The Prey (20 page)

The water has continued to rise, extinguishing the last candle and putting them in darkness. Hope feels Helen's hand stiffen in hers.

“It's okay,” Hope says. “We don't need light to swim.”

The surface of the water is black and impenetrable, and Hope suddenly realizes the tunnel isn't wide
enough to allow the two of them to swim side by side. She needs a new plan.

A large
kerplunk
sounds behind them.

“What was that?” Helen asks, afraid.

“Just dirt,” Hope says. The tunnel is collapsing in on itself. Support beams bend with the strain. No time to waste.

“Here's what we're going to do,” Hope says, looking Helen in the eyes. “I'm going first, you're going to grab my ankle, and I'll pull us along.”

“But what if I let go? What if I lose you?” Hysteria rises in Helen's throat.

“You're not going to lose me, because I'm not going to move that leg,” Hope reassures her. “And if we do get separated, I'll just turn around and come get you.”

“That's not possible! I don't think—”

Hope leans forward until their foreheads are touching. “Hope and Helen together. All right?”

“All right,” Helen murmurs, chin quivering.

Another shard of earth collapses into the water. Time is running out. Hope gets horizontal in the water and lifts her right foot above the surface. “Now grab hold.”

Helen lets go of the rungs and flings herself forward—paddling like a panicked dog. Her tiny hands encircle Hope's ankle.

“Ready?” Hope asks, and counts aloud, “One . . . two . . . three!”

They each take a big gulp of air and plunge beneath the black surface.

Silence. Muffled, murky silence.

Hope puts everything she has into that first stroke . . . and realizes how difficult this is going to be. It was hard enough the first time, swimming from one end of the tunnel to the other without taking a breath—but this time she's pulling Helen.

Live today, tears tomorrow.

She flings her arms forward and snaps them back. Her left foot kicks at the water, fluttering in inky blackness. She finds a rhythm and it begins to happen. They're moving through the narrow tunnel. Slowly. Slowly.

But just when Hope thinks it's working, her legs cramp and her lungs begin to tighten—a twisting, clenching pain that seems to engulf her entire body. Her head aches. Stars dance in her periphery.

The end has gotta be here,
she tells herself.

But it isn't.

She starts tugging at support beams. It's slower than swimming, but it's still forward movement. All she can ask for at the moment.

The pain spreads from chest to head. Muscles become slack. Her legs grow heavy as if ankle weights are dragging them down. Like the weights in the freezing tank.

Oh, Faith. I didn't leave you. I came back for you, even though it meant our capture.

Hope grows dizzy. The water seems to be wringing every last ounce of air from her lungs. She's no longer aware if she and Helen are moving or not. She honestly doesn't know.

Nightmare images flash through her mind. Dr. Gallingham and his piggish smile. The blond woman with her ruthless expression. The bullies from Barracks D, the ones who taunted Helen, now taunting her.

Give up yet?
they ask.
You'll never make it. You never should've come back in the first place. Not for Faith. Not for Helen.

Hope wants to scream, but when she opens her mouth there is only water there.

Without her knowing, she comes to a dead drift, her body floating lifelessly to the surface, arms outstretched, her spine and the back of her head bumping against the tunnel ceiling.

And then she sees her father.

There he is now, returning from a hunt, skinned carcasses hanging from his belt. And her mom spying him out the window and ordering the girls to get washed up and they squeal with excitement as they go running off. And after dinner, Hope hanging on her dad's every word and wanting the evening to last forever, never wanting him to leave again, who cares if they have meat or
not, and then the soldiers come and shoot Mom and blood—blood more purple than red—spilling from her forehead like a turned-over bottle and her lifeless eyes staring into the porch. Their father finding them in the log and hustling them away and living off the land until infection—caused by a stupid little nail—brings her father down and he utters words Hope can't forget—
You have a choice to make
—and why?
Why did she and Faith have to end up here in Camp Freedom?
And there's Book and their eyes are locked and their hands are touching and it's just the two of them, surrounded by warm barn smells and a shaft of pure sunlight. And standing in her way is Dr. Gallingham with an enormous syringe in his hand, and she pushes him away, but of course there is no pushing him away, and the more she realizes that the more she senses his pudgy, sausage fingers coming at her, grabbing her, groping her face, her hair, her wrists.

