Read the book: «The Capture»

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Part One: The Road Back

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

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Part Two: Capture

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

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Part Three: Return

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

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Also By Tom Isbell

About the Publisher

PART ONE
THE ROAD BACK

When men take up arms to set other men free, there is something sacred and holy in the warfare.

—PRESIDENT WOODROW WILSON

PROLOGUE

HE WALKS THROUGH THE valley of shadows, surviving fire and flood, flames and torrents. Marching across the barren wilderness, he carries in his heart the faint memory of those who went before him. In his veins runs the blood of warriors, the pulse of poets.

Pursuing him are those who will not rest. Like lions, they track him, chasing him across the smoke-filled prairies, the desolate hills, the sun-stroked plains. The rivers shall turn against him, as shall the fields and forests.

Though he gathers friends, there are those who will betray him. Friend will become foe and foe become friend.

But my beloved fears not. He shall mount up with wings like the birds of the air, shall burrow beneath the earth like creatures of the dark, shall carry great loads like beasts of prey, shall run and not grow weary.

My beloved, in whom I am well pleased.

1.

THEY LOOKED AT ME with hollow, vacant stares—their sunken cheeks more like ghosts’ than human beings’. Festering sores tattooed their bodies, and their pleading eyes cut circles in the black.

Please, their expressions said, as they strained against the chains that pinned them to the bunker walls. Get us out of here.

There were a dozen of them, boys my age, and the more I took in their emaciated bodies—the bones pushing against skin, the bloodshot eyes and skull-like faces—the more I realized I didn’t know how to help them. I had no idea, no solution for unlocking their shackles and setting them free.

You must, one of them said, as if I’d voiced my thoughts aloud, and soon all of them were saying it—You must, you must—their voices growing louder and more insistent until it was a kind of song, a raspy chant from begging faces.

You must. Help us.

“But I can’t. I don’t know how …”

You must help us.

“I don’t know how!”

YOU MUST HELP US!

I woke with a start, my T-shirt damp with sweat. With trembling hands I tried to rub the sleep from my eyes … and the image from my mind.

“Same one?” Cat asked. He was hunkered in the shadows, his long knife scraping the edge of a cedar branch.

Every night it was the same: dreaming of those Less Thans shackled in the bunker beneath the tennis court. I couldn’t let it go. As bad as the memory was, my dreams only made it worse, distorting the boys’ bodies until they were more skeletons than living, breathing human beings.

It was why we had to get back to Camp Liberty. Why we had to free those Less Thans.

I lifted my head and looked around. Orange light from the campfire flickered across the faces of the others. With the exception of Cat and me, the others huddled around the fire and shared stories and laughter. Three squirrels roasted on spits; the grease sizzled in the flames. On the surface, at least, everything seemed fine.

Just one week earlier, twenty-six of us had crossed into the other territory—the Heartland. Eleven had stayed over there; fifteen had decided to return. Seven Less Thans, eight Sisters. For the past seven days we’d been gathering food, carving bows and arrows, setting up an archery range and firing till our fingers bled. Still, I wondered: Were we up for this? Could we really pull it off?

“Do you think it’s a mistake?” I pulled myself over to the log where Cat was sitting.

At first he didn’t respond. No surprise there—his least favorite thing was conversation. “Do I think what’s a mistake?” His knife dug into the wood. Cedar shavings whispered in the air.

“Going back?”

He thought a moment. His glinting blade stripped off a layer of bark as effortlessly as peeling a banana. “Nah, it’s definitely the right thing.” Then he added, “We don’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell, but it’s definitely the right thing.”

I couldn’t argue with him. Who were we to take on Brown Shirts and Crazies, Skull People and wolves? What made us think we could even make it back to Camp Liberty, let alone free the Less Thans there? What on earth were we thinking?

“If the odds are so bad, why’re you going back?” I asked.

Cat shrugged. “Like I said at the fence, it’ll be the adventure of a lifetime.”

I got the feeling there was more to it than that, but there was no point asking. Cat would tell me only when he was good and ready.

Laughter erupted from the far side of the campfire—Flush and Twitch bickering like an old married couple. Tweedledum and Tweedlesmart. The oddest set of friends I’d ever come across. Twitch was tall and supersmart. Flush was short and, well, not as smart as Twitch.

“How about the others?” I asked. “Think they’ll be in it for the long haul?”

“Most of ’em,” he said, his sandy hair catching a sliver of moonlight.

“Not all?”

“Most,” he repeated.

I wondered who wasn’t committed. Flush or Twitch? Red or Dozer? Or was he referring to the Sisters? For obvious reasons I didn’t count Four Fingers. Ever since his head injury back in the Brown Forest, he’d been wildly out of it. On most days he was lucky to remember his name.

As my eyes passed over the others, it struck me how much we’d changed. The sun had weathered our skin. The baby fat had burned away. And we moved and spoke with a kind of quiet confidence. All this despite the fact that our clothes were nothing more than rags, dotted and shredded with holes, singed from fire, bleached from sun. After the inferno in the Brown Forest, all we’d managed to salvage were the essentials: the clothes on our backs, some canteens, a few weapons. The good side of that was that nothing was weighing us down.

