The Capture (14 page)

I
T
'
S BETTER THIS WAY,
Hope tells herself.
I'm needed here.

And it's true. Every healthy Sister is necessary to nurse the sick ones back to life. A few succumb to dysentery right away, and more would follow if not for the swift actions of Helen. Hope realizes it's a very different Helen from the one who relied on her sister for everything.

As for Book, Hope doesn't let herself think of him.
I've got my hands full here,
she tells herself.
Let him help his Less Thans and I'll help my Sisters.

At least, that's what she tries to tell herself.

Then there's the other issue. If Hope can piece together where the Sisters were being taken, it will
help her understand what the Territory's plan is . . . and where to find Chancellor Maddox.

“When were you told you were leaving?” Hope asks a young girl named Sarah. Hope is feeding her sips of warm broth, sliding the spoon between Sarah's trembling lips.

Sarah's body is so thin, Hope is able to watch the liquid journey from her mouth down her throat. Although Hope's instinct would be to feed her gobs of food, Helen warns against it. If they eat too much too soon, they'll actually die; their stomachs can't handle it.

“At dinner one night,” Sarah says. “The guards came in and started shouting. Said we had to go on a march.” She lowers her voice as she remembers. “Some girls didn't even have boots.”

“And the Brown Shirts didn't care that so many were sick?”

Sarah's bony shoulders rise and drop in a shrug. “I overheard one of them say, ‘Just makes our job easier.'”

Hope remembers the corpses along the side of the road. She stirs the spoon in the bowl of broth; it clanks against the edges.

“Where were you going?”

“They wouldn't tell us. ‘Not long now' was all they said. Every hour, every day—‘Not long now.'”

“Is your sister here?” Hope asks.

Sarah shakes her head no.

“Did you lose her on the march or before?”

“Before,” Sarah answers. “Long before.”

“I'm sorry. How about the others from your barracks?”

“There's no one from my barracks. I'm the only one left.”

Her words cut Hope's heart in two, and she has to hurry out of the room. She finds Helen in the kitchen of one of the other cottages, cutting pieces of willow bark into small chunks. “So . . . when do we give them solid food?”

Helen barely looks up. In the other room, a half dozen Sisters lie on cots or tables—wherever there's a flat surface. Their rasping coughs punctuate the still afternoon. “Another day or two. And even then, not much.”

“How soon till they can move?”

Helen measures out several teaspoons of the bark and puts it into a pot of boiling water. “Not soon.”

“Days? Weeks?”

“Months,” Helen answers.

Hope nods absently, watching the willow bark turn and twist in the roiling water, staining it red. She wonders how long before Brown Shirts will discover them. Wonders something else as well.

“You may as well tell me,” Helen says.

“Tell you what?”

“Whatever's going through your head.”

“Who says there's something—”

“Hope.”

Helen gives her friend a look, and Hope knows there's no point denying it. She has an idea—an outlandishly crazy idea. And if she doesn't share it, if she doesn't act on it, she's afraid she never will . . . and then who knows where her life will lead?

She looks around to make sure no one's within earshot, grasps the locket around her neck, then leans in and begins to speak.

W
E HAD FINALLY EMERGED
through a line of trees and found ourselves at the edge of a high limestone cliff. Far below us was a ribbon of brown—a swift, wide, muddy river. It was a good half mile wide.

“How're we supposed to get across
that
?” Flush asked.

We had managed to ford dozens of streams, even floated down one flood-swollen river, but those were nothing compared to this. This was a
river
. We watched as an enormous tree was swept down the rapids like a toothpick.

I looked at Cat, thinking he might offer a suggestion. He avoided my eyes and slurped from a bottle.

We hugged the cliff and marched north, reaching a railroad bridge an hour or so later. It was old and weathered, with huge stone pilings jutting from the
river. But there was a problem: one of the metal arches had collapsed into the water, leaving a gaping chasm of about twenty feet. Gusts of hot wind keened and whistled through the twisted metal.

And then came an even stranger sound. Peals of laughter. From Cat.

“What's so funny?” I demanded.

He wobbled on the parched earth and gestured with his stump in the direction of the broken bridge. “This.” As he collapsed into a fit of giggles, I felt my body stiffen. “We were safely in the other territory.
In the Heartland!
Now we can't get to Liberty and we won't make it back to the other side. Face it, Book. We're beat. We never shoulda left the other territory.”