“No!” she screams. “You can't have me! I won't go back! I won't!”

And the voice answers back, “But I want you to.”

“I won't!”

“But I'm here to save you.”

“You're not here to save me. You're here to kill me.”

“No! Look at me. Look at
me
!”

Forcing Hope to open her eyes and see what's in front of her. There in the gloom, water to his chin, is
Book—Book the Less Than—arms outstretched, reaching for her, grabbing her, pulling her and Helen from the flooded tunnel as they catch their breath.

“What happened?” Hope asks at last.

“Book saved us,” Helen says breathlessly. “He appeared out of nowhere and saved us.”

Hope eyes the locket around Helen's neck and nods. Then she turns to Book, and when she speaks, her voice is soft, muffled, disbelieving. “You came back.”

“I said I would,” Book answers her.

Their eyes lock, and without a second thought, Hope leans forward and presses her lips against his. The kiss is hasty and clumsy and awkward and brief . . . and still it takes all her willpower to pull away. She is once more out of breath.

“Well,” she says.

“Well,” he says back.

There is more she could say—
wants
to say—but not with Helen there. As she studies Book's face and notices the color in his cheeks, she suffers a jolt of panic. How is she able to see so clearly?

Her head tilts back, catching an oval of warming sky. Dawn, appearing in the tunnel opening.

“Come on,” she says. “We better hurry.”

One at a time, the three go dashing across the final ten yards to the woods. The Sisters smother them with hugs and do all they can to warm them. A couple girls
rush back with pine boughs and cover the exit hole.

They look at each other—twenty Sisters and one Less Than who have somehow managed to escape from Barracks B and Camp Freedom and the nightmare of the infirmary.

But Hope knows they're far from safe.

“Let's get out of here,” she says.

As they scurry through the woods, the morning sun begins to chase away the night.

Live today, tears tomorrow.

W
E MADE OUR WAY
up Skeleton Ridge, twenty Sisters and I, following what I hoped was the Less Thans' trail. The trail was steep, and we had to stop often while some of the Sisters caught their breath. The little one—Helen—was as frail as any person I'd ever met.

As for Hope, it seemed that each time I looked at her, she looked away. And I did the same. Like we wanted to talk to each other but didn't know what to say . . . or how to say it. Like that kiss had made us suddenly self-conscious.

One of the things that also made it hard for me to talk to her was the way she looked at me. She didn't look
at
me; she looked
through
me. As if she could see
my innermost thoughts. It was no wonder I kept averting my gaze.

Of course, the fact was neither of us really knew the other's intention. All we knew for sure was that we wanted to get out of the territory. And maybe that was enough for now.

In addition to Hope, there was Scylla—a short spark-plug of a girl with a permanently grim expression who never opened her mouth. And Diana, who was willowy in stature and bright in demeanor. Also Helen—the small, frail girl with strawberry-blond hair who seemed always on the verge of flinching.

There were others too, of course, but those three were the ones who seemed closest to Hope . . . and so they were the ones I paid most attention to.

But what they all had in common was what I'd first noticed in the camp: something in their eyes. It was different from the desperation of the Less Thans—even the ones in the bunker. It was like some unfathomable sorrow—a grief as deep and dark as a bottomless well. I couldn't begin to understand it.

By the time we caught up with the others, the Less Thans were well up the mountainside. We spied them just as the sun was beginning to set. They sat huddled under a tarp on the edge of a mountain stream.

“What are
they
doing here?” Dozer asked. As usual, there was nothing friendly in his tone.

“They're coming with us,” I said.

Dozer shook his head and spat. “First Four Fingers, now these girls?”

