"We have to be almost there." Jeff could barely make out Kai's form. A
thick bank of fog had settled over the area just after the sun rose to warm
the saturated forest. He looked up. He couldn't even see the lower
branches of the trees they walked under and strained his ears for some
sound of a plane. He still carried the flare gun, fresh cartridge loaded,
just in case.
Kai stopped in front of him. "Going down that slope ahead ought to be oodles of fun in this." She pushed some of her thick damp hair back from her face. The fog encircled her as she moved, wisps flying as she waved her hands.
Jeff ran a hand through his own mop. The dampness of the air combined with the droplets of rain that fell from the trees to wet his clothes. A slight chill ran through his body in spite of his jacket. He began to move again for warmth.
Jeff swooped down and grabbed the pack Kai had set on the ground. "I'll carry this for awhile."
"I can carry it," she protested.
"So can I," Jeff settled the pack on his back, "It's time I pulled my own weight around here."
"Okay, whatever," Kai smiled as she studied the land around her. She stretched her back and shivered a little.
"You all right, kid?" he asked as they began to move on.
"I'm okay," Kai replied, "I'm taking a vacation after this, though. Aruba, maybe."
They moved on walking in companionable silence. The woods were quiet, depressed by the dreariness of the morning. It was eerie, and Jeff couldn't help but feel as though he were being watched. He spun his head around, and then turned to walk backwards to see behind him.
"Gus!" Kai made a grab for the dog as he burst past her in a blur of black and tan. He snarled and began to bark.
She gathered her muscles to go after him, but Jeff tackled her to the ground. "Hold on."
"Get off!" she yelled, her temper flaring. "I have to go get him."
Jeff slapped a hand over her mouth and used his body weight to hold her still. She squirmed and fought with him, making it hard for Jeff to listen and keep her subdued at the same time.
He didn't have to listen too hard. A short spattering of gunfire shattered the stillness of the morning, causing a flock of birds to leave their roosts noisily above them. His suspicions were correct. Someone was looking for them.
Jeff felt something warm and wet running down the back of his hand. He looked down to see Kai's eyes clenched shut, tears falling freely. He removed his hand and pulled her up from the ground. She stood beside him, wiping her face with the back of her hand.
"I'm sorry, kid," Jeff apologized softly, knowing how much Gus had meant to her, "but we have to get out of here."
Kai nodded and began to move again, going as quietly as possible. The only signs of grief he was aware of were for the sniffles he heard as they went.
They were both knew that they were being hunted. Together they crept over the hill and started to move away from the general location of the shots. Kai was focused, determined not to be caught. She slid down the embankment and Jeff followed, thinking how glad he was for the fog now.
He hauled Kai behind a large boulder, when he heard a twig snap behind them. She knelt silently in front of him and watched as lanky, dark- haired man appeared over the hill they had just come down. He wore black coveralls, with a strange gold seal emblazoned on the left breast. His beady eyes scanned the area as he shifted an automatic rifle in his hands and walked off in the opposite direction.
"Where did he come from?" Kai asked, whispering.
Jeff pulled on her jacket, backing her away from the protection of the rock. "Looks like the Hood called in some friends."
"How did they get here so fast?"
"He's apparently slyer than I gave him credit for." Jeff felt like an idiot. "I should have guessed he would have some kind of transport waiting."
"Like a Land Skipper or a Hovercraft?"
Jeff nodded. "Something equipped to deal with the terrain and the weather."
He turned around and looked at the girl that tagged along behind him. His main concern was for Kai. She had been right earlier when she said Jeff probably wouldn't have been killed. She would be shot on sight just to get him to stop. He wasn't going to let that happen.
That thought was running through his head when he heard a splash of water in front of him and a loud oath. Someone had placed a foot wrong.
Jeff grabbed Kai's waist and all but threw her to the ground, kneeling down beside her. She was about to ask him what the hell he was doing when he covered her lips with his hand and mouthed 'opossum'.
She got the idea and closed her eyes, lying quite still.
The sound of a plane caused Jeff to look up for a brief second. He swore inwardly. That had been search and rescue, canvassing the area. There was nothing he could do about it. If he signaled them they would never get here in time. He went back to the situation at hand and slid the pack off.
"Do not move." A voice, thick with an accent said. Jeff looked up to see a second man with dirty blonde hair advancing on him, an assault weapon pointed straight at his chest.
"I give up," Jeff said, raising his hands from Kai.
The man raised a walkie-talkie to his mouth, his eyes not leaving Jeff for a second. "Master, we have them."
