The Release
The Release
Tom Isbell
The Release is the thrilling YA conclusion to Tom Isbell’s suspenseful post-apocalyptic Prey series. Perfect for fans of the MAZE RUNNER!Two months have passed since Book, Cat, Hope, and the two others rescued the remaining Less Thans, but no one is safe yet. The group must leave Liberty for good and escape the wolves, the Brown Shirts and the Hunters. Most important, they need to stop Chancellor Maddox before she executes her Final Solution and grows even more powerful.But for Hope, the battle has become personal; she must seek her revenge, no matter what the cost.The PREY trilogy comes to a thrilling conclusion in THE RELEASE, as the group must risk everything – including their lives – in order to defeat their enemies.
Copyright (#u3239141b-d125-57b8-8ebc-3ff8b1da0d77)
HarperVoyager an imprint of
HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpervoyagerbooks.co.uk (http://www.harpervoyagerbooks.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by HarperVoyager 2017
Copyright © Tom Isbell 2017
Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2017
Cover photographs © Shutterstock.com (http://Shutterstock.com)
Tom Isbell asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780007528264
Ebook Edition © February 2017 ISBN: 9780007528257
Version: 2016-12-21
Dedication (#u3239141b-d125-57b8-8ebc-3ff8b1da0d77)
To Paul and Mary Isbell, who loved unconditionally.And to Pat, always.
Contents
Cover (#u25a205b0-400a-5123-a7c1-a57a545c548b)
Title Page (#u369be015-4d8c-5317-a4ac-5e036f7cf2ac)
Copyright
Dedication
Part One: Enemies
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Part Two: Allies
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Part Three: Release
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Also By Tom Isbell
About the Publisher
PART ONE (#u3239141b-d125-57b8-8ebc-3ff8b1da0d77)
ENEMIES (#u3239141b-d125-57b8-8ebc-3ff8b1da0d77)
I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
—ALBERT EINSTEIN
PROLOGUE (#u3239141b-d125-57b8-8ebc-3ff8b1da0d77)
FROZEN SLOPES STRETCH THEIR icy fingers to leaden skies, and winter gales sweep clean the vast, white prairies. Though captured, he escapes. Though beaten down, he rises, even as the mountains rumble and the waters rush and roar.
But enemies persist. The dead and dying litter the long road to freedom, and many more must perish.
My beloved …
1. (#u3239141b-d125-57b8-8ebc-3ff8b1da0d77)
THE NIGHT WAS COLD, and each time I breathed out, my mouth released a haze of frost. I squinted past the cloud of white, peering into the dark. They were out there. It was just a matter of time before they showed themselves.
A tap on the shoulder made me jump. Diana, come to relieve me.
“My turn,” she said.
“Already?”
“Unless you want to stay longer.”
“Nope, I’m good.”
I pushed myself up from the snow and stretched. My toes and fingers were numb. My joints creaked. Argos uncurled from my side and also stretched, extending his back legs.
“Anything?” Diana asked.
“Some yellow earlier. Nothing recent.”
“How many?”
“A dozen. Maybe more.”
She nodded grimly. “They do anything?”
“Just circled.” Then I added, “They came closer than last night.”
We shared a look. Diana knew what I was talking about without having to say the words. Yellow meant wolves, the color referring to their eyes. The more yellow, the more wolves. Lately, the numbers were increasing, and the packs had started coming closer. The only thing that kept them at bay was an enormous ring of fire we’d built around our camp. We stoked it day and night like some primitive tribe from centuries past. So far, no wolves had dared go through it.
We intended to keep it that way.
The avalanche had wiped out all of Camp Liberty, flattening buildings, vehicles … and several dozen Brown Shirts. Their decomposing bodies released a sickening aroma of rotting, putrefying flesh. Just the thing to attract roaming wolf packs. Each night the wolves materialized from the mountains, alternately ripping at the corpses with their razor teeth and sending piercing cries to the starry sky.
As if the wolves weren’t bad enough, just days after the avalanche, howling swirls of snow came racing down Skeleton Ridge and descended on the No Water, wreathing our shantytown in five-foot drifts. What was cleared away one morning was buried in snow the next. Between the snow and wolves, we were prisoners in our own camp.
Diana took my place on the ground, folding her willowy body behind the barricade. She pulled her auburn-colored hair back into a ponytail and readied a bow and arrow. I found some logs and tossed them onto the nearest bonfires. Five hundred embers danced to heaven. I was about to go but found myself lingering, wiping the bark from my hands.
“What?” Diana asked, noticing I hadn’t left.
It was a long time before I answered.
“How’s Hope?”
Diana gave a small sigh. “She’s fine, Book.”
“She’s really okay?”
“No better or worse since the last time you asked—which was last night.”
“Have you seen her?”
“Hardly anyone sees her. You know that. Now get out of here.”
I started to leave.
“And Book?”
“Yeah?” I turned to her, hopeful.
“Stop thinking about her.”
That was what Diana told me every night. Stop thinking about her. There was little chance I could follow that advice.
I shuffled back through the snowy labyrinth of Libertyville. That was the name we gave our makeshift town of rickety huts. The buildings were an unsightly collection of recovered pieces from Camp Liberty. Bits of planking here, corrugated metal there, tree branches acting as joists and beams. A ramshackle village whose blue-tarped roofs dipped low from snow. Temporary housing.
Although we often talked about marching out of there, it would have been mass suicide. It was the dead of winter, and there were still Less Thans so emaciated they could barely walk. We’d rescued seventy-five of them from the Quonset hut that night two months ago, but malnutrition and sickness had taken the lives of four the first week alone. The long winter claimed three others. We couldn’t be on our way until all sixty-eight of them regained their strength—whenever that was.
Argos and I stepped into the shack that we called home. It was nearly as cold inside as it was out.
On the floor were seated Twitch and Flush, bent over a sheet of paper. Flush read a series of numbers out loud.
“Any progress?” I asked.
“There’s gotta be a pattern,” Twitch answered, tapping the paper with his fingers. “I just can’t figure it out.”
“And you’re sure they’re not random numbers?”
“Two people with the same series of thirteen numbers? Not likely.”
Back when we had been digging through the snow looking for building materials, we’d come across Colonel Thorason’s body. In his front shirt pocket was a slip of paper. On it was written a long string of numbers.
4539221103914
When we uncovered another Brown Shirt and found the exact same numbers in his shirt pocket, we figured it was a code of some kind. So far, we’d had no luck translating it.
“I keep hoping it’s a letter-number cipher,” Twitch went on. “Those aren’t so tough to crack. But if it’s a letter shift cipher, then things get tricky. You gotta create a whole grid to solve it.”
Leave it to Twitch to know all this. He’d been blinded by a mortar when the Brown Shirts ambushed us last summer. Although it slowed him down physically, it didn’t faze him a bit when it came to problem solving. The code was just another puzzle he was determined to break.
In addition to Flush and Twitch, Red was also in the room, carving a cedar branch. Like Flush and Twitch, he had been in that original group of Less Thans who escaped Camp Liberty. His shame for abandoning us in favor of Dozer was as easy to read as the radiation splotch on his face. There was never a moment when he wasn’t making arrows or tending to the survivors.
“Anything?” he asked. The same question we asked one another every night.
“Some yellow a couple hours ago.”
“More or less than last night?”
“Definitely more. And getting closer.”
It was not the answer anyone wanted to hear.
I tossed some wood into the stove and poked the logs. As I stretched out before the flames, pinpricks of heat danced up my toes and fingers. Argos circled and lay down. He was practically fully grown now, the scars from various wolf attacks pockmarking his fur like badges of honor.
Cat entered and we went through the same series of questions. Any yellow? How many? How close? That kind of thing.
The fact was, we were fixated on wolves—could think of little else. They circled us each night, taunting us with their howls, their greenish-yellow eyes poking through the dark like devil fingers. There was never a time when they weren’t on our minds.
“How much longer?” I asked, absently petting Argos.
“Till what?”
“Till they finish off the corpses?”
Cat shrugged. “Another day. Maybe two.”
He bent down and picked up two rocks—one quartz, one flint—and began knapping them together, making arrowheads. He held the flint by wedging it between his armpit and artificial limb. His movements were so effortless, you almost got the feeling he’d been missing an arm his entire life. Typical Cat.
“And when they’re done with the corpses?” I asked.
He shrugged. “I guess they’ll look somewhere else.” The fire crackled and Cat knapped the rocks. Then he turned to Flush and asked, “We’re still waiting for spring?”
“As soon as the snow melts,” Flush said.
“We can’t leave any sooner?”
“Not as long as there are LTs who can’t get out of bed.”
“We could build a sled and drag them along.”
Flush shook his head. “Better to wait until we can all walk on our own.”
I knew what was going on in Cat’s mind. It wasn’t just wolves he was thinking about. We had seen for ourselves the realities of the Republic of the True America: Hunters tracking down Less Thans, experiments on Sisters, Brown Shirts locking up LTs and letting them die in their bunks.
Since Chancellor Maddox had somehow escaped the avalanche—Dr. Gallingham, too—we knew we couldn’t remain in Libertyville a second longer than necessary. Our only salvation—and curse—was the snow, which kept the Brown Shirts away … but also kept us captive.
To lift people’s spirits—and also celebrate a year’s worth of birthdays—we’d decided to throw a party the next night. It wouldn’t solve our problems, but maybe it would get our minds off wolves and a dwindling food supply—at least for one evening.
When I climbed into bed, Cat continued to strike rocks, and Flush and Twitch were still poring over numbers. As I settled into sleep, it wasn’t wolves or Chancellor Maddox or Dr. Gallingham I thought about.
It was Hope. I hadn’t seen her since we’d rescued her from the bunker. For the past eight weeks, she had spent her days hunting game in the foothills, returning only when the sun was setting and she could cloak herself in darkness, closeting herself in her tent on the far edge of Libertyville. I wondered when I’d see her again.
If I’d see her again.
My eyes drifted shut and I fell into a deep sleep, only partially aware of the wolves’ haunting howls from the other side of the ring of fire.
2. (#u3239141b-d125-57b8-8ebc-3ff8b1da0d77)
AFTERNOON SUNLIGHT BOUNCES OFF the snow as Hope field dresses a squirrel. Her hands and knife move in an acrobatic flurry. She’s done it so many times, it’s become a kind of dance. Knife in the underside, tug at the skin, slice off the front legs, remove the skin, dig out the entrails, chop off the head, cut the back feet, pull out the organs—done. She can do it in her sleep.
Hope does all this in the privacy of an aspen grove. Anything to hide herself. While she’s never considered herself a vain person, there is something about these scars—these twin Xs on her cheeks—she finds disgusting. Repulsive, even. They’re like brands for marking livestock, as if she were someone else’s property. The thought sickens her.
It’s why she keeps to herself. Why she wears a hoodie and pulls the drawstrings tight. Why she avoids the stares of well-meaning friends.
Why she avoids Book.
Hunting is her refuge. It not only lets her provide food for the others, it gives her an excuse to get away from camp. And the fact is, she’s good at it. Setting traps and tracking prey have always been her specialty. She can thank her father for that.
It’s the only thing she can thank him for. Now that she knows he collaborated with the enemy, working alongside Dr. Gallingham and injecting patients with experimental drugs, she finds it best not to think of him. Yes, she’ll use the skills he taught her, but that’s it. No more honoring his memory.
She plops the skinned squirrel in her pack, resets the trap, and notices the late-afternoon sun sneaking past the tree trunks, announcing the coming dusk. Time to return to Libertyville. Skeleton Ridge is no place to be after dark.
Her lips purse and she gives a sharp whistle. A moment later, a whistle answers. It’s Diana, hunting on the other side of the aspens. That’s their signal to start back down the mountain.
Hope reaches back and removes the pair of skis strapped to her back—skis she made from birch planks. She slips her boots into the bindings, pulls them taut, and takes off down the mountain.
Her hair is longer now, black and flowing, and the crisp winter wind sails through it. It’s not as long as her mother’s was, but it’s getting there. Closer to how it was before Chancellor Maddox ordered it chopped off way back when.
Partway down the mountain, something catches Hope’s eye: two dark objects, not much bigger than her hand, lying still and silent atop the snow. She angles the skis in that direction, shooshing to a stop. It’s obvious what she’s looking at: two field mice, their bodies stiff from death. Hope looks around. The mice aren’t from any trap, and it’s unlikely they died from natural causes one right next to the other. So what are they doing here? More importantly, why haven’t they been eaten?
She grabs one by the tail and lifts it in the air.
“What’ve you got there?” Diana asks, appearing at her side.
“Nothing,” Hope says, startled. She throws the stiff rodents into her pack. “Just a couple of mice.”
“Better than nothing. And it wouldn’t hurt for you to eat some of that.”
“We’ll see.”
“I mean it.”
“I know.”
It’s an ongoing debate. Diana is convinced Hope isn’t eating enough, and Hope tells her there’s hardly enough food for the sick and wounded, let alone the healthy ones.
She’s still thinking about the mice when Diana says, “Book was asking about you last night.”
“So?”
“So what I do I tell him?”
Hope pulls up her hoodie and tightens it. “Tell him whatever you want.”
“But he keeps asking and I don’t know—”
“Tell him I’m busy,” she snaps. “Tell him I’m trying to feed two Sisters and seventy-three Less Thans. Tell him someone needs to do the hunting around here.”
Diana looks down at her hands before asking, “And tonight? I can’t change your mind?”
Hope gives her head a shake and turns away. She has no interest in going to parties. Has even less interest in being seen.
“You know, you’re going to have to go out sometime. You can’t stay shut up the next couple months.”
“I get out,” Hope says. “I’m out now.”
“You know what I mean.”
Hope says nothing. The sun angles lower.
“Suit yourself,” Diana says, “but I hate being the lone girl.” Ever since Scylla was killed by the avalanche, Diana and Hope are the only two Sisters, surrounded by all these Less Thans.
“I’m not worried about you.”
“I’m not worried about me either. It’s those poor LTs I’m thinking about.” She shoots Hope a wink and pushes off.
As they ski single file down the mountain, headed for the ring of fire encircling Libertyville, Hope thinks about Book. The truth is, he can ask about her all he wants, but Hope won’t let him see her this way. She won’t accept his pity. As much as she likes Book, as much as she remembers every last detail of their time together, she knows there’s no going back. Not now. Not ever.
She zips down the mountain, ignoring the tears that press against her eyes. She blames them on the cold, on the setting sun, on anything but the truth.
Live today, tears tomorrow.
Later, after Diana has gone to the party and Hope can hear the muted, faraway sounds of laughter and music, she reaches beneath the tarp wall and sticks her hand into the snow, fishing around until she finds the two dead mice. She hasn’t had a chance to examine them since they returned, and the thought of them bothers her. At a time when every single person and animal is foraging for food, how is it that two mice died so oddly, and are left uneaten? It doesn’t make sense.
She pinches one by the tail and dangles it. It exudes a whiff of rot, and her eyes pore over the brownish-gray rodent. Although there’s no blood, she spies something she didn’t notice before: the belly puckers unnaturally, as though the two seams of skin don’t quite match up. She lowers the mouse to the table and pokes at it, revealing a razor-thin gash that runs from head to tail. An eviscerating slice like from a sharpened knife.
Or a wolf’s claw.
She examines the other mouse and finds the same. Another slit that runs the length of the tiny animal’s belly.
Okay. So a wolf killed these mice. But why go to that trouble and then not eat them?
Hope has heard the wolves at night, gobbling up the avalanche victims. If they’re as famished as the LTs and Sisters, why leave two mice to fester and rot?
Unless …
The hair rises at the back of Hope’s neck as she comes to a sudden realization. A moment later, she rushes out of the tent.
3. (#u3239141b-d125-57b8-8ebc-3ff8b1da0d77)
GROWING UP IN CAMP Liberty, we never celebrated birthdays. The only exception was when we turned seventeen, because that was the day we went through the Rite. There was a big ceremony on the parade ground, and following that, the birthday boys—the graduates—were shipped off to become the new lieutenants of the Western Federation Territory.
Or so we were told.
The truth was that the Less Thans were sold off to Hunters to be tracked down and slaughtered like prey. A very different future than what was promised us.
But now that we were free of Camp Liberty and there were a number of us who had turned or were about to turn seventeen, we decided to throw a proper birthday party. This was going to be a genuine celebration.
A couple of the guys even made decorations out of paper they’d found blowing around in camp. Personally, I enjoyed the irony of it. I doubt that anyone ever dreamed that the official Republic of the True America stationery would be turned into party hats and paper chains.
Some of the LTs had created a stage at one end of the mess hall and were performing skits. At the moment, two guys were prancing around in an improvised horse costume, and that was getting huge laughs, especially when the rear of the horse got separated from the front.
I found Flush and Twitch sitting at a table in the very back of the mess hall, poring over sheets of paper.
“You’re missing the fun,” I said.
“Some of us are preoccupied,” Flush said, cocking his head toward Twitch.
“I can still hear, you know,” said Twitch. “I know you’re talking about me. And I bet you’re cocking your head in my direction.”
Flush’s face turned bright red, and Twitch pointed at the paper.
“Look at this,” he said. “We’ve started working out some combinations.”
I bent down and inspected the paper. An elaborate chart showed numbers along the side and letters across the top.
“If we choose the column where ‘four’ is ‘n,’” Twitch went on, “then that means that ‘five’ is ‘o,’ ‘six’ is ‘p’ and so on. So then we get something like—well, read it, Flush.”
Flush picked up the paper and tried to pronounce what they’d come up with. “Nomsllkk-mskn,” he said.
Nomsllkk-mskn. If it was a word, it wasn’t an obvious one.
“I admit,” Twitch said, “it’s nothing definite yet, but if we added some more vowels in there, who knows?”
“You might be onto something,” I said, patting him on the shoulder. “Keep at it.”
Flush rolled his eyes. “Now we’ll never enjoy the party,” he moaned good-naturedly.
“When we get to the Heartland,” I said “the first thing we’ll do is throw a real party. And we’ll have those foods we’ve always read about.”
