Wilder Girls

by Rory Power

  “Welch was on our side,” I say. “Wasn’t she?”

  Headmistress frowns. “I’m not sure what constitutes your side, Hetty, but she was adamant that we not subject the whole student body to testing, that it would lead to unnecessary suffering.” She smiles nervously. “Personally, I think it’s clear she was mistaken.”

  “She killed herself.” I’m shaking, and Reese presses in closer, lays her hand on the small of my back. “She did that because of your plans.”

  “Let’s not forget,” Headmistress says, a flash of annoyance crossing her face, “she was a grown woman capable of critical thinking. She made her own choices. I won’t be held responsible for them.”

  She’s right. Welch did choose—she chose us every time she threw out the contaminated supplies, every time she had us lie to Headmistress about it.

  And I was wrong. I had her wrong the whole time.

  I can’t be here anymore. Every mistake I’ve made, digging us in deeper, and the whole place will be better off without me, even when the jets come.

  “Hetty,” Reese says behind me. Out in the hallway I can hear talking, louder and louder as the other girls raid a nearby classroom for desks and benches, anything they can barricade the doors with.

  I look back to Headmistress. “How long until the jets?”

  “They’ll be here by dark.”

  That’s it. A day. That’s all Raxter has left until a squadron of jets blows it off the map. I can hear my father in my head, and he’s telling me to run, as fast and as far as I can. I will. But there’s still one thing left. “Why bother with the water, then,” I ask, “if we’re all dead anyway?”

  Headmistress coughs delicately. “It’s more humane.”

  “Humane?” I nearly laugh. I can’t believe her. “Where was that when you tried to gas us?”

  “Gas?” Reese says from behind me, shock tight in her voice. I’d forgotten she didn’t know.

  “It should have worked,” Headmistress insists. “I don’t think your dose was concentrated enough. It worked on your friend, after all.”

  For a second I’m not here anymore. I’m on the ferry that first day, watching Byatt watch me. Her smile like something I’d been waiting for my whole life, her smile like I was something special.

  “No,” I say. “No, I don’t understand. What are you talking about?”

  “Your friend. Miss Winsor.”

  My breath catches. Reese swears softly.

  But Headmistress keeps on. “From what I hear she was very helpful.”

  “ ‘Was’?” I say. But I know; I know what’s coming.

  “She’s dead.” Headmistress shrugs. “The CDC administered her dosage of the gas sometime yesterday.”

  I feel hollow, like the center of me has vanished. Ripped clean out of me. She can’t be gone. Tears pricking at my eye, and my whole body shuddering. “I don’t believe you,” I say. “I don’t, I don’t.”

  “Well, that hardly matters.”

  I’m across the room before I realize it, my hand clawing at Headmistress’s face. She cries out, and blood streaks over her skin as my nails tear a stripe down her cheek. Reese grabs me around the waist and hauls me back, my legs kicking wildly as she drags me away from Headmistress.

  “She’s lying,” I say. “She doesn’t know Byatt. She doesn’t understand.”

  “I know,” Reese says in my ear. “You’re right. You are. But we don’t have time. Like you said, okay? We have to go.”

  “Yeah.” I swallow hard, force my body to relax. “Just one thing first. Dump the bottles. Except one.”

  “No,” Headmistress says, “no, no, wait.” Reese lets me go, lets me press my forearm against Headmistress’s neck.

  “It’s over,” I say. Behind me Reese starts pouring out the water. The floor turns dark and slick, and Headmistress is crying.

  Byatt isn’t dead. I won’t believe it. Headmistress has lied before, and she could be lying now. I’ll find Byatt like I promised I would. And when I do, I’ll be able to tell her I did this in her name.

  I drop my arm from Headmistress’s throat. Reach back toward Reese, and she presses the last water bottle into my working hand. For Byatt, for Mr. Harker, and for us.

  “We were supposed to drink this?” I say, holding the bottle up to my lips. She nods.

