BLOODLINES BURIED BENEATH THE CAGE

The roar of the swollen river rose to greet them through the freezing mist long before they saw the water. The Black River cut through the granite gorge at the base of the ridge, fed by autumn rains and mountain runoff, its current churning white and violent between jagged boulders.

Gabriel led the children down the final slick embankment, sliding the last ten feet through wet mud until their boots hit the gravel shoreline. The cold air radiating off the water was biting, cutting through their damp clothes like razor blades. Lily’s lips were turning a faint blue, her small body shivering so violently that her teeth chattered uncontrollably.

""We can't swim across,"" Toby said, staring at the boiling rapids with legitimate fear. ""Lily will drown.""

""We aren't swimming,"" Gabriel replied, scanning the shoreline.

Two hundred yards upstream sat the rotting remnants of a timber loading dock, where logs had once been chained into rafts to be floated down to the municipal mills. Tied to an ancient iron ring embedded in the timber piling was an old maintenance skiff—a flat-bottomed aluminum boat coated in fallen leaves, half-filled with rainwater, but structurally intact.

Gabriel pulled the children along the gravel bank toward the skiff. Every step was an agonizing battle against his own failing nervous system. His left leg was beginning to drag, a creeping paralysis numbing his knee joint. He used the knife to saw through the decayed hemp rope securing the boat, then used his functional left arm to tip the skiff on its side, dumping the stagnant rainwater into the river.

""Get in,"" he urged, lifting Lily inside first, then Toby. ""Lie flat on the bottom. Don't sit up, no matter how much the boat rocks.""

""Dad, what about you?"" Toby asked, his voice cracking as he saw Gabriel struggling to shove the aluminum hull into the shallows.

""I'm steering,"" Gabriel grunted, wading waist-deep into the freezing water. The shock of the icy river hit his chest like a physical blow, stealing his breath, but the extreme cold temporarily deadened the burning neuropathic pain in his limbs.

He shoved the boat out into the main current, then threw his upper body over the stern, hauling his deadened legs over the gunwale just as the river caught the flat-bottomed craft and hurled it downstream.

Behind them on the ridge, sweeping beams of high-intensity spotlights suddenly broke through the tree line. The hunting teams had reached the riverbank. Automatic rifle fire erupted from the heights, bullets skipping across the black water like stones, punching clean holes through the air above the skiff.