“You mean like cake and ice cream?”
“And cookies and brownies and everything else we can think of.”
Flush turned back to Twitch. “What’re you waiting for? Let’s crack this code so we can get out of here and celebrate.”
I turned back to the stage. The rear of the horse was chasing the front, trying to catch up. It had been a long time since I’d heard my friends laugh so much.
The one actor had just about caught up with the other when a voice interrupted them.
“We need to leave.”
I knew that voice. Had dreamed about that voice.
The actors hesitated, unsure if they should go on or not.
“We need to leave,” the voice said again, and the audience laughter came to an abrupt halt.
Heads turned. Standing by the back door, concealed in shadows with a hoodie drawn tight around her face, was Hope. It had been forever since I’d seen her, and I could feel the butterflies in my stomach.
“We know that, Hope,” Flush said, stepping toward her. “That’s what we’ve been talking about in our meetings.”
“I mean soon.”
“Exactly. Once the snow melts—”
“Tomorrow. The next day at the latest.”
Jaws hung open. Eyes widened. We’d just lived through the most dangerous year of our lives … and she was proposing something to top even that.
“You’re kidding, right?” asked Flush.
“I’m not.”
“But we’ve got three Less Thans who can barely get out of bed. It’s the middle of winter, the snow’s practically to our knees, and we don’t have nearly enough food to take with us on a trip.”
Others began chiming in; everyone had an opinion and wanted to voice it.
Hope listened to it all, calmly nodded, then walked down the aisle toward the front of the mess hall. She tossed two objects onto the stage, where they landed with a muffled thud. The two actors backed up and everyone grew quiet.
“What are those?” Flush asked.
“Mice,” she said.
“So?”
“The wolves killed them.”
He shrugged. “Wolves kill mice all the time.”
“They didn’t eat them.”
It slowly sank in what she was getting at.
“They’ve developed a taste for humans,” she went on, her voice eerily calm. “They’re no longer interested in other animals. It’s people or nothing.”
Her words were followed by a silence louder than the avalanche.
“That may be true,” Flush said, “but that doesn’t mean—”
“We leave tomorrow,” she insisted. “We rejoin the Sisters we left behind at the lake and go from there.”
An LT named Sunshine let loose a high-pitched laugh. “Now you’re dreaming. Like we’re gonna be able to make it all that way—especially with them.” He pointed in the direction of the infirmary, housing those Less Thans still too weak to walk.
“We’ll get there,” Hope said.
“Right. And the world’s flat.”
I understood where Sunshine was coming from, but Hope was right. If we didn’t leave soon, there was a chance we wouldn’t leave at all.
Again, a chorus of voices chimed in, most claiming that Hope was being alarmist. Chicken Little, and all that.
I listened to the debate, then looked at Hope to gauge her reaction. But she’d already gone, slipped out without anyone noticing.
4. (#u3239141b-d125-57b8-8ebc-3ff8b1da0d77)
IT WAS FOOLISH, LEAVING the tent like that, exposing herself to the stares of others. But after examining those mice, Hope knew things that others didn’t. If she didn’t say something, they’d wait until springtime to leave and then it’d be too late. That’s why she spoke up.
Well, that’s the main reason. There’s also the matter of unfinished business.
She’s preparing to go to bed when she catches a glimpse of herself in the shard of mirror that hangs on a side wall. She stands there a moment, studying her face. Each time she happens to see her reflection, she is startled. The Xs are as unsightly as ever. As though it’s someone else she’s looking at, some stranger. Definitely not Hope.
She draws her arm back and sends an elbow flying, smashing it into the mirror. The glass shatters, obliterating her reflection. Blood drips from her elbow.
As she wraps the wound in cloth, she wonders if they can do it. Can they really make it all the way to Helen and the other Sisters, huddled in Dodge’s Log Lodges on the shores of a distant lake? Can they cover that kind of distance with little food and no shelter?
She snuggles beneath a thin blanket on the floor—a bed would be entirely too foreign—and as she does most every night, she fingers the locket around her neck. She can sense the stares of her mom and dad from the miniature photos.
Not for the first time, her fingers edge away from the locket and move toward her face, tracing the raised scars on her cheeks, down one diagonal and up the other. The two Xs remind her of what she wants.
Revenge.
For her mother. For her father. For her sister, Faith. It’s not that she doesn’t want to escape from the territory and save the country and all that other rah-rah stuff. But mainly she wants revenge. And she will get it … or die trying.
She settles in for sleep, comforted by the soothing tap tap of raindrops on the tarp. As she’s drifting off, she remembers Book’s expression when she threw the mice on the stage. He was as surprised as everyone else, but she got the feeling, from a single glance, that he agreed with her. Which is why she was hurt he didn’t say anything in support of her. Still, even if he had—
She jolts up in bed.
Something’s not right. She replays her thoughts, stopping when she remembers the soothing sound of raindrops. Straining to listen, she hears it again: tap tap. It sounds like raindrops, but there’s no way it can be raining—not in the dead of winter. She whips into her clothes, grabs her bow and a quiver of arrows, and hurries out of the tent.
The night is cold and clear. No moon, which makes the stars glimmer extra bright.
Now that she’s outside, she can hear the sound more clearly, and she realizes the tap tap is more a pitter-pat, a muffled padding. As much as she doesn’t want to believe it, she knows the sound. A wolf. When they run, they do so on their toes, but when they stalk, their whole pad hits the ground.
This one’s stalking.
Hope follows the sound, her moccasins slipping through freshly fallen snow. The tendons of her knuckles glow white as she grips the bow. She still can’t believe it. How did a wolf get past the ring of fire?
She comes upon a single set of tracks. Even in scant starlight, she’s able to make out the distinctive wolf print: the triangular pad, the four oval toes in perfect symmetry. The good news is that it’s just one wolf. The bad news is that it’s big. The paw prints are larger than the palm of her hand.
She picks up her pace, her breath ballooning in front of her. Rounding the corner of a hut, she comes to a small intersection. Before her is the infirmary. The wolf prints lead right to the flap that serves as the lone entrance.
Hope tiptoes forward, parting the flap with an outstretched elbow.
Her eyes adjust to the dark, and it takes her a moment to locate the wolf. It’s as big as she feared, and prowling the aisles. Its fur is singed from where it went through the fire. She assumes that at any moment it’s going to stop and attack one of the three Less Thans there, but instead it keeps moving—as though it’s checking out the situation. Counting its prey.
The wolf rears back its head and sends a piercing howl toward the ceiling. The sound sends a shudder down Hope’s back.
The emaciated Less Thans start to wake. One sits up in bed.
“Don’t move,” Hope whispers fiercely.
They obey. The wolf turns and stares at her, just as she stares at it. For the longest time, neither of them moves. Then Hope slowly nocks an arrow and draws the bowstring back. But just as she’s about to shoot, the wolf leaps forward, landing on the Less Than who’s sitting up. Hope wants to release the arrow, but the wolf is smart enough to get behind the LT, shielding itself.
Trying to get a better angle, Hope runs to another aisle. But every time she moves, so does the wolf, repositioning itself behind the sick LT. Hope could run back in the other direction, but the wolf will just move again. Meanwhile, it continues to howl, its piercing wail blasting her ears.
“Have it your way,” she mutters, and draws the bowstring back until her thumb tickles her cheek. She waits until the wolf is midhowl, and then she sends the arrow flying. It zips through the infirmary in a horizontal blur, missing the LT by an inch and impaling the wolf in the neck. It shrieks, then crumples to the ground.
The infirmary comes alive. The Less Than is sobbing hysterically, and there are startled cries as other LTs race in from the party. But even as they come running to find out what’s going on, Hope is headed the other way. She’s taken care of the situation, and now she’s getting out of there.
Picking her way through the snowy back alleys of Libertyville, Hope’s heart races. The thing she can’t let go of is that howl. That wasn’t some mournful wail, some aimless baying at the invisible moon. That was a call to arms.
A signal to attack.
5. (#ulink_077ecc16-d2fe-51af-b728-7af952f4fe77)
WE LEFT THE NEXT morning.
There were those who disagreed with our decision, but Hope was right. We had to get out of there.
“That wasn’t a wolf attack last night,” Hope said as we were tying up the last of the packs. “It was a scouting mission. That thing was here to let the rest of the pack know what it’d seen.”
It was crazy what she was saying. Ridiculous, even. But I knew that she was right. Like her, I had seen the attack on Skeleton Ridge.
That didn’t mean we were ready to leave. For all the reasons Flush had voiced earlier, we weren’t even remotely prepared for this. But the alternative was worse.
The LT who’d been pounced on by the wolf died during the night, as much from shock as from the attack itself. With no shovels and little time, we topped the grave with rocks to prevent the wolves from unearthing the corpse.
“What’s the point?” Sunshine mocked. “If those wolves want him, they’ll get him. Nothing we can do to stop ’em.”
“The rocks’ll stop them,” I replied.
“The rocks’ll slow ’em down.” Then he added, “Probably better for us if the wolves did get him. That way they won’t come chasing after us.”
No one bothered to respond, and Sunshine ran a hand through his greasy hair. It was so blond it was practically white, and when he laughed, his cheeks turned bright red. He looked like a demented elf. Although he was one of the emaciated ones we’d rescued from Liberty, you wouldn’t know it now. He was brash to the point of cocky. People put up with him because he was a fellow Less Than … and because he was good with a slingshot. We had a feeling we’d need every fighter we could get.
When we finished creating the burial mound, a number of us stood awkwardly around the grave while I recited a poem.
No man is an island,
Entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
A little John Donne to feed our souls—not that anyone had the faintest idea what the poem was or who wrote it.
Our number was down to seventy-four.
After placing our few belongings in the middle of tarps and bundling them into Yukon packs, we squinted into the morning sun.
“Let’s get out of here,” Cat said, impatient to get going.
“Which direction?” Flush asked.
“Where else? East to the river.” It’s how we’d gotten here, and it was how we’d get out.
Cat took the lead, finding an opening in the ring of fire’s dying flames, and everyone else followed. We carried supplies and dragged the two wounded on triangular stretchers through the calf-high snow.
I was the last to leave. I turned and took a final look at Libertyville, at what had once been Camp Liberty. I hoped to never lay eyes on this part of the Western Federation Territory again.
6. (#ulink_c23fd75b-e541-5eae-8bb7-70043ce1615a)
THE SNOW IS DEEP, the going slow, and by the time they reach the river—a winding sheet of ice—they’re huffing for air. They head south along its banks.
The sun is a blinding splotch of yellow that bounces off the snow and spears their eyes. Hope is glad for the hood. It shields her eyes from the glaring sun … and conceals her scars from others.
“Hey.”
Book is suddenly walking alongside her. She angles her head in the other direction.
“You doing okay?” he asks.
“Doing fine.” There is defiance in her voice. Even a touch of contempt. Only the weak and helpless accept pity. Hope is neither of those.
“You sure?”
“I said so, didn’t I?”
Book allows the silence to stretch between them. All around them is the muffled thud of footsteps as seventy-four stragglers wade through snow.
“What do you want, Book?” Hope finally asks.
“Isn’t it obvious?”
“Not to me, it’s not.”
“I’m looking for someone—someone I used to know who’s gone missing.”
“Who’s that?”
“A girl named Hope.”
Hope gives her head a violent shake. “Not gonna happen.”
“Why? Because of those?” He gestures vaguely to the Xs on her face. “You think you’re the only one around here with scars?”
“No …”
Book tugs up a sleeve and displays the crisscrossing lines on his wrist. “What do you call these?”
“Sure, they’re scars …”
“But?”
“They’re hidden. You’re not disfigured like me.”
“Right, because yours are on your face, that makes them somehow worse,” he says sarcastically.
“That’s right.”
“Because everyone can see them, that somehow makes them more noticeable than everyone else’s.”
“Exactly.”
“And my limp?”
“That’s different and you know it.”
“Is it? What about my internal scars? How about those?”
“What’re you talking about?”
“Feeling responsible for the deaths of my friends. Those scars don’t heal.”
“You think I don’t have those, too?”
“I know you have them. That’s my point. All of us do.”
She stops abruptly. “So these are just nothing?”
“I don’t care about those. No one does.”
“I do!”
Her voice carries farther than she intends, and Diana makes a move to come to Hope’s side. Hope shakes her off.
“I care about these scars,” Hope says in a fierce whisper. “I care because I know that’s all that people see. They can say they don’t, that they can look past them, that all they really see is my soul, but that’s bullshit and you know it.” She whips the hoodie back so that the Xs catch the full brunt of sunlight. The scars pucker the skin; shadows crisscross her cheeks. “Tell me you don’t see these.”
Book shrugs. “I don’t see them.”
“And you see into my soul.”
“I see into your soul.”
Hope grabs Book’s hand and slaps it against her cheek, resting his fingers on the cold, raised edges of her scars. “And now?”
“They don’t exist.”
She throws his hand away. “You’re crazier than I thought.”
Then she pulls the hood around her face and stomps off, joining the seventy-some others who trudge past Book in the vast expanse of snow.
7. (#ulink_773f34ed-dbdd-5212-82e1-c4bdd11e045a)
HOPE WOULD HAVE NOTHING more to do with me the rest of that day. Or the day after that. When we set up camp each evening, I put my bedroll on one arc of the circle, and she put hers directly opposite. Then she’d go off in search of food, not returning for hours.
Each evening, we huddled around our fires, pockets of muffled conversation drifting from one group to the other.
“What do you think it was like?” Flush asked out of the blue one night.
“What what was like?”
“The day the bombs fell. Omega.”
“Frightening,” an LT said.
“Confusing,” another added.
“Terrifying,” a third chimed in.
“For the living, yeah,” Twitch said.
We turned to him. His blind eyes probed the night.
“Ninety-nine percent of the earth’s population was probably eliminated in a matter of seconds. They didn’t feel a thing. They might have been the lucky ones.”
His words settled on us. The fire popped and crackled. The world had never seemed so still.
“I wonder which country started it,” Flush said.
“Why’s it matter?” Cat said, whittling a branch. “What matters is it’s left to us to pick up the pieces.”
“Yeah, but aren’t you curious?”
“Why? There’s no way we’ll ever know.”
Cat was right—we’d never find out the answer to that—but it did make me wonder about something else.
“Why do they hate us?” I asked. The question had burned within me ever since I found out we were considered Less Thans. As I spoke, I petted Argos. I could feel the ribs protruding beneath his fur.
“Who?” Flush asked.
“Everyone. Brown Shirts, Hunters, Crazies. Why do they all want us dead?”
“You know what they say,” Twitch said. “There are three reasons to hate someone. Either we have something they want.”
“Yeah, right,” Flush said sarcastically.
“Or we’re a threat.”
“Not likely.”
“Or we’re just different.”
Flush didn’t respond to that one. No one did.
“But why the Hunters?” I asked. “I mean, I can maybe understand the Crazies not liking us—they’re just crazy. And the Brown Shirts have somehow been indoctrinated to think we’re evil. But what do the Hunters have against us? What’s their deal?”
“Maybe they just like shooting defenseless people,” Cat said.
“Yeah, maybe.” But we all knew there was more to it than that.
By the fifth day after leaving Libertyville, our pace had become glacial—a combination of fatigue and lack of food. Although Hope often returned with a rabbit or a squirrel, sometimes even a porcupine, it wasn’t enough. Not to fill over seventy bellies. We were slowly starving to death.
Our rest breaks dragged out. We covered fewer miles. Each day started later and ended sooner. Although the sun brought warmth, its sharp rays bit our skin, chapped our lips, burned our cheeks red. Our eyes formed a permanent squint from staring into sunlight.
It was obvious we couldn’t go on like this.
“We need to go to the Compound,” I said on the sixth afternoon, as we were gathering wood.
“What’re you talking about?” Flush asked.
“The Compound—where we were held captive by the Skull People.”
“I know what it is.”
“We need to return there.”
Everyone around me stopped what they were doing.
“But that’s, like, miles and miles out of the way,” Flush said.
“I know.”
“The fastest way to Dodge’s is if we cut across the river and head east, not go south to the Compound. And for the sake of the sick, for the sake of all of us, we need to get to Dodge’s as soon as possible.”
“I don’t disagree.”
“Not to mention the fact that the last time we were at the Compound, the Hunters and Crazies were having a field day massacring the Skullies.”
“I remember.”
“So why do you think—”
“There might be food there.” That was the magic word: food. “You’re right, the Compound was attacked. But that place was so well stocked, there have gotta be some hidden rooms where there’s still food. Just imagine what that could do for us.”
The thought of eating smoked meats and canned vegetables made my mouth water.
“But Book, we don’t know who controls the Compound,” Twitch said.
“True, but what if the Hunters and Crazies just attacked and left? What if they’re not there anymore? Not only that”—here I hesitated—“what if there are survivors? Skull People, still alive. If so, we could bring ’em with us.”
Flush cleared his throat before speaking. “I don’t mean to sound heartless or anything, but why would you want to do that?”
“First of all, because they helped us escape.”
“After they locked us up.”
“And secondly, because they have skills. They’re smart—they can help us.”
“If you’re thinking of your little friend Miranda,” Diana said, “don’t forget she was a traitor.”
It was the first time anyone had uttered her name in months. Miranda. The girl who’d kissed my cheek as we watched the sun set. The same girl who’d been spying for her father.
“At first she was, yeah. But if it wasn’t for her, we wouldn’t have gotten out of those caves. She created the diversion.” No one responded—not Diana, certainly not Hope—and I went on. “Listen, we’re not going to make it out of this territory unless we get some food. Like, soon. And the Compound is the only possibility I can think of.”
“But if the Crazies are still around—” Flush began.
“We take that chance. We don’t have a choice.”
The silence stretched, and it was a long time before anyone else spoke. I squinted into the distance. The setting sun erupted in an explosion of orange.
“I love it,” Sunshine said. “We’re screwed if we go, we’re screwed if we don’t. Welcome to the life of a Less Than.” He brayed like a donkey.
“What’re you thinking, Book?” Cat asked.
