The Darkest Path

1

When I woke up in the examination room, I was handcuffed to the bed.

A loop of steel circled my right wrist, holding it fast to a guardrail. My left arm lay throbbing by my side, the skin swollen taut from where Sergeant Rhames had broken my wrist with a baseball bat.

My head swam as I lifted it off a thin pillow. The room was nearly empty, nothing but the cot I was on, a discolored sink, and a few cabinets. A rush of air kicked on from somewhere above me. I searched the ceiling and found a single dusty vent. Air-conditioning.

I’ve done it, I thought. I’m here.

I closed my eyes and thought about James, hoping my little brother’s face would ease the pounding in my chest. I pictured him moving through our barracks, turning the chaos around us into folded clothes and tidy stacks. He said that cleaning calmed him and, even though I made fun of him for it, the truth was that seeing him do it calmed me too. The day before I left, I didn’t make my bunk, just so I could watch as he tucked the sheets beneath the mattress and then smoothed the wrinkles flat with the palm of his hand.

My pulse stilled. I breathed. A door opened and someone shuffled into the room.

“Well, you must have really pissed somebody off.”

I didn’t move. Didn’t speak.

“Multiple shallow cuts as well as bruises over your chest and arms and face. Your wrist is fractured. I think I can put a cast on it, but I can’t spare any pain meds. Your friends in the Glorious Path are to thank for that.”

I opened my eyes. The doctor was short, with thinning brownish-gray hair. An awkward belly poked out of his white lab coat and hung over his camo fatigues.

“They’re not my friends,” I said.

“Ah, the dead arise. It’s a miracle. What’s your name?”

“Where am I?”

“Okay,” he said, making a note on his clipboard. “Path John Doe it is, then.”

“I’m not Path,” I said. “Not anymore.”

“Funny,” he said. “The Army of the Glorious Path isn’t exactly known for its revolving-door policy.”

My tongue darted out over my cracked lips. “Can I have some water?”

“If I can have a name.”

“Callum Roe. Cal.”

He lowered a canteen to my lips. I drank until he pulled it away from me.

“You’re in the infirmary at Camp Victory,” he said. “I’m Dr. Franks. One of our patrols found you out in the desert and brought you here.”

“I need to see your base commander.”

“Oh, sure,” Franks said with a chuckle. “I keep my sidearm in my desk — maybe you’d like to take it with you.”

I glared at him until he chucked his clipboard onto a nearby table with a sigh.

“All right,” he said. “Why do you think you need to see the commander?”

I swallowed hard. Could I really do this? Would he even listen? My pulse raced, but I made myself think of James moving through our barracks, slow and deliberate, setting everything in its place.

“Because if you don’t let me see him,” I said, “everyone in his camp is going to die.”

2

Dr. Franks led me from the chill of the examination room into the hundred-degree blast of the California desert.

Camp Victory was smaller than I thought it would be. I counted no more than ten dusty buildings, a mix of repurposed civilian houses and corrugated-steel huts. They didn’t have much in the way of vehicles, just a couple Humvees with .50 caliber machine guns on the roof, a troop carrier, and a single decrepit-looking Apache. What they lacked in mobility, though, they made up for in perimeter defense. The whole place was surrounded by a high wall — a mix of concrete slabs, sandbags, and steel fencing. Gun emplacements sat every ten to fifteen feet, each one manned by a team of hard-looking Fed soldiers.

While most of the base was military, there was also a sizable civilian population that must have been drawn from the two small towns the base protected. The civilians seemed to be acting as gofers and nurses and mess-hall attendants. I felt sick just looking at them. They had no idea what was coming.

We stopped at a small plywood building at the center of camp, and Franks conferred with a guard. I stepped back, looking up at the red, white, and blue flag of the Federal Army, whipping about in a dry wind.

I shivered as we moved out of the heat and into the chill of the commander’s office. A small air conditioner teetered in the window above his desk. Below it was a computer, an electric lamp, and a handheld calculator. I stared from one to the other, tracing their contours like they were relics from some lost world. Nathan Hill said it was reliance on things like these that made the Pathless so soft. Followers of the Glorious Path were stronger, he said. They didn’t need toys.

Franks shackled my wrist to the chair and sat me down. My arm itched under a plaster cast that ran from just below my elbow to halfway down my palm. My fingers, bruised black and red, stuck out at the end. On top of that, the simple walk from the infirmary had every one of my injuries throbbing at once, igniting a headache at the base of my skull. Franks handed me two aspirin, and I chewed them like candy.

“You just tell him what you told me,” Dr. Franks said. “Answer his questions and you’ll be fine.”

The door behind him opened and a gray-haired man swept in. He wore a standard camo uniform, no rank insignia, just a stars-and-stripes patch and a tag that said Connery. He sat down across from me without a word.

I’ve always been small for my age, five feet five, and so thin you could see my ribs through my T-shirt. Still, I cringed down into my chair, trying to make myself look like even less of a threat. If I had learned anything in the last six years, it was that there was nothing people like Connery enjoyed more than feeling big. Give them that and they just might listen to you.

“So,” Connery said, regarding me with watery blue eyes, “I hear you have things to tell me.”

I took a shaky breath and let it out. Here we go.

“There are nearly two hundred Path soldiers a little over ten klicks to your east,” I said. “They have armor and air support and they’ll be here just after midnight.”

There was no change in the stony composition of Connery’s face. His thin lips were set and straight. Painful seconds passed and then he turned to his computer. He tapped a key and sent a blue glow over his face.

“Thanks for bringing him in, Dr. Franks. That will be all.”

“Sir,” Dr. Franks said. “Don’t we have to at least—”

“If there was a significant force of rebel fighters on my doorstep, I think I’d know about it.”

“You know how they work,” I said, struggling to keep my voice calm. “They scatter their forces, put them in small groups that can’t be discovered. They only join up at the last minute and then—”

“Son, even if the Path did have a force that size in the area, they’d be headed to Greenfield. It’s a far more strategically valuable piece of land. If you want to control the region, you go there.”

“They’re not trying to control the region.”

“No?” Connery said with a condescending chuckle. “Then why are they here?”

I leaned forward as far as the handcuffs and my injuries would allow. “They’re here to give you the Choice.”

Franks made an anxious little noise behind me and then fell silent. Connery’s chair creaked as he sat back. His hand fell to a folder on his desk. He moved it idly back and forth, making a sandpaper rasp against the desktop.

“And you came here to tell us this out of the kindness of your heart?”

“My brother and I were visiting our mom’s family in Phoenix when we were kidnapped and made to serve the Path. I was nine. James was seven. Since then we’ve seen them give the Choice to Bowling Green and El Paso and Marietta.”

A silence fell, as it always did when someone mentioned Marietta.

“You were at Marietta?”

I nodded. “I’ve seen what Nathan Hill’s men do to people who choose not to embrace the Glorious Path. I didn’t want to see it again, so when I got a chance, I ran. Path security caught me. I guess when I passed out, they figured I was dead.”

Connery glanced over my shoulder.

“Corporal Tate’s men picked him up a few miles from here,” Dr. Franks said. “He was beaten badly enough that if they hadn’t found him, I’m pretty sure he would have died.”

“I left my brother alone with those people to come here and help you,” I said. “So I am not leaving until you listen to me. Your base is dangerously isolated. They’ve got you beat three to one on men. They have four Apache gunships to your one, and six armored Humvees. If you move now, you can evacuate your men and the civilians. Like you said, there’s nothing to be gained here.”

“Look, I’m not about to bug out just because some kid—”

I drew a folded-up piece of paper out of my back pocket and tossed it onto his desk. It was stained with dirt and flecks of my blood.

“I stole their com frequencies and encryption codes before I left,” I said. “If you don’t believe me, then take a listen. They’re out there.”

Connery stared at them, the muscles in his jaw and neck tight as cables.

“Please,” I said, nearly in a whisper. “You’re running out of time.”

He glanced out the window by the air conditioner. The sun was already starting to fall. Connery swept the papers off his desk, then strode past us into the outer room. The door slammed shut behind him.

I sank back into the chair, weak and exhausted, wishing it was over but knowing it wasn’t. What if he still refused to listen? What if he decided to be a hero? Then all of this would be for nothing. I thought of James alone in our barracks, and my head began to pound.

“So, the Choice… it’s really what they say it is.”

I couldn’t turn to face him. “You should take your family and go while you can.”

“I can’t abandon my post,” Dr. Franks said, voice quivering. “They need a doctor. I—”

“Your family needs you too,” I said. “Up to you which is more important.”

The doctor said nothing. Minutes later the door behind him swung open and Connery walked in, carrying a long roll of paper. He passed us without a word and sat back down at his desk. After moving aside his electronic toys, he unrolled the paper in front of me. It was a map.

“Show me how to get away from them,” he said.

It was just after dawn when the convoy pulled into an abandoned parking lot near the shores of a small mountain lake.

We had driven through the night, Connery’s few armed vehicles bracketing a column of civilian cars and trucks and RVs. The Apache that shadowed us throughout the trip had just peeled off in search of fuel, with a promise to return as soon as it could.

When we came to a stop, civilians cracked the doors of their vehicles and stumbled out into the morning light, dazed. I watched one family flee their broken-down RV, the mother and father sweeping two young boys and a teenage girl up into their arms, all of them crying. It was happening everywhere, tears mixed with sudden bursts of relieved laughter. And why not? They had escaped the Army of the Glorious Path. They were all alive. All together.

I was in the lead Humvee with Connery. As soon as he left to tour the camp, I took off too, winding through the parking lot toward the edge of the lake. I was halfway across when I heard a voice behind me and felt a tug at my shirttails. One of the boys from the RV. He was seven or eight, with a pinpoint nose and brown hair in a shaggy bowl cut. He was holding a white plastic box out toward me.

