by Laken Cane
Sage was not with them.
Chapter Eleven
“When we left this morning, she was sitting on a chair beside your cot, waiting for you to wake up.” Richard’s voice was calm—cold, even—but there was a spark of worry in his odd, pale eyes.
I paced the floor, chomping away at my fingernails, worried sick. I believed them. At least, I wanted to. They couldn’t have traded her to the gods—they’d have traded me as well. “Where the hell is she?” I whispered. “Where did she go?”
I stopped pacing abruptly. “The door. Did you lock the door when you left this morning?”
“No,” Richard told me. “Sage said she’d lock up after us.”
I sat on the couch—Sage’s bed—and buried my face in my hands. She’d been missing since that morning. “They have her.”
“Why do you think that?” Caleb asked.
“For all we know, you killed her,” Lila said. She sat in a chair across the room, unloading the bag she’d filled from their raid.
I ignored her and strode toward the kitchen.
“Where are you going?” Caleb asked, following me. His voice was carefully friendly—cheerful, even—but the look in his eyes was almost as cold as Richard’s.
I wasn’t sure why he thought he needed to hide himself behind a façade of jovial blandness, but he wasn’t quite to the point where he could disguise what was in his eyes.
Richard was, but Richard was older. He’d had more time to harden his shell.
“I’m going to find Sage.”
“You can’t go out there by yourself. Hang on. I’ll go with you.”
I stopped walking. “You will?”
He grinned. “Yeah. She’s a sweetheart.”
I heard Lila snort. “Yeah. You’re going for the kid.”
Caleb’s stare didn’t waver. His smile remained firmly in place, but there was a flicker of something I didn’t recognize deep in his eyes.
Richard walked into the kitchen and strode by both of us without a word or a glance our way. He grabbed his water gun, shoved it into its holster, then walked out the door.
I raised an eyebrow but said nothing.
“Ready?” Caleb asked.
“What’s her story?” I asked him, once we were out of the house and walking down the street.
“Lila?” He shrugged. “She’s…angry.”
“I figured that much out for myself.”
“What about you,” he asked. “You lived in Crowbridge all your life?”
“Yes. After everything happened, I found a different house to live in, but this is my town.” I paused. “Where were you this morning? Did you go into town?”
“We got as close as we could, then spied on them with binoculars. There are a lot of them. This cluster is bigger than any I’ve seen before.”
I swallowed. “Do you think they have Sage?”
“I don’t know, Teagan. It’s a possibility. But why would she have left the house in the first place? She was a smart kid.”
“Is,” I said, a little too loudly. “She is a smart kid.”
He nodded and looked away. “Yeah.”
The sun was beginning to drop as the day faded, and the air was getting chillier. I hated to think of Sage being out there by herself, cold, alone. Maybe she’d fallen and hurt herself and couldn’t get back home. Maybe she was trapped. Maybe she’d broken a leg or knocked herself unconscious.
Maybe a dark, horrible human had kidnapped her.
“Shit,” I whispered.
I wanted to yell her name, but I couldn’t. The mutants seemed to be hanging close to their cluster, but who knew when a pack of scouts might head this way? Still, we had the alcohol guns. Maybe a yell wasn’t a bad idea.
I patted my gun. “How did you find out that alcohol would kill them?”
He smiled, and it made his eyes sparkle in the evening light. “Lila discovered it, actually. She’d been injured and was pouring a bottle of it over the wound. A mutant surprised her and the first thing she did was fling the alcohol—bottle and all—at the asshole.”
“That was lucky.”
“Very. From then on, we’ve been spreading the word and gathering as much alcohol as we can find. In every town, we fill drums with it before we move on.”
“For those who come after.”
“Yes. We tape notes to the drums explaining. We also have people making the stuff.”
I frowned. “People?”
“We’re everywhere.” His voice was full of something I finally recognized as pride. “You haven’t seen us, but we exist. This is our world—not theirs. We’re going to take it back.”
I studied him. His face was open and almost innocent with his shiny brown eyes and quick smile.
Before the world ended, he could have sat behind me in algebra and I wouldn’t have noticed him. He wouldn’t have been remarkable back then.
But now he was. How many teenagers were left? Not many.
“You can trust me,” he said. “You can trust all three of us.”
But trust was an unfamiliar concept. The word sounded strange when I whispered it to myself. Trust?
No. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
Halfway down the block, I caught a movement from the corner of my eye.
“What?” Caleb asked, when I stopped walking and stared into the deep shadows of the porch across the street.
“I thought I saw something.”
He slipped his gun from its holster. “Where?”
I slid my own gun free and jogged toward the house. I knew he was hissing at me to stop, but his voice wafted away like fog and I wouldn’t have listened to him anyway.
It was Sage. It had to be.
I needed it to be.
Caleb ran beside me, and I sped toward trouble with more abandon because of him. I knew he’d help me with whatever threat happened to show itself.
I also knew that was a sort of trust.
I wasn’t alone, and there were people who’d help me, people I could maybe depend on.
The feeling, now that I allowed it in, was indescribable.
And it was scary. But trusting someone was always scary.
