by Patti Larsen
“Thank you,” the boy says. “You saved my life.”
Reid thinks of a snappy comeback, but it’s not worth the effort. “You’re welcome.”
“Reid…” Drew looks away, puts his glasses back on. Looks back. “I was the one who wanted to leave you behind.”
Reid just nods. Drew hugs him, the impulsive move making Reid groan from the pressure of it.
“We need to go soon.” Carly’s voice carries. Reid struggles to sit up and manages. He is still cold, but his body is all present and accounted for and he is very grateful.
Reid is about to ask why she is so afraid when he hears it. A howl. Very close. It’s enough to get him up and pulling on his wet clothing. Leila hands him his socks and sneakers, fortunately dry. He isn’t sure how far he can run in his condition, but knows he doesn’t have a choice.
He has just finished tying his shoelaces when Carly’s scream jerks him upright. He looks where she points and freezes, cold again, this time from fear.
Two hunters hover on the other shore of the lake. They hold still for only a moment, the girl’s scream carrying across the water to them, before beginning a lazy lope around the bank.
Reid grabs Carly and drags her along, forcing his exhausted body to move, pulling the terrified girl with him, following the others as they run into the woods.
Up ahead, another hunter howls.
***
Chapter Sixteen
Reid changes course as soon as he hears the howl, whistling to the others to follow. They listen, at least that is something. He begrudges the need for sound, knowing it will help the hunters locate them, but it’s too hard in the dark to simply use gestures. Despite his weariness, Reid runs on, grateful for once for his fear because it gives him access to energy he never knew he had.
To his frustration, his familiar tactic does him no good this time. It doesn’t seem to matter which way he leads the kids, how much he alters direction. The howling behind him is always answered from directly ahead. From the volume, the hunter is closing in.
Reid remembers something that troubled him, something he thought of before he met the two poachers. About being herded. He has a flashback of Monica spinning and doubling back on her own trail before heading off again. He stumbles to a halt and turns around, almost running into Drew and Trey, retreating and heading back the way they came. No one says a word, but they all follow.
Reid runs on for another minute before he is forced to swerve to avoid a fallen tree. That’s when he loses his grip on Carly. He almost forgot she was there with him, clutching his hand. The sudden missing connection between them reminds him. She tumbles, rolling over and over, coming to a thudding halt against the grounded trunk. He turns to go after her without hesitation, but his fear brings him to a sharp stop.
A hunter emerges from the forest and fixes its attention on the weeping girl.
Time stands still. Reid’s mind stumbles over one idea after another in the long, hanging second suspended between them. The three of them hover in it, Carly, the hunter, Reid. He feels the line draw in, pulling them tighter and tighter until he can’t breathe. The hunter’s claws gleam in the moonlight. Carly’s tears glitter on her cheeks, huge eyes swallowing Reid whole. He simply stands there, so torn by indecision he is unable to do anything.
When the moment breaks, Reid has no time left to act, nor the strength to get to Carly before the inevitable.
The hunter pounces in one fluid motion while Reid’s tortured mind still tries to figure it out. He hears Carly scream, lunges forward to try to save her, only to be yanked off balance and pulled away. His instincts take over again, but only barely. Reid runs, throat tight, eyes welling with moisture as the girl he barely knows dies in silence in the dark.
Reid immediately thinks of Lucy. She must be dead by now, too slow, too weak. There’s no way his fragile and needy sister could possibly survive anything like this. A sob rips from his chest, making it hard to breathe. Carly. Monica. Lucy. Around and around in a circle, joined by Mustache and Scar, and the two boys whose names he never knew. So much death and loss and only fear to keep him moving. There has to be more to life again, it can’t just go on like this, one endless run until the hunters finally get around to killing him.
