by Tom Isbell
Sure enough, there it was, just south of Skeleton Ridge. Some of the others gathered round.
“Follow the river upstream and veer off when you get to this fork, and then this fork after that. That’s how you get back.”
The river would be our guide. And the best part was that it allowed us to skip the Flats entirely.
“Why’re you showing us this?” Hope asked. Her tone was hostile, threatening.
Miranda tugged at her necklace and looked Hope in the eye. “To make up for things,” she said, and left it at that. She refolded the map and extended it to me.
I took it just as Flush shouted, “Found it!”
He stood in the entry of a tunnel, a breeze slapping the torch flame sideways.
“Let’s go,” I said, pocketing Miranda’s map and slinging the canvas knapsack over my shoulder.
We had just entered the tunnel when gunshots shattered the silence. They pinged off limestone walls and dropped us to the ground. The Crazies had found the Wheel . . . but they hadn’t yet found us.
“Don’t fire,” I hissed, even as a couple of the girls nocked their arrows. It would give away exactly where we were.
“We can’t outrun ’em, Book,” Cat said.
“I know.”
“Even if they don’t know which tunnel we’re in, all they have to do is follow the sound of our footsteps.”
“I know.”
Distant gunfire clattered off rock. We’d found the escape tunnel, but now it seemed doubtful we could make it out in time.
“What if I lead them to another tunnel?” Miranda suggested. “That’ll give you a head start. Maybe time to reach the end.”
I looked at her like she was crazy. “You’ll never make it out alive.”
“I’ll find my people. They’ll protect me.”
“Who says there are any left?”
She acted as though she didn’t hear me. “Follow the river. That’s how you get back to Liberty.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but she wouldn’t let me.
“Follow the river,” she said again, then kissed me, not on the cheek this time but on the mouth. We watched as she ran out of the tunnel and disappeared from sight. My heart shuddered with a sadness that surprised me.
Everyone took off in a mad dash down the tunnel; only Hope and I remained. She gave me a long look, and I had no doubt her brown eyes could see to the depths of my soul. Finally, she turned and jogged after the others. I followed, Miranda’s kiss on my lips still warm, its imprint as distinct as the tattoo on my arm.
40.
THE BREEZE TUGS THEM down the tunnel. Even though they’re caked in sweat and grime, there’s a sudden sense of optimism, of exhilaration. They’re going to make it. They’re going to escape the Compound.
As Hope runs, she thinks about Miranda’s sacrifice and how she’s risking her life for Book and a group of strangers. Hope doesn’t know what to make of it. A part of her admires Miranda for it . . . and a part of her is wildly jealous.
They race on without words. It’s just the scrabble of feet, muffled coughs, the occasional clatter of stones. The torches’ flickering flames throw orange light on the umber-colored walls. With each bend of the cave, they expect to spy the opening and an endless field of corn. But the tunnel goes on. And on.
“Why are we going down?” Diana asks.
It’s what they’re all thinking. The tunnel angles down, not up. How can it deposit them in the cornfield if it keeps sloping downward? Something isn’t right. Still, the breeze seems to suggest that there’s an opening ahead of them.
It is scent, not sight, that alerts them to the end. A smell of dust and wet and pure night air. An intoxicating fragrance. The tunnel narrows . . . and there it is: the outside world. A rainy downpour makes a curtain across the opening. Black night presses against it from the other side.
But there’s a problem: it isn’t a field the tunnel empties out on, but air itself. Space. The sky. They are smack-dab in the middle of a cliff, and when lightning flashes, Hope catches a glimpse of the brown river below them. Directly below them. She pulls herself back, gasping for breath.
Diana steps out onto a small ledge. When she comes back in, water drips from her hair.
“There’s no path,” she reports flatly.
“There’s gotta be,” Book says. “Why build this tunnel otherwise?”
But when he goes to inspect, he sees she’s right: there is no trail. They’ve come all this way, only to be confronted with the fact that it’s nothing more than a glorified air shaft. A hole for letting fresh air in and sucking bad air out.