  “It’s what’s best for you,” Headmistress says. “You don’t want all that pain. I promise, it’ll be the easiest thing in the world.”

  “Yeah.” I stare down at the water and lick my lips. When I look back up at Headmistress, she’s watching me with warmth in her eyes, and she reaches up to touch my shoulder.

  “It won’t hurt,” she says softly.

  I lean in close. “Prove it.”

  She gasps, and I shove the bottle into her mouth, throw all of my weight against her jaw, holding it open as the water tumbles in.

  A muffled yell, and a whimper as she thrashes under me. Water spilling down over my hand, drenching the front of her shirt. She can try not to swallow, but soon enough she’ll have to. Her lips are wet against my palm, but I don’t give, just press harder, touch my forehead to hers. She did this to us. Now it’s our turn.

  Snot dripping from her nose, and she starts to choke as spasms rack her body. I’m watching her throat, waiting, waiting, and finally, a moan slipping out of her as she swallows.

  I stay there, hip to hip with her, until she goes limp and I can’t hold her up anymore. I step away, let her body drop to the floor. On her hands and knees, gasping for air. She looks small. I can see the narrow taper of her wrists, skin sallow and pale. I crumple the water bottle, toss it down next to her.

  “Leave her,” Reese says, “and let’s go. It’s getting nasty out there.”

  I look back at her, confused, and she nods toward the hallway. Hit after hit against the double doors closing off the main hall. If the front doors didn’t hold, these don’t stand a chance. I can hear Julia, yelling at the other girls, urging them to keep supporting the barricade. But it’s no use.

  “Okay,” I say.

  I hoist the backpack up, staggering a little under the weight of it, but soon it’s on and we’re heading out of the office. Not a backward glance, not until we hit the kitchen and I check to make sure none of the other girls is following.

  Empty space, and the sound of screams. We need to hurry.

  Reese crosses to the emergency exit door, the sign above it dark and cracked. I follow, and she goes first, opens the door just a few inches, and looks out.

  “Seems clear.”

  I laugh a little. “Either way, we’re going.”

  She holds out her silver hand to me, and I take it. “Stay with me,” she says, “and I’ll stay with you, yeah?”

  I close my eye. Raxter behind me, and who knows what ahead.

  CHAPTER 24

  The door spits us onto the south side of the grounds. Strong sunlight through the clouds as the morning fills out. Lawn empty ahead of us, just a few stands of coastal pine between us and the ocean. To my right, across a hundred yards of frost-dusted grass, the fence, and the way out.

  “If we get separated,” Reese says, “find my house. I’ll meet you there.”

  “And then what?”

  “My dad’s boat,” she says. “More like a dinghy, I guess. It’s hidden along the shore somewhere.”

  A crash from inside the house, maybe one of the doors giving way, and I hear the other girls start to shout. I squeeze Reese’s hand. The jets are coming, I think. I hate how it sounds like an excuse.

  “Count of three,” Reese says. “Break for the gate.”

  I nod, and together we whisper, “One. Two. Three.”

  We sprint, so quick I lose my breath, let my mouth go slack as I throw everything into my legs. Overhead the first flurry of snow, stinging a
gainst my cheeks. The backpack is too loose, jerking from side to side, and I stumble, but Reese won’t let me fall.

  “Almost there!” she yells.

  The fence coming up quick, but I can’t stop. I’m tired, so tired, and my legs go loose, my stride turning wild. But at last, the gate.

  We stagger to a stop. My hand is throbbing, and Reese is leaving bloody tracks in the snow, but adrenaline is sharp and bitter in my mouth, the cold waking against my skin. I’m alive. I’m here and I’m alive.

  I tighten the backpack straps as Reese slides the pistol out from her waistband. The gate open ahead of us, and she bites her lip against the pain as she lifts the pistol, her stance and firing hand switched like I taught her, and aims it into the shadow coating the trees beyond the gate.

  “Just to be safe,” she says.

  I almost laugh.