“Here.”

“I don’t…”

“My mom said you were the one who came to warn us,” he said, and turned the case over. On the other side, there was a small glass screen surrounded by brightly colored buttons. “It only has Starfighter 3 on it right now. But it’s still pretty fun.”

He tried to push the game into my hands. “No, you keep it. I didn’t—”

The kid’s brows dropped, making a single confused wrinkle between his eyes. I didn’t know what else to say, so I turned from him and hurried off. He called after me, but I kept my eyes fixed on the dark blue of the lake and strode toward it. Soon, the buzz of the camp faded behind me. The rising sun was warm on the back of my neck. I reached the pebbly beach and started down the length of it until I found a sliver of shade behind a group of boulders. The lake in front of me was vast and slate-gray, perfectly still.

My arm and ribs ached from the bounce of the long drive. I would have killed for more of Franks’s aspirin, but I couldn’t go back to all those people. Not yet. I picked a handful of stones and threw them into the water one by one. For a moment I imagined myself on the shore of Cayuga Lake, surrounded by moss and autumn trees instead of rock and sand. Mom and Dad and James were just a little way ahead, around the bend in the shore. My chest clenched at the thought of them, and I had to snap the image away.

I lifted my hand to throw another stone but froze at a crunch of boots on the sand behind me. The reflection of two soldiers appeared in the lake, dark pillars to each side of me. I threw the stone, shattering their reflections. When the water stilled, they were sitting to either side of me. Corporal Johnson, a beanpole redhead, was on my left.

On my right was Sergeant Rhames.

“Anything unexpected?”

I shook my head. Rhames pulled the mic off his shoulder and reported in.

“Huntsman One, this is Huntsman Two. Bloodhound reports all clear. Repeat, we are alpha charlie.”

“Understood, Huntsman Two. We are go.”

Rhames replaced the radio, shaking his head. “I swear, I never thought it would work. I mean, a commander hands over his entire base because some skinny kid tells him to? I can’t believe it’s taken us so long to beat this bunch of cowards.”

I skipped a rock across the lake. “He was just trying to protect his people,” I said.

Rhames laughed. “And that’s why the Pathless will lose,” he said. “They don’t think there’s anything worth dying for.”

After a short prayer, Rhames and Johnson pulled out their MRE rations and tore open the brown packaging. Johnson’s was spaghetti. Rhames had meat loaf. They offered me one, but I refused.

“You should eat,” Johnson said. “You’ll stunt your growth.”

“Too late for that,” Rhames said with a snort.

I watched Rhames’s reflection as he ate. He was a piggish-looking man with a blunt nose and deep-set eyes. A scar at his temple made a part in his trim salt-and-pepper hair and ran down one cheek. I looked away, remembering how I’d cringed as he towered over me. How he’d barely checked his swing when he’d shattered my arm with the bat. He said it had to look real if it was going to work.

“How much longer?” I asked.

As if in answer, a black spot appeared over the mountains and dropped soundlessly into the lake’s valley. As it drew closer, I saw it was the returning Fed Apache. It was about a mile out when the smoke trail of a Path Stinger missile streaked across the blue sky. The Apache tried to dodge, but the missile struck the helicopter broadside and it went up in a furious explosion.

Behind us came a gasp and then the sound of rushing bodies as the evacuees ran to their vehicles. But it would be too late for them too.

Just do what they tell you, I thought. Do what they tell you and everything will be all right.

Rhames and Johnson said another prayer and then finished their meals. When they were done, they set about meticulously tidying up, putting the MRE wrappers back into their packs, brushing crumbs from their uniforms and checking for stains. One of the first things we learned after we were taken is that Path soldiers existed to set an example for the Pathless, so no detail was too small. So said Nathan Hill.

There was a firecracker chatter of gunfire from the direction of the parking lot, then two explosions that sent tremors through the ground.

“They’ll be given the Choice,” I said. “All of them. That was the deal.”

“You didn’t make a deal,” Rhames said as he stood. “You followed an order.”

Rhames strode away, but Johnson hung back.

“Want to go witness?”

I stared at the edge of the lake and shook my head.

“Arm okay?” Johnson asked, softening his voice now that Rhames was out of earshot. I drew the cast to my chest and said it was. “I hear Captain Monroe is going to make you and James citizens because of this.”

I nodded weakly.

Johnson knelt beside me. “Look, Rhames is just — he’s Rhames, right? You drew a tough assignment, Cal. We all know that. You just have to understand that some of the things we do… you have to put them behind you. Heck, a few years from now the whole country will be on Path, and people will barely remember that things like this happened. It’ll be a whole new world.”

I stared up at the sharp lines of his face until they shifted into a brotherly smile.

“You brought people to the Path, Cal. You should be proud.”

I forced myself to nod, even muscled up a paper-thin version of a smile that seemed to satisfy him. Johnson cuffed my shoulder.

“It’ll be over in about an hour,” he said as he started back to the parking lot. “Choppers will be leaving twenty minutes after that. We’ll be back at Cormorant before Lighthouse.”

The crunch of Johnson’s boots faded and I was alone again. Soon a beacon would be standing in front of the survivors, all smiles and pious concern, to administer the Choice. Unite with the Glorious Path or receive Nathan’s Blessing.

Seconds ticked away. The soldiers would be moving through the crowds now, separating the new converts from the rest and leading them away to their new lives as novices and companions of the Glorious Path. Once they were safely away, the ones who had opted to remain Pathless—

The roar of automatic weapons shattered the lakeside quiet. My body seized, folding in on itself. I tried to drive out the sound with thoughts of Mom and Dad and James, but the firing went on so long that it was useless. Everything in me and around me was wiped away by that one awful sound.

And then, all at once, the firing ceased. I sat in that tense after-action silence, staring into the dark of my closed eyes.

I lifted my head, blinking away the glare of the sunlight. The lake was a glassy calm, reflecting a pale blue sky and streaks of clouds. The shadow of a Path Black Hawk flew over me, its rotors kicking up a cloud of tan dust.

I stood by the lake until my legs steadied, and then I walked back to the lot.

3

We made it to Arizona just before dark. Beacon King was waiting at the landing pad when the Black Hawk touched down. Hunched over and mouth covered with a cloth to keep out the dust, he hustled us all through Cormorant’s operations center.

There was the usual rush of activity around us as uniformed men moved in and out of the plywood-and-corrugated-steel command buildings. Radios blared and vehicles roared. Electric lights shone everywhere.

The noise lessened when we reached the canvas tent that stood at the edge of the ops center. There, soldiers turned over their weapons and radios and any other bit of the modern world on their person. Once that was done, we followed Beacon King inside.

The tent was lit with candles and smelled faintly of sandalwood incense. We dropped to our knees before Beacon King and bowed our heads.

“I am a blade in the hand of God,” we intoned. “To walk the Path he has set for me, I must put my hand to worldly things. This is a sacrifice I make for my brothers and sisters. When his kingdom has come, I will forsake these things and be clean again.”

Blessing over, Rhames announced that they were going to squeeze in an after-action meeting before evening Lighthouse began. I saw him looking for me but managed to slip through a gap in the tent wall and disappear. A sentry at the gate that separated the ops center from the rest of the base nodded and let me pass.

My steps lightened as I moved into the residential district. It was quieter there. No coms buzzing, no grind of engines or turn of rotors. No glare of electric lights. I passed the soldiers’ and citizens’ barracks and made my way down the hill to the novices’ district.

A group of companions came up the road from their own barracks on the far side of Cormorant. There were ten of them, huddled close together, ghostly in their white robes and veils. I moved off the path and stood, eyes cast down, as the shepherd at the head of the flock hurried them along.

When I looked up again, one of the companions had paused on the road and was staring at me. Her eyes were wide shadows beneath her veil. She raised one hand gently to her cheek and I understood. The bruises. The cast. I must have looked as bad as I felt. I waved her away and she glided up the hill with the others.

Two oil lamps sat just inside the door to our barracks. I lit them both and was relieved to find the place empty. Our fifty or more barracks mates were either finishing up the day’s work or already wolfing down dinner in the mess before it was time to go to Lighthouse.

Standing in the doorway, I cast my eye down the two lines of steel bunk beds. I saw what I was looking for immediately. Top bunk. Last row. A single cardboard box. I grunted from the pain in my side and shoulder as I reached up and pulled the box off the bunk. A single folded piece of paper sat on top.

I dropped the note and tore open the box. Inside were two stacks of MREs. I shuffled through them. Meat loaf. Burritos. Chicken teriyaki. As hungry as I was, I set them aside and dug until I uncovered the three asthma inhalers hidden beneath. I held my breath when I saw them. For novices like me and James, medical care meant herbal tea and prayer. These inhalers might as well have been made of solid gold. I couldn’t imagine the look on James’s face when I put them in his hand. Never mind when I told him about the rest of Captain Monroe’s promise.

Citizenship.

For years the word had seemed too impossible to even speak, but here it was, a day away. Better jobs. More access to medicines. A private room with actual beds, doors, and windows. After six years of struggling, James and I would finally have a place we could make our own.

Outside, the Lighthouse bells began to toll. I pocketed one inhaler, then hid the rest of them with the MREs under my bunk’s mattress.

I stopped at the shared latrine on my way out, hoping to scrub the grime off my face before Lighthouse. The line of sinks and mirrors gleamed in the lantern glow. I turned one of the faucets, thankful that the Path didn’t consider hot running water as corrupting as radios and electric lights. I leaned over the sink to fill my hands but drew them back when I saw the white of the cast Dr. Franks had put on my arm.

I stared down at the cottony fringe where my fingers emerged from the plaster, each one bruised black and blue. A dull throb built in my head and I felt a sick whirl in my stomach. The flow of the water through the chrome rose in pitch until it sounded like a chorus of screams. I lurched forward to turn it off, striking my cast against the fixture. My body shook with the pain of it, and I nearly called out before I managed to pull back and stagger away from the sink.

