The Twelfth Insight - James Redfield [37]
Adjar said nothing.
“You know what the Document is saying,” Rachel pressed. “It says we can experience a Breakthrough of some kind. We have to figure out what that is. It could lead to a resolution between both sides. What if Armageddon doesn’t have to happen?”
Adjar turned away again, as though under terrible stress.
Finally, he said, “Okay. Get your belongings.”
Hira ran up to Rachel, her gun hanging from her shoulder, pointed to herself, and said something, which seemed to mean she was going with us.
Rachel turned and looked at me, smiling as though thoroughly astounded that her plea had been granted. I whirled around and began dismantling my tent as quietly as possible. Within minutes, the three of us were carefully walking to the north. Behind us, Adjar was standing motionless watching us go, the firelight glistening on his tall forehead.
“What about Adjar?” I whispered to Rachel. We were climbing up the steep, wooded incline in the direction of Secret Mountain.
She stopped and looked back at him.
“I don’t know,” she said.
Rachel found a break in a steep outcropping where we could make our way to the right along a small ridge. Suddenly, we heard a loud sequence of yells and arguing behind us at the Apocalyptics’ camp, apparently at the discovery of our absence. I could see the large flashlights come on again and a group of men begin heading our way.
We hurried our pace toward the north, ever deeper into the Secret Mountain Wilderness. This area, I knew, was at least forty square miles of rough terrain. We walked until well after sunrise, and at each rise in the terrain we stopped to rest and to check if the extremists were following us. Each time we would see them still back there but not catching up.
As the sun rose higher in the sky, we quickened our pace until we couldn’t see them anymore and then pushed forward into the early afternoon, when we virtually collapsed from exhaustion. We set up camp on a rise of rock surrounded by thick bushes except on one side, which allowed us a view down the ridge.
For the rest of the day, we ate camp stew and took turns keeping watch and sleeping. Finally, we all gathered on the edge of the rocks to watch the sunset. Rachel sat down beside me, and Hira sat a few paces away, watching for movement and still appearing very nervous. As the sunset unfolded, swirling cirrus clouds picked up the last of the light and began to look like little pink Angels.
“I guess they were protecting us back there,” Rachel said.
I nodded.
“You’re still going to need them!” Hira suddenly shouted.
A hundred yards away, a group of seven extremists were jogging up the hill toward us. Some of them had assault weapons on their shoulders.
“Come on,” I said. “We have to get out of here.”
In minutes we had grabbed everything and were running up the slope toward the top of the mountain, scaling rocky outcroppings and making our way through thick clumps of trees. Hira had moved in front of us and was directing the route.
“Let her lead,” Rachel said to me. “She used to be in the Israeli military.”
We were making our way around one of the tight ledges when my foot suddenly slipped and I felt myself toppling off the edge toward another spire of rock twenty feet below. At the last second I leaped to a boulder about ten feet down and slid to a prone position, scraping my arm on the jagged rocks.
“Are you all right?” Rachel was whispering from above.
I could see there was no way back up to her.
“Yeah,” I said, “but I’ll have to find another way up. I’ll meet you ahead somewhere.”
She nodded, and I took off. Glancing behind me in the descending darkness, I could see the flashlights of the Apocalyptics flickering on again and bobbing up and down as they closed in on us. Suddenly, a single shot rang out, reverberating against the mountain in a series of echoes that chilled my soul.
Despite everything I could do, my energy began to fade even more. I sought to bolster my consciousness by telling myself how important it was