Brianna nudged me with her hand. I nearly stumbled forward down the last seven steps. Once again we marched across the compound, passing kids as young as six or seven who, whether at work or play, all stopped to gander at me. I couldn’t help but think about that little girl Oliver had tried to save. How much it had hurt her to have to end the girl’s life, and what she would have done to be able to cure her. I wondered if we would have let the little girl stay had we known we could cure the wound and just keep her alive. I would have taken convincing, but Oliver would have taken the chance in a heartbeat.
I was led to a cabin with security bars drilled into all the windows and a deadbolt that locked from the outside. Two guards saluted Brianna. After she saluted them back, they opened the door and shoved me inside. Tom was sitting on a cot, his head in his hands. He was breathing hard. He didn’t stand when he heard me. Not even after Brianna shut the door behind us.
“There’s a small group of us leaving tonight.” As Brianna told me this, she cut my hands loose. “We’re taking you with us.”
“Me?” I asked. “What makes you think I’ll go without alerting everyone?”
Brianna laughed and stared at me directly in a way that would have made most people uncomfortable. The way I used to stare at my stepfather, until he got so upset that he brought me to the shed for re-education. Brianna replied, “Because you’re stupid enough to believe you have a better chance of escaping on the run from us than from in here with Timothy.”
I sat next to Tom. He looked over at me, his red-rimmed eyes and spit-covered lips betraying that he’d been crying.
“Just be ready,” Brianna whispered, as she came nearer to us.
“My stepfather will kill you. If you wanted to get away, you could have joined us. I came here to see if any of you would join us.”
“You’re the losing team, you fool. Between Timothy and your stepdad, you are never going to survive. Why would anyone side with you?”
The door suddenly opened, and Brianna hauled off and punched me across the cheek. I collapsed to the cot just as a guard poked his head inside.
“Timothy wants a report,” the guard told her.
Brianna walked out. After the door closed, I heard the click of the lock. I rubbed my cheek and got up and walked the few steps over to the other cot across the room. Nothing else was in there. No lamps, no toilet, nothing.
“Are we dead?” Tom asked just as I lay down.
Staring up at the ceiling, I considered his question. If Brianna got us to my stepfather, he’d kill us. If we stayed, Timothy would make us one of the deaders to use in his army. Brianna was our only chance to get out of Efrafa. She was right about me believing we stood a better chance escaping on the run.
“We’re alive now, Tom. Don’t give up.”
He nodded, but I couldn’t tell if he’d nodded because he forgave me, or if that was just how he coped. For now, I closed my eyes and decided to try and rest. When the escape plan happened, one of us needed to be ready. One of us needed to be aware enough to save both of us. To figure out when during the escape we’d need to really escape.
MUFFLED VOICES FROM outside the locked door woke me in the middle of the night. I listened hard to make out words, but it just sounded like noise. A shout and a bang against the door, as if a body had slammed into it, pushed me into peeling my blanket off me. I reached over to nudge Tom awake, but he was already wide eyed and sitting up.
“You okay?” I asked him.
“I’m ready,” he told me. As a key clicked in the lock, he punched my shoulder, adding, “And we’re okay. I get that you totally saved me.”
When the door swung open, Brianna rushed in with two of her guards following close. One grabbed Tom’s wrists; the other grabbed mine.
Tom gave me a look that asked, “Should we fight?” and I quickly shook my head. We allowed them to bind our wrists with nylon cable cuffs. We rushed outside and followed Brianna along the shadows of buildings toward the main gate. At the nearest building, Brianna checked her watch, and I saw her lips counting down. “Three, two, one . . . zero,” she mouthed. As she spoke the last number, an explosion rocked the other side of the compound. Kids screamed and soldiers rushed with buckets of water.
“This is our chance!” Brianna said, and ran for the gate.
Tom and I followed as Brianna led us around the steel-sided building to the back, where we huddled beside a big door that looked like barn doors. Two of Brianna’s army brats, each armed with an AK-47 and machete, walked behind Tom and me. One had a hockey bag like the one I had seen the girl at the auto shop with months before. For all I knew, any of them could have been the one who had shot Greg in the mechanic’s shop or had killed the farmers. I had to remind myself that these kids were not innocent.
