The Offering

by E. R. Arroyo

  I’m tempted to argue but bite my lip to stop myself.

  “I don’t have anything to clean the wounds with,” he grumbles. “Water will have to do.”

  “Water’s fine,” I tell him. I wince when he pours the water on, trying to act like it doesn’t hurt even though the sting radiates down my arm and across my back. After a few minutes of neither of us talking, I finally say what I’ve been thinking this whole time. “I can’t believe they’re real. Did you see them?”

  “Yeah.” His voice is softer now.

  “I thought it was a lie Antius would say to scare us. Once we saw the ones in The City, you know?”

  He nods as the others trickle back onto the campgrounds. Eli lowers himself beside me, panting. “Are you okay?” he asks, slightly panicked.

  “Yeah…” I give a small nod.

  Tyce and the elder who saved me make their way toward us and all the soldiers give them a wide berth, as usual. I wish they weren’t afraid of the elders. But fearing the creatures we killed a few minutes ago is perfectly reasonable.

  “Thank you,” I tell the elder. He snaps his muzzle closed, tips his head, and retreats to his own side of the camp, away from the men staring at him. He is covered in blood, but I am too.

  “You okay?” Tyce asks.

  “Yep,” I say, ready to move on from this stupid injury. “Did you know wild packs of them were out there? We’re not that far from the Pitt.”

  “Never seen ‘em, but I’ve wondered,” Tyce says. “Sometimes when we’re out, the pops’ll get all bothered. Never knew why, but I’d bet it was them. They never came so close before, though.”

  “Do you think there are more?”

  “In the whole world? Probably.” He smirks.

  Dylan doesn’t appear to appreciate the humor.

  “Let’s move out,” Max says, prompting everyone to pack up.

  “What about you,” I ask Max once he’s close enough to hear me. “Have you ever seen them before?”

  “A long time ago, yes. But never this close to home.”

  “What do you think drew them here?” Dylan asks, finally taking an interest in the conversation now that it’s not with Tyce.

  “I don’t know,” Max says, knitting his brows.

  * * *

  On the road, we move slowly, looking for any evidence that vehicles have recently turned off the pavement. The elders walk in the grass alongside us.

  Hours pass before we stop to rest, and even then it isn’t for long. We didn’t pack enough food and water for a long trip so I don’t know how much longer we can go. I hope we don’t get lost. Max seems to know the area pretty well though. Eventually the Smyrna soldiers convince Tyce’s crew to give up walking, and we move a bit faster once they’re loaded up in vehicles. There’s probably nothing for the elders to smell anyway.

  The landscape gradually shifts and there are less trees, more open space covered in low brush. Whether it was always like this or something existed that bombs destroyed I don’t know. But I do know it’s inspiring to see open space that stretches so far that I can’t see the end of it. I never have before.

  It makes me strangely happy for however brief of a moment.

  Dylan leans forward from the opposite side of the truck bed, laying his hand on my jaw. I touch his hand, leaning into it. He’s smiling but I can’t imagine why.

  “Come here,” he says over the wind.

  Careful with my wounded shoulder, I crawl to him and sit with my back to his chest. He laces our fingers as he hums into my ear like he used to do when we first escaped Antius. I wonder how many tunes he knows or if he makes them up. My eyes feel heavy under the sweetness of this moment. Eventually, he lulls me to sleep.

  When my eyes finally drift open, at least a couple hours have passed and we only have a few more hours of daylight. Looking toward the horizon, gauging the sun, a glint catches my eye. I squint, trying to see it again or determine what caused it. I wait, looking harder. Then I see it again.

  I pound on the rear windshield with my fist. I point into the distance when Max glances back at me. He brings the truck to a stop and leans out the window.

  “What is it?”

  “I saw something. Over there.”

  “What kind of something?” He looks where I’m pointing, as do Amy and Wayne.

  “Like a glint of light.” It sounds ridiculous because all that can be seen are endless fields.

