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by K A Riley

When we can manage to, we talk for a while more about what we found in the Valta and, more sorrowfully, about what we lost. Adric and Celia nod their heads sympathetically, a look of understanding in their young eyes. I hate the thought that they’ve been through similar pain, but somehow it helps to know our pain is shared.

  “Sun’ll be up soon,” Celia says after a few hours. “Adric, are you okay gathering more wood for the fire?”

  “Sure. I can get started, anyway. The Neos can help out when they wake up.”

  Rain raises her hand and offers to help. “I feel like I need to contribute something, even if it’s just to keep my mind off the Valta.”

  “I can give you a hand, too,” Cardyn volunteers.

  “That’d be great.”

  “I’ll go, too,” Manthy says.

  Cardyn beams at her. “Really?”

  “I’m not tired,” she says. “If I don’t do something useful, I’ll just lie here and think too much.”

  After the four of them have pushed themselves up and ducked out of the tent, Celia asks if Brohn, Rain, and I want to check in on Kella.

  “I’ve been taking care of her as best I can,” she tells us. “Though I can’t say she’s doing all that well.”

  I shoot Brohn a look. “We should check in,” I say. “All of us.”

  All I can think is This is going to be brutal.

  Brohn, Rain, and I accompany Celia toward another improvised tent at the end of the semi-circle of shelters where she tells us she’s been tending to Kella during the four days we’ve been gone.

  “We use it as our emergency room,” Celia explains. “We’ve patched up our share of bumps and bruises. The Neos are really good at tripping and landing on sharp rocks.”

  As we walk, Brohn asks, “How is she really, Celia?”

  Celia stops in her tracks and shakes her head. “She’s eating a little. But she’s so frail. Not just her body. Part of her soul’s been broken, and I don’t know how to help her.”

  The words come from a person who knows all too well what it is to see someone who’s been crushed. I tell myself angrily, silently, that no seventeen-year-old should know that feeling.

  Celia walks us the rest of the way to the canopy fashioned out of pieced-together green canvas panels, an impressive network of branches forming the framework of the whole thing. Long, dark shadows cast by a small, struggling phosphor-pack inside flicker and dance.

  “I’ll leave you to catch up,” Celia says. “I’m going to go help the others gather wood. If we wait too long, it gets too hot out to do much of anything.”

  With the first hints of a pink morning peeking over the horizon, she heads back toward the tree-line while Brohn and I duck into the small shelter where Kella is lying on a blanket of leaves and moss. Her blond hair is splayed out around her head. She has one arm slung across her eyes, and her breathing is raspy and shallow.

  Brohn leans over her and asks how she’s doing.

  She drops her arm from over her eyes and looks up at him and then over to Rain and me. “You’re back.”

  “We’re back,” Brohn confirms.

  “Did you…what did you find?”

  Brohn sits down and shakes his head, and Kella’s lip starts to tremble. “It’s what we were all afraid of, isn’t it?” she sobs. “There’s no one?”

  Brohn shakes his head again, his eyes welling up with tears. Kella shifts her gaze over to me as if hoping I can offer her a better answer, but, of course, I can’t. She must recognize the pain etched on my face because she rolls over on to her side like she can see the Valta in my eyes.

  “I’ve caused everyone quite a headache, haven’t I?” she whispers. I get the feeling she’s steering the subject away from the overwhelming trauma of home on purpose.

  “You haven’t caused anyone anything of the kind,” Brohn says.

  “We’re just concerned for you,” I tell her. “We may have a lead on where to go next, and we need you with us.”

  Kella tries to push herself up onto her elbow, but she’s clearly too weak right now, and Brohn urges her to lie back down.

  “I’m fine,” she says in a voice I practically have to strain to hear. “No need to fuss over me.”

  I kneel down next to Brohn and run my hand along Kella’s hot forehead. We sit in silence for several minutes before I ask her, “Do you remember that time in the Processor when we had the shooting competition?”

  I know it’s a risk bringing up our time in the Processor. It’s where Kella bonded so closely with Karmine and where we all saw him die. But it’s also, strangely enough, where Kella was at her happiest.