Brianna and I took the lead. I kept stumbling over roots that I couldn’t see in the darkness and falling with my fists clenched out as a way to stop myself from face-planting. We couldn’t turn on flashlights, as that would make us super easy to track. And we couldn’t see any moonlight that far into the woods.
“Veer left here. There’s a side road that parallels the highway,” I told Brianna. I no longer concentrated on the guns behind me, as I just wanted to get as far away from Efrafa as possible. We were heading northeast enough that we would eventually come out at Loon Lake.
“We should stop to make sure no one is following,” Brianna said. She held her hand up, signaling her boys to stop. They threw the bag down, and fell asses to the ground.
I objected. “We need to keep moving. What if we’re being chased?”
Brianna glared at me, giving away that she might not be as honest about all this as she’d been pretending. Was Timothy crazy enough to think he could send Brianna as a spy into my stepfather’s colony? As Brianna and I concentrated on our standoff, a group of deaders rushed at us from the bushes. One grabbed a brat and bit hard into his neck. The other army brat fired, and shadows in the woods fell to the ground. As bullets fired wildly, I met Tom in a huddle.
Brianna fired at the deaders, bringing them down with single shots right in their foreheads. I watched her posture as she fired, the way she held the gun, the way she listened to her surroundings after the bullet had fired. She was trained. Whether in cadets or by a military parent, or just a post-apocalyptic need to survive, she knew how to use that gun in her hands. If Tom and I ran, she’d have no trouble hitting us from a distance. Her actions also told me that she worried about Timothy knowing our location.
“Let me guess,” I said. “Protocol is to send a handful of deaders after those who attempt escape. Outside the walls, the deaders will pick up the scent of those running—like bloodhounds—and when shots are fired Timothy knows where to look.”
The kid who had been bitten was twitching on the ground. He gurgled, pleading for his life through the blood that pooled in his throat. Tears fell from his eyes. The last army grunt stared at Brianna. I wondered if this was the first time their own deaders had killed one of their own soldiers.
Brianna was on me fast. “This is your fault!” She got into my face and pushed me hard to the ground. I didn’t struggle, and I couldn’t fight back with my hands tied. “We would have heard them if you had just agreed to stop!”
I stood face-to-face with her again. “You wanted to stop to hear if any deaders had been sent our way. You are so over your head! Do you understand that you’re heading off to be a lackey in my stepfather’s colony, and you need me alive for your deal to stay solid?”
The kid on the ground still moaned. His eyes lolled into the back of his head. He was about to die. About to turn. But Brianna opened one of the hockey bags and grabbed a needle and vial. She filled the needle with what was in the vial. Then, slamming the needle into his leg, she pushed down the plunger. He stopped twitching.
“We’re stopping.” She growled through gritted teeth. To her brat she said, “Chris, look after Peter.”
Chris sat and held a gun to Peter’s head. “Just i
n case the medicine doesn’t work,” he told me. I could tell by his tone that he wasn’t so keen on being the one to pull the trigger.
“We could rest at one of the abandoned roadside restaurants. Lots of them along the nearby road,” I suggested. Brianna agreed, and Chris picked up Peter. I shook my head.
“We’re not moving until you cut Tom and me loose. If Timothy is sending deaders after us, or if we wind up in a firefight, no way are we going down unable to protect ourselves.”
“Right. And you try and run, escape, and I’m screwed. Don’t think so.”
“I’ll make you a deal. I’ll go with you willingly, no battle or fight, if you let Tom go free with one of the antibiotic kits in the morning. We have a friend who’s dying, or might be dead, but her life is worth more than mine.”
“Her?” Both Tom and Brianna asked, though Brianna spoke with a smirk.
“This is someone you love,” Brianna said. “That’s a deal I can trust.”
