The Capture (3 page)

T
HE AIR IS MOIST
and heavy, and Hope's breath frosts with each exhalation.

Cat's does too, as he walks beside her.

They glide through the damp, dark woods, easing around trees, stepping over stones, hurrying away from camp—the pale light of the moon their only illumination. Hope's heart beats with a kind of feverish anticipation, and every so often Cat's arm brushes against her own. A cadence of crickets accompanies their every step.

They're not more than a mile from camp when they hear the creak of a branch. The sound is unmistakable, and they freeze. Something's out there.

Some
one
is out there.

Cat doesn't need to motion her to stay silent; she knows the drill. She was brought up in the woods. She and her dad and Faith were on the run for ten years. She knows what it is to go from hunter to prey.

As Cat reaches into his quiver and nocks an arrow, Hope readies the grip on her spear and finds the balance point. They stand there, poised to strike, their breathing shallow. There are footsteps now, scuffing through twigs and leaves. The snap of a stick.

“Don't move!” Hope shouts.

The figure stops in place.

Hope and Cat approach from different sides, weapons poised, ready to cast their spear and arrow. The lone figure stands there, hands raised.

It's Book.

“What the hell,” Hope says, and Cat rolls his eyes. They each release their grip on their weapons. “You coulda gotten yourself killed.”

“I didn't know it was dangerous to follow your friends,” Book says.

“It is if it's the middle of the night and your friends don't know you're following them.”

Book doesn't respond, and Hope realizes he's waiting for an explanation. She has no intention of giving one.

Cat's gaze shifts uncomfortably between the two. He slips the arrow back into the quiver and lowers his bow.

“See you back at camp,” he mutters, disappearing
into the woods, swallowed by the black. Hope turns to Book.

“So you
are
stalking me!” she says.

“Not stalking. Following.”

“Forgive me for not seeing the difference.”

“The difference is you lied to me. The difference is you said you went to the woods alone.”

“That was last night, and who says I wasn't alone?”

“Were you?”

Hope averts her eyes. She wants to lie again . . . but she can't. “No,” she says beneath her breath.

Book takes a step back as though he's been punched. “That's why I followed you—to see what you were up to.”

“And what'd you find out?”

“You tell me.”

Their eyes lock. Again, it seems that Book is expecting an explanation. Again, she doesn't give one.

“Look,” he says, “you can do whatever you like with whoever you want—”

“We weren't
doing
anything.”

“—but don't tell me one thing and do something else. Don't—”

He stops himself midsentence, but Hope knows exactly what he was going to say.
Don't kiss me one moment and then ignore me the next.

She wants to respond—wants to tell him
everything—but she doesn't know how, and before she knows it, the silence stretches to something long and awkward and painfully uncomfortable. When she does open her mouth to speak, she's interrupted by a sound—something mechanical. A growling engine.

Hope and Book immediately slip into hunter mode. They crouch low to the forest floor and bend their ears to the sound, determining direction, speed, object. Hope takes off first, Book right on her heels—two runners skirting the darkened landscape like ghosts.

Alder thickets slow them to a crawl, the thick brush tugging at their clothes. The sound grows louder, and suddenly it's doubled. Not just one engine, but two.

They reach the edge of the thicket and stop. A pair of headlights carves tiny holes in the dark, snaking around a bend. And from the other direction: another set of headlights. The vehicles are headed right for each other on the same small road. Even in the black night, it's possible to see the plumes of gravel that follow.

Hope realizes she hasn't seen actual cars outside camp since the day she and Faith were captured.

Faith. Which makes her think of Dad. And Mom.

She shakes her head and grips the spear. Her fingers shine white.

The two vehicles slow, then come to a grinding stop. Book and Hope share a grim look.

The headlights of each illuminate the other vehicle,
and Hope sees they're both Humvees. Pure military. Car doors open and slam, the hollow sound echoing toward them.

Feet crunch on gravel, and for the first time Hope can make out two figures walking toward each other. When they step forward and headlights wreathe their silhouettes, Hope gives an audible gasp. She recognizes those silhouettes—she'd know them anywhere. The woman with the ankle-length coat draped around her shoulders; the obese man waddling forward.

Chancellor Maddox and Dr. Gallingham.