Well, not physically.

Argos lifted his head and gave a soft moan. He came padding to my side. I reached over and petted him, the ends of my fingers disappearing into his fur. I was careful to avoid the burns from the fire. The wound from the wolves. The gimpy leg. He was no longer the cute little puppy stuffed in a backpack. He’d been to hell and back like the rest of us.

Cat’s knife bit into the branch—and then stopped. He opened his mouth to speak, but just as he began to talk, Flush set himself down squarely between us.

“Would you please tell Twitch I wasn’t the only one who ate the maggots?” he said. “Red did, too.”

Everyone’s gaze was directed toward us, waiting for a response. It figured: one of the few times Cat was actually going to start a conversation, and we were interrupted. Whatever he was going to tell me would have to wait.

“As I remember,” I answered, loud enough for the others to hear, “Red had the good sense not to like it. You enjoyed your maggots.”

That brought on a roar of laughter. Even though Flush pretended to be irritated, I got the impression he enjoyed being the center of attention.

As I prepared for bed that night, constructing a mattress out of pine needles, my thoughts returned to where they always went: Hope. She was the very last of the Sisters to join us—only reluctantly crossing from the other side of the fence.

Things were different between us now. We’d kissed that day after surviving the fire, but ever since, we’d been so busy—just trying to survive—that it was like we didn’t know how to act around each other. What I wanted was to take her hand, to hold her, to go back to the way we were … but I never had the chance.

So I contented myself with fleeting looks. Stolen glances.

There was something else, too. Something I couldn’t figure out. Her expression. It had changed these past seven days—it was no longer just the haunted appearance she shared with all the Sisters. It was something more. A kind of grim determination I couldn’t quite decipher.

And I saw the way she looked at Cat, her enormous brown eyes lingering on him a moment longer than they needed to. I couldn’t help it. Maybe it was my imagination, but then again, maybe it wasn’t.

2.

IT’S JUST BEFORE SUNUP when Hope and Cat tiptoe back to camp.

The two of them waited till the others were asleep before sneaking off, the dull red glow of the fire’s embers their only illumination. It’s been the same each night since they crawled back from the fence. Seven nights, seven silent journeys. So far, with the exception of Argos, no one seems to notice.

The next morning the rains begin, and with the change of weather comes a change of mood. Despite the fact that it’s now the height of summer, the showers are icy cold and soak the fifteen travelers to the bone. They spend much of the day sloshing through mud.

For Hope, it’s impossible not to sense the resentment from some of the other Sisters. Although she was the last to cross back from the fence, she was the one who originally convinced them to join up with the Less Thans. She can only imagine the questions running through their minds. After all their hard work, after digging a tunnel under Camp Freedom itself, why are they throwing it all away to head back into the heart of the Western Federation Territory? For the sake of saving some Less Thans they’ve never met?

When they stop to make camp, Hope drifts off to look for firewood, happy for the chance to be alone. The rain has stopped. There is birdsong.

“You all right?” a voice asks. It’s Book.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Hope says.

“Don’t know. Just curious.” Then he says, “I woke up last night and didn’t see you.”

Hope feels a stab of panic. She wonders what Book knows, what he saw. Even as she picks up a large, unwieldy branch, she tries to make a joke of it. “You’re not stalking me, are you?”

“No, just happened to look over. Didn’t see you.”

“Right, well, answering a call of nature.”

“Seemed like you were gone a long time.”

“Now I know you’re stalking me.” She laughs and snaps the branch in two. “Plus I couldn’t sleep, so I just, you know, walked around.”

“In the dark?”

“I think better that way.”

“Right.”

“Can’t say no to thinking.”

“Nope.”

Hope can hear the pathetic nature of her lies. They’re so obvious, so blatant. So bad. She tries to change the subject.

“I hear there are Skull People between here and your camp,” she says.

“That’s what we’ve heard.”

“You never saw them?”

Book shakes his head. “Hunters. Brown Shirts. Wolves. Crazies. No Skull People.”

“Consider yourself lucky.”

Her father once pointed out a camp of Skull People to Hope and her sister, Faith. With their painted skin and helmets made of animal skulls, they were the most frightening sight Hope had ever seen in her life. They were terrifying.

“How do we avoid them?” Book asks.

“Any way we can.” She means it as a joke, but Book doesn’t laugh. Doesn’t even smile.

“What happens after?” Hope asks.

“After?”

“Once we free your friends?”

“Head back to the Heartland. Get everyone to safety.” He studies her expression. “Why, you have something different in mind?”

“No, just, you know … curious.”

“Oh.”

They continue to scrounge, their boots squishing in mud.

“Good luck sleeping,” Book finally says, and heads back to camp with an armful of branches. Hope’s face burns crimson.

He was right, of course. She does have something in mind—but she’s not ready to share it. Not with Book. Not with anyone.

As for what she and Cat do each night, well, she wants to break that to Book as well. She does. But there are some things she just doesn’t know how to say.

3.

