As much as I appreciate his rationale, this isn’t playtime, and he’s an Outsider. In a real emergency that delineation alone could get him hurt or killed.
“Rémy, I’m serious. I’m not talking about things from stories. I’m talking about real people. My sisters and I aren’t the only ones hunting in these woods.” The turkey yelps again and I use it to my advantage, standing taller to listen while drawing another arrow from my quiver. “Unless you want to watch me hunt that bird.”
His eyes widen. “No, but—” I call back to the turkey, and something about my expression alters the playful grin on Rémy’s face. “Okay. I guess I’ll see you on Monday. Turkey sandwiches for lunch.”
I nod quickly, adding a grin to satisfy whatever closed social interaction he’s used to, knowing I’ve made a promise that might cost us more of our privacy.
IDF
INDIRECT FIRE
RÉMY IS OUT of sight when a sharp sting zips across the outside of my right arm. I drop to my knees and see an arrow strike the same tree, right below where my own arrow nailed Rémy’s map. I suck in my bottom lip so hard to keep from crying out I taste my own coppery blood and can’t help letting out a suppressed groan. Warm blood leaks out through the tear in my camouflage shirt sleeve, weeping into a dark sticky blob. I cover the searing flesh wound with my hand and manage to keep from screaming.
What the fuck? What the fuck? What the fuck?
I can’t let the words bellowing in my mind fly out through my mouth or Rémy will turn back. I bite back the pain until I’m composed enough to stand, thinking if the SHTF, I’d have to remain silent. Safe and silent. But from who? Five of us came into the woods with bows and arrows. My sisters would never—
And then I spot Annalise. Walking toward me with mocking concern, her bottom lip pouted but her eyes as hard as one of the stones digging into my right knee, and just as flinty.
“I wasn’t trying to hit you,” she says. “Just wanted you to know I was watching you with that Outsider from school. Did you tell him where we live?”
“No. Of course not.”
“He shouldn’t be out here.” She tries to examine my arm, but I jerk it away. “I had a feeling your family couldn’t be trusted. It was only a matter of time.”
“So you decided to maim me?” I spit through gritted teeth, while my own hypocrisy mocks me. Only if she had really wanted to. “Who says we can’t be trusted? Where’s Magda? I thought you were hunting together.”
Fear for my sisters overrides my pain. If this is some kind of warning to know our true place, Magda might do the same to them. Removed from the sight of other members. Their word against ours. I’ve heard the saying the sins of the father will be visited upon the children, but what about the sins of the mother? Ours, more specifically.
“She went to get help moving the deer she nabbed.” Annalise dips to study my arm again with mock concern. “It’s just a flesh wound, but who knows how dirty those arrows were that my dad left out? It might cause an infection. Your mother should be able to patch you up with the antibiotics she’s making.”
Blood is seeping through my fingers. Annalise meant to hit me. Let’s put that lie straight to bed. She’s an excellent shot and only missed the straight through shot because that was her intention. She’s clearly mad about our mother and taking it out on me.
This is my fault. From a training standpoint, I wasn’t Ready or Responsible. Therefore I was unable to React to this attack. Dieter didn’t tell us to grab our packs for this training, but we could have gone home for them if we were fast enough. If I had thought to employ the three Rs, I could have Reacted to the assignment by making sure we were Ready for anything, which would have been the Responsible thing to do. Three Rs, all strikes against me. I didn’t think I’d get hit with indirect fire, and I have no choice now but to think of how to React to this wound.
Something clean. Something clean. Something clean.
I remove the wide headband keeping my flyaway hairs in control and string my arm through the fabric loop, wrapping it twice until it’s snug, but loose enough that I can run it up my arm to cover the wound.
“You can’t talk to Outsiders about us,” Annalise says. “Trying to be sneaky about it won’t work. Coalition members with loose lips aren’t tolerated.”
“I can talk to anyone I want as long as it’s not about the compound or the coalition.” I whistle long and low tone with a sharp uptick so my sisters will come find me. It doesn’t take long. They know that whistle means now.