"Both of them?" A voice rasped slowly in response. "I want both of them alive!"
The man looked at Jeff. "Is she alive?"
"No."
Kai moaned softly and Jeff suppressed a scowl at her. His plan had been to leave her behind and hope she would find her way out of this on her own. Apparently, the girl had different ideas.
"You said she was dead!" the man yelled, though he seemed considerably relieved that Jeff had been wrong.
Jeff shrugged. "I thought she was."
"The girl is alive, but injured." The man spoke to his 'master' again.
"Excellent," the voice said cruelly. "Bring them both."
The dark-haired man ran up. "Mr. Tracy, I presume?" he gloated.
"Shut up," the other man said. "Get the girl."
The man approached, but Jeff reached down and picked up Kai first, hefting her against him. Her head rolled around and for a minute, he actually believed she was unconscious. The kid deserved an Oscar.
"You know the problem with this girl?" Jeff asked as he approached the dark haired man. "She's just too damned heavy!" He tossed Kai at the man who instinctively put out his arms to catch her, but the velocity with which she hit him knocked them both to the ground.
Jeff turned his attention to the man behind him, grabbing the barrel of the gun before he even knew what was happening. The stock of the weapon was jabbed into his rib cage with all the strength Jeff had. The man doubled over in pain. Jeff slammed him in the face with his knee. The blonde man fell down, out cold.
A cry of excruciating pain sounded behind him. Kai scrambled backwards as the dark-haired man clutched his crotch. Her hand found a rock as she stood. Yelling, she fell forward and cracked the man over the head with it. He fell over, temporarily out of his misery.
"Too damned heavy?" Kai asked breathlessly, throwing the rock to the ground hard to emphasize her words, "Last night there wasn't enough of me to keep you warm and now I'm fat?"
"Sorry," Jeff replied, preoccupied with checking the magazine of the gun he now held in his hand. It was full. "Are you all right?"
"Dandy," she snorted, as she began to laugh. "Would you please just let me know before you toss me at a bad guy?"
"I thought you handled yourself well enough." Jeff reached down and grabbed the second gun. He stood to find Kai staring at him, hands on her hips. "What?"
Kai shook her head, switching the train of conversation. "So what next?"
"The Hood knows where we're going." Jeff said decisively. He pulled the clip off of the second gun and put the weapon back down. "I'm not about to simply walk into him. We have to find another way off this plateau." He looked at her, feeling the implicit trust that he placed in her abilities. "Can you do that?"
"I think so," Kai replied, "but I don't think its going to be easy."
"Well if things got easier we wouldn't know what to do with ourselves, would we?"
"I guess not"
Kai grabbed the canteen and first-aid kit from the pack and slung them diagonally across her shoulder. "We'll have to shift our course a bit, but we should still be in McPhereson by tonight."
Leaving the rest of the pack, she trotted off into the fog. Jeff followed quickly, carrying his arsenal. What he wouldn't have given for some rope to tie up those bastards. It didn't matter, he supposed. They would be dead when the Hood learned of their failure, if the reports about the criminal were true.
They picked up their pace, running silently through the forest. Jeff felt the thrill of adrenaline. It reminded him of days long gone, where he had been in similar situations. Though he had been an Air Force pilot, he still underwent the basics of ground warfare and land reconnaissance missions. It was training he had been glad of more than once.
Kai moved ahead of him with confidence, plotting a fairly straight course through the trees. Suddenly, she stopped short. "Slight miscalculation."
Jeff halted beside her and looked down the sheer wall of rock that disappeared in the mist below them. "Is there another way down?"
"I honestly don't know," Kai answered. "But if we go looking around, aren't we more likely to be found?"
"True." Jeff wanted to avoid a confrontation with this man at all costs. Hovercrafts could carry five people, pilot included. Those were not good odds. "How far down do you think it is?"
"Can't be more than 200 feet."
"Is that all?" Jeff asked sarcastically. He sat down on the edge, adjusting the gun so it sat on his back and out of his way.
Jeff was thankful for his five lively and active sons. Even in his fifties, he could still keep up with them admirably. Rock climbing was something he had taken up with John after Scott and Virgil had left for college. Losing his two oldest boys to adulthood had made him appreciate his younger children all the more. They had even rigged a climbing wall on one of the slopes of Tracy Island when John had moved in. Jeff spent many a-morning racing John up the steep northern face of the inactive volcano.
He looked down again in doubt. At home, he knew how far he was going and what lay below. There was also the added comfort of harnesses and safety lines. Fortunately, the slope below him wasn't as sheer as the one at home, but the drop would most certainly kill a person.