I closed my eyes, forcing myself to breathe slow and deep, willing the shaking to subside. When I opened them again, a stranger’s face glowered at me in the mirror. My eyes were surrounded by kaleidoscopes of black and red and blue. There were two crusty gashes on my cheeks, and bruises on my neck and shoulders. I moved my fingers lightly over the wounds, wincing at their tenderness. The faces of Camp Victory crowded the edge of my mind. Connery. Franks. The little boy who was so eager to thank me for saving them all. I could hear their voices. The gunfire—

Citizenship. I imagined the word carved into a stone door that I pulled closed, trapping any other thought, any other memory, on the other side. My fingers traced the body of the inhaler in my pocket until my heart quieted.

The bells tolled again and I left the barracks, striding up the hill to the Lighthouse.

The Lighthouse was full by the time I got there. I pushed my way through the ranks of shuffling novices to my place in the rear of the hall. Down below, the soldiers and citizens were laid out in a fan around the simple wood-plank altar. Beacon Thomas hadn’t appeared yet, so I turned and looked for James. He should have been behind me, just ahead of the white-robed companions who haunted the very back of the Lighthouse, but I didn’t see him. Jimmy Wayne and Rashid James, officers’ valets just like James, were there, but I couldn’t catch their eye to ask where he was.

Beacon Thomas came out onto the stage below, and a hush spread through the crowd. The soldiers and citizens took their seats on the rows of benches, while us novices and the companions remained standing behind them. We folded our hands before us, our heads slightly bowed.

Beacon Thomas took his copy of The Glorious Path off of the altar and opened it.

“With these words, I consecrate my life to the Glorious Path,” he recited.

“With these words, I consecrate my life to the Glorious Path,” all of us echoed, beginning the call-and-response opening to service.

“God, lead me to my Path. Let me be a light in the darkness and the rod that falls upon the backs of the defiant. The lives of my brothers and the lives of the Pathless are in my hands. If I allow them to fall into the darkness, then so must I. Their loss is my loss. Their death is my death.”

Once the congregation fell silent, Beacon Thomas set the book down and lit a single candle in the center of the altar.

“There is but one God and he sent us Nathan Hill to light the Path that leads to his kingdom.”

Beacon Thomas continued the service while Beacons Quan and Rozales stalked the aisles, their eyes sharp for the insufficiently reverent. I dropped my head as they passed, my eyes closed tight. Looking distracted during Lighthouse was a ticket to hours of hard labor. Of course, seeming too enthusiastic led to the same thing if a beacon decided you were mocking the service. I had fallen on either side of the line more times than I could count. James was the real master. Over the years he had figured out how to play the game perfectly. Back flawlessly straight, his copy of The Glorious Path open before him, his eyes boring into its pages as if he was searching for the subtlest meanings buried in Nathan Hill’s words. No one would ever guess it was all an act.

Once Quan and Rozales passed, I turned and caught Rashid’s eye. I nodded over to James’s spot, but he shrugged and went back to praying. My stomach sank. There weren’t many reasons why a novice would be allowed to miss Lighthouse.

My hand went to the inhaler in my pocket. One day the previous April, I had returned to the barracks to find James clawing at his chest, nearly purple from lack of oxygen. Had it happened again? Was he at the infirmary? The attendants there wouldn’t know anything about the deal I made with Captain Monroe. They’d just stand there mumbling prayers while James struggled to breathe.

The beacons had now descended to the front of the Lighthouse to help Thomas with the Receiving. The soldiers and citizens stood up and moved toward the central aisle. One by one, Beacon Thomas lifted a lit candle to their foreheads and said a prayer. The novices and companions would follow. If I had a chance, this was it. When the time came for our row to move into the aisle, I pretended to retie my boots, fumbling with the laces because of my cast.

Novices huffed and jostled by me, putting me at the end of our line. I shuffled up the aisle between the rows of companions making for the back entrance. My fingers hit the door handle, and a voice stopped me in my tracks.

“What are you doing, Mr. Roe?”

Beacon Quan stood in the aisle behind me, frowning, his shaved head gleaming in the lantern light.

“I’m, uh…” I mumbled, hoping to buy some time. “I wasn’t feeling well. I thought—”

“You thought you would skip the service and head to the infirmary without informing anyone.”

“No. I mean… I guess I’m a little light-headed.” I held up my cast. “My arm was hurting. I wasn’t thinking. I can—”

“I think you can figure things out while you’re digging latrines tomorrow. Wait here and I’ll get Beacon Rozales.”

Quan passed me and headed down the aisle. My heart pounded, thinking of James in the infirmary, suffering and alone.

I lifted my cast and slammed it into the corner of the pillar next to me. The pain was an explosion that flipped the entire Lighthouse upside down. My knees turned to jelly, and the ground slammed into my side and then into my head. The last thing I saw before passing out was Beacon Quan running up the aisle toward me.

4

I sat up in the infirmary cot, pushing away the third cup of herbal tea a companion had tried to force on me in the last hour.

“Look, I’m fine. Could you please just tell me where my brother is?”

“I don’t know your—”

“Roe. James Roe. He has trouble breathing. He should be here somewhere. You have to—”

“Cal?”

James was running down the aisle toward me. He was still in his valet’s uniform, its blue lines pressed just as neat as they were the last time I had seen him.

“James? What are you — are you okay?”

“Uh, you’re the one in the infirmary, Cal.”

James nodded to the companion and she drifted away to another patient. He sat down on the edge of the empty cot next to mine.

“I came here looking for you,” I said. “You weren’t at Lighthouse and then—”

“I had to stay late with Monroe. Why did you think I was in the infirmary? And what happened to you? Your arm—”

He reached for my cast and I pulled it back. “It’s nothing.”

James laughed, putting an accusing finger in my face. “It was that Rottweiler again, wasn’t it? The same one that knocked you down on the last work detail Quarles sent you on.”

I paused, remembering my cover story for the last couple days. “The detail was fine. I just… I had an accident, that’s all.” James narrowed his eyes at me, but I pulled the sheets back on the cot. “Look, forget it. Let’s get out of here, okay?”

“I think they want you to stay till morning.”

“Seriously?”

“You’re aware that you puked all over Beacon Quan when he carried you out of the Lighthouse, right?”

“I don’t actually remember puking.”

James threw the blankets back over me and helped me sit up.

“You been to the barracks?” I asked.

“No. Why?”

I scanned the infirmary floor. Two companions and a citizen medic were at the far end of the room. They were presided over by a single beacon who looked busy with some paperwork. I slipped my hand beneath the sheets and into my pocket.

“Give me your hand,” I said.

“Why?” James asked. “Is it a bug? Are you going to put a bug in my hand again? Honestly, Cal, that stopped being funny when I was five.”

“Just do it.”

James held his hand out and I pushed the inhaler into it, closing his fingers around it fast. He drew his hand back to his waist and opened it.

“James, this is — where did you get this?”

“It’s not contraband. Don’t worry.”

“Then how—”

“I got it from Monroe.”

“From Monroe?” James looked from the inhaler to my cast and the bruises. His face went gray as ash. “If this is what it took to get this, then you should take it back. I don’t need it.”

“Oh, really? You and the beacons gonna pray the asthma away?”

James gritted his teeth. His fingers went white, curled around the inhaler.

“You’re Monroe’s favorite, Jim. The guy couldn’t tie his shoes without you. I promise, it didn’t take anything more than me asking nicely to get the meds. All this… it’s nothing you have to worry about. I swear.”

“Nothing that’s going to get you in trouble?”

“Scout’s honor, little brother,” I said, holding up my busted left hand.

“You were never a Boy Scout,” he said. “I wanted us to be Scouts, but you said it was for weenies.”

“I know. It was a mistake. You would have fit right in.”

James tucked the inhaler away, but his face was still scrunched up and dark, his lips tight.

“Come on,” I teased. “James…”

“I just don’t want you to get off Path again.”

“I’m not. Look, come here,” I said, waving him over. “Keep it between you and me for now, but there’s more, okay?”

“More what?”

“I’m meeting with Captain Monroe tomorrow.”

“So?”

I glanced back at the beacon, who was still absorbed in his paperwork. “We’re getting moved up.”

“Moved up?” James said. Then it clicked. “You mean…”

I nodded. “I told you you’re his favorite.”

“But—”

“We’ve been here six years now, James. With everything you do for him, it’s not even that far ahead of schedule.”

James still looked wary, but I could tell there was excitement bubbling underneath it.

“When?”

“Soon, I think, but I’ll know more after the meeting tomorrow. We’ll talk between breakfast and morning Lighthouse, okay?”

I almost laughed at James’s openmouthed speechlessness.

“Who’s the best big brother in the entire universe?”

“Well…”

“How about within a five-foot radius?”

James finally laughed but a companion cut it off, appearing just behind him. He nodded and she stepped away.

“Cal, I don’t… I don’t know what to say.”

“Music to my ears. Just go home and start packing our things.”

“Want me to lead a prayer before I go?”

James had his copy of The Glorious Path open in his lap. I checked over his shoulder. The beacon was on the far side of the room and out of earshot.

“It’s okay, Jim,” I said. “No one’s looking.”

There was a second’s pause and then something inside of James seemed to shift. “Yeah,” he said, snapping the book shut. “Right. Of course. I’ll see you later, okay?”

“Get some sleep,” I said.

“You too. And try not to puke on yourself again.”

“I’ll do my best.”

James tucked the book back into his pocket and walked away down the line of beds. Companions moved through the infirmary, snuffing out candles. I lay back on my cot, staring up into the dark, fantasizing about what job I might get once we were citizens. Surely they wouldn’t make me keep mucking out the dog kennels with Quarles. That was a novice job, and a bad one at that. Could I be a cook’s apprentice? A mechanic? It seemed impossible.

