by Ike Hamill
Scarlett held Wyatt in her arms—or what was left of him. Amelia could only identify him by the clothes he had been wearing, and the flap of blond hair that hung from where his neck ended.
His head was gone, and his chest had been torn open. His rib cage was mostly empty.
Scarlett’s sobbing drool leaked from her mouth and fell into Wyatt’s remains.
Harper reached out and touched Scarlett’s arm. “Come on. Let’s get him home.”
Scarlett looked up. Her eyes were cold fire. “First, we find whoever did this.”
“I’m sure it was an animal or something,” Harper said. “It was probably scared off when it heard us.”
“This was no animal,” Scarlett said.
“She’s right,” Jayden said. “It doesn’t look like an animal attack to me.”
“You think a person did this?” Amelia asked. She couldn’t imagine the savagery required to commit such an act. An image flashed in her memory—it was Caleb, breaking his own hand off to escape his bonds. She realized that she could imagine such savagery, and it fit perfectly with who they were looking for.
“Knife wounds,” Andrew said. “Too clean to be from teeth or claws. They only took the organs and the head.” He stood up and moved away from the others, scanning the ground.
“I’ll take more than that when I find them,” Scarlett said through clenched teeth. She set her brother down on the ground and tried to pull his lacerated clothes back over the damage to cover him.
Andrew returned to the group, wiping his hands absently on his pants.
“What’s the plan?” Jayden asked. He shifted his eyes uncomfortably from Scarlett over to Amelia.
Amelia spoke slowly. “Well, I suppose that we need to get his body back for a proper ceremony. Do we have any tracks leading away from here?”
“We need more time to search,” Andrew said.
Scarlett looked up from the corpse. Her head jerked around in a circle as she decided her next move. She turned her nose up and sniffed the air.
“I think we need to stick together,” Amelia said. “Let’s figure a way to mark this spot so we can come back. Do we need to do anything with his, uh, remains?”
“If we leave him here,” Jayden said, “something will find him.”
Amelia covered her mouth with a hand and exhaled.
“I’ll stay here,” Harper said. “I’ll stay here with him so nothing happens.”
“I really think we need to stick together,” Amelia said. “We’ve seen what happens when we don’t.”
Scarlett’s eyes landed on Harper.
Harper shrank from the anger there.
When Scarlett spoke, she practically spat her words. “What more do you think is going to happen to him?”
Harper swallowed and took a second. “It’s just that, you wouldn’t want a scavenger to take his body, you know?”
“That’s not Wyatt. I don’t care what happens to that flesh. I care about the person who did this to him,” Scarlett said. With that, she began to trudge west.
Amelia turned to Andrew and Jayden. “Get ahead of her. Make sure you pick up any trail before she tramples it.”
They glanced at each other and then ran to catch up.
“Come on,” Amelia said. “We’ll stick together. That’s the most important thing.”
# # # # #
Scarlett didn’t stop until she reached the place where the trees ended and the rocks took over the landscape. Andrew and Jayden emerged from the woods on either side of her. Bringing up the rear, Harper and Amelia followed.
Andrew and Jayden immediately began to cast around, looking for any signs of tracks amongst the rocks.
Jayden waved and Andrew converged on a spot.
Amelia made her way over.
“Is it something?”
“It’s hard to tell, but it looks like someone may have tried to cover their tracks right here,” Andrew said. “You see how this is scuffed and not as dry as the surrounding dirt?”
“No,” Amelia said, “but I’ll take your word for it.”
“They went this way,” Scarlett said. She was pointing south.
“How do you know?” Harper asked.
“I just know,” Scarlett said. “I feel it. I bet they’re trying to circle back to the south. They’re headed down towards the ice.”
Andrew found something else. He knelt close and then dabbed his finger on the spot. He lifted it to his nose. “Blood.”
“See?” Scarlett asked.
“Could be from anything,” Jayden said.
“Or it could be Ryan,” Scarlett said.
“What’s the plan?” Harper asked. She looked to Amelia.
Amelia looked north and then back to the south. “If they continued north, then the mountains will contain them. They would have to veer back to the east to get to the pass. They could hide up in the mountains indefinitely. If they went south, that takes them pretty close to Fairbanks. That could mean trouble.”
“You mean more trouble,” Andrew said.
“Right,” Scarlett agreed. “I’m going to follow them down to the ice and then I’m going to kill them.”
Amelia and Harper looked at each other.
Jayden spoke up. “I didn’t figure on tracking anyone down towards the ice.”
“Me neither,” Andrew said.
Scarlett didn’t bother to accuse them of cowardice. She had her mission, and wasn’t going to wait for help. She started following the rocks south.
“Scarlett, you can’t go alone,” Harper said.
Scarlett didn’t turn to address the point. The woman kept walking.
They watched her walk until she was about to disappear behind a hill.
Amelia turned to the others. “I’ll go after her. Can you three take care of Wyatt?”
“Of course,” Harper said. She raised her eyebrows and looked at Andrew and Jayden until they nodded.
“Good,” Amelia said. She ran off after Scarlett.
“I take it you two know the fastest way back?” Harper asked.
