red hill - jamie mcguire

Shallot would be work, but I was forcing myself to put one foot in front of the other, and we weren’t
halfway there yet.
“I’ve got to rest,” I said, stopping.
“Whose idea was it to walk” Joey smiled.
“We all agreed,” I said. “We would only use the vehicles in case of an emergency exit.”
“You look like an emergency to me,” Joey said, still smiling.
I peered up at him with the threat of wrath in my eyes. “Shut up.”
“We won’t make it back by dark if we rest,” Cooper called back.
“If we keep pushing like this, we’ll all be too tired to clear,” Bryce said. “We might just have to
find somewhere to hole up for the night.”
“In Shallot” I said, grabbing my knees. I stood up and made myself take the first step. “Didn’t you
say some of your people got killed there”
“Some of Nathan’s people,” Joey said.
I nodded, but didn’t say anything else. We alternated walking and jogging, until finally I saw that
damn car in the middle of the highway. The alarm had been silenced, or the car battery had died. The
teds were gone.
The tire tracks from the Jeep were still rutted in the field on the other side. It seemed like a
lifetime had passed since that day. “Come on,” I said. “We’ll go in slow. Stay together.”