Free The Hatching: A Novel by Ezekiel Boone

over, and though Duran had a dour look on his face, Elroy was his usual unflappable self. “Suppose we’ll have to start over,” Elroy said.
    Kim sighed, because Mitts was right, they’d been doing a good job, and it was going to be hard to get themselves psyched up foranother go. She started to tell the unit to head back to the chute when the loudspeaker crackled on again. This time it let out a long, piercing siren. This wasn’t just for the arena. This was for the whole base. And then, when the voice announced that all units were ordered to report immediately, when it said “This is not a drill,” she got concerned. Not because of what “This is not a drill” might mean or not mean, but because, for the first time she could remember, Private First Class Elroy Trotter looked worried.

Hindu Kush, Afghanistan-Tajikistan Border
    S he was tired of the prospectors. Occasionally they’d come to visit her and ask her for information about the area, though she wasn’t sure exactly what they were looking to find. Other times they’d trade with her for one of her sheep, and once they invited her to share a meal. But they’d mostly left her alone. That had changed since she’d shown them the rocks that she brought down from the old cave she sometimes sheltered in if she was caught up on the pass.
    Until they’d seen the rocks, the prospectors themselves did not seem to want to be there either. From what little language they had in common, she’d gathered that they found it cold and inhospitable. Which was not short of the truth. She had a good touch with the sheep, and she was more prosperous than some, but even when her husband and daughter had still been alive, it had been a difficult place to live. The prospectors made things easier in some ways—they’d given her a knife and a new jacket that she was quite happy with—but mostly they’d been an annoyance. They liked to play loud music at their camp, and they used explosives in some of their attempts to find whatever it was they were looking for. Theywere friendly but disruptive, and she would not be sad to see them leave.
    Today, however, they were paying her. They seemed to have no concept of how much to offer, and for what they had been willing to pay, she would happily lead them wherever they wanted to go for as long as they wanted. And so she was taking them up the pass to help them find the old cave, to show them where she’d gotten the rocks. She wasn’t sure why they were so excited about the rocks. There wasn’t any gold or silver in them. But really, she didn’t care. What she cared about was that they were paying her handsomely.
    Despite being older than most of the men—she was nearly forty, and the men seemed much younger, though most of them were older than her husband had been when he died—she kept outpacing them. Every few minutes she would stop and wait for the prospectors to keep up. They carried small packs filled with electronic gear, shovels and picks, and other tools, but she didn’t think the bags were so heavy. She carried one of the packs herself. They told her, best they could, that they were having trouble breathing so high up in the mountains, so she slowed down and took breaks for them to catch their breath.
    By the time they reached the cave, it was late morning. The sky was still clear. The lead prospector, a man named Dennis, had told her the weather would be good all day, that they would have nothing to worry about. He had put her in front of his computer and showed her a map full of colors and said there was no snow coming until the next day. She was not so certain. She’d lived there long enough that she had respect for the suddenness with which the sky could burst. If they got stuck in a storm, it would be a difficult descent. They wouldn’t have a choice, however. None of the men carried the kind of gear that would see them through the night. They were idiots.
    She had no trouble leading them to the cave. A few