I SLOGGED BACK TO camp and released the branches from my arms. They clattered on the pile with all the rest. If Hope wouldn’t tell me what was really going on with her, maybe her friends would.

Of the seven other Sisters, Hope was close to three. Diana was tall and willowy, terrific with a crossbow, and never afraid to speak her mind. Then there was Scylla, who had never uttered a single word in all the weeks I’d known her. I wondered if she was even capable of talking. She was short and compact and basically all muscle—not someone you wanted to meet in a dark alley late at night.

The third friend was Helen, who was frail and shy and seemed always on the verge of being blown away by a gust of wind. Small in stature with strawberry-blond hair, she looked at Hope with adoring eyes.

It was Helen I decided to approach.

She was sitting on a log, fletching arrows. Next to her was a pile of goose feathers.

“I can’t believe you’re able to attach those tiny feathers with just animal guts,” I said.

She smiled shyly. “Sinew. Once it dries, it’s there forever.” She expertly split a quill in half, then wrapped a short thread of dried animal gut around the base of the quill and the arrow’s shaft.

I sat on a nearby rock. “Helen, can I ask you something?” She flinched slightly but said nothing. “Are you okay with heading back into the territory?”

“If it’s the right thing to do, then we should do it.”

“And your friends? They feel the same?”

“I think so.”

Her voice had a sudden wariness to it. Like Argos detecting an unfamiliar scent. I realized I was in dangerous territory here.

“Everyone’s on board?” I asked. “Everything’s normal?”

“Yes …”

“And Hope? She’s fine with all this?”

Helen’s body shrank in on itself, and I suddenly realized I’d crossed the line. I was asking about the very people she was closest to. Helen nodded quickly, her fingers deftly wrapping the animal gut around the top of the fletching. She placed the finished arrow in a pile.

“You’re close to Hope, aren’t you?” I asked.

“She saved my life.”

“Then you and I have something in common.”

I pushed myself up and walked away. Although I needed to know what was going on with Hope, it felt somehow traitorous to ask about her behind her back.

But I was still convinced that she was up to something—I just didn’t know what.

4.

THE AIR IS MOIST and heavy, and Hope’s breath frosts with each exhalation.

Cat’s does too, as he walks beside her.

They glide through the damp, dark woods, easing around trees, stepping over stones, hurrying away from camp—the pale light of the moon their only illumination. Hope’s heart beats with a kind of feverish anticipation, and every so often Cat’s arm brushes against her own. A cadence of crickets accompanies their every step.

They’re not more than a mile from camp when they hear the creak of a branch. The sound is unmistakable, and they freeze. Something’s out there.

Someone is out there.

Cat doesn’t need to motion her to stay silent; she knows the drill. She was brought up in the woods. She and her dad and Faith were on the run for ten years. She knows what it is to go from hunter to prey.

As Cat reaches into his quiver and nocks an arrow, Hope readies the grip on her spear and finds the balance point. They stand there, poised to strike, their breathing shallow. There are footsteps now, scuffing through twigs and leaves. The snap of a stick.

“Don’t move!” Hope shouts.

The figure stops in place.

Hope and Cat approach from different sides, weapons poised, ready to cast their spear and arrow. The lone figure stands there, hands raised.

It’s Book.

“What the hell,” Hope says, and Cat rolls his eyes. They each release their grip on their weapons. “You coulda gotten yourself killed.”

“I didn’t know it was dangerous to follow your friends,” Book says.

“It is if it’s the middle of the night and your friends don’t know you’re following them.”

Book doesn’t respond, and Hope realizes he’s waiting for an explanation. She has no intention of giving one.

Cat’s gaze shifts uncomfortably between the two. He slips the arrow back into the quiver and lowers his bow.

“See you back at camp,” he mutters, disappearing into the woods, swallowed by the black. Hope turns to Book.

“So you are stalking me!” she says.

“Not stalking. Following.”

“Forgive me for not seeing the difference.”

“The difference is you lied to me. The difference is you said you went to the woods alone.”

“That was last night, and who says I wasn’t alone?”

“Were you?”

Hope averts her eyes. She wants to lie again … but she can’t. “No,” she says beneath her breath.

Book takes a step back as though he’s been punched. “That’s why I followed you—to see what you were up to.”

“And what’d you find out?”

“You tell me.”

Their eyes lock. Again, it seems that Book is expecting an explanation. Again, she doesn’t give one.

“Look,” he says, “you can do whatever you like with whoever you want—”

“We weren’t doing anything.”

“—but don’t tell me one thing and do something else. Don’t—”

He stops himself midsentence, but Hope knows exactly what he was going to say. Don’t kiss me one moment and then ignore me the next.

She wants to respond—wants to tell him everything—but she doesn’t know how, and before she knows it, the silence stretches to something long and awkward and painfully uncomfortable. When she does open her mouth to speak, she’s interrupted by a sound—something mechanical. A growling engine.

Hope and Book immediately slip into hunter mode. They crouch low to the forest floor and bend their ears to the sound, determining direction, speed, object. Hope takes off first, Book right on her heels—two runners skirting the darkened landscape like ghosts.