“Aim for their eyes and throats,” Caleb said, quietly. “Takes them out quicker.”
I darted to a skinny tree in the front yard and stared at the porch, squinting so hard I gave myself a headache. My eyes began to burn with the strain.
“If it were mutants, they wouldn’t be hiding,” I whispered. “Mutants don’t hide.”
“The orphans don’t,” he agreed. “They don’t have enough sense to hide. But the scouts and the gods. They know to hide.”
“How do you know so much about them?” I hissed. Was I the only person in the dark? Even Sage knew more than I did. Of course, she’d been their prisoner for God knew how long, but still.
“I’ve been fighting them for two years,” he said. “I learned.”
I felt heat climbing my face at his exasperation, but I squared my shoulders and said nothing. I’d been alone. I hadn’t left town to join others or fight mutants because…
I just hadn’t.
“Sage?” I called, but too quietly. I cleared my throat. “Sage! Is that you?”
Before I could decide whether or not to leave the tree and climb the porch steps, Lila, baseball bat in her hand, jogged past me.
“What the hell?” But when I looked around for Caleb, he was gone. He’d slipped away and even as I cowered behind the tree, I caught sight of him sliding around the corner of the house. He made his way toward the porch.
I stepped out from behind the tree. “Assholes,” I muttered, but not loudly enough for anyone to hear.
“What do you have up there, Lila?” he asked.
She materialized from the deep shadows of the porch, something in her arms.
My heart leapt and I holstered my gun, then sprinted toward her. But I realized after a few seconds she wasn’t carrying Sage.
She was carrying a dog.
A
starving, injured dog.
I ran up the steps and wrapped my arms around it, barely noticing Lila’s quick withdrawal when I got into her space.
“Hey,” she muttered. She practically shoved the dog at me, then backed up a couple of steps. “Take it, already.”
“Oh, honey,” I murmured. “Sweet boy. I’ve got you.” I walked back down the steps to sit on the bottom one, cradling the injured dog on my lap.
He wasn’t very big, probably because he’d been starved most of his life. His light brown fur was intermittently marked with splotches of black, like spilled paint on a worn, wrinkly blanket.
His eyes were pale and calm, and made me think of Richard Connor. His thin face was marred by a couple of fresh wounds and some scars, though he wasn’t very old. Three or four, maybe.
“How’d you know there was a dog on the porch?” I asked Lila.
She’d fetched her bat, and twirling it gently, she walked down the steps to join me. She leaned against the wall. “The porch rails on the left are broken. I saw him. He was limping and when I got to him, he was huddled in a corner.” She stared down her nose at me, and though she obviously cared about the dog, she still hadn’t warmed up to me. “He’s going to need some fixing up. You might as well be the dog doctor.”
“Since I’m not good for anything else,” I said. But I really didn’t care what she said or thought. I was going to doctor the dog. “Come on, baby boy. I’ll take you home.”
“What about the kid?” Lila asked.
I closed my eyes and squeezed the dog. Sage.
“Look what I found on the porch,” Caleb said. He jumped down the steps and when he stood on the ground, he held up a long, silver chain on which a bejeweled dragon dangled.
“What is that?” Lila asked. She pulled off her cap and began digging at her skull like a colony of lice had taken up residence in her short hair.
“Oh my God,” I whispered, and reached out to yank the chain from Caleb’s grasp. “It’s Sage’s necklace. She was here.”
Lila put her hat back on. “And?”
I closed my eyes and blew out a hard breath. “I know why she left the house. I know what she was doing when she was taken.”
Chapter Twelve
I took a deep breath, but it did nothing to calm me. “She followed the dog here. She knew I wanted a dog.” I squeezed the dragon so tightly it cut into my hand. “She left this here hoping we’d eventually find it.”
“Hoping we’d find the dog,” Lila said. “Kid was a softie. Just like you.”
I curled my lip. “Says the girl who carried the dog off the porch.”
She shrugged.
“Teagan, take the pup back to the house. We’ll do some tracking, see if we can find any footprints. Knowing the kid, she’s left us a trail of breadcrumbs that’ll lead right to her.”
I was sure he was trying to comfort me, but I couldn’t be comforted while Sage was out there. “Where are you?” I murmured.
“You know where she is,” Lila said. “She’s in town. The scouts have taken her back to the gods.”
I shuddered. “We don’t know that for sure. Could be baddies.”
She rolled her eyes, then looked at Caleb. “We have to decide if we want to go after her.”
I stood, the dog in my arms, Sage’s necklace in my fist. “Of course we’re going after her.”
Neither of them said a word.
“You said you fight the mutants,” I said, sneering, dangerously close to tears. “Did you mean you fight the occasional orphan while you’re running away?”
Caleb met my stare. “We’ll attack the cluster. We go in to kill, not to rescue.”
“This time you’re going in to rescue.” I clenched my teeth together so hard they began to ache. “You’re going to save Sage. You can kill the cluster another time.”
“We can’t just walk in and take her back. You do understand that the mutants are dangerous, don’t you?”
“I understand that perfectly well—which is why we have to go in and get her. We’re not leaving her with them.”