  Max decides to check it out and takes the next turn onto a narrow gravel road only wide enough for one vehicle. After a few minutes, we arrive at the source of the glare. On both sides of the road stand rows and rows of crops, all varying heights and types. That this exists is intriguing, because it’s clearly manmade not that I know anything about crops. But that’s not even what’s remarkable.

  Entire sections of crops are completely encased, like giant greenhouses. I hop out of the truck and touch it. It looks like glass, but feels like plastic. The walls are at least twelve feet tall and arched at the top.

  “Incredible,” Max gapes beside me.

  “How is this possible?” someone asks, but I don’t even look to see who has joined us.

  I drag my fingers along the surface walking toward the edge hoping to find a way in. When I finally reach an access pad, Dylan touches it.

  “I’ve heard of this place. A long time ago,” he says. “I’d forgotten about it.” He marvels over the encasements and the access pad.

  “This explains a lot, actually,” Max says. “Why they were willing to cut ties with us and lose out on our food. They didn’t even need it.”

  “Then why did they bother to trade at all?” I ask. “If they had all this food, why trade with the colonies?”

  “Control,” Dylan says, stepping back from the access pad and shooing us away as well. Before I notice what he’s doing, he pulls his gun, flips the safety off, and fires at the mechanism. He steps closer again. Using the butt of his gun he breaks the remaining pieces of the lock and then kicks the door open.

  I fall in behind him. Glancing over my shoulder, I see that a crowd has gathered nearby, all of them staring in awe. Max and Boone kneel down, inspecting the plants. Boone tugs on a stem and a carrot emerges. He smells it, touches it, and eventually rinses it with a little water and takes a bite. He arches his brows, chewing the vegetable thoroughly and shifting it around in his mouth.

  “It tastes good. Looks like these five rows are carrots.” He taps his chin as he walks farther, inspecting the different types of crops. He takes another bite, talking with his mouth full. “And these rows are cabbage. Wow. Incredible.” He shakes his head.

  I notice the greenhouse to our left is all the same plant and they are as tall as me, if not taller, with bright green stalks with yellowish fuzz on the tips and long, bent leaves up the sides. “What are those?” I ask, pointing.

  “Corn,” says Max. He glances back at Boone who is still taking inventory. Max grins. “Who’s hungry?”

  Everybody piles into the greenhouse taking turns to fill their bellies. Down the road a little someone even discovers fruit. The only ones who seem dissatisfied are the elders, because they only eat meat, and there’s none of that to be found. Though Tyce and his boys make do just fine with the fruits and vegetables.

  “So, they have more resources than we knew about. Maybe they’re going somewhere specific. They wouldn’t abandon Antius without somewhere secure to go.” I sit in the truck bed, wiping fruit juice from my chin.

  “We just don’t know where that somewhere could be.” Dylan leans against the truck beside me.

  “Wait a second…” Greg spits out a piece of food, making a sucking noise while trying to clean his teeth. “I got an idea where they’re headed.”

  “How?” I ask, sitting up straighter.

  Dropping the remains of the fruit he has just demolished, he jogs to his van and returns unfolding a worn-out, faded map. He spreads it across the hood of the truck. I hop down to see. “Where are we … where … ah
, yes. Here.” He points to a spot on the map. “Back in the day, just about everything the Burkes did was in the news. Out East, there was a huge warehouse explosion, killed a bunch of Burke’s employees. I betcha…” He traces a line across the map. “I betcha they got a place out in that area. The explosion happened here.” He points to a spot on the map and we all stare at it, hoping he’s right.

  Max shakes his head. “There’s nothing out there but a crater the size of Philadelphia.”

  “There could be a bunker, though. Something easily missed.”

  “Guys!” Boone calls out from a ways down the road. “You’re gonna wanna see this!”

  As soon as we look to Boone, snarls from the elders divert all our attention, every one of them standing on the balls of their feet, breathing rapidly, and brandishing their claws.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “What is it?” Max asks, hustling over to Tyce and Flex. The elders are all inside a greenhouse where Boone stands near the entrance.

  “The smell’s got them riled up,” Tyce explains.

