by Joe Hart
It is glorious. The odor of cooking food, its delectable scent nearly maddening in its potency. She can’t pick out a singular smell among the mélange of mouthwatering odors that coast on the air, but it is unlike any food she has smelled before. While the cafeteria meals always had a muted scent of boiled vegetables and bland rice, this food has life to it. She doesn’t realize her mouth is open, tasting the air, until a runner of drool drips over her bottom lip.
Her stomach growls, and she comes back to herself.
She focuses on the line of brush that hems in the little clearing. Through one gap there is a bag slumped onto its side, within reach if someone were to crawl partially through . . .
No. It’s too risky. They would catch her, and do God knows what to her. There are six of them, probably armed. She would be insane to try it.
Zoey shoots a glance to the other side of the stump and runs, bent over, to the following tree. She pauses there for a second before hustling on to the next trunk. Gradually she makes her way closer to the flames, their light shoving the darkness back only to let it flow forth again. She stops at the final mature tree before the line of young pines. Checking in both directions, she breaks cover, runs, and slides to a stop behind the thick, intertwining branches, listening for calls of alarm.
Only raucous laughter.
The fire is maybe forty yards away, and the smell of food is so intoxicating she sways with it even as she curses herself. This is too close.
She worms her way into the thick cover of the pines, gently pushing aside the prickly branches until she is only several feet from the open space on the opposite side. The sage still blocks most of her point of view, but the men’s words are more pronounced than ever.
“Just be sure you duck and cover if that chopper comes over, that’s all I’m sayin’, Reg. Never know what those black ops bastards will do if they track us back to the group.”
“Don’t worry about me, you old coot, I’m faster than all of you.”
“Yeah, and dumber too.” Laughter fills the night again.
“You wouldn’t say that if my uncle was here.”
“Listen, boy, the only reason you’re on this little scouting mission is because of your uncle. If not for him, we would’ve chucked your whiny ass into a ravine a week ago.”
A new voice chimes in. “Yeah, except then the ravine would’ve been full of bullshit too.” This is met by high, crazed laughter.
“Ahh, where ya goin’, Reg? We was only messing with ya.”
“Screw you guys.”
“Well, at least leave us the bottle, you little pig, you’ve been sucking off it all night like it was your momma’s teat.”
The loudest eruption of laughs and calls yet comes from near the fire, and Zoey realizes the men are drinking alcohol. Lee’s told her about it before, how it’s forbidden except for once a year in the middle of winter since it makes people act strangely, unlike themselves. But he also said the guards don’t abide by that rule either and it’s easy to find a bottle of the concoction at any given time being passed around in the guards’ dorm.
Lee. How she wishes he were here now. He would know a way to get food. He would find a plan that would work. Maybe some type of diversion. Zoey nods to herself. She has to figure out a way to get the men away from the fire so she can steal the bag on the ground. There’s bound to be food inside it, not to mention other useful things that could help her survive. Maybe she can—
But all thought goes dark as a large shadow approaches the line of pines, coming straight toward her with a single purpose. He’s so close she can see long, tangled hairs, lit by the firelight, sprouting from the sides of the man’s head, hear the crunch of his boots, smell him over the delicious odor of food.
He is five steps away.
Three.
Two.
She brings up the rifle, readying herself to break cover the moment she fires the first shot.
The man stops a few feet to her left and sighs. He fumbles with his belt, hawks and spits into the tree over her head. If she wanted to, she could reach out and touch the toe of his scarred boot.
A spattering of liquid startles her, the warmth of it speckling the fabric on her arms and shoulder. She turns her head away, silently gagging as the urine cascades down through the thick branches and pools a few inches beside her. Reg grunts, shifting his boots farther into the soft soil. Every nerve in her body screams for her to move, to burst from her hiding spot and run. She has to get the urine off her, scour it away. She can almost feel it crawling on her skin, infecting her.
