A gun fired. I spun to face the sound, just in time to see a shadow running from the road to the bushes. Was it the army brats? I hoped Kady hadn’t come looking for Tom. The lookout nearest me started to fire toward the road. A siren blasted loudly throughout the compound as all the lookouts started firing at the road. A rat-a-tat of machine gun fire from behind me, and the siren fell quiet. More army brats.
Five armed women rushed from the house and scattered throughout the area. One dashed behind a truck, another scrambled for the lookout tower, a third ran toward the lookout I had killed. The other two moved into the yard. The last one headed toward me. I crouched and waited. I hoped she was focused on the soldier at the road. She rounded the corner, and without hesitation I swiped with my machete. It was silent. It was efficient.
It was the first kill I had to see full on. I froze. It was indescribable as to what happened to me at that moment. I wished I could take back those last few seconds of my life. This is why you will die, my stepfather’s voice said in my head. It was just enough to snap me from my trance, as a rifle bullet grazed my cheek. I fell against the coop again and pressed my body flush against the wood. Heavy steps came toward me, and then another rifle blasted. I heard no more steps.
The person on the road could deal with those in the compound. I needed to get into that farmhouse where candlelight flickered through the windows. If any were oil lamps I may be able to use them to burn the home to the ground. I held my blades with my arms straight, and touched the tips to the sod. My breathing steadied. My heart calmed. I started toward the house but stopped when a figure emerged.
“In the land of the blind . . . the One-Eyed Man is King!” the figure spat.
Chapter Twenty-three
“You killed my boys.” His words were calm, spoken through a clenched jaw. Dripping with his hatred for me. We stood only a few strides apart, both of us soaked by the rain that suddenly pelted from the sky. When I had dashed into the shelter, when I had chosen to save myself rather than stay and fight for my mother and my sister, I had hidden from this moment. A few months before, I’d been just a boy. Now, I was ready to be a monster.
“I was more worthy than them.” I had to scream this over the storm that raged around us. Cobalt clouds hid the stars, and the wind whipped raindrops across my cheeks and into my eyes. To show him I wasn’t going to run again, I held out my machetes so he’d see them clearly. “I don’t care if you find me worthy! I don’t care anymore!”
All that time I had spent at the dinner table, wishing I could be where his sons sat, seemed pointless now. I was never going to be worthy. I was not of his blood. Even though I couldn’t hear him above the rain, I knew by his grin that he was laughing at me. That he had no fear in his blood from this battle. That he was confident he knew the outcome. That his one prophetic eye had told him that he would reign as king, with my head on a stick to warn others who might oppose him. Slowly and with purpose, he drew a machete of his own. He staggered his feet and motioned with his hand for me to come at him.
I understood him. As much as he wanted me to see he had no fright, I knew he was the angry one. The one who had dreamed of this fight. The one who had spent all his time sending me messages to psychologically break me. Did his colony know why he wanted me dead so badly? What lies had he told them to keep them under his control?
He rushed me. Machetes clashed and rainwater sprayed. A small burst of sparks flew as metal scraped against metal. He swung his body and knocked me onto the ground, but I managed to pivot just enough to avoid him. I sliced at the back of his legs, but my stepfather was too fast. The bunt of his machete crossed my face, and suddenly I smelled my own vomit. The blows came quick, and with each I found it harder and harder to stand. The world spun, and just as I started to collapse, his strong hands pulled me back up.
“What did you think? You’d come here, fight me, and avenge your pathetic colony?”
Yes. That was exactly what I’d thought.
“I’ve been watching since the day you crawled out of that hole. I’ve watched every mistake. Every moment that led you here to your demise.”
He pointed the tip of his machete on my chest. I managed to open my eyes enough to see his madness. I reflected on my mom and sister. Blake and Tom. Even Kady and Connor. Mostly, I reflected on Oliver, and how I wished I could have had one more time to say goodbye. To say thank you. The One-Eyed King was going to kill me, and I could do nothing about it.
“You destroyed everything I loved.” His voice was wet with sadness, but for only as long as it took to spit out the words, “You killed my sons!”