They meet between their vehicles, too far away for Hope and Book to hear the conversation. Dr. Gallingham deposits a gleaming steel box on the ground. It's cubical in shape, and the metal glimmers in the light. He undoes a series of clasps, reaches into the bowels of the box, and removes . . . something. His body blocks Hope's view and she can't see. Whatever the object is, it makes an impression on Chancellor Maddox. Her beauty-queen smile flashes white, cutting through the dark like a sharp knife.

What could it possibly be?
Hope wonders, darkness clouding her thoughts.

Whatever the answer, Gallingham returns it to the bottom of the box, fastens and reattaches all the clasps, and presents the steel box itself to the chancellor like a Wise Man presenting frankincense or myrrh.

Chancellor Maddox takes it, walks back to her vehicle, and climbs inside. Both Humvees return in the direction from which they came, the sound of gravel crunching beneath the tires growing more and more faint until, at last, the night returns to silence.

W
E MADE OUR WAY
back without speaking. Although a part of me wanted to know where we stood . . . another part absolutely didn't. The woods slipped by without a word between us.

When we stepped into camp, we woke the others. Everyone moaned as they rubbed the sleep from their eyes, but once we told them what we'd seen, they woke up in a hurry. The Less Thans had had little contact with Chancellor Maddox, but we'd heard about her—our friend Frank in the mountains had told us she was a beauty queen turned congresswoman turned leader of the Western Federation. According to him, it was her idea to scrap the Constitution. Her idea to label us Less Thans.

As for Dr. Gallingham, once Hope mentioned his name, I swear I could see the blood draining from the Sisters' faces.

“What was it, Book?” Twitch asked. “What'd he give the chancellor?”

“We couldn't see. But you could tell from the way they handled it that it was valuable.”

People threw out guesses, but Hope and I just shrugged. We could only speculate like the rest.

“What do we do now?” Flush asked.

I could feel the others' stares directed toward me. After all, it had been my bright idea to cross back from the other side of the fence. If it hadn't been for me, we'd all be safe and sound in the Heartland. It was my job to get this group to Camp Liberty and back.

“We need to leave. Tonight.” A few people grumbled, but I kept going. “It's not safe being this close to a road. We've got enough food and weapons for a while, right?”

I gave a glance to those who'd been carving arrows and drying jerky, and they returned my look with unenthusiastic nods.

“All right,” I said. “Let's pack up and get out of here.”

People were just beginning to step away when four shadows drifted in my direction. Dozer, Red, and two of the Sisters: Angela and Lacey.

“What makes you think we can t-t-take on the
Brown Shirts?” Red asked, with his tendency to stutter. “They've got g-g-guns.”

The question startled me in its bluntness. We'd been here a whole week and there'd been no discussion like this at all. I got the feeling these four had been talking.

“Red's right,” Dozer said, and it was obvious he was the instigator. Dozer lived to stir up trouble. “And not just the Brown Shirts. How can we hope to fend off the Hunters with these?” He gestured to the primitive slingshots, the clumsy crossbows, the recently whittled arrows.

I understood his point. It took little effort to remember the armor plating on the Hunters' souped-up ATVs, the Kevlar vests, the M4s.

We had long ago made the decision to stick with what we knew: crossbows, spears, slingshots, bows and arrows. Not only were we proficient with those weapons, but they were quiet and light and allowed us a stealth that heavier automatic rifles wouldn't. Also, we could make our own ammunition for slingshots and bows and arrows. Not so with M4s.

“We don't need their weapons,” I said. “We didn't in the Brown Forest, and we don't now.”

Dozer took a bullying step toward me.

“Okay, then what I want to know is how're we gonna release those Less Thans. Even if we do make it to Liberty—which is doubtful—how're we gonna spring 'em?”

Everyone was quiet now. Even the crickets and frogs. I longed for Cat to back me up, but his eyes were fixed on the ground. I had no idea what was running through his mind.

“I don't have a strategy just yet,” I said.

Dozer's eyes widened in surprise. “No strategy at all? Great plan, Book
Worm
,” he scoffed. “That explains a lot.”

He looked around at the others. A couple of them obliged with laughter. I felt my face burning red.

“You agreed to go back to Liberty,” I said. “You didn't have to.”

“That's when I thought you had a plan. Now I know otherwise.”

“All I know is we have to do this.” Despite my efforts, I could feel my chest tightening.