  We take a different route to her house. Keep out of the wilds, stick to the spidery deer paths that run through the trees, both of us keen to face the danger we know instead of the danger we don’t.

  The woods are strangely quiet, even for Raxter. Snow speckled on the ground, falling more thickly than it usually does this early in the winter. We scan the ground closely for tracks, but every time we find some they’re heading away, toward the school. If we’re safe out here, it’s at the other girls’ expense.

  Eventually, the ramshackle shape of the Harker house is visible ahead. I blink the snowflakes from my lashes and hurry forward, eager for a bit of rest.

  Reese goes in first, wipes her feet at the door absently, and it makes something clench in my chest. And then she gasps, lets out a sob, and of course, I forgot. Mr. Harker. The body.

  I rest my working hand on her shoulder, step up next to her, ready to offer some comforting words. But they won’t do anything, because crowded around what’s left of Mr. Harker are three gray foxes, their mouths dripping black as they rip into his torso.

  “Get away from him!” she yells. Lifts the pistol and fires between the foxes, no aim to speak of, stance in shambles. “Go!”

  One darts through a hole in the house wall, disappearing into the reeds, but the other two just lift their heads and look at us. Reese doesn’t care, though. She stumbles toward the body, batting my hand away from her as I try to hold her back. Drops to her hands and knees at her father’s feet, one of his boots unlaced, the other with a striped sock peeking above it.

  The foxes regard her calmly, almost like she’s one of them. But when I approach they skitter away with a high-pitched cry and squirm through the wall.

  “Reese?” I say. She sits back on her heels, and I catch the trail of a tear on her cheek before she wipes it away.

  “Do you mind,” she says, “if we get out of here?”

  * * *

  —

  We head farther west along the coast of the island, and it would be easier going on the beach, but Reese keeps us in the trees, far enough back that we’re still under the cover of the branches.

  Raxter’s edge is shifting here, almost porous. Later it’ll turn to jagged clusters of rock before easing out into marsh at the other end. When we left I asked Reese where we were going, but she just shook her head and pulled me along. A week ago I would’ve called it stubborn, but this is Reese embarrassed, because I asked where we’re going, and Reese isn’t all the way sure.

  It’s the rocks, now. Reese is frowning, peering down the shore, taking us out of the trees a few steps at a time.

  “Almost there,” she says, and I nod. Don’t press. She’ll find what she’s looking for.

  We keep on, our bodies tense, the backpack heavier on my shoulders with every step. It’s quiet, as if everything on the island is hiding from what happened at the house. Once the bear has finished with what’s left of us, it’ll go after the other animals. We have to get out before this place turns to war.

  Reese stops suddenly, points ahead of us.

  “There,” she says.

  Tucked in between two tall spears of stone, there’s a path cleared out, and I can just make out a stretch of shore, the waves stranding nests of seaweed on the sand. And laid out on the beach, barnacles and moss growing over the hull, a dingy white boat.

  We head down, careful of the rocks oiled over with sea. Reese holds out her arm, and I grab it, let her keep me steady as we pick our way to the shore.

  The trail breaks off above the sand, and we have to jump down. My boots sink in, leave disappearing footprints behind me. On the horizon I can see the mainland, empty and black against the sky.

  “Here,” Reese says, gesturing to one of the rocks. “I should redo your bandages.”

  I sit down there, hand her the backpack so she can fish out the first aid kit. The bandages Julia gave me are barely enough to cover half the tears in my hand, and when Reese flips open the kit, I let out a relieved sigh at the sight of a pristine ace bandage.

  She takes my hand in both of hers, rolling her shoulder to keep it relaxed. The snow, still light but sticking where it lands, sneaks under my collar, hits the back of my neck, and I pull my hood up as she undoes my makeshift binding.

  “God, you really messed this thing up,” she says, probing my palm softly. “Can you feel that?”

  “Only in spots.”