Of course, whatever duty I pulled, the important thing would be me and James in our own room in the citizens’ barracks — two beds side by side, with four walls and a door. Inside that room, there would be no beacons, no Lighthouse, no Army of the Glorious Path, just us.

I tried to banish my impatience for the morning with a prayer of my own, one that was composed of a single word written in stone.

5

I nearly knocked over a lieutenant when I staggered out of Captain Monroe’s office the next morning.

“Watch yourself, novice.”

“Yes, sir,” I mumbled automatically. “Sorry, sir.”

I stumbled down the stairs and out onto the street, shielding my eyes to block out the glare of the sun. A Humvee laid on its horn and blew past me. Cormorant had come alive in the hour since I had been inside. Soldiers grunted up on the training field and the air was thick with dust and diesel exhaust.

I fell into a stream of citizens who were bustling from their barracks to mess. They were all talking and laughing. I thought of how each had slept that night in a private room in a real bed.

“Hey, Cal!”

I turned to see James peeling off from a group of friends and rushing toward me.

“Get to mess, James.”

“How was your meeting?”

“Later. I have to get to work.”

“But—”

I whirled on him and shouted, “Just leave me alone!”

James nearly toppled backward. I shoved my way through the rest of the crowds and left him. My head was pounding and it only got worse when I reached the crest of a hill that led down to the kennels. I could already hear the rolling growls of the dogs and the rattling fences down below. The air was thick with the smell of meat, urine, and fur. I stepped into it, pushing through the stink and noise until I found Quarles out back on the edge of the training ground.

“The hell you been?” he croaked.

Quarles was balding and fat, dressed in layers of greasy wool despite the heat and sun. His blotchy skin sported a constant growth of stubble.

“Ops,” I said. I was about to remind him that I’d been with Monroe, but I couldn’t make my lips form the man’s name.

Quarles glanced down at my arm, then up at my face. “Should have figured,” he said, rolling the words around in his mouth like wet gravel. “Only a matter of time before someone decided to put a beating to a kid like you. Useless to me busted.”

“I’m fine. Let’s just get going.”

Quarles stared me down with his rheumy eyes. I was close to insubordination, but sending me off for discipline would mean he’d have to see to the dogs alone that day. Quarles broke and nodded toward the kennels.

“Feed ’em,” he growled. “But half rations! I want those monsters blood hungry this morning.”

The kennel was a narrow concrete-floored room lined with cages, ten on each side. Each steel mesh cage was barely two by three feet with an exit on either side, one leading to the yard and one into the kennel’s central aisle. I heard Quarles out in the yard, setting up the dogs’ practice dummies. I looked up at the pull chains hanging across from the back door. One pull and every cage would open at once, leaving him surrounded by twenty starving animals. Of course, with my luck I’d grab the wrong chain and send them all into the kennel with me.

The ammonia stench of urine clung to my skin as I crossed the kennel and found the bucket of kitchen scraps. It was a gloppy mess of day-old meat, rice, and rotten vegetables. I grabbed a scoop off the shelf and stepped into the aisle, kicking the bucket ahead of me.

The dogs threw themselves against their cages and howled. I just wanted to feed them as fast as possible and get out of there. My arm and my head were screaming. I tossed half rations into each cage, which blunted their frenzy for the ten seconds it took to gobble it all down. I paused at the doorway, looking back at the dogs as they threw their scrawny bodies against the steel, eyes wild, jaws snapping.

Disgusting as Quarles was, Monroe put up with him because he knew how to train an attack dog and how to do it cheaper than any kennel master Cormorant had ever had. Most of the dogs came in as skinny strays, scared and hesitant. They left with a streak of violence running through them like an electrified fence.

I glanced out the door at Quarles, then threw an extra scoop of food into each dog’s cage. They fell to it savagely. I felt heroic for half a second, before I realized that there’s nothing heroic about giving an animal what it deserves.

“What now?” I asked, standing in front of Quarles on the practice field. “Want me to clean the cages?”

The sun was high and Quarles was sweating heavily, his skin blotchier than usual. He sneered at me. “You’d rather muck out cages than watch them tear apart a few dummies. What’s the matter, Roe, feeling a little delicate this morning?”

“They don’t perform well when I’m here,” I said. “You know that.”

Quarles considered a moment. I looked back and saw a company of men kicking up dust as they descended the hill.

“They’re almost here,” I said.

Quarles scooped a dogcatcher pole off the ground and handed it to me. It was a long stick with a sliding handle that tightened a noose at the end.

“Got report of a stray out by the highway. Go see if you can bring him in.”

“With my arm like this?”

A stiff-backed sergeant appeared out of the glare. His men were arranged around him.

“Are you ready, Mr. Quarles?”

Quarles’s own back went straight. “Yes, sir!” he announced, his voice without slur or stutter. “We’re ready whenever you are.”

The sergeant directed his men into the kennel. When he was gone, Quarles looked at me, his hand resting on his belt, between his black club and his revolver.

“Go get that mutt or you’re gonna be down one more arm,” he said. Then he climbed the dusty hill, up to the range.

An abandoned shopping center sat on a little-used highway at the edge of the base. There was an old supermarket. A gas station. A pawnshop. All the windows had been shattered and their signs were bleached to ghostly shades by the relentless Arizona sun.

I stepped onto the cracked parking lot, then circled around to the back, where scrubby weeds gave way to desert. In the far distance were the tops of rock-pile mountains. No dog in sight.

It had taken me nearly an hour to walk to the lot, which meant the soldiers had at least another hour of training to do. There was no way I was going back until they were done. I propped the dogcatcher over my shoulder and walked onto the hard-packed dirt. It was like wading into the ocean, the asphalt shore and sun-bleached bones of the shopping center at my back, an endless plain ahead.

I dropped onto a gravel-and-dirt hill, broiling in my dress uniform and my shined shoes. I hated myself for every second I had spent in the mirror that morning, combing my hair, brushing my clothes. I wanted to look so on Path. The picture of a citizen. I dug into my pocket and pulled out a small metal token. A sunburst bisected by a razor-sharp line. It glowed, growing hot in my palm.

“I have wonderful news,” Monroe had said, standing up behind his great oak desk as I entered. “Quite an honor.”

I stood there, grinning and attentive as a fool, ready for that single word to part his lips. I wanted to hear it so bad I almost swore I had, but then Monroe slid the token across his desk, and the illusion was shattered. I stared at it, my world collapsing down onto that gold pin.

“Generally we make novices become citizens first,” Monroe said. “But your work yesterday was so exemplary, so indicative of a young man on Path that you are excused from that requirement.”

I tore my eyes from the pin. “Sir?”

Monroe beamed, clearly pleased with his own generosity. “You’re our newest recruit, son,” he said. “You are now Private Callum Roe in the Army of the Glorious Path. You’ll be assigned to Sergeant Rhames’s platoon.”

He paused there, waiting for… what? Joy? Thanks? I knew that was what he expected and what I needed to give him — for me, for James — but I couldn’t find it inside me. When I finally managed to speak, my voice was small and shaky.

“And I’ll… be doing what I did at the last base?”

Monroe nodded. “Exactly. Sergeant Rhames will be taking his men on an indefinite campaign into California. You’ll infiltrate a town, preparing it for Rhames and his men. They’ll lead the assault, bringing whoever they can to the Path before moving on. You’ve seen it done, so you know how it works. You leave in three days.” Monroe stuck his hand out across the desk. “Congratulations. It’s an incredible honor.”

“But James,” I said. “He’ll still be made a citizen.”

Monroe dropped his hand. “Callum…”

“You said—”

“I prayed hard on this, son. Believe me. Your brother is a fine valet. Best I ever had. But as much as I may want to, I cannot grant citizenship to someone with his… difficulties.”

“But you gave him the medicine. If he takes it—”

“Giving him that medicine was a sentimental weakness on my part. I shouldn’t have done it and I apologize.”

“But, sir—”

“Each man walks his own Path, Cal. You got where you belong and your brother will do the same in time. You have to trust in that.”

A helicopter flew by, toward Cormorant, kicking a cloud of dust into the empty lot and snapping me back to the present.

The pin lay in my hand like a bit of molten gold. My arm ached to hurl it into the dunes, but I knew I couldn’t. I needed to fix it to my collar and present myself to my new commander. To Rhames. I closed the metal in my fist and got up to go.

That’s when I saw him.

The dog was standing on a nearby dune, watching me intently, his short legs tensed, ready to flee. He looked like a Doberman but at about a quarter of the size. He was deep black with blazes of copper on his legs, chest, and muzzle. Rust-colored pips sat above each eye, giving him expressive little eyebrows. His tail had been docked into a stub, and he had enormous ears that stood straight up.

The dogcatcher was inches from my fingers. He flinched as I went for it but didn’t run. He leaned forward instead, curious, tongue out and panting. I imagined him back in Quarles’s cage, cowering amid monsters twice his size, and pulled my hand back from the dogcatcher.

“Go on,” I called. “Get out of here!”

When he didn’t move, I kicked a cloud of dirt at him. He held his ground, so I grabbed a small rock, sure a glancing blow to his side would send him running. I lifted the stone, ready to throw, but my arm went weak.

The dog crept down his hill and then up mine. His muscles were taut, ready to flee if I made another wrong move. When he reached the top of the hill, his eyes darted over me, sharp and alert, the color of amber.

“Go on,” I said again but softer this time.

Close up, I could see his ribs standing out as bold as a range of sand dunes. His short fur was filthy, matted with dried mud. I held out my hand tentatively and he sniffed at it. His nose, cool and wet, prickled the hair on my arms. He licked a patch of sweat off my forearm and then came closer. There was a barely healed wound on his side.