“It wouldn’t be everyone,” I said. “Just a small group. Whoever wants to join me. The rest of you go on to Dodge’s and we’ll meet up there. Hopefully with a whole mess of food.”
Now I needed volunteers. I shot a look to Hope, hoping she would say yes. She met my stare with narrowed eyes.
“Go,” she said. “We’ll continue on without you.”
“That’s what I’m suggesting,” I said.
“Then do it. You don’t need my permission.”
“Fine.”
“Fine.”
I didn’t disagree with her, but it hurt, the way she said it. Like she wanted no part of me.
“I’ll go,” Red said.
“Me too,” Flush added, although not with as much conviction.
So that was the group: Red, Flush, and me. And of course Argos. Everyone else would cross the river and head straight for Dodge’s.
“If you want, I can join you,” Cat said later on, when it was just him and me.
“No, better that you’re with the others. They need you.”
“You sure about this? You don’t have to go back there if you don’t want.”
“It’s best this way,” I said, and left it at that.
That night I had watch, peering into the dark for any sign of yellow. I wondered if the wolves were content now, if they had just wanted us to leave Libertyville so they could reclaim that part of Skeleton Ridge for themselves. Or were they trailing us across the frozen tundra, waiting for the right moment to attack?
Soon, it wasn’t wolves I was thinking about, or Skull People, or even Hope. It was my grandmother. The woman with the long black hair whose final words to me had been I haven’t been guiding you, Book. You must be listening to your heart.
But at that particular moment, I had no idea what my heart was telling me. It felt like I knew less than ever.
8. (#ulink_afdb898f-f60c-540d-a794-547a5136bd44)
THEY SEPARATE THE NEXT morning. After an awkward round of good-byes, most of them cross the frozen river to the other side. The only ones who don’t are Book, Red, Flush, and Argos. Hope and Book don’t exchange any final words, but when Hope reaches the opposing riverbank, she catches him watching her. At the same moment they both look away.
Hope agrees that they need food, and she can’t fault Book’s plan to return to the Compound. Still, she can’t help but wonder if his ulterior motive is to find Miranda. It angers her that she feels a stab of jealousy.
For the first part of the morning, the two groups are a mirror—three on one side, seventy-one on the other—trudging through snow on opposite banks of the river. The trio moves at a far quicker pace, of course, and soon they forge ahead. When they eventually disappear into the horizon of white—Argos’s muffled bark a final good-bye—Hope is surprised to feel a sudden emptiness.
Later that day, Hope hears a distant sound. It takes a moment to identify it, and when she realizes it’s the growl of a Humvee, the Less Thans and Sisters scurry for cover, throwing themselves to the ground. Cat is atop a ridge, and Hope crawls forward until she’s next to him. They peek their heads above the snow.
A lone Humvee appears in the far distance, and they watch as it snakes its way across the snow-blasted prairie. What Hope can’t figure out is why it’s out here, where it’s going. The one-lane road appears to dead-end at a small, snow-covered mound. There are no buildings here—no structures of any kind. Just a rusted chain-link fence encircling a tiny hill.
“Launch facility,” Cat explains.
“Huh?”
“It’s where they fired the missiles that day. My dad took me to one once.”
“There’s a missile there?”
“Used to be, in an underground silo. Nearly five thousand of them, scattered across the country. That’s how the world blew itself up.”
Hope has often wondered about Omega. She was young when her father first explained it, but somehow she envisioned airplanes dropping bombs from the air, not missiles erupting from the prairie.
She studies the hill. It’s a good quarter mile away, but she’s able to make out an upside-down dome on top of the mound. Burn marks scorch its edges.
“What’s in there now?”
“Not a missile, that’s for sure.”
So why is the Humvee headed there?
They watch as the military vehicle nears, then passes through the fence, skidding to a stop when it reaches the small hill. Three Brown Shirts emerge, cracking jokes, their laughter bouncing off the cloudless sky. One lights a cigarette before they disappear behind the far side of the mound.
“Where are they going?” Hope asks, more to herself than Cat.
Five minutes pass before the soldiers return. They each carry a large wooden crate. Stenciled on the sides is the distinctive symbol of the Republic: three inverted triangles. Beneath that are a series of letters and numbers. M4. M16. AK-47.
Military weapons.
The three soldiers slide the wooden crates into the back of the Humvee and then return to the mound. Hope rises to her feet.
“Where’re you going?” Cat asks.
“I want to see what they’re doing.”
Cat looks at her like she’s crazy. “You want to go inside a missile silo?”
“That’s right.”
“Where there are three Brown Shirts with weapons?”
“Yup.”
“Why?”
She’s not sure she knows the answer, but it has something to do with unfinished business. Everything has to do with unfinished business.
Cat turns to the Less Thans behind him. Their hunger and exhaustion are obvious; many have fallen asleep in the snow. Cat points to the LT named Sunshine.
“Sunny, get up here,” he says.
Sunshine crawls forward. “What’s up, el bosso?”
“You’re good with a slingshot, right?”
“I’m good with any weapon.” He says it loudly, as if for Hope’s benefit. She rolls her eyes.
“Great. Then you’re coming with us.”
“What? I—”
“We’ll move in on their next trip.”
They wait for the soldiers to return.
9. (#ulink_dfbba173-ffd8-5562-9a27-7d7b6fe2cd01)
IT WAS STRANGE TO be following the same path we’d used to escape from the Compound. Once more, we were racing to something we’d already escaped from. I longed for the day when we could just live in one place.
Red raised his hand and motioned Flush and me to stop. He pointed to Argos, who was sniffing the ground with a sudden intensity. When he lifted his head, snow encrusted his muzzle.
Directly next to his front paws were human footprints.
I lowered myself to the ground and analyzed the treads; they weren’t from the moccasins of the Skull People nor the rags of the Crazies. These were pre-Omega shoes: Brown Shirt boots.
Soldiers.
My body gave an involuntary shudder.
“How many, do you think?” Flush asked.
“Looks like two.”
“Recent?”
“Recent enough.”
The footprints veered inland, away from the river but in the direction of the Compound.
“Do we follow them?” Flush asked.
“Do we have a choice?”
We shared a look, and Argos took off at a trot.
The footsteps were easy enough to track, and by midafternoon Flush pointed to the far horizon. Squinting across the flat tundra of snow, all I could make out was a speck of a distant object, sparkling sunlight.
“Solar panels,” Flush explained. “I used to clean those things.”
That was his job at the Compound. While I was working in the Wheel, he was helping harness energy.
“So we’re close?” Red asked.
“Not just close,” Flush said. “We’re probably above the Compound right now.” We all looked at our feet, envisioning what was on the underside of the ground.
We marched on, eager to reach the Compound entrance … and dreading it just the same.
It was the smell that suddenly led us forward. The footsteps were still there, of course, but we could have reached the Compound from the scent alone.
No, not scent—more like stench.
“What the heck?” Flush said.
Neither Red nor I answered, because we each had a suspicion we didn’t want to voice. The Brown Shirts’ rotting, putrefying bodies outside Libertyville had taught us what death smelled like. But why was that smell so strong out here, especially the closer we got to the Compound?
When the footsteps forked in the direction of the Compound’s main entrance, we abandoned them and went the other way, following the smell instead. We needed to see where it led us.
We were now in a field of corn stubble, dead stalks jutting from the snow. With each passing step, the bile rose in my throat, and my imagination was working overtime. Did we really want to discover the source of this awful stench?
Argos stopped and began to whimper. At first, I thought he was picking up the scent of more footsteps. Then I saw the black oval—a small hole in the middle of the field. It was nearly invisible to the naked eye … and just wide enough in diameter to allow a human body.
“Good boy,” I said, and nudged him out of the way.
I got down on hands and knees and inched forward, then stuck my head into the opening. There was a long wooden ladder that descended into darkness. Where it led was impossible to see. All I knew was that a wave of rancid smells gushed through the narrow opening, like lava spewing from a volcano.
I recoiled, breathing through my mouth to avoid gagging. It was rotten eggs and dead skunk and overflowing outhouses all mixed together. My eyes watered after a single whiff.
“Where’s it lead?” Flush asked.
“Hell,” I answered … and then started making my way down.
10. (#ulink_a889e61c-764d-5df3-b31d-5fe0749d0f47)
THE THREE BROWN SHIRTS reappear, once more lugging wooden crates that they slide into the Humvee. When they return to the silo, Hope, Cat, and Sunshine rise to their feet and scamper across the snow.
They enter through the open gate and ease around the mound, stopping when they reach a thick metal door. Cat nods and the three of them step inside. When Hope’s eyes adjust to the gloom, she sees that they’re in a small antechamber. An elevator door stands straight ahead; to the side is a tube with a metal ladder descending straight down. She bends her head and listens. Voices spiral up.
With a series of hand gestures, Hope motions that she’ll go first, climbing down the ladder into the heart of the silo. She has no idea who’s down there … or what she’s getting into.
When she reaches the bottom, the first thing she sees is an open reinforced steel door. It’s easily two feet thick. Beyond it is a series of tunnels branching off in varying directions. Soldiers’ voices echo from a nearby chamber.
When Cat and Sunshine join her, they head toward the voices. On the way, Hope spies a side room, stacked with dozens and dozens of crates. More weapons.
Hope looks at Cat. Are you seeing all this?
He gives a nod.
As they tiptoe through one of the tunnels, still trying to follow the soldiers’ voices, Hope knows they’re buried beneath countless tons of earth and steel and reinforced concrete. Even if this place took a direct hit during Omega, it would have come out just fine.
They reach a cramped soldiers’ quarters: a couple of bunk beds, a primitive lavatory, a small kitchenette. In former times, soldiers lived here. Now, it’s just storage space, filled floor to ceiling with more crates.
The Brown Shirts’ voices grow suddenly louder, and Hope, Cat, and Sunshine duck into the nearest doorways. When the soldiers approach, Hope lets them walk by … and then she tiptoes forward, following. Just as her hand reaches for her knife, her shoes make a squeaking sound from the melting snow. The trailing Brown Shirt turns around.
His eyes open wide when he sees her. “Hey, you can’t—”
Hope sends her foot into the soldier’s groin. “I just did.”
His face turns strawberry as he collapses to the ground. Cat and Sunshine leap forward. The other Brown Shirts throw their crates and make a run for it, drawing weapons as they do.
“Damn it!” Cat curses, dodging the tossed crates and taking off after the soldiers. Sunshine follows.
At the first intersection of tunnels, one Brown goes right and the other goes left. With a quick nod of his head, Cat motions for Sunshine to follow the one to his right while he goes the other way.
No sooner does Cat step into the tunnel than it goes black; the soldier switched off the lights. Cat freezes, willing his eyes to adjust to the black. He tilts his head to the side, straining to hear. All he can make out is the steady, muffled, faraway sound of the soldier’s breathing. And then the click of a pistol being readied.
Cat freezes. One series of blind gunshots down this narrow tunnel and Cat’s a dead man. He presses himself against the wall.
He stands there, trying to come up with a plan. More than anything, he needs to see. From far behind him, he hears the sound of a scuffle. He can only hope Sunshine subdued the other soldier, leaving just this one.
His body folds in on itself as he lowers himself to the ground. Lying flat on the concrete floor, he removes an arrow from his quiver and nocks it. He reaches out to the side walls and gets his bearings, determining the tunnel’s direction. The fingers of his artificial arm hold the bow in place as he slowly draws back the string, aiming down the center of the tunnel. At the last moment, he alters where he points, so that when he releases the bowstring, the arrow travels no more than fifty yards before it hits a side wall.
“Shit!” the soldier cries, and takes off running.
Cat nocks a second arrow and sends it flying, then hears the satisfying sound of arrowhead entering flesh. The soldier stumbles to the ground, his gun clattering. Even in the dark, Cat is able to race forward and find the wounded soldier lying sprawled in the middle of the tunnel. Cat drags him back to the others.
When all three Brown Shirts are trussed up, Hope interrogates them.
“What’s going on here?” she asks.
The soldiers sit on the floor, wrists and ankles tethered together. They don’t answer her.
“Where’s your camp? Where’re you taking those crates?”
The Brown Shirt with the arrow jutting from his shoulder blade actually laughs. “Why should we tell you?” he says. “The only reason you’re still alive is because my gun jammed.”
He begins to turn away, but Cat grabs the soldier’s nose with his wooden pincers. “She asked you a question. Now, are you gonna answer her or not?”
His face goes pale. He tries to squirm free, but Cat’s grip won’t allow it. “The Eagle’s Nest,” the Brown Shirt sputters.
“What’s that?”
“Headquarters.”
“For who?” Again, the Brown Shirt tries to pull his nose free. Cat just pinches harder. “For who?”
“Chancellor Maddox. Who do you think?”
The hair rises on Hope’s arms, and although she knows it’s her imagination, it feels like both her scars itch at the mention of the chancellor’s name.
“You can say good-bye to those plans,” Sunshine says. “You’re not going there ever again.”
“Actually, they are,” Hope corrects him. “And they’re taking us with them.”
11. (#ulink_aadde47f-e2fc-53ff-b9da-d914e3529350)
THE LADDER GROANED BENEATH my weight. My guess was that this was one of the escape tunnels Goodwoman Marciniak had told us about. Except instead of escaping, we were using this tunnel to enter. A nasty habit we kept falling into.
When my feet landed on solid ground, I whistled for Flush and Red to climb down. Argos stayed up above.
The three of us began feeling our way around in the dark, trying to get a sense of where we were and how we could reach the heart of the Compound. Along the wall, a torch sat perched in its holder, as cold and lifeless as the winter itself. We could have lit it, but a fire would only announce ourselves.
Waving our outstretched hands like branches in a breeze, we let the wall guide us forward. It was slow going, made worse by the smell. We pulled bandannas over our mouths and noses, and every so often we stopped to spit—as if that could rid us of the foul stench.
Finally, we noticed a far-off glow. We moved faster now, aided by the distant light. Although I knew there were soldiers up ahead, I also thought about the food we would find. I could imagine the countless jars of green beans and blueberry jam, the strips of dried meat hanging like icicles in the smokehouse. The more I envisioned them, the more I could practically taste them.
I was thinking so much about my next meal that I stopped paying attention to where I was going. I tripped on something and went flying. When I reached down to push myself up, my hand went squish. I tried with my other hand, but it went squish as well. Then I realized why.
I’d landed on a person.
A dead person.
Many dead persons.
I was elbow deep in decaying corpses, and only the possibility of being discovered by Brown Shirts prevented me from letting out a horrified scream. I clamped my mouth shut and tried to steady my breathing.
“Oh … my … God,” Flush said. “Are those what I think they are?”
I nodded dumbly.
Easing to a standing position, my eyes peered into the dark, head swiveling first one direction and then the other. We were smack-dab in the middle of a burial ground, surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of lifeless, bloated bodies.
Although we wanted to turn around—wanted desperately to get the hell out of there—we knew we couldn’t. We had come this far; we had to see it through. So we inched forward, tiptoeing around and over the piles of bodies.
What I couldn’t figure out was what it was supposed to be. Was this a cemetery—some sacred place of honor—or just a dumping ground? There was no way to tell.
We headed for the faint glow at the end of the tunnel, hoping to get as far away from the bloated corpses as possible. But of course, just when we thought we’d cleared the last of them, there were still more—piles of bodies stacked like firewood stretching as far as we could see.
“Who are they?” Red asked. I understood what he was getting at. He hadn’t been with us when we’d been imprisoned in the Compound. He didn’t know what Skull People looked like.
But when I bent down and tried to examine the dead bodies in the dark, I suddenly wasn’t so sure myself. On the one hand, it seemed their clothes were leather sandals and wool robes and toga-like garments, which made me think Skull People. But right next to them were men wearing rags, their beards long and matted, which made me think they were Crazies. I couldn’t figure it out.
A noise from farther down the tunnel grabbed my attention. Perhaps the very Brown Shirts whose footsteps we’d been following.
The more we tiptoed forward, the brighter it got … and the more we tried to avert our eyes. It was bad enough we were traipsing through this grisly graveyard—no point making things worse by staring at the corpses themselves. And yet, I caught myself glancing down from time to time, looking for people I might recognize. Like my grandmother. Or Goodwoman Marciniak.
Or Miranda.
It didn’t help that every corpse’s expression was the same—one of horror and fear.
In the near distance, torch flames caressed the cave walls with strokes of flickering light. Flush pulled to a stop, and I followed his gaze … to the bloated face of the chief justice.
My heart gave a lurch. I had no reason to feel any sympathy for him. After all, he was the one who’d sentenced us to thirty years’ imprisonment. But he was also the man who’d changed my sentence from the Wheel to the library—and was Miranda’s father.
So maybe she was here as well. My eyes roamed from one face to the next, and while the bodies were discolored and disfigured, there wasn’t one that looked remotely like the girl who’d kissed me as we watched the setting sun.
I breathed a silent sigh of relief.
We moved on. The only sounds were the quiet shuffle of our feet, a persistent dripping from the ceiling, the steady huff of breathing through our mouths.
When we reached a high-ceilinged chamber at the end of the tunnel, we expected to see the soldiers, but they weren’t there. No living person was. Just hundreds of scattered corpses.
“Where’d they go?” Flush whispered, but I didn’t know. I wondered the same thing.
Red pointed to the side. “Was it always like that?”
He was referring to an enormous rock pile that blocked a far entrance, boulders strewn in every direction. I gave my head a shake. “The Crazies were blowing up the place as we were leaving. Guess that’s what happened.”
We eased forward and began exploring. Some of the tunnels were completely closed off, barricaded by heaping mounds of rock. Others looked remarkably the same. The Crazies had managed to destroy only a portion of the Compound.
Flush began winding his way between a series of scattered objects, bending down to inspect a stack of items in the very center of the chamber. “What’s this?” he asked.
I turned and looked … and my heart stopped. I needed no refresher course to know what I was looking at. It wasn’t just dozens of cans of gasoline, but also explosives—C-4 and sticks of dynamite, heaped atop one another like a jumbled pyramid.
Someone intended to reduce the Compound to a pile of rubble.
