The Capture (22 page)

H
OPE WENT FIRST.
W
ITH
one end of the makeshift rope strapped around her waist, she stepped into the pummeling rain and began pulling herself up. Diana followed, the rope connecting her to Hope.

A fresh burst of gunfire exploded from the tunnel.

“What're they shooting at?” Flush asked. “There's no one there.”

“They're trying to get us to fire back,” I said. “To pinpoint our location.”

My eyes met Scylla's. “Here. Take my knapsack and help the others.” I dropped the canvas bag at her feet, grabbing a bow and a quiver full of arrows.

“Wait,” Flush said. “Where're you going?”

I didn't answer. Darkness embraced me as I picked
my way back up the tunnel. Every so often a spurt of gunfire stopped me in my tracks. I let the sound echo away before moving on.

The Crazies' rank smell wafted in my direction like an animal's sour breath. I had to breathe through my mouth just so I wouldn't gag. And then I realized that if they were close enough for me to smell them, they were close enough for me to attack them.

I lowered myself behind a boulder and lined up three arrows in front of me. I fixed the first one to the string and drew back until the fletching tickled my cheek.

Breathe
, I told myself, just as Frank had instructed us way back when.
Breathe and hold.

Footsteps grew louder, and then the Crazies' shadows wavered on the walls like giants. It looked like there were a dozen of them. More than I'd expected.

I released the bowstring, and the arrow sliced through air. There was a muffled thud as a body fell to the ground.

“What the hell, Bobby!” one of the Crazies shouted. I recognized the voice: Goodman Nellitch. Our prosecutor.

When he saw the arrow sticking from his friend's chest, the gunfire started. It splattered the rock and ricocheted off the walls. Once the volley ceased, I released two more arrows. One hit a Crazy in the thigh; the other sailed wide.

Then I was on the move, rounding a bend so I was
out of the line of fire. I hid behind a boulder and lined up three more arrows.

The Crazies' confused shouts bounced off the limestone walls. By the time they rounded the bend, their torches showed them perfectly.

My first arrow went through the lead man's neck, the second into another's abdomen, the third into a Crazy's arm. I went racing away before gunfire erupted.

I was breathing heavily now, and my assailants had grown strangely quiet. They'd extinguished their torches and were tiptoeing forward. I could no longer see or hear them. We were all blind together.

As I waited, existing in a world of black, I prayed my friends had made it safely out of the tunnel and were making their way up the cliff.

H
OPE TREMBLES.
W
HETHER FROM
the ice-cold rain or straining to climb a sheer limestone wall, she can't say. Her arms and legs are shaking uncontrollably, her fingers bleed from clinging to the cliff.

The others are beneath her, connected by their rope of shirts. Each time she hears a clatter of stones, her body tenses. Although the rope strains from time to time, no one has lost their grip and plummeted to the river below.

Not yet.

Thunder rumbles, making the rocks vibrate beneath her hands. She worries about Book. The last lightning flash showed only six others beneath her. So where is he? Why hasn't he joined them? If he doesn't get here soon, he won't be able to reach the rope. He'll be completely on his own.

But why should she care if he makes it or not? First he lied to her about the infirmary, then he abandoned her for Miranda. What's it to her if he's able to join the group or not?

But just when she's convinced herself she doesn't care, she hears a burst of gunfire. She doesn't know which is worse: the sound of bullets or the silence that follows. Both make her heart shudder.

The rope has gone slack, meaning the others are caught up, even Cat, who is climbing one-handed with the rope secured tightly around his chest. Scylla has Argos draped around her neck. Diana is helping Four Fingers. Flush is guiding Twitch.

Hope shakes the rain from her face and fumbles for the next handhold, her arms and legs a series of right angles. She takes a deep breath and shifts her weight. This is how it will go, one small lizard-movement at a time, until they manage to reach the plateau—thirty to forty feet above her.

A snake's tongue of lightning strikes the opposite cliff, and she counts seven bodies beneath her. Seven! Her heart swells with hope—Book made it out! But as the lightning fades and the world is plunged back to darkness, she realizes that seventh form is just the trunk of a scrub pine jutting from the cliff. Not a person at all.

Come on, Book,
she silently prays.
You can do it. You can make it.

S
ILENCE.
T
HE ONLY SOUNDS
were the distant drip of water and my heart hammering against my chest.

Suddenly, the cave exploded in a flurry of gunfire and orange muzzle spits. When the bullets finally ceased and the last ricochet echoed off the narrow walls, I opened my eyes. It was as black and dark as before. My ears were ringing, but I'd survived. They hadn't gotten me, not yet.

I pulled back an arrow and stopped when I heard . . . someone's slow, steady inhalation. It wasn't just the sound that alarmed me, but where it came from: mere yards away.