Chris cut Tom and me loose, and we headed for the road. Tom sidled up next to me, but before he could say anything I shot him a look that told him to let it be for now. I needed him to do what I asked—to save Oliver. Even if it meant I ended up being delivered back to my stepfather.
When we emerged from the woods, and the moon gave us a little light, we found an old mom-and-pop kind of diner with a house attached to the back. I entered first, wishing I had Connor with me to sniff out any deaders who might be inside. The front door barely stayed on its hinges. As I opened it, I listened. Moonlight shone in through the front windows and across dusty tables and scattered broken jars, illuminating sugar, ketchup, and mustard spilled all over the floor. The place had been scavenged, meaning it could have been safe.
The others walked in after me as I made my way to sit on a stool at the front counter. Tom walked behind the counter, looked into the kitchen through a pass-through, and then rang a bell. “Order up!” he shouted. When no one laughed, he leaned on the counter opposite me. He gave me a long look that told me he had gone behind the counter on purpose. Here, we could shift the power back to us.
Brianna and Chris, carrying Peter, stumbled into the dining area and glanced out the window. They put Peter on the floor after kicking away a few empty plastic ketchup bottles. The sun had begun to rise, changing the cobalt blue light to a dull shade of amber.
“Don’t do anything,” I whispered to Tom.
Brianna snapped me a hard glare. I wondered if she had heard me. She patted her gun, still holstered at her side. The rest happened so quickly it was a blur of reactions. Tom threw the meat cleaver that he’d found behind the counter. He missed Brianna, whom I assumed he’d chucked it at, and the stray weapon wound up slamming into the floor.
Brianna drew her gun, but I instinctively slammed into her and knocked her to the ground. As she lost balance, she fired one shot. Chris moved in, but the cleaver had landed on Peter and had killed him. That turned him—treated with medicine or not. Chris fired at the now-deader, leaving Brianna struggling against my grip. I wrestled Brianna and brought her gun hand up on Chris. Brianna fired before she knew what she was doing.
“Give me your weapon!” I commanded her, as Chris fell to the ground.
“Let me help him!” Brianna shouted, struggling to get free. I pulled her down to the ground and held her in an arm-bar.
Finally she stopped struggling, and I took away her gun. I set her free, and she fished another needle from the hockey bag. Brianna rushed to Chris, who was shot in the arm, and pushed the needle into his leg. “This should keep you alive until we get to Evergreen Fishing Resort. Someone there should know how to take a bullet out of your shoulder.”
“Tom, that was a huge chance!” I said.
“Facebook status: ‘Kind of like the weird kid who runs my colony. Not ready to let him die.’”
“We’re leaving right now,” I told them. To Brianna I said, “We’ll still take you to my stepfather’s colony, but we’re not going the whole way with you. You can tell him you failed.”
Tom took a knife off Brianna and a gun and Bowie knife off Chris. He tied our prisoners’ wrists with nylon cuffs he found in the bag, and I gathered our weapons. I also found my notebook and immediately set to writing down everything that had happened.
AFTER A FEW HOURS HAD passed, no one—human or deader—had been by the restaurant. Tom and I, now fully armed and ready, began the march back into the woods with our prisoners. Tom carried the hockey bag of medicine, the bag that would save Oliver if she was still alive, over his shoulder. I watched everywhere, around the hills and as far down the road as I could. Dark clouds were moving in. The air had turned cold and crisp. The nearer we got to the lake, the thicker the fog that rolled in. No doubt Timothy was now close on our heels, having heard the gunfire from the night before. He needed to bring us back to save face, else my stepfather’s psychological warfare would, indeed, win him Timothy’s colony.
Two giant egos fighting for supremacy. Two giant egos I could use to destroy each other.
Chapter Twenty-one
Tom and I took Brianna and Chris to the gibbets where Timothy, or my stepfather, could find them. The remains of men and women rotted inside the cages, some with bullet holes to the brains and others fully intact, indicating those people hadn’t had the sickness and had died of starvation and exposure. Every cage had pin-tumblers, locks with grooved keys that, when pushed downward, aligned all the cylinders inside the lock. I didn’t have a key, but my stepfather had taught me how to pick locks. I was pretty good with a pin. I pried a needle from the med kit into one of the locks. It took me a few tries, but eventually it clicked open.
