Page 10 of The Code

Clay screams and topples onto his side, jackknifing.

“Don’t move,” Evan says. “Stop moving.”

Whimpering, Clay stills, hands hovering above the embedded knife.

“You’ll be fine,” Evan tells him. “It’s just slipped beneath the dermis where all the nerves are.” He looks at the two others. “But he can’t move much. And he can’t walk. Not until you carry him back to get his jeans cut off.”

Dale and Franky blink at him.

“Or,” Evan says, “we can continue.”

Clay’s jerking breaths fill the brief silence. Wafting breeze from the fair brings a whiff of popcorn and shouts of delight.

Dale and Franky snap into motion, scurrying to Clay. They lift him gingerly, legs and armpits, and stagger out of the alley, grunting.

It takes some time.

Clay moans and makes gagging noises.

Here at the periphery it is dark and cold and Evan feels even more alone than he did when he stirred into consciousness abandoned in the forest. He stands in the dead end until the grunts and cries fade, until there is only the smell of cotton candy and the distant sound of laughter, the glow of life and fun at the center of things.

Then he starts for the bus stop.

The convenience mart attached to the gas station has rubbing alcohol and days-old hot dogs spinning greasily on a roller grill. He grabs the rubbing alcohol and stares a moment at the hot dogs, tempted. In the end he opts for a bag of beef jerky and a small bottle of water, saving ten bucks for the bus. A ride this distance is eight bucks but he wants two for overage in case there’s been an increase.

He sits on the curb at the air pumps, pries his boot off gingerly, and peels the sock free. The toe stares up at him woefully. The smell is not good.

There is more road to travel and he cannot afford infection.

Thunder rumbles through the night sky, and the air tastes wet and heavy. Time to get on with it. He uncaps the rubbing alcohol, braces himself, and dumps it over the gash of the nail bed. Squeezing his eyes against the pain, he rides out the sting, which proves to have legs.

He allots himself five breaths, same as the SEAL instructor with the janky scissors gave him. Then he eases sock and boot back on, gets up, and heads next door to the bus station.

He checks the boards, finds a solitary route to Arlington, and gets in line. Ahead of him, a heavy woman wrangles two bratty kids who twist and turn weightlessly when she grabs their arms. Her hair is taken up in a messy bun, her face flushed menopausally.

After she finishes, he steps up to the window and asks for a ticket.

The clerk, a humorless long-faced man, prints one out.

“That’ll be twelve dollars.”

Evan has perhaps his first moment of full-fledged denial in his life. “Sorry, what?”

“Twelve dollars.”

He only has ten left of his twenty. It cannot be that he miscalculated. He could not have been this foolish. His brain is out of juice. He feels like he is slowly winding down.

“It’s normally eight bucks,” he says helplessly.

The clerk says, “We added late routes for the carnival. Late routes cost more.”

Two dollars. Evan has made it all this way only to come up two bucks short.

The clerk goes back to a well-worn paperback, something called One Shot with a target on the cover. Evan knows not to make a scene. The bus leaves in ten minutes, and stealing or figuring out how to stow away seems unlikely in that time.

In a daze, he turns around and walks out of the bus station.

He can feel the weight of his flesh, exhaustion pulling at his bones.