  Fortunately, she seems grateful to reminisce and turns her head to look up at me.

  “Which one?” she asks, rolling onto her back. “Bow, pistol, or rifle?”

  “As I recall, you beat everyone at all three.”

  “Even Trench,” Brohn adds.

  Kella’s eyes sparkle. “He was pretty cocky for a guy who couldn’t hit the ground if he fell out of a tree.”

  The three of us have a good laugh. Kella coughs a bit, and I move to help her tilt her head, but she waves me off.

  “Twelve arrows into a forty-centimeter target from twenty meters in sixty-two seconds, wasn’t it?” Brohn asks.

  Kella gives him a dirty look. “Sixty-one seconds.”

  “I stand corrected! And you aced clay pigeon-shooting.”

  Kella coughs again. She turns her head to wipe her mouth against her shoulder before turning back to us. “Thirty pigeons in twenty-five seconds.”

  “Trench only hit twenty-two.”

  “What’d you use for that? The Beretta twelve-gauge?”

  “Yeah. The one with the recoil reducer. I would’ve won the distance competition, too, but Karmine...”

  When she mentions Karmine, her eyes get glossy with tears, and she looks away from us for a second.

  “He got lucky,” Brohn assures her.

  Kella shakes her head. “No. He beat me. Fair and square. He handled that Inferno stock twenty-two like it was part of his body. Hit a seven-centimeter target at three-hundred meters. I don’t think he even needed the telescopic sight.”

  “None of us even came close,” I say with a laugh. “I thought the kickback alone was going to blow my arm off. You, though…you were like a surgeon out there.”

  “I was good, wasn’t I?”

  “The best,” Brohn says.

  Kella nods, and her eyelids flutter.

  “Better let you get some sleep,” I offer.

  She answers with a quiet moan and closes her eyes. I stroke her hair one last time before Brohn helps me to my feet, and we duck back out of the shelter.

  With the sun now rising along with the rest of Adric and Celia’s band of orphans, Cardyn and Rain get the rest of Adric and Celia’s crew caught up on what we found in the Valta. The kids are beyond sympathetic, embracing all of us and telling us how sad they are for us.

  Brohn asks Adric if he knows anything about San Francisco. When he says, “Not really” and apologizes, Brohn informs him, “It’s where we need to go next. You should come with us.”

  “How long do you figure it would take to get there?”

  “Chace and Trax tell us maybe four weeks’ hike.”

  Without a second’s hesitation, Adric shakes his head. “We can’t. There’s no way.”

  “Why not?”

  He pulls Brohn and me aside. “Listen. The younger ones wouldn’t survive even half of a trip that long. Not yet, anyway. We don’t have the provisions or resources to be of any use to you. These kids are mostly Neos. The truth is, we’d drag you down. Just promise me…”

  “What?”

  “If you make it out there, out to San Francisco, don’t forget about us. Come back for us. Save us…if there are any of us left to save.”

  When I promise Adric we will, he looks genuinely happy. We also agree to stay a few more days. Just long enough to help get them on their feet, refresh their supplies, and give
them a fighting chance at some semblance of life.

  Rain and Brohn team up a few more times to try to convince them to come with us, but Adric and Celia, protective of the Neos and Juvens, remain adamant.

  “We really should stick together,” Brohn urges Celia as the five of us sit in a small circle on a sunny ridge near their camp later that evening. He uses his knife to strip the knots and bark from a thin stick and tosses it onto the growing pile of finished arrow shafts at his feet.

  Celia says it’s too risky as she continues to carve small notches into the end of each new shaft with another one of Brohn’s knives that he pilfered from the Processor before our escape. I’m just sharpening up some small stones to use as arrowheads when Adric returns with a canvas sack full of bird feathers he’s collected from the forest floor.