“You in a fight?”

He dipped his snout into my face and there was a metallic clink under his chin. I found his narrow pink collar and turned it around. There was a silver tag with two mostly scratched-off phone numbers on one side and a single word on the other.

Bear.

“Why would anyone name a dog Bear?”

“Rrrrr-Rup! Rup rup!”

I turned back to the grocery store, thought for a minute, and then started toward the entrance. The grocery store was abandoned but not completely empty. I walked up and down the aisles, Bear’s claws clicking on the cracked linoleum behind me.

“Sorry,” I said, standing in front of the cleaned-out pet section. “No Alpo left.”

I spied a couple dusty water bottles left in a far corner. I took them along with the spare-change dish from the front counter, then went back outside. The second I got the dish full of water, Bear was on it, lapping hungrily and panting between gulps.

“Yeah, you’re thirsty, all right.”

While he drank I ran one hand along his side until it came to the gash. Something with claws had gone after him. I cracked open another bottle of water and knelt beside him. Bear growled when I poured water over the cut.

“Take it easy.”

Bear’s copper brows scrunched together as he eyed me, but soon enough he returned to his water, and I returned to the wound. I trickled water down his side, then swept along after it with an open palm as gently as I could, wiping away dirt and crusted blood. Long and shallow, it didn’t look quite as bad as I had feared. After refilling his water dish, I moved farther along his flank, washing off the dried mud.

Once I was done and Bear drank his fill, he turned and stepped up into my lap.

“Hey. Wait. You—”

He ignored me, spinning a few times before dropping down and laying his snout across my knee. He yawned and then the thump of his heartbeat slowed against the side of my leg. I leaned over him. His fur smelled warm and haylike. My palm fell on his side and I petted him with long, even strokes.

“Mom said when me and James got back from Phoenix, we’d go to the shelter and pick out a dog. But then we never came back.”

Bear huffed and squirmed. I looked over him at the emptiness that stretched north and east. Somewhere on the other side of all that was home.

Ithaca.

For years I had pushed thoughts of it, along with thoughts of Mom and Dad, out of my head as fast as they came. I was afraid they would sweep me away, back to the terrified kid I was six years ago. But sitting there with my hand on Bear’s side, I felt anchored in place and I let the memories draw near. When I did, I realized how indistinct they had become, like photographs faded in the sun. Had Mom’s hair been fully blond or was there brown in it too? Who was taller, Mom or Dad? What exactly was the tattoo on Dad’s right arm, and what kind of guitar was it that he would play for us every night after dinner?

I wondered if I’d reach the day when the memories of them would fade entirely and I’d be left with just my years in the Path camp. What would it be like to look backward and see nothing but stretches of desert and the stubbly, bloated face of Benjamin Quarles? How would it be to trade the sound of Mom singing Joni Mitchell songs to the strumming of Dad’s guitar for the chop of helicopter rotors and the bay of starving dogs?

How much longer would it be before I lost them forever?

There was a rush of wind as a beat-up supply truck appeared on the highway, kicking up a trail of dust as it headed into Cormorant. Bear lifted his head.

“Rup! Rup rup! RRRRR-RUP!”

“Well done,” I said. “You really scared them off.”

Bear jumped up and headed toward the parking lot. He rooted about in the debris by the gas station until he discovered a length of black rubber. He brought it over and dropped it between us.

“Rup! Rup rup!”

“I don’t want to play,” I said.

Bear wouldn’t take no for an answer. He edged the stick of rubber toward me with his nose and barked until I tossed it away halfheartedly. Bear exploded across the parking lot and dove on top of it, tumbling over onto his side and then trapping it under his paws like a fleeing squirrel. Once it had been subdued, he took it in his jaws and proudly dropped it at my feet.

“Rup!”

I laughed and snatched it up again. Bear leapt up onto his hind legs and danced in anticipation, his forepaws clawing at the air.

“Oh. Bear. Like a dancing Bear. I get it now.”

I threw it out into the desert, each time farther and farther away. We played until I collapsed into the sand. My wrist ached underneath the cast, but it felt distant now, muted by exhaustion. Bear protested my idleness with a few playful growls, then dropped down beside me, nestling into the crook of my arm, his front paws on my chest. He held his head erect, scanning the desert, his ears on alert, panting happily. I raised one rubbery arm and took his silver tag in my fingers.

I saw him then as the family dog he must have been once. Curled up on a couch and sleeping with his family. Eating from a bowl with his name on it. Nothing at all like the monsters kept by Quarles, whose eagerness for anything other than blood and violence had been starved out of them ages ago. I ran my fingertip over the scratched-out phone numbers on the tag and wondered if Bear still thought of his old owners and his old life. Was he trying to get back to them, or had he given up too?

Bear dug his snout beneath my hand, urging me to pet him. I cupped my palm against his cheek and drew it back over his ears. His fur was smooth and warm.

We dozed a moment and when I opened my eyes again, the sun had dipped into the west. What time was it that Quarles had sent me away? Nine thirty? Ten? I realized with a shock that it had to have been hours ago.

I jumped up and started back toward the lot. Bear trotted along behind me and when I stopped to pick up the dogcatcher, he planted himself in front of me, eyes bright and expectant. I dropped the dogcatcher and took his head in my hands.

“You can’t come with me,” I said, a dull ache growing in my chest. “It’s not a good place.”

Bear shook himself away, dancing backward like we were playing again. When I didn’t follow, he stood there, staring back at me.

“You’re going to have to find your way back home, okay? It can’t be far.”

I wished he could understand me, but I knew it was pointless. Nothing could change what had to happen next. I had to go present myself to Rhames, and Bear had to go his own way. There was no sense in putting it off. I moved toward the road but Bear raced by, beating me to the parking lot. When I caught up to him, he was staring out toward Cormorant and barking wildly.

A dust cloud rose in the desert across the road. I squinted into the sunny glare and saw that it was centered around a black Ford pickup that was racing in our direction. It was one I’d know anywhere, one that only a single person would be driving.

Quarles.

I didn’t even think. I grabbed Bear’s collar and ran.

6

Quarles threw open the door of his truck and stepped out.

“Where’ve you been?”

“I was looking for the dog,” I said. “I thought he was somewhere behind the store and—”

“I tell you to do a thing, you do it and come back. You don’t make me wait. You don’t take your time.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I thought I could find him, but I guess he—”

Quarles’s open hand slammed into my jaw, nearly knocking me down.

“Don’t lie to me. Supply truck radioed about some kid playing with a mutt.” Quarles reached for the dogcatcher he kept in a metal sleeve on the side of the truck. “Useless. Like always, if I want something done, it’s on me.”

“Look,” I said, jogging to keep up with him. “I found him. Okay? But he was too fast. I almost had him, but then he ran off and I couldn’t get him. He’s just one dog. Little too. We should get back for afternoon prayers.”

Quarles ignored me and checked each storefront. I hoped he would get frustrated by the time he reached the supermarket, but when he got there, he went in the front door. I followed him, barely breathing, as he moved up and down the aisles. When his back was to me, I looked into the corner where a short hall led down to two bathroom doors. Both were closed.

Five minutes, I thought, staring back at the hall. Just be quiet for five more minutes.

Quarles finished going through the rows and headed toward the register.

“I told you, he’s not—”

A high-pitched whine came from the back hall. Quarles froze, his hand tense on the shaft of the dogcatcher.

No. “Wait. Quarles…”

By the time Quarles reached the hallway, Bear’s claws were scraping against the thin wooden door. His free hand fell to the bludgeon on his belt.

“He’s not worth it.”

He turned and stabbed the tip of the lead club into my chest.

“I’m rid of you soon,” he said in a deadly rumble. “So what you do isn’t my concern anymore. But you’re going to help me take this one. Make my life harder and I’ll tell Monroe what you’ve done.”

A sick feeling was growing in my gut, but I somehow managed to nod. Quarles forced the bludgeon into my hands.

“If he gives me a problem, put him down.”

Quarles moved to the door. I wanted to tell him to stop, wanted to beg him, but a bad word from him to Monroe could hurt me, hurt James. I just stood there, stupid and small, as he reached for the door handle. When he opened it, Bear was sitting in the center of the room, ears up, tongue hanging out of his mouth.

“This mutt is what you were keeping from me?”

He reached for Bear’s collar, but there was a growl and then Quarles reared back with a yelp. Bear darted through his legs and into the store. When Quarles staggered out of the bathroom, one hand was dripping blood onto the tile floor.

“No stray bites me,” he said as he drew a black .38.

I backed out of the hall, keeping between Quarles and Bear, the club in my hand. Quarles thumbed the hammer back and leveled the gun at my chest.

“I can kill you too, boy. Nobody’d question me. Now move away.”

I was rooted in place, couldn’t move if I wanted to. Quarles made a disgusted sound and pushed past me. As soon as he did, something in me unlocked. I twisted around and swung for his wrist, shattering it with the club. Quarles dropped to his knees with a scream, sending the gun skidding across the linoleum. I stepped back, amazed at what I had done. Quarles looked at me with bloodshot eyes.

“Quarles, wait. I didn’t mean to—”

“I should thank you,” he said, drawing himself up. “Gives me the reason to do what I’ve wanted to do since I met you.”

Quarles lurched forward, grabbing my collar and swinging me into one of the floor displays. My bad arm hit the shelf, and the pain sent me to the floor. The club skittered away from me.

I tried to get up, but Quarles drove his fist into my stomach, knocking the wind out of me. He lifted his hand again, and Bear jumped at him with a snarl, digging his teeth into the man’s calf and thrashing wildly. Quarles kicked him into a far wall and then scooped up the club. Bear cowered, ears back, eyes wide, as Quarles came for him.

My hand hit a hot piece of metal as I scrambled away. Quarles’s revolver. I grabbed it just as Quarles was raising the club over Bear’s skull.