  We go to Boone, the elders still making so much noise we have to shout to hear each other. They’re moving around inside, taking in deep breaths through their noses.

  “This one’s been harvested recently. By the looks of our hunter friends, it was them,” Boone says, implying Antius.

  “Musta been. ‘Cause their scent still lingers.” Tyce taps his nose as the last couple of elders finally come out of the greenhouse inhaling and exhaling with desperate wheezing sounds.

  Greg scratches his head then replaces his hat. “Maybe they’re not far.”

  Max agrees, so we fan out to search the area—but if Antius’s population were here, wouldn’t there be vehicles? Dylan follows close behind me, but I make a point to stay near the guys from The City. I trust their intuition.

  The area outside the greenhouses is mostly wilderness, so a bunker or underground passage could be well hidden if one existed. I’m kneeling near a section of brush, feeling the ground for anything unusual when someone trips over me and knocks me on my rear end. He grabs my wrist, and I finally look up to see his face.

  “Eli, I thought you agreed to stay with the vehicles.”

  “We’re not fightin’, sister. Just wanna help.”

  Dylan offers us both his hands, and Eli and I each take one. He pulls us to our feet with ease. I glance at Dylan, pursing my lips and nodding toward Eli. Dylan shrugs.

  “Fine,” I say. “Stay close.”

  Eli’s face lights up. “‘Course.”

  He mimics me, feeling around the earth for a handle or a hatch, or anything.

  I find nothing. Same as Eli and Dylan. We head back to the central area we started from and it seems like no one has turned up any leads. The elders seem fixated on the road, probably where they lost track of the scents from the greenhouse.

  We decide to keep moving and head back to the street where a bus and a few other vehicles stayed behind. Eli ends up in the back of Max’s pickup with Dylan and me. It’s nice to have him close so I don’t have to worry about him. I still wish he’d stayed behind, for his own sake. He acts like he’s fine but when he’s not paying attention his hand keeps drifting to his side where he’d been stabbed. It must be bothering him.

  Two hours later the road all but disappears, crumbled and strewn alongside ruins of what could have been a giant city or a housing area. I wouldn’t know because not a single thing is still standing. It’s all rubble now.

  Not only is the street obliterated, but the remnants of barriers appear to split in two directions, meaning choosing a direction to follow from this juncture would be a pure gamble.

  We’ve stopped and gotten out to check the path for safety before we venture farther in our vehicles. I climb up onto a particularly large chunk of broken concrete a little ways from the road, looking for anything worth seeing. Dylan follows, his hand touching the small of my back, ready to catch me should I misstep.

  Aside from the mountains in the distance, there’s only rubble as far as I can see.

  “Boss, look at this!” Boone waves Max over to the path up ahead of where we stopped. I take Dylan’s hand and hop down then jog over to Max and Boone who are kneeling over something.

  “Look at these lines.” He traces the direction of the lines just above the gray surface. “It looks swept.”

  “They covered their tracks,” Dylan says.

  “They missed a spot,” Tyce says, and we all look up. An arrogant grin is spread across his face, a grin that is so uniquely him. He points at the ground and Boone arrives first, confirming what are indeed tire tracks.

  “This way,” Max says, pointing in the direction he wants us to go.

  On the way back to the truck I notice Smitt, the sniper, on top of a van looking through his scope. He meets eyes with his commander, Greg, and shakes his head. Whatever he was looking for isn’t there.

  Before we load up and go, several men help remove large boulders blocking the road. If Antius got through with vehicles, it means they are not only covering their tracks, but they also put the giant stones there after they passed through. The thought makes me uneasy.

  I pull Dylan aside. “Do you think they knew we would follow them?”

  “Clearly they suspected we might. If you want to know the truth, I can’t get past the timeline of it all.” He shifts his weight with his hands on his hips, his face wearing a troubled expression.

  “What do you mean?”

  He hesitates. “Well … there’s no way they could rig those bombs on short notice, certainly not a matter of hours. Either the bombs were already there as a precaution or they planned to leave well before Jayce escaped The City.”