“Honey.” Birdie’s whisper-yell cuts through the trees.
I turn my head and see my sisters scrabbling over the deadfall separating us.
“I got one.” Birdie holds up a turkey weighing at least forty pounds, just heavy enough to impede her mobility. But she’s grinning and proud, tongue pressed between her teeth. I haven’t seen her smile in days.
When she catches my pained expression, her joy is replaced by a furrowed brow. She tips her head at Blue, making me wonder if our little sister suggested this might happen in her weird way.
“You have something on your face,” Annalise says, pulling my attention back.
I brush my cheek, forehead, and chin with my hands. Not that it matters. I’m so pissed at Annalise right now, I want to tackle her in the muck. And I would if I had the use of both arms and thought it wouldn’t cause bigger problems in The Nest.
“No, it’s here.” Annalise rubs the space beneath my nose hard enough to wiggle the septum between my nostrils. Treating me like I’m some mall rat cokehead in a bathroom with my BFF who’s trying to clean me up before we hit the dance floor.
“Stop. You’ve done enough.”
I pull my face away and Annalise raises both hands like she didn’t mean to offend. I rub my nose hard and take a deep sniff, cleaning up what she started.
Something about her smile, the way her top lip is devoid of any curve, makes Annalise look extra fishy. Or maybe it’s her dead, shark-like eyes, despite their being blue.
“Did she shoot you?” The clench of Birdie’s jaw and fists mirror mine, and I know she’ll lash out physically at Annalise if I don’t intervene.
“Not intentionally,” Annalise says. The lie leaves her fishy-lips again without so much as a twitch. “I didn’t mean to, but accidents happen. Tell them it was an accident.”
“It was an accident?” It comes out of my mouth unwillingly as a question, and she gives me a satisfied nod.
“That’s not exactly an apology,” Birdie says without flinching. “But you’re right. Accidents can happen to anyone at any time. That’s the point of all this prepping, isn’t it? To keep our group and everyone in it safe.”
The implied warning is crystal clear.
I love that Birdie is being protective of me, despite knowing she made the smart-ass comment first while we were picking out bows.
Annalise shrugs one shoulder. “You should ask your boyfriend about that concept next time you see him.”
“I will, Annalise. Trust me.”
What happened at school wasn’t an accident. It was planned. I don’t get what Annalise is implying about Daniel, and I won’t until I talk to Ansel.
“It’s near dark. We better head back,” I tell them. I stare at Birdie hard. Stopping her from stoking this into something bigger.
“But your arm?” Blue says. “You don’t have a kill yet.”
“I need to get this cut washed out. I’ll deal with the consequences and figure out something to tell Mother.”
Annalise rolls her eyes. “If she’s back.”
“She will be,” I say. “She’s the leader of The Nest.”
“For the moment.”
I had a feeling we’d be on Annalise’s shit list after Dieter’s promotion of Mother, but I can’t help throwing her a dig since she shot me in the arm. “Doesn’t that make me second-in-command of The Nest?”
“Nobody said that, or trust me, I wouldn’t have missed. But since Ansel is on the verge
of being demoted, I’m happy to take his place, or yours, whichever comes first.”
Demoted? Ansel didn’t mention that, but I bet what happened at school is the reason he isn’t allowed to come to The Nest.
“We need to get a move on,” Annalise says. Assuming the position of leader to prove a point. “Walk slowly and be quiet. Invisible quiet.”
Nesters aren’t supposed to be at odds with one another, truth be told, but things are slipping in that direction. Presently, I’m tired, losing blood, and willing to let her take the lead. For the moment. On that, we agree.
“We’re being stalked by a snake,” Blue says.
Birdie and I are so used to the stuff Blue says, we’re unfazed.
The other Nesters and Burrows look at Blue the same way Annalise is right now. Like she’s someone they don’t understand. If we were living in a different time, she’d be the first of us weirds to be tried as a witch. Birdie would be next, for failure to cooperate with the magistrates. And then me, because with my sisters persecuted I would straight up lose my mind.