He speeds along on autopilot, letting the kids choose their path, forgetting the world he runs through, ignoring the times he stumbles and almost falls, the sounds and smells of the forest, the gnawing hunger in his stomach. He stops when they make him, runs when they urge him on. Reid is lost inside himself for a long time and can’t find a way out again. Doesn’t want to, really. It’s safer to hide inside himself. He’s never been a quitter. His father would be so disappointed, he knows that. But there is only so much Reid’s mind can take and he has reached his limit.
The rising light of the sun brings him back to the present and the moment. He curses the warmth of morning for pulling him out of limbo. The other kids try to talk to him, to keep him with them, but Reid doesn’t hear their words, not really. Every sound hits him like a muffled whine. He finds a place to collapse and huddles by himself, well apart from the others, shaking from weariness. His leg muscles jump and twitch under his hands. He lets himself sink down, back against a tree, to watch the sunrise and wish he were dead.
In that moment, Reid would gladly trade places with Carly. Wishes it had been him. She relied on him, and he let her down. Let her go. He can never, ever forgive himself. He runs over the whole thing in his mind, the freeze-frame examination driving him deeper and deeper into despair. Reid feels her hand in his, the slickness of her skin, how her palm and fingers just slid out of his grasp as he swerved. He tried so hard to pull her along with him. He should have held her more tightly, but he didn’t. Reid let her go and she fell and rolled away into the darkness and the hunter killed her.
It is all his fault.
He feels Leila’s hand on his shoulder but he shrugs her off.
“It’s not your fault.” She’s reading his mind. He looks up and sees her for the first time in the light. She is very pale from her skin to her almost white hair to her clear blue eyes. She stands in front of him, between him and the sun. The glow of it makes her look like an angel. But despite the comparison he refuses to allow her to absolve him.
“I know. I did what I had to do. I left her behind.” He is such a liar. But he can’t let the others know what he does in his heart. That he could have saved Carly if he had just acted in time. Could have. Should have.
All his fault.
“You would have died too.” She sees right past him, obviously. Time to be more harsh, to get his message across.
“Just leave me alone.” It emerges in a half-growl out of his dry throat. He is satisfied with the raspy quality of it. He sounds dangerous, like a lone wolf. That’s what he needs to be from now on. No more thinking of others. The realization is so clear to him it chases away the guilt and shame and drives him further into anger.
She waits a moment before doing as he asked. The tiny part of him that still feels human wishes she would come back while the rest of him draws itself around him like a shield and reminds him they left him behind once. Another good reason to go it on his own again. It’s not like he can trust them anyway. Why is he so broken up over a girl who would have abandoned him in a heartbeat if it meant her survival?
Drew tries next. Reid hears the distinctive shuffle of the chubby boy’s feet. No sneakers but penny loafers. How pathetic.
Still, his message cuts to the bone. “I know what it’s like. I felt that way when we left you in the cave. I’m so glad Leila went back for you.”
Reid spins, despising the confession. Drew is only grateful because Reid saved his miserable life. How dare he compare who he is to what Reid has become? So what, he left Reid behind. At least no one died.
The look on his face sends Drew back two steps. “You don’t get it. I don’t give a crap. You hear me?” He is shouting and doesn’t care. Let the hunters come. What does it matter? �
�Just stay the hell away from me.”
Drew retreats to huddle with the others. Milo shoots Reid a nasty look and flips him the finger. Reid ignores the skinny kid and goes back to his private hell. Time to get out of there and move on. He can’t be responsible for them. Can’t. They’re just getting in his way, holding him back, keeping him from his chance at winning free of this insanity.
He won’t survive another loss.
Reid is on his feet and moving off before he can think twice or talk himself out of it. It takes Leila almost a minute to catch up. When she does her cheeks are flushed and not just from the exertion. She spins him around by her grip on his arm, surprisingly strong for her size.
“Where are you going?”
He doesn’t answer. It’s pretty obvious to him as it is to the others, from the looks on their faces. They’ve all followed him. Reid can’t have that. But they gang up on him, appealing to the part of him that has shrunk to a fragment under the constant stress.
The part of him that cares what happens to them.