“Back is easy,” Jayden said. “Carrying what’s left of Wyatt is going to be hard.”
Chapter 12
{Dream}
MADELYN WOKE UP, STARTLED. It felt like she was falling. She looked down and saw that her feet were hanging over the edge of a chasm. She pushed herself backwards across the grass and looked at the gap. The rift looked to be about a dozen meters wide, maybe more. On the other side, the grass was all dead. The world looked like the color had drained away over there. Only her side of the trench looked real.
She turned away—she didn’t want to look over at that pale place anymore. She saw the swing set and she ambled over towards it. Her legs wanted to run, but she kept her slow pace. When she got to the swing, she grabbed one of the chains and flopped down on the seat. She kicked off with her legs and got the swing moving.
She spun around when she heard the laughter of little girls behind her.
Madelyn stopped her swing with stiff legs.
She knew them.
They took the seats on either side of her and then turned their heads to smile at Madelyn. She whipped her head back and forth, trying to decide if she should stay or run. They were just little girls. She decided that it would be silly to run from little girls.
“What’s your name?” Madelyn asked. “I can’t remember.”
“You remember,” one of them said. Her face didn’t look right. It was too shiny and smooth. The other girl looked more real.
“I don’t remember,” Madelyn said. “I don’t know how I got here.”
“This place is running out,” the other girl said. “You probably thought you would never come back, didn’t you?”
“I’m not sure I thought of it at all,” Madelyn said. But something about the girl’s certainty tickled the back of Madelyn’s brain.
“That’s not true,” the unreal girl said.
Madelyn looked at her. It seemed silly to contradict
her. They would simply get into a pointless back and forth. Instead, she waited to see if the girl might back up her claim.
The girl who looked real put her hand on Madelyn’s arm. “If you thought about it carefully, you would remember,” she said. “You remember when you told your story, over and over?”
Madelyn blinked. She thought about the trial. She had told her story there, but that wasn’t what the girl was talking about. She was talking about a much darker time—the time in the control room of her grandmother’s cabin. She had waited for death down there and told her story again and again.
“What did you eat?” the girl asked.
Madelyn looked between them. It was such an absurd question. She smiled. “I don’t know. I ate food. What do you mean?”
“Did you really?” the unreal girl asked. “You ate about as much food as I ever did.”
“What does that…”
“Do you honestly remember eating?” the other girl asked. Madelyn was so close to coming up with names for the girls. They were right on the tip of her tongue.
“Yes. I remember getting food from my stores and eating. And I drank a ton of water. I suppose I didn’t treat myself perfectly during that time. They said that I was skin and bones by the time they rescued me. I was weak. I remember that. So I suppose I was fairly malnourished.”
The unreal girl had her hands cupped in front of her. They formed a little cave. The girl put her eye to the tiny cave and giggled. She held out her cupped hands for Madelyn. For some reason, Madelyn had the idea that maybe there was a lightning bug in there. She hadn’t seen a lightning bug in years and years. She leaned forward to get a look.
There was an image inside the girl’s hands. It was a tiny movie. Projected there, inside the girl’s hands, was a tiny skeleton woman with sunken eyes and cheeks. She moved in jerks and stops, like a bad puppet.
“You remember?” the other girl asked.
Madelyn nodded. She blinked to try to get rid of the image of herself. It had burned into her brain.
“How did you survive that?” one of the girls asked.
Madelyn wasn’t sure which one had spoken. She was staring straight ahead, trying to get rid of the image of her own skeletal body. She had looked to be moments from death.
“Malta!” Madelyn said. “But everyone calls you Malty.” She turned to her left. “And you’re Millie.”
The girl smiled and laughed. “No, I’m Malty, and she’s Millie!”
“You’re changing the subject,” Millie said. “We asked you a question.”
“Forgive me,” Madelyn said. “I’m old. What did you ask.”
“It’s a simple question—how did you survive?” Malty asked.
Madelyn put her hands up. “How does anyone survive? Technically, I didn’t. If you want the truth, I was all done living. I let the sand come in and bury me. If Jacob and Elijah hadn’t broken in…”
Madelyn’s face fell into a frown. Simply saying his name made her heart go cold. If she hadn’t fought him at the end, maybe he would still be alive.
“See?” Millie asked, leaning around Madelyn. “She does remember.”
“I think it’s time for you to go,” Malty said.
Madelyn shook her head.
“You have to,” Millie said.
# # # # #
“Don’t try to move,” he said.
Madelyn almost laughed. The notion was silly. She didn’t know much, but she knew one thing—there was no hope of her moving.
“Just hold perfectly still. Don’t even speak.”
She heard a giant crack and the world got smaller. Everything seemed to contract on all sides, like she had moved from the infinite down to the finite in the amount of time it took for that percussive sound to reverberate in the room.
“There,” he said. “Can you speak?”
She remembered the idea of operating her mouth, but somehow the mechanics were different. It was like straddling a motorcycle for the first time after learning on a bicycle.
“Dark,” she said.
“You’ll get used to it,” he said. “We can’t risk any lights.”
