A bullet punched into Brandon’s face, shattering his nose, burrowing between his eyes.
Blood spurted out of his eyes. He made a strangled noise in the back of his throat.
Emmett grabbed me and pulled me down into a bush with him. “Duck and cover. Duck and cover,” he was saying over and over again.
There was blood on me. Brandon’s blood. I’d been close enough to get the spatter.
Emmett crawled ahead of me, through the underbrush.
I followed him, feeling shocked. I’d killed a lot of people, but when I pulled the trigger, I knew it was coming. Brandon and I had been talking.
One minute he’d been alive.
The next?
Dead.
I scrambled after Emmett, trying to move as quickly and as quietly as I could.
CHAPTER TEN
“I think we lost them,” said Emmett. He stopped moving and sat up.
I stopped moving too. “They could have shot any of us. They were right there. Close enough to get Brandon in the face, and we didn’t even know they were there.”
“They’re good at what they do,” said Emmett. “It’s not easy to shake them.” He looked me up and down. “You weren’t lying about being hard to kill, were you? I could have sworn that you were dead yesterday. They shot you so many times.”
“I’m not dead,” I told him.
“I can see that,” he said. “Well, from now on, that makes you the one who goes first.” He got to his feet and gestured for me to go ahead of him.
I began to traipse through the woods.
“Jesus,” he said. “Not so loud.”
“Sorry,” I said.
“Look where you’re walking,” he said. “Try to place your feet where there aren’t any branches that you’ll break and crunch, huh?”
I did my best to follow his advice. I took a few more steps.
“Better,” he admitted grudgingly. “But not perfect.”
“I never spent any time in the woods before,” I told him.
“Obviously,” he said.
“What happened to Christa?” I said, making my way carefully through the woods. “I saw her get past the tree line, but then I lost consciousness.”
“I don’t know about the girl,” said Emmett. “Brandon and I waited for as long as we could for the others to meet up with us. No one showed.”
“Ken got shot,” I said. “Did you see that?”
“I was too busy running for my life to watch and see who got taken down. Watching everyone else’s backs is a good way to get yourself killed.”
I didn’t respond. I kept forgetting that Emmett had been on death row. I didn’t know what kind of guy he was. He seemed like a decent person, except for the fact he didn’t seem too broken up about anyone’s deaths. He sure hadn’t shown any remorse over Brandon, and I figured they’d been in the woods together for an entire day.
Of course, I wasn’t exactly breaking out in tears over him either. It was awful that these guys were getting shot down, and I didn’t condone what Rolf did, but I didn’t have the energy or the inclination to get soft over it. I needed to find Christa, and I needed to get us out of here. That was the priority.
“Hey,” said Emmett. “Go that way.”
I turned to look at him. “What does it matter?” It was all woods, wasn’t it?
He pointed. “You see that?”
“No,” I said. All I saw were trees.
“In the distance,” he said. “That’s a power line.”
I squinted. He was right. “Shit, you’re right.”
“That’s where we’re headed,” he said. “Well, it’s where I’m headed anyway. You can do what you like. I guess you’ll want to find your girlfriend.”
I thought about telling him she wasn’t my girlfriend. But would he think she was open season if I said that? If a guy thought he was going to die out here, what would he do to a girl like Christa? Maybe it was better if he thought she was spoken for. “I do need to find her. I can’t let anything happen to her.”
“Well, I’m going to the power line,” he said. “You can do what you want.”
I considered. I began to walk in the direction that he’d shown me. “What’s so important about the power line?”
“It’s a way out,” he said. “If they ran a power line through here, then there’s some kind of civilization out in this wilderness. We follow it until we find it.”
“Civilization?”
“Maybe a housing development,” he said. “Maybe even a town. But even if it’s only one house, it’s a house with electricity. They’ll have some way to call for help. It’s our best hope.”
I nodded. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”
“Course I’m right,” he said. “So, you’ll come with me?”
“I need to find the girl,” I said.
“It’s a big woods, Silas. You might never find her.”
I knew that he was right, but I couldn’t give up on her. I shook my head.
He shrugged. “Suit yourself.” He moved around me and began trudging through the underbrush.
I looked around, almost as if I expected Christa to appear out of a tree nearby or something. When she didn’t, of course, I went after him. “Hold up.”
“Not waiting for you,” he said.
I caught up to him. “She’s alone out there. She doesn’t know anything about how to take care of herself. She’s young. She’s probably scared.”
“So?” said Emmett.
“So, you seem like a decent guy to me. Help me find her.”
He snorted. “Decent guy? You know that I was serving out a death sentence, right?”
“That doesn’t mean you’re not a decent guy,” I said. “I’ve done some things, things I had to do, and they weren’t always easy, but just because I did them doesn’t mean I’m an evil person, you know.”
“Evil person?” He turned to look at me, narrowing his eyebrows.
“Yeah,” I said. “Sometimes you got to do stuff, no matter what it is.”
“What kind of stuff we talking about here?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. You’re the one who was on death row. What’d you do? Kill someone?”