He was starting to swing when I lifted the gun and pulled the trigger.

7

I sat with my back wedged into a corner, ears ringing, my hand cramping around the handle of the revolver. Time seemed to distort around me, speeding past, then slowing to a crawl.

There was a shuffling sound beside me. Bear had come around Quarles, and we were sitting shoulder to shoulder. He shifted his weight from paw to paw with an urgent whine.

Quarles was facedown with three bullet wounds in his back, one high and two low. Each one was a spot of black ringed by a circle of dark red. A pool of blood, the thickness of motor oil, had spread out underneath him, a misshapen circle stretching from his waist to his head.

I heaved violently, vomiting up acidic bile. After it passed, I stayed there on my knees, my stomach muscles clenching. I breathed deep until they stilled, then turned to the door. Quarles’s truck sat across the parking lot, a black splotch against the tan desert. How long had it been sitting there now? Minutes? Hours? I imagined the dogs going mad for food back in their kennels. How long until someone noticed? How long before they came looking?

I forced myself up onto legs as shaky as a fawn’s, then took a few steps before squatting down by the dead man’s shoulders. His face was turned toward me and his eyes were open wide, staring blankly. Their blue centers were surrounded by a maze of burst blood vessels.

I grabbed the edge of Quarles’s coat in my one good hand and threw myself toward the back hall. His body skidded a few inches, but the effort forced me to my knees, panting. There were at least five more feet between him and the narrow bathroom door.

Bear stood by the door, watching me, his front paws tapping anxiously against the tile.

I dug my heels into the floor and I pulled again, grunting, until his body moved. I got him another few inches, rested, and did it again and again until we were at the edge of the bathroom. I dropped his coat and collapsed against the wall.

Bear scurried across the store, giving the slick of blood a wide berth. He sat before me, making an impatient huffing sound. Somehow I got up again and pulled until I got Quarles into the bathroom.

His body ended up curled around the base of the filthy toilet, chin on his chest, arms limp at his sides. Looking down at him, numbness spread through me, and I felt like I was seeing him from high above. I suddenly realized how little I knew about him. Did he have a wife? Children?

I staggered out of the bathroom and shut the door.

Bear stayed close as I covered Quarles’s blood with whatever trash I could find. If someone was searching the store, they would figure out what happened pretty quick, but it might at least buy me some time.

But time to do what?

I didn’t breathe at the Cormorant checkpoint. My hand gripped the steering wheel as two sentries looked over the truck in front of me. I checked the rearview. Bear was lying on his side in one of the back cages. When I looked forward, one of the sentries was waving me up.

He took my tech operator’s dispensation papers and studied them. His sleek M4 hung on his chest, one hand never more than a few inches from the grip and trigger.

“This is Quarles’s rig?” he asked, looking down the length of the truck.

“Yes, sir,” I said. “He’s gone after a pack we found. He wanted me to drop this dog back in the kennels and come back for him tonight.”

“No one in or out until after prayers and supper.”

“Yes, sir,” I said. “No problem.”

He waved me on and I pulled the truck through the gate and up to the kennel. It was fully dark by the time I parked and got Bear out of his cage. Inside the kennel, the dogs were barking wildly, starved for the supper no one had given them. Bear shied away, trembling. He wouldn’t move, so I had to lift him awkwardly onto my shoulder with one hand and carry him down the aisle.

“It won’t be for long,” I said. “Promise.”

The other dogs threw themselves against the bars of their cages and snarled at the intruder in their midst. When I finally got Bear into a cage, he pressed himself up against the bars and whined.

“I’ll be back,” I said, reaching my fingers through the bars to scratch his ear.

Bear retreated to the far corner of his cage and cringed away from the other dogs. I hated leaving him there, but what could I do?

I left the kennel and then climbed the hill into camp just as the last of the crowds were moving into the Lighthouse. I caught sight of James at the rear of the pack and yanked him out of line.

“Cal? What are you—”

I put one finger to my lips and pulled him away, keeping us to the shadows as we made our way down to the barracks. Once we were inside, I lit a single lantern and shut the door.

“What are you doing?”

I took James’s backpack out of our footlocker and pushed it into his chest. “Fill it.”

“Why? Cal, what’s going on?”

“We have to go,” I said, turning my back to him and filling my pack with clothes, camping gear, maps.

“Go where? What are you — Why do you have blood on your clothes?”

I was leaning over my bunk, the straps of the backpack tight in my hand. Looking down, I saw that my pants, from cuffs to knee, were stained with Quarles’s blood.

“There was an accident,” I said quietly, my back still to James. “With Quarles.”

“Is he dead?”

The words stuck in my throat but I didn’t need to say anything. James could see. I pulled him down onto the bunk beside me.

“We need to leave,” I said. “Now.”

“Leave? What are you—”

“Quarles’s truck is out by the kennels. I told the sentries I’d be driving out again tonight to look for a pack of strays.”

“Where would we even go?”

“I don’t know. West maybe, cross into California. We’ll figure it out.”

“But—”

“If they find him, I’m dead.”

James went quiet, staring down at the concrete floor. The walls of the barracks ticked as the building settled into the desert night.

“James?”

“We’ll go to Monroe together,” he said slowly. “We’ll explain it to him. He was just about to make us both citizens. He’ll—”

“It was a lie. He’s going to keep you as his valet and send me away with Rhames to be a soldier.”

James looked up at me, his eyes sharp like he was searching out a lie. When he didn’t find one, his face went dark, shadowed in flickering lantern light.

“Remember when we used to talk about escaping?” I said. “We put it aside for too long, James. This is our chance. We have to take it. Are you listening to me? We need to—”

“I’ll get Milo,” he said. “He can get into the storage sheds and draw us some supplies.”

“There’s no time for that.”

“We need food,” he said. “And a tent. I’ll grab him on the way out of Lighthouse and meet you at the kennels.”

“James.”

“He won’t talk,” James said. “Don’t worry. I’ll be fast and we’ll be gone before anybody knows what happened.”

James rolled up off the cot and slung the pack from his shoulder.

“Everything is going to work out for the best,” he said. “You’ll see.”

Looking up at him, I felt a surge of astonishment. For years I thought he was the weak one, the sickly one. Turns out I didn’t know my brother at all.

I nodded and James slipped out of the barracks. I changed out of my uniform and into Path-issued boots, jeans, and a denim jacket. I threaded a sheathed knife onto my belt, then finished packing. I could feel the minutes ticking by double time.

I reached behind my back until I felt the warm end of Quarles’s gun. I pulled it out and snapped the chamber open. One round left. The thought of having to use it again made me sick, but it would be stupid to leave it behind. If someone got in our way, we couldn’t stop. I closed the chamber and tucked the gun into the small of my back. The last thing I did before I left was stuff my bloody clothes beneath my mattress.

Outside, bells began to chime. I slipped out of the barracks, one eye on the crowds exiting the Lighthouse.

I felt an unfamiliar buzz of hope as I moved into the shadows and ran toward the kennel.

The kennel was quiet when I got there, but it didn’t last long. As soon as I stepped inside, the dogs began to stalk their cages, low growls in their throats. We had to move fast. Once they saw that dinner wasn’t coming, every ear in camp would turn to the sound of their barking.

Bear met me at his gate with a whine. “See?” I said, scratching his snout. “Told ya I’d come back.”

I threw open the bolt to his cage and led him past the cages in the back of the truck and into the passenger seat.

“No more cages for you, okay?”

By the time I got back to the kennel, the dogs had started to bark. The only thing that would keep them from an all-out revolt was food. I grabbed the scraps bucket, but before I could give out the first taste, I heard footsteps behind me. I turned with a start. It was only James silhouetted in the dim glow of an open door.

“Where’s your stuff?”

“Left it by the truck.”

“Great,” I said, dropping the bucket onto the cement floor. Someone would come by the next day and feed them. They weren’t my problem anymore. “Milo come through?”

“Yeah, he was perfect.”

“Good. Come on, let’s get out of here before these dogs bust their cages.”

James grabbed my sleeve and held me back. “Cal, wait. Maybe there’s another way.”

“I told you. If they catch me—”

“I know, but listen, the two of us? Running in an old pickup truck? And we don’t even know where we’re going? They’ll find us. You know they will. We should just go talk to Monroe.”

I took him by the shoulders to calm him down. “You just have to hang in there a little while longer. We can talk more in the truck. Now, come on.”

I started to go but stopped dead before I made it three steps. Two soldiers had appeared in the shadows, blocking the exit.

“Cal…”

I eased back slowly, drawing James along with me.

“Go on,” I whispered, trying to keep my voice low and steady. “Out the back door. Head for the truck.”

Two more soldiers stepped into the doorway behind us. The growls from the pens grew louder, sawing at the air. One hand disappeared behind my back and found the butt of the revolver.

“Get ready to run,” I said.

“You have to talk to them, Cal.”

I turned to James and found him staring at me through the gloom.

“James?”

He took a step toward me. “I told them it was an accident,” he said. “Captain Monroe knows what Quarles is like. All you have to do is come with us and talk to him about it. We’ll get you back on Path.”

“They’ll kill me!”

James took another step and I grabbed him, whipping Quarles’s revolver out from behind my back at the same time. The soldiers rushed forward, sweeping the rifles from their shoulders and clicking off the safeties.

“Wait!” James pleaded with the soldiers. “It’s okay. Cal, just give me the gun and we can talk. They’re surrounding the kennel. There’s nowhere to go.”

I looked up above me and backed up slow into a dark corner, keeping James close. The soldiers eased in, stepping into the main aisle as they converged. Behind me, the snarls of the dogs moved from cage to cage like rolls of thunder.

“When did they get to you?” I said, edging backward. I could feel the far wall get closer. “Huh?”

