Murray Hill || A Superhuman Tale - 1

Chapter Sixty-One

About three hours before dark, Sam and the girls made a short stop to drink water and to eat the last of the MREs. It was their first real break of the day and was the end of eight hours of the most brutal and grueling travelling Sam could remember.

***

The rain he'd prayed for that morning finally had come several hours before noon, and he'd roused the girls to begin their long trek. After feeding them and urging them to drink as much water as possible, he plopped the youngsters on the ground and inspected their feet. Neither had shoes, and they would be going over rough terrain. Lydia's feet were like shoe leather, and despite a little tenderness, Celia's soles were in remarkably good shape. He would watch those, but it was nice to have a piece of good news.

Throughout the course of the morning, they walked and climbed until the girls were exhausted. The rain and clouds came and went and came again. Frequently, he bid the girls to go to the ground or to hide in the scant foliage, fearing they might be under observation. The distant sound of helicopters sometimes reached them as they'd moved, and on one occasion an aircraft had come so close that they lay hidden in the hollow of a mountainside for half an hour until the noise had passed.

At a little past noon, Sam pronounced the small party to be out of the valley. There still were many miles of uncharted territory in front of them, and many hills and rocks over which they'd need to scamper, but he declared the worst of the climbing to be done.

Still, he pushed them on, not knowing how far behind them pursuit might be or how far safety lay in their future.

There was no reason to lie to the children. Celia could detect Sam's every rosy estimate or shaded truth. The maps he'd purloined from the range tower had been all but useless. They'd confirmed their location as being in northwestern Montana, but otherwise they were military grid reference maps of areas out of which they'd already traveled. The paper might be good to kindle a fire later, but were useful for little else.

One advantage that they enjoyed, even without the maps, was Sam's remarkable sense of direction. With just a casual glance, the old man could make out north, south, east, and west from the direction of the sun or the position of the stars. As a result, they'd kept on a somewhat jagged course northward throughout the day.

***

Now, on their first break, Celia announced, out of the blue, that she and Lydia were coming to live with Sam in Chicago after they got out of the wilderness. The two girls had decided.

Neither had family of which they knew. Lydia's only kin, her mother, had died protecting her from the men who'd come to kidnap her on a Kansas highway five years before, and Celia had lived in an orphanage in Sevastopol, in what was then Ukraine, before waking at The Farm one day four years earlier.

The whole notion nearly brought a tear to the old man's eye.

The girls were extraordinary. He'd never seen two children so close or so connected with one another. Both'd endured much through the last years, but the last weeks alone in the woods had been a meatgrinder for Lydia, who still was prone to jump at sounds and who several times had burst into tears for no apparent reason.

Celia soon became a barometer for her "sister." Immediately before Lydia began to cry, Celia would emit a wail in anticipation. The smaller girl's outburst, in turn, would further fuel the tears of the other. Their laughter worked on the same cyclical principal, and the two would often break into lengthy bouts of giggling for little or no reason.

Their tenderness for one another warmed Sam's heart, but he assured them that the road to Chicago was still not free and clear. There was absolutely no doubt their enemies were still on their trail, and enough time had passed that those who hunted them might even have raced ahead to lay in wait for them.

He asked the girls to brace themselves.

"We have to be quiet, move as fast as we safely can, and keep up a steady pace." He bent down to look at them where they sat finishing their meals. "The next couple of days are going to be even tougher. We're not going to stop until we're sure our enemies are far behind us, even if I have to carry you both."

The two girls looked at him with wide-open eyes and nodded silently.

Half an hour later, they again set out. Several times over the next hours they heard vehicles moving in the mountain valleys below them and voices that caused them to stop, change their paths, or even climb higher on the ridgelines they followed. There was no evidence that those sounds where made by their pursuers, but Sam took no chances with his young charges.

Their pace actually improved after dark. The moon was nearly full, and Sam felt safe to move their path out of the woods and onto the treeless patches they found, in order to make better time. They neither heard nor sensed anyone.

About an hour before midnight, Celia finally grew foot sore and was struggling from exhaustion, and he scooped her up not long afterward. Three hours later, he lifted Lydia into his other arm, and the rest of the night he made his way along ridgelines, through short valleys, down slight draws, and up again. The direction in which he took them led away from the north to east, back north again, and then to the east, and finally north again.

By the time the sun rose in the early morning, the small group had travelled more than 10 miles. The countryside before them now looked markedly different. There were still high and jagged peaks nearby, but he now carried the girls through a small river valley that cut its way roughly south and north.

The river bottom was wooded, but there were broad sections of grass and brush higher up the valley wall. Throughout the morning, Sam travelled on the fringe of the wood, keeping a close eye out for possible company and always ready to retreat for the trees at the least sign of danger.

The girls had dozed in his arms throughout the night and morning, but the two had gotten little real rest. Looking ahead through the trees, Sam spied a point where the valley narrowed sharply. It was a section along which they would need to scamper, something best done if the girls were on their own feet. For that task, they needed rest.

He hiked for another 20 minutes along a faint game trail before coming to a place that was a natural stopping point. The river was close by, and thick trees provided some protection from the rain, which had returned for the umpteenth time that day. He let the girls down, and rolled them into the poncho for an hour or two of actual sleep.

After taking a long look around their impromptu camp, Sam allowed himself the luxury of walking the 40 or so yards down to the river, to rinse off. The stream that cut through the narrow valley was shallow but fast moving, and it struck him that the river made a rough meander northward rather than south. It was about noon by that time, and it occurred to him that Canada must be close ahead.

God, let these girls be close to safety, he silently prayed.

Bending down to the icy water, he commenced to rinse himself as clean as he could and thought he should insist the girls do the same before they departed. It would take only a few minutes, and the on-again, off-again rain they'd endured over the last day had left them more sticky than wet. Being a little cleaner did much for a person's outlook on life.

He'd been away from the children for less than five minutes when a piercing scream split the air.

It was Celia.