His jaw twitched. He didn’t meet my gaze.
“Yeah, so I killed people,” I said.
He raised his gaze to mine, and his expression was hard. “Did you?”
“If I had to, I did,” I said. “Probably have to do it again. If I make it out of this, Rolf sure as shit isn’t going to.”
Emmett nodded slowly.
“All I’m saying is that I think you’re a decent guy, okay?” I said. “And I don’t think you want anything to happen to Christa either. I think you want to protect her.”
He picked up the pace. “You don’t know a thing about me.”
“Well, you don’t know anything about me either.”
“And I don’t know anything about the girl.”
“She doesn’t deserve this,” I said. “She got into this mess because of me. Rolf’s got her here to punish me. She’s completely innocent. She isn’t like us.”
He stopped, bracing himself against a tree trunk. “God damn it.”
“You’ll do it, won’t you?”
He turned to me. “We need to find something to eat, okay? We need protein. We’ll make a fire. Maybe she sees it. That’s all I’m willing to commit to doing. Take it or leave it.”
It was a better plan than I had. “I’ll take it.” If it didn’t work, then I guessed I could part ways with him.
* * *
Emmett was gathering sticks together, putting them in a small pile with dry leaves.
“Aren’t you going to want bigger wood to make a fire?” I asked him.
He glowered at me. “You don’t know a thing about building fires, do you?”
I shrugged. “I, uh, lit a charcoal grill a few times.”
“Let me guess,” he said. “You used the charcoal that lights up right when you touch i
t with the flame?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
He went back to his task, rolling his eyes. “Listen, you can’t start a fire with big logs. You need to get the flames going with some smaller stuff first. Otherwise, you just smother the flame.”
“Oh,” I said. Huh. I never knew that.
“Why don’t you go scavenge for some though, huh?”
“Okay.”
He showed me about how big he wanted the pieces of wood to be, and I went off looking for them. It wasn’t too difficult to find them. There were a good number of fallen down trees close by. However, it would have been easier, I have to admit, if I’d had something like a saw or an ax. As it was, I had to bring things back in big pieces.
When I had a nice pile, I stopped to watch Emmett. “You going to rub two sticks together?” I said.
“No,” he said.
“Make sparks with flint? Use eyeglasses?”
He pulled a lighter out of his pocket. “Figured I’d use this.”
“You have a lighter.”
“Yeah,” he said. “They gave them to us when they locked us up in that cellar. Gave us cigarettes too. Of course, they’re all gone now. Smoked them all.”
I sat down next to his pile of sticks and leaves. “They didn’t give me a lighter.”
He just shrugged.
“Well, what are you waiting for?” I said.
“I’m not going to start the fire yet,” he said. “That would be a complete waste of resources. No, we’re going to use this fire for two purposes. First, we’re going to cook something to eat. Then, we’re going to make it smoky, and try to signal your girl. But the whole time the fire’s going, we’re vulnerable, you understand that? Because the hunters can see us too.”
My stomach growled. “Eat? We’re going to eat?”
“Yeah,” he said.
“What are we going to eat?”
“We have to kill something,” he said. “Obviously.”
“Oh,” I said, looking around. “How?”
* * *
Emmett held up a rock to show me. It had a jagged, sharp edge. “You need one like this.”
I knelt down, searching. We were a few feet away from the place where we’d made our fire. There were more rocks here—flat ones in heaps beneath the undergrowth. I sifted through them, looking for one like the one that he’d shown me.
“Like this?” I picked one up and offered it to him.
He scrutinized it. “That’ll work.” He gestured to the long, thin tree saplings that he’d instructed me to pull up out of the ground. “We’re going to use these to make spears.”
I looked at the saplings. Really? How did he propose we do that?
“First we’ve got to strip the branches off of it, get it down to one long, smooth piece of wood,” he told me. “Then we use these rocks to whittle away at the end, sharpening it into a point.”
Oh. Okay. Maybe it would work. It wasn’t going to be quick or easy, that was for sure.
We set to work.
It was easy enough to strip the branches from the tree. When I had trouble, the sharp rock worked almost like a saw, helping me remove everything. Emmett worked at his too. We were silent and efficient, both going as quickly as we could.
It wasn’t difficult, but it was time consuming. It took quite a bit of time to get the branches off.
Then we had to work on sharpening the ends of the spears. That was a bit tougher. Emmett showed me how to use my rock like a knife to whittle away at the wood.
After some time, we finally both had spears with lethally sharp tips.
But now came the real work. We had to kill something.
* * *
Emmett decided fish would be easiest. There was a small stream trickling through the woods, and he thought it must have some fish in it.
For hours, the two of us balanced on rocks jutting out of the stream, each holding our makeshift spears up, hovering over the water, waiting for the fish to swim by.
I knew about water refraction, so I rolled my eyes when Emmett tried to explain it to me. Yes I knew that I should stab lower than where I actually saw the fish, because the water was tricking my eyes to see it in the wrong place.