At just that moment, distant gunfire clatters off the walls. The Crazies—in this very tunnel. It’s only a matter of time before they find the eight Sisters and Less Thans.
“This is an escape tunnel,” Hope says.
Diana bristles. “I was just out there, Hope. There’s no path.”
“You didn’t look directly above.” Hope knows a thing or two about escape routes, like how the best way to hide one is to put the trail above the tunnel itself.
To prove her point, she steps outside. The rain comes down, not in sheets, but thick, cold, suffocating blankets. With fumbling, outstretched hands she reaches above the tunnel. Fingers curl around a jutting stone, first one hand, then another. A burst of lightning shows the river directly below her, several hundred feet down. If she loses her grip, there is nothing between her and the river. Death on impact.
“Is there a path?” Flush calls out.
It’s not so much a path as it is a limestone cliff angling straight up with a series of tiny notches and indentations scattered here and there. Nothing more. And somewhere far above her the cliff plateaus out, but where that is she can’t yet tell. She lowers herself back into the tunnel. Her clothes are soaked, and Diana holds the torch close so Hope can steal some of its warmth. Her teeth chatter as she explains.
“I’m not sure all of us can make it,” Flush says. His eyes fall on Four Fingers, on Argos, on Twitch, on Cat with his one arm.
“Don’t worry about me,” Cat says. “Besides, we don’t have a choice.” Gunfire punctuates his comment.
“We could maybe manage if we had a rope,” Flush says.
Their eyes fall to the few supplies they carry. Nothing comes close to a rope.
Hope rips off her outer, long-sleeved shirt . . . and Book suddenly does the same. The others look at them as if they’re out of their minds, watching Book and Hope knot the sleeve of one to the sleeve of the other. In no time, two shirts equal six feet of rope.
“What’re we waiting for?” Diana asks. She rips off her outer shirt as well, and soon all of them are in their T-shirts, tying their long-sleeved shirts together. As they work, Hope’s gaze returns to Book. There are times he seems to know exactly what she’s thinking . . . and that makes her more nervous than she dares admit.
41.
HOPE WENT FIRST. WITH one end of the makeshift rope strapped around her waist, she stepped into the pummeling rain and began pulling herself up. Diana followed, the rope connecting her to Hope.
A fresh burst of gunfire exploded from the tunnel.
“What’re they shooting at?” Flush asked. “There’s no one there.”
“They’re trying to get us to fire back,” I said. “To pinpoint our location.”
My eyes met Scylla’s. “Here. Take my knapsack and help the others.” I dropped the canvas bag at her feet, grabbing a bow and a quiver full of arrows.
“Wait,” Flush said. “Where’re you going?”
I didn’t answer. Darkness embraced me as I picked my way back up the tunnel. Every so often a spurt of gunfire stopped me in my tracks. I let the sound echo away before moving on.
The Crazies’ rank smell wafted in my direction like an animal’s sour breath. I had to breathe through my mouth just so I wouldn’t gag. And then I realized that if they were close enough for me to smell them, they were close enough for me to attack them.
I lo
wered myself behind a boulder and lined up three arrows in front of me. I fixed the first one to the string and drew back until the fletching tickled my cheek.
Breathe, I told myself, just as Frank had instructed us way back when. Breathe and hold.
Footsteps grew louder, and then the Crazies’ shadows wavered on the walls like giants. It looked like there were a dozen of them. More than I’d expected.
I released the bowstring, and the arrow sliced through air. There was a muffled thud as a body fell to the ground.
“What the hell, Bobby!” one of the Crazies shouted. I recognized the voice: Goodman Nellitch. Our prosecutor.
When he saw the arrow sticking from his friend’s chest, the gunfire started. It splattered the rock and ricocheted off the walls. Once the volley ceased, I released two more arrows. One hit a Crazy in the thigh; the other sailed wide.
Then I was on the move, rounding a bend so I was out of the line of fire. I hid behind a boulder and lined up three more arrows.
The Crazies’ confused shouts bounced off the limestone walls. By the time they rounded the bend, their torches showed them perfectly.