So
that
was the tactic: fire at will to cover the sound of others drawing close. A high-stakes game of Red Light, Green Light. And it had worked. I was surrounded. If I
took off down the tunnel, I'd run smack-dab into them.

I could stay hidden and let them pass, but then the Crazies would reach the end of the tunnel, see my friends clinging to the cliff face, and swat them down like flies.

There was no good solution.

As they walked by, I counted seven of them. They passed, and I exchanged my bow and arrow for my knife. My body unfurled to its full height and I inched forward. When I reached the trailing Crazy, my knife came whipping around his head, licking his neck.

“He's here!” he yelled, and the cave exploded in rifle fire.

I tucked myself behind him, his body rippling with every bullet he accepted. He was my shield—my only chance for survival.

“Hold your fire!” one of the Crazies called out, and the bullets stopped, the echoes faded. “Someone light a torch.”

As I listened to the scraping of flint and steel, my heart raced. Once there was light, all bets were off. The Crazies would see me and that would be that. Whatever I did, I had to do it before the torch was lit.

I lowered the Crazy's lifeless body to the ground, fumbled for a rock, then threw it down the tunnel in the direction of the Wheel. It clattered off the walls. Gunfire followed it.

“He went back that way!” one of the Crazies said, and
they ran off, shooting as they went.

The Crazy with the torch remained where he was, working on the flame. I picked up my bow, nocking an arrow in darkness.

I could hear his hands fumbling with flint and steel, then the silent
whoosh
of flame as the torch caught and an orange oval of light illuminated the two of us. For the briefest of moments we locked gazes . . . and then I released the bowstring.

The arrow embedded itself in his abdomen, and his knees buckled. Before he dropped to the ground, I ripped the torch from his hand and took off running, scrambling down the passageway. Gunfire chased after me.

My guess was there were five left, and although I could outrace them to the tunnel's mouth, that wasn't good enough. Somehow I had to finish them off.

My feet slipped on loose gravel, and the ground went out from under me. I fell to the stone floor, the torch rolling to one side. It gave me an idea.

I left it there and dashed ten paces in the direction of the Wheel—
toward
the Crazies. I was now between them and the flame. I concealed myself behind a rock and readied two arrows.

The first Crazy rounded a far curve, his eyes focused on the torch's glow. He didn't expect me to be so close, and when I released the arrow, he fell to the ground with a muffled cry of surprise. My second arrow did
the same to the next. I grabbed the torch and took off.

Only three Crazies were left!

Two hundreds yards later I did it again, taking down two more. That left just one. And if I wasn't mistaken, it was none other than Goodman Nellitch.

But there was a problem. The yawning black mouth of the tunnel's end was right behind me. I had run out of room. I extinguished the torch, dropped to one knee, and picked up a rock. This had to work.

It took every ounce of willpower to be patient. When Nellitch crept around a bend, I cocked my arm and hurled the rock forward. It sailed wide, clattering down the tunnel. I threw again and had the same result. Nothing.

Goodman Nellitch laughed. “Looks to me like someone's out of arrows. To which all I can say is: Sucks to be you.”

He laughed and raised his body to its full height, and by then I'd nocked an arrow—my final one—and sent it flying. It landed hard in his chest, and Goodman Nellitch fell to the ground with a thud.

“Guess I had one left after all,” I said. He was gasping for his last breath.

With trembling legs, I rose and stepped to the tunnel's edge. I had done it, I had taken out the enemy, and I enjoyed the moment. The cold, hard rain slapped my face, and I stared into the dark. Only when a jagged shaft of lightning split the sky could I see.

Far above me, mere ants against the rock face, were the seven others. I breathed a sigh of relief. I had delayed the Crazies long enough to let the others scale the cliff. But my friends were so far ahead of me, there was no way I could reach the rope. I'd have to do this on my own.

I began to climb. The eroding rain had sent stones plunging to the dark abyss, and I had to create new hand- and toeholds altogether. My fingers dislodged a rock and my hand flailed, grasping for something to hold on to as my body fell backward into air. Only at the last moment did my fingers squeeze into a tiny crevice and pull me toward the cliff. My heart was pounding so hard, it seemed to shake the mountainside itself.

The rain was coming down harder now, and the others were farther away than ever. How could I possibly do this on my own?

A stroke of lightning strobed the night, and a grunt of sound made me look downward. I nearly lost my breath—there was Goodman Nellitch, directly beneath me. Somehow he was still alive, the stub of my arrow poking from his chest. His shirt was red with blood, and he had a wild look in his eyes.

“Not dead yet, boy,” he said, and grinned.

I needed to get up the cliff face as quickly as possible.

But when I went to move my foot, it wouldn't budge. It was somehow stuck in place. Even when I jerked and
swiveled, there was no give whatsoever.

