Magisterium by Jeff Hirsch Page A

called to Kevin as they came to a clearing, but Kevin said nothing. He was hunched over, panting, one palm pressed flat onto a tree trunk to keep standing.
    “You’re exhausted,” Glenn said. “You can’t keep this up. They want me, not you. You should go back.”
    Kevin took another step but then his foot slipped on a snow-slick rock and he fell into a heap on the ground.
    “Kevin!”
    Glenn dropped down, turning Kevin over to get his face up out of the snow. His skin was waxy and gray, his lips blue. Lines of pain shot across this face. His head lolled, frighteningly boneless, like a doll’s.
    He moaned and lifted his hand to his forehead. It was covered in something as thick and black as oil.
    “Kevin, what’s …”
    Glenn yanked his leather jacket open. His white T-shirt was soaked through from neck to tail with blood, its redness black in the moonlight.
    “Kevin, no.”
    Glenn scrambled to lift up his shirt. The bullet wound in his side was ringed in tattered flesh. Blood oozed from it, pooling beneath him.
    A wave of panic crashed into Glenn. She leaned into the wound, her thin arms quivering. Kevin howled but she pressed harder. She had hoped the soaked T-shirt would hold back the blood, but she could already feel it seeping through the fabric and onto her fingers. Kevin moaned again, weaker this time. His eyes opened. They were
    unfocused and hazy, wild. His life was flowing out of him.
    Glenn turned back the way they had come, the panic turning to hysteria. She had no choice.
    “We’re here!” she screamed, shredding her throat, hoping the agents would hear her, hoping they would come. “We’re here! Please help us! PLEASE!”
     
    Glenn turned to Kevin, bundling his jacket over the wound. “It’s okay,” she said, trying to control her voice, trying to slow it down and sound calm and sure. “They’ll come and we’ll get you on the skiff and to a hospital.”
    She turned back again. Where were they?
    “PLEASE HELP US!”
    Glenn tore off her own jacket and piled it on Kevin’s side, leaning her whole weight into it. She was about to yell again, but just then there was a rustle of branches behind her as the agents came through the trees. A flash of anger hit Glenn when she saw the guns in their hands, but she pushed it aside.
    “I’ll go with you; please, just take him to the hospital!”
    The agents stood impassively at the edge of the woods. Four huge men in armor, faceless in their helmets.
    “What are you waiting for? Please, I know what I did was wrong.
    I shouldn’t have run. That wasn’t Kevin’s fault. He didn’t do anything.
    Please don’t punish him.”
    The agents said nothing. Glenn tried to tear the bracelet off, but her hands, slick with blood, slid off its surface.
    “Take it. Take it and help him! What’s the matter with you, just take it!”
    One of the agents raised his rifle.
    “No,” another said. “Not here. You’ll have to use the knife.”
    The agent’s hand dropped to a knife strapped to his waist. It whispered out into the air between him and Glenn as he advanced.
    “Please,” Glenn said, backing away.
    But the faceless man kept coming. She couldn’t run and leave Kevin; she couldn’t fight. Deep inside her mind she cried out for her father. The agent’s boots crunched through the snow. Glenn took Kevin’s hand in hers.
    Just then, a low moan cut through the woods behind Glenn and surrounded them, echoing through the trees.
    The agent stopped.
    Something large lumbered in the dark behind Glenn. Tree limbs fell. Rocks tumbled. The agent held up his hand for silence. The moan rose again. Closer now, sharper. More like a growl. It had a wildness to it that made Glenn tremble.
    “It’s nothing,” one of the older agents said. “An animal. Go on.”
    “Leave them here, then,” said another. “Take the bracelet and we’ll go.”
    The agent with the knife nodded and reached for Glenn’s
    bracelet.
    Glenn was dimly aware of something soaring through