“Oh we do, do we? And why is that?”

“Because it's the right thing.”

Dozer laughed. A loud, mocking laugh. “And killing us in the process? Is that the ‘right thing'?”

My fists clenched, and Dozer leaned forward until our noses were actually touching.

“Well?” he asked. I nearly gagged from his sour breath.

I turned to move away, but his meaty hand grabbed my shoulder and whipped me back around.
“Well?”
he asked again.

Although I wanted nothing more than to take a swipe at him, I knew I wouldn't stand a chance. Dozer was a big, barrel-chested guy with a thick neck, and even though one of his arms was slightly withered from radiation, he more than compensated with his other. If I attacked him, it'd only prove his point that I was reckless and not a real leader.

So I did nothing, said nothing, just turned and walked away. Behind me, I heard Dozer making clucking sounds.

There wasn't anything I could do about Dozer. I'd just have to live with the situation—and him.

We marched through the night and into the morning, as the sun chased away the stars and made invisible the moon. There was little conversation, and Hope and I kept more distance between us than ever. She didn't want to talk to me, and I had no desire to talk to her.

But it hurt to lose her. Cat, too. Ever since I'd snuck up on them, he'd avoided looking at me. I felt betrayed, as though someone had taken a shot to my gut and I hadn't seen it coming.

I tried to focus on other things. Like what on earth had we witnessed between Dr. Gallingham and Chancellor Maddox? What was so precious that it had to be exchanged in a secret meeting in the middle of the night? We were utterly exhausted by the time we set up
camp the next evening, but I was craving conversation. No, not just conversation:
companionship
. I needed a friend.

I found Twitch sitting cross-legged on the ground, his tall, gangly form folded in on itself. If there was ever a person who reminded me of a stork, it was Twitch.

He didn't seem to notice when I sat down next to him. His fingers gripped a stick as though it was a pencil, sketching a series of loops and lines and mathematical equations in the dirt.

“Oh, hey,” he said, when he finally saw me, his cheek rising and falling in a facial tic. Even though Omega happened a good four years before we were born, the radiation from the bombs had done a number on his central nervous system. Of course, at this point, his twitches were just a part of him. Like my limp. Or Four Fingers's missing finger.

“What do you think about our decision to return?” I asked. After last night's confrontation with Dozer, I couldn't help but feel that it was me versus everyone else. All the excitement we'd first experienced after crossing back from the fence seemed a thing of some distant past.

Twitch took a bite of squirrel jerky and chewed a moment. He was the kind of guy who liked to consider an issue fully before voicing an opinion—unlike his counterpart, Flush, who blurted out whatever popped
into his head at any given moment.

“On the one hand, Dozer's right,” he said. “It's the most foolish decision we've made.” His facial features jerked as he chewed.

“But?” I prompted.

He finished chewing and swallowed. “We need to rescue those Less Thans. And that trumps logic.”

Without meaning to, I sighed in relief. All day, I'd had the feeling I was waging an uphill battle against the others.

“Not that that means we'll succeed,” he added, and my happiness evaporated.

“You don't think we'll make it?”

“Are you kidding? We don't stand a chance.”

I looked at him in disbelief. “But you're willing to go along anyway?”

He shrugged. “No one else is going to rescue those Less Thans—might as well be us. And who wants to miss out on that?”

I loved Twitch for that—that he knew the odds were stacked against us but was willing to go along anyway.

I pointed to the drawings in the dirt. “What's all this?”

His eyes lit up. “Ever heard of a zip line?” When I gave my head a shake, he used the stick to walk me through the drawings, telling me how—in pre-Omega days—people used to stretch out long wires and ride them down mountains.
For fun.

“Where'd you hear this?”

“Read about it in some old science magazines.”

Figured. “So what're you saying?” I asked.

“The enemy's always coming at us from the ground, right? So I say we build our own zip line and attack them from the air.”

The point of his stick landed on a series of lines and semicircles, and he told me all about inertia and acceleration and other things I only partly understood. As he spoke, his facial tics decreased. It was as though the more passionate he became, the less his face twitched.

It seemed impossible, of course, finding the materials to build such a line, but I loved his enthusiasm. He would do his best to make this work, even though we had “no chance” of succeeding.

Now if I could only convince the rest of them.