My first arrow went through the lead man’s neck, the second into another’s abdomen, the third into a Crazy’s arm. I went racing away before gunfire erupted.
I was breathing heavily now, and my assailants had grown strangely quiet. They’d extinguished their torches and were tiptoeing forward. I could no longer see or hear them. We were all blind together.
As I waited, existing in a world of black, I prayed my friends had made it safely out of the tunnel and were making their way up the cliff.
42.
HOPE TREMBLES. WHETHER FROM the ice-cold rain or straining to climb a sheer limestone wall, she can’t say. Her arms and legs are shaking uncontrollably, her fingers bleed from clinging to the cliff.
The others are beneath her, connected by their rope of shirts. Each time she hears a clatter of stones, her body tenses. Although the rope strains from time to time, no one has lost their grip and plummeted to the river below.
Not yet.
Thunder rumbles, making the rocks vibrate beneath her hands. She worries about Book. The last lightning flash showed only six others beneath her. So where is he? Why hasn’t he joined them? If he doesn’t get here soon, he won’t be able to reach the rope. He’ll be completely on his own.
But why should she care if he makes it or not? First he lied to her about the infirmary, then he abandoned her for Miranda. What’s it to her if he’s able to join the group or not?
But just when she’s convinced herself she doesn’t care, she hears a burst of gunfire. She doesn’t know which is worse: the sound of bullets or the silence that follows. Both make her heart shudder.
The rope has gone slack, meaning the others are caught up, even Cat, who is climbing one-handed with the rope secured tightly around his chest. Scylla has Argos draped around her neck. Diana is helping Four Fingers. Flush is guiding Twitch.
Hope shakes the rain from her face and fumbles for the next handhold, her arms and legs a series of right angles. She takes a deep breath and shifts her weight. This is how it will go, one small lizard-movement at a time, until they manage to reach the plateau—thirty to forty feet above her.
A snake’s tongue of lightning strikes the opposite cliff, and she counts seven bodies beneath her. Seven! Her heart swells with hope—Book made it out! But as the lightning fades and the world is plunged back to darkness, she realizes that seventh form is just the trunk of a scrub pine jutting from the cliff. Not a person at all.
Come on, Book, she silently prays. You can do it. You can make it.
43.
SILENCE. THE ONLY SOUNDS were the distant drip of water and my heart hammering against my chest.
Suddenly, the cave exploded in a flurry of gunfire and orange muzzle spits. When the bullets finally ceased and the last ricochet echoed off the narrow walls, I opened my eyes. It was as black and dark as before. My ears were ringing, but I’d survived. They hadn’t gotten me, not yet.
I pulled back an arrow and stopped when I heard . . . someone’s slow, steady inhalation. It wasn’t just the sound that alarmed me, but where it came from: mere yards away.
So that was the tactic: fire at will to cover the sound of others drawing close. A high-stakes game of Red Light, Green Light. And it had worked. I was surrounded. If I took off down the tunnel, I’d run smack-dab into them.
I could stay hidden and let them pass, but then the Crazies would reach the end of the tunnel, see my friends clinging to the cliff face, and swat them down like flies.
There was no good solution.
As they walked by, I counted seven of them. They passed, and I exchanged my bow and arrow for my knife. My body unfurled to its full height and I inched forward. When I reached the trailing Crazy, my knife came whipping around his head, licking his neck.
“He’s here!” he yelled, and the cave exploded in rifle fire.
I tucked myself behind him, his body rippling with every bullet he accepted. He was my shield—my only chance for survival.
“Hold your fire!” one of the Crazies called out, and the bullets stopped, the echoes faded. “Someone light a torch.”
As I listened to the scraping of flint and steel, my heart raced. Once there was light, all bets were off. The Crazies would see me and that would be that. Whatever I did, I had to do it before the torch was lit.
I lowered the Crazy’s lifeless body to the ground, fumbled for a rock, then threw it down the tunnel in the direction of the Wheel. It clattered off the walls. Gunfire followed it.