“Now what, remove the dead body and throw in our live ones?” Tom asked.
“Nope.”
With my machete, I sliced the cable tying our prisoners’ hands together. Then I grabbed Brianna by the hair. She struggled. I pushed her face first into the gibbet, grabbed her feet, and hoisted her body the rest of the way inside. She screamed and I worked fast. I slammed the door and closed the lock. I did the same with Chris.
“You need to get back to Oliver and Kady,” I told Tom. I pointed at the bag of medicine.
“No. I’m not leaving you behind.”
“We need to get this med pack home. I need to make sure my stepfather finds these two.”
“And then what?” Brianna spat out. “Then I get to watch him kill you?”
I opened the hockey bag and fished out a flare gun. I threw the bag to Tom. “When Timothy realizes we got this far, he’ll think my stepfather outdid him. He’s all about winning, and he’s so crazed for power he doesn’t care who he hurts. His pride won’t let him lose. He’ll have to strike.”
The loaded flare gun was ready. I fired. A long streak of red flame lit up the sky, drowning out the sun, showing everyone where to find us.
“Now my stepfather knows where to find me. So does Timothy.”
“If you’re not back by noon, I’m coming to get you,” Tom said.
A part of me wanted to tell Tom that he was wrong. That if I wasn’t back by noon, it was because I was dead. The right thing to say was that he had to forget about helping me. But as Tom and I nodded at each other, I knew he needed to feel as though he’d rescue me if necessary. And he needed me to believe he’d do it. I hoped this wouldn’t be the last time we spoke as he turned and walked into the woods.
My mind turned to what I needed to do. My heart raced. I didn’t want to do this alone. I wished I had Connor with me. Chances were he was dead. Doubtful he would have made it home after his escape from Efrafa. But now, it was just me. Waiting for my stepfather, and for Timothy. Waiting to start the war that would end the struggle over this territory.
I sat in the woods where I was hidden but could still see whatever happened. I was doing what my stepfather was so good at—playing mind games to pinpoint weaknesses. This one was a big gamble for me, but if these two forces canceled each other out, it was worth taking. If I could get my stepfa
ther to fight the army brats, if I could get the two sides to kill each other, I might never have to deal with either of them again.
Rustling sounded from the bushes in the direction of my stepfather’s colony. First, a couple of men stepped out, each one brandishing a rifle. Then two more. Lastly my stepfather. Seeing him in person, that scarred face missing one eye, boiled my blood. Memories of my mother and sister consumed me. I pushed down the need to rush him, to hack down on him with my machetes. To spit in his face as I reminded him that I had triumphed over his two sons.
He walked up to the gibbet with Brianna. He looked at her hard with his one eye, and I saw that his skin was dried and cracked.
“What do we have here?” he whispered, in that voice that would have gotten me hit if I had answered him. It was a type of voice where he asked questions he did not want to be answered. “Did you not understand our deal?”
Brianna grasped the bars but didn’t say anything. She could have easily given me away, told my stepfather I had taken to the bushes. Her fear was so strong it almost radiated from the gibbet. After all her yelling and screaming, her wide eyes showed that her fear had rendered her speechless.
My stepfather began one of his rants. “You are not what you seem! You are a trickster. Something that makes me look right, when I should be looking left.” He grabbed the bars over Brianna’s fingers. She winced and struggled to pull free. “Our deal was not to deliver you. It was to deliver my stepson. Who then delivered you to me, unless it was my stepson?”
Brianna nodded but still did not speak. When I clicked the gibbet shut, I killed her. Maybe not instantly, but by delivering her to my enemy. And now I regretted it. Regretted that I knew her death would not be quick, nor would it be justice. For that moment when I sentenced her I had forgotten that she was a person. When she had acted like a monster, like an unfeeling beast, this had been an easy decision. But not now. Now, she seemed like a scared teenage girl who was wishing her parents would come and save her. I now wished that I could save her.
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