“Shh,” Annalise scolds, and I obey. She points to her ear and I hear some movement in a patch of fiddlehead ferns, a slow-moving animal. Nothing with two to four feet moves like that in the presence of a small human pack.
“Honey, shoot it,” Annalise says, pointing.
I nock an arrow and pull it tight, biting back the pain in my shoulder that’s making me light-headed, waiting, waiting, waiting. I blink my eyes several times before I see the tiniest quake in the foliage and release my grip, fingers spread like a ready slap at my cheek. The arrow flies semi-blind and strikes, sticking up at an angle through a patch of ferns, halting the movement within.
Annalise marches forward and lifts my arrow by the shaft, dangling a western rattlesnake at least eighteen inches long. A complete strike-through. I shake my head and look at Blue. “Snakes don’t stalk people.”
She shrugs. “Snakes aren’t always snakes.”
“Better him than us,” Birdie says. “Snakes are edible in a pinch. I say that counts.” Ever the one to compare what’s fair.
“It’ll make a statement,” Annalise says. “Give it to my father when we get back, but be conscious of its head. A dead rattlesnake can still deliver a lethal bite.”
“We should give it to Mother,” Blue says. “She might want to extract the venom.”
“No. To Dieter,” I say. “I have to give it to Annalise’s father.”
My sisters gape at me like I’ve lost my mind, but that’s what I want to do.
My shoulder is pulsing with intermittent stabs of pain, my nerve endings protesting the attack, making it hard to think straight. My thoughts are equally jumbled by the snide comments being exchanged between Annalise and Birdie. But when I hear Annalise say, “Jump,” I do. Over a thick branch. I’m not sure if she was speaking to me or Birdie, so I prick my ears up to listen more closely.
“That was kind of an exaggerated move,” Blue says.
“Was it? I felt like it was warranted.” I take Blue’s hand in mine. The lights from the compound make it easier to see the end of this proverbial tunnel, but I still want her close beside me as we traverse the unbeaten path. She’s usually okay with this kind of thing, but tonight she stalls with a tug, staring at me in the dark.
“You’re acting strange.”
“Am I?”
She’d be acting strange, too, if she got shot with an arrow for talking to an Outsider in the woods. Annalise is hot and cold as a rule, but tipping more and more toward frigid lately. There’s no way of knowing how she’ll continue to play the new intel she has on me.
We’re nearing the edge of the woods when I consider the sight we’d make for the mall rats at school. Annalise and Birdie with their turkeys, Blue with her grouse, and me with my snake. If this were the Hunger Games and it was only about getting food, we’d be the victors. Injured, tired, completely at odds with each other and ready to form a rebellion to save Daniel. At least, that’s what Birdie wants us to do.
“Honey, watch out! The trip wire.”
I heed Birdie’s warning, but it’s too late. I’m ambushed. Bumbling forward and pulling Blue to the ground with me as a screech alarm blares, alerting everyone on the compound of mock intruders. We were so close. I was so glad to be done I forgot about the tasks assigned to Camilla, Tashi, and Tito. I right myself, choking on my usual confidence as a metaphorical cannon booms, signifying the death of these false tributes. Overall, we were successful. As an individual, I failed the group.
I kneel with my hands on my knees. “Sorry,” I tell Blue.
“Don’t be. This isn’t how our world will end.”
That’s not the weirdest thing she’s ever said.
* * *
The majority of Burrowers and Nesters are waiting for us, dimly lit by the solar lights we have around the area. Mother is back, standing to the right of Dieter. Not directly at his side, but close enough to be in the near front. Magda’s deer is hanging by its rear legs behind them, dead-eyed and field dressed. Innards completely gone. It’s something we’ve seen often, and my automatic response is always to look at Blue.
“I hate it,” she says quietly, averting her eyes. “I’ll never eat red meat. I don’t care if I die from starvation.”
“Don’t say that. You know I won’t let that happen.”
