She was no longer thinking about Peaceful Cove. Her world had narrowed to the size of a three-foot-wide metal tube filled with water. The pipe wasn’t even wide enough to swing her arms overhead, so she was half swimming, half crawling. Every few feet, her hips and knees bumped painfully against the bottom. Her mouth ached from biting down on the plastic mouthpiece. What if the water got deeper or the pipe narrowed down?
Suddenly, water was in her mouth, finding its way down the snorkel despite the float valve. She had to stand up, she had to. Cassie thrashed, wanting nothing more than to feel air on her face. But the pipe was too small to kneel in.
Something heavy and soft smacked her on top of the head. When she tried to push it away, her fingers sank into squishy fur. Some kind of animal, dead and rotting in the water. A wave of nausea rolled through her as she clawed it away. The pipe was never going to end. She was going to die in this pipe, die like this animal had.
And then suddenly she felt the space change around her. There was cold air on her back. She was out in the open ditch in the field beyond the compound.
Coughing, Cassie crawled out of the ditch. She opened her waterlogged backpack, shoved on her shoes, and began to run.
twenty-nine
June 17
Stumbling over rocks, trying to avoid the spiky bushes, Cassie kept on, shaking as much from fear as from cold. The only way out was forward. To keep moving and to get as far as possible before they took a head count and figured out who was missing. Before they forced Hayley to tell what she knew.
She turned around to look at Peaceful Cove. A dark column of smoke blotted out the stars. The air was filled with an oily, burning stench. The roof must be on fire! Cassie thought of the girls in her family, the kids she saw every day, the kids who at first had been interchangeable to her in their dirty uniforms. Were they trapped inside their locked rooms, already unconscious from the smoke?
A sob burst from her, and Cassie stumbled, blinded by her own tears. Why had she left Hayley behind? She should have insisted. Maybe they both could have made it. What would Gary do to her now? Would he turn her over to Hector?
Then there was the sound of a vehicle, very near, and Cassie threw herself facedown on the rocky ground. Headlights swept over her. It was a pickup, jouncing its way to the compound from the village. The village lay directly between her and the U.S. When the sun was up, she could use the compass ring on her watch, but not now. For now, she had to put as much distance between herself and Peaceful Cove as she could. She cut to the right, determined to give the village a wide berth.
She ran through a palm grove, then down a slope, holding her arms outstretched in front of her to keep from running into something. With one hand she still gripped the snorkel, with the other her flippers. The wet backpack thumped against her spine.
Gradually, Cassie’s eyes adjusted to the dark. Things were shadows upon shadows. At one point she dug a hole for her snorkel gear, using the stiff tube of the snorkel itself instead of her bare hands. She’d heard that tarantulas like to bury themselves in the sand, and she didn’t want to grab one. Afterward, she kicked the sand over. It made a little mound, but in the dark, it looked good enough to be missed for a day or two.
She sat on the ground, took off her Nikes, then pulled on her jeans over legs that already stung from a dozen nicks and cuts. As she put on socks and then her shoes again, Cassie took stock of what she had. One Powerbar, eleven $20 bills, a watch with a compass ring that was more like a toy, a half gallon of water, and, if you didn’t count swearing, three dozen words in Spanish. She thought of the kid Hayley said had died in the desert, then pushed the thought away.
A ridge rose ahead of her, steep and dark. She saw it by absence more than presence, a shadow that covered the stars. Grabbing at roots and outcroppings, Cassie started climbing, sometimes on her knees. Once she tumbled backward, ending up on her shoulder blades, scratched and panting, her knee next to her shoulder.
When she righted herself, she looked behind her and saw a half dozen flickers far away. Little lights on the move. They looked the way she imagined fireflies might. Only these glimmers, Cassie knew, belonged to flashlights. Flashlights looking for her. She had been thinking about resting, her breath scouring her lungs, but instead she turned and went on, faster than before, half running down the other side of the ridge.
She walked for hours. The clouds had cleared and the moon helped her with its silvery-blue light. She had put on her sweater, but still she could not stop shaking, her chattering teeth the only sound. She passed through ranchland where a half dozen scrawny cows slept, standing stock-still. A coyote yipped in the distance.
