The Darkest Path Read online

  The Darkest Path

  Jeff Hirsch

  USA TODAY bestselling author Jeff Hirsch once again creates a futuristic world with stunning, dramatic realism.

  A civil war rages between the Glorious Path—a militant religion based on the teachings of a former US soldier—and what’s left of the US government. Fifteen-year-old Callum Roe and his younger brother, James, were captured and forced to convert six years ago. Cal has been working in the Path’s dog kennels, and is very close to becoming one of the Path’s deadliest secret agents. Then Cal befriends a stray dog named Bear and kills a commander who wants to train him to be a vicious attack dog. This sends Cal and Bear on the run, and sets in motion a series of incredible events that will test Cal’s loyalties and end in a fierce battle that the fate of the entire country rests on.

  Jeff Hirsch

  THE DARKEST PATH

  For Gretchen

  MAP: JUNE 2026

  PART ONE

  1

  When I woke up in the examination room, I was handcuffed to the bed.

  A loop of steel circled my right wrist, holding it fast to a guardrail. My left arm lay throbbing by my side, the skin swollen taut from where Sergeant Rhames had broken my wrist with a baseball bat.

  My head swam as I lifted it off a thin pillow. The room was nearly empty, nothing but the cot I was on, a discolored sink, and a few cabinets. A rush of air kicked on from somewhere above me. I searched the ceiling and found a single dusty vent. Air-conditioning.

  I’ve done it, I thought. I’m here.

  I closed my eyes and thought about James, hoping my little brother’s face would ease the pounding in my chest. I pictured him moving through our barracks, turning the chaos around us into folded clothes and tidy stacks. He said that cleaning calmed him and, even though I made fun of him for it, the truth was that seeing him do it calmed me too. The day before I left, I didn’t make my bunk, just so I could watch as he tucked the sheets beneath the mattress and then smoothed the wrinkles flat with the palm of his hand.

  My pulse stilled. I breathed. A door opened and someone shuffled into the room.

  “Well, you must have really pissed somebody off.”

  I didn’t move. Didn’t speak.

  “Multiple shallow cuts as well as bruises over your chest and arms and face. Your wrist is fractured. I think I can put a cast on it, but I can’t spare any pain meds. Your friends in the Glorious Path are to thank for that.”

  I opened my eyes. The doctor was short, with thinning brownish-gray hair. An awkward belly poked out of his white lab coat and hung over his camo fatigues.

  “They’re not my friends,” I said.

  “Ah, the dead arise. It’s a miracle. What’s your name?”

  “Where am I?”

  “Okay,” he said, making a note on his clipboard. “Path John Doe it is, then.”

  “I’m not Path,” I said. “Not anymore.”

  “Funny,” he said. “The Army of the Glorious Path isn’t exactly known for its revolving-door policy.”

  My tongue darted out over my cracked lips. “Can I have some water?”

  “If I can have a name.”

  “Callum Roe. Cal.”

  He lowered a canteen to my lips. I drank until he pulled it away from me.

  “You’re in the infirmary at Camp Victory,” he said. “I’m Dr. Franks. One of our patrols found you out in the desert and brought you here.”

  “I need to see your base commander.”

  “Oh, sure,” Franks said with a chuckle. “I keep my sidearm in my desk — maybe you’d like to take it with you.”

  I glared at him until he chucked his clipboard onto a nearby table with a sigh.

  “All right,” he said. “Why do you think you need to see the commander?”

  I swallowed hard. Could I really do this? Would he even listen? My pulse raced, but I made myself think of James moving through our barracks, slow and deliberate, setting everything in its place.

  “Because if you don’t let me see him,” I said, “everyone in his camp is going to die.”

  2

  Dr. Franks led me from the chill of the examination room into the hundred-degree blast of the California desert.