“He went back that way!” one of the Crazies said, and they ran off, shooting as they went.
The Crazy with the torch remained where he was, working on the flame. I picked up my bow, nocking an arrow in darkness.
I could hear his hands fumbling with flint and steel, then the silent whoosh of flame as the torch caught and an orange oval of light illuminated the two of us. For the briefest of moments we locked gazes . . . and then I released the bowstring.
The arrow embedded itself in his abdomen, and his knees buckled. Before he dropped to the ground, I ripped the torch from his hand and took off running, scrambling down the passageway. Gunfire chased after me.
My guess was there were five left, and although I could outrace them to the tunnel’s mouth, that wasn’t good enough. Somehow I had to finish them off.
My feet slipped on loose gravel, and the ground went out from under me. I fell to the stone floor, the torch rolling to one side. It gave me an idea.
I left it there and dashed ten paces in the direction of the Wheel—toward the Crazies. I was now between them and the flame. I concealed myself behind a rock and readied two arrows.
The first Crazy rounded a far curve, his eyes focused on the torch’s glow. He didn’t expect me to be so close, and when I released the arrow, he fell to the ground with a muffled cry of surprise. My second arrow did the same to the next. I grabbed the torch and took off.
Only three Crazies were left!
Two hundreds yards later I did it again, taking down two more. That left just one. And if I wasn’t mistaken, it was none other than Goodman Nellitch.
But there was a problem. The yawning black mouth of the tunnel’s end was right behind me. I had run out of room. I extinguished the torch, dropped to one knee, and picked up a rock. This had to work.
It took every ounce of willpower to be patient. When Nellitch crept around a bend, I cocked my arm and hurled the rock forward. It sailed wide, clattering down the tunnel. I threw again and had the same result. Nothing.
Goodman Nellitch laughed. “Looks to me like someone’s out of arrows. To which all I can say is: Sucks to be you.”
He laughed and raised his body to its full height, and by then I’d nocked an arrow—my final one—and sent it flying. It landed hard in his chest, and Goodman Nellitch fell to the ground with a thud.
“Guess I had one left after all,” I said
. He was gasping for his last breath.
With trembling legs, I rose and stepped to the tunnel’s edge. I had done it, I had taken out the enemy, and I enjoyed the moment. The cold, hard rain slapped my face, and I stared into the dark. Only when a jagged shaft of lightning split the sky could I see.
Far above me, mere ants against the rock face, were the seven others. I breathed a sigh of relief. I had delayed the Crazies long enough to let the others scale the cliff. But my friends were so far ahead of me, there was no way I could reach the rope. I’d have to do this on my own.
I began to climb. The eroding rain had sent stones plunging to the dark abyss, and I had to create new hand- and toeholds altogether. My fingers dislodged a rock and my hand flailed, grasping for something to hold on to as my body fell backward into air. Only at the last moment did my fingers squeeze into a tiny crevice and pull me toward the cliff. My heart was pounding so hard, it seemed to shake the mountainside itself.
The rain was coming down harder now, and the others were farther away than ever. How could I possibly do this on my own?
A stroke of lightning strobed the night, and a grunt of sound made me look downward. I nearly lost my breath—there was Goodman Nellitch, directly beneath me. Somehow he was still alive, the stub of my arrow poking from his chest. His shirt was red with blood, and he had a wild look in his eyes.
“Not dead yet, boy,” he said, and grinned.
I needed to get up the cliff face as quickly as possible.
But when I went to move my foot, it wouldn’t budge. It was somehow stuck in place. Even when I jerked and swiveled, there was no give whatsoever.
Goodman Nellitch’s pudgy fingers were gripped tightly around my ankle. Rain dripped from his beard, and he seemed hardly aware of the chunk of arrow sprouting from his body. Lightning flashes showed his eyes, squinty and hard. He wasn’t going to stop until he pulled me from the cliff . . . even if it meant plunging to his own death as well.
“Not so smart now, are you, Less Than?” he screamed, his harsh, guttural voice slicing through rain and wind.