12. (#ulink_bff86ed5-76bf-5019-91fd-75ffb622069c)
HOPE SITS IN THE passenger seat while a Brown Shirt drives. The other four are crammed in back. Whenever the driver peeks to the side, Hope raises her crossbow so it’s aimed at his chest. The message is clear: Don’t try anything.
Before leaving, she instructed Diana to lead the sixty-some Less Thans to Dodge’s Log Lodges. Hope, Cat, and Sunshine will catch up when they can.
“How often do you make these deliveries?” Hope asks the driver. When he doesn’t answer, Hope nuzzles the crossbow against his side. “I asked you a question.”
“Get that thing outta my ribs, and maybe I’ll tell you.”
“Why don’t you tell me and then I’ll get it out of your ribs.” She presses it into his body.
“Just started,” he says, writhing. “Last week.”
“How many more trips will you make?”
“Till the silo’s empty, I guess.”
“You’re taking all those weapons to Chancellor Maddox?”
“That’s right.”
“Why?”
“Got me,” he says, and Hope jams the crossbow between his ribs. “I’m serious! I don’t know.”
For some reason, Hope believes him.
“Tell me about the Eagle’s Nest,” she says.
“What about it?”
“What kind of place is it?”
“A fortress you’ll never get into,” he says smugly.
Questions swim through Hope’s mind. Why are all those guns in an abandoned missile silo? Why are they being transferred to the chancellor’s headquarters? And why now?
The miles slip by—endless fields of white—as they veer farther and farther north, up toward the rolling foothills of Skeleton Ridge.
It’s late afternoon when the vehicle slows to a stop, and Hope realizes she’s been daydreaming. Something to do with Book. A part of her tries to shake the memory away.
Another part doesn’t.
“There,” the driver says, and Hope looks at where he’s pointing.
Perched atop a nearby mountain peak, swathed in swirls of clouds, is a fortress. Its walls are made of stone, and crenellated parapets give it the appearance of a medieval castle. Hope can’t believe it. What’s something like that doing in the Republic of the True America?
“What is this place?” she asks.
“I told you, the—”
“Eagle’s Nest, I know. But what is it?”
“A ski resort back in the day. Now it’s the chancellor’s HQ. That’s all I know.”
Hope studies it a moment. The turrets seem to snag the clouds, tugging at wisps of white. The Brown Shirt wasn’t kidding; the place is impenetrable.
“How do we drive up there?”
“We don’t.”
Hope turns to him and presses the crossbow into his chest.
“I’m not kidding,” he sputters. “There’re no roads up there in winter.”
“So how—” Hope doesn’t finish the sentence. At just that moment her eyes land on a tiny red square dangling in the sky. It’s an aerial tram slinking up the mountainside on a thick black cable. The soldier was right; there is no way in the world they’ll get up there—not if they have to ride in that.
“Told ya,” he says.
Hope sends an elbow into his side, and the Brown Shirt doubles over.
“Oops,” she says.
As her eyes follow the tram to the top, she tries to figure out how the three of them will make it up there. Because if that’s where Chancellor Maddox is, that’s where Hope needs to go.
“Well, I guess that’s that,” Sunshine offers from the backseat.
“Not necessarily,” Hope says. Even as she says it, she knows what she’s thinking is wildly dangerous and ridiculous even to consider. Still, what does she have to lose?
Three Brown Shirts shuffle through the snowy streets of town. Vehicles pass, weary salutes are exchanged. No one gives them a second glance.
A good thing, too, because wearing the uniforms are Hope, Cat, and Sunshine. The original soldiers are currently hog-tied in the back of the Humvee, down to their boxers, T-shirts, and socks. As a courtesy, Hope threw a blanket over them so they wouldn’t freeze to death.
Sunshine tugs at his uniform. “This thing is scratchy. And two sizes too big. And frankly, I don’t think the color becomes me.”
“I don’t think talking becomes you,” Cat growls. The younger LT shuts up.
Hope barely hears them; she’s thinking about Chancellor Maddox. Hope’s parents always taught their daughters to avoid the whole “eye for an eye” thing. They never said anything about “cheek for a cheek.”
A military transport passes, and Hope and Sunshine bow their heads. The fact that she’s a girl and has tea-colored skin makes her more than slightly conspicuous. Cat, the former Young Officer, fits right in.
“Uh-oh,” Sunshine says.
“What?”
“See for yourself.”
They’re within sight of a small brown building not much bigger than a shed—the tram station—and Hope’s heart sinks. Two armed Brown Shirts stand guard, checking the papers of everyone who intends to board.
“What do you think?” Cat asks, once the trio duck into an alley.
“I’m working on it,” Hope says.
Hope knows the smart thing would be to abandon their plan, to join back up with the others and head for Dodge’s and not worry about Chancellor Maddox and Dr. Gallingham and a silo full of semiautomatic weapons. The important thing is to get out of the territory.
But Hope Samadi is the first to admit she’s never been about the smart thing. Especially when it comes to avenging her family’s deaths.
They crouch in shadows, eyes trained on the two soldiers guarding the tram station.
“You sure about this?” Cat asks.
Hope gives a fierce nod.
“Okay then,” he says. “Let’s do it.”
He gets up and exits the alley, walking purposefully toward the station. When he’s halfway there, Sunshine exits the alley out the other way. Hope takes a deep breath, then rises and shuffles down the street, head lowered. Her short black hair is tucked under her soldier’s cap.
“How’s it going?” Cat asks one of the soldiers at the tram station, an older man with a pockmarked face.
“Papers,” the soldier commands humorlessly. He steps from the shed and extends a hand.
“Right.” Cat pats his pockets. “Now where did I—”
“No papers, no tram. You know the rules.”
“I know. Oh, here …” He removes a folded bundle and passes it to Pockmark.
The Brown Shirt examines the papers carefully, especially the picture. His eyes dart back and forth between the photograph and Cat’s actual face.
“I know, I know,” Cat says, “it doesn’t look like me. That’s what a lot of people say.”
Pockmark grunts. His gaze lands on Cat’s artificial hand. “What happened there?”
“Hunting accident. No biggie.”
Pockmark shuffles through the papers. “How come it’s not listed?”
“It’s not?” Cat asks innocently. Out of the corner of his eye he notices the other soldier inching closer, his index finger gripping the trigger of his M4.
“You sure this is you?” the first soldier asks.
“Of course it’s me. Who else would it be?”
Just as the second Brown Shirt exits the shed and begins to bring the barrel of his gun toward Cat’s chest, a thin wire wraps around his neck and is snapped back. The soldier’s mouth opens and the assault rifle clatters to the ground. Hope pulls at the wire until the soldier’s eyes bulge.
Pockmark drops the papers and reaches for his pistol. Sunshine appears with a wire of his own, and Pockmark has no choice but to drop his weapon.
Cat begins binding the soldiers’ hands.
“Fine, you tied us up, you win,” Pockmark says with a smirk. “But there are a lot more soldiers up top than just the two of us.”
Hope’s doubts start to overwhelm her. What was she thinking, trying to get past the Brown Shirts and enter a secure fortress? Is she really willing to say good-bye to everything—her friends, Book, life itself—just for revenge?
“So I guess that’s that,” Sunshine says.
Hope gives her head a shake. “Nothing changes. I’m still going up there.”
She doesn’t know how, she doesn’t know what she’ll find. She’s not even sure she’ll succeed. But unfinished business is unfinished business, and there’s no turning back from that.
13. (#ulink_81631cb0-217f-505a-a64f-06a41e10845e)
“FREEZE, FLUSH!” I COMMANDED, and he could tell from my tone I wasn’t kidding around. “Now, slowly step away. No big movements.”
“Is it …?”
I gave a nod.
“What’ll happen if it goes off?”
“Let’s not find out, okay?”
I knew what TNT could do. And with that many pounds of explosives—and all those cans of gasoline—the Brown Shirts weren’t just looking to blow up a single chamber; they meant to destroy the entire Compound. Leave no trace. If we didn’t get out of there, we’d be buried beneath tons of rock and earth. Not an image I wanted to dwell on.
Flush backed up, eyes wide. His feet guided him through the maze of explosives. At a turn in the path, his foot accidentally nudged a can of gasoline, and we inhaled sharply. The can teetered but stayed upright. We let out a long, slow breath.
“What now?” Red asked, when Flush finally joined us.
“Forget the food,” Flush said, still breathing heavily. “We gotta get out of here.”
It was hard to argue. We’d come here hoping to find something to eat, maybe even recruit an army. It was obvious neither wish would come true. We had to get out while we could.
Still, there was maybe one thing we could salvage.
“You go on ahead,” I said. “I’ll join up later.”
Flush looked at me like I was crazy. “What’re you talking about? They’re going to blow this place to smithereens. We’ve gotta get out of here.”
“I know, but there’s something I need to do.” He was about to protest, but I didn’t let him. “I’ll be quick. Promise.”
Shaking their heads, they eased back down the tunnel and were swallowed by black. I took a deep breath, then scurried across the chamber.
There had been a time when I’d worked in the Compound. Not just the Wheel, but also the library. It was where I was headed now.
Like a rat in a maze, I raced down one tunnel after another, backtracking whenever I ran into a dead end. I’d never approached the library from this direction, and it took me a while to get my bearings. Every so often I heard the two soldiers’ voices, and I flattened myself against the damp limestone walls, praying for invisibility.
When I finally found the library, I yanked a torch from the wall and lit it with my flint, and the flame cast a flickering light on the countless shelves of books. A thick layer of dust coated everything in sight: books, tables, chairs. My eyes darted across the titles. In the background, the soldiers’ voices grew louder. I had to work fast.
Twenty years ago—following Omega—the country that was formerly the United States of America established a new government. They created new borders, wrote a new set of rules, and confiscated all the maps. It was a new country, they told the citizens. The Republic of the True America. There was no point living in the past. No place for old geography.
For nearly a year, we had been blindly traipsing across the Western Federation Territory, trying to get from one point to the next. But if we actually knew where we were going, wouldn’t we stand a better chance? If the Compound couldn’t give us food or armies, it could at least give us knowledge.
My eyes landed on an oversize book. Its jacket was torn and faded, but the title was clear enough. Atlas of the World. Even though it was decades old, it was exactly what I was looking for.
I slipped the torch into a holder and then pulled the atlas from the shelf. As I laid it on the table, an explosion of dust mushroomed up. My fingers raced through the pages, not stopping until I reached the desired page.
The United States of America.
Poring over it, I took in the green of the South and East, the rugged browns and purples of the West, the five enormous lakes at the top of the page, the vast expanses of blue to the east and west. There was something about it that seemed so different from the world I knew. Organized. Unified. Serene.
I knew it couldn’t have been as idyllic as it looked on the page, but a part of me ached for a return to that life, when everyone was a part of the whole and there weren’t men on ATVs hunting down the weak and different. A return to a world without Less Thans.
Soldiers’ voices broke me from my reverie. I had to hurry.
The book was way too big to take with me, so I ripped out the map’s two adjoining pages, then folded and stuffed them into a back pocket. For good measure, I found a map of the entire world and tore that out as well. Maybe there would come a day when we could safely explore other parts of the planet.
Yeah, right.
Retracing my steps, I made my way back through the Compound, easing around corners to avoid being seen. Despite the cold of this subterranean world, perspiration dotted my forehead, slid down my jaw.
I had just reached the far side of the central chamber when I saw them—the two Brown Shirts whose footsteps we’d trailed here. I ducked behind a boulder and watched as they strode toward the center of the room, joking and laughing. As long as they were there, I was stuck. The tunnel I needed to exit from was on the very opposite side of the chamber.
The soldiers inspected the gas cans and dynamite, taking their time.
Come on, I silently pleaded. Get out of there. Go away.
While I waited, my eyes took in my surroundings. As in the rest of the Compound, there were bodies scattered everywhere, resting atop pools of dried blood. Their stiff limbs were splayed in multiple directions, as if they were reaching for one last gasp of life.
And that’s when I saw her.
Miranda.
She was curled on her side as though she’d just lain down to take a nap—like I could nudge her shoulder and she would wake. But of course she was dead, and had been for some time.
I bent down beside her, easing her body over until she rested on her back. Her hair was pulled back in its customary ponytail, and her face was pale and gaunt. Smudge marks dotted her cheeks, just as they had when I’d seen her last in the Wheel, running off down the tunnel to distract the Crazies.
Even though death had bloated her body, and dried blood smeared her chin and neck, she was still recognizable, her metallic pendant around her neck.
It was Miranda and at the same time it wasn’t. Without her jokes and smile, she was just the empty shell of a body. Not the same Miranda at all. And then it hit me—I would never fully know whether she had actually liked me or if that was just an act. She took those answers with her to the grave.
I have no idea how long I knelt there, taking in Miranda’s face, waiting for her eyes to flutter open. They never did.
It was the sound of the soldiers’ footsteps that brought me back to the present. I peeked around the corner and watched as they made their way to a wall sconce. One of them grabbed the torch and then they left. Silence followed.
I waited for the echo of their footsteps to fade away before I emerged. They were gone. If I hurried, I could carry Miranda through the chamber and back down the tunnel, laying her to rest at her father’s side. It seemed the right thing to do.
I took her cold, stiff hand in mine, and was just preparing to lift her lifeless body into my arms when I heard a new sound. It was distant and faint and oddly urgent, and its muffled quality made it hard for me to identify. I froze in place, trying to figure it out.
When the sound emerged from the tunnel—the very one the two Brown Shirts had departed through—I could suddenly hear its high-pitched crackle. Its racing sputter. Its snakelike spit and sizzle.
It was a fuse … making its way to the cans of gas and TNT.
14. (#ulink_00b08ff0-8046-5cf3-b5c4-bb6351a89628)
HOPE REALIZES THERE’S NO way she can make it up to the Eagle’s Nest riding in the tram. Once the door opens at the top, she’ll be captured and probably killed. So if she can’t ride up in the tram, maybe she can ride up on it.
That’s why she grips the metal plates that connect the tram car to the cable.
“See you in exactly one hour,” Cat says, synchronizing his watch. They know the tram runs exactly every fifteen minutes.
Just as Hope wonders if she’s making a huge mistake, the tram gives a jerk and she is on her way. No turning back now. As the tram rises above the snow-covered boulders and trees, soaring up the mountainside, Cat and Sunshine get smaller and smaller until they’re no bigger than ants.
What she hadn’t counted on was the wind. It was breezy down at the base of the mountain, but up here it’s howling. Gusts tear at Hope’s fingers and screech between the cables. Blankets of snow swirl in mini tornadoes.
The tram sways and lurches, rocking violently side to side. It’s everything Hope can do to hold on. Her fingers are numb from clinging to the biting-cold metal.
She lifts her head and sees a tiny red spot coming her way: the other tram. When one tram goes up, the other automatically comes down. Which means that in a couple of minutes, the two cars will pass side by side, and if there are Brown Shirts in the descending tram, what’s to prevent them from seeing her?
Her mind races, even as the other tram grows larger. Digging her numb fingers into the metal plate, she inches her legs around until the lower half of her body hangs over the far side of the tram. There’s virtually no feeling in her fingers at all, and it’s a minor miracle she’s able to hold on. She doesn’t let herself look down.
The two trams grow close, then near … then pass. Two red squares passing high above the mountainside. No shouts of alarm. No gunshots. Hope lets out a long breath.
A quick glance shows the descending tram is crowded with Brown Shirts, too occupied with their own conversations to spy her. When they’re far away, Hope manages to climb back on top of the tram. The top of the mountain can’t come soon enough.
Although the Eagle’s Nest looked impressive from the bottom of the mountain, it’s even more menacing from up close. Stone walls jut from the cliff face. Spires rise to the skies. It’s an impregnable fortress perched atop a steep mountain.
The tram slows, and Hope can make out the station now. There are two Brown Shirts there, each with an M4 slung over his shoulder. There’s no way she can stay on top of the tram without being seen. She’ll have to think of something else.
Live today, tears tomorrow.
Before the tram shudders to a stop, she leaps from the top, flying through air and landing in a deep snowbank. Of course, just beneath the snow is a granite boulder, and her impact is harder than she expects. It takes everything in her power not to cry out.
She lies there a moment, waiting for the pain in her ankles to subside, listening to hear if the Brown Shirts spotted her. Their laughter and jokes continue as before.
A glance at her watch tells her ten minutes have passed. That leaves only fifty. She needs to get going.
She scrambles up the mountainside, pulling herself up to a ledge. To reach the interior of the fortress, it appears as though soldiers have to walk through a long, damp tunnel burrowed within the mountain. She’s thankful that the few lightbulbs that do work are dim and spaced far apart.
She tugs her cap low and enters the tunnel. The walk seems to take forever, the sound of her footsteps echoing against the stone. The arched stone ceiling drips water.
At the end of the tunnel is a large elevator, and when the door opens she steps inside, admiring the polished brass walls, the immaculate interior. Not what she expected. She presses the button for the top floor, and her stomach drops as the elevator shoots upward. Her hand rests on the handle of her knife, jutting from her waistband.
When she steps out of the elevator, breath leaves her. The exterior wall of the Eagle’s Nest may be a medieval fortress, with its thick stone and crenellated parapets, but the inside is all twenty-first century. Buildings made of chrome and glass reach for the sky. Tinted windows glint in the late-afternoon sun. Everything sparkles and shines.
A glance inside the buildings shows atria with water-spewing fountains, escalators moving people effortlessly up and down, coffee shops and bakeries, banks and grocery stores. It’s like she’s landed on another planet.
And the people—not just soldiers but men and women in suits and lab coats, all in a hurry, moving briskly atop paved, spotless streets. No one pays Hope the least bit of attention. Keeping her head lowered, she edges her way through the fortress, trying not to gawk.