Sighing, he uttered the phrase that had become his motto for this trip.
"What the hell."
Kai sat a few feet from him, grinning. "Ready to go then?"
"Have you ever done anything like this before?"
"There's a first time for everything." Kai slid off the edge, turning quickly and landing on a ledge beneath her. Flattening herself to the rock, she began to look for holds down the cliff.
Jeff watched. She knew exactly what she was doing. He sighed again, and started down himself. Carefully, he tested rocks for use as handholds as he began to descend. Kai did the same across from him and they kept even as they went, each concentrating on what they were doing.
"Damn!" Jeff looked over to see a large rock bounce of the knuckles of Kai's hand. She lost her grip and the other hand hold she had just acquired crumbled in her grasp. She fought to hold on, but her feet went out from under her. She slid down the rock wall as more rocks came loose from above. The girl disappeared into the fog.
Jeff didn't yell for fear he would trigger a larger slide, but his heart leapt to his throat. He held tightly to the wall, pressing his body to the rock to avoid being knocked down as well. Quickly, but carefully he avoided the slide area and descended. After thirty more feet, he could see the sandy soil of a dry creek bed. He jumped down the last few feet, the incline of the bank giving way beneath him.
He looked around, damning the fog now. He couldn't see anything except the outlines of a few of the larger rocks that had fallen down with Kai.
Suddenly, nothing mattered but finding her. They had been through too much together to let it end like this.
"Oh, that was stupid," he heard a weak voice from across the way. Jeff jumped into the creek bed, the gravel crunching beneath his feet as he ran. Kai was getting shakily to her knees against the opposite bank.
"Hold still," Jeff fell and slid to a stop beside her. He looked her over. A nasty scrape ran across her forehead. A few more cuts and bruises covered her hand and her jeans were torn above a superficial gash in her leg. His eyes lit on her left arm as she held it against her chest. Jeff could see from the angle that it was most definitely broken
Kai followed his gaze. "It doesn't hurt."
"Uh-huh," Jeff gently pried the limb away from her body. "It will as soon as your body figures out that it's broken." As he moved it, blood flowed from beneath her jacket sleeve. "Anything else busted?"
Kai shook her head and sat down on her butt. She slid the first-aid kit from around her body. Jeff snatched it and removed the scissors. He positioned himself so that his back was to Kai. Her arm ran under his so he could work without her seeing the extent of the injury.
He could hear her fighting to control her breathing as he gently began to cut the sleeve. Jeff revealed nothing in his manner when a glistening white shard of bone appeared, peeking out from beneath her skin
"How bad is it?" Her voice cracked a bit. The injury was beginning to hurt her, and Jeff jostling it was not helping.
"Not too bad." In truth, it looked horrible.
"You're a rotten liar," Kai whimpered as Jeff irrigated the wound with water from the canteen and quickly staunched the flow of blood as it poured from her body. He knew antibiotics would cause more harm than good. The damage was too extensive. Besides, if he wasted time, Kai would bleed to death before infection was a possibility. He covered the open wound with gauze and bound it tightly.
Jeff stabilized the injury, using two straight limbs from a nearby Oak sapling. "How are you doing, kid?"
"Great, let's arm wrestle."
He smiled. The mockery was a good sign.
Jeff used his sweatshirt to secure Kai's arm to her body.
"I don't feel so good." She had gone pale.
"I can't imagine why. You just fell down a cliff." He shook his head with indecision. "God, I don't want to risk moving you."
Her eyes reflected pain and determination. "Then leave me here."
"What?" Jeff exclaimed.
"Mr. Tracy, I am only going to slow you down." She sounded worn out. "Go without me and bring back help."
"That," he said sternly, "is not going to happen, young lady."
"It's not that far to McPhereson," she tried to reason with him, "If you go without me, you can make it there and back by tonight."
"Do you know what can happen in that amount of time?" he shook his head. "Sorry kid, either we stay or we go, but whatever we do, we do it together."
Kai sighed tiredly. "Stubborn man." She reached up with her right arm and pushed off his shoulder. Jeff stood up beside her, providing support. Her knees buckled, but he caught her.
"This isn't going to work." Jeff said. "You'll kill yourself."
"Give me a chance here." Kai said, looking up at him with a pain-drawn face. "I'll go as far as I can with you, and we'll regroup from there."
That translated to 'we'll discuss the leaving option when I can't keep up with you anymore'. It wouldn't happen, but he humored her. "All right."