“If we see her while we’re fighting and the opportunity presents itself—”
“No. Just sneak in and find her. Once she’s safe, you can go back and melt the assholes. Or leave them alone. I don’t care. I just want Sage back.”
Lila jumped to the ground. “Kill the gods, or save the girl.”
“Save the girl,” I said. “Caleb? Save the girl.”
He smiled his quick smile. “Save the girl, then kill the gods.” But his eyes didn’t smile.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
“She’s probably already dead,” Lila said. “And we still have to run this by Richard.”
“He can’t stop you if you want to go,” I said. “Can he?”
“Us,” she said, turning around long enough to toss me a glance filled with glee. “This is your idea. She’s your friend. If we go, you’re coming too. Time you learned about the real world.”
“I wouldn’t think of staying behind,” I said. “And there’s no way in hell Richard can stop me.”
“Teagan, take the dog home. We’ll be there soon.” Caleb’s gaze lingered on my lips, then he met my eyes once again.
He reached out and squeezed my arm, his touch gentle but heavy at the same time.
I couldn’t breathe for a second as my stomach tightened. It’d been…forever since I’d had that feeling.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Lila said. “Are we going to look for the kid or not?”
Clutching the dog, I hurried away.
Richard was in the kitchen when I walked in with the dog in my arms. He didn’t even glance at it. “I found your cellar.”
I set the pup on the floor, avoiding Richard’s stare as I got a bowl from the cabinet. I poured the quiet animal some water, and stood back to watch as he lapped it up. “You hungry, boy?”
“You should have told me,” Richard continued.
I opened a can of Spam for the dog, then cut the meat into chunks. I had bags of dry dog food in the cellar. I’d need to haul one of them upstairs. “I had no reason to tell you. They belong to me.”
“This is a good place to settle down. The supplies are ours—not yours.”
“Settle down?” I gaped at him. “In Crowbridge? I thought you guys were hunters, not looking for a place to live.”
He put a pot on the camp stove, then began opening cans of vegetables. “The plan is to find a good base, one we can stock and fortify. Rebuild. Farm. People will come, eventually. We can’t roam forever, searching for monsters to kill.” He shrugged. “At least, not all of us can.”
I said nothing, just watched him. He was taking over, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about it.
He turned to look at me. “You did a good thing, stocking up the cellar. You really have no idea what it’s like out there.”
I opened my mouth, then closed it, unsure. “You seriously want to build a compound here?”
“This is the most untouched town I’ve seen in nearly two years.” His face relaxed a little, and his stare softened as he gazed over my head at something only he could see. “There’s something about this place.”
“Where did they come from?” I asked. “The mutants. Were they here all along?”
He focused on me, then hesitated, as though sorting through what he should say. Or maybe he was only gathering his thoughts. Maybe he simply didn’t know.
“I have some theories,” he said, finally. “And not just because of the things I’ve seen over the last two years. When things started going bad…”
As he talked, I pulled a blanket from one of the totes stacked against the wall, and made a bed for the dog. I watched him as he turned in circles—limping the entire time—before he finally sank to the blanket with a tired, wheezing sigh.
“What theories?” I asked, finally, when Richard didn’t continue.
“I don’t think they’re some government-created soldiers or lab monsters a group of scie
ntists lost control of. And I don’t think they’re monsters who’ve hidden from us since the beginning of time.”
I sat on the floor beside the dog, my heart beating a little too fast. “What do you think they are?”
His voice was soft, his eyes emotionless, and I could see pain in every line on his face. “I don’t think they’re from here.”
“You mean…like, aliens? From a different world?”
“Yes.”
I put my hand to my mouth. “Aliens?”
“A different kind of alien.”
“What does it mean, though?” I whispered.
“It means they might eventually go back. When they’ve gotten whatever it is they came for, they might go back home and leave us to rebuild our world.”
I started nodding and couldn’t seem to stop. “We were killed by aliens. They killed our families. Ruined our lives. People who never belonged here came in to destroy those of us the flu didn’t take.” I stared at him. “Did they bring the flu?”
And for the first time in two years, anger—rage—started to smother my fear.
He knew exactly what I was feeling. He knelt in front of me and waited for me to look up at him. “That’s why we hunt them. Why we kill them. Keep hold of your anger, girl. You’ll need it when you take on your new job.”
I twisted my trembling fingers together. “What job?”
“Hunting.”
I shook my head. “I don’t want to hunt.”
He smiled. “You will.” He stood, then walked back to finish making dinner. “You’re young, able-bodied, and sane. You and those like you will spend your lives sending the mutants to hell. You want a purpose, don’t you?”
I widened my eyes, then nodded. “Yes. Yes, I really do. But—”
“And when you need to touch base, this town will be waiting for your return.”
I climbed to my feet, then grabbed a bottle of water. My mouth was so dry I couldn’t swallow. “I’m no hunter.”
“I can read people,” he said, his voice almost pleasant. “And you are a hunter.”
“Why should we kill them if they’re going to go back anyway?”
He glanced back over his shoulder at me. “Teagan,” he chided. That was all, just my name, and tendrils of shame snaked through my body.