The tip cut into my skin, and I closed my eyes for the end.
But there was no end, no darkness. He wrenched to the side and tossed me to the ground. Growling filled the bits of silence between raindrops as my eyes focused on Connor, who was clenching his jaw on my stepfather’s wrist. My stepfather screamed so loudly that I imagined Conner ripping the flesh right to the bone. This was my one chance to flee. My one chance to live.
“Connor! Come!” I called, and scrambled to my feet. My feet slipped in the wet grass as I scurried back to the woods. My body bounced on the ground and off the trees, but I made my way in the dark as best I could.
Gunshots fired more rapidly. The fight was heating up. Maybe the army brats would win, and I’d only have them to worry about. As I ran wildly through the trees, their branches scraping against my skin, I heard a yelp that burned into my soul. More painful was the silence that immediately followed—a silence that knocked me to the ground.
“Connor,” I whispered, knowing he hadn’t followed me. I gripped my hair tightly in my fists and howled, knowing this was how my stepfather had felt when his sons didn’t return from hunting me. I now had the same knot of revenge in my heart to see him dead. I forced myself to stand and stumble forward.
At last I saw the lodge. Perhaps because of the darkness, I had expected to find Connor there. Exhaustion hit me and my knees buckled. It was as if the ground were falling toward me as I collapsed onto the dirt. I managed to catch myself from falling past my knees, but I’d come as close to the lodge as I could. The machetes on my back were heavy, as if they were pushing me to the ground. My arms shook from holding myself up, and now I was ready to give up.
Tears and rain on my cheeks confused me into thinking Connor had run to my side. It was his tongue licking my face, his nose nudging me in the ribs, him saying, “Thank you for all you did for me.”
My eyes shut, and my cheek sank into the mud. “Good-bye, Connor,” I muttered. “Good-bye, my friend.”
THE SMELL OF CANNED stew reached my nose just before I heard the sound of it bubbling on a hotplate. At first when I opened my eyes, I expected to see my mom in her pink floral nightgown making breakfast for her hungry family. This feeling took me back to before the accident that had changed my stepfather. When my mom was pregnant with my new half sister, and my stepsiblings were trying to figure out how to be my friend.
I saw my mom’s smile, heard my stepsiblings’ laughs, and listened as my stepfather spoke of future vacations and making memories together. We were happy. But as the memory began to turn into a haze, my mom’s eyes became bruised, my stepsiblings stood over me glaring, and I watched as my toddler half sister followed my stepfather into her room, and my stepfather closed the door behind them.
I was brought back to the present with memories of the deaders, of my zombified sister, and of Connor’s sacrifice. Of Blake murdered, Kady turned, and Tom executed. And the faces of all the people I’d had to kill. I wasn’t in a home with a family, once loving, who’d turned dysfunctional. I was on a cot in the hunting lodge. Gripping the sides of the bed to push myself up. Forcing away sleep. My eyes focused as Kady cooked breakfast.
“I was sure everyone was dead,” she said, without turning to face me. The crackle in her voice told me she’d been crying. I recognized it from the times I had heard my mother cry. “Tom ran off after you. I watched him from the roof.
I couldn’t stop him—”
“He’s dead,” I interrupted her, though I knew that she knew.
Her knees buckled for a second before she regained her composure. “I know you tried to save him.” Kady repeated this over and over again. Quieter each time she uttered the words. How could I tell her that I hadn’t? I couldn’t tell her.
I swung my legs over the cot. When my bare feet touched the floor, I realized I was in my underwear and T-shirt. Oliver was on another bed against the opposite wall opposite me. She was sleeping, her chest rising and lowering steadily. Color was back in her cheeks. I was thankful in a way that I had never imagined I could be thankful.
“I cleaned you up while you were asleep,” Kady said, scooping some stew into a bowl. “I didn’t know what else to do.”
I watched her walk to my cot carrying only one plate of food. Chances were she wasn’t going to eat because she couldn’t. Not because she had already. It was strange for me to get the first plate of food. The lion’s share.