  She smooths the bandage out and rewraps my hand, careful to avoid the places where blood is already seeping through the first layer of cloth. “What about moving it?”

  I manage a twitch in my thumb, and Reese smiles, lets go of me.

  “That’s good,” she says. “We’ll keep trying.”

  She stands up, packs the first aid kit into the backpack, and I look past her to where the mainland is faint on the horizon. “It looks so far,” I say.

  “Maybe thirty miles to the shore.” Reese squints at the horizon. “And then what, once we get there?”

  “I want to go to Camp Nash,” I say firmly. “That must be where Byatt is, and I’m not leaving her behind. Not even if she really is dead.”

  “Hetty—”

  “I’m not doing it. I can’t leave her like that. You don’t understand.”

  Reese looks away. “I do, though.”

  Of course. Her dad. I fight back a wave of nausea. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…” I tilt my head back, watch the snow come down. “I don’t want you to think I’ve forgotten. Or that I think it’s all okay. I know you’re angry, and I know you will be for a long time, and I can accept that.”

  “I am angry,” Reese says slowly. “But I can barely feel it. And I know it’ll come back, but I have things to be sorry for too.” She glances at me, at my throat, and I remember the feeling of her arm pressing hard across it. A week ago, but it seems like years. “There are more important things, right now.”

  I let out a laugh of relief that totters on the edge of tears, and Reese leans in so our shoulders brush.

  “One of those important things,” she continues, “is a cure. Nobody’s looking for a real one. We know that now.”

  “Maybe we’ll find something at Camp Nash,” I say. And then I think of Welch on the pier, of what she told me about my parents. Of what I said about my dad. “Or maybe there’s somebody else who can help.”

  Reese frowns. “Who?”

  “My dad.” I wonder if he’s still stationed in Norfolk. What have he and my mother done with their lives now that they think I’m dead? “He’s Navy. I mean, not like Camp Nash, but he might know something. And at this point, I think that’s all we can hope for.”

  Reese is quiet, and I look away. I know she’s thinking about her own dad, and I wait for her to pull herself out of it.

  “All right,” she says at last. “Byatt and then a cure.”

  I zip up the backpack while Reese goes to the boat to turn it over, and in a minute or two she has it righted and dragged to the water. I can see a rusted o
utboard motor barely hanging onto the stern.

  “Will it work?” I ask. “Or do we have to row? Thirty miles is far.”

  “Should be all right,” Reese says. “And my dad always kept a spare fuel can in the lockbox.”

  I watch as she inspects the oars and lays them across the seats, just in case. A strong wave jolts the boat, and I dart back a few steps. I’m a Navy man’s daughter—boats are bigger than this where I come from. Stable, and wide, holding together without a tar patch on the stern.

  Reese laughs, the wind tugging at her braid, and I feel my heart clench. The clouds rippling above us, and the sun dipping below the horizon. The rocks moaning as the wind hollows around them, and I’ll never let go of Raxter, no matter how far away I get. It’ll never let go of me.

  “Get in,” Reese says, handing me the backpack. “I’ll push us out.”

  I climb in and sit quickly, facing the shore, gripping hard at the gunwale. Reese starts to shove the boat farther into the surf until she’s knee-deep in the water, and I can feel my stomach start to twist as the boat jerks from side to side.

  “Okay,” she says. “Brace yourself. I’m climbing in.”

  She takes one last step, pushes off as strong as she can, and hoists herself up onto the gunwale. The boat tips wildly to one side as Reese swings one leg over and then the other. I jerk back as the water hits my face.

  “There,” she says, dropping onto the bench opposite me. “Okay?”

  “You brought half the ocean in with you.”

  She rolls her eyes. “Besides that.”

  “Yeah.”

  The waves are already pushing us back to shore, so Reese adjusts a lever on the engine and yanks the start pull. Nothing happens, but she tries again, and again, and at last it sputters to life, kicking up a spray as we start to hum forward.

  “All right,” Reese says. I can barely hear her over the engine. “Here we go.”