  “So, what does that mean?”

  He shrugs, “I don’t know.”

  It doesn’t make sense for Antius to suddenly be afraid of us just because Nathan is dead. We didn’t take out that many of their soldiers and I’m certain their guns outnumber ours. They probably have more explosives too. There’s absolutely no reason for them to run from us.

  It makes me uneasy, sure, but I don’t know what to make of it, and I don’t have a good enough explanation to voice my concerns. I don’t even know exactly what my concerns are. It doesn’t seem Dylan does either.

  Biting my lip, I climb into the truck where Eli is waiting. I muss his hair as I climb around him, careful not to touch the bomb. Dylan climbs in too, and slaps the top of the truck. Max waves for a small car that is only carrying its driver to go ahead of us. I shoot Dylan a puzzled look. We’ve been leading the pack the whole way.

  “We don’t know what we’re driving into with this terrain. They probably don’t want to drive the bomb over it until we know the road is stable,” Dylan explains.

  Sure enough, the little car moves slowly over the rocky street, and Max waits until he’s a good fifty yards ahead before putting the truck in drive and making his way forward. The truck handles the bumps so poorly the three of us have to hold the bomb to keep it from bouncing against the rope holding it down.

  The conditions don’t get any better over the next few hours and eventually we stop to set up camp before the sun sets. The closer we get to the mountains, the cooler the temperature is, which is a relief. The night is uneventful, thankfully, though a lot more of us sleep inside vehicles than we did last time—probably because of the run-in with the vicious savages that made The City’s elders seem tame by comparison.

  Once we’re back on the road the terrain soon begins to change again, though still having a fair bit of rubble and debris. The landscape contains more ups and downs, making it harder to see ahead as we approach the mountains.

  At the top of a smaller hill, Max slams his brakes and the three of us in the back fall forward, fumbling over one another. Without a word, Max steps out, staring ahead. I hop out to join him and my jaw goes slack.

  Where the road should continue, it cuts off at the edge of a massive crater. The largest I’ve seen. I can’t even tell
where it ends.

  “Wow,” I whisper.

  “My brother used to live in a cabin right over there.” Max points to somewhere far into the crater. “He was a recluse. When news about the war came out, I couldn’t even call him. He didn’t have a phone or computer. It was too far of a drive. I never would’ve made it in time to get to him.”

  Max leans against the truck and I do likewise, listening.

  “I crawled into a bunker knowing he was going to die. But I had a baby boy to think about. Wife too, at the time. It was still the hardest decision of my life.” He glances over at me, his eyes distant. “I drove out here, once. Long time ago. It’s not easy to make peace with losing people.”

  “No, it’s not,” I agree. He grabs my shoulder, squeezes.

  Wayne, Greg, and Dylan join us. Again, we split up our people into groups and spread out, searching for anything we can find that might lead us to Antius’s location. It doesn’t seem logical that they would be underground with as many vehicles as it would have taken to evacuate the entire colony. They would be difficult to conceal.

  On the right the terrain is rocky and wooded. I’m careful to watch my step and fortunately Eli doesn’t try to follow. He’d roll his ankle out here for sure. As the afternoon wears on, I scale higher up the hillside scoping things out as I go. Dylan, ever at my side, is the one who finds something.

  “Over there,” he says, pointing across the way.

  From this vantage point the woods down closer to the vehicles seem unusually dense in one particular spot. Suspiciously so.

  We hustle back down the hill. Dylan leading the way, we seek out a path to the cluster that caught his eye. Slipping into the forest, we tread over low branches and wild brush. I hop up onto a fallen tree and pause for a moment, looking around. When I jump down, my boots crunch on the ground. I bend down and stick my fingers through the leaves, finding gravel.

  “Check this out,” I tell him.

  Underneath the leaves and a layer of dirt there’s actually a gravel road, though the rocks have become smooth over time. Dylan continues to kick up the dirt as he follows the path that takes us directly to the cluster of brush we saw from the hill. Moving around the patch, my face lights up when I see a wrought iron gate hidden by vines.