I wasn’t sure what the others thought. Maybe they thought we were squabbling. That her anger with me was just a lover’s quarrel.
I thought it would have been better if she’d been close to me, though. I worried about her.
This was my fault. All of it. She didn’t deserve any of this. I had to keep her safe.
So when I opened my eyes to look for her, and she wasn’t there, I panicked.
I sat straight up.
And then I saw her at the edge of the cave, sitting just inside the opening. She was curled up, hugging her legs to her chest.
I got up and began to walk towards her.
As I got closer, I realized she was crying.
I stopped. Maybe I should leave her alone. She was pissed at me, and she obviously thought that no one was watching or hearing her.
“Silas, is that you?” Her voice had a note of fear in it.
“It’s me,” I said.
“Oh,” she said. “Okay.”
I started to walk towards her again. I sat down next to her at the opening to the cave, but I didn’t touch her.
I stared out into the night. It was dark outside, but in the light of the moon—heavy in the sky—I could see the foliage outside. The leaves all had a blue-ish tint. They were still and quiet and peaceful. Right now, it all looked beautiful. It was hard to believe that this was the place we’d been taken to die. It didn’t seem to fit. This beauty couldn’t be the sight of so much danger.
“You okay?” I whispered.
“No,” she said.
Right. Stupid question. Of course she wasn’t okay. There was no reason she would be. Everything was really fucked right now. I rested my chin on my knee. “I’m sorry, Christa. I’m sorry about everything.”
She snorted.
I guessed I deserved that. “You, uh, you want me to go?”
“You wouldn’t really go, though, would you?” she said. “You’d go back and hide in the darkness and watch me.”
“Well, I don’t want anything to happen to you.”
“Why don’t you? Why do you care?”
I floundered. I wasn’t entirely sure of that myself. “Because you’re right that it’s my fault that you’re here. Because I have to get you out of this. Because you don’t deserve any of this. Because Griffin would kill me if I didn’t protect you.”
She snorted again. “Griffin? Does he even care about me?”
“Of course he does,” I said. “You’re his sister.”
“He lied to me,” she said.
“He had to,” I said.
“He didn’t, though. He didn’t have to tell my mother and me that crazy story. He could have told us the truth.”
Maybe she was right. I shrugged, even though I knew she couldn’t see my movement in the scant light. “I don’t think he wanted you to know. He’s not proud of the things he had to do. And besides, like I said, he never wanted to do that. He never wanted to have to kill people.”
“But he did,” she said. “He killed people. My big brother killed people.” Her voice was full of fresh tears.
I didn’t know what to say. “That really bothers you, huh?”
“Of course it does,” she said. “Wouldn’t it bother anyone?”
I hesitated, unsure of how to answer. “I guess I don’t spend a lot of time with normal people. Pretty much everyone I’m close to has had to kill. It doesn’t really phase me anymore.”
Her voice was soft. “That’s horrible.”
It was quiet and still around us, like we were wrapped in a cold, blue blanket.
“Is it? It doesn’t seem like that to me anymore,” I said. “You know, honestly, I don’t spend too much time trying to determine what’s good and bad. I try to keep moving. I don’t like to think about all the stuff I’ve had to do. So, maybe I’m a jerk. Maybe I’m a really bad person. But if I think about that too much, it’ll paralyze me.”
“You are a jerk,” she said.
I felt a twinge. That had actually sort of hurt my feelings. I didn’t say anything.
“Sorry,” she muttered. “I didn’t mean that.”
“Sure you did.” I peered out into the night. A light breeze fluttered into the cave, chill and surprising. I shivered.
Christa turned to me. “You cold?”
“I’m fine,” I said.
“I’m a little cold.” She hugged her knees tighter against her chest. “Maybe it would be warmer if we slept closer together. I mean, it’s not like they don’t think we’re together as it is.”
I hadn’t expected her to say that. “But you think I’m a jerk.”
“A warm jerk.” She got to her feet.
I followed her further into the cave. When she lay down, I lay down behind her, wrapping my body around hers, spooning with her.
She snuggled close to me. “Silas?”
I wrapped my arms around her. “What?”
“Do you really think we’re going to get out of this?”
“I do,” I said. But she seemed so delicate when she was this close to me. So likely to shatter.
“I hope so,” she murmured.
I shut my eyes. I’d keep her safe. I had to.
I started to relax, to feel myself floating off to sleep.
But then I felt her hand. She had reached back to touch me, sliding searching fingers over my thigh. She was inching closer and closer to my dick.
I recoiled from her. “What the hell?” I whispered.
She turned to look at me, fixing me with huge, innocent eyes. “You don’t want me to touch you?”
“No,” I said.
She smirked. “Liar.”
But she kept her hands to herself for the rest of the night.
* * *
Milo groaned. The makeshift bandage on his arm was soaked through with blood. It was wet and dripping. His wound had been bleeding all night.