  Camp Victory was smaller than I thought it would be. I counted no more than ten dusty buildings, a mix of repurposed civilian houses and corrugated-steel huts. They didn’t have much in the way of vehicles, just a couple Humvees with .50 caliber machine guns on the roof, a troop carrier, and a single decrepit-looking Apache. What they lacked in mobility, though, they made up for in perimeter defense. The whole place was surrounded by a high wall — a mix of concrete slabs, sandbags, and steel fencing. Gun emplacements sat every ten to fifteen feet, each one manned by a team of hard-looking Fed soldiers.

  While most of the base was military, there was also a sizable civilian population that must have been drawn from the two small towns the base protected. The civilians seemed to be acting as gofers and nurses and mess-hall attendants. I felt sick just looking at them. They had no idea what was coming.

  We stopped at a small plywood building at the center of camp, and Franks conferred with a guard. I stepped back, looking up at the red, white, and blue flag of the Federal Army, whipping about in a dry wind.

  I shivered as we moved out of the heat and into the chill of the commander’s office. A small air conditioner teetered in the window above his desk. Below it was a computer, an electric lamp, and a handheld calculator. I stared from one to the other, tracing their contours like they were relics from some lost world. Nathan Hill said it was reliance on things like these that made the Pathless so soft. Followers of the Glorious Path were stronger, he said. They didn’t need toys.

  Franks shackled my wrist to the chair and sat me down. My arm itched under a plaster cast that ran from just below my elbow to halfway down my palm. My fingers, bruised black and red, stuck out at the end. On top of that, the simple walk from the infirmary had every one of my injuries throbbing at once, igniting a headache at the base of my skull. Franks handed me two aspirin, and I chewed them like candy.

  “You just tell him what you told me,” Dr. Franks said. “Answer his questions and you’ll be fine.”

  The door behind him opened and a gray-haired man swept in. He wore a standard camo uniform, no rank insignia, just a stars-and-stripes patch and a tag that said Connery. He sat down across from me without a word.

  I’ve always been small for my age, five feet five, and so thin you could see my ribs through my T-shirt. Still, I cringed down into my chair, trying to make myself look like even less of a threat. If I had learned anything in the last six years, it was that there was nothing people like Connery enjoyed more than feeling big. Give them that and they just might listen to you.

  “So,” Connery said, regarding me with watery blue eyes, “I hear you have things to tell me.”

  I took a shaky breath and let it out. Here we go.

  “There are nearly two hundred Path soldiers a little over ten klicks to your east,” I said. “They have armor and air support and they’ll be here just after midnight.”

  There was no change in the stony composition of Connery’s face. His thin lips were set and straight. Painful seconds passed and then he turned to his computer. He tapped a key and sent a blue glow over his face.

  “Thanks for bringing him in, Dr. Franks. That will be all.”

  “Sir,” Dr. Franks said. “Don’t we have to at least—”

  “If there was a significant force of rebel fighters on my doorstep, I think I’d know about it.”

  “You know how they work,” I said, struggling to keep my voice calm. “They scatter their forces, put them in small groups that can’t be discovered. They only join up at the last minute a
nd then—”

  “Son, even if the Path did have a force that size in the area, they’d be headed to Greenfield. It’s a far more strategically valuable piece of land. If you want to control the region, you go there.”

  “They’re not trying to control the region.”

  “No?” Connery said with a condescending chuckle. “Then why are they here?”

  I leaned forward as far as the handcuffs and my injuries would allow. “They’re here to give you the Choice.”

  Franks made an anxious little noise behind me and then fell silent. Connery’s chair creaked as he sat back. His hand fell to a folder on his desk. He moved it idly back and forth, making a sandpaper rasp against the desktop.

  “And you came here to tell us this out of the kindness of your heart?”

  “My brother and I were visiting our mom’s family in Phoenix when we were kidnapped and made to serve the Path. I was nine. James was seven. Since then we’ve seen them give the Choice to Bowling Green and El Paso and Marietta.”

  A silence fell, as it always did when someone mentioned Marietta.

  “You were at Marietta?”