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Tom Isbell
The Release is the thrilling YA conclusion to Tom Isbell’s suspenseful post-apocalyptic Prey series. Perfect for fans of the MAZE RUNNER!Two months have passed since Book, Cat, Hope, and the two others rescued the remaining Less Thans, but no one is safe yet. The group must leave Liberty for good and escape the wolves, the Brown Shirts and the Hunters. Most important, they need to stop Chancellor Maddox before she executes her Final Solution and grows even more powerful.But for Hope, the battle has become personal; she must seek her revenge, no matter what the cost.The PREY trilogy comes to a thrilling conclusion in THE RELEASE, as the group must risk everything – including their lives – in order to defeat their enemies.
Copyright (#u3239141b-d125-57b8-8ebc-3ff8b1da0d77)
HarperVoyager an imprint of
HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpervoyagerbooks.co.uk (http://www.harpervoyagerbooks.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by HarperVoyager 2017
Copyright © Tom Isbell 2017
Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2017
Cover photographs © Shutterstock.com (http://Shutterstock.com)
Tom Isbell asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780007528264
Ebook Edition © February 2017 ISBN: 9780007528257
Version: 2016-12-21
Dedication (#u3239141b-d125-57b8-8ebc-3ff8b1da0d77)
To Paul and Mary Isbell, who loved unconditionally.And to Pat, always.
Contents
Cover (#u25a205b0-400a-5123-a7c1-a57a545c548b)
Title Page (#u369be015-4d8c-5317-a4ac-5e036f7cf2ac)
Copyright
Dedication
Part One: Enemies
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Part Two: Allies
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Part Three: Release
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Also By Tom Isbell
About the Publisher
PART ONE (#u3239141b-d125-57b8-8ebc-3ff8b1da0d77)
ENEMIES (#u3239141b-d125-57b8-8ebc-3ff8b1da0d77)
I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
—ALBERT EINSTEIN
PROLOGUE (#u3239141b-d125-57b8-8ebc-3ff8b1da0d77)
FROZEN SLOPES STRETCH THEIR icy fingers to leaden skies, and winter gales sweep clean the vast, white prairies. Though captured, he escapes. Though beaten down, he rises, even as the mountains rumble and the waters rush and roar.
But enemies persist. The dead and dying litter the long road to freedom, and many more must perish.
My beloved …
1. (#u3239141b-d125-57b8-8ebc-3ff8b1da0d77)
THE NIGHT WAS COLD, and each time I breathed out, my mouth released a haze of frost. I squinted past the cloud of white, peering into the dark. They were out there. It was just a matter of time before they showed themselves.
A tap on the shoulder made me jump. Diana, come to relieve me.
“My turn,” she said.
“Already?”
“Unless you want to stay longer.”
“Nope, I’m good.”
I pushed myself up from the snow and stretched. My toes and fingers were numb. My joints creaked. Argos uncurled from my side and also stretched, extending his back legs.
“Anything?” Diana asked.
“Some yellow earlier. Nothing recent.”
“How many?”
“A dozen. Maybe more.”
She nodded grimly. “They do anything?”
“Just circled.” Then I added, “They came closer than last night.”
We shared a look. Diana knew what I was talking about without having to say the words. Yellow meant wolves, the color referring to their eyes. The more yellow, the more wolves. Lately, the numbers were increasing, and the packs had started coming closer. The only thing that kept them at bay was an enormous ring of fire we’d built around our camp. We stoked it day and night like some primitive tribe from centuries past. So far, no wolves had dared go through it.
We intended to keep it that way.
The avalanche had wiped out all of Camp Liberty, flattening buildings, vehicles … and several dozen Brown Shirts. Their decomposing bodies released a sickening aroma of rotting, putrefying flesh. Just the thing to attract roaming wolf packs. Each night the wolves materialized from the mountains, alternately ripping at the corpses with their razor teeth and sending piercing cries to the starry sky.
As if the wolves weren’t bad enough, just days after the avalanche, howling swirls of snow came racing down Skeleton Ridge and descended on the No Water, wreathing our shantytown in five-foot drifts. What was cleared away one morning was buried in snow the next. Between the snow and wolves, we were prisoners in our own camp.
Diana took my place on the ground, folding her willowy body behind the barricade. She pulled her auburn-colored hair back into a ponytail and readied a bow and arrow. I found some logs and tossed them onto the nearest bonfires. Five hundred embers danced to heaven. I was about to go but found myself lingering, wiping the bark from my hands.
“What?” Diana asked, noticing I hadn’t left.
It was a long time before I answered.
“How’s Hope?”
Diana gave a small sigh. “She’s fine, Book.”
“She’s really okay?”
“No better or worse since the last time you asked—which was last night.”
“Have you seen her?”
“Hardly anyone sees her. You know that. Now get out of here.”
I started to leave.
“And Book?”
“Yeah?” I turned to her, hopeful.
“Stop thinking about her.”
That was what Diana told me every night. Stop thinking about her. There was little chance I could follow that advice.
I shuffled back through the snowy labyrinth of Libertyville. That was the name we gave our makeshift town of rickety huts. The buildings were an unsightly collection of recovered pieces from Camp Liberty. Bits of planking here, corrugated metal there, tree branches acting as joists and beams. A ramshackle village whose blue-tarped roofs dipped low from snow. Temporary housing.
Although we often talked about marching out of there, it would have been mass suicide. It was the dead of winter, and there were still Less Thans so emaciated they could barely walk. We’d rescued seventy-five of them from the Quonset hut that night two months ago, but malnutrition and sickness had taken the lives of four the first week alone. The long winter claimed three others. We couldn’t be on our way until all sixty-eight of them regained their strength—whenever that was.
Argos and I stepped into the shack that we called home. It was nearly as cold inside as it was out.
On the floor were seated Twitch and Flush, bent over a sheet of paper. Flush read a series of numbers out loud.
“Any progress?” I asked.
“There’s gotta be a pattern,” Twitch answered, tapping the paper with his fingers. “I just can’t figure it out.”
“And you’re sure they’re not random numbers?”
“Two people with the same series of thirteen numbers? Not likely.”
Back when we had been digging through the snow looking for building materials, we’d come across Colonel Thorason’s body. In his front shirt pocket was a slip of paper. On it was written a long string of numbers.
4539221103914
When we uncovered another Brown Shirt and found the exact same numbers in his shirt pocket, we figured it was a code of some kind. So far, we’d had no luck translating it.
“I keep hoping it’s a letter-number cipher,” Twitch went on. “Those aren’t so tough to crack. But if it’s a letter shift cipher, then things get tricky. You gotta create a whole grid to solve it.”
Leave it to Twitch to know all this. He’d been blinded by a mortar when the Brown Shirts ambushed us last summer. Although it slowed him down physically, it didn’t faze him a bit when it came to problem solving. The code was just another puzzle he was determined to break.
In addition to Flush and Twitch, Red was also in the room, carving a cedar branch. Like Flush and Twitch, he had been in that original group of Less Thans who escaped Camp Liberty. His shame for abandoning us in favor of Dozer was as easy to read as the radiation splotch on his face. There was never a moment when he wasn’t making arrows or tending to the survivors.
“Anything?” he asked. The same question we asked one another every night.
“Some yellow a couple hours ago.”
“More or less than last night?”
“Definitely more. And getting closer.”
It was not the answer anyone wanted to hear.
I tossed some wood into the stove and poked the logs. As I stretched out before the flames, pinpricks of heat danced up my toes and fingers. Argos circled and lay down. He was practically fully grown now, the scars from various wolf attacks pockmarking his fur like badges of honor.
Cat entered and we went through the same series of questions. Any yellow? How many? How close? That kind of thing.
The fact was, we were fixated on wolves—could think of little else. They circled us each night, taunting us with their howls, their greenish-yellow eyes poking through the dark like devil fingers. There was never a time when they weren’t on our minds.
“How much longer?” I asked, absently petting Argos.
“Till what?”
“Till they finish off the corpses?”
Cat shrugged. “Another day. Maybe two.”
He bent down and picked up two rocks—one quartz, one flint—and began knapping them together, making arrowheads. He held the flint by wedging it between his armpit and artificial limb. His movements were so effortless, you almost got the feeling he’d been missing an arm his entire life. Typical Cat.
“And when they’re done with the corpses?” I asked.
He shrugged. “I guess they’ll look somewhere else.” The fire crackled and Cat knapped the rocks. Then he turned to Flush and asked, “We’re still waiting for spring?”
“As soon as the snow melts,” Flush said.
“We can’t leave any sooner?”
“Not as long as there are LTs who can’t get out of bed.”
“We could build a sled and drag them along.”
Flush shook his head. “Better to wait until we can all walk on our own.”
I knew what was going on in Cat’s mind. It wasn’t just wolves he was thinking about. We had seen for ourselves the realities of the Republic of the True America: Hunters tracking down Less Thans, experiments on Sisters, Brown Shirts locking up LTs and letting them die in their bunks.
Since Chancellor Maddox had somehow escaped the avalanche—Dr. Gallingham, too—we knew we couldn’t remain in Libertyville a second longer than necessary. Our only salvation—and curse—was the snow, which kept the Brown Shirts away … but also kept us captive.
To lift people’s spirits—and also celebrate a year’s worth of birthdays—we’d decided to throw a party the next night. It wouldn’t solve our problems, but maybe it would get our minds off wolves and a dwindling food supply—at least for one evening.
When I climbed into bed, Cat continued to strike rocks, and Flush and Twitch were still poring over numbers. As I settled into sleep, it wasn’t wolves or Chancellor Maddox or Dr. Gallingham I thought about.
It was Hope. I hadn’t seen her since we’d rescued her from the bunker. For the past eight weeks, she had spent her days hunting game in the foothills, returning only when the sun was setting and she could cloak herself in darkness, closeting herself in her tent on the far edge of Libertyville. I wondered when I’d see her again.
If I’d see her again.
My eyes drifted shut and I fell into a deep sleep, only partially aware of the wolves’ haunting howls from the other side of the ring of fire.
2. (#u3239141b-d125-57b8-8ebc-3ff8b1da0d77)
AFTERNOON SUNLIGHT BOUNCES OFF the snow as Hope field dresses a squirrel. Her hands and knife move in an acrobatic flurry. She’s done it so many times, it’s become a kind of dance. Knife in the underside, tug at the skin, slice off the front legs, remove the skin, dig out the entrails, chop off the head, cut the back feet, pull out the organs—done. She can do it in her sleep.
Hope does all this in the privacy of an aspen grove. Anything to hide herself. While she’s never considered herself a vain person, there is something about these scars—these twin Xs on her cheeks—she finds disgusting. Repulsive, even. They’re like brands for marking livestock, as if she were someone else’s property. The thought sickens her.
It’s why she keeps to herself. Why she wears a hoodie and pulls the drawstrings tight. Why she avoids the stares of well-meaning friends.
Why she avoids Book.
Hunting is her refuge. It not only lets her provide food for the others, it gives her an excuse to get away from camp. And the fact is, she’s good at it. Setting traps and tracking prey have always been her specialty. She can thank her father for that.
It’s the only thing she can thank him for. Now that she knows he collaborated with the enemy, working alongside Dr. Gallingham and injecting patients with experimental drugs, she finds it best not to think of him. Yes, she’ll use the skills he taught her, but that’s it. No more honoring his memory.
She plops the skinned squirrel in her pack, resets the trap, and notices the late-afternoon sun sneaking past the tree trunks, announcing the coming dusk. Time to return to Libertyville. Skeleton Ridge is no place to be after dark.
Her lips purse and she gives a sharp whistle. A moment later, a whistle answers. It’s Diana, hunting on the other side of the aspens. That’s their signal to start back down the mountain.
Hope reaches back and removes the pair of skis strapped to her back—skis she made from birch planks. She slips her boots into the bindings, pulls them taut, and takes off down the mountain.
Her hair is longer now, black and flowing, and the crisp winter wind sails through it. It’s not as long as her mother’s was, but it’s getting there. Closer to how it was before Chancellor Maddox ordered it chopped off way back when.
Partway down the mountain, something catches Hope’s eye: two dark objects, not much bigger than her hand, lying still and silent atop the snow. She angles the skis in that direction, shooshing to a stop. It’s obvious what she’s looking at: two field mice, their bodies stiff from death. Hope looks around. The mice aren’t from any trap, and it’s unlikely they died from natural causes one right next to the other. So what are they doing here? More importantly, why haven’t they been eaten?
She grabs one by the tail and lifts it in the air.
“What’ve you got there?” Diana asks, appearing at her side.
“Nothing,” Hope says, startled. She throws the stiff rodents into her pack. “Just a couple of mice.”
“Better than nothing. And it wouldn’t hurt for you to eat some of that.”
“We’ll see.”
“I mean it.”
“I know.”
It’s an ongoing debate. Diana is convinced Hope isn’t eating enough, and Hope tells her there’s hardly enough food for the sick and wounded, let alone the healthy ones.
She’s still thinking about the mice when Diana says, “Book was asking about you last night.”
“So?”
“So what I do I tell him?”
Hope pulls up her hoodie and tightens it. “Tell him whatever you want.”
“But he keeps asking and I don’t know—”
“Tell him I’m busy,” she snaps. “Tell him I’m trying to feed two Sisters and seventy-three Less Thans. Tell him someone needs to do the hunting around here.”
Diana looks down at her hands before asking, “And tonight? I can’t change your mind?”
Hope gives her head a shake and turns away. She has no interest in going to parties. Has even less interest in being seen.
“You know, you’re going to have to go out sometime. You can’t stay shut up the next couple months.”
“I get out,” Hope says. “I’m out now.”
“You know what I mean.”
Hope says nothing. The sun angles lower.
“Suit yourself,” Diana says, “but I hate being the lone girl.” Ever since Scylla was killed by the avalanche, Diana and Hope are the only two Sisters, surrounded by all these Less Thans.
“I’m not worried about you.”
“I’m not worried about me either. It’s those poor LTs I’m thinking about.” She shoots Hope a wink and pushes off.
As they ski single file down the mountain, headed for the ring of fire encircling Libertyville, Hope thinks about Book. The truth is, he can ask about her all he wants, but Hope won’t let him see her this way. She won’t accept his pity. As much as she likes Book, as much as she remembers every last detail of their time together, she knows there’s no going back. Not now. Not ever.
She zips down the mountain, ignoring the tears that press against her eyes. She blames them on the cold, on the setting sun, on anything but the truth.
Live today, tears tomorrow.
Later, after Diana has gone to the party and Hope can hear the muted, faraway sounds of laughter and music, she reaches beneath the tarp wall and sticks her hand into the snow, fishing around until she finds the two dead mice. She hasn’t had a chance to examine them since they returned, and the thought of them bothers her. At a time when every single person and animal is foraging for food, how is it that two mice died so oddly, and are left uneaten? It doesn’t make sense.
She pinches one by the tail and dangles it. It exudes a whiff of rot, and her eyes pore over the brownish-gray rodent. Although there’s no blood, she spies something she didn’t notice before: the belly puckers unnaturally, as though the two seams of skin don’t quite match up. She lowers the mouse to the table and pokes at it, revealing a razor-thin gash that runs from head to tail. An eviscerating slice like from a sharpened knife.
Or a wolf’s claw.
She examines the other mouse and finds the same. Another slit that runs the length of the tiny animal’s belly.
Okay. So a wolf killed these mice. But why go to that trouble and then not eat them?
Hope has heard the wolves at night, gobbling up the avalanche victims. If they’re as famished as the LTs and Sisters, why leave two mice to fester and rot?
Unless …
The hair rises at the back of Hope’s neck as she comes to a sudden realization. A moment later, she rushes out of the tent.
3. (#u3239141b-d125-57b8-8ebc-3ff8b1da0d77)
GROWING UP IN CAMP Liberty, we never celebrated birthdays. The only exception was when we turned seventeen, because that was the day we went through the Rite. There was a big ceremony on the parade ground, and following that, the birthday boys—the graduates—were shipped off to become the new lieutenants of the Western Federation Territory.
Or so we were told.
The truth was that the Less Thans were sold off to Hunters to be tracked down and slaughtered like prey. A very different future than what was promised us.
But now that we were free of Camp Liberty and there were a number of us who had turned or were about to turn seventeen, we decided to throw a proper birthday party. This was going to be a genuine celebration.
A couple of the guys even made decorations out of paper they’d found blowing around in camp. Personally, I enjoyed the irony of it. I doubt that anyone ever dreamed that the official Republic of the True America stationery would be turned into party hats and paper chains.
Some of the LTs had created a stage at one end of the mess hall and were performing skits. At the moment, two guys were prancing around in an improvised horse costume, and that was getting huge laughs, especially when the rear of the horse got separated from the front.
I found Flush and Twitch sitting at a table in the very back of the mess hall, poring over sheets of paper.
“You’re missing the fun,” I said.
“Some of us are preoccupied,” Flush said, cocking his head toward Twitch.
“I can still hear, you know,” said Twitch. “I know you’re talking about me. And I bet you’re cocking your head in my direction.”
Flush’s face turned bright red, and Twitch pointed at the paper.
“Look at this,” he said. “We’ve started working out some combinations.”
I bent down and inspected the paper. An elaborate chart showed numbers along the side and letters across the top.
“If we choose the column where ‘four’ is ‘n,’” Twitch went on, “then that means that ‘five’ is ‘o,’ ‘six’ is ‘p’ and so on. So then we get something like—well, read it, Flush.”
Flush picked up the paper and tried to pronounce what they’d come up with. “Nomsllkk-mskn,” he said.
Nomsllkk-mskn. If it was a word, it wasn’t an obvious one.
“I admit,” Twitch said, “it’s nothing definite yet, but if we added some more vowels in there, who knows?”
“You might be onto something,” I said, patting him on the shoulder. “Keep at it.”
Flush rolled his eyes. “Now we’ll never enjoy the party,” he moaned good-naturedly.
“When we get to the Heartland,” I said “the first thing we’ll do is throw a real party. And we’ll have those foods we’ve always read about.”
“You mean like cake and ice cream?”
“And cookies and brownies and everything else we can think of.”
Flush turned back to Twitch. “What’re you waiting for? Let’s crack this code so we can get out of here and celebrate.”
I turned back to the stage. The rear of the horse was chasing the front, trying to catch up. It had been a long time since I’d heard my friends laugh so much.
