The Prey (11 page)

“Some of the other barracks don't like us. They think we're up to something.”

“Are you?”

Helen seems on the verge of speaking but stops
herself. “We'd better hurry,” she says.

Hope wonders what it was Helen was about to say. “Go on if you'd like, I'm almost done here.”

“But it's a special inspection. If you're not there, you'll be punished.”

“What're they gonna do? Put me in prison? Go.”

“Thank you,” Helen murmurs, then hurries away.

Hope wrings out the dress and puts it on. Its dampness raises goose bumps and she rubs her arms to warm herself up. As she does, she thinks of the Less Than—Book. Although their encounter seems like a distant dream, she lets herself pretend it's Book who strokes her arms. She imagines him holding her firmly against his chest, the heat from his body mingling with hers.

Don't be a fool,
she tells herself, and shakes away the thought.

Still, why is it that just thinking of him makes her feel less alone? Makes her want to escape from Camp Freedom this very moment?

By the time Hope returns, the inspection is under way. An entourage parades from one barracks to another. Hope slips inside her tar-paper shack through the rear door. The other girls are standing stiffly by their cots.

“Thanks for joining us,” Athena says as Hope shuffles to her place in line.

“Don't mention it.”

“Next time you put us all in jeopardy, let us know ahead of time, okay?”

The door swings open and in steps the tall, blond woman—the same one who demanded Hope's hair be cut off.
So that's who the special inspection is for.
As before, the woman wears an ankle-length coat that hangs off her shoulders. Colonel Thorason and half a dozen Brown Shirts single-file behind her, down one aisle and then another.

Suddenly the blond woman stops. “What's that
smell
?”

The entourage comes to a halt.

“There,” one of the Brown Shirts says, pointing at Hope's feet.

Water drips from the hem of her dress, creating a small brown puddle on the pine floor.

Colonel Thorason stomps forward, grabbing Hope's arm to read her tattoo. “What's the meaning of this, 739?”

“I had an accident,” Hope mumbles.

“And you didn't think it necessary to clean up for our honored guest?”

“I tried.”

“Not hard enough,” he sputters. “And just for that, I'm going to double your work duties, and then—”

The blond woman with the high cheekbones cuts
him off. “If I may,” she says, her voice so sugary sweet it's painful to listen to.

“Of course.” Thorason takes a deferential step backward.

The woman faces Hope directly. Her smile is brittle, her eyes icy. In a move so fast it startles even Hope, she rips off Hope's head scarf, revealing a patchy fuzz of short black hair.

“I thought it might be you,” she says, deliberately tossing the head scarf into the puddle of brown muck.

Hope's cheeks burn red.

“Care to tell us how you got into this mess?” the woman asks.

Out of the corner of her eye, Hope sees Helen about to open her mouth. Hope beats her to it. “I fell in the barn shoveling manure,” she blurts out. “I tried to clean up. Guess I didn't do a very good job.”

“No, I guess you didn't. But then again, you know what they say. You can take the girl out of the shit, but you can't take the shit out of the girl.”

There is a brief moment when no one quite knows how to respond. When the woman begins to laugh, the Brown Shirts and Colonel Thorason are quick to follow.

As the laughter dies, the woman's smile hardens. She turns to Colonel Thorason and says, “No need to double this girl's work time.”

Hope lets out a small sigh.

Then the woman adds, “Let Dr. Gallingham have her instead.”

With that, she does an abrupt about-face and exits the barracks, the
click click
of her heels echoing in the tar-paper shack long after she is gone.

W
E TRAVELED THE ENTIRE
night without stopping. Along the trail, faded signs from long ago warned travelers of the perils of hiking.

“Mountains don't care,” one read, describing the dangers of avalanches. As if the post-Omega world wasn't bad enough already.

Streaks of pink painted the eastern sky. By the time my horse pulled up, the others had already dismounted, stopped at a fork in the trail.

“What's going on?” I asked.

“Cat wants to take this smaller trail,” Flush confided, a hint of panic in his voice. “But we don't know where it goes.”

“We don't know where the other goes either,” Cat said.