I gave Cat a hard shove. Because of his drunken state, he fell to the ground, and one of the bottles in his backpack broke, flooding the dirt with brown liquid. I jumped on top of him and began pummeling him with angry punches. It was the rainy infield back at Camp Liberty all over again—the day Cat had first told me I was a Less Than. The difference now was that I knew how to hit . . . and he was half drunk and only had one arm.

When I'd had enough, I threw myself off. Flush, Twitch, and Four Fingers stood to one side.

“Done so soon?” Cat asked. He spat out a mouthful of blood and maybe a tooth. “Why not finish me off?”

“If I had any sense, I would,” I said.

“What's stopping you? I've only got one arm. I can't fight back.”

“That's where you're wrong.”

“Uh, in case you didn't notice . . .” He held up his bandaged stump. The gauze was black with dried blood and dirt.

“You're missing
part
of an arm,” I said. “That doesn't mean you have to roll over and die.”

“I'm not—”

“You
are
. You've given up. The old Cat—the Cat who shot the propane tank to save us from the Hunters—he would've fought back. He wouldn't be drinking himself to death. But you . . .” I shook my head. “You're nothing like the old Cat. You're nothing at all.”

“If I was sober, I could take you.”

“Fine! Take me! Fight back! Just
do
something!”

For the longest time, Cat didn't respond. No one did. Finally, Cat stared at his stump as if noticing it for the first time. “And what do I do about this?”

I pointed at my short leg, at Four Fingers's hands, at Twitch's bandaged eyes. “The same thing all of us do. Adapt. Get used to it.”

I pushed myself from the ground and walked away. I didn't want anything to do with him.

Flush and Twitch came up with an idea. If there was a twenty-foot gap across the bridge, then we needed a
thirty-foot span, and there were plenty of logs in the forest that would do the trick.

But there was a problem.

“How're we going to
move
it?” I asked. “I mean, it could weigh a ton.” I didn't bother to state the obvious. Twitch was blind. Cat was passed out.

“Slide logs,” Twitch said. While he spoke, Flush sketched a diagram in the dirt. “We place the tree on five small logs and then roll the tree forward. When we uncover the last log, we move it to the front so it becomes the lead log. We just keep rotating them.”

I gave them both a glance. “Where'd you learn this?”

“It's Flush's idea.” He angled his head in the direction of his friend.

Flush beamed. “And I got it from one of Twitch's science magazines. An article about the pyramids.”

“You really think we can do this?”

“Do we have a choice?”

We found an old log that looked to be about thirty feet long, then cut and shaped the slide logs to go under it. The sun beat down on us, and our bodies glistened with sweat. Cat remained passed out in a bed of ferns.

Every so often I heard a rustling from the trees, but when I looked—hoping to catch some glimpse of Hope stepping through the woods—it was nothing more than a ground squirrel, curious to see what we were up to.

When we finally had the pieces in place and gave the thirty-foot log a push, nothing happened. Not on the first try or the second or the third.

Flush walked over to Cat and gave him a kick. “Come on. You're helping us.”

Cat held up his stump. “I've only got one arm.”

“One arm is all you need.”

Cat growled and stumbled to his feet. This time, when we all leaned into it, the log moved. Just an inch or two, but still.

Flush and Twitch were beaming with pride. Four Fingers was giggling like a child. And when I looked behind me, there was Cat, his good shoulder pressed against the log's end. His heart might not have been in it, but his muscles were.

We rolled that tree all day and much of the night, rotating the slide logs, not stopping until we reached the bridge's gap. The next afternoon, Flush created a pulley system from the bridge's arches. We helped him raise the log one inch at a time, and when it was high enough, we rocked it forward and back like a pendulum. At just the right moment, Flush cut the rope and let the log fall . . . right across the missing span.

We cheered like crazy. Four Fingers was shouting, Twitch and I were screaming, Flush did a little dance, and Argos howled and howled. Only Cat was silent, chugging long swigs of his amber-tinted liquid.

After all that, shimmying to the other side was a piece of cake. Even Argos trotted across like it was the easiest thing in the world.