The one actor had just about caught up with the other when a voice interrupted them.
“We need to leave.”
I knew that voice. Had dreamed about that voice.
The actors hesitated, unsure if they should go on or not.
“We need to leave,” the voice said again, and the audience laughter came to an abrupt halt.
Heads turned. Standing by the back door, concealed in shadows with a hoodie drawn tight around her face, was Hope. It had been forever since I’d seen her, and I could feel the butterflies in my stomach.
“We know that, Hope,” Flush said, stepping toward her. “That’s what we’ve been talking about in our meetings.”
“I mean soon.”
“Exactly. Once the snow melts—”
“Tomorrow. The next day at the latest.”
Jaws hung open. Eyes widened. We’d just lived through the most dangerous year of our lives … and she was proposing something to top even that.
“You’re kidding, right?” asked Flush.
“I’m not.”
“But we’ve got three Less Thans who can barely get out of bed. It’s the middle of winter, the snow’s practically to our knees, and we don’t have nearly enough food to take with us on a trip.”
Others began chiming in; everyone had an opinion and wanted to voice it.
Hope listened to it all, calmly nodded, then walked down the aisle toward the front of the mess hall. She tossed two objects onto the stage, where they landed with a muffled thud. The two actors backed up and everyone grew quiet.
“What are those?” Flush asked.
“Mice,” she said.
“So?”
“The wolves killed them.”
He shrugged. “Wolves kill mice all the time.”
“They didn’t eat them.”
It slowly sank in what she was getting at.
“They’ve developed a taste for humans,” she went on, her voice eerily calm. “They’re no longer interested in other animals. It’s people or nothing.”
Her words were followed by a silence louder than the avalanche.
“That may be true,” Flush said, “but that doesn’t mean—”
“We leave tomorrow,” she insisted. “We rejoin the Sisters we left behind at the lake and go from there.”
An LT named Sunshine let loose a high-pitched laugh. “Now you’re dreaming. Like we’re gonna be able to make it all that way—especially with them.” He pointed in the direction of the infirmary, housing those Less Thans still too weak to walk.
“We’ll get there,” Hope said.
“Right. And the world’s flat.”
I understood where Sunshine was coming from, but Hope was right. If we didn’t leave soon, there was a chance we wouldn’t leave at all.
Again, a chorus of voices chimed in, most claiming that Hope was being alarmist. Chicken Little, and all that.
I listened to the debate, then looked at Hope to gauge her reaction. But she’d already gone, slipped out without anyone noticing.
4. (#u3239141b-d125-57b8-8ebc-3ff8b1da0d77)
IT WAS FOOLISH, LEAVING the tent like that, exposing herself to the stares of others. But after examining those mice, Hope knew things that others didn’t. If she didn’t say something, they’d wait until springtime to leave and then it’d be too late. That’s why she spoke up.
Well, that’s the main reason. There’s also the matter of unfinished business.
She’s preparing to go to bed when she catches a glimpse of herself in the shard of mirror that hangs on a side wall. She stands there a moment, studying her face. Each time she happens to see her reflection, she is startled. The Xs are as unsightly as ever. As though it’s someone else she’s looking at, some stranger. Definitely not Hope.
She draws her arm back and sends an elbow flying, smashing it into the mirror. The glass shatters, obliterating her reflection. Blood drips from her elbow.
As she wraps the wound in cloth, she wonders if they can do it. Can they really make it all the way to Helen and the other Sisters, huddled in Dodge’s Log Lodges on the shores of a distant lake? Can they cover that kind of distance with little food and no shelter?
She snuggles beneath a thin blanket on the floor—a bed would be entirely too foreign—and as she does most every night, she fingers the locket around her neck. She can sense the stares of her mom and dad from the miniature photos.
Not for the first time, her fingers edge away from the locket and move toward her face, tracing the raised scars on her cheeks, down one diagonal and up the other. The two Xs remind her of what she wants.
Revenge.
For her mother. For her father. For her sister, Faith. It’s not that she doesn’t want to escape from the territory and save the country and all that other rah-rah stuff. But mainly she wants revenge. And she will get it … or die trying.
She settles in for sleep, comforted by the soothing tap tap of raindrops on the tarp. As she’s drifting off, she remembers Book’s expression when she threw the mice on the stage. He was as surprised as everyone else, but she got the feeling, from a single glance, that he agreed with her. Which is why she was hurt he didn’t say anything in support of her. Still, even if he had—
She jolts up in bed.
Something’s not right. She replays her thoughts, stopping when she remembers the soothing sound of raindrops. Straining to listen, she hears it again: tap tap. It sounds like raindrops, but there’s no way it can be raining—not in the dead of winter. She whips into her clothes, grabs her bow and a quiver of arrows, and hurries out of the tent.
The night is cold and clear. No moon, which makes the stars glimmer extra bright.
Now that she’s outside, she can hear the sound more clearly, and she realizes the tap tap is more a pitter-pat, a muffled padding. As much as she doesn’t want to believe it, she knows the sound. A wolf. When they run, they do so on their toes, but when they stalk, their whole pad hits the ground.
This one’s stalking.
Hope follows the sound, her moccasins slipping through freshly fallen snow. The tendons of her knuckles glow white as she grips the bow. She still can’t believe it. How did a wolf get past the ring of fire?
She comes upon a single set of tracks. Even in scant starlight, she’s able to make out the distinctive wolf print: the triangular pad, the four oval toes in perfect symmetry. The good news is that it’s just one wolf. The bad news is that it’s big. The paw prints are larger than the palm of her hand.
She picks up her pace, her breath ballooning in front of her. Rounding the corner of a hut, she comes to a small intersection. Before her is the infirmary. The wolf prints lead right to the flap that serves as the lone entrance.
Hope tiptoes forward, parting the flap with an outstretched elbow.
Her eyes adjust to the dark, and it takes her a moment to locate the wolf. It’s as big as she feared, and prowling the aisles. Its fur is singed from where it went through the fire. She assumes that at any moment it’s going to stop and attack one of the three Less Thans there, but instead it keeps moving—as though it’s checking out the situation. Counting its prey.
The wolf rears back its head and sends a piercing howl toward the ceiling. The sound sends a shudder down Hope’s back.
The emaciated Less Thans start to wake. One sits up in bed.
“Don’t move,” Hope whispers fiercely.
They obey. The wolf turns and stares at her, just as she stares at it. For the longest time, neither of them moves. Then Hope slowly nocks an arrow and draws the bowstring back. But just as she’s about to shoot, the wolf leaps forward, landing on the Less Than who’s sitting up. Hope wants to release the arrow, but the wolf is smart enough to get behind the LT, shielding itself.
Trying to get a better angle, Hope runs to another aisle. But every time she moves, so does the wolf, repositioning itself behind the sick LT. Hope could run back in the other direction, but the wolf will just move again. Meanwhile, it continues to howl, its piercing wail blasting her ears.
“Have it your way,” she mutters, and draws the bowstring back until her thumb tickles her cheek. She waits until the wolf is midhowl, and then she sends the arrow flying. It zips through the infirmary in a horizontal blur, missing the LT by an inch and impaling the wolf in the neck. It shrieks, then crumples to the ground.
The infirmary comes alive. The Less Than is sobbing hysterically, and there are startled cries as other LTs race in from the party. But even as they come running to find out what’s going on, Hope is headed the other way. She’s taken care of the situation, and now she’s getting out of there.
Picking her way through the snowy back alleys of Libertyville, Hope’s heart races. The thing she can’t let go of is that howl. That wasn’t some mournful wail, some aimless baying at the invisible moon. That was a call to arms.
A signal to attack.
5. (#ulink_077ecc16-d2fe-51af-b728-7af952f4fe77)
WE LEFT THE NEXT morning.
There were those who disagreed with our decision, but Hope was right. We had to get out of there.
“That wasn’t a wolf attack last night,” Hope said as we were tying up the last of the packs. “It was a scouting mission. That thing was here to let the rest of the pack know what it’d seen.”
It was crazy what she was saying. Ridiculous, even. But I knew that she was right. Like her, I had seen the attack on Skeleton Ridge.
That didn’t mean we were ready to leave. For all the reasons Flush had voiced earlier, we weren’t even remotely prepared for this. But the alternative was worse.
The LT who’d been pounced on by the wolf died during the night, as much from shock as from the attack itself. With no shovels and little time, we topped the grave with rocks to prevent the wolves from unearthing the corpse.
“What’s the point?” Sunshine mocked. “If those wolves want him, they’ll get him. Nothing we can do to stop ’em.”
“The rocks’ll stop them,” I replied.
“The rocks’ll slow ’em down.” Then he added, “Probably better for us if the wolves did get him. That way they won’t come chasing after us.”
No one bothered to respond, and Sunshine ran a hand through his greasy hair. It was so blond it was practically white, and when he laughed, his cheeks turned bright red. He looked like a demented elf. Although he was one of the emaciated ones we’d rescued from Liberty, you wouldn’t know it now. He was brash to the point of cocky. People put up with him because he was a fellow Less Than … and because he was good with a slingshot. We had a feeling we’d need every fighter we could get.
When we finished creating the burial mound, a number of us stood awkwardly around the grave while I recited a poem.
No man is an island,
Entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
A little John Donne to feed our souls—not that anyone had the faintest idea what the poem was or who wrote it.
Our number was down to seventy-four.
After placing our few belongings in the middle of tarps and bundling them into Yukon packs, we squinted into the morning sun.
“Let’s get out of here,” Cat said, impatient to get going.
“Which direction?” Flush asked.
“Where else? East to the river.” It’s how we’d gotten here, and it was how we’d get out.
Cat took the lead, finding an opening in the ring of fire’s dying flames, and everyone else followed. We carried supplies and dragged the two wounded on triangular stretchers through the calf-high snow.
I was the last to leave. I turned and took a final look at Libertyville, at what had once been Camp Liberty. I hoped to never lay eyes on this part of the Western Federation Territory again.
6. (#ulink_c23fd75b-e541-5eae-8bb7-70043ce1615a)
THE SNOW IS DEEP, the going slow, and by the time they reach the river—a winding sheet of ice—they’re huffing for air. They head south along its banks.
The sun is a blinding splotch of yellow that bounces off the snow and spears their eyes. Hope is glad for the hood. It shields her eyes from the glaring sun … and conceals her scars from others.
“Hey.”
Book is suddenly walking alongside her. She angles her head in the other direction.
“You doing okay?” he asks.
“Doing fine.” There is defiance in her voice. Even a touch of contempt. Only the weak and helpless accept pity. Hope is neither of those.
“You sure?”
“I said so, didn’t I?”
Book allows the silence to stretch between them. All around them is the muffled thud of footsteps as seventy-four stragglers wade through snow.
“What do you want, Book?” Hope finally asks.
“Isn’t it obvious?”
“Not to me, it’s not.”
“I’m looking for someone—someone I used to know who’s gone missing.”
“Who’s that?”
“A girl named Hope.”
Hope gives her head a violent shake. “Not gonna happen.”
“Why? Because of those?” He gestures vaguely to the Xs on her face. “You think you’re the only one around here with scars?”
“No …”
Book tugs up a sleeve and displays the crisscrossing lines on his wrist. “What do you call these?”
“Sure, they’re scars …”
“But?”
“They’re hidden. You’re not disfigured like me.”
“Right, because yours are on your face, that makes them somehow worse,” he says sarcastically.
“That’s right.”
“Because everyone can see them, that somehow makes them more noticeable than everyone else’s.”
“Exactly.”
“And my limp?”
“That’s different and you know it.”
“Is it? What about my internal scars? How about those?”
“What’re you talking about?”
“Feeling responsible for the deaths of my friends. Those scars don’t heal.”
“You think I don’t have those, too?”
“I know you have them. That’s my point. All of us do.”
She stops abruptly. “So these are just nothing?”
“I don’t care about those. No one does.”
“I do!”
Her voice carries farther than she intends, and Diana makes a move to come to Hope’s side. Hope shakes her off.
“I care about these scars,” Hope says in a fierce whisper. “I care because I know that’s all that people see. They can say they don’t, that they can look past them, that all they really see is my soul, but that’s bullshit and you know it.” She whips the hoodie back so that the Xs catch the full brunt of sunlight. The scars pucker the skin; shadows crisscross her cheeks. “Tell me you don’t see these.”
Book shrugs. “I don’t see them.”
“And you see into my soul.”
“I see into your soul.”
Hope grabs Book’s hand and slaps it against her cheek, resting his fingers on the cold, raised edges of her scars. “And now?”
“They don’t exist.”
She throws his hand away. “You’re crazier than I thought.”
Then she pulls the hood around her face and stomps off, joining the seventy-some others who trudge past Book in the vast expanse of snow.
7. (#ulink_773f34ed-dbdd-5212-82e1-c4bdd11e045a)
HOPE WOULD HAVE NOTHING more to do with me the rest of that day. Or the day after that. When we set up camp each evening, I put my bedroll on one arc of the circle, and she put hers directly opposite. Then she’d go off in search of food, not returning for hours.
Each evening, we huddled around our fires, pockets of muffled conversation drifting from one group to the other.
“What do you think it was like?” Flush asked out of the blue one night.
“What what was like?”
“The day the bombs fell. Omega.”
“Frightening,” an LT said.
“Confusing,” another added.
“Terrifying,” a third chimed in.
“For the living, yeah,” Twitch said.
We turned to him. His blind eyes probed the night.
“Ninety-nine percent of the earth’s population was probably eliminated in a matter of seconds. They didn’t feel a thing. They might have been the lucky ones.”
His words settled on us. The fire popped and crackled. The world had never seemed so still.
“I wonder which country started it,” Flush said.
“Why’s it matter?” Cat said, whittling a branch. “What matters is it’s left to us to pick up the pieces.”
“Yeah, but aren’t you curious?”
“Why? There’s no way we’ll ever know.”
Cat was right—we’d never find out the answer to that—but it did make me wonder about something else.
“Why do they hate us?” I asked. The question had burned within me ever since I found out we were considered Less Thans. As I spoke, I petted Argos. I could feel the ribs protruding beneath his fur.
“Who?” Flush asked.
“Everyone. Brown Shirts, Hunters, Crazies. Why do they all want us dead?”
“You know what they say,” Twitch said. “There are three reasons to hate someone. Either we have something they want.”
“Yeah, right,” Flush said sarcastically.
“Or we’re a threat.”
“Not likely.”
“Or we’re just different.”
Flush didn’t respond to that one. No one did.
“But why the Hunters?” I asked. “I mean, I can maybe understand the Crazies not liking us—they’re just crazy. And the Brown Shirts have somehow been indoctrinated to think we’re evil. But what do the Hunters have against us? What’s their deal?”
“Maybe they just like shooting defenseless people,” Cat said.
“Yeah, maybe.” But we all knew there was more to it than that.
By the fifth day after leaving Libertyville, our pace had become glacial—a combination of fatigue and lack of food. Although Hope often returned with a rabbit or a squirrel, sometimes even a porcupine, it wasn’t enough. Not to fill over seventy bellies. We were slowly starving to death.
Our rest breaks dragged out. We covered fewer miles. Each day started later and ended sooner. Although the sun brought warmth, its sharp rays bit our skin, chapped our lips, burned our cheeks red. Our eyes formed a permanent squint from staring into sunlight.
It was obvious we couldn’t go on like this.
“We need to go to the Compound,” I said on the sixth afternoon, as we were gathering wood.
“What’re you talking about?” Flush asked.
“The Compound—where we were held captive by the Skull People.”
“I know what it is.”
“We need to return there.”
Everyone around me stopped what they were doing.
“But that’s, like, miles and miles out of the way,” Flush said.
“I know.”
“The fastest way to Dodge’s is if we cut across the river and head east, not go south to the Compound. And for the sake of the sick, for the sake of all of us, we need to get to Dodge’s as soon as possible.”
“I don’t disagree.”
“Not to mention the fact that the last time we were at the Compound, the Hunters and Crazies were having a field day massacring the Skullies.”
“I remember.”
“So why do you think—”
“There might be food there.” That was the magic word: food. “You’re right, the Compound was attacked. But that place was so well stocked, there have gotta be some hidden rooms where there’s still food. Just imagine what that could do for us.”
The thought of eating smoked meats and canned vegetables made my mouth water.
“But Book, we don’t know who controls the Compound,” Twitch said.
“True, but what if the Hunters and Crazies just attacked and left? What if they’re not there anymore? Not only that”—here I hesitated—“what if there are survivors? Skull People, still alive. If so, we could bring ’em with us.”
Flush cleared his throat before speaking. “I don’t mean to sound heartless or anything, but why would you want to do that?”
“First of all, because they helped us escape.”
“After they locked us up.”
“And secondly, because they have skills. They’re smart—they can help us.”
“If you’re thinking of your little friend Miranda,” Diana said, “don’t forget she was a traitor.”
It was the first time anyone had uttered her name in months. Miranda. The girl who’d kissed my cheek as we watched the sun set. The same girl who’d been spying for her father.
“At first she was, yeah. But if it wasn’t for her, we wouldn’t have gotten out of those caves. She created the diversion.” No one responded—not Diana, certainly not Hope—and I went on. “Listen, we’re not going to make it out of this territory unless we get some food. Like, soon. And the Compound is the only possibility I can think of.”
“But if the Crazies are still around—” Flush began.
“We take that chance. We don’t have a choice.”
The silence stretched, and it was a long time before anyone else spoke. I squinted into the distance. The setting sun erupted in an explosion of orange.
“I love it,” Sunshine said. “We’re screwed if we go, we’re screwed if we don’t. Welcome to the life of a Less Than.” He brayed like a donkey.
“What’re you thinking, Book?” Cat asked.
“It wouldn’t be everyone,” I said. “Just a small group. Whoever wants to join me. The rest of you go on to Dodge’s and we’ll meet up there. Hopefully with a whole mess of food.”
Now I needed volunteers. I shot a look to Hope, hoping she would say yes. She met my stare with narrowed eyes.
“Go,” she said. “We’ll continue on without you.”
“That’s what I’m suggesting,” I said.