“Where?” she asked. Specifically, she wanted to know if she had fallen down into the hole in the ground. She imagined that she had left the swing and somehow tumbled down into the chasm in the grass. She didn’t want to be down there.
In response to her question, she heard feet slogging through standing water.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “We won’t be here long. We just have to get you going again.”
“Who?” Madelyn asked. If she could get her mouth in gear, she could have added many more words to that question. She wanted to know who the hell was speaking to her. She could almost place the voice, but her brain rejected the idea. If it was him, then what did that make her?
He chuckled. It was a sad sound. “Just me, I’m afraid. We’re on our own.”
“Elijah?” she asked.
Chapter 13
{Knowledge}
“I GOT IT,” LOGAN said. “Let go.”
“Are you sure?” Jacob asked. Logan had gotten better at steering, but he still had a tendency to aim for the side of the road and then veer back towards the center at the last moment.
“We can’t both drive. Not when we’re making so many stops and turns,” Logan said.
“Take us right downtown,” Brook said from the back.
“Are you crazy?” Logan asked. “We can’t trust Cleo.”
“We’re not going to,” Brook said. “We’ll catch the gardeners moving back from the farms and tell everyone what we saw. We need to get this information to as many people as we can. Once everyone knows what’s going on, they’ll demand that Cleo does something.”
“And what exactly is going on?” Jacob asked. “What are we supposed to tell them.”
“Everything we saw,” Brook said. “I’ve got readings recorded here. They’ll have to go check them out, and then they’ll see the same things we did. That cloud is unnatural. Plus, we should have a team of people taking apart this vehicle to see how it works.”
“You’re a very logical person,” Isaac said. “I hope everyone else is as logical as you.”
# # # # #
They pulled to a stop in front of the library and left the vehicle running so the machine would grant them protection from the Hunters. From the intersection, they could see where the paths of the gardeners led towards the residential part of town. It was possible that some of the workers might veer farther west and be out of sight over the hill, but he majority of the people would see them.
Brook got out and climbed up to the roof of the red vehicle. The others stood on the pavement and looked up at her.
Guards from the edge of town were the first to arrive. They had tracked the vehicle on foot since it passed their outposts.
Brook turned to them and waved them over.
They held their guns against their chests—not threatening, but at the ready.
“Mila, Jack,” Brook said to them as they approached. “We’ve got news that everyone needs to hear.”
“You’re on the list,” Mila said.
“What list?” Logan asked. He came forward towards the pair.
Jack moved his rifle away from his chest. He didn’t aim it at Logan, but looked like he was prepared to.
“Let’s get out of here,” Jacob said in Brook’s direction. “We can let people know as we see them.”
Mila reached down and hit a button on her radio. Jacob knew about those radios. At one point, Harper had one when she was working for the guard. They operated below the noise floor of the Hunters. They didn’t have much range, but they were good for signaling when someone needed backup. Jacob glanced at Isaac. His eyes were wide. Jacob realized that he wasn’t the only one who knew the implication of the radio.
Isaac ran south. It was towards the library—which was the wrong direction if he wanted to get away. It had one advantage though. It put the big red vehicle between himse
lf and the people with guns.
“Stop!” Jack said. His rifle finally came up to his shoulder. He stepped to the side to get clear aim on Isaac.
Jacob didn’t believe for an instant that anyone would shoot at Isaac. They had a fundamental regard for life, and beyond that, everyone liked Isaac. Besides, he couldn’t be on any list yet. He had only joined the search that very day. Nobody could possibly accuse him of collusion. Jacob wasn’t going to waste the opportunity. While Jack and Mila focused on Isaac, Jacob bolted for the alley between the old bank and the bar. A shot split the air immediately. Jacob saw a brick explode into fragments next to his shoulder. He didn’t stop running. He made it around the corner of the building before a second shot could be fired.
He paused, trying to catch his breath so he could figure out what to do.
From down the street, he heard a yell and a cry for help. It sounded like Isaac had been caught. More than likely, the radio had summoned more guards from the library. Isaac would have run right into their arms.
“Easy, easy,” Logan said.
Jacob desperately wanted to poke his head around the corner to see what was going on, but he didn’t want to betray the fact that he was still right there.
“I’m coming down,” Brook said. He heard her hit the pavement with a little yell. He imagined that she had been pulled down from her perch on top of the vehicle.
Jacob tried to guess what they would do. The guards didn’t know about the vehicle and its ability to repel Hunters. They would be eager to find cover now that a shot had been fired. Nobody stuck around long after gunfire.
From the sound of it, Logan was the next recipient of rough handling.
“Hey. Get off of me,” Logan said.
Jacob heard a grunt and then new voices joined the scuffle.
“Get them inside, quick,” someone said. It sounded like they were moving down the street.
Jacob didn’t allow himself to think about it.
He ran out from around the corner and sprinted towards Dave’s vehicle. It was still idling. He dove through the passenger’s door and pulled it shut behind him. Using the distraction, Logan pushed over one of his guards and pulled away from the grip of the other. Logan ran. A guard sprinted after him, but Logan was too fast. Meanwhile, Jacob was trying desperately to reproduce the actions that Logan had used to get the vehicle moving.