What I didn’t realize, though, until after a few failed attempts, was that fish were slippery as hell, even if you were aiming in the right place. They darted through the water, easily evading our strikes.
Not to mention the fact that they didn’t come by that often. We were there for a long time. The sun moved halfway across the sky. My neck got sore from staring down at the water.
And all the time, we both knew that Rolf and his hunters were out there somewhere. They could be watching us, and we’d never know it. A shot could burst through the air and take either one of us down. I’d get back up.
Well, probably, anyway.
Who knew when Rolf would get sick of killing me, and decide it was better if I stayed dead.
I figured the first thing he’d try, if he knew that the regular ways of killing me didn’t work, was to cut off my head. And that would do me in, all right. I couldn’t survive that.
Every noise made us twitch in fear. Every stirring could be the only signal we had to our last moments.
But after all of that, I was the one who stabbed a fish.
Me.
It was a lucky strike, honestly. I didn’t do anything differently than I had the last seven times I’d tried, but, for some reason, this time it worked. I nabbed it.
I crowed in triumph, lifting my speared fish up for Emmett to see.
He laughed. “All right, Silas. You got it.”
I grinned, feeling proud of myself.
He raised his eyebrows. “I bet you have no idea how to clean and gut that thing, do you?”
* * *
The fish didn’t taste good, not exactly. We didn’t have any seasonings. We managed to cook it over the fire, but we didn’t have anything else to go with it.
It mostly tasted… hot.
And fishy.
I didn’t care. I was so hungry. I hadn’t filled my stomach with anything since I’d thrown up all the berries.
It wasn’t enough either. I could have eaten three fish all by myself, I was so hungry. Instead, Emmett and I had to share one between us.
After we were done eating, the sun started to sink low in the sky.
Emmett started stomping on the fire, putting it out.
“Hey,” I said. “I thought we were going to use that fire to signal Christa.”
He shook his head. “It’s too dark. At night, that fire is like a beacon. It’ll draw the hunters straight to us. We’ll have to try again tomorrow when it’s light outside.”
“Tomorrow?” I said. “But that’s another whole night she’s got to spend out there alone.”
“Sorry,” he said. “Too dangerous any other way.” He stomped the fire completely out. “Come on, let’s go.”
“Go?” I said.
“We can’t stay near the fire,” he said. “If the hunters are coming for us, then they’ll come right to this spot. We’ve got to get away, so that they can’t find us.”
I hated this. I had to find Christa, and I felt like I was getting farther and farther away from her every minute.
“Look,” said Emmett, “I don’t mean to be an ass, but she might not even be alive anymore.”
“She’s alive,” I said. “Rolf told me that he wants me to watch her die. He’ll keep her alive long enough to make sure that happens.”
“Rolf?”
“That’s the guy who organizes all of this,” I said.
“So you know him? He’s got some personal reason for going after you?”
“Yeah,” I said.
He started into the woods, motioning with his head. “You can tell me about it while we walk.”
I heaved a huge sigh, looking at the remains of the fire, debating whether I wanted to go with Emmett or not.
He was my best chance of staying alive
and getting help, I decided. And that was the best way I knew to help Christa.
I started to walk too.
“You first, remember?” he said.
Right. I got in front, doing my best not to make an incredible amount of noise as we walked through the underbrush.
A gun shot splintered the air.
I froze, looking up. Was it close?
Next to me, Emmett hadn’t moved either. He was also staring at the sky.
Then there was a noise. The sound of something crashing through the woods.
“Move,” said Emmett.
I started forward.
“Quieter!” he whispered.
But before I took another step, Christa burst through the woods and hurled herself into my arms. “Silas!”
“Christa?” I couldn’t believe she was here. I hugged her tightly, relief pouring through me. “You’re okay?”
“We saw your fire.” Her voice was muffled because her face was pressed into my chest. “We came in this direction, but they saw us.”
Another gun shot.
“We?” I said.
Milo appeared behind Christa, pushing through the leaves and branches. “They’re right behind us.”
“Fucking excellent,” growled Emmett.
There was one more shot.
Milo screamed. His arm exploded in red gore just above the elbow.
“Shut up,” said Emmett.
Milo grabbed onto his arm.
Emmett hit the forest floor. “On the ground, all of you. Don’t move. Don’t talk.”
I got down, pulling Christa with me.
We lay on our sides in the foliage, face to face. We were still holding onto each other.
More gun shots. A volley of them. Bang bang bang!
She felt incredibly small and fragile pressed against me, like a baby bird or something. I had the feeling that I might move the wrong way and accidentally crush her.
She gazed at me with wide, frightened eyes.
I tightened my grip on her, wondering if that was reassuring, if that helped her at all.
I was just as afraid as she was.
Close by, Milo’s breathing sounded labored. He was having trouble not making noise. He was probably in a lot of pain.
I knew what it felt like to get shot like that, but I couldn’t fully fathom how he was doing, because my body went to work healing me right away. I only felt the excruciating agony at first. Afterward, it faded pretty quick.
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