Finally, the edge of the sky began to lighten. When the sun rose, she followed Hayley’s directions and pointed the hour hand of her watch at it, then rotated the compass directional ring until the S was past the hour hand, halfway between it and the 12. She looked back down at her watch again, lined herself up so that she was facing north. Had she been walking in the right direction all night? Cassie was afraid her direction had been more northeast, but she wasn’t sure. She hoped that she wasn’t too far away from San Diego.
She wanted desperately to stop, to curl up someplace and sleep, but she knew she had to keep on. A cactus beckoned her, looking like something out of a Road Runner cartoon, as tall as a man, complete with arms. The more distance she put between herself and Peaceful Cove, the better. A few people with pickups and binoculars could make short work of searching for her. From her backpack, she pulled out her sunscreen, smeared some on, then pulled on a baseball cap to shade her eyes. Taking out her water bottle, she let herself take two sips. She had to make it last.
Cassie kept on, threading her way through squat barrel cacti with their thick, sharp spines, and cholla cacti with their fine, silvery ones. The back of her heels felt hot. Blisters were forming where no shoes had rubbed for weeks. A cottontail rabbit bounded away from her into the brush, its white tail winking. Every now and then Cassie would come across evidence that people had passed this way before, and these seemed like a good sign. An opened sardine can, a crumpled tube of Mexican toothpaste, an empty white plastic water jug caught up in the brush.
Every hour, she adjusted her watch to make sure she was moving north. By midafternoon she stood on the crest of a long fold of a mountain. Shading her eyes, Cassie spent a long time looking behind her. She saw nothing moving, no people, no plumes of dust trailed by cars. But instead of feeling reassured, Cassie felt alone and insignificant, as if at any moment she might disappear. She could get hurt or trapped and slowly die here and no one would ever know. Pushing the thought away, she lay down in the shadow of a rock outcropping and draped her pack over her face. She tried to forget how thirsty she was and sleep.
When she awoke two hours later, Cassie ate half the Powerbar. It was dry and crumbly and it parched her mouth. She took out her water bottle and shook it. Half gone. She had watched more than one kid pass out at Peaceful Cove from the heat, so she knew how important it was to drink enough water, but she also knew once she finished it, there wouldn’t be anyplace to get more. She compromised by drinking only a few swallows.
The sun was lower in the sky, but the day was, if anything, hotter. Plus, the air was heavy with moisture, and dark clouds were massing on the southern horizon. The air shimmered and played tricks on her, making the mountains appear to move. A half hour later, a cool, narrow sandstone canyon beckoned her. About thirty feet deep, it ran roughly north, so she clambered down into its shady depths. A small stream trickled over the rocks, and she took off her shoes, knotted the laces around her neck, and waded. The cool water felt good against her blisters. Beneath her feet, the stones were smooth and slippery. She wished she could drink the water, but she knew it was too dangerous.
A drop of rain landed on her cheek, then another on her arm. In the distance she heard the low grumble of thunder. She looked up at the sky. It was all dark gray now, and the light had an odd greenish cast. Sheltered by the canyon, she hadn’t noticed that the wind had picked up.
Her eye caught on something she had seen earlier, but not paid attention to. There were branches and sometimes whole logs tangled high up at the edge of the canyon. How had they gotten wedged so far up there? The stream was deeper now than it had been earlier, turbid with silt. More raindrops freckled her arms.
There was a rumbling sound like an approaching freight train. Head cocked, Cassie tried to figure out what it meant. Then she realized that the canyon was acting like a funnel, channeling all the rain that had landed to the south of her. And that meant—
With a burst of energy, she ran toward the side of the canyon. There was no easy way out, just a mad scramble up the side. Ignoring her stubbed toes, she clambered up, her feet and fingers finding crevices and notches, sometimes creating them by sheer force of will.
Halfway up, Cassie turned just in time to see a wall of water thunder into the canyon. Her scream was lost in the roar of the flash flood.