“I’m glad you got away,” I said, taking the food and shoveling it into my mouth. My hands were shaking, making it difficult to eat.
“They came. So many. But we fled just in time. Oliver was able to stay awake long enough to show me the way here.” Tears rolled down her cheeks, and she buried her face in her palms. “I think she’s okay.”
I had nothing left to save. My colony decimated, our home overtaken. For now, the poacher’s cabin would keep us safe. But for as long as my stepfather knew I was alive, he’d be hunting me. It still rained, but more calmly now. It didn’t seem much different than the gunfire on our tin roof, except that when the rain hit, no holes burst through.
WE NEEDED A PLAN. I needed to think. I took out my soaked notebook and saw that the ink had run through the pages. My body rocked back and forth, and a pressure built in my head. This was all wrong! In all the comics I’d read, the hero always won. The hero always saved his family and his friends. The hero didn’t lose as I had just lost.
“It’s okay,” Oliver whispered from her cot. I took a blanket and wrapped it around my trembling shoulders. As I kneeled beside Oliver, she turned her head toward me, her eyes fluttering open. Her chapped lips parted into a smile. I stayed beside her, and she reached out for my hand. Our fingers entwined. My heart beat fast and hard. She sat up and rested her head on my shoulder, wrapping her arms around my waist. As her breath caressed my neck, I wondered if this was good-bye.
Soon, someone would come looking. My stepfather or the army brats—one of them would hunt us. Unlike Oliver and Kady, I was used to being pursued. This was the closest feeling I had to normalcy.
When I’d first found this cabin, it was a dark night without rain. I had stumbled in from the woods. My eyes stung from the vinegar my stepfather had tossed into them. My scraped knees and bloodied hands couldn’t have taken another fall. This place had been my sanctuary. The end times had begun, and my stepfather had made one thing clear: this hunt was to end in my death.
I had found the water pump and washed myself off. My throat was dry, but I knew better than to drink the water without boiling it. The door had no lock, and the cabin had no electricity. I stumbled inside, with only the dim light from the moon shining through the windows.
I knew it wouldn’t be long before Kyle and Zeke found me. Alongside one of the cabin’s walls were iron traps—teeth strong enough to hold fast but not intended to kill. They would do fine. I grabbed three fox traps and set them up outside. Then I ran back inside, grabbed three more, and set them on all sides of the cabin. I shivered, but I forced myself to carry on.
To earn my place at the table, to prove to my stepfather that I was more than just bait, I had to turn from hunted to hunter. Inside the cabin, I found a warm plaid jacket that was two sizes too big. I wore it anyway and climbed up onto the roof. From there, I sat watching the woods for movement.
Oliver came up and sat close beside me. Unlike that day when I had waited for Kyle and Zeke, I wasn’t shivering—but she was. She clutched her crossbow with white knuckles. Her breaths rasped in her lungs.
“Do we have a plan?” she asked.
“You shouldn’t be up here. You’re still sick.”
I had never hated my stepfather as much as I did at that moment. He could have left me alone, and our two colonies could have coexisted without trouble. My life could have been peaceful. I was just starting to understand what that meant. And what did Oliver think of all this? Did she regret finding me, putting her trust in me? The silence between us was long, but I didn’t know how to end it.
“None of this is your fault,” she whispered in my ear, as if she knew my thoughts. “I’m okay now. Weak, yes, but fine.”
Her voice echoed against what was once a lost memory. I had been waiting on the roof for my stepfather’s sons to find me. It had felt like hours passed before I heard the first rustling of bushes. Something rustled in the bushes toward the cabin, slowly but steadily. It wasn’t a loud rustle, and had I not been listening intently, it would’ve blended in with the crickets and frogs of the woods. But I had been listening. I had been waiting.
Zeke had stepped out into the clearing, alone. He was shaking, but not from fear. He shook from the adrenaline rush that came with the hope of winning the hunt. I felt it, too as I stayed crouched low until I knew for certain that he was alone. I stood and tapped my shoe against the roof so that it would sound like a woodpecker. Zeke looked up at me and smiled. He did not call to the eldest, no doubt wanting this victory alone.