Slowly the man’s stream lessens and dribbles to a stop. He coughs and spits again and Zoey can’t help but flinch, sure that the phlegm will find its way through the cover to her face. And then she will scream, there will be no stopping it.
The man buttons his pants and turns partially away, scratching at his ass before meandering down the lane created between the young trees and the sage. Zoey loses sight of him in the cajoling shadows at the edge of the clearing.
She scuttles backward as quietly as she can, rubbing the urine-spattered sleeve of her shirt in the soil as she goes. When she reaches the opening behind her she crouches, eyeing the way opposite where the man was heading. A diversion, that’s exactly what she needs. Something to send them all scurrying away from the fire for a few seconds, just enough to allow her to snatch the bag and disappear again into the darkness.
She ponders her options as she sneaks back the way she came to the safety of the larger trees, scooting from one to the next to circumvent the open ground. Zoey stops beside the stump once again to catch her breath. There has to be a way to get the bag, she just needs to find it. Be like Lee, be a problem solver. Her gaze hovers on the flames, almost entranced as a niggling sensation crawls through the back of her mind. The man who’d relieved himself on her hasn’t returned to the fire yet.
She registers movement to her left a half-second before something strikes her hard on the side of the head.
The fire pinwheels as she rolls from behind the stump, and she nearly cries out when the rifle slips from her fingers. Her vision wobbles as she comes to a stop at the base of a tall pine, its exposed roots digging into her back.
Reg is there in the flickering dark. One side of his face is bathed in firelight, and a single hard eye gleams at her as he stalks forward, his hand on the butt of a pistol strapped to his thigh. His lips glisten with moisture as he stops and licks them, the eyebrow she can see rising in surprise.
“Holy shit. It’s a girl,” he says in awe. “Where the hell did you come from?”
Zoey works her jaw, but nothing comes out. Her eyesight is steadying, and the strength that fled her limbs with the blow is returning. Her skull pounds from where Reg struck her.
“Aren’t you something?” Reg says, his voice husky. “I’ve never seen one so young.” Zoey claws her way backward up the slope, fingers digging into the fallen layers of pine needles. “Where you going?” He follows her, slowly, carefully.
“Stay away from me,” she whispers, searching the ground behind him for the rifle. Reg tips his head to one side, wild hair floating in the breeze.
He lunges for her but Zoey is already up and moving, legs pumping up the slight hill. She can’t hear him but knows he’s right behind her, any second his fingers will clamp onto her shoulder and he’ll drag her down.
Darkness invades the trees, their trunks deeper shadows as they flash by on either side. Panic is a living creature in her chest, tearing at her heart and lungs, weakening her legs. She jags to the left in a ninety-degree turn, using the base of a deadfall to launch off from. Reg curses and there’s a soft snapping of branches and twigs as he flies past. She sprints lateral to the crest of the rise, eyes searching for a hiding place, a weapon, anything.
There is only the trees and wind.
Ahead a rough outcropping of rock appears, piled up on the inside of a bowl where the rise turns in on itself. She leaps up the first three boulders and releas
es a short yelp as the fourth gives beneath her foot.
Her knee slams into granite, the burst of pain a lightning strike behind her eyes. Her lips pull back from her teeth as she tries to force herself up the rock tumble.
Fingers snag her hair and yank.
She loses her footing and falls backward, tumbling once on an unforgiving boulder before rolling over the softer mass of Reg, who plummets with her.
Zoey flips once in a clumsy somersault and comes to a stop on a bed of needles. Before she can pull herself up, Reg is above her. One booted foot plants itself in her stomach, hard.
Her air rushes out and refuses to return.
“Why you gotta run, girlie? Why you do that, huh? Make it hard on yourself.” Reg stands near her feet as she struggles in vain to get her breath back. “God, you’re a pretty one. Best I’ve ever seen.” He begins to fumble with his belt. “I’m gonna be a rich man, you don’t know the price you’re gonna bring for me.” He lets out childlike laughter. “Can’t believe my luck. Go to take a piss and find a girl. Knew I heard something when I was walking away.”