Alder thickets slow them to a crawl, the thick brush tugging at their clothes. The sound grows louder, and suddenly it’s doubled. Not just one engine, but two.

They reach the edge of the thicket and stop. A pair of headlights carves tiny holes in the dark, snaking around a bend. And from the other direction: another set of headlights. The vehicles are headed right for each other on the same small road. Even in the black night, it’s possible to see the plumes of gravel that follow.

Hope realizes she hasn’t seen actual cars outside camp since the day she and Faith were captured.

Faith. Which makes her think of Dad. And Mom.

She shakes her head and grips the spear. Her fingers shine white.

The two vehicles slow, then come to a grinding stop. Book and Hope share a grim look.

The headlights of each illuminate the other vehicle, and Hope sees they’re both Humvees. Pure military. Car doors open and slam, the hollow sound echoing toward them.

Feet crunch on gravel, and for the first time Hope can make out two figures walking toward each other. When they step forward and headlights wreathe their silhouettes, Hope gives an audible gasp. She recognizes those silhouettes—she’d know them anywhere. The woman with the ankle-length coat draped around her shoulders; the obese man waddling forward.

Chancellor Maddox and Dr. Gallingham.

They meet between their vehicles, too far away for Hope and Book to hear the conversation. Dr. Gallingham deposits a gleaming steel box on the ground. It’s cubical in shape, and the metal glimmers in the light. He undoes a series of clasps, reaches into the bowels of the box, and removes … something. His body blocks Hope’s view and she can’t see. Whatever the object is, it makes an impression on Chancellor Maddox. Her beauty-queen smile flashes white, cutting through the dark like a sharp knife.

What could it possibly be? Hope wonders, darkness clouding her thoughts.

Whatever the answer, Gallingham returns it to the bottom of the box, fastens and reattaches all the clasps, and presents the steel box itself to the chancellor like a Wise Man presenting frankincense or myrrh.

Chancellor Maddox takes it, walks back to her vehicle, and climbs inside. Both Humvees return in the direction from which they came, the sound of gravel crunching beneath the tires growing more and more faint until, at last, the night returns to silence.

5.

WE MADE OUR WAY back without speaking. Although a part of me wanted to know where we stood … another part absolutely didn’t. The woods slipped by without a word between us.

When we stepped into camp, we woke the others. Everyone moaned as they rubbed the sleep from their eyes, but once we told them what we’d seen, they woke up in a hurry. The Less Thans had had little contact with Chancellor Maddox, but we’d heard about her—our friend Frank in the mountains had told us she was a beauty queen turned congresswoman turned leader of the Western Federation. According to him, it was her idea to scrap the Constitution. Her idea to label us Less Thans.

As for Dr. Gallingham, once Hope mentioned his name, I swear I could see the blood draining from the Sisters’ faces.

“What was it, Book?” Twitch asked. “What’d he give the chancellor?”

“We couldn’t see. But you could tell from the way they handled it that it was valuable.”

People threw out guesses, but Hope and I just shrugged. We could only speculate like the rest.

“What do we do now?” Flush asked.

I could feel the others’ stares directed toward me. After all, it had been my bright idea to cross back from the other side of the fence. If it hadn’t been for me, we’d all be safe and sound in the Heartland. It was my job to get this group to Camp Liberty and back.

“We need to leave. Tonight.” A few people grumbled, but I kept going. “It’s not safe being this close to a road. We’ve got enough food and weapons for a while, right?”

I gave a glance to those who’d been carving arrows and drying jerky, and they returned my look with unenthusiastic nods.

“All right,” I said. “Let’s pack up and get out of here.”

People were just beginning to step away when four shadows drifted in my direction. Dozer, Red, and two of the Sisters: Angela and Lacey.

“What makes you think we can t-t-take on the Brown Shirts?” Red asked, with his tendency to stutter. “They’ve got g-g-guns.”

The question startled me in its bluntness. We’d been here a whole week and there’d been no discussion like this at all. I got the feeling these four had been talking.

“Red’s right,” Dozer said, and it was obvious he was the instigator. Dozer lived to stir up trouble. “And not just the Brown Shirts. How can we hope to fend off the Hunters with these?” He gestured to the primitive slingshots, the clumsy crossbows, the recently whittled arrows.

I understood his point. It took little effort to remember the armor plating on the Hunters’ souped-up ATVs, the Kevlar vests, the M4s.

We had long ago made the decision to stick with what we knew: crossbows, spears, slingshots, bows and arrows. Not only were we proficient with those weapons, but they were quiet and light and allowed us a stealth that heavier automatic rifles wouldn’t. Also, we could make our own ammunition for slingshots and bows and arrows. Not so with M4s.

“We don’t need their weapons,” I said. “We didn’t in the Brown Forest, and we don’t now.”

Dozer took a bullying step toward me.

“Okay, then what I want to know is how’re we gonna release those Less Thans. Even if we do make it to Liberty—which is doubtful—how’re we gonna spring ’em?”

Everyone was quiet now. Even the crickets and frogs. I longed for Cat to back me up, but his eyes were fixed on the ground. I had no idea what was running through his mind.

