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“What?” She moved next to him, her skirts brushing his leg. Tingles again.
“Nothing.” He sighed. “Let’s get moving.”
* * *
Three hours later they’d entered a thick wood. On an uphill incline. Getting hotter by the moment. They had to find a town. Soon. Central Pennsylvania couldn’t be this remote, could it? And he was running out of potential painful death ideas to trade with Amalia. The Truitts really were the most imaginative people who ever lived.
“How about cook me alive in a giant soup pot?” He pressed through the brush as morning sun beat down on the oak leaf canopy, poaching him inside his clothes.
“Dull.” Amalia scoffed as she darted over the tree roots like a mountain goat. How exactly did she manage that in heeled boots? “Now, if you add a man-part eating toothed fish that can live in boiling water to the pot, the entire scenario becomes much more interesting.”
“Now that’s unfair, because such a thing doesn’t exist. You’re cheating.” He paused, only to turn and give her his best glare.
“Oh no.” She rushed up and punched him on the shoulder. “No one said anything about realistic deaths.” With a broad grin, she swished past him.
Total brat. With a strong left hook. He trotted up and grabbed her round the waist. She squealed in his arms. “Put me down.”
“You stay behind me.” Her hair was right against his nose. Magnolias, even after a night in a cave.
“Why, it isn’t like you know where you are going.” She turned her head to give him a smirk. A kissable smirk. She lifted her skirts as she picked her way around a clump of nettles.
“Funny.” He grabbed her wrist and pressed it to his lips. She whimpered. “Seriously though, I’m protecting you.” He swatted a tree branch out of the way so she didn’t need to duck.
“From what? There’s no one out here. Besides, I think I’m better at this.” Using a tree trunk as leverage, she dashed upwards, only a bit out of breath. Like one of those characters Thad and Will always talked about, Hermia or Helena or Titania. Otherworldly.
“Oh, you really think so?” He intended a challenging tease but it was more of a whisper.
“Are you holding back on me?” She swished her hips and that smirk was back. That smirk that just begged for play and for adventure and for freedom.
Laughing, he ducked down under low-hanging brush to take the lead and burst out of the trees, cresting the hill. “You bet, just watch—”
Everything stopped. His words, his muscles, his breath, even the beat of his heart. All the memories he’d locked away, the ones he dulled with relentless study and observation and alertness—first so he could march and then so he could move forward, so he didn’t cry in his sleep or drink or rage or show any signs of being not right—like so many others—roared back. Because he was back. He’d recognize the topography anywhere. Little Round Top. The 91st’s first taste of what war meant.
In an instant it was the second of July again—cannon blasts and gunfire and battle cries and screams, oh lord, the screams. He’d been so careful to fill his mind with work, endless work, to banish it all, but in the moment, it was back.
General Warren barked and stamped upon the boulder once more. Inside his head. But David threw his hands tight against his ears anyway, even as the words echoed.
Shit. Meade. Incompetent bastard. Hold your fucking positions, you worthless maggots.
And Simon. Simon was alive and next to him.
Come on, David, faster, we have to fire faster. Man, there have to be thousands of them.
The rock-covered slope before his eyes wavered. Swarms of gray rolled forward, over the bodies of the first line of defense, the boys from Maine, who’d charged even after running out of ammunition. The 91st had been sent to replace them. To take on the storm sweeping higher, determined to break their line.
And their faces. Did they always have faces? Angry and snarling and scared and human. Wrong and ready to kill him and willing to defend the indefensible, but still human.
Air.
Why wasn’t there enough air?
That’s it, David. We gotta keep going, push them back and Thad’ll pick ’em off.
The memories, the dialogue, the movements, even the cast of the light reared back to life in his mind, faster and louder and more and more real.
How his hands had grown so slick he had to strike the flint over and over and over... He was so slow too and—a pop and a cry and a thud.
Simon. At his feet. Hands clutching his gut. Sliding down the hill.