A second later, there was a river rising under her feet. Water lapped at her toes, then sucked at her calves. She scrambled faster, just managing to keep ahead of the water. A passing branch scratched her back. Raindrops stung her arms and face. Nearly at the top, Cassie looked behind her. The little trickling stream now nearly reached the top of the canyon. Filled with broken branches, the water was the color of mud. The cataract was only a few inches below her, so fast it created its own breeze. With a final fevered burst, Cassie grabbed a stone at the lip of the canyon. It came away in her hand, anchoring her to nothing but air.
She fell backward, arms pinwheeling. At the last minute, she reached out and just managed to snag a dangling root. For a long moment, she hung suspended, her shoulder screaming. Then she found another root, and then a toehold, and another, and painfully dragged herself to the top. Panting, she lay on her belly, ignoring the stinging rain.
Lightning flickered down and touched a small wizened tree less than three hundred feet away. The thunder was directly overhead, as loud as artillery. Cassie realized that if she stood up, she would be the tallest thing around, a human lightning rod.
She had to get to shelter. In the flare of another lightning strike, she saw a rock outcropping a few hundred yards away. She ran through standing water, the wind a giant hand at her back. Between the wind and the rain, it was nearly impossible to breathe.
Cassie crouched under the lip of rock, just big enough to shelter her. Rain sheeted from it. It was as if she had crawled under a waterfall. But as quickly as it came, the rush of water began to slow to a trickle, then a few drips. The light changed as the clouds parted. By the time she left her shelter, the sun was dazzling, sparkling off the dozens of puddles, the ground steaming. Water had collected on top of the rock that had sheltered her. She lowered her head and sucked it dry, not even minding the grit it left on her tongue.
She walked for another hour, two, her clothes gradually growing damp, then dry. As the sun was setting, she realized she was staggering. Again, she looked behind her for any signs of pursuit, saw none. Finally she rolled herself into a ball and slept with her back against a rock. Although the air was cool, the stone against her back was warm.
She awoke the next morning, ate the rest of the Powerbar, used her watch to figure out north again, and kept on. Cassie calculated that she’d been walking the better part of twenty-four hours. The blisters on her heels were filled with water, hot and tight, but she tried to ignore the pain.
As the heat began to rise, she found the faint trace of a road. In the brush on either side were dozens of discarded white plastic jugs and shreds of newspaper that had been used as toilet paper. A faded Mexican comic book waved in the breeze. Cassie hoped that all these discards meant she was getting close to the border.
Stumbling through the sand and scrub, she searched in vain for shade. She shook the last few drops of water onto her tongue, then put the empty bottle in her pack. She should have drunk up all the puddles yesterday, but Cassie had been afraid she would get alkali poisoning or something. Now Cassie’s mouth was cold and dry, while her face was burning and wet with sweat. Despite the sunscreen she kept reapplying, her face felt like it was cracking when she squinted. She had planned to spend the heat of the day resting in a shadowed cleft, but there was no shade, just desert specked with mesquite shrubs, yuccas, and prickly pear. She kept on.
Just as darkness fell, she crossed a river, holding her shoes and pack above her head. The water was low, no higher than her belly button. Surrendering to temptation, she bent her head to the water and drank a few sips. It tasted like chemicals and left her tongue feeling coated. In the fading light, the river looked more like oil than water. On the far side, the road was tire tracks worn into the dirt, the moon a tiny smudged thumbprint on the horizon. She was exhausted, but afraid that if she closed her eyes, they might not open again.
Finally, an hour after sunrise, Cassie found what she thought was the border. Not a twelve-foot-tall steel barricade illuminated by stadium-style lighting and fortified with motion detectors, but a four-foot-high barbed wire fence, cut in places, that stretched as far as she could see. Along the fence, tiny flags of torn clothing fluttered in the breeze. Turning sideways, Cassie simply walked through. It seemed too easy. And, her brain fuzzily realized, that easiness told her something. This couldn’t be a border next to a major metropolitan area. It must be in the middle of nowhere. That first night she must have angled too far east, so now she was nowhere near San Diego.