  He plops down heavily next to Celia, pulls a spool of twine from a small satchel draped over his shoulder, and starts tying feathers to the ends of some of the arrows. His fingers are long and slender, flying and flitting in a mesmerizing bit of dexterous choreography. “She’s right,” he says with a deep sigh. “The two of us can make it, but we’ve got ten others we’re responsible for. When the Recruiters came last year, there were only four new Seventeens. This time, there’s just us two.” He makes a sweeping gesture with his hand toward the younger kids scurrying around over by the fire. “They’re just too inexperienced, too young, and frankly, too small to make that kind of trip.”

  “Not to mention the drain on supplies,” Celia adds. “No. You need to travel light. You’ve been together a long time. You’ve got your own…what did you call it?”

  “Conspiracy,” Brohn says with a wink in my direction. “Kress says that’s what you call a family of ravens. Or, in this case, a family with a raven and a raven-whisperer.”

  Celia laughs at that, and the gloomy mood that comes with being immersed in a struggle for survival lifts a little. “You’re doing the right thing for you,” she says. “You’re doing what you need to do. We’ve got a different path.”

  “What will you do?” I ask. “You can’t stay here forever.”

  “That’s true,” Adric says through a deeply contemplative squint. “But thanks to your help, we can get through the next few weeks. Maybe even months. We’ll store up supplies. We’ll take some smaller excursions first. Maybe see if we can find a transport or something in one of the towns you say you passed on your way here. Once we feel everyone’s strong enough for the trip, we’ll set out and see what we find.”

  “Don’t get your hopes up of finding anything in those towns,” I say. “There really isn’t much of anything left.”

  Adric plucks chunks of crusty mud from some of the arrow feathers. “A chance we’ll have to take. Besides, based on the path you say you took, you might have missed a few towns. Trax and Chace say they’ve found a bunch of places on their maps, and who knows—maybe there’ll even be people out there.”

  I shake my head, but I don’t dispute his suggestion. As sure as I am that they’ll find nothing out there at best—and enemies at worst—Adric seems just as sure that hope, no matter how slim, is worth holding onto. I can’t blame him, really. Although we’re older than these kids and have been trained for combat and problem-solving, even our upcoming journey could benefit from a healthy dose of Adric’s optimism.

  “We’re thinking about heading east,” Celia says. “Nearly all of us have family back there. Me and Adric and most of the others. Most of our families came here to escape the violence when the war first broke out. I’m sure if we can get back there, we can track down relatives, find safe places to stay.”

  I’m doubtful about that, too, but again, I decide not to say anything. If the government is set on recruiting people our age, leaving the safety of the woods and the mountains to head back east where the so-called war started seems to me like sticking your own head in the hangman’s noose and helping him to tighten the knot.

  Still, despite the overwhelming odds against them, Celia’s right. Their path and circumstances are different from ours. It’s not my place to offer advice. After all, I don’t know if where we’re headed is any better. In a few days, we’re going to follow a mysterious black bird toward a city none of us has ever been to, in a world we don’t begin to know.

  All on the advice of a cryptic phrase carved into a rock.

  A phrase that might lead us into a whole new trap.

  “Okay,” Brohn says to Celia and Adric as he stands and stretches. “We’d like to have you with us. We can relate to what you’ve been through, but we respect what you need to do.” He squints into the setting sun and points. “If you change your mind, San Francisco is in that direction, I think.”

  I know they’re tempted.

  “Who knows?” I say. “Maybe you can do some good back East while we see what kind of answers we can find out West, and maybe someday we’ll meet up again somewhere in the middle of the country, and things will be good again.”

  “I’d like that,” Celia says. “Not sure if I’d bet on it. But I definitely like the idea.”

  Brohn sits back down and the five of us continue making arrows, stitching together some basic carrying sacks from extra clothes Adric and Celia have lying around. Steering clear of sadness and negativity, we talk about all the great things the future might hold. They tell us more about growing up in their small town, which, miraculously, was even smaller than ours.

  When we swap stories about the Recruitment the mood turns sour again.

  Adric turns to Brohn. “Do you think they’ll still try to come for us?”