“Then do it. You don’t need my permission.”
“Fine.”
“Fine.”
I didn’t disagree with her, but it hurt, the way she said it. Like she wanted no part of me.
“I’ll go,” Red said.
“Me too,” Flush added, although not with as much conviction.
So that was the group: Red, Flush, and me. And of course Argos. Everyone else would cross the river and head straight for Dodge’s.
“If you want, I can join you,” Cat said later on, when it was just him and me.
“No, better that you’re with the others. They need you.”
“You sure about this? You don’t have to go back there if you don’t want.”
“It’s best this way,” I said, and left it at that.
That night I had watch, peering into the dark for any sign of yellow. I wondered if the wolves were content now, if they had just wanted us to leave Libertyville so they could reclaim that part of Skeleton Ridge for themselves. Or were they trailing us across the frozen tundra, waiting for the right moment to attack?
Soon, it wasn’t wolves I was thinking about, or Skull People, or even Hope. It was my grandmother. The woman with the long black hair whose final words to me had been I haven’t been guiding you, Book. You must be listening to your heart.
But at that particular moment, I had no idea what my heart was telling me. It felt like I knew less than ever.
8. (#ulink_afdb898f-f60c-540d-a794-547a5136bd44)
THEY SEPARATE THE NEXT morning. After an awkward round of good-byes, most of them cross the frozen river to the other side. The only ones who don’t are Book, Red, Flush, and Argos. Hope and Book don’t exchange any final words, but when Hope reaches the opposing riverbank, she catches him watching her. At the same moment they both look away.
Hope agrees that they need food, and she can’t fault Book’s plan to return to the Compound. Still, she can’t help but wonder if his ulterior motive is to find Miranda. It angers her that she feels a stab of jealousy.
For the first part of the morning, the two groups are a mirror—three on one side, seventy-one on the other—trudging through snow on opposite banks of the river. The trio moves at a far quicker pace, of course, and soon they forge ahead. When they eventually disappear into the horizon of white—Argos’s muffled bark a final good-bye—Hope is surprised to feel a sudden emptiness.
Later that day, Hope hears a distant sound. It takes a moment to identify it, and when she realizes it’s the growl of a Humvee, the Less Thans and Sisters scurry for cover, throwing themselves to the ground. Cat is atop a ridge, and Hope crawls forward until she’s next to him. They peek their heads above the snow.
A lone Humvee appears in the far distance, and they watch as it snakes its way across the snow-blasted prairie. What Hope can’t figure out is why it’s out here, where it’s going. The one-lane road appears to dead-end at a small, snow-covered mound. There are no buildings here—no structures of any kind. Just a rusted chain-link fence encircling a tiny hill.
“Launch facility,” Cat explains.
“Huh?”
“It’s where they fired the missiles that day. My dad took me to one once.”
“There’s a missile there?”
“Used to be, in an underground silo. Nearly five thousand of them, scattered across the country. That’s how the world blew itself up.”
Hope has often wondered about Omega. She was young when her father first explained it, but somehow she envisioned airplanes dropping bombs from the air, not missiles erupting from the prairie.
She studies the hill. It’s a good quarter mile away, but she’s able to make out an upside-down dome on top of the mound. Burn marks scorch its edges.
“What’s in there now?”
“Not a missile, that’s for sure.”
So why is the Humvee headed there?
They watch as the military vehicle nears, then passes through the fence, skidding to a stop when it reaches the small hill. Three Brown Shirts emerge, cracking jokes, their laughter bouncing off the cloudless sky. One lights a cigarette before they disappear behind the far side of the mound.
“Where are they going?” Hope asks, more to herself than Cat.
Five minutes pass before the soldiers return. They each carry a large wooden crate. Stenciled on the sides is the distinctive symbol of the Republic: three inverted triangles. Beneath that are a series of letters and numbers. M4. M16. AK-47.
Military weapons.
The three soldiers slide the wooden crates into the back of the Humvee and then return to the mound. Hope rises to her feet.
“Where’re you going?” Cat asks.
“I want to see what they’re doing.”
Cat looks at her like she’s crazy. “You want to go inside a missile silo?”
“That’s right.”
“Where there are three Brown Shirts with weapons?”
“Yup.”
“Why?”
She’s not sure she knows the answer, but it has something to do with unfinished business. Everything has to do with unfinished business.
Cat turns to the Less Thans behind him. Their hunger and exhaustion are obvious; many have fallen asleep in the snow. Cat points to the LT named Sunshine.
“Sunny, get up here,” he says.
Sunshine crawls forward. “What’s up, el bosso?”
“You’re good with a slingshot, right?”
“I’m good with any weapon.” He says it loudly, as if for Hope’s benefit. She rolls her eyes.
“Great. Then you’re coming with us.”
“What? I—”
“We’ll move in on their next trip.”
They wait for the soldiers to return.
9. (#ulink_dfbba173-ffd8-5562-9a27-7d7b6fe2cd01)
IT WAS STRANGE TO be following the same path we’d used to escape from the Compound. Once more, we were racing to something we’d already escaped from. I longed for the day when we could just live in one place.
Red raised his hand and motioned Flush and me to stop. He pointed to Argos, who was sniffing the ground with a sudden intensity. When he lifted his head, snow encrusted his muzzle.
Directly next to his front paws were human footprints.
I lowered myself to the ground and analyzed the treads; they weren’t from the moccasins of the Skull People nor the rags of the Crazies. These were pre-Omega shoes: Brown Shirt boots.
Soldiers.
My body gave an involuntary shudder.
“How many, do you think?” Flush asked.
“Looks like two.”
“Recent?”
“Recent enough.”
The footprints veered inland, away from the river but in the direction of the Compound.
“Do we follow them?” Flush asked.
“Do we have a choice?”
We shared a look, and Argos took off at a trot.
The footsteps were easy enough to track, and by midafternoon Flush pointed to the far horizon. Squinting across the flat tundra of snow, all I could make out was a speck of a distant object, sparkling sunlight.
“Solar panels,” Flush explained. “I used to clean those things.”
That was his job at the Compound. While I was working in the Wheel, he was helping harness energy.
“So we’re close?” Red asked.
“Not just close,” Flush said. “We’re probably above the Compound right now.” We all looked at our feet, envisioning what was on the underside of the ground.
We marched on, eager to reach the Compound entrance … and dreading it just the same.
It was the smell that suddenly led us forward. The footsteps were still there, of course, but we could have reached the Compound from the scent alone.
No, not scent—more like stench.
“What the heck?” Flush said.
Neither Red nor I answered, because we each had a suspicion we didn’t want to voice. The Brown Shirts’ rotting, putrefying bodies outside Libertyville had taught us what death smelled like. But why was that smell so strong out here, especially the closer we got to the Compound?
When the footsteps forked in the direction of the Compound’s main entrance, we abandoned them and went the other way, following the smell instead. We needed to see where it led us.
We were now in a field of corn stubble, dead stalks jutting from the snow. With each passing step, the bile rose in my throat, and my imagination was working overtime. Did we really want to discover the source of this awful stench?
Argos stopped and began to whimper. At first, I thought he was picking up the scent of more footsteps. Then I saw the black oval—a small hole in the middle of the field. It was nearly invisible to the naked eye … and just wide enough in diameter to allow a human body.
“Good boy,” I said, and nudged him out of the way.
I got down on hands and knees and inched forward, then stuck my head into the opening. There was a long wooden ladder that descended into darkness. Where it led was impossible to see. All I knew was that a wave of rancid smells gushed through the narrow opening, like lava spewing from a volcano.
I recoiled, breathing through my mouth to avoid gagging. It was rotten eggs and dead skunk and overflowing outhouses all mixed together. My eyes watered after a single whiff.
“Where’s it lead?” Flush asked.
“Hell,” I answered … and then started making my way down.
10. (#ulink_a889e61c-764d-5df3-b31d-5fe0749d0f47)
THE THREE BROWN SHIRTS reappear, once more lugging wooden crates that they slide into the Humvee. When they return to the silo, Hope, Cat, and Sunshine rise to their feet and scamper across the snow.
They enter through the open gate and ease around the mound, stopping when they reach a thick metal door. Cat nods and the three of them step inside. When Hope’s eyes adjust to the gloom, she sees that they’re in a small antechamber. An elevator door stands straight ahead; to the side is a tube with a metal ladder descending straight down. She bends her head and listens. Voices spiral up.
With a series of hand gestures, Hope motions that she’ll go first, climbing down the ladder into the heart of the silo. She has no idea who’s down there … or what she’s getting into.
When she reaches the bottom, the first thing she sees is an open reinforced steel door. It’s easily two feet thick. Beyond it is a series of tunnels branching off in varying directions. Soldiers’ voices echo from a nearby chamber.
When Cat and Sunshine join her, they head toward the voices. On the way, Hope spies a side room, stacked with dozens and dozens of crates. More weapons.
Hope looks at Cat. Are you seeing all this?
He gives a nod.
As they tiptoe through one of the tunnels, still trying to follow the soldiers’ voices, Hope knows they’re buried beneath countless tons of earth and steel and reinforced concrete. Even if this place took a direct hit during Omega, it would have come out just fine.
They reach a cramped soldiers’ quarters: a couple of bunk beds, a primitive lavatory, a small kitchenette. In former times, soldiers lived here. Now, it’s just storage space, filled floor to ceiling with more crates.
The Brown Shirts’ voices grow suddenly louder, and Hope, Cat, and Sunshine duck into the nearest doorways. When the soldiers approach, Hope lets them walk by … and then she tiptoes forward, following. Just as her hand reaches for her knife, her shoes make a squeaking sound from the melting snow. The trailing Brown Shirt turns around.
His eyes open wide when he sees her. “Hey, you can’t—”
Hope sends her foot into the soldier’s groin. “I just did.”
His face turns strawberry as he collapses to the ground. Cat and Sunshine leap forward. The other Brown Shirts throw their crates and make a run for it, drawing weapons as they do.
“Damn it!” Cat curses, dodging the tossed crates and taking off after the soldiers. Sunshine follows.
At the first intersection of tunnels, one Brown goes right and the other goes left. With a quick nod of his head, Cat motions for Sunshine to follow the one to his right while he goes the other way.
No sooner does Cat step into the tunnel than it goes black; the soldier switched off the lights. Cat freezes, willing his eyes to adjust to the black. He tilts his head to the side, straining to hear. All he can make out is the steady, muffled, faraway sound of the soldier’s breathing. And then the click of a pistol being readied.
Cat freezes. One series of blind gunshots down this narrow tunnel and Cat’s a dead man. He presses himself against the wall.
He stands there, trying to come up with a plan. More than anything, he needs to see. From far behind him, he hears the sound of a scuffle. He can only hope Sunshine subdued the other soldier, leaving just this one.
His body folds in on itself as he lowers himself to the ground. Lying flat on the concrete floor, he removes an arrow from his quiver and nocks it. He reaches out to the side walls and gets his bearings, determining the tunnel’s direction. The fingers of his artificial arm hold the bow in place as he slowly draws back the string, aiming down the center of the tunnel. At the last moment, he alters where he points, so that when he releases the bowstring, the arrow travels no more than fifty yards before it hits a side wall.
“Shit!” the soldier cries, and takes off running.
Cat nocks a second arrow and sends it flying, then hears the satisfying sound of arrowhead entering flesh. The soldier stumbles to the ground, his gun clattering. Even in the dark, Cat is able to race forward and find the wounded soldier lying sprawled in the middle of the tunnel. Cat drags him back to the others.
When all three Brown Shirts are trussed up, Hope interrogates them.
“What’s going on here?” she asks.
The soldiers sit on the floor, wrists and ankles tethered together. They don’t answer her.
“Where’s your camp? Where’re you taking those crates?”
The Brown Shirt with the arrow jutting from his shoulder blade actually laughs. “Why should we tell you?” he says. “The only reason you’re still alive is because my gun jammed.”
He begins to turn away, but Cat grabs the soldier’s nose with his wooden pincers. “She asked you a question. Now, are you gonna answer her or not?”
His face goes pale. He tries to squirm free, but Cat’s grip won’t allow it. “The Eagle’s Nest,” the Brown Shirt sputters.
“What’s that?”
“Headquarters.”
“For who?” Again, the Brown Shirt tries to pull his nose free. Cat just pinches harder. “For who?”
“Chancellor Maddox. Who do you think?”
The hair rises on Hope’s arms, and although she knows it’s her imagination, it feels like both her scars itch at the mention of the chancellor’s name.
“You can say good-bye to those plans,” Sunshine says. “You’re not going there ever again.”
“Actually, they are,” Hope corrects him. “And they’re taking us with them.”
11. (#ulink_aadde47f-e2fc-53ff-b9da-d914e3529350)
THE LADDER GROANED BENEATH my weight. My guess was that this was one of the escape tunnels Goodwoman Marciniak had told us about. Except instead of escaping, we were using this tunnel to enter. A nasty habit we kept falling into.
When my feet landed on solid ground, I whistled for Flush and Red to climb down. Argos stayed up above.
The three of us began feeling our way around in the dark, trying to get a sense of where we were and how we could reach the heart of the Compound. Along the wall, a torch sat perched in its holder, as cold and lifeless as the winter itself. We could have lit it, but a fire would only announce ourselves.
Waving our outstretched hands like branches in a breeze, we let the wall guide us forward. It was slow going, made worse by the smell. We pulled bandannas over our mouths and noses, and every so often we stopped to spit—as if that could rid us of the foul stench.
Finally, we noticed a far-off glow. We moved faster now, aided by the distant light. Although I knew there were soldiers up ahead, I also thought about the food we would find. I could imagine the countless jars of green beans and blueberry jam, the strips of dried meat hanging like icicles in the smokehouse. The more I envisioned them, the more I could practically taste them.
I was thinking so much about my next meal that I stopped paying attention to where I was going. I tripped on something and went flying. When I reached down to push myself up, my hand went squish. I tried with my other hand, but it went squish as well. Then I realized why.
I’d landed on a person.
A dead person.
Many dead persons.
I was elbow deep in decaying corpses, and only the possibility of being discovered by Brown Shirts prevented me from letting out a horrified scream. I clamped my mouth shut and tried to steady my breathing.
“Oh … my … God,” Flush said. “Are those what I think they are?”
I nodded dumbly.
Easing to a standing position, my eyes peered into the dark, head swiveling first one direction and then the other. We were smack-dab in the middle of a burial ground, surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of lifeless, bloated bodies.
Although we wanted to turn around—wanted desperately to get the hell out of there—we knew we couldn’t. We had come this far; we had to see it through. So we inched forward, tiptoeing around and over the piles of bodies.
What I couldn’t figure out was what it was supposed to be. Was this a cemetery—some sacred place of honor—or just a dumping ground? There was no way to tell.
We headed for the faint glow at the end of the tunnel, hoping to get as far away from the bloated corpses as possible. But of course, just when we thought we’d cleared the last of them, there were still more—piles of bodies stacked like firewood stretching as far as we could see.
“Who are they?” Red asked. I understood what he was getting at. He hadn’t been with us when we’d been imprisoned in the Compound. He didn’t know what Skull People looked like.
But when I bent down and tried to examine the dead bodies in the dark, I suddenly wasn’t so sure myself. On the one hand, it seemed their clothes were leather sandals and wool robes and toga-like garments, which made me think Skull People. But right next to them were men wearing rags, their beards long and matted, which made me think they were Crazies. I couldn’t figure it out.
A noise from farther down the tunnel grabbed my attention. Perhaps the very Brown Shirts whose footsteps we’d been following.
The more we tiptoed forward, the brighter it got … and the more we tried to avert our eyes. It was bad enough we were traipsing through this grisly graveyard—no point making things worse by staring at the corpses themselves. And yet, I caught myself glancing down from time to time, looking for people I might recognize. Like my grandmother. Or Goodwoman Marciniak.
Or Miranda.
It didn’t help that every corpse’s expression was the same—one of horror and fear.
In the near distance, torch flames caressed the cave walls with strokes of flickering light. Flush pulled to a stop, and I followed his gaze … to the bloated face of the chief justice.
My heart gave a lurch. I had no reason to feel any sympathy for him. After all, he was the one who’d sentenced us to thirty years’ imprisonment. But he was also the man who’d changed my sentence from the Wheel to the library—and was Miranda’s father.
So maybe she was here as well. My eyes roamed from one face to the next, and while the bodies were discolored and disfigured, there wasn’t one that looked remotely like the girl who’d kissed me as we watched the setting sun.
I breathed a silent sigh of relief.
We moved on. The only sounds were the quiet shuffle of our feet, a persistent dripping from the ceiling, the steady huff of breathing through our mouths.
When we reached a high-ceilinged chamber at the end of the tunnel, we expected to see the soldiers, but they weren’t there. No living person was. Just hundreds of scattered corpses.
“Where’d they go?” Flush whispered, but I didn’t know. I wondered the same thing.
Red pointed to the side. “Was it always like that?”
He was referring to an enormous rock pile that blocked a far entrance, boulders strewn in every direction. I gave my head a shake. “The Crazies were blowing up the place as we were leaving. Guess that’s what happened.”
We eased forward and began exploring. Some of the tunnels were completely closed off, barricaded by heaping mounds of rock. Others looked remarkably the same. The Crazies had managed to destroy only a portion of the Compound.
Flush began winding his way between a series of scattered objects, bending down to inspect a stack of items in the very center of the chamber. “What’s this?” he asked.
I turned and looked … and my heart stopped. I needed no refresher course to know what I was looking at. It wasn’t just dozens of cans of gasoline, but also explosives—C-4 and sticks of dynamite, heaped atop one another like a jumbled pyramid.
Someone intended to reduce the Compound to a pile of rubble.
12. (#ulink_bff86ed5-76bf-5019-91fd-75ffb622069c)
HOPE SITS IN THE passenger seat while a Brown Shirt drives. The other four are crammed in back. Whenever the driver peeks to the side, Hope raises her crossbow so it’s aimed at his chest. The message is clear: Don’t try anything.