“I’m going to die,” he whispered, looking down at the sopping, red bit of fabric.
Emmett knelt over him, peeling away at the bandage, looking at the wound.
“It’s infected, isn’t it?” said Milo.
“It’s not,” said Emmett. “It’s still bleeding pretty good. It’s clean.”
“I’m going to die,” said Milo.
“We’re all going to die,” said Emmett. “It’s only a question of when.” He turned to look up at me. “What did you do with the fish bones?”
I’d managed to spear two more fish which we’d eaten for breakfast. Emmett was too afraid to chance a fire, since it had led them right to us before, so we’d had to eat it raw.
“Uh… they’re over here.”
“Try to find one that might work as a needle,” said Emmett.
“A needle?” said Milo. “What the fuck?”
“The wound’s not closing,” said Emmett. “If I can get some of the threads out of my shirt, I can give you a couple of stitches.” He gestured to his flannel shirt, which was folded up on the ground. Emmett had used it for a pillow the night before.
Milo shook his head. “No way. You’re going to use fish bones? That means it’s going to get infected for sure.”
Emmett shrugged. He got to his feet. “Fine. You don’t want me to do it, I won’t. It’s a big pain in the ass for me, frankly. I’ll just rip up some of this shirt and give you a fresh bandage.” He picked up his flannel.
Milo dragged his bottom teeth over his top lip. “You think I should let him do it?” he asked me.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“I guess it doesn’t matter, does it?” said Milo. “I mean, if I got saved, if they found me out here, they’d just give me a lethal injection anyway. No matter what happens, I’m going to die.”
“No,” said Christa. “That doesn’t have to be true. If you survived this, maybe they’d let you go. This has got to be punishment enough, doesn’t it?”
I spoke up. “When we get out of this, we don’t even have to go to the authorities, you know. You two can go off on your o
wn if you want. I don’t see why we have to turn you back in.”
Emmett was ripping the sleeve off of his flannel. “But then no one will know about what Rolf’s doing. He’ll be free to do it again and again.”
“He won’t do it again,” I said.
“Why not?” said Milo.
“Because I’m going to kill him,” I said.
* * *
We walked towards the power lines. It was slow going, mostly because of Milo, who didn’t have much energy and was in a lot of pain. He could barely keep the pace.
More than once, I thought that we should leave him behind.
He was right when he said he was going to die. That was no reason to get the rest of us killed as well.
But I didn’t say anything out loud about it, because I thought of the way Christa acted last night when I confessed that killing didn’t bother me. If she was so appalled by that idea, what would she think of me if I suggested leaving a wounded man to die?
She’d hate that.
Not that she wasn’t confusing as hell, trying to grope me last night.
Normally, a girl would not be all up on my dick in a situation like this. It was weird. It was kind of disturbing.
Still, she was kind of right.
I did want her, and if we weren’t out here in danger, I probably would have let her touch me.
Thinking about that made me feel a little bit aroused.
Damn it. I needed to stop thinking about that.
I put it out of my head, focusing on Milo. I helped him along, letting him lean against me while we walked.
He was quiet. His face had turned an unnatural shade of white. His lips had lost almost all of their color. The only noise he made was an occasional moaning sound. It wasn’t loud, and it wasn’t in protest. It was almost involuntary, as if the pain was simply too much for him.
Milo and I went first. Christa and Emmett went behind us.
We walked.
And walked.
And walked.
Periodically, we stopped to rest. Mostly for Milo. The rest of us could probably have quickened the pace and gone much longer without stopping. But, even though Milo didn’t say anything, we could all tell he needed the breaks.
On one of our little rest stops, Emmett found some nuts growing on one of the trees. He and Christa busied themselves with picking as many as they could. Emmett said it would be a good idea for us to have a store of food for when we couldn’t catch or kill anything.
I helped Milo eat a few of the nuts. He couldn’t get the shells off without assistance.
I plucked some of the meat of the nut out and put it in the palm of his good hand.
“Thanks,” he said, stuffing it into his mouth.
Bang.
The shot whizzed past me and burrowed itself in Milo’s stomach.
He screamed.
Blood burst out of the wound.
I dropped the nut I was holding.
“What was that?” Christa. She was coming back towards us, her hands full of nuts.
“Run!” I shrieked at her.
She gave me a confused look.
“Run!”
I scooped up Milo, so that I was practically carrying him.
He was making a funny gurgling noise. I could feel his hot blood spilling onto me, soaking through my shirt.
Christa took off into the underbrush. The nuts she’d been carrying scattered everywhere.
I was right behind her.
I could see that Emmett was ahead of us, also running.
We followed him.
The forest reached out to grab at us, the landscape careening into our faces and limbs. We tore through it, fast as possible, running half blind through the undergrowth.
There was the sound of more shots behind us.
I clutched Milo closer and dove underneath a low hanging branch.
In the distance, whoops and laughter. “Got ‘em on the run now!” yelled a male voice.
