by Tom Isbell
He studies her face. “What do you mean?”
“It’s empty.”
“How do you know that?”
“I know.”
“But what if there’s someone in there? Someone hiding?”
“No one would hide in there.” Her tone leaves no room for discussion.
“Okay,” Book says, and starts to walk away, but her nails dig into his skin.
“You need to promise me something,” she says. “Promise you’ll never set foot in that building.”
Book smiles, thinking she’s kidding, and when he tries to pull his arm free, her grip tightens. “Promise me,” she says again.
“Why?”
“Just promise.”
Hope’s attitude is matched by that of her three friends. Their faces are as set as Hope’s, and it’s obvious they’re in complete agreement. The look of surprise on Book’s face shows he has no sense of what this is all about. Of what they went through.
“Uh, sure,” he stammers.
Hope leans into him—their eyes locking. “Actually promise.”
“I promise,” he says.
She releases his arm and motions to the Sisters. “Go get the others,” she says. Scylla, Helen, and Diana exit through the unlocked front gate in the direction of the woods. Book turns to Hope.
“What’s going on?” he asks.
“I don’t know,” she answers. “I thought the Sisters would be here.”
“That’s not what I mean. That building—why aren’t you letting me go in there?”
She seems about to speak but then thinks better of it. “You have no idea,” she says, and walks away.
17.
YOU HAVE NO IDEA. The very words Cat said to me back at Camp Liberty, back when I didn’t know a thing about the Hunters.
So what was going on? I wondered . . . and questioned if I really wanted to know.
It was Flush who had the idea to examine the kitchen. “If they were in such a hurry, maybe they didn’t take everything with them.”
He was right. The back pantry was a smorgasbord: dozens of gallon-sized cans of fruit cocktail, baked beans, creamed corn, chocolate pudding. A feast just waiting to be devoured. There was no electricity, and we didn’t dare fire up the generators. Instead, we covered the kitchen windows with blankets, lit a small candle, and then ate straight from the cans.
We stumbled back to the tar-paper barracks and found the beds. For us four Less Thans, it was the first time we’d slept on mattresses since our escape from Liberty, months earlier. My friends began snoring before the blankets even settled on their bodies.
But I couldn’t sleep. I had vowed to myself I would try to understand Hope’s haunted look, and now I had a chance to do something about it.
I got up and walked across the parade ground, the air damp with summer, a million stars winking overhead. On the far side of camp a screen door banged against its frame as the breeze opened and closed it.
Slam, slam, slam, slam.
The infirmary was a plain, two-story rectangle of a building with peeling white paint and bars crisscrossing the second-story windows. Curious. Who would want to break into—or out of—a hospital?
A part of me felt oddly guilty. I had promised Hope I wouldn’t do this. But at the same time I wanted to know her better. If I could understand what was going on behind those haunted eyes, maybe I could help her—just as she’d helped me when I told her about K2, the friend whose death I felt responsible for.
The infirmary knob twisted in my hand, and I eased inside. I pulled the blinds shut and lit a lantern that rested on a desk, and a yellow glow blossomed, revealing a small waiting room. A door stood on the far side. I tugged it open. Before me was a narrow corridor with a series of rooms on either side. To my immediate right was a staircase leading up.
I inched my way down the hall, holding the lantern before me as though it was a cross to ward off vampires. The first room to my right was a doctor’s office. A small desk, a chair, an examination table. The cabinet doors above the sink swung open, revealing empty shelves.
I moved to the next room. Its door was closed. I steadied my hand on the knob and turned. The door squeaked open, and the lantern’s rays spilled onto the linoleum floor . . . revealing the same furnishings as the previous room. And more empty shelves.
Each room was virtually the same. I couldn’t figure out why Hope had forbidden me to come here.
At the end of the hallway was another stairway leading up. A part of me wanted to get the heck out of there, maybe come back the next day when it was bright out. But I knew I had to do this now. I had to know. I took a deep breath and went up.
Each step creaked beneath me. I reached the top of the stairs, opened a set of double doors, and looked down the long hallway. It was no different from the one below. Linoleum floor. Pale institutional walls. A series of rooms on either side.
“There’s nothing here,” I said aloud, my voice echoing back at me.
I peeked in the first doorway—it was a simple doctor’s office, just like what I’d seen below—and I was ready to step back out when I noticed something dangling from the thin mattress: two sets of leather straps with metal buckles. I’d never seen that on a hospital bed before.
The next room was stranger still. Its central feature was an enormous steel tank—something you’d see in a barn for livestock. The third room sported a metal table, splotched with rust, encircled by a gutter that drained into the floor.
An autopsy table, I realized. For dissecting dead bodies.
The next room had the same. And the next several after that. There were nearly as many rooms with autopsy tables as there were rooms with beds. As if the doctors expected inmates to die.
What was going on here?
The final room was a lab, flasks and beakers of every possible size, everything covered in a coating of dust. It was here that I spied a fat three-ring binder. It lay in the corner of an emptied cabinet. Whoever had cleared out the room had obviously missed it.