The train tracks led us to the middle of an enormous cornfield—the largest cultivated field we'd ever encountered. We harvested some ears, stripping off the husks and eating the corn raw. The kernels were crunchy and sweet and exploded in our mouths.

A flash of movement at the far end of the row caught my eye.

“Did you see that?” I asked.

“Probably just a fox,” Flush replied, far more concerned about food than about some wild animal.

A moment later, I caught another glimpse. “How about that?”

Flush just kept on eating.

But when we heard the rustling of leaves, we tossed the corn to the ground and fumbled for weapons. I aimed my arrow first in one direction, then another. Argos growled.

“Looking for someone?”

The voice whipped me around, and I nearly released the bowstring before I saw who it was.

Hope. It was Hope. She stood in the middle of a row of corn, spear in hand. Black hair framed her face. Her eyes sparkled with sunshine. I'd never been so happy to see her in my life. At her side were Diana and Scylla.
Flush and I lowered our weapons.

“You're here,” I said. After all the hours I'd spent thinking of her, those were the first words I could think of to say. “I thought you were going to stay with the others.”

Hope shared a look with her two friends. “I had this crazy idea we should join you. Besides, Helen's got it under control.”

“So . . . does this mean you're going with us to Liberty?”

“We're here, aren't we?”

Just like that, Flush was screaming in my ear. “You hear that? They're going with us! They're going to help us free the LTs.”

He began whooping and hollering and did another little dance, and that made Four Fingers whoop and holler and Argos bark, and even Diana and Scylla got in on the act, exchanging high fives with each of the guys. Only Cat, Hope, and I didn't join in the celebration.

I wondered what it was that had changed Hope's mind, and I felt this overwhelming urge to thank her: not just for putting her life on the line for a bunch of Less Thans she didn't even know, but for something else, too. For trusting me. For
forgiving
me. There were suddenly so many things I wanted to say to her.

But I didn't get the chance.

When the dart went whistling by our ears, all of us
turned, first at the weapon embedded in the cornstalk, then in the direction it had come from. At the far end of the row were maybe two dozen men, their clothing torn and ragged. Some were bare-chested. All wore helmets made of large animal skulls.

The men were muscled and sinewy, and streaks of brightly colored paint adorned their pale cheeks, giving their faces a devilish appearance. They grunted and made sharp yapping noises, pawing at the earth like animals ready to strike, their hands gripping bows and arrows, spears and atlatls.

One look told us who they were: Skull People. We turned and ran.

We went tearing through the field, arms slapping cornstalks, cornstalks slapping faces, arrows and darts whispering past our heads.

“No straight lines!” Hope yelled, and we dodged in and out of rows, taking turns guiding Twitch. My ears pounded with the thumping of my heart . . . and another sound, too: war cries. They were high-pitched and strangled—relentless, terrifying screams.

Before us was the end of the field, the edge of the bluff, the railroad bridge that would take us back across the river. All we had to do was get there first.

We were breathing heavily. Four Fingers was beginning to drag. Flush grabbed the back of his shirt and yelled, “Almost there, Four! No stopping now!”

“No . . . stopping,” Four Fingers gasped, badly out of breath.

I could hear the footsteps gaining on us. The Skull People were fast, shrieking and screaming like a pack of rabid dogs.

Hope cleared the field first, emerging into bright sunshine. The rest of us were right behind her. Far below us was the swift, muddy river. To fall those hundreds of feet would be an instant death. The bridge was our salvation. It would lead us to safety.

Hope half ran, half tiptoed across the ties, and I was nearly to the bridge when I snuck a glance behind me. The Skull People were emerging from the field, and I could smell them now: a thick, musky scent like livestock sweat. One of the men raised his arm, and they all came to a sudden stop.

That's when I realized: They were going to let us go. They weren't going to chase us. As long as we got to the other side of the river—and
stayed there—
they weren't going to bother us. My heart lifted.

I was about to share this good news when I saw that Hope had stopped. Diana and Scylla, too. Right in the middle of the bridge!

“Keep going!” I yelled. “We've gotta get to the other side!”

But Hope turned and gave her head a simple shake. A moment later I realized why. The log we'd worked so
hard to put in place was nowhere to be seen. Once the Sisters had come across it, someone had pushed it to the roiling waters below.

The Skull People weren't letting us go. They were corralling us. They were closing in for the kill.