Fuck them for having fun while this was happening. I was holding a bleeding man. He was choking out his last moments as we rushed through the woods. They were laughing about it.
Ahead of us, another noise.
Water. Rushing.
Then I noticed a bright spot ahead. The woods cleared up there, and the sun was pounding through, lighting up the leaves.
Emmett lurched to a stop.
I nearly collided with Christa trying to get stopped behind them.
We were at the edge of a waterfall.
The clearing in the woods allowed a rush of water to cascade down over a set of rocks—white, frothing, bubbling water. The water was about five feet across. It wasn’t a raging river by any stretch of the imagination, but it also wasn’t so small that we could leap it.
It was a barrier.
The hunters were behind us.
The waterfall was ahead of us.
Emmett turned back to look at me, his eyes wide, his hair plastered to his forehead with sweat.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“They shot Milo?” said Emmett. He was winded.
I nodded.
“Again,” said Milo. “They’re trying to finish me off.”
“You’re going to be fine,” said Christa. She gave him a fierce look. She turned to Emmett. “We have to jump.”
I peered down the waterfall. It was at least a two-story drop, and I seriously doubted that the water was deep down at the bottom.
Well…
On second glance, maybe it did sort of gather in a pool down there. But I didn’t know if that meant anything at all. If this was the same stream that I’d been fishing in, it was really shallow. I could stand up in it, and it only reached my knees.
I shook my head. “No way, Christa.”
“We can’t stand here talking about it.” She turned back to the waterfall.
“Wait,” I said.
But she didn’t listen. She just leaped over the edge of the cliff, feet first.
I held my breath.
Down, down, down she fell, the white water falling right next to her.
And then she splashed into the pool below.
I waited for her to resurface.
And waited.
She didn’t.
Another gun shot. It whizzed over our heads. I could feel the disturbance in the air.
Emmett and I both ducked instinctively.
Then I looked back down at the pool.
Still no Christa.
Emmett cast a glance back the way we’d come. “Well, they’re coming.” And he jumped over the side of the cliff too.
Milo disentangled himself from me and stumbled towards the edge.
“Wait,” I said. “We can’t know if—”
He hurled himself over.
I watched them both fall.
I watched the water swallow them up.
Christa still hadn’t resurfaced.
Neither had the others.
A voice in the distance. “Shoot ‘em all!”
I jumped too.
My stomach tangled up with my throat as I fell, hurtling down towards the water.
The pool at the bottom rushed up at me. Closer. Closer. Close—
I plunged down into icy water.
I braced myself to hit the bottom, for my bones to crunch so badly that I was trapped and couldn’t swim.
But I didn’t hit the bottom.
Instead, I kept going down. Further and further.
How deep was this pool?
I kept sinking, cutting through the water quickly because I’d fallen from so high.
I struggled to stop my movement, to swim back up, but I had nothing to push off of, nothing to grab onto. All I could do was thrash ineffectually in the water, hoping that my frantic attempts to swim upwards would slow me down.
If I kept going down too far, I’d run out of breath.
I was in fairly good shape, but I didn’t often practice holding my breath. Swimming wasn’t one of my exercise activities, just s
omething I did in the summer for fun. I wasn’t sure how long I could hold my breath. I remembered once—when I was a kid—Sloane and I playing a game where we timed each other to see who could hold their breath for longer. She always won.
I redoubled my efforts.
I thought that I’d stopped going down.
I thought.
Wasn’t there a thing that could happen to you underwater where you’d get confused about which way was up and which way was down?
Or did that only happen in the ocean when you were scuba diving or something?
I knew which way was up.
I’d gone into the water feet first. My feet were pointing down.
My head was pointing up.
Okay, my lungs were starting to niggle me. I needed to breathe. It wasn’t absolutely imperative yet, but it was going to be.
I kicked my legs and used my arms to stroke through the water, propelling myself upwards.
I moved, but much more slowly than I’d fallen.
Still, I persevered, kicking my way towards the surface.
My lungs started to protest.
My body started to get tired.
My lungs started to scream.
And then, finally, I resurfaced.
Christa, Milo, and Emmett were all already paddling in the water, all out of breath.
I looked up to the top of the waterfall. I couldn’t even see the woods from here.
“They won’t be able to see us down here if we stay close to the falls,” wheezed Emmett.
“Oh,” I said. “Good.”
“Nice move, Christa,” said Emmett, smiling at her.
Wearily, she smiled back.
* * *
I wrenched Milo up onto the shore of the stream. About twenty feet from the waterfall and the deep pool we’d fallen into, it got relatively shallow again. I’d been holding Milo up for the past half hour or so, because he barely had the strength to keep himself afloat.
I hoisted him onto dry land.
He winced.
He was bleeding pretty bad.
I hauled myself out of the stream.
“You’re going to have to leave me behind,” said Milo.
Silas Page 12