  I nodded. “I’ve seen what Nathan Hill’s men do to people who choose not to embrace the Glorious Path. I didn’t want to see it again, so when I got a chance, I ran. Path security caught me. I guess when I passed out, they figured I was dead.”

  Connery glanced over my shoulder.

  “Corporal Tate’s men picked him up a few miles from here,” Dr. Franks said. “He was beaten badly enough that if they hadn’t found him, I’m pretty sure he would have died.”

  “I left my brother alone with those people to come here and help you,” I said. “So I am not leaving until you listen to me. Your base is dangerously isolated. They’ve got you beat three to one on men. They have four Apache gunships to your one, and six armored Humvees. If you move now, you can evacuate your men and the civilians. Like you said, there’s nothing to be gained here.”

  “Look, I’m not about to bug out just because some kid—”

  I drew a folded-up piece of paper out of my back pocket and tossed it onto his desk. It was stained with dirt and flecks of my blood.

  “I stole their com frequencies and encryption codes before I left,” I said. “If you don’t believe me, then take a listen. They’re out there.”

  Connery stared at them, the muscles in his jaw and neck tight as cables.

  “Please,” I said, nearly in a whisper. “You’re running out of time.”

  He glanced out the window by the air conditioner. The sun was already starting to fall. Connery swept the papers off his desk, then strode past us into the outer room. The door slammed shut behind him.

  I sank back into the chair, weak and exhausted, wishing it was over but knowing it wasn’t. What if he still refused to listen? What if he decided to be a hero? Then all of this would be for nothing. I thought of James alone in our barracks, and my head began to pound.

  “So, the Choice… it’s really what they say it is.”

  I couldn’t turn to face him. “You should take your family and go while you can.”

  “I can’t abandon my post,” Dr. Franks said, voice quivering. “They need a doctor. I—”

  “Your family needs you too,” I said. “Up to you which is more important.”

  The doctor said nothing. Minutes later the door behind him swung open and Connery walked in, carrying a long roll of paper. He passed us without a word and sat back down at his desk. After moving aside his electronic toys, he unrolled the paper in front of me. It was a map.

  “Show me how to get away from them,” he said.

  • • •

  It was just after dawn when the convoy pulled into an abandoned parking lot near the shores of a small mountain lake.

  We had driven through the night, Connery’s few armed vehicles bracketing a column of civilian cars and trucks and RVs. The Apache that shadowed us throughout the trip had just peeled off in search of fuel, with a promise to return as soon as it could.

  When we came to a stop, civilians cracked the doors of their vehicles and stumbled out into the morning light, dazed. I watched one family flee their broken-down RV, the mother and father sweeping two young boys and a teenage girl up into their arms, all of them crying. It was happening everywhere, tears mixed with sudden bursts of relieved laughter. And why not? They had escaped the Army of the Glorious Path. They were all alive. All together.

  I was in the lead Humvee with Connery. As soon as he left to tour the camp, I took off too, winding through the parking lot toward the edge of the lake. I was halfway across when I heard a voice behind me and felt a tug at my shirttails. One of the boys from the RV. He was seven or eight, with a pinpoint nose and brown hair in a shaggy bowl cut. He was holding a white plastic box out toward me.

  “Here.”

  “I don’t…”

  “My mom said you were the one who came to warn us,” he said, and turned the case over. On the other side, there was a small glass screen surrounded by brightly colored buttons. “It only has Starfighter 3 on it right now. But it’s still pretty fun.”

  He tried to push the game into my hands. “No, you keep it. I didn’t—”

  The kid’s brows dropped, making a single confused wrinkle between his eyes. I didn’t know what else to say, so I turned from him and hurried off. He called after me, but I kept my eyes fixed on the dark blue of the lake and strode toward it. Soon, the buzz of the camp faded behind me. The rising sun was warm on the back of my neck. I reached the pebbly beach and started down the length of it until I found a sliver of shade behind a group of boulders. The lake in front of me was vast and slate-gray, perfectly still.

