American Elsewhere - By Robert Jackson Bennett Page 0,182

great in her head, but she would be outrageously vulnerable up there: she’d essentially be sticking her head up over a wall at them, much like a puppet at a kid’s show, an invitation to a bullet.

Mona starts crawling, estimating when she’ll be out of their range of vision.

I will figure all this out, she thinks, when I need to figure all this out.

When she feels safe, she pops up and silently walks (she does not run) to the western wall. The walls of the canyon are fairly shallow here, and aren’t hard to climb. She swivels the rifle so it’s on her back, and begins climbing.

Halfway up, she stops.

Someone is talking on the other side of the canyon wall. The speaker sounds either mush-mouthed or drunk.

Someone else shushes them. Then it is quiet.

That’s interesting. There’s more than one of them, that’s for sure. And it’s hard to gauge where they are by what she’s heard, but it sounds like they’re in the same area. And if what she heard is correct, someone over there is either sloppy or unpredictable or both.

And Mona is pretty sure none of Parson’s brothers or sisters are among their attackers, because she doesn’t think they need to use guns. If they wanted her dead, she would be dead.

She keeps climbing until the top of the canyon wall is just above her.

Okay. I’m here. Now what to do.

Mona thinks. She thinks for a long time.

She doesn’t want to poke her head over and look. Just that twitch of motion would be enough to bring attention to this stretch of the wall. And if she’s going over it—and she’s reasonably sure that’s a smart thing to do—then she needs it to be a total surprise. But how to keep that element of surprise while also getting a good long look at what’s out there?

There isn’t a way, she thinks. I’m all the way up here and there’s no way over the wall. Not a chance, not a way, no sir.

Then she has an idea.

It is a very dumb idea.

Okay, she admits reluctantly. There’s a way.

Every muscle in her body is still as she considers it. She is panicking at the very idea of it. Her blood is trying to beat its way out of her veins the more she considers it, as if it knows better and is trying to abandon ship.

Am I really, really, really going to do this?

The rifle swivels around again until it’s in her hands. Her legs start to bend, readying to spring up.

I guess that’s a yes, she thinks. Well. It was fun being alive for a while.

Mona jumps.

Well, she doesn’t jump so much as dive up and over, and she completely overestimated the power it would take because she actually does a fucking flip right when she’s about to come down on the other side. The stars spin above her, and just before she comes crashing down on the ground a stretch of trees below her lights up with flashes. Hot tunnels of air open up on either side of her. It sounds like there’s a chain gang all along the slope cracking open rocks.

Mona thinks: Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck

Yet at the same time, she thinks: Watch—and remember.

She sees:

A flashing light beside a large tree trunk.

Large enough, she thinks, for the top of the tree to poke up above the others—remember that.

Someone is crouched there. Two, three feet off the ground.

Still shooting at where she was.

Remember remember remember

Then her tailbone makes a solid connection with the ground, and she starts sliding down, rocks scraping her back and shoulder. They are still shooting, thinking she is hunkered down at the top, trying to hide from their fire.

She extends both feet out, flexes her knees, prays for something to stop her.

That something comes, but it comes only to her right foot, which catches a stone shelf with enough force to make her ankle ache. But her left side keeps moving, and there’s an unwelcome pop! from the right side of her groin, and she grits her teeth and searches with her left toe for something, anything, please…

Her toe finds a tree root. She stops herself, rolls onto her stomach, brings the rifle swinging up.

They’ve stopped shooting. She can hear one of them asking something.

She puts her eye to the scope, scans the tree line, finds the tall tree, follows the trunk straight down. It is too dark to see anything clearly. She takes her eye away to watch.

Wait. Wait. Just… wait.

Four seconds.

Do not waste the