Kai exhaled, and ordered her battered body to move. Jeff picked their supplies back up and followed her, silently willing her the strength to keep going.
Kai stopped in front of him. "Going down that slope ahead ought to be oodles of fun in this." She pushed some of her thick damp hair back from her face. The fog encircled her as she moved, wisps flying as she waved her hands.
Jeff ran a hand through his own mop. The dampness of the air combined with the droplets of rain that fell from the trees to wet his clothes. A slight chill ran through his body in spite of his jacket. He began to move again for warmth.
Jeff swooped down and grabbed the pack Kai had set on the ground. "I'll carry this for awhile."
"I can carry it," she protested.
"So can I," Jeff settled the pack on his back, "It's time I pulled my own weight around here."
"Okay, whatever," Kai smiled as she studied the land around her. She stretched her back and shivered a little.
"You all right, kid?" he asked as they began to move on.
"I'm okay," Kai replied, "I'm taking a vacation after this, though. Aruba, maybe."
They moved on walking in companionable silence. The woods were quiet, depressed by the dreariness of the morning. It was eerie, and Jeff couldn't help but feel as though he were being watched. He spun his head around, and then turned to walk backwards to see behind him.
"Gus!" Kai made a grab for the dog as he burst past her in a blur of black and tan. He snarled and began to bark.
She gathered her muscles to go after him, but Jeff tackled her to the ground. "Hold on."
"Get off!" she yelled, her temper flaring. "I have to go get him."
Jeff slapped a hand over her mouth and used his body weight to hold her still. She squirmed and fought with him, making it hard for Jeff to listen and keep her subdued at the same time.
He didn't have to listen too hard. A short spattering of gunfire shattered the stillness of the morning, causing a flock of birds to leave their roosts noisily above them. His suspicions were correct. Someone was looking for them.
Jeff felt something warm and wet running down the back of his hand. He looked down to see Kai's eyes clenched shut, tears falling freely. He removed his hand and pulled her up from the ground. She stood beside him, wiping her face with the back of her hand.
"I'm sorry, kid," Jeff apologized softly, knowing how much Gus had meant to her, "but we have to get out of here."
Kai nodded and began to move again, going as quietly as possible. The only signs of grief he was aware of were for the sniffles he heard as they went.
They were both knew that they were being hunted. Together they crept over the hill and started to move away from the general location of the shots. Kai was focused, determined not to be caught. She slid down the embankment and Jeff followed, thinking how glad he was for the fog now.
He hauled Kai behind a large boulder, when he heard a twig snap behind them. She knelt silently in front of him and watched as lanky, dark- haired man appeared over the hill they had just come down. He wore black coveralls, with a strange gold seal emblazoned on the left breast. His beady eyes scanned the area as he shifted an automatic rifle in his hands and walked off in the opposite direction.
"Where did he come from?" Kai asked, whispering.
Jeff pulled on her jacket, backing her away from the protection of the rock. "Looks like the Hood called in some friends."
"How did they get here so fast?"
"He's apparently slyer than I gave him credit for." Jeff felt like an idiot. "I should have guessed he would have some kind of transport waiting."
"Like a Land Skipper or a Hovercraft?"
Jeff nodded. "Something equipped to deal with the terrain and the weather."
He turned around and looked at the girl that tagged along behind him. His main concern was for Kai. She had been right earlier when she said Jeff probably wouldn't have been killed. She would be shot on sight just to get him to stop. He wasn't going to let that happen.
That thought was running through his head when he heard a splash of water in front of him and a loud oath. Someone had placed a foot wrong.
Jeff grabbed Kai's waist and all but threw her to the ground, kneeling down beside her. She was about to ask him what the hell he was doing when he covered her lips with his hand and mouthed 'opossum'.
She got the idea and closed her eyes, lying quite still.
The sound of a plane caused Jeff to look up for a brief second. He swore inwardly. That had been search and rescue, canvassing the area. There was nothing he could do about it. If he signaled them they would never get here in time. He went back to the situation at hand and slid the pack off.
"Do not move." A voice, thick with an accent said. Jeff looked up to see a second man with dirty blonde hair advancing on him, an assault weapon pointed straight at his chest.
"I give up," Jeff said, raising his hands from Kai.
The man raised a walkie-talkie to his mouth, his eyes not leaving Jeff for a second. "Master, we have them."
"Both of them?" A voice rasped slowly in response. "I want both of them alive!"
The man looked at Jeff. "Is she alive?"
"No."