  My arm and ribs ached from the bounce of the long drive. I would have killed for more of Franks’s aspirin, but I couldn’t go back to all those people. Not yet. I picked a handful of stones and threw them into the water one by one. For a moment I imagined myself on the shore of Cayuga Lake, surrounded by moss and autumn trees instead of rock and sand. Mom and Dad and James were just a little way ahead, around the bend in the shore. My chest clenched at the thought of them, and I had to snap the image away.

  I lifted my hand to throw another stone but froze at a crunch of boots on the sand behind me. The reflection of two soldiers appeared in the lake, dark pillars to each side of me. I threw the stone, shattering their reflections. When the water stilled, they were sitting to either side of me. Corporal Johnson, a beanpole redhead, was on my left.

  On my right was Sergeant Rhames.

  “Anything unexpected?”

  I shook my head. Rhames pulled the mic off his shoulder and reported in.

  “Huntsman One, this is Huntsman Two. Bloodhound reports all clear. Repeat, we are alpha charlie.”

  “Understood, Huntsman Two. We are go.”

  Rhames replaced the radio, shaking his head. “I swear, I never thought it would work. I mean, a commander hands over his entire base because some skinny kid tells him to? I can’t believe it’s taken us so long to beat this bunch of cowards.”

  I skipped a rock across the lake. “He was just trying to protect his people,” I said.

  Rhames laughed. “And that’s why the Pathless will lose,” he said. “They don’t think there’s anything worth dying for.”

  After a short prayer, Rhames and Johnson pulled out their MRE rations and tore open the brown packaging. Johnson’s was spaghetti. Rhames had meat loaf. They offered me one, but I refused.

  “You should eat,” Johnson said. “You’ll stunt your growth.”

  “Too late for that,” Rhames said with a snort.

  I watched Rhames’s reflection as he ate. He was a piggish-looking man with a blunt nose and deep-set eyes. A scar at his temple made a part in his trim salt-and-pepper hair and ran down one cheek. I looked away, remembering how I’d cringed as he towered over me. How he’d barely checked his swing when he’d shattered my arm with the bat. He said it had to look real if it was going to work.

/>   “How much longer?” I asked.

  As if in answer, a black spot appeared over the mountains and dropped soundlessly into the lake’s valley. As it drew closer, I saw it was the returning Fed Apache. It was about a mile out when the smoke trail of a Path Stinger missile streaked across the blue sky. The Apache tried to dodge, but the missile struck the helicopter broadside and it went up in a furious explosion.

  Behind us came a gasp and then the sound of rushing bodies as the evacuees ran to their vehicles. But it would be too late for them too.

  Just do what they tell you, I thought. Do what they tell you and everything will be all right.

  Rhames and Johnson said another prayer and then finished their meals. When they were done, they set about meticulously tidying up, putting the MRE wrappers back into their packs, brushing crumbs from their uniforms and checking for stains. One of the first things we learned after we were taken is that Path soldiers existed to set an example for the Pathless, so no detail was too small. So said Nathan Hill.

  There was a firecracker chatter of gunfire from the direction of the parking lot, then two explosions that sent tremors through the ground.

  “They’ll be given the Choice,” I said. “All of them. That was the deal.”

  “You didn’t make a deal,” Rhames said as he stood. “You followed an order.”

  Rhames strode away, but Johnson hung back.

  “Want to go witness?”

  I stared at the edge of the lake and shook my head.

  “Arm okay?” Johnson asked, softening his voice now that Rhames was out of earshot. I drew the cast to my chest and said it was. “I hear Captain Monroe is going to make you and James citizens because of this.”

  I nodded weakly.

  Johnson knelt beside me. “Look, Rhames is just — he’s Rhames, right? You drew a tough assignment, Cal. We all know that. You just have to understand that some of the things we do… you have to put them behind you. Heck, a few years from now the whole country will be on Path, and people will barely remember that things like this happened. It’ll be a whole new world.”