Which was what I had counted on.
Zeke kept his gaze locked on me as he paced around the cabin. If I bolted, he’d have no trouble cutting off my escape. I didn’t run. Had no intention of running. I was leading him. Coaxing him. The metallic chink of the spring was loud enough that I could hear it from my perch, but before Zeke could look down at his footing, a fox trap clamped shut around his ankle. He screamed once, and in unison I howled with my head tilted back. As I’d hoped, nearby wolves howled along with me, masking Zeke’s pleas. I didn’t see him fall, didn’t see his head hit the sod, didn’t see the bear trap that sprang shut around his neck. But I didn’t want to see the first person I had ever killed die such a horrible death.
Now, once again, I sat on top of the roof—though this time I wasn’t alone. Oliver rested her head on my shoulder, and I felt emotions that I had turned off long before. They sparked alive like tiny firecrackers. The three of us could just flee, head south and start again. I considered it.
“We can’t run,” I said out loud, knowing Oliver was thinking the same thing.
“Why not? Does the house mean that much to you?”
The house. Where I grew up. Where my mother planted her gardens. Where my sister played on her swing. Where my stepsiblings tortured me, and my stepfather brought me to the shed for re-education.
“The house can burn to the ground for all I care,” I said without emotion. With a touch of anger, I added, “But there will be many left in this world who are like my stepfather. If we always run, one of them will eventually catch us.”
We spoke no more words that night. No more words were needed. Memories of my stepbrother as he bled out filled my mind. But what I remembered most were Kyle’s blood-curdling screams as he stumbled from the woods. His wails were like calls to my stepfather, and I took them as my declaration that I had finally won. Back then, I couldn’t have cared less as I prepared for what my stepfather would do to me. But then again, when I had watched Kyle weep for the loss of his younger brother, my heart swelled with pride that I had won.
That night the rooftop had become my sanctuary. It was the seat I had taken to move through the ranks of my stepfather’s army. No one could know of this place, I’d decided as I picked up my bow. Kyle was still weeping, his face buried deep in his dead brother’s chest. He only looked at me when I let out a slight whistle. I had wanted him to see the arrow that would kill him. I had wanted him to see me fire it. I had wanted to watch him die.
On that day, three boys died.
Oliver slept beside me as I pondered all the things that had happened that day. She had just fallen asleep, so I didn’t wake her for her watch. Tears had streaked her mud-caked cheeks. Her hair, though still short, had grown back in as matted blond locks. If I failed her, if I couldn’t protect her, then again the fear of what might happen to her, the fear that had driven her to become “Oliver,” might well become real. Just thinking about it, I welled up with anger. If fear didn’t grip on me that night so many months ago, it needn’t have a grip tonight, I thought.
Because of her, I was no longer dead. All those emotions I had shut off now flooded back into me. At first I worried they would make me weak, and with them I would be too scared to fight back. Now, as I watched her chest rise and fall with deep breaths, I needed them to win.
“Wh-what time is it?” she mumbled as her eyes flitted open.
“It’s morning,” I said flatly.
“Why didn’t you wake me? Did you sleep?”
“No. I don’t need it.”
“You aren’t Batman.” Her hand rubbed my back in small circles. I wondered if it was wrong that I still didn’t feel sadness that the world had fallen. As she rested against me with her head on my shoulder, I thought this might have been the best moment of my life.
“I’m going to kill my stepfather today.”
“I know. I’m coming with you. So will Kady. She’s ready.”
“You aren’t. She isn’t. This has to be between him and me.”
Her head lifted off my shoulder, and I felt her stare on me. I couldn’t look at her. She couldn’t know how scared I was.
“And she and I will do what? Stay here and watch the homestead?”
“No. You’re both going to run far away, and you’re going to live.”
“Without you, I am going to live alone.”
A week. A month tops. That’s how long Oliver and Kady would last without finding a colony they could trust. To find out if they could trust someone was a big chance to take. Fall asleep. Hope they wake up alive. Every night they would have to learn again: could they trust anyone? I wished Connor were with us so he could protect them.
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