“Just put the gun down. They’ll listen to you.”

My back hit the wall. Two chains rattled above me.

“I don’t think so.”

“Cal—”

I grabbed one of the chains and gave a sharp tug. The cage doors flew open and dozens of half-starved animals burst into the aisle. The soldiers tried to back away but the dogs were faster. There was a scream as one man went down and then the others began firing their weapons wildly. Rounds crashed into the cages and the walls. A few animals howled pitifully and fell.

I clamped both arms around James and ran for the back door. Reinforcements were already coming in from across the camp. I pushed James into the truck’s passenger seat with Bear and slammed the door. The sentries at the main gate were moving into position. I pulled James’s seat belt over him and Bear and cranked the engine. Shots crackled behind us, slamming into the cages in back. I hit the gas.

“Cal, this is crazy. You have to stop!”

“Put your head down!”

Rounds pinged off the side of the truck as the sentries began firing. When it became clear that I wasn’t stopping, they fired a few more rounds, then dodged out of the way.

There was a squeal of metal as we hit the gate and tore it from its moorings. I kept my foot hard on the gas, and we were through, dragging pieces of torn steel behind us. The highway west was only minutes away.

“This isn’t going to work,” James said. He was pressed into the passenger-side corner, Bear in his lap. “Seriously, how do you see this ending? We can’t—”

Rotating red and blue lights appeared in the rearview mirror, followed by wailing sirens. Military Police. My stomach tightened.

“Cal?”

The lights grew brighter as they gained on us, filling the inside of the truck. The exit onto the highway was just ahead.

“You can’t outrun them,” James said. “We’re in the middle of nowhere, so it’s not like you can lose them. What happens when they get a chopper in the air?”

“They’re not sending a chopper after two kids in a stolen truck.”

“PULL OVER!” an MP announced over his loudspeaker. “YOU ARE UNDER ARREST.”

I swerved at the last second and took the highway exit. The MP overshot it, but as I accelerated down the ramp and onto an empty two-lane road, I heard his brakes squeal. It was only seconds before the MP’s lights emerged in the rearview again. The truck’s engine revved as the speedometer climbed past seventy, then eighty. It hit ninety and the truck began to shake. Still, the MP drew closer.

“Even if we made it to the border,” James said calmly, “no one will let us across. Monroe will listen to you, Cal. I promise.”

“When did you do it?” I asked. “When did you trade Mom and Dad for him?”

“I didn’t,” James said. “I grew up. That’s all.”

The panic that had been fueling me began to drain away, replaced by a buzzing numbness. My foot eased off the gas and the truck slowed. Eighty-five. Eighty. The MP cruiser was moving alongside us now, its bumper approaching my door.

“It’s okay,” James said soothingly. “We’ll go back home and everything will be just like it was.”

Just the sound of that word in his mouth, home, and something inside of me went molten. I glanced out the side window. The cruiser had pulled even and was moving ahead.

“Hold on to Bear,” I said.

“What? Cal—”

I jerked the wheel, hurling us into the side of the cruiser. There was a shriek as metal hit metal and then a split second of weightlessness before the seat belt yanked me back. James’s screams, mixed with the glass and steel crash. Everything was lit by the red and blue of the police lights until they winked out and everything went dark.

We ended up sideways in the middle of the road. The windshield was a spiderweb of fractures, and smoke poured out of the hood. James was slumped in his seat, dead pale with his arms clapped around Bear.

The cruiser was twenty feet down the road, flipped upside down at the end of a trail of shattered glass and torn metal. The windows were smashed and I couldn’t see anyone moving inside.

“James? Are you okay?”

He moaned. I pushed open my door, but my legs were useless. I collapsed the second they hit asphalt. I lay facedown, every nerve in my body buzzing at once. No time, I thought, nearly delirious. Got to move. Glass crunched under my palm as I forced myself up. I kept one eye on the cruiser as I came around the front of the truck, like it was a monster that could come to life any second.

Bear was as dazed as James, whimpering and shaking as I lifted him out of the truck. I checked him for injuries but found only cuts and scrapes. I set him down by the side of the road, then undid James’s seat belt. He fell into my arms and I eased him down beside Bear and grabbed our backpacks. I got mine on and staggered out into the roadway.

“Come on,” I said, draping the backpack over James’s shoulders. “We have to go.”

“No,” he mumbled, nodding listlessly toward the wrecked MP cruiser. “We have to stay. Have to help them.”

I stared at the cruiser. There was still no movement inside. No sound.

“They’re fine,” I said. “Let’s go. Bear, come on.”

James tried to pull away from me but he was too weak. I threw my arm around his shoulder and drew him away from the side of the road. Bear trailed along behind us as we moved into the desert.

I dragged James along until the flat land fell away and we found ourselves at the crest of a ravine. There was a narrow trail heading down into it, but it was impossible to see how far it went or if it would even support our weight. I looked around for another option and found none. I pulled a single chemical glow stick out of my pack and cracked it. Any light was risky, but taking the trail blind was sure to be suicide.

I headed down first, stepping slowly into the chem stick’s pale green glow. James came next, with Bear sniffing along behind us. Now that the shock of the crash had passed, every step sent waves of pain through my body. The bones in my wrist felt like they were grinding together. Soon, exhaustion began to nip at every muscle, settling over my thoughts like a fog. The dark of the chasm yawned beside us as the trail grew more and more narrow. We had to find someplace to rest, and fast.

It was an hour or more before I let James sink to the rocky floor and then sat down beside him, struggling to catch my breath and wishing away every stabbing pain throughout my body. When I could summon the strength to move again, I cracked another glow stick and looked around.

We were on a small shelf of rock just wide enough for the three of us. Bear sat panting, eyes shining eerily in the chemical green. The gash on his side was still sealed, but he yanked one of his front paws away with a yelp when I tried to look at it. He tucked it close to his body and licked at it.

James was beside me, bent in half over his knees, with his back to me.

“James?” He didn’t turn, so I reached for his shoulder. “Listen to me. I—”

He fell into the light and I saw that his mouth was open wide and he was gasping soundlessly, tears streaking the sides of his face. Both hands were clasped over his chest, clawing at his lungs.

I dropped the light and tore through my pack, nerves screaming as I searched through clothes and useless gear. I found the inhaler, dropped it, grabbed it again. James started to thrash in the middle of the trail, pounding at the dirt with one fist, his face streaked with panic. I pulled him to me and set the inhaler to his lips, but one hand flew up and knocked it away.

“Don’t need,” he insisted in a tortured rattle. “Don’t… need…”

“Yes, you do. Now take it before you pass out.”

I forced the inhaler into his mouth and clamped his jaw shut around it. I triggered a blast of medicine into him and then another.

I watched as he struggled, and timed the next blast for the tiny intake he could manage. With each puff from the inhaler, I felt the rigid muscles in James’s back yield. The wheeze faded and James settled into a halting, staticky breath. His arms were limp, and even in the green glow, I could see the palor of his skin and the sheen of cold sweat all over him. I dropped the inhaler and wiped the sweat from his forehead.

“You’re okay,” I whispered. “You’re going to be okay.”

Bear appeared in the dark, sniffing at him with great concern. James managed to lift one weak hand and pat his side. He took a shaky breath, then pulled himself into the deeper shadows on the opposite side of the platform. Bear followed, standing halfway between the two of us. He looked over his shoulder at me.

“Look,” I said to James’s back. “You need time to adjust. Okay? Once we get away from them, you’ll see.”

I stopped at the faint sound of James’s voice.

“James? I can’t hear you. What are you saying?”

I moved closer until I was at his back. I put my hand on his shoulder and turned him around.

“… consecrate my life to the Glorious Path. I am the light in the darkness. The hand offering guidance to those who have gone astray. I am the rod that falls upon the backs of the defiant….”

My hand fell from his shoulder as I backed away. The glow of the chem stick faded and I was left there in the deep dark with nothing but the sound of my brother praying.

8

I spread our map out on the ground the next morning and bent over it.

Path states were bordered in gold, Fed in blue. I used a pencil to sketch out the western and eastern fronts. The closest Federal territory was California, but that was a pipe dream. California was a major prize for the Path, second only to the new Federal capital in Philadelphia. Fighting along the border had been intense for years. James was right; we could never cross there.

I moved my finger over the map to Nevada and Oregon, which, with California, made up the Federal-controlled land in the region. Nevada was a slightly better bet, but it was still westward, the wrong direction, and the word for the last few weeks was that Idaho was probably going to fall any day. If we were in Nevada when that happened, it’d close off our only route back to New York. We’d be trapped on the West Coast until the end of the war — forever if the Path came out on top.

The only possibility left was Wyoming, which seemed insane. Between us and Wyoming were more than eight hundred miles of Path lands in Arizona and Utah. On top of that, Salt Lake City sat too close to the Utah–Wyoming border and was among one of the Path’s major strongholds. Two scruffy-looking kids and a dog trying to walk anywhere near that city would be in jail before they took two steps.

I kicked the map away and sat back against a rock. It couldn’t have been more than eight o’clock in the morning and the sun was already intense. I wiped a film of sweat from my forehead and reached for our canteen but stopped before taking a drink. It was almost a thousand miles to Fed territory and we had one canteen and a handful of food. I set the water back down.

James was at the end of the trail, knees hugged to his chest, watching without expression as Bear splashed about in a thin stream of water. James and I hadn’t said a word to each other since we’d woken up at dawn.

I rummaged in my pack and threw an MRE down to him.

“You should eat,” I said. “We’ll leave as soon as it gets dark.”

“Leave for where?”

I grabbed my own breakfast and ripped it open. Beef stew. “Home.”

“You think you’re going to get all the way to New York? Cal—”

“We just have to get across the border,” I said. “Once we explain that we’re captures, the Feds will help us from there. And the Path isn’t going to get bent out of shape searching for two escaped novices. We’ll travel at night. We’ll be careful.”