“Yeah, but at least it's a real path.”

“Do you want to make it as easy as possible for the Brown Shirts to track us down? Is that it?” Anger welled up in Cat's chest as he spoke. “We need to get off the main trail and get out of sight. Now!”

No one dared utter a word. What could we say? Cat had more experience than all of us put together.

As the guys stumbled for their horses, we heard a sharp yapping sound. Cat drew his horse around.

“What was that?” he asked.

No one answered. Cat hurled himself down from his mare and strode through the group until he came to Four Fingers.

“Turn around,” Cat snapped.

“Why?” Four Fingers muttered.

“Turn around, I said.”

Four did as he was commanded. Cat reached for the opening of his backpack and released the drawstring.

A dog's head popped out and Cat recoiled. The dog panted, smiling brightly, its brown fur creased by a wide grin. One ear flopped upward, one down.

“What's this?” Cat asked.

“A dog.”

“I know that. What's it doing here?” Cat grabbed the younger LT's shoulder and pushed him back around so he could face him.

Four Fingers faltered. “It's a puppy. . . . We found it
last week. . . . It was starving to death . . . so we took it in.”

“And you thought you could just bring the dog along? What happens when it starts barking and we're trying to hide?”

“But I couldn't just . . . leave it back at camp. . . . The Brown Shirts'd kill it.”

“Who says we won't?”

June Bug placed a hand on Cat's shoulder. “It's all right. We can manage.”

Cat flung off June Bug's hand. “You all don't get it, do you?” His piercing stare traveled to each of us. “If those soldiers catch us, we're dead. You saw what Westbrook did to me. And even if we do manage to escape, we still have to figure out some way to eat. There's barely enough food to last us a couple of days.”

Cat's gaze returned to Four Fingers. “If that thing makes a sound when we don't want it to—even a peep—it's gone. Are we clear?”

Everyone nodded. Cat mounted his horse and spurred it into action. A part of me wanted to help Four Fingers, to say something comforting. But I didn't. Chalk it up to the
K2 Effect. Safer just to keep my distance.

“Bet you can't guess how I got my name,” K2 said to me that day.

It was four years earlier—the day I first met him.

I was eating by myself, my face buried in a book, and this hulking LT was suddenly sitting next to me. “Huh?” I said.

“I said, bet you can't guess how I got my name.”

“You're right, 'cause I don't even know who you are.” I'd seen him around camp, of course—how could you miss someone who stood a good half foot taller than the rest of us?—but I'd never had reason to talk to him.

“I'm K2. And you're Book.”

“How'd you know—”

“So how do you think I got my name?”

My eyes did a sweep of him—of his massive frame and his smallish head.

“K2's the second highest mountain in the world,” I said. “After Mount Everest, of course. Way over on the other side of the world. It's also called Savage Mountain because back in pre-Omega days so many people died trying to climb it.”

“You still didn't answer my question; how'd I get my name?”

I sighed. “Because you're big?”

“Not just big.
Jumbo-honkin'
big!”

“Fine.
Jumbo-honkin'
big.”

His face lit up into a broad smile and he slapped me on the back—so hard I nearly coughed up my spleen. But there was something about this K2 that was enormously likable; he was like a jovial giant. And if he
wanted to be my friend, well, what was wrong with that? It was high time I broke out of my cocoon.

He suddenly jumped up and called out to two LTs at a far table. “I win! I told you the guy was smart.”

I looked up from my book. “You win? At what?”

“I bet those losers over there you'd know the reason behind my name.”

My face twisted. “That's why you spoke to me? To win a bet?”

“Yeah!”

And here I thought he'd sat down out of kindness. Turns out it was just so he could collect on a dumb wager. I felt foolish. Downright stupid. “I'm glad I could help you win your bet,” I muttered.

“Don't mention it.”

“Glad I'm nothing more than a game to you.”

“Hey, you don't have to get your panties in a twist. It was just a harmless little bet. Besides, it's a compliment. You're a brainiac.”

“Well, next time, have your fun at someone else's expense.”

