dust out here will make you sick if you don’t,” he said.

He ripped off the sleeve of his t-shirt and tossed it over to me. I tied it around my neck and swallowed the sting.

        “Thanks. You should rest for a second.“

        “No time for that.”

Caleb’s voice came out like gravel, lower and huskier than I’d ever heard it. His determination to finish out whatever it was he’d started scared me, not because I was afraid of what he wanted, but because I had a feeling he’d kill himself trying. He circled around the sides of the tunnel entrance until he found what he was looking for.

He froze up and stared down at the raised patch of ground near his feet like he’d forgotten they were still connected to the earth. Maybe he’d lost his mind and left it back in pieces on the slaughterhouse floor between the splinters and broken glass.

I didn’t want to believe something was wrong, but I felt it, and bad things happen to people who don’t pay attention.

        “Caleb, slow down.”

        “Help me with this.”

He pointed me over to a small metal handle near his feet, sunk low to the ground, and dug his heels into the dirt.