“I don’t have a strategy just yet,” I said.

Dozer’s eyes widened in surprise. “No strategy at all? Great plan, Book Worm,” he scoffed. “That explains a lot.”

He looked around at the others. A couple of them obliged with laughter. I felt my face burning red.

“You agreed to go back to Liberty,” I said. “You didn’t have to.”

“That’s when I thought you had a plan. Now I know otherwise.”

“All I know is we have to do this.” Despite my efforts, I could feel my chest tightening.

“Oh we do, do we? And why is that?”

“Because it’s the right thing.”

Dozer laughed. A loud, mocking laugh. “And killing us in the process? Is that the ‘right thing’?”

My fists clenched, and Dozer leaned forward until our noses were actually touching.

“Well?” he asked. I nearly gagged from his sour breath.

I turned to move away, but his meaty hand grabbed my shoulder and whipped me back around. “Well?” he asked again.

Although I wanted nothing more than to take a swipe at him, I knew I wouldn’t stand a chance. Dozer was a big, barrel-chested guy with a thick neck, and even though one of his arms was slightly withered from radiation, he more than compensated with his other. If I attacked him, it’d only prove his point that I was reckless and not a real leader.

So I did nothing, said nothing, just turned and walked away. Behind me, I heard Dozer making clucking sounds.

There wasn’t anything I could do about Dozer. I’d just have to live with the situation—and him.

We marched through the night and into the morning, as the sun chased away the stars and made invisible the moon. There was little conversation, and Hope and I kept more distance between us than ever. She didn’t want to talk to me, and I had no desire to talk to her.

But it hurt to lose her. Cat, too. Ever since I’d snuck up on them, he’d avoided looking at me. I felt betrayed, as though someone had taken a shot to my gut and I hadn’t seen it coming.

I tried to focus on other things. Like what on earth had we witnessed between Dr. Gallingham and Chancellor Maddox? What was so precious that it had to be exchanged in a secret meeting in the middle of the night? We were utterly exhausted by the time we set up camp the next evening, but I was craving conversation. No, not just conversation: companionship. I needed a friend.

I found Twitch sitting cross-legged on the ground, his tall, gangly form folded in on itself. If there was ever a person who reminded me of a stork, it was Twitch.

He didn’t seem to notice when I sat down next to him. His fingers gripped a stick as though it was a pencil, sketching a series of loops and lines and mathematical equations in the dirt.

“Oh, hey,” he said, when he finally saw me, his cheek rising and falling in a facial tic. Even though Omega happened a good four years before we were born, the radiation from the bombs had done a number on his central nervous system. Of course, at this point, his twitches were just a part of him. Like my limp. Or Four Fingers’s missing finger.

“What do you think about our decision to return?” I asked. After last night’s confrontation with Dozer, I couldn’t help but feel that it was me versus everyone else. All the excitement we’d first experienced after crossing back from the fence seemed a thing of some distant past.

Twitch took a bite of squirrel jerky and chewed a moment. He was the kind of guy who liked to consider an issue fully before voicing an opinion—unlike his counterpart, Flush, who blurted out whatever popped into his head at any given moment.

“On the one hand, Dozer’s right,” he said. “It’s the most foolish decision we’ve made.” His facial features jerked as he chewed.

“But?” I prompted.

He finished chewing and swallowed. “We need to rescue those Less Thans. And that trumps logic.”

Without meaning to, I sighed in relief. All day, I’d had the feeling I was waging an uphill battle against the others.

“Not that that means we’ll succeed,” he added, and my happiness evaporated.

“You don’t think we’ll make it?”

“Are you kidding? We don’t stand a chance.”

I looked at him in disbelief. “But you’re willing to go along anyway?”

He shrugged. “No one else is going to rescue those Less Thans—might as well be us. And who wants to miss out on that?”

I loved Twitch for that—that he knew the odds were stacked against us but was willing to go along anyway.

I pointed to the drawings in the dirt. “What’s all this?”

His eyes lit up. “Ever heard of a zip line?” When I gave my head a shake, he used the stick to walk me through the drawings, telling me how—in pre-Omega days—people used to stretch out long wires and ride them down mountains. For fun.

“Where’d you hear this?”

“Read about it in some old science magazines.”

Figured. “So what’re you saying?” I asked.

“The enemy’s always coming at us from the ground, right? So I say we build our own zip line and attack them from the air.”

The point of his stick landed on a series of lines and semicircles, and he told me all about inertia and acceleration and other things I only partly understood. As he spoke, his facial tics decreased. It was as though the more passionate he became, the less his face twitched.

It seemed impossible, of course, finding the materials to build such a line, but I loved his enthusiasm. He would do his best to make this work, even though we had “no chance” of succeeding.

Now if I could only convince the rest of them.

6.

THEY SHIVER THEIR WAY westward, sloshing through ankle-deep mud under leaden skies.

Hope’s mind is a million places at once, darting back and forth between Book and Cat and what they witnessed on the darkened road … and her own past.

Just seeing Dr. Gallingham brought it all back, and it’s as if the injections are happening all over again. Her body goes clammy, perspiration dots her forehead.