There was no point responding, so I bit my tongue. Argos was really the only one who seemed happy to see us, and he circled the Sisters, trying to determine if they were friend or foe.

Hasty introductions were made, and I couldn't help but notice how Hope's eyes widened when she met Cat. Their handshake, too, lingered longer than the others. Like they knew each other or something.

“Why isn't there a fire?” I asked.

“Ask him,” Dozer said, referring to Cat.

“Too risky,” he said. “Can't let the Brown Shirts know our position.”

As we went to bed that night—Sisters huddled under one tarp, Less Thans huddled under another—my eyes kept landing on Hope. Despite the haunted expression, despite the ragged clothes and the scarf that barely covered her shaved head, I thought I'd never seen anyone more beautiful in all my life. And I swear I could actually feel the touch of her skin, her soft body beneath my hand, the brush of her lips against mine.

But who was I kidding? Once she found out my secrets, she wouldn't want anything to do with me.

We woke to steady rain. After eating our small allotment of nuts and raisins, we headed up the mountain, trailing the stream. We took turns walking and riding horses. All of us were soaked to the bone and our bodies shivered uncontrollably.

But when we stopped that night, we still didn't dare build a fire. Too risky. So we huddled beneath our separate tarps. The only sounds were the familiar ones: aspen trees dripping rain; nickering of horses; muted pounding of river.

At the end of three days, my teeth were chattering, my fingers were pruned from wet and cold, and bloodstains painted my jeans from where the saddle chafed. As miserable as I was, it was the hint of freedom that kept me going—the idea that if we survived all this and made it into the next territory, we wouldn't be Less Thans anymore.

It was nearing dusk when we rounded a bend and spied the river's source: a lake, stretching a good mile in all directions, with water gushing over a spillway at the end nearest us. A steep mountain stood at its northern border, scarred by a landslide of boulders. There was no way we could get our horses over that kind of terrain.

Perched on the lake's edge was a little log cabin, bordered by two outbuildings: a faded red barn on the near side and a dilapidated shed on the far. A tendril of
smoke ribboned from the cabin's stone chimney.

On the other side of a grove of aspens was a large, fenced-in garden and an empty corral. Closer at hand was a newer garden, a shovel leaning idly against the trunk of a tree. All in all, the ranch looked like something from a picture book. An oasis in this godforsaken landscape.

Except this oasis included an old man standing on the porch—with a shotgun in his hands. A shotgun aimed directly at us.

What little hair the man had was white and unkempt, pointing in a hundred different directions. He was unshaven, his shirttails untucked, and there was a wild look in his eye.

“Just passing through, are you?” he asked, his mouth partly hidden behind the stock of his 12-gauge.

“That's right,” June Bug said, dismounting. He was only five feet tall and looked downright dwarfish standing next to his horse. Still, despite his small stature, we trusted him to speak for us.

“Ain't nothing in this direction. Best turn around.”

“We were hoping to cross the river.”

“Be my guest.” The man shot a snide look toward the raging spillway.

A couple of us shivered in our saddles. The thought of another night in the open rain was more than we could stomach.

“Maybe we could rest here for the night. Sleep in your barn. Eat some food if you could spare us some. Then we'll be on our way tomorrow.”

“I ain't got but food for one. And that's me.” The old man worked his jaw restlessly from side to side. White spittle formed at the corners of his mouth.

Although he denied the existence of others, I wasn't convinced. I wondered if there were other guns trained on us that very moment. A glance at Hope and some of the other Sisters told me they were thinking the same thing.

“Fine. Then just let us stay the night. We won't be in your way, and we'll catch our own dinner.” June Bug gestured to the lake. A series of circles marked where fish were rising for insects in the waning light.

The man shook his head more vigorously than before. “Nope. No staying in my barn, and no fishing in my lake.”

Hope took a step forward. “I doubt it's your lake, Mister,” she said.

“If I say it's my lake, it's my lake. Now git!”