I set the lantern on the desk and picked up the black binder. As soon as I opened it and my eyes roamed over the contents, I realized I was looking at something I wasn’t meant to see. A photo album. But without photos of smiling children or families.
These were pictures of female inmates, sporting hideous scars, gruesome wounds, festering sores. The pictures were bloody and grisly and awful, and I wished more than anything I’d never seen them.
But the photo that grabbed my attention most was absent of blood and scars. It showed two female prisoners submerged in a vat of water, ice floating all around them. Their skin had purpled and they looked moments away from death.
But worse was the fact that I recognized the prisoners: Hope and her sister, Faith. Hope’s enormous brown eyes were filled with pleading, just like those of the emaciated Less Thans imprisoned in the bunker.
I slammed the binder shut, and particles of dust exploded in the air. My heart hammered against my chest and pounded in my ears, drowning out all other sounds . . . which was why I didn’t hear the footsteps on the stairs and the opening and closing of the hallway door.
Sensing rather than hearing someone’s arrival, I whipped my head around, shocked to see a figure standing in the open doorway—and relieved that it was Hope.
“Thank goodness,” I said, breathing again. “I was afraid you were a Brown Shirt or—”
She slapped me hard across the face.
“You promised,” she said. Her teeth were bared like some cornered animal’s.
“I know, but I thought if I came here—”
“You promised,” she said again.
“But that’s what I’m trying to tell you—”
Her look cut me off, and then her eyes landed on what I was holding. With trembling hands she took the binder from me, opened it, and flipped through the pages, her eyes darting from one horrific image to another. When her gaze fell on the picture of herself and Faith, I watched as the blood drained from her fa
ce.
She put the binder down and held on to the desk so she wouldn’t faint. Finally, when it seemed she’d gotten herself under control, she began backing out of the room.
“Wait!” I said.
But she was already halfway down the hallway. When I caught up with her in the first-floor waiting room, she spun around and struck me—this time not with hands or fists, but words.
“How could you?” she asked, her voice stinging with disappointment. “You said you wouldn’t come here. You swore.”
“But I had to,” I said. “I saw those pictures, and I think I understand now. They did experiments; they did these terrible things to you, and that’s how your sister died.”
She crossed her arms and looked away. “You don’t know.”
“You’re right, I don’t. That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”
“You don’t know!” she screamed again, her voice rattling the windowpanes.
“Then tell me,” I said. “Please, Hope.”
She opened her mouth to speak, but no words came. It was like some kind of silent scream.
“If you don’t tell me,” I said, “I can’t help you.”
Her eyes narrowed into a deathly squint. “Who says I need help?”
She turned and left, slamming the door behind her.
Hope didn’t speak to me for the next two days. Her friends, too, regarded me as a kind of monster. At meals, the four Sisters ate in one part of the mess hall kitchen, the four Less Thans in the other. Only Argos bridged that wide divide, accepting scraps from both groups. He made out like a bandit.
“What’s up with them?” Flush finally asked.
“A little disagreement” was all I said.
“A disagreement? I don’t know, Book. I haven’t seen that kind of stink eye since the time I accidentally peed on Sergeant Dekker’s shoes.”
I didn’t respond. I was in no mood to talk about it.
Flush wasn’t finished. “You know, if they don’t go to Liberty with us, we’re screwed. The four of us and Argos can’t do this on our own.” He shot a look to Twitch and Four Fingers. “No offense.”
“None taken,” Twitch said.
“We’ll make it,” I said, a little more forcefully than I intended.
“Sure, I hope we do,” Flush said, “but I’m just saying—”
“I know what you’re saying, and I’m telling you we’re going to make it. We’re going to free those Less Thans.”
I slammed my food down and stormed out. I was mad at myself for raising my voice at Flush, but he’d hit a nerve. Deep down I agreed with him. Without the Sisters, we didn’t stand a chance.
When I woke the next morning, Hope was standing by my bed. It was the first time she’d even looked at me since our argument.
“We’re leaving,” she said. Behind her stood Diana, Helen, and Scylla.
I sat up and swung my legs over the edge of the bed. “Okay, let me wake the guys. Give us a minute and then we’ll—”
“Not with you. Just us.”
I struggled to understand. “So you’re going hunting?”
She shook her head. “This is good-bye.”
I realized they had their packs and crossbows. “But I thought we were going to help each other.”
“We were.”
“I thought you were going to Camp Liberty with us.”
“We were.”
“So . . . ?”
“You broke your promise.” She said it like it was so obvious that nothing more needed to be said.
“You can’t be serious. We need you.”
“You should’ve thought of that earlier.” She slung her knapsack over her shoulder. “We’re taking some of the food, but there’s plenty left.”
Argos jumped down from my mattress and scampered to Hope’s side. She petted him a final time.
“Where’re you going?” I asked.
“To find the Sisters.”
I scrambled to my feet and threw on a shirt. “We can help you.”
“We don’t need your help. Maybe before, but not now.”