Kai moaned softly and Jeff suppressed a scowl at her. His plan had been to leave her behind and hope she would find her way out of this on her own. Apparently, the girl had different ideas.
"You said she was dead!" the man yelled, though he seemed considerably relieved that Jeff had been wrong.
Jeff shrugged. "I thought she was."
"The girl is alive, but injured." The man spoke to his 'master' again.
"Excellent," the voice said cruelly. "Bring them both."
The dark-haired man ran up. "Mr. Tracy, I presume?" he gloated.
"Shut up," the other man said. "Get the girl."
The man approached, but Jeff reached down and picked up Kai first, hefting her against him. Her head rolled around and for a minute, he actually believed she was unconscious. The kid deserved an Oscar.
"You know the problem with this girl?" Jeff asked as he approached the dark haired man. "She's just too damned heavy!" He tossed Kai at the man who instinctively put out his arms to catch her, but the velocity with which she hit him knocked them both to the ground.
Jeff turned his attention to the man behind him, grabbing the barrel of the gun before he even knew what was happening. The stock of the weapon was jabbed into his rib cage with all the strength Jeff had. The man doubled over in pain. Jeff slammed him in the face with his knee. The blonde man fell down, out cold.
A cry of excruciating pain sounded behind him. Kai scrambled backwards as the dark-haired man clutched his crotch. Her hand found a rock as she stood. Yelling, she fell forward and cracked the man over the head with it. He fell over, temporarily out of his misery.
"Too damned heavy?" Kai asked breathlessly, throwing the rock to the ground hard to emphasize her words, "Last night there wasn't enough of me to keep you warm and now I'm fat?"
"Sorry," Jeff replied, preoccupied with checking the magazine of the gun he now held in his hand. It was full. "Are you all right?"
"Dandy," she snorted, as she began to laugh. "Would you please just let me know before you toss me at a bad guy?"
"I thought you handled yourself well enough." Jeff reached down and grabbed the second gun. He stood to find Kai staring at him, hands on her hips. "What?"
Kai shook her head, switching the train of conversation. "So what next?"
"The Hood knows where we're going." Jeff said decisively. He pulled the clip off of the second gun and put the weapon back down. "I'm not about to simply walk into him. We have to find another way off this plateau." He looked at her, feeling the implicit trust that he placed in her abilities. "Can you do that?"
"I think so," Kai replied, "but I don't think its going to be easy."
"Well if things got easier we wouldn't know what to do with ourselves, would we?"
"I guess not"
Kai grabbed the canteen and first-aid kit from the pack and slung them diagonally across her shoulder. "We'll have to shift our course a bit, but we should still be in McPhereson by tonight."
Leaving the rest of the pack, she trotted off into the fog. Jeff followed quickly, carrying his arsenal. What he wouldn't have given for some rope to tie up those bastards. It didn't matter, he supposed. They would be dead when the Hood learned of their failure, if the reports about the criminal were true.
They picked up their pace, running silently through the forest. Jeff felt the thrill of adrenaline. It reminded him of days long gone, where he had been in similar situations. Though he had been an Air Force pilot, he still underwent the basics of ground warfare and land reconnaissance missions. It was training he had been glad of more than once.
Kai moved ahead of him with confidence, plotting a fairly straight course through the trees. Suddenly, she stopped short. "Slight miscalculation."
Jeff halted beside her and looked down the sheer wall of rock that disappeared in the mist below them. "Is there another way down?"
"I honestly don't know," Kai answered. "But if we go looking around, aren't we more likely to be found?"
"True." Jeff wanted to avoid a confrontation with this man at all costs. Hovercrafts could carry five people, pilot included. Those were not good odds. "How far down do you think it is?"
"Can't be more than 200 feet."
"Is that all?" Jeff asked sarcastically. He sat down on the edge, adjusting the gun so it sat on his back and out of his way.
Jeff was thankful for his five lively and active sons. Even in his fifties, he could still keep up with them admirably. Rock climbing was something he had taken up with John after Scott and Virgil had left for college. Losing his two oldest boys to adulthood had made him appreciate his younger children all the more. They had even rigged a climbing wall on one of the slopes of Tracy Island when John had moved in. Jeff spent many a-morning racing John up the steep northern face of the inactive volcano.
He looked down again in doubt. At home, he knew how far he was going and what lay below. There was also the added comfort of harnesses and safety lines. Fortunately, the slope below him wasn't as sheer as the one at home, but the drop would most certainly kill a person.
Sighing, he uttered the phrase that had become his motto for this trip.