Goodman Nellitch's pudgy fingers were gripped tightly around my ankle. Rain dripped from his beard, and he seemed hardly aware of the chunk of arrow sprouting from his body. Lightning flashes showed his eyes, squinty and hard. He wasn't going to stop until he pulled me from the cliff . . . even if it meant plunging to his own death as well.

“Not so smart now, are you,
Less Than
?” he screamed, his harsh, guttural voice slicing through rain and wind.

And he was right. There was nothing I could do. I kicked and jerked my foot, but he wouldn't let go. He had me and both of us knew it. He gave a hard tug, and my foot came flying free. I was now holding on by two hands and one toehold. These were my final moments.

Nellitch laughed uproariously. “Didn't know you could do the split, did you, boy?”

Something brushed my face, and I blinked. I wanted to wipe it away, but I didn't have a free hand. Below me, the demonic sound of Goodman Nellitch's crazed laughter bounced off the canyon walls. I couldn't hold on much longer.

My face was hit a second time and I looked up. It was the rope of tied-together shirts, snaking over the edge of the cliff. My friends had made it to the top and were throwing down a lifeline.

But there was no way to grab it. Once I released
a hand, the two of us would go spiraling through air until we smacked into the river. Death would be instantaneous.

The rope was there. The Less Thans were counting on me. Nellitch was getting ready to pry my other foot from the cliff. I'd get no second chance.

This is the night

That either makes me or fordoes me quite.

Lines of Shakespeare, tugging at my thoughts. Now or never. Do or die.

My right hand slipped from the rock, and for the long forever of that moment I felt my body falling backward, felt it leave its vertical and bend toward horizontal. Felt my stomach rush upward to my throat as terror gripped my chest.

I thrust out my right hand, slapping air, waving at nothing, until—finally—it collided with the dangling shirt. I clutched it hard and my left hand joined it. Even as I was falling backward, I snapped the rope around my wrist in a hasty knot. The rope jerked to its full length, nearly yanking my shoulder from its socket.

Nellitch was pulled away from the cliff, hanging on to my ankle with his hands. I was supporting the two of us, dangling hundreds of feet above the river. Laughing maniacally, he swung drunkenly from one side to the
next, pushing off against the rock like an insane rappeller, the shaft of the arrow jutting from his chest.

The rope was weak to begin with—it was just a bunch of shirts knotted together, after all—and the rain had loosened it further. I could feel it stretch even as we hung there. Somewhere up above a knot was slipping.

“No point fightin' it, Less Than,” Nellitch called out. “Time for us to meet our maker.” He guffawed loudly.

He was right: I couldn't fight it. The weight was too much. My arm muscles were giving out.

In this final moment of living, I was consumed with a sudden urgency—there was something I needed to know.

“Why'd you do it?” I shouted, my voice fighting the rain.

“Do what?”

“Sell out the Skull People?”

He laughed a barking laugh. “Don't you know nothin', boy? After the Conclave happens, I want to be on the winning side.”

I realized I never would find out what he was talking about. I could hold on a little longer, but what was the point? Why bother to extend my life an extra thirty seconds if this
was what it came down to?

Then I thought of those Less Thans back at camp—the ones who'd be stuffed in a bunker on their seventeenth
birthdays and sold off to the Hunters and hunted down like prey—and I did the only thing I could possibly do. Using my one free leg, I brought my boot down on Nellitch's hands and squeezed my feet together, pinching his fingers. He just laughed.

“No gettin' rid of me that easy, boy!” he shouted, having the time of his life.

The rope jerked downward. The knots were slipping, the fabric tearing.

It was at that moment that Hope's face appeared before me: black hair framing tea-colored skin, her brown eyes wide and mysterious. I remembered all we'd gone through: How I'd held her after the cave-in. How we'd kissed after the fire. How we'd caught the train and made the jump to freedom.

I was suddenly consumed with a new feeling. Not a fear of dying or even a desperation to live, but
anger
. Pure, raw anger, building inside me like floodwaters straining against a dam. How dare this crazed human being deprive me of my life?
Deprive me of Hope?

I began kicking at his hands, at his thick, grasping fingers, one blow after another, my boot jerking and digging at his fingers. Even as he strained to hold on, I found some reserve of energy I didn't know I had, pummeling, kicking, jabbing with the toe of my boot until, finally, one of his hands slipped free.

When it was obvious he couldn't hold on, he looked
at me and hissed, “You Less Than. You're not even a normal human being.”

Then his other hand let go. He hovered in midair an insanely long time as though some invisible god—or
devil
—was holding him in place, and then he plunged through night and rain, disappearing from sight.

Was it my imagination or could I hear the splash as he collided with the water?

“That's right,” I answered to the dark. “I am a Less Than. And don't you ever forget it.”