I got up and left. I didn't talk to K2 for a whole other year.

We rode on. When I happened to swipe a glance in Four Fingers's direction, I noticed he looked shaky. An encounter with Cat could do that to a guy. Against my
better judgment, I spurred my horse forward until we were riding side by side.

“What's his name?” I asked.

“Huh?”

“Your dog. What's his name?”

The backpack shifted and the dog's head poked out of the narrow opening.

“Argos,” Four Fingers said proudly. “That was—”

“The dog of Odysseus.”

A smile spread across his face. “You've read
The Odyssey
, too?”

“Sure. Argos waited twenty years for Odysseus to come home . . .”

“. . . and then he died. It was really sad.” Four Fingers hesitated a moment before asking, “You think Cat'll let me keep him?”

“Who? Argos?” The dog's tongue was lolling out of his mouth. I didn't know much about dogs, but he seemed some mix of beagle and Labrador. Maybe even coyote. The flap of one ear remained continuously up, as though he was eavesdropping. “As long as you keep him quiet, I don't see why not.”

Four Fingers beamed. Probably the first time in forever.

“So where're we going?” he asked.

“East.”

“What's east?”

“Another territory.”

“And things'll be different there?”

“They'd better be.”

Cat suddenly motioned for us to be quiet. There was a sound—a faint drone, like bees buzzing. It grew steadily louder.

“What's that?” Four Fingers asked.

Red was searching the sky through a canopy of pine boughs. “A plane, maybe,” he said, but there were precious few of those. What was the point of leaving a toxic, smoldering city if your only choice was to fly to
another
toxic, smoldering city?

We dismounted and ran toward a jutting boulder.

Far below us was a canyon, gouged into the mountain. On the other side was a ridge, nearly a mirror to our own . . .

. . . with a line of Humvees snaking up the mountainside. From the tops of the vehicles were soldiers in gunners' turrets, swiveling .50 caliber machine guns.

“Oh shit,” Flush said.

“What do you think, Twitch?” June Bug asked.

The strange thing about Twitch was that when he was able to control his blinking, he had notoriously good eyesight. He was like a hawk that way. A tall, gangly hawk with a nervous tic.

“Eleven vehicles.”

“How many in each?”

Twitch's eyes roamed from one Humvee to the next. “Three, maybe four. But that second to last is a troop carrier. There could be ten in there.”

June Bug did the math.

“Anywhere from thirty to fifty then. Give or take.”

Forty-some soldiers against the eight of us. Hardly a fair fight.

“Too bad someone didn't get the keys to the Humvees,” Dozer said, as though Cat was at fault for not crippling every vehicle in Camp Liberty.

“But we're okay,” Flush said. “I mean, even if they did spot us, they couldn't get those vehicles up here, right?”

The long silence that followed was hardly reassuring.

“Maybe their
vehicles
can't get up here,” Cat said, “but the Brown Shirts can.”

The thought settled over us. A regiment of soldiers tearing up the hill, firing as they came. What would we do? Pelt them with rocks? Fling a few arrows in their direction?

A high-pitched whine accompanied six dirt bikes as they began tearing up the trail. The column of Humvees ground to a halt and out of the lead vehicle stepped Colonel Westbrook in full military camo, a hulking pistol strapped to his waist.

A biker pulled up alongside and removed his helmet and goggles. It was Sergeant Dekker, sunlight glistening
off his oily hair. He and the colonel pored over a map on the hood of Westbrook's vehicle.

“Looks like they can't find us,” Flush said, a little too hopefully.

“Not yet,” Cat said, “but the dirt bikes are probably examining every trail and gully, looking for a way for the vehicles to make it up here.”

Our prospects just got worse.

“So what do we do?” Twitch asked. A nervous tic jerked his eye open and closed.

Cat gave a shrug as if the answer was obvious. “We get the hell out of this territory.”

He began crawling back to the clearing.

I dared a final look. Colonel Westbrook had a pair of binoculars pressed to his face, and it seemed as though he was staring right at me. I was nearly certain I could see his coal-black eyes through the binocs' thick lenses.