Blue is fully aware that hunting and trapping big game is part of our survival training, but she always voices her natural law afterthoughts. More than Birdie or me, who are just trying to get through the task. It’s not like it doesn’t wreck my gut, too, every time I take a life. Any life. But I’ll do whatever is necessary to keep my sisters alive when the time comes.
“You would have all been dead,” Dieter admonishes. “Killed by a trip wire that will one day be rigged to cause a deadly explosion upon contact. Next time, we’ll be using nonlethal, stun-based training. Real dangers continuously threaten our country and our coalition. If we treat these drills like a game, we won’t survive more than a week when the shit hits the fan. We must be ready to protect and defend this compound against attack with counterattack measures at a moment’s notice.”
Tashi catches my eye through a veil of dark curls and mouths, Sorry. I give the slightest shake of my head and smile. She caught me fair and square.
“Magda succeeded in bagging the biggest kill long before you four got caught by the trip wire.” Dieter’s headlamp is shining uncomfortably in our eyes. “Do you know why?”
“Three,” Annalise interjects. “I was hunting with Mom.”
“You were moving with the Juniper sisters as one hunting party when you showed up. Four.”
Annalise clamps her mouth tight, looking at me with wide eyes, jerking her head at the snake. “Throw it at him,” she whispers through clenched teeth.
Having Dieter shame us for getting smaller prizes doesn’t stop me from throwing my kill at his feet. Rigid arrow still piercing the snake’s murky-green and brown body.
“Honey!” Mother exclaims at my disrespect, but I don’t care.
Dieter puts a hand up to stop Mother from intervening. He steps toward me with the snake until he’s close enough for me to smell the trapped heat and perspiration rising off his skin as the night gets colder. I study the silver hairs poking out of his stubble before raising my brown eyes to meet his icy-blue ones. The depthless pupil is so prominent in blue-eyed people it can look like a solar eclipse reflected on water. Only what I see in his isn’t emptiness. It’s my own reflection. The second time in as many days that I’ve found myself mirrored in the pupil of an eye. I don’t flinch. As far as I can tell, I don’t even blink.
“Pick up the snake,” he says, and I do.
“Hand it to me by the tail.”
I do that, too.
He stops looking me in the eyes to glare at Annalise. “Was this you?”
“Was what me?” She steps forward and lays her own kill on the picnic table. “I got this. In case you wanted a tur
key dinner from your daughter to go with your deer wife’s venison. That’s two good kills, unless Ansel can prove himself by doing us one better.”
That sounded personal. Dieter doesn’t react, and no one standing around makes a peep. Ostensibly because Annalise is pointing out what Dieter’s recent decision implies about him and Mother and the whole upset of the compound’s power structure.
Dieter pulls the snake off the arrow like a sausage on a barbecue skewer. “Honey, take this snake and swing it to Annalise by the tail so she catches it by the head.”
I take the snake from him, ready to do as instructed.
Annalise shrieks, “Drop it,” countermanding her father.
I drop the dead snake.
“That’s what I thought,” Dieter says.
Annalise presses her lips into a tight line and goes silent.
I keep my mouth shut through all of it because the leader of The Burrow is testing his daughter, and I know nothing about that dynamic. We’ve always only had Mother, but learned early on that if Dieter asks us to do something during any survivalist or prepper training, we do it. We do it, because we want to survive.
Survival isn’t supposed to be a deadly competition among us.
“I’ll take her home,” Mother says.
“Good idea. We can wrap things up here, but you and I should meet later to discuss the failures and trapping of this training.”
Magda stiffens nearby. The deep grooves between her eyes form three ridges as her face hardens into an angry mask. I can’t be the only one who thinks Mother’s new leadership role is only in place for her and Dieter to spend more time together.
I make a move to pick up the snake and Dieter steps on it. “I’ll keep that.”
I understand his caution with the venom. It’s a neurotoxin and Dieter was a soldier in the Gulf War, just like that guy, Thane. I’ve heard others talking about what happened to the men and women stationed with him, how they were exposed to toxic chemicals and given experimental drugs meant to protect them from exposure.
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