I’m not sick, she has to tell herself. I am not sick.

It feels like just yesterday that she and Faith were submerged in vats of ice, their body temperatures lowered some twenty degrees. It was a long forever before Hope recovered. Faith never did. Hope can still see her face, blue and lifeless, her unseeing eyes cutting into Hope’s soul.

The tears press against her eyes, but she’s damned if she’s going to give in to them. Live today, tears tomorrow, her father always said.

Her father.

Dr. Gallingham claimed they’d worked together, that her father had somehow been involved in those experiments. Known as the Butcher of the West. Ludicrous to even think about.

And yet the notion lingers. Something Hope needs to find out for herself. It’s one of the reasons she crawled under the fence and joined the others. A search for truth.

She is woken from her reverie when a herd of deer goes bounding past. Everyone looks up and watches them go, their white tails raised as they gallop away. It’s a beautiful sight.

Then a flock of birds flies past, the flap of their wings making ripples in the air. Hope begins to wonder. When a dozen chattering squirrels leap through the trees above, the wonder turns to alarm.

“Cool,” Flush says, admiring the nature parade.

But Hope knows animals don’t just run in herds—at full speed, in the same direction—for the fun of it. Something’s going on.

An instant later they hear a booming crash that shakes the ground beneath their feet. They stand there listening, afraid to speak. There’s another crash. The earth trembles.

“What is it?” Flush asks. His voice is barely a whisper.

“Whatever it is,” Twitch answers, “it’s coming from over there.” He points to the north.

The noises come regularly now: thunderous, splintering booms that rattle the ground. Hope clutches her spear and races forward, the others right behind her. They dart through the woods, ducking beneath branches, skipping over a carpet of dead leaves.

They come to a sudden stop when they spy the crown of a tree swaying forward and backward as though pushed by a violent wind. And then it comes crashing to the earth. Whoompf! They feel the vibration from where they stand. The throaty rumble radiates up their feet.

A moment later, another tree does the same, wobbling in one direction, then the other, before arcing through the air and slamming to the ground. Thwump!

What’s going on? Hope wonders, her body rigid with fear. How can a forest be collapsing on itself? What could be ripping trees from the earth?

All at once, they hear another sound: engines. But different than the Humvees from the other night: louder, gravelly, hulking. And now the biting smell of diesel.

Cat motions them forward, and at the top of a ridge they look down and see a sight they can’t quite believe: enormous bulldozers knocking down trees, clearing out a swath of forest, creating an ugly, barren scar in the middle of the wilderness.

On the sides of the vehicles is a symbol they know too well: three inverted triangles. The insignia of the Republic of the True America. And the drivers of the bulldozers are none other than Brown Shirts, clad in their customary black jackboots, dark pants, and brown shirts.

The Sisters and Less Thans watch, mesmerized. A building project—in the middle of nowhere! It makes no sense. As trees tumble to the ground and great shovelfuls of dirt are ripped from the earth, the Less Thans and Sisters can’t begin to understand it.

What are they building? And why here?

When they finally tear themselves away, Hope feels her heart hammering against her chest. She knew they’d run into soldiers—she just didn’t think it would be so soon. But it’s more than that. It’s the mystery of not knowing what they’re up to that disturbs her most.

“Come on,” Cat says. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

They march the rest of that afternoon and evening, sleep little, and march all the next day, trying to put as much distance as possible between them and the Brown Shirts. When they stop the following night, the few words they speak are colored by exhaustion and anxiety.

“Are we safe here?” Helen asks.

“Should be,” Hope answers. “That wasn’t a search party. It was a construction project.”

“For what?”

She shrugs.

“Whatever it is,” Twitch says, “they want it hidden.”

“Great job leading us to safety,” Dozer says to Book, magnifying an eye roll. A few others laugh in support.

They drift away and prepare for sleep, and Hope and Cat exchange a glance. Not tonight, her expression says.

As Hope lies down on a bed of weeds and pine needles, she remembers her conversation with Book—about what they intend to do after freeing the Less Thans. What she didn’t tell him was that, yes, she does have something in mind. In fact, it’s the other reason she didn’t stay in the Heartland. She has unfinished business—that she knows for certain.

Colonel Thorason. Chancellor Maddox. Dr. Gallingham.

The camp overseer. The ruler of the territory. The sadistic doctor.

She doesn’t care what order; she doesn’t care how it happens. But she will see to it that they pay for what they did to her sister.

7.

THE NIGHTMARE WAS THE same: the hollow, vacant stares of Less Thans imprisoned in the bunker. They gazed at me with oozing sores and pleading eyes and begged me to do something. To free them. To get them out of there.

They reached for me with their bony fingers and I jerked awake. But it wasn’t the dream that woke me, it was sound. I’d heard something.

I lifted my head and looked around. Everyone was fast asleep … except a lone figure tiptoeing through the woods. I couldn’t tell who it was—just a fuzzy silhouette in passing moonlight—but I figured it was probably someone going off to take a leak. Guys did it all the time in the middle of the night, and now that there were Sisters with us, we had to travel a little farther to find some privacy.

