Storm (Swipe Series)

Unmarked River, several hours longer than either of them would have liked. But the Unmarked River didn’t exactly get its name by advertising itself with all too many signs.
    They’d been walking in circles all night by the time the little scrawled boat revealed itself on the stump of a fallen maple tree.
    “Should be a captain this way,” Hailey said. She pointed in the direction of the trunk, as if the tree itself were their compass.
    “Straight as we can walk?” Logan asked.
    “Straight as we can walk.”
    Logan nodded. Hailey took the lead. And yet somehow, Logan’s feet didn’t follow.
    “You all right?” Hailey asked, stopping short.
    Logan paused. “No,” he said, bemused. And all at once, he crumpled to the dirt.
    “ Hey ,” Hailey said, rushing over to him. “What’s the matter? Are you sick? Are you exhausted?”
    “I can’t,” Logan told her. His eyes glinted in the starlight. “I just can’t. It’s too much.”
    Hailey frowned. She sat down beside him.
    “How can we possibly make it?” Logan asked. “It’s too far to walk. Peck was right to abandon us—”
    “Peck didn’t abandon us!” Hailey said. “Peck just . . . I don’t know . . . Peck just sorta lost it, if you ask me. But he’ll be all right. We’ll see him again.”
    “Yeah?” Logan asked. “And what about Erin?”
    “Erin too!”
    Logan closed his eyes. “She’s dying, Hailey. No one’s saying it. But everyone knows it. They aren’t close to a cure for this thing. And she’s already dragged her own fever out longer than any of us thought it could go.”
    “Well, Erin’s tough!” Hailey said. “She’s not your average anything —fever victim included.”
    Logan laughed. “Maybe,” he said. “And what about us?”
    “Not average,” Hailey said again. And for a while, she watched the stars sing.
    “It was easier last time,” Logan said. “On the River.”
    “We had Dane with us last time,” Hailey told him.
    “And a purpose. A mission we were sure about. Friends to support us . . .”
    Hailey laughed. “I don’t think I’m sure about anything anymore. But we still do have friends, though.” And now she glanced at Logan, hunched over in the starlight. What was he holding? She smiled. It was his old Bible.
    Hailey smiled. “You’re really still carrying that thing around with you,” she said.
    “I lent it to Erin these past few weeks,” Logan said. “But yeah. Ever since the underpass.” He flipped through the book’s whisper-thin pages. “Peck always told me there was strength in this book. That you could pray with it and that it makes you strong.”
    Hailey frowned. “That’d be nice,” she said.
    In the distance, crickets chirped.
    “Pray with me,” Logan said, out of nowhere.
    Hailey looked at him. “Really?”
    “Yeah. Come on, pray with me. Please.”
    It was dim under the night sky. There was no moon. There was only a soft blue glow. And yet somehow, the reading was easy.
    “‘For truly, I say to you,’” Logan began, “‘if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, “‘Move from here to there,’” and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you.’” Logan stared at Hailey as the breeze washed over them. “That’s what we need, Hailey,” he said. “Faith.”
    “Yeah, well . . .” Hailey laughed. “A miracle wouldn’t hurt, either.”
    And Logan took Hailey’s hand. And he closed his eyes. And the two of them prayed under the singing stars and the gentle breeze.
    “This is nice,” Hailey said.
    The crickets chirped louder.
    Logan lowered his head.
    He wept.

    The sun came up not too much later. Logan wasn’t sure whether he’d slept or not. But there was light on the fields now.
    And in the distance, two horses appeared on the horizon, quickly galloping into view.
    Logan didn’t believe it.
    “Is that . . . ?” Hailey asked.
    And he rubbed his eyes as if to make the vision go away. Except it didn’t.
    Charging, charging. White. Speckled gray.
    “Horses,” Hailey said.
    The path before them was bright.
    3
    It was morning in Beacon, too early still to call Erin out west, given the time difference.
    The Arbitors should have been at work. But they weren’t. It had become the unspoken rule between them since reconnecting with Erin: no one leaves the house for the day until contact with their daughter was made.
    “Bet you never thought you’d be spending the busiest days of the G.U. merger