“Please, Reid.” Drew is there, too, holding his other arm with one hand while his free one hitches up his pants. “Don’t leave us.”
“Whatever,” Milo mutters. Reid doesn’t say anything. There is nothing to say. “Let him go,” Milo says. “We don’t need him.”
“I do,” Trey whispers. He is shivering. “He kept us alive last night.”
“Not all of us.” Milo’s lower lip shoots out, his dark eyes locked on Reid, anger vibrating through him. Reid almost tells the boy he agrees with how he feels. But instead of coming out as grief, it emerges as anger.
“I don’t want to be responsible for you.” He meets Leila’s eyes. “Especially when I don’t know if I can trust you.”
Drew draws a breath. “I deserve that.”
“You all do.” Reid pulls free of both of them. This lashing out is wrong. He needs to apologize, beg them to forgive him for letting Carly go when all he had to do was hold onto her a little longer, but its easier to blame and rage and be an asshole than face his guilt. “Can you honestly tell me that if you’re given the choice to survive but it means one of us dying you won’t take it?”
Drew starts to protest but fall silent. Milo’s face crumples. Even Leila is quiet.
“Yeah,” Reid says. “Thought so.”
“I’d like to think not.” Leila’s whisper carries. “But I really don’t know. Is that wrong?” She looks up at him again. “That we don’t know for sure? How can we until we’re faced with it?”
Reid jerks his gaze away from hers. “We’re all on our own out here.” He starts walking again. Hears them behind him. Turns and confronts them. Even Milo is there. “You’ll be fine without me. Right, Milo?” The boy mutters something and looks away.
“We’ll just keep following you.” Leila crosses her arms over her chest. “You can’t stop us.”
Reid lets out a breath of air and rolls his eyes. “Fine. Do what you want.” The fragment swells inside him and he is surprised to recognize a feeling of relief. But he has no intention of letting them near him emotionally again. Ever.
Reid continues on and they join him in silence. That only lasts a short time. Drew is beside him suddenly, struggling to keep up but smiling at him like they are friends or something.
“So what does the fence look like? How much power, could you tell? Man, I hope those guys had some food at their camp.” The chubby boy’s cheerfulness is obscene and feeds Reid’s anger. How can he smile? Or think about his stomach?
Reid’s belly growls in protest at being ignored. It just makes him angrier.
“Maybe they left weapons behind too, did you think of that? Or a tent. Soap.” Drew groans in joy. “I’d love to be clean. Clothes!” He almost bounces in place as he hurries, shorter legs fighting to match pace. “Do you think?”
Reid’s thin patience snaps without much prodding. “You might want to shut the hell up. So the hunters don’t hear you.”
Drew’s smile drops off his face so fast that if the circumstances were different it would have been comical. The chubby boy hangs his head, eyes darting from side to side. “Sorry,” slips out of him at a whisper. He keeps step with Reid for only another moment, as though he knows he isn’t welcome but doesn’t want to go, before falling quietly back.
Reid glances over his shoulder, sees Leila’s arm go around the boy and grinds his teeth. She meets his eyes, hers expressionless. Her disappointment hides there behind the blankness in her gaze and Reid shrinks from it.
He’s gotten so used to being alone that having the others there is a growing irritation. Every shuffled footstep, every muted cough is a jab to his senses. When they whisper among each other, he wants to wring their necks. Reid is on the verge of turning on them and telling them all to be quiet when he catches a glimpse of what he’s been searching for just up ahead.
His heart instantly lifts, the others forgotten. Reid picks up speed and, within moments, is standing in front of the fence.
***
Chapter Seventeen
His annoyance is gone. All that matters now is the fence and the promise of freedom it offers. Reid welcomes the familiar feeling of it, the hum vibrating through his sneakers and making his skin break out in goose bumps. He rubs the hairs at the back of his neck and grins with goofy enthusiasm at Drew who smiles right back, previous conversation instantly forgiven.