“Please,” Zoey manages. Her lungs are two limp bags inside her chest as she tries to scoot away.
“Oh, I’m not gonna hurt you. Well, maybe I will. Guessin’ you’re a virgin so it’ll hurt a little.” Reg lowers his pants slightly and moves forward, crouching down over her like a bearded spider.
Zoey swings an arm out but finds only rumpled piles of needles. No rock, no stick, nothing to defend herself with.
Reg falls upon her, splaying her legs apart hard enough that her pelvis emits a pop. His face is inches from hers, hands fumbling for the waist of her pants. She is paralyzed, unable to even scream. The smell he gives off is a mixture of stale sweat and onions. The coarseness of his beard scratches her face, and she whimpers as his breath washes over her.
21
Zoey nudged the small clump of gristle toward the owl that watched her with its luminescent eyes.
“You need to eat,” she said, pushing the morsel another inch closer to the bird’s hooked beak. She had saved the bite of meat beneath her tongue during dinner, daring to spit it out only after Simon said goodnight and locked the door to her room. She’d waited until after midnight before pulling the loosened piece of glass out of its casing to find the bird still in the small alcove where she’d left it that morning.
Its wing hung at an ugly angle away from its body, and its beak opened and closed in small movements as if it were panting. It hadn’t drunk any of the water she’d poured into the divot in the alcove’s floor.
“Just try a bite, okay?” She picked the soft piece of meat up and extended her arm farther out. The owl nipped at her fingers, pinching the tip of one hard in its beak. “Ouch!” Zoey squealed, unable to stop herself. She dropped the chunk and drew her hand back, examining the shallow cut the bird had made. It oozed a line of blood, and a sudden overwhelming fear flooded her. What if the owl was infected with the plague?
She stepped down from the chair and went to the bathroom, running the cut first under steaming hot water, then under cold until the bleeding stopped. She wrapped it carefully in toilet paper before returning to the window. The bird hadn’t touched the meat.
“You don’t look sick,” Zoey said. “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with you besides your wing.” The owl tilted its head at her words as if considering them. “But you’ll starve if you don’t eat something.”
She glanced away from the alcove and its occupant, looking into the night sky.
The darkness above the wall was buffeted by some of the exterior lights, but beyond the pale glow, stars glistened in a billion flickering points.
“How high have you flown?” she said, not breaking her gaze. “Have you tried to reach them?” She looked back at the bird before remembering Simon’s words from earlier that day. “I bet you can fly really fast. Faster than that bird that flew past us today. Zipper. Is that an okay name?” The owl cocked its head the opposite way. “I’ll take that as a yes. Zipper, if you don’t eat or drink anything, your wing won’t heal and you won’t ever fly again. And if you can’t fly, you can’t leave this place. If you’ll just eat and let me help you, I know you’ll get better. I can fix your wing, I’m sure of it.” She licked at the dryness of her lips, studying the sky again. “Otherwise you’ll die here.”
Zoey checked the cut on her finger and tossed the toilet paper into the room. The slice didn’t look infected, but it was really too soon to tell. Maybe she’d wake up with the plague. If she did, she was going to cough all over Rita.
The owl shuffled to one side and made a low, mournful croak. She watched it try to fold the broken wing tighter to its body, but let it flop back to its original position after a moment.
“You can’t give up,” she said in what she hoped was a soothing voice. “The second you give up is when you start to die. You have to fight to make it. You have to want to live. Do you want to live?” The bird blinked. “Then let’s try this again.”
Zoey picked up the meat between her thumb and forefinger and slowly extended it toward Zipper again. In a quick, darting motion, it stabbed its beak forward and snapped back. She nearly yelped with the anticipated pain. She’d pushed the animal too far, been too excited by its presence, too determined to keep it alive, and now it had taken a piece of her finger for payment. She should have left it alone, even if it was going to die. That was the way things were. If you didn’t fight, you died, either in body or in mind.
