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Molev quietly raced from branch to branch, staying away from the edges so we wouldn’t be spotted. I hugged the backpack I wore and thought about Zion and Nova. It’d been months since I’d seen either of them. At their ages, they had to be growing like crazy. Would they even recognize me the next time they saw me?
I tried not to think about the possibility that we would never see each other again. That I would die trying to make the world a safer place for them.
Molev ducked his head and whispered, “Shh,” a second before he jumped. My stomach flipped at how far we fell. There was no way he’d land without noise. And I was right. The jarring thump rattled my brain.
I looked up at him as he straightened and caught the wince on his face. All I could do was offer him a silent pat on his chest. He nodded and began moving through the grass without a sound. A section of wall nearby had footholds that he scaled easily. Then we both landed flat at the top of the wall while he listened to the darkness on the other side.
A scuff of noise reached my ears a few minutes later. Molev’s hand brushed my ankle, tapping it twice. I waited. The noise sounded farther away the next time. Molev’s hand wrapped around my ankle and tugged gently. I took that as a sign to move and eased into a crouch. He picked me up and jumped over to the dark side.
I couldn’t hear a hint of sound as he ran away from the wall, staying to the shadows cast by rock formations. When he reached a dark opening, he paused again, pressing me into the rock as he listened. Once more, his intuition saved us as an infected walked through a patch of light not too far away. I watched it move, each quiet step fluid. It lifted its head and looked around. Thankfully, not in our direction. Then, it paused, turning its back on us to stare at the grove, now barely a speck in the distance.
Carrying me, Molev slipped quickly into the tunnel while it was distracted.
I couldn’t see a thing in the next cavern and hoped that meant the infected couldn’t either. Molev moved swiftly and without hesitation, his vision obviously better than my own.
Another opening glowed as we neared it, but Molev veered away from it and chose another darkened cave. He ran like that for more than an hour before he stopped in the shadow of a pillar. He pressed his finger to my lips as soon as I stood on my own. I nodded in understanding and watched him ease into a seated position. Quietly, I removed the canteen from the bag and offered it to him. He drank and leaned his head back. I ran my fingers over his hair and stood beside him as he rested for a bit.
We didn’t stay like that for more than a few minutes though. He stood and took one more drink. After I put the canteen away, he picked me up again. I rested my head against his chest over his heart, listening to its steady rhythm.
What would be the end of this journey?
A magic crystal and a bomb?
Death?
With nothing else to do, I closed my eyes and held onto Molev, regretting that our time together had been filled with so much danger and not enough of the simple stuff. Late mornings with breakfast in bed. Early nights snuggled together on the couch. Just the simple task of making meals together. I barely knew anything about him. Did he like to dance and listen to music? Did he like coffee? Was he an early riser or a night owl? That one was hard to tell given our current circumstances. Did he prefer sunsets or sunrises? What was his favorite season? What would he look like as we grew old together? What his kids would have looked like…
Those thoughts swam in my head, and I wished more than anything I had something else to do other than think. Molev had made a place for himself in my life, growing closer to me than even my brother and his family had. And the idea of losing him now hurt. It was a vulnerability I’d tried so hard to avoid. Yet, I’d fallen for it. For him.
I turned my head and pressed a kiss to his shirt over his heart. He held me just a little tighter for a moment, acknowledging what I’d done.
Time stretched. The caves we passed through were mostly dark with a few dimly lit ones. I began to understand why he chose the dark caves. If there were infected in them, I never heard them. The dimly lit caves were another story.
In those, the infected lingered in the shadows at the edge of the light, the place where they could likely see the best. They rarely made any noise, standing still and just watching everything.
We had so many close calls that I lost count. Moments where Molev paused and listened only to change his mind at the last moment and backtrack. He moved quickly, darting from shadow to shadow to avoid being spotted.
He put endless effort into evading detection after ignoring the infected that had followed us on the way in. It gave me something else to think about when we were in the dark caves, and I couldn’t help watching for infected. I’d seen him disappear under a wave of infected and come out just fine. He had to be worried about being swarmed by them and unable to protect me.
Why bring me with then? Did he think the rest of the group at the tree wouldn’t make it out?
I saw a distant speck of light ahead and glanced up at Molev. His gaze was scanning everything around us as he paused in a shadow. Instead of looking for the next shadowed spot away from the light, he was focused on it.
I scanned the darkness with him, looking for infected and spotted one ahead to the left. Molev nodded at the light tap on his left shoulder but didn’t stop scanning the path ahead.
The infected turned away slightly, watching in the other direction. Molev sprinted forward toward the next shadowed hiding place.
Another infected appeared in front of us, walking by gracefully without looking at where Molev had us pressed against the rock. I barely breathed and waited until it passed, hiding my face against Molev’s chest.
It wasn’t out of fear. Molev’s grey skin helped him blend with the shadows. My clothes and gloves were dark, blending just as well, but not my pale face.
He sprinted forward again then stopped. I kept my face hidden and waited. Something scraped nearby. How many were there? How close were they?
His hold tightened on me, and he lurched forward.
An infected called out.
And another.