“Wow,” Drew says, glasses winking, “you weren’t kidding. This sucker would kill a deer. No pulse, either, steady current. That’s unusual.” He takes another step closer to it before falling back with a shudder. “What is it, fifteen feet high?” Drew spins in a circle. “And no trees close to it.”
Reid realizes the boy is right. “So no chance of jumping over it.”
Drew nods. “Exactly. And we don’t have the tools to cut one down, so…” he trails off. “Too bad. If we could find a way to sever the connection, the whole thing would lose power.”
“What do you mean?” Milo is running his hands over his bare arms and staring at the giant barricade.
“That’s how electricity works.” Drew suddenly reminds Reid of a teacher he had last year. But there is nothing arrogant about the way he talks to Milo, unlike Mr. Rupert. “You have to have a complete circuit or the power won’t flow.”
“You think that’s what those poachers did?” Milo steps back to stand beside Trey.
“Not likely,” Drew says, grunting softly as he bends to pick up a pinecone. He throws it at the chain link. It erupts into a cascade of sparks and bounces off, smoking where it lies on the ground. “If that was the case, the fence wouldn’t be live anymore.”
“So how?” Reid turns to Drew. “How would they get over?”
Drew’s glasses receive an adjustment while he thinks about it. “I don’t know,” he says at last. “There shouldn’t be a way. I mean, maybe they have some kind of tech that allowed them to only disrupt part of the current so they could cut a hole in it, but if so that’s more science fiction than science fact.” He looks so serious, so grown up. Definitely a teacher. Destined to be one. If they ever make it out of here.
“I’m less worried about how they got in,” Reid says, “than how they planned to get out.”
Drew turns to Reid. “What do you mean? Isn’t it the same thing?”
“Maybe not.” Reid looks up and down the line of the fence, seeing it curve away in the distance. “And maybe so. I’ve been thinking there has to be a gate.”
No one says anything, but Drew is nodding. Reid starts to follow the line, knowing they will be right him. “Whoever put us in here had to get in somehow, right? That means a gate. Maybe more than one.”
“Makes complete sense,” Drew says. “They have to have somewhere to run the gennies that keep the fence going, where the capacitors are. And you’re right, it’s not like we were air lifted in. I remember a van, being carried.”
Something about what Drew says triggers a thought in Reid’s head, but he lo
ses it before he can figure out what it means. Instead he runs on, hearing his weary band panting along behind him.
He almost misses the camp, it’s that well camouflaged. But his eyes are now trained to see everything, miss nothing, knowing his life depends on it. Reid slides to a halt in front of a large draped sheet and thinks of Mustache and Scar.
“A ghillie net!” Drew’s excitement is catching. They all move forward, sliding under the edge of the artificial canopy, heavy with fake leaves and branches, a perfect match to the trees around it. Inside the gloom it takes them a moment to adjust to the light, but Reid has no doubt he has found the poacher’s camp.
A quick search of camo-colored backpacks turns up fresh clothing and everyone takes advantage. They are too large, but with some liberated rope for belts and ties they manage to get everyone outfitted in something clean. Only Leila turns down a pair of pants, keeping her old jeans but accepting a clean t-shirt from Reid’s hands with a small smile.
“There has to be food,” Drew mutters to himself. “Has to be.”
It’s Trey who spots the box high above in the tree. Reid gives him a boost to the lowest branch and within moments the dark painted crate lowers toward them. Trey’s yelp of surprise is all the warning they get. Reid grabs Drew who stands directly below, narrowly saving his life when the heavy wooden box comes crashing down.
“Sorry,” Trey whispers, holding up his hands. They look very red. “It was heavier than I thought.” The last bit of rope snakes to the ground, painted with Trey’s blood.
Reid helps him down while Drew, Milo and Leila go through the smashed box. When Reid turns, Trey safe on the ground, he hears an odd snuffling sound and it isn’t until he gets closer that he realizes what he’s hearing. The three kids are stuffing themselves.
He resists the urge to laugh, pulling them back one by one, liberating a large chunk of power bar from Drew’s desperate hands.