I lowered my head and had nearly dozed off again when it suddenly occurred to me: who would be tiptoeing? Who was that considerate? Normally, when guys had to whiz, they just tromped off into the woods, did their business, and tromped back. No one tiptoed.

I sat back up. Argos was awake, a low growl rumbling in the back of his throat. The two of us peered into the dark.

A moment later I saw fireflies, tiny white dots etching circles in the black. They hovered and swooped and I was mesmerized by their movements.

But as they grew closer I realized they weren’t fireflies at all—and my heart nearly exploded from my chest. At the very top of my lungs I yelled the first and only word that came to mind.

“Ambush!”

We scrambled to our feet, simultaneously grabbing weapons and shouting questions.

“What’s going on?”

“What do you see?”

“Who is it?”

It was like we’d never been in a battle before. Cat was the smoothest of all, of course, nocking an arrow before the rest of us were even standing.

In no time, bullets were whistling past our ears, the headlamps poking through the woods. Headed straight in our direction.

A flare rocketed skyward, bathing the night in eerie luminescence, and I got my first glimpse of the attackers. There had to have been at least fifty of them. Two bullets bit the earth at my feet. I did a little dance and stumbled to the ground.

I was just pulling myself up when I heard a sharp whistling sound, growing steadily louder. A moment later there was a huge explosion. Dirt and rocks and shrapnel sailed through air, throwing everyone off their feet. Whoever was standing next to me went flying, as if some giant hand had swatted him aside.

More mortars followed, but even scarier than that was the sight of Brown Shirts, surging toward us like a tidal wave. The flare’s green light made their silhouettes flicker like monsters’.

“Douse the fire!” I yelled. As long as there were even smoldering coals, the soldiers would have no trouble picking us off. Someone threw the contents of their canteen on the embers, and white smoke billowed up.

I scrambled to find the person who’d been hit. His moans led me to him, and even by weak moonlight it was clear who I was looking at.

Cat.

His left arm was like spaghetti, an explosion of red sinews and dangling muscles. He’d already lost a ton of blood and was barely conscious. At the sight of it—his limp arm and ashen face—I grew suddenly clammy. The horizon tilted. It was all I could do to keep from passing out.

I felt a pull and realized Flush was tugging at my shirt. “What do we do?!” he shouted.

I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to calm myself. Steady breaths. Steady. And suddenly it wasn’t Cat I saw, but the woman from my dreams—the one with the long black hair. She was kneeling on prairie grass, hands atop my shoulders, her eyes locked with mine.

“Book!” Flush screamed, and my eyes popped open. “What do we do?”

Flares exploded in the sky and mortars exploded on the ground. These Brown Shirts meant to kill us then and there.

Meanwhile, the Less Thans stood in a half circle staring down at Cat, their expressions vacant and disbelieving. The sight of him gasping for breath stopped us in our tracks. It was as if we’d lost the power to act. Lost even the ability to think straight.

Without knowing what I was saying or why I was saying it, I began barking out commands. “Twitch and Dozer, lay cover with your arrows. Hope, spread out your best shooters and hammer the Brown Shirts from the sides. Red and Flush, pound them with rocks. The rest of you, get back up that ridge ASAP.”

Everyone went into motion.

“Who’s got Cat?” Twitch asked, nocking his first arrow.

“Me,” I said, and before anyone could object, I grabbed Cat’s good arm, hoisted him over my shoulder, and began carrying him up the hill.

It made no sense, of course. I was the weakest of the bunch with a permanent limp, but at that particular moment I could’ve lifted all the LTs. After all, it was Cat—my friend Cat. Sure, I didn’t know what he was doing with Hope behind my back, but I knew it was up to me to save his life.

It was a mad scramble up the steep slope, everyone making for the woods at the crest. Bullets zinged around us, digging up the earth and embedding themselves into trees. Adding to the chaos were the flares washing the night in shades of eerie green, turning the world into a lurid nightmare—as vivid and terrifying as hell itself.

“Twitch, get out of there!” I yelled.

He nodded but didn’t stop firing, pulling one arrow from his quiver after another. It was like he was a man possessed, and I saw at least three Brown Shirts lying on the ground, arrows protruding from their bellies like flags. Twitch had done his job, and then some. Frank would’ve been proud.

“Twitch!” I yelled again.

But too late. A mortar screamed from the heavens, landing not far from where he knelt. The explosion catapulted him into the air. Red and Flush raced to his side and grabbed ahold of his hands. They began dragging him up the hill.

The only thing that saved us was the dark. Each time the flares faded, the soldiers were shooting at shadows.

“Drop me,” Cat moaned.

“Like hell,” I said.

By the time we made it into the trees, I was breathing so hard I thought my lungs might explode. I lowered Cat to the ground and examined his wound. It was bad. His left forearm was a shredded mess of tissue and muscle, skin hanging like a loose flap. I ripped off my belt and tied a tourniquet above his elbow. Then I tore off his shirt and pressed it on the wound, trying to stanch the flow of blood. I hated that I was getting good at this.