The four of them began to walk away.
“But you were going to help us free the Less Thans,” I called out.
“And you were going to stay out of the infirmary.” Hope turned and met my eyes. “You gave me your word, Book. I believed you. Now I don’t know what to believe and who to trust.”
Then they stepped into blinding sunlight and disappeared.
The rest of that day was a blur. The four of us went about our daily routine, but our hearts weren’t in it. Even Argos traipsed to the screen door and let out a whimper, hoping for the Sisters’ return.
It never came.
That night at dinner, Flush asked the obvious. “You still want to go through with this?”
We were sitting on the kitchen floor. I was finishing my third serving of Spam; he, Twitch, and Four Fingers had their spoons submerged in a gallon-sized can of pork and beans.
“We have to,” I said.
“We don’t have to, Book. There’s no law that says we need to go back. And the truth is, once the other LTs saw us escape, they probably figured out they could do it too. Who knows, they’re maybe all gone by now. Maybe they’re in the Heartland.”
Of all the unlikely possibilities, that seemed the unlikeliest.
I finished my Spam and slid the can to Argos. He was all too happy to lick out the can.
My gaze settled on Flush. There was no point arguing with him. He’d made up his mind, and I couldn’t blame him.
“I’m going back to Camp Liberty,” I said. “I have to.”
“I know.”
“I saw those Less Thans in that bunker. They’re going to be sold off to the Hunters and massacred—just like what you and I saw up in the mountains. The slaughter of those six LTs.”
“I remember.”
“So I don’t think I have a choice.”
Flush nodded respectfully. I appreciated that he allowed me my opinion, even if it didn’t match his own.
“And you?” I asked. “What’re you going to do?”
He gave a glance to Twitch. “We’re gonna head back to the fence and try to cross into the Heartland.”
“You think that’s safe?”
“Safer than what you have in mind.”
He was right about that.
“And Four?” I asked.
“We’ll take him with us. Maybe there’s a doctor over there who can make him better.”
I hated to leave my friends. Hated more to be on my own. But what was the point of arguing? There was no way I was going to convince them to come with me.
“Tomorrow then,” I said. “You guys go your way; I’ll go mine.”
We looked away at the same time, avoiding eye contact, the silence heavy between us. But before we departed Camp Freedom for good, there was still one thing I had to do.
18.
SHE TRIES NOT TO think of him. There is more than enough to occupy her mind: leading the three others through deep woods, foraging for food, trying to track down more than a hundred Sisters.
But it’s always Book she comes back to—the conflicting emotions swirling around her head like gnats on a summer day. Trust and doubt. Respect and contempt. Love and betrayal.
Why? Hope asks herself. Why did he have to break his word?
Although she tries to see it from his point of view, she keeps coming back to one thing: he made a promise . . . and he broke it. Something her father never would have done.
“Good riddance,” Diana says. She’s joined Hope at the front of the line. “We don’t need him. We don’t need any of them. We’re just fine on our own.”
Hope is embarrassed that Diana has read her mind.
“You can’t be partners with people you don’t trust,” Diana says. “Period. “
Hope knows three things about Diana: she is good with a crossbow, her twin sister was murdered by Dr. Gallingham, and she is never shy about voicing her opinion.
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br /> And she’s not finished. “To say one thing to your face and then go off and do another, well, it’s just not right.”
“I know.”
“Good riddance, I say.”
“I got it.”
“Good flippin’ riddance.”
“Okay, I get it!”
Diana stops, startled. “What? I—”
“They helped us, we helped them, that’s all that needs to be said.” Hope is surprised by her voice’s icy edge. Where did that come from?
Scylla and Helen watch from a respectful distance, eyes darting back and forth between Hope and Diana.
Diana shifts her weight from one leg to the other. “All I’m saying is—”
“Look, we made our decision—we left them behind—and the sooner we stop talking about them, the better.”
Diana’s hands rise to say, Don’t shoot me, I’m just the messenger. “Fine,” she says.
“Fine,” Hope says back, then turns and resumes walking. Even as she tries to dismiss the conversation, she regrets blowing up. She knows better than that. As they march through waist-high weeds, she thinks of Book. His lopsided smile. The dark hair framing his face. The press of his lips against hers.
We did the right thing, she tries to tell herself. It’s better this way.
Hope may have gotten angry at Diana for the way she worded things, but she was exactly right. You can’t be partners with people you don’t trust.
Period.
Hope crouches on a gravel road, her hands hovering above the rocks. Her palms and fingertips trace the grooves and indentations. She tiptoes from one side of the road to the other. The other three Sisters watch from the ditch.
“What’re you looking at?” Helen asks.
“Tracks.”
“Animals’?”
“People’s.”
If there’s one thing her father taught her, it was how to track game. She’s had little experience tracking people, but the concepts are the same. Footprints tell a story; it’s just a matter of knowing how to read them.
She glances to the west, happy the sun hangs low above the horizon. That makes for the best tracking—when shadows are deepest. They might have walked across this road hours earlier and not noticed a thing.