She brought her fingers back into the better light of the room, ready for the sight of her torn flesh, but they were unscathed save the prior cut.
Zoey blinked and looked back at where the owl rested.
Zipper’s beak worked in quick, pinching motions, the scrap of meat she’d been holding vanishing down his throat with a bob of his head. His eyes flashed and he shuffled forward, dipping down to scoop up some of the water she’d left that morning.
Zoey smiled.
22
With a single motion, she grasps Reg’s beard with the arm he doesn’t have pinned and yanks his head forward to bury her teeth in the soft skin of his face.
Hot blood squirts into her mouth.
A gurgling cry comes from the man’s chest and the reaction is immediate. He shoves away from her, and she feels his flesh tear from her mouth. The gap between them widens enough for her to launch a kick at his groin. The muffled, mewling sound he makes as he tips to one side lets her know she found her mark.
Then she’s on her feet and running, hoisting her pants back above her hips. She flies up the rockfall, not looking back to see if Reg is pursuing her, only moving, running from the feeling of his body on top of hers. Her mind attempts to rip itself from its moorings, to hide away behind a sudden memory of Lee’s fingers sliding over her hand, but she flings it away, bringing herself back to the present.
A branch snaps behind her, close, and her bladder threatens to release itself. She can hear his breathing now, ragged and hoarse. She won’t be able to outrun him.
Zoey catches a glimpse of a barren pine to her right a dozen paces ahead. Its branches are different from the other trees, and it takes her a split second to realize it’s dead. Its limbs snake out in a thousand directions, and even in the faint light she can see their pointed ends scratching the sky.
She changes course for the dead tree, leaping over a knee-high rock. She trips as she reaches the tree’s base and skids to a stop with its crumbling bark crushing into her shoulder. Reg’s footfalls are right behind her, and she barely has time to climb to her feet and face him.
He is ten steps away, coming full bore, an outline of fury against the backdrop of forested night.
Zoey reaches up over her head.
Stretches high.
Grasps the lowest, wickedly pointed branch and pulls it down.
The branch shudders in her hands and she lets go, cringing against the impact she knows will come.
But it doesn’t.
/> She opens her eyes and stares at what she’s done.
Reg jitters at the end of the razored branch, and it takes a heartbeat for her to recognize its tip protruding from the back of his neck. Reg chokes and splutters something as he makes feeble grabs for the branch impaling him. His fingers slide in a bony rasp down its length to where it disappears under his chin. His legs shudder before they fold, and he drops to his knees.
Zoey moves out from under the dead tree’s cover, taking care to keep far out of the man’s reach. She stares, transfixed as Reg’s shirt and jacket darken with the unending current that pumps from his ruined throat.
He turns his head to look in her direction, to follow her movement, but instead slumps to the side, the branch snapping off to follow him to the ground, where he lies utterly still.
The sounds of the night come rushing back in. Zoey blinks, the silence that had gathered in the seconds before Reg impaled himself on the tree branch washing away.
No, she tells herself. He didn’t do it, you did. You’ve done it again, killed again. But even the guilt-fueled voice can’t drown out the lingering feeling of his hands on her, trying to tear her clothing away. The urge to spit on his corpse comes and goes as she steps past it.
Zoey moves through the trees, climbing carefully back down the rocky embankment and retraces the path of her flight. Soon the woods begin to jitter with firelight again, and she makes out the stump she hid behind earlier.
The fire still wavers in bright, lapping tongues. The men’s voices are there, but lower now, almost conspiratorial. She drops to her hands and knees, fingers hovering across the ground, searching for the hard composite of the rifle stock. It has to be here. She remembers it falling away when Reg struck her. It was only feet from the right side of the stump. Couldn’t have gone far.