I noticed everyone had made it to the trees, including the two guys with Twitch. They hovered over him frantically.

“They’re a hundred yards away!” Dozer cried.

A flare hissed and sizzled, illuminating Brown Shirts tromping on our campsite.

I looked down at Cat’s face; it was growing paler by the minute. He was mumbling incoherently.

Red appeared by my side. “T-T-Twitch can’t see,” he said.

I looked over and saw Flush crouched by Twitch’s side. He was wrapping a strip of fabric around his good friend’s face. Four Fingers hugged himself and rocked back and forth, keening wildly, a string of drool rubber-banding from his mouth.

“Twitch!” he cried to the stars. “Twiiiiiiiitch!”

Everything was happening too fast—it was all out of control. Bullets whistling, mortars screaming, flares hissing. And now the Brown Shirts were making their way up the hill, their shadows dancing like ghosts in the green light of the flares.

“Spread out!” I yelled, but even as I said it, I knew it was useless. Though the Sisters were bringing down their share of Brown Shirts with crossbows, we didn’t stand a chance. Not with so few of us. Not without Cat. Not against fifty.

My hands were a sticky mess. The balled-up shirt was a sopping, bloody sponge. Cat’s face was ashen.

“Come on,” I begged him. “Stay with me!” Both a prayer and a command.

I jammed the soggy shirt into the wound. But even if I managed to stop the flow, what then? Without any medical supplies, the situation was hopeless.

I cursed the woman with the long black hair. She’d led us here. If I hadn’t listened to those damn dreams, we’d all be safe and sound in the other territory. But it was too late. We were about to be captured … or shot dead on the spot.

“They’re getting closer!” Dozer shouted.

The soldiers kept advancing. There was nothing stopping them. A hail of bullets snapped small saplings in two.

Hope whistled sharply and the Sisters regrouped, dropping to one knee. With an icy calmness, they readied their crossbows and released their bolts. A half dozen Brown Shirts crumpled to the ground.

But still the soldiers came, marching up the hill, now joined by other soldiers who’d been trailing them all along. It was no longer fifty Brown Shirts, more like a hundred. Maybe more.

I looked down at Cat. His chest was unnaturally still, his face clammy.

“What do we do?” Flush cried out in a panic. Even the Sisters, so calm at first, showed signs of alarm. Their eyes were wide with terror as they reloaded their crossbows.

The Brown Shirts strode effortlessly up the hill, their M16s strobing the black, peppering tree trunks until it rained pine bark. The smell of gunpowder mixed with vanilla pine—a bittersweet concoction.

“Well?” Dozer asked. He nocked an arrow and sent it squirting into the black. “Any bright ideas, genius?”

For the longest time, I didn’t answer. When I did, it was almost as if I couldn’t believe what I was telling them.

“Retreat,” I said, my voice barely audible.

“Who’s gonna get Cat?”

“No one. We’re gonna leave him behind.”

Cat.

The sandy-haired boy we’d rescued one day at the edge of the No Water. The one who showed us the Hunters and told us what LT really stood for: Less Than. From the moment we found him, our destiny was changed. On more than one occasion he had saved our lives.

And now here he was, pale and delirious, blood seeping from his arm.

“What’re you talking about?” Flush yelled, near tears. “We can’t leave him.”

I understood his desperation. This was Cat. The thought of losing him was beyond comprehension. Still, if we stayed, we’d all be killed. And if we tried to take him with us, he’d die for sure. This was the only choice.

“Go!” I yelled.

Most of the Sisters obeyed immediately. They fired their crossbows even as they took giant strides backward. The Less Thans weren’t as easily convinced.

“It ain’t right,” Dozer said. He sent an arrow into the black, then turned and ran.

Hope was the last of the girls to leave. I saw her stare at Cat for what seemed like forever. What was in that look I couldn’t tell. Then she gave me a glance, as if questioning my decision.

“I’ll catch up,” I said.

Her enormous brown eyes danced back and forth between Cat and me … and then she went.

Flush and Red just stood there, not moving. Unable to move.

“What’re you waiting for?” I screamed at them. “You’ll die if you stay here.”

“We can’t leave Cat,” Flush said. His eyes were red.

“I don’t want to either, but we don’t have a choice. Now get out of here!”

Reluctantly, they grabbed hold of Twitch and ran, guiding him through the woods.

I reached down and squeezed Cat’s hand. Was it my imagination or was he trying to squeeze back? His eyes were closed, his face an unnatural shade of gray. It seemed not even remotely possible to see him this way. This was Cat—who survived a walk through the No Water, the most barren, inhospitable landscape imaginable, and lived to talk about it. Who led us up Skeleton Ridge and across the Flats and through the Brown Forest and took out the propane tank with a single bullet.

“This is just for now,” I said, choking back tears. “You haven’t seen the last of us.”

I waited as long as I dared, hoping—praying—he might respond. He didn’t.

I gave his hand a final squeeze, jumped to my feet, and dashed off into the woods, bullets chasing me like angry hornets. As I ran, tears spewed from my eyes and raced down my cheeks.

What have I done? I asked myself. What on earth have I done?