  “I don’t think so,” Brohn replies. “It’s past May first. Past your Recruitment Day. I think they’ll be more interested in tracking us down than figuring out where you all got off to.”

  “Then…Recruitment’s over?”

  “I’d say so. For you, anyway. I don’t know how many other towns like ours are out there.”

  Adric’s flighty fingers pause for a moment. “Do you really think there’s something special about us? Kids in these mountain towns, I mean.”

  “I’m not sure what to think,” Brohn says. “There’s so much we still don’t know, and guessing isn’t a strategy. But I’ve seen Kress and Manthy do things they shouldn’t be able to do. Things no one should be able to do. And yet…”

  “And yet, they’ve done them,” Adric finishes. “They’re…special.”

  Brohn laughs at this. “Well, they were special long before they started to develop their abilities. These new things they can do just makes them…very handy in certain situations.”

  “Just what I’ve always strived to be,” I say with a playful sneer and an exaggerated eye-roll. “Handy.” I deliberately avoid mentioning that Brohn is supposed to be gifted, just as we are. I can’t help wondering sometimes if it bothers him to know he has some mysterious, hidden skill that may or may not prove incredible.

  “We could use a little ‘handy’ around here, ourselves,” Adric says. “I have a feeling we’re in for a rough time ahead. Maybe a dangerous time.”

  “You’ll be okay,” Brohn assures him. “You’re survivors.”

  “So were the rest of the people from our town.” Celia hangs her head. “Right up until they died.”

  12

  Over on the other side of the camp, Cardyn and Manthy have teamed up to continue taking care of Kella. They take turns bringing her water from a nearby trickle of a creek. The water doesn’t look too healthy, but Card and Manthy, with some help from a few of the Neos, have been able to filter it and boil it without losing too much.

  For the rest of the night and into the next day, Brohn and Rain shift gears and help Adric, Celia, and the other members of their camp gather more wood for fire and show them which trees provide the best building material and which are best for fuel. They teach them how to assemble and use the bows and arrows we made for hunting. They even help them bring down a mule deer, which is a cause of massive celebration in the form of fists to the sky and ho
wls of triumph from the Neos and Juvens.

  I’m reminded with a smile of Final Feast back in the Valta on the night before Recruitment. Brohn fed us then, too.

  He’s taller than everyone here, and he prowls the camp like a panther, helping out, offering advice, and inspiring a type of reverential awe with every determined stride and authoritative command. The Neos and Juvens hang on his every word. Although he doesn’t seem to notice, some of the boys have even started trying to walk and talk like him. It’s really something to see.

  I can’t help but feel a surge of pride and affection at the thought that I share a connection with the broad-shouldered titan.

  In the afternoon, Rain and I team up to lead the ten Neos and Juvens into another part of the woods. We give them a whole series of lessons about which berries and plants are edible, which are medicinal, which are borderline, and which are just plain deadly. Using a dozen or so of the sacks we sewed together the day before, Rain and I help the kids gather enough food to last for several weeks at least.

  “It will keep better if you have a nice, cool place to store it,” Rain tells the kids. “We’ll help you build an underground storage space when we get back to your camp.”

  The Neos and Juvens absorb every word and spend the walk back to camp quizzing each other on everything we’ve taught them.

  When we get back, I check on Cardyn and Manthy, who are still taking care of Kella.

  Kella offers me a weak smile as I sit down with them under the canopy.

  “Feeling any better?” I ask her.

  “I’m not feeling much of anything these days.”

  I slip onto my knees next to her and squeeze her to me. She lets out a gentle purr and nuzzles her cheek against mine.

  “You’re going to be great,” I assure her. “We’re all going to be great.”

  “I’d settle for just ‘okay,’” she says.

  After that, I don’t have a lot to do, so I mosey out to the clearing and sit on a flat rock by the fire. It’s nice to have a break from the constant worry and busyness that comes with the struggle to survive. I cross my legs and focus, like I learned back in the Processor. It’s funny. For all their lies and evil intent, the things Hiller and her crew taught us have actually been helpful during our adventures. Ironic that they’re the reason we’ve survived this long.