“You can’t run away from this.”

“Run away from what?”

“You killed someone.”

It was like a punch in the gut. I flexed the sore muscles of my right hand, still able to feel the kick of the gun.

“You know the kind of person Quarles was.”

“And you made sure he never had the chance to become anything better.”

I glared across our camp. “And how many people has the Path killed, James?”

“It’s a war. It’s different.”

“You learn a lot about war sitting in camp and fetching Monroe’s coffee?”

“As much as you did mucking out a dog kennel.”

I threw the half-eaten MRE into the dirt and stormed down the trail.

“You want to know how I really got that medicine for you?” I asked, holding up my cast. “How I got this? It was a little deal I worked out with your buddy Monroe. Your medicine in exchange for Rhames going at me with a baseball bat so I’d look pathetic enough to draw some Feds out of their base. I was right there, James. I listened while they gave them the Choice, while they murdered men, women, and children.”

“That’s not true!” James said. “Anyone who refuses the Path is taken to a camp until the end of the war. After the war—”

“I was there! I was right there. What did they do to you?”

“They didn’t do anything to me! I made a choice.”

“Then make another one. Get your things together. As soon as it’s dark, we leave.”

“I’m not going.”

“I swear to God, I will tie you up and drag you home if I have to.”

James pressed his wrists together and thrust them toward me. “Do it.”

“James—”

“I am on a Glorious Path,” he spat at me, his voice quickly finding the rhythm of a first-year novice prayer. “I will not turn from it even if it means my death. I will not succumb to the temptations of the lost and the wicked. I will be their beacon instead.”

He stood there, hands out, daring me. I went back and rooted through my backpack until I found a length of rope. Bear ran up from the stream, growing increasingly distressed as I bound James’s wrists, yanking the knot tight enough to make him gasp.

“We leave when the sun goes down.”

I left James, snatching the map off the ground and flattening it in front of me. I searched the map’s blocks of gold and blue for a way out. Salt Lake City sat like a citadel near the southern edge of the Wyoming border, but north of that, the border looked nearly empty. A plan started to snap together — head north, skirting west to avoid Salt Lake City, then head east to cross the border. It was a tough route, but as long as we stayed away from the hornet’s nest of SLC, maybe we had a chance.

I sat back and breathed deep, trying to calm the thud of a headache that was pounding just behind my eyes. Once it calmed, I drew my finger across the map, past Wyoming and South Dakota and Iowa, all the way to New York and Ithaca.

I closed my eyes, seeing it all as it was — the lake, the trees, the cobalt-blue walls of our house — going over each image like they were the words of a prayer.

After the sun had been down for more than an hour, I threw on my backpack and went down to the stream. James and Bear were nowhere to be found.

“James?” I called as loudly as I dared. Nothing. “Bear?”

I cracked another chem light and held it up. A shuffling sound came from somewhere beyond its reach. I crept toward it as silently as I could until I came around a pillar of rock and saw him.

James was on his knees in the dirt, his back to me, his bound hands in front of him. His forehead was pressed into Bear’s neck and his entire body was shaking. At first I thought he was having another attack, but then I heard his voice.

“I just want to go home.”

He said it over and over, quiet, but so strained it was like the words were slicing his throat on their way out.

“I just want to go home. I just want to go home. I just want to go home.”

Bear grew anxious, dancing back and forth and then setting his front paws on James’s legs with a whine. James flung his hands over Bear’s head, drawing him in as he cried. Soon Bear went still and then James did too.

A rock shifted as I took a step, and James turned toward the sound. When he saw me, he left Bear and slowly crossed into the circle of green light. James put his bound hands out in front of him.

“You said you’d be dragging me.”

Bear whimpered at his feet, staring up at me. I seized the ropes and flung James out onto the path ahead of me. He stumbled, nearly pitching into the dirt before righting himself and continuing on without a word. Bear shied back with a growl.

“What? You want to stay?”

Bear barked once, an angry yap, but then I took his collar and hurried him along too. As we climbed, the deep blue sky shaded to black. By the time we were topside, the stars were out, circling a full moon. The land was quiet and flat, vastly dark. Bear dashed out into the night to explore. I found the Big Dipper and traced a line from it to the North Star.

Beside me, James began to pray.

It was like a knot tightening inside me. I remembered the nights I stood in the dark by his bunk trying to quiet him as he sobbed. We’d just been taken by the Path and he’d gone days without food, surviving on nothing but the few drops of water I was able to force into him. How many of those nights had I lain below him in the bunk, sleepless, terrified that I’d wake to find my brother dead of grief?

Listening to him pray, some dark part of me wished I had. I felt sick even as I thought it, but at that moment, even his absence seemed more welcome than standing beside this stranger.

“We should go if we’re going,” James said when he finished his prayer.

I slipped my knife out of its sheath and cut his bonds with a single slash. James looked up at me, confused, as the ropes fell to the ground. I shoved his pack into his chest.

“Go home.”

James was motionless for a few seconds and then he drew the pack toward him.

“Maybe we don’t have to go back to Cormorant,” he said, tempering the edge in his voice. “Beacon Quan told me about this place in Oklahoma called Foley. It’s a real Path town, way behind the lines. Just a few farms and a small Lighthouse. Maybe we could—”

“The highway we came in on is that way. Leave now and you’ll be in your bunk before morning.”

James started to protest, but whatever fight he had in him seemed to evaporate. “What do you want me to tell Monroe?”

“Tell him whatever you want,” I snapped. And then, “Tell him… tell him I had a gun and I tried to force you to come with me but you managed to escape. Say I’m heading west to California.”

James nodded. I dug through my own pack and held out the asthma inhalers.

“Here.”

“I don’t need them.”

“Don’t be—”

“I don’t have asthma.”

“Then what was that last night?”

James kicked the sand at his feet and then looked up at me. His eyes were gray in the moonlight. “A lack of faith.”

“James…”

“I should go.”

Bear trotted out of the dark, tail wagging. He ran to James, who dropped down beside him and gave him a scratch under his chin.

“Take care of him,” he said.

James slipped his backpack on and started away. Bear followed for a few steps and then stopped to look back at me, confused. He barked toward James, but my brother had already begun to melt into the darkness.

I wanted to call out to him, stop him, but I knew it was useless. Even if I found the right thing to say, even if he walked by my side for the next thousand miles, the truth was I lost my brother years ago. I stood there until the dark overtook him, and the whisper of his footsteps faded away to nothing.

“Come on, Bear,” I said, and then I put my back to all of it and headed north.

Bear and I walked until we fell from exhaustion.

We were at the edge of a cliff. The moonlit desert spread out below us, huge and blank. Bear went to work on his paws, licking at the pads and digging out small stones and grit. I put an MRE down in front of him, then tore open one of my own. It tasted as bland as sawdust, but I forced down every bite. As I reached for our canteen, something rustled behind me. I whipped around, thinking I’d see James coming out of the dark, but there was nothing but desert brush blowing in the wind.

I imagined him back at Cormorant, safe in his bunk, but then all the things that could have gone wrong struck me. He could have gotten lost, or hurt or—

I slammed the door on the thought. James got what he wanted. There was no reason to dwell on it. I poured Bear some water, then dug through my pack, searching for something to fight the chill that numbed my fingers and toes. I found two sweaters and slipped one on over my T-shirt and tucked the other tight around Bear. I thrust my bare hand into my pocket and lay out alongside Bear to share warmth.

I closed my eyes, desperate for sleep, but nothing inside of me would go still. James haunted me no matter how hard I tried to push him away.

I remembered one Sunday night when Dad set up our “bunk beds” — what he called two hammocks hung in the backyard garden, one above and one below. That night it was a reward for me and James behaving when we took Grandma Betty to church. Or James behaving, really. I was simply half asleep, observing the homily through half-closed eyes. James sat up tall in the pew, listening with his whole body. Even then I thought he was simply playing an expert-level game of “Good Son.”

That night I lay in the top bunk mashing buttons on my PlayStation, with James below me. Mom and Dad and Grandma Betty were inside the house, just visible through the living room window. Dad was playing a new song for them. His voice mixed effortlessly with the jangle of his guitar and the tinkling of Mom’s and Grandma’s wineglasses.

Eventually they went to bed and shut out the lights, leaving me and James alone in the dark. The creaking sway of the hammocks’ ropes against the maple tree made me think of the rigging of a sailing ship. I closed my eyes and imagined us as sailors at sea, crashing through the waves.

“Why doesn’t it all just fall apart?”

I had thought James was asleep until his voice rose up from the bottom bunk.

“Why doesn’t what fall apart?”

There was a long pause and I leaned over the bunk. James seemed to be staring past me and the tree branches and the wisps of clouds to the stars.

“Everything,” he said.

I sat up in the desert, clamping my arms around my middle and leaning over my knees. It felt like there was an immense weight pressing down on me from all sides. Something touched my jacket, and I turned with a start.

Bear had his front paws perched on my shoulder. He was very still, examining me closely, his tan-dotted brows drawn together. He let out a breathy woof and I pulled him to my chest, inhaling the warm smell of him. My breath quaked in my throat as it went down. I let Bear go and he fell into my lap, drawing his legs beneath him. I tucked the sweater back over him and sat there with my palm on his side.

I looked up at the stars. Among them, the moon was full and white. A ghostly snatch of music swirled around me.

“Moonlight road,” I sang, hearing the chords in my head. “Why don’t you lead me on home?”

Bear twitched and shuffled. I ran my hand over the gloss of his coat and pulled him in tight. I looked over my shoulder again, out at the miles of darkness stretching to the south.

He’s where he belongs, I thought, and heard a door fall closed in my mind. I turned back to Bear and sang to him until he fell asleep.