"What the hell."
Kai sat a few feet from him, grinning. "Ready to go then?"
"Have you ever done anything like this before?"
"There's a first time for everything." Kai slid off the edge, turning quickly and landing on a ledge beneath her. Flattening herself to the rock, she began to look for holds down the cliff.
Jeff watched. She knew exactly what she was doing. He sighed again, and started down himself. Carefully, he tested rocks for use as handholds as he began to descend. Kai did the same across from him and they kept even as they went, each concentrating on what they were doing.
"Damn!" Jeff looked over to see a large rock bounce of the knuckles of Kai's hand. She lost her grip and the other hand hold she had just acquired crumbled in her grasp. She fought to hold on, but her feet went out from under her. She slid down the rock wall as more rocks came loose from above. The girl disappeared into the fog.
Jeff didn't yell for fear he would trigger a larger slide, but his heart leapt to his throat. He held tightly to the wall, pressing his body to the rock to avoid being knocked down as well. Quickly, but carefully he avoided the slide area and descended. After thirty more feet, he could see the sandy soil of a dry creek bed. He jumped down the last few feet, the incline of the bank giving way beneath him.
He looked around, damning the fog now. He couldn't see anything except the outlines of a few of the larger rocks that had fallen down with Kai.
Suddenly, nothing mattered but finding her. They had been through too much together to let it end like this.
"Oh, that was stupid," he heard a weak voice from across the way. Jeff jumped into the creek bed, the gravel crunching beneath his feet as he ran. Kai was getting shakily to her knees against the opposite bank.
"Hold still," Jeff fell and slid to a stop beside her. He looked her over. A nasty scrape ran across her forehead. A few more cuts and bruises covered her hand and her jeans were torn above a superficial gash in her leg. His eyes lit on her left arm as she held it against her chest. Jeff could see from the angle that it was most definitely broken
Kai followed his gaze. "It doesn't hurt."
"Uh-huh," Jeff gently pried the limb away from her body. "It will as soon as your body figures out that it's broken." As he moved it, blood flowed from beneath her jacket sleeve. "Anything else busted?"
Kai shook her head and sat down on her butt. She slid the first-aid kit from around her body. Jeff snatched it and removed the scissors. He positioned himself so that his back was to Kai. Her arm ran under his so he could work without her seeing the extent of the injury.
He could hear her fighting to control her breathing as he gently began to cut the sleeve. Jeff revealed nothing in his manner when a glistening white shard of bone appeared, peeking out from beneath her skin
"How bad is it?" Her voice cracked a bit. The injury was beginning to hurt her, and Jeff jostling it was not helping.
"Not too bad." In truth, it looked horrible.
"You're a rotten liar," Kai whimpered as Jeff irrigated the wound with water from the canteen and quickly staunched the flow of blood as it poured from her body. He knew antibiotics would cause more harm than good. The damage was too extensive. Besides, if he wasted time, Kai would bleed to death before infection was a possibility. He covered the open wound with gauze and bound it tightly.
Jeff stabilized the injury, using two straight limbs from a nearby Oak sapling. "How are you doing, kid?"
"Great, let's arm wrestle."
He smiled. The mockery was a good sign.
Jeff used his sweatshirt to secure Kai's arm to her body.
"I don't feel so good." She had gone pale.
"I can't imagine why. You just fell down a cliff." He shook his head with indecision. "God, I don't want to risk moving you."
Her eyes reflected pain and determination. "Then leave me here."
"What?" Jeff exclaimed.
"Mr. Tracy, I am only going to slow you down." She sounded worn out. "Go without me and bring back help."
"That," he said sternly, "is not going to happen, young lady."
"It's not that far to McPhereson," she tried to reason with him, "If you go without me, you can make it there and back by tonight."
"Do you know what can happen in that amount of time?" he shook his head. "Sorry kid, either we stay or we go, but whatever we do, we do it together."
Kai sighed tiredly. "Stubborn man." She reached up with her right arm and pushed off his shoulder. Jeff stood up beside her, providing support. Her knees buckled, but he caught her.
"This isn't going to work." Jeff said. "You'll kill yourself."
"Give me a chance here." Kai said, looking up at him with a pain-drawn face. "I'll go as far as I can with you, and we'll regroup from there."
That translated to 'we'll discuss the leaving option when I can't keep up with you anymore'. It wouldn't happen, but he humored her. "All right."
Kai exhaled, and ordered her battered body to move. Jeff picked their supplies back up and followed her, silently willing her the strength to keep going.