Before leaving, she instructed Diana to lead the sixty-some Less Thans to Dodge’s Log Lodges. Hope, Cat, and Sunshine will catch up when they can.
“How often do you make these deliveries?” Hope asks the driver. When he doesn’t answer, Hope nuzzles the crossbow against his side. “I asked you a question.”
“Get that thing outta my ribs, and maybe I’ll tell you.”
“Why don’t you tell me and then I’ll get it out of your ribs.” She presses it into his body.
“Just started,” he says, writhing. “Last week.”
“How many more trips will you make?”
“Till the silo’s empty, I guess.”
“You’re taking all those weapons to Chancellor Maddox?”
“That’s right.”
“Why?”
“Got me,” he says, and Hope jams the crossbow between his ribs. “I’m serious! I don’t know.”
For some reason, Hope believes him.
“Tell me about the Eagle’s Nest,” she says.
“What about it?”
“What kind of place is it?”
“A fortress you’ll never get into,” he says smugly.
Questions swim through Hope’s mind. Why are all those guns in an abandoned missile silo? Why are they being transferred to the chancellor’s headquarters? And why now?
The miles slip by—endless fields of white—as they veer farther and farther north, up toward the rolling foothills of Skeleton Ridge.
It’s late afternoon when the vehicle slows to a stop, and Hope realizes she’s been daydreaming. Something to do with Book. A part of her tries to shake the memory away.
Another part doesn’t.
“There,” the driver says, and Hope looks at where he’s pointing.
Perched atop a nearby mountain peak, swathed in swirls of clouds, is a fortress. Its walls are made of stone, and crenellated parapets give it the appearance of a medieval castle. Hope can’t believe it. What’s something like that doing in the Republic of the True America?
“What is this place?” she asks.
“I told you, the—”
“Eagle’s Nest, I know. But what is it?”
“A ski resort back in the day. Now it’s the chancellor’s HQ. That’s all I know.”
Hope studies it a moment. The turrets seem to snag the clouds, tugging at wisps of white. The Brown Shirt wasn’t kidding; the place is impenetrable.
“How do we drive up there?”
“We don’t.”
Hope turns to him and presses the crossbow into his chest.
“I’m not kidding,” he sputters. “There’re no roads up there in winter.”
“So how—” Hope doesn’t finish the sentence. At just that moment her eyes land on a tiny red square dangling in the sky. It’s an aerial tram slinking up the mountainside on a thick black cable. The soldier was right; there is no way in the world they’ll get up there—not if they have to ride in that.
“Told ya,” he says.
Hope sends an elbow into his side, and the Brown Shirt doubles over.
“Oops,” she says.
As her eyes follow the tram to the top, she tries to figure out how the three of them will make it up there. Because if that’s where Chancellor Maddox is, that’s where Hope needs to go.
“Well, I guess that’s that,” Sunshine offers from the backseat.
“Not necessarily,” Hope says. Even as she says it, she knows what she’s thinking is wildly dangerous and ridiculous even to consider. Still, what does she have to lose?
Three Brown Shirts shuffle through the snowy streets of town. Vehicles pass, weary salutes are exchanged. No one gives them a second glance.
A good thing, too, because wearing the uniforms are Hope, Cat, and Sunshine. The original soldiers are currently hog-tied in the back of the Humvee, down to their boxers, T-shirts, and socks. As a courtesy, Hope threw a blanket over them so they wouldn’t freeze to death.
Sunshine tugs at his uniform. “This thing is scratchy. And two sizes too big. And frankly, I don’t think the color becomes me.”
“I don’t think talking becomes you,” Cat growls. The younger LT shuts up.
Hope barely hears them; she’s thinking about Chancellor Maddox. Hope’s parents always taught their daughters to avoid the whole “eye for an eye” thing. They never said anything about “cheek for a cheek.”
A military transport passes, and Hope and Sunshine bow their heads. The fact that she’s a girl and has tea-colored skin makes her more than slightly conspicuous. Cat, the former Young Officer, fits right in.
“Uh-oh,” Sunshine says.
“What?”
“See for yourself.”
They’re within sight of a small brown building not much bigger than a shed—the tram station—and Hope’s heart sinks. Two armed Brown Shirts stand guard, checking the papers of everyone who intends to board.
“What do you think?” Cat asks, once the trio duck into an alley.
“I’m working on it,” Hope says.
Hope knows the smart thing would be to abandon their plan, to join back up with the others and head for Dodge’s and not worry about Chancellor Maddox and Dr. Gallingham and a silo full of semiautomatic weapons. The important thing is to get out of the territory.
But Hope Samadi is the first to admit she’s never been about the smart thing. Especially when it comes to avenging her family’s deaths.
They crouch in shadows, eyes trained on the two soldiers guarding the tram station.
“You sure about this?” Cat asks.
Hope gives a fierce nod.
“Okay then,” he says. “Let’s do it.”
He gets up and exits the alley, walking purposefully toward the station. When he’s halfway there, Sunshine exits the alley out the other way. Hope takes a deep breath, then rises and shuffles down the street, head lowered. Her short black hair is tucked under her soldier’s cap.
“How’s it going?” Cat asks one of the soldiers at the tram station, an older man with a pockmarked face.
“Papers,” the soldier commands humorlessly. He steps from the shed and extends a hand.
“Right.” Cat pats his pockets. “Now where did I—”
“No papers, no tram. You know the rules.”
“I know. Oh, here …” He removes a folded bundle and passes it to Pockmark.
The Brown Shirt examines the papers carefully, especially the picture. His eyes dart back and forth between the photograph and Cat’s actual face.
“I know, I know,” Cat says, “it doesn’t look like me. That’s what a lot of people say.”
Pockmark grunts. His gaze lands on Cat’s artificial hand. “What happened there?”
“Hunting accident. No biggie.”
Pockmark shuffles through the papers. “How come it’s not listed?”
“It’s not?” Cat asks innocently. Out of the corner of his eye he notices the other soldier inching closer, his index finger gripping the trigger of his M4.
“You sure this is you?” the first soldier asks.
“Of course it’s me. Who else would it be?”
Just as the second Brown Shirt exits the shed and begins to bring the barrel of his gun toward Cat’s chest, a thin wire wraps around his neck and is snapped back. The soldier’s mouth opens and the assault rifle clatters to the ground. Hope pulls at the wire until the soldier’s eyes bulge.
Pockmark drops the papers and reaches for his pistol. Sunshine appears with a wire of his own, and Pockmark has no choice but to drop his weapon.
Cat begins binding the soldiers’ hands.
“Fine, you tied us up, you win,” Pockmark says with a smirk. “But there are a lot more soldiers up top than just the two of us.”
Hope’s doubts start to overwhelm her. What was she thinking, trying to get past the Brown Shirts and enter a secure fortress? Is she really willing to say good-bye to everything—her friends, Book, life itself—just for revenge?
“So I guess that’s that,” Sunshine says.
Hope gives her head a shake. “Nothing changes. I’m still going up there.”
She doesn’t know how, she doesn’t know what she’ll find. She’s not even sure she’ll succeed. But unfinished business is unfinished business, and there’s no turning back from that.
13. (#ulink_81631cb0-217f-505a-a64f-06a41e10845e)
“FREEZE, FLUSH!” I COMMANDED, and he could tell from my tone I wasn’t kidding around. “Now, slowly step away. No big movements.”
“Is it …?”
I gave a nod.
“What’ll happen if it goes off?”
“Let’s not find out, okay?”
I knew what TNT could do. And with that many pounds of explosives—and all those cans of gasoline—the Brown Shirts weren’t just looking to blow up a single chamber; they meant to destroy the entire Compound. Leave no trace. If we didn’t get out of there, we’d be buried beneath tons of rock and earth. Not an image I wanted to dwell on.
Flush backed up, eyes wide. His feet guided him through the maze of explosives. At a turn in the path, his foot accidentally nudged a can of gasoline, and we inhaled sharply. The can teetered but stayed upright. We let out a long, slow breath.
“What now?” Red asked, when Flush finally joined us.
“Forget the food,” Flush said, still breathing heavily. “We gotta get out of here.”
It was hard to argue. We’d come here hoping to find something to eat, maybe even recruit an army. It was obvious neither wish would come true. We had to get out while we could.
Still, there was maybe one thing we could salvage.
“You go on ahead,” I said. “I’ll join up later.”
Flush looked at me like I was crazy. “What’re you talking about? They’re going to blow this place to smithereens. We’ve gotta get out of here.”
“I know, but there’s something I need to do.” He was about to protest, but I didn’t let him. “I’ll be quick. Promise.”
Shaking their heads, they eased back down the tunnel and were swallowed by black. I took a deep breath, then scurried across the chamber.
There had been a time when I’d worked in the Compound. Not just the Wheel, but also the library. It was where I was headed now.
Like a rat in a maze, I raced down one tunnel after another, backtracking whenever I ran into a dead end. I’d never approached the library from this direction, and it took me a while to get my bearings. Every so often I heard the two soldiers’ voices, and I flattened myself against the damp limestone walls, praying for invisibility.
When I finally found the library, I yanked a torch from the wall and lit it with my flint, and the flame cast a flickering light on the countless shelves of books. A thick layer of dust coated everything in sight: books, tables, chairs. My eyes darted across the titles. In the background, the soldiers’ voices grew louder. I had to work fast.
Twenty years ago—following Omega—the country that was formerly the United States of America established a new government. They created new borders, wrote a new set of rules, and confiscated all the maps. It was a new country, they told the citizens. The Republic of the True America. There was no point living in the past. No place for old geography.
For nearly a year, we had been blindly traipsing across the Western Federation Territory, trying to get from one point to the next. But if we actually knew where we were going, wouldn’t we stand a better chance? If the Compound couldn’t give us food or armies, it could at least give us knowledge.
My eyes landed on an oversize book. Its jacket was torn and faded, but the title was clear enough. Atlas of the World. Even though it was decades old, it was exactly what I was looking for.
I slipped the torch into a holder and then pulled the atlas from the shelf. As I laid it on the table, an explosion of dust mushroomed up. My fingers raced through the pages, not stopping until I reached the desired page.
The United States of America.
Poring over it, I took in the green of the South and East, the rugged browns and purples of the West, the five enormous lakes at the top of the page, the vast expanses of blue to the east and west. There was something about it that seemed so different from the world I knew. Organized. Unified. Serene.
I knew it couldn’t have been as idyllic as it looked on the page, but a part of me ached for a return to that life, when everyone was a part of the whole and there weren’t men on ATVs hunting down the weak and different. A return to a world without Less Thans.
Soldiers’ voices broke me from my reverie. I had to hurry.
The book was way too big to take with me, so I ripped out the map’s two adjoining pages, then folded and stuffed them into a back pocket. For good measure, I found a map of the entire world and tore that out as well. Maybe there would come a day when we could safely explore other parts of the planet.
Yeah, right.
Retracing my steps, I made my way back through the Compound, easing around corners to avoid being seen. Despite the cold of this subterranean world, perspiration dotted my forehead, slid down my jaw.
I had just reached the far side of the central chamber when I saw them—the two Brown Shirts whose footsteps we’d trailed here. I ducked behind a boulder and watched as they strode toward the center of the room, joking and laughing. As long as they were there, I was stuck. The tunnel I needed to exit from was on the very opposite side of the chamber.
The soldiers inspected the gas cans and dynamite, taking their time.
Come on, I silently pleaded. Get out of there. Go away.
While I waited, my eyes took in my surroundings. As in the rest of the Compound, there were bodies scattered everywhere, resting atop pools of dried blood. Their stiff limbs were splayed in multiple directions, as if they were reaching for one last gasp of life.
And that’s when I saw her.
Miranda.
She was curled on her side as though she’d just lain down to take a nap—like I could nudge her shoulder and she would wake. But of course she was dead, and had been for some time.
I bent down beside her, easing her body over until she rested on her back. Her hair was pulled back in its customary ponytail, and her face was pale and gaunt. Smudge marks dotted her cheeks, just as they had when I’d seen her last in the Wheel, running off down the tunnel to distract the Crazies.
Even though death had bloated her body, and dried blood smeared her chin and neck, she was still recognizable, her metallic pendant around her neck.
It was Miranda and at the same time it wasn’t. Without her jokes and smile, she was just the empty shell of a body. Not the same Miranda at all. And then it hit me—I would never fully know whether she had actually liked me or if that was just an act. She took those answers with her to the grave.
I have no idea how long I knelt there, taking in Miranda’s face, waiting for her eyes to flutter open. They never did.
It was the sound of the soldiers’ footsteps that brought me back to the present. I peeked around the corner and watched as they made their way to a wall sconce. One of them grabbed the torch and then they left. Silence followed.
I waited for the echo of their footsteps to fade away before I emerged. They were gone. If I hurried, I could carry Miranda through the chamber and back down the tunnel, laying her to rest at her father’s side. It seemed the right thing to do.
I took her cold, stiff hand in mine, and was just preparing to lift her lifeless body into my arms when I heard a new sound. It was distant and faint and oddly urgent, and its muffled quality made it hard for me to identify. I froze in place, trying to figure it out.
When the sound emerged from the tunnel—the very one the two Brown Shirts had departed through—I could suddenly hear its high-pitched crackle. Its racing sputter. Its snakelike spit and sizzle.
It was a fuse … making its way to the cans of gas and TNT.
14. (#ulink_00b08ff0-8046-5cf3-b5c4-bb6351a89628)
HOPE REALIZES THERE’S NO way she can make it up to the Eagle’s Nest riding in the tram. Once the door opens at the top, she’ll be captured and probably killed. So if she can’t ride up in the tram, maybe she can ride up on it.
That’s why she grips the metal plates that connect the tram car to the cable.
“See you in exactly one hour,” Cat says, synchronizing his watch. They know the tram runs exactly every fifteen minutes.
Just as Hope wonders if she’s making a huge mistake, the tram gives a jerk and she is on her way. No turning back now. As the tram rises above the snow-covered boulders and trees, soaring up the mountainside, Cat and Sunshine get smaller and smaller until they’re no bigger than ants.
What she hadn’t counted on was the wind. It was breezy down at the base of the mountain, but up here it’s howling. Gusts tear at Hope’s fingers and screech between the cables. Blankets of snow swirl in mini tornadoes.
The tram sways and lurches, rocking violently side to side. It’s everything Hope can do to hold on. Her fingers are numb from clinging to the biting-cold metal.
She lifts her head and sees a tiny red spot coming her way: the other tram. When one tram goes up, the other automatically comes down. Which means that in a couple of minutes, the two cars will pass side by side, and if there are Brown Shirts in the descending tram, what’s to prevent them from seeing her?
Her mind races, even as the other tram grows larger. Digging her numb fingers into the metal plate, she inches her legs around until the lower half of her body hangs over the far side of the tram. There’s virtually no feeling in her fingers at all, and it’s a minor miracle she’s able to hold on. She doesn’t let herself look down.
The two trams grow close, then near … then pass. Two red squares passing high above the mountainside. No shouts of alarm. No gunshots. Hope lets out a long breath.
A quick glance shows the descending tram is crowded with Brown Shirts, too occupied with their own conversations to spy her. When they’re far away, Hope manages to climb back on top of the tram. The top of the mountain can’t come soon enough.
Although the Eagle’s Nest looked impressive from the bottom of the mountain, it’s even more menacing from up close. Stone walls jut from the cliff face. Spires rise to the skies. It’s an impregnable fortress perched atop a steep mountain.
The tram slows, and Hope can make out the station now. There are two Brown Shirts there, each with an M4 slung over his shoulder. There’s no way she can stay on top of the tram without being seen. She’ll have to think of something else.
Live today, tears tomorrow.
Before the tram shudders to a stop, she leaps from the top, flying through air and landing in a deep snowbank. Of course, just beneath the snow is a granite boulder, and her impact is harder than she expects. It takes everything in her power not to cry out.
She lies there a moment, waiting for the pain in her ankles to subside, listening to hear if the Brown Shirts spotted her. Their laughter and jokes continue as before.
A glance at her watch tells her ten minutes have passed. That leaves only fifty. She needs to get going.
She scrambles up the mountainside, pulling herself up to a ledge. To reach the interior of the fortress, it appears as though soldiers have to walk through a long, damp tunnel burrowed within the mountain. She’s thankful that the few lightbulbs that do work are dim and spaced far apart.
She tugs her cap low and enters the tunnel. The walk seems to take forever, the sound of her footsteps echoing against the stone. The arched stone ceiling drips water.
At the end of the tunnel is a large elevator, and when the door opens she steps inside, admiring the polished brass walls, the immaculate interior. Not what she expected. She presses the button for the top floor, and her stomach drops as the elevator shoots upward. Her hand rests on the handle of her knife, jutting from her waistband.
When she steps out of the elevator, breath leaves her. The exterior wall of the Eagle’s Nest may be a medieval fortress, with its thick stone and crenellated parapets, but the inside is all twenty-first century. Buildings made of chrome and glass reach for the sky. Tinted windows glint in the late-afternoon sun. Everything sparkles and shines.
A glance inside the buildings shows atria with water-spewing fountains, escalators moving people effortlessly up and down, coffee shops and bakeries, banks and grocery stores. It’s like she’s landed on another planet.
And the people—not just soldiers but men and women in suits and lab coats, all in a hurry, moving briskly atop paved, spotless streets. No one pays Hope the least bit of attention. Keeping her head lowered, she edges her way through the fortress, trying not to gawk.
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Tom Isbell
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: The Release is the thrilling YA conclusion to Tom Isbell’s suspenseful post-apocalyptic Prey series. Perfect for fans of the MAZE RUNNER!Two months have passed since Book, Cat, Hope, and the two others rescued the remaining Less Thans, but no one is safe yet. The group must leave Liberty for good and escape the wolves, the Brown Shirts and the Hunters. Most important, they need to stop Chancellor Maddox before she executes her Final Solution and grows even more powerful.But for Hope, the battle has become personal; she must seek her revenge, no matter what the cost.The PREY trilogy comes to a thrilling conclusion in THE RELEASE, as the group must risk everything – including their lives – in order to defeat their enemies.