OBLIVIOUS

CHAPTER 23 - Flight from Cain

Soon, the flat ground elevates into a hillside, like foothills of more mountainous terrain, and that's what it turns out to be. The slight incline morphs into a much steeper slope that's more difficult to navigate. Jinx says this is the way, so we trudge on, sometimes climbing bluffs with our hands and feet until we can walk, even if we're bent over digging into the dirt and rock, scraping for leverage.

"Over this mountain ridge is a valley," Jinx says. "Beyond that is our destination. We will arrive there before my battery runs low. I'm one day into my three-day reserves. I can protect you till then. After that, you're on your own."

I glance over at Eve and she looks away with a tight set to her jaw. I peer down with my hands on my waist. Exhale.

"That's not good, Jinx." I narrow my eyes at the drone. "I could use the company."

Eve huffs.

"I meant nothing by it."

"Sounded like it to me."

"There's something else." Jinx swivels to face us with his screen of blue wavy lines as he talks. "There are predators in the valley and the land on the other side of this ridge."

"More rhino-bears?"

"No, worse. Vile wolves."

"You're kidding me." Eve crosses her arms. "This just keeps getting better."

"There's more," Jinx says with the blue lines on his video screen, transforming into the red-line of his infrared detector. "I've picked up an incoming heat source. I noticed it a mile back, but I wanted to make sure it was heading our way, and I'm afraid it is."

"Is it Cain's rocket ship?" I ask.

"No. It's Jezebel's tracer craft. She and Cain use it to track the humans Abraham sends to Earth."

"So, there are more of us?"

"There might be, if they escaped from Cain. By design, Abraham limited my knowledge on this subject since I only have general information relating to his previous efforts to establish a presence for humanity on the planet."

"How are we going to escape him if he's onto to us?" I say. "If he's coming our way, he has to know where we're headed."

"Jezebel probably found the log where we crossed the river." Eve shrugs. "She's a tracker, right? So, she saw where we disrupted the moss and bark on the fallen tree. From there, she knew we took a path through the forest."

"She's right. If they're in a tracer craft, like you said, then the tracer is probably too big to weave between the trees. They didn't want to spook us at night, afraid we'd run and hide, so they waited till morning."

Jinx says, "They're five miles away now and racing toward us at over a hundred miles an hour. They've targeted your heat source and they've increased speed over the forest canopy."

"They found the remnants of our campfire and now they're really on to us," I reply. "How long will it take them to reach us?"

"Less than three minutes."

"We have to hide now." Eve snatches my arm, drawing a glance from me. She removes her hand and gestures to Jinx. "Where can we hide?"

As Jinx spins on an invisible axis, I scan the mountainside. We're past the tree line, in the open, with nothing but a rocky cliff before us, one we have to scale to get to the other side to reach the valley below. And vile wolves. Great. If we escape Cain and Jezebel, we get eaten by a wolf pack. Fantastic.

"I've located a small cave we can hide in along this ridge to the south," Jinx says. "We need to hurry. The tracer is a minute and a half away."

We follow a narrow trail with a sheer drop below us and the ridge above. Gravel and dirt loosen beneath our boots, threatening to topple us and send us sliding down and off the cliff side. In thirty seconds, I spot the cave and we hustle up to it.

Less than a minute until the tracer is upon us.

When we reach the cave, I turn to Jinx, the corner of my eye, glimpsing Eve for a moment. "This isn't a cave, it's an alcove. It only goes in five feet. They'll spot us for sure. We can't hide here."

"This is our only option," Jinx says. "Thirty seconds left."

Behind us, the screeching roar of a jet turbine races across the roof of the forest. We're in plain view and I see the tracer thundering toward us, so we heed Jinx's command and enter the cave. From inside, I watch as the craft draws near and slows.

Jinx positions himself in front of us and a flash of blue light bursts over us and envelopes the tiny alcove of a cave.

I peek to the side and realize the tracer hovers over the treetops in front of us, in direct line of sight. Bent wings extend to the sides of the craft with turbines on each, now turned vertical to produce a downward thrust to keep them hovering as they scour the mountainside, searching for us.

As I crouch behind Jinx, Eve ducks behind my shoulder, her fingers climbing up my back as she pulls me against her. I'm sure she's just hiding herself better, so Cain will kill me first.

The tracer's fuselage is a transparent sphere large enough to hold two people. I suspect it's made of clear polycarbonate like the viewports on the space ark. The long barrels of high-caliber guns protrude from the bottom of the craft. I guess the rocket ship they came to Earth in is bigger than it seemed when they entered the atmosphere, large enough to contain a tracer craft.

A woman with short dark hair sits in the pilot's chair with her hand on the controls. And a man with long dark hair that sweeps back over his collar jabs his finger at the mountainside in our direction.

The tracer moves in closer, vibrating with thrust aimed at the ground, the air around them shimmering with turbulence.

As we wait for Cain to blast us into oblivion, we don't speak a word. We only shiver with fearful expectation while the smell of exhaust burns our nostrils.

Cain and Jezebel mouth words to each other. An argument? He points toward us and slams his fist down on the console in front of him, and with a hard jerk of the controls, Jezebel whips the tracer to the south. The wings swivel to redirect the turbines on a horizontal plane, and then the craft blisters a trail along the mountain ridge, leaving us behind.

When the air clears and the roar of the tracer dissipates, Jinx's blue light vanishes and I breathe out a relieving gust of air.

Eve edges away from me, no longer needing to use me as a human shield.

"Why couldn't they see us?" I say to Jinx.

"I used a camera and projector system to produce a hologram of the cave wall behind us. All they saw was an empty rock alcove, as you so humbly referred to it a moment ago."

"What about their infrared sensors?" Eve asks.

"The blue light contains a neutralizer that masks your heat signature."

I huff. "I won't underestimate you again, Jinx."

As soon as the words leave my mouth, an unsettling feeling grips me when I consider the vile wolves that await us on the other side of the mountain ridge. With that, we leave the cave, climb over to the other side, and peer into the valley below. There's a creek running in the middle of an open grassy field, and beyond that, more trees and mountains.

When we start down the ridge's backside, I swear I see long, dark shadows dashing into the next patch of the Yellowstone Forest. They're much faster than the rhino-bears and they appear to stick together in packs.

I know what Jinx said they are. I just hope we reach our destination before his battery power runs down and his ability to protect us dwindles to nothing.