The Prey (2 page)

Hope dragged her sister to a hollow log and there they stayed for two whole days. When their father returned from a hunting trip, the three of them took off, not even daring to return home to bury their mother or pack supplies. They feared the Republic's soldiers were staking out the house.

That was ten years ago. They've been on the run ever since, rifling through abandoned houses, living in trees and caves. They even spent one winter in a grizzly's den, praying the bear wouldn't return.

Out of necessity, Hope has grown more tomboyish
with each passing day, learning how to start fires, how best to throw a spear. Her only vanity is her hair, which is black and long and silky—resembling her mother's. A way of honoring her fallen parent.

“One thing,” her father says. “You have a choice to make.”

Hope stares down at him. What's he talking about? “All we've been doing these last ten years is making choices,” she says.

“This one's different.” His voice is a raspy whisper. “There's a reason the government's after us.”

“Yeah, because you didn't sign the loyalty oath.”

He gives his head a shake. “That's just part of it.”

What is he about to tell her? And why does she feel a sudden dread?

“Go on,” she says.

“You're twins.”

Hope sighs in relief. “Gee, I had no idea.”

He continues, “And the government wants twins.”

Hope cocks her head. Where's her father going with this? Is he delirious with fever or is this for real? “I don't get it. What's so special about twins?”

He grimaces. “You have a choice to make. Either stay together . . . which means you'll be hunted the rest of your life . . .”

“Or what?” she dares to ask. She realizes she has ceased to breathe.

“Or separate.”

His words are like a thunderclap.
Separate?
It's true, Faith can be irritatingly slow and often holds them up. But separate? The thought has never crossed her mind.

She peers toward the cave's interior; Faith is wringing water from the rag. Her skeletal silhouette looks ghostlike. Draped around her shoulders is their mother's pink shawl. It's tattered and torn, singed from fire.

“Why would we do that?” Hope asks her father. “Faith wouldn't last a day.”

“If they catch you . . . neither of you will.”

Hope wants desperately to find out what on earth he's talking about—but at that moment Faith returns. She places the damp cloth on her father's forehead. His eyes close and he's asleep within seconds.

“What was he saying?” Faith asks.

“Nothing,” Hope answers a little too quickly. “Just nonsense. Fever and all.”

Hope crawls back to the cave's entrance, staring into the dark through a curtain of dripping snowmelt. Her father's words bounce around her head.
Separate from Faith? Abandon her?
What an absurd idea.

As the black night presses against her, Hope can only pray it's a decision she'll never have to make.

I
TYPED UP MY
report using one of the camp's bulky typewriters. Although we'd heard of cell phones and computers and something called the internet, all that was fried by the electromagnetic pulse that accompanied the bombs.

Omega, they called that day. The end of the end.

One enormous burst of electromagnetic radiation and everything that was even remotely electronic was fried to a crisp. Computers became the stuff of legend. Most cars were no longer drivable. And although I'd read about them, I'd never seen an airplane in the sky. And figured I never would.

Not that Camp Liberty was without luxuries. Every Friday night we gathered in the mess hall to watch
movies, the film projector powered by the camp's generators. The problem was, only a handful of movies survived, all oldies, and so we saw the same ten films all year, every year.
Stagecoach
,
Shane
,
To Kill a Mockingbird
, that kind of thing.

I stripped the paper from the typewriter's roller. For obvious reasons, I neglected to mention the boy's whispered message. I walked the report over to Major Karsten's office and left it with Sergeant Dekker.

“Slice slice,” he said with a sneer, enjoying the in-joke that—thankfully—only a couple of us understood.

My face burned and I got out of there as fast as I could.

Days passed. Rumors flew. Some claimed the boy in the black T-shirt was a convict on the run. Others said he was no outlaw, merely an LT from an adjoining territory.

What I couldn't figure out was why he was in the middle of the No Water in the first place, on the outskirts of an orphanage.

That's what Camp Liberty was, although in official Republic jargon it was called a “resettlement camp.” There were several hundred of us, all guys, most with birth defects brought on by Omega's radiation. Those toxic clouds remained floating above the earth like Christmas ribbon encircling a present, just waiting for someone to tighten the bow.

Our poor mothers had been doused with so many gamma rays or alpha particles or whatever it was, that they brought us into the world with one too many fingers or one too few or shriveled arms. Or, in my case, one leg shorter than the other. And then they died shortly after giving birth.

It was never clear how it all began. Some say a group of no-goods on the other side of the planet got hold of weapons of the nuclear kind. Others claim our own allies were to blame, attacking countries who then counterattacked. However it started, a dozen nations ended up shooting off nuclear warheads like it was the Fourth of July, until every major city in the world was obliterated. Utterly wiped out.

Of course, since all this took place a good twenty years ago, we had to rely on what the soldiers told us. Which wasn't always accurate.

It was the other camps I wondered about. They had to be out there, right? There were rumors, of course—grisly tales of torture and atrocities—but who really knew what was true and what was made up.

“John L-183?” A Brown Shirt was standing by my table in the mess hall.

“Yeah?”

“The colonel wants to see you.”

My fork lowered. Whenever Colonel Westbrook asked to see an LT, it usually meant one thing: punishment.
Was it the false report? Had the colonel somehow figured out the boy had told me more than I let on?

“Maybe you're going through the Rite early,” Flush suggested. I shook away the notion. No one graduated until they were seventeen. I still had another year.

“That'll teach you to read so many books,” Dozer said, snorting. He was a barrel-chested LT who could
never
be accused of reading books.

The acne-scarred soldier waited for me to get up. Like all the soldiers in camp, he wore a uniform of black jackboots, dark pants, and a brown shirt. That's why we called them Brown Shirts. We were clever that way.

I left the mess hall feeling like I was headed to my execution. Sunlight blinded me as we crossed the camp's infield. Above us, the flag atop the pole cracked in the wind like a whip.
Snap. Snap
.

We approached the headquarters, an ancient, rotting log building that sat in the middle of camp like a festering sore. An older Brown Shirt sat hunched over a sheaf of papers, a sweaty sheen covering his face.

Three straight-backed chairs lined the wall. To my surprise, one of them was occupied. It was the boy from the No Water.

Even though I'd helped save the guy's life, he didn't offer a word of thanks. Didn't even acknowledge my presence.

The door to an inner office opened and out stepped
Colonel Westbrook. He was of medium height with an unimposing face, his dark brown hair styled in a kind of comb-over across his skull. Like all the officers, he wore a dark badge on his left sleeve. It sported the Republic's symbol: three inverted triangles.

I must've seen the colonel a thousand times, but never up close. For the first time I noticed the blackness of his eyes. There was not a bit of color in them at all. My heart was in my throat as I followed him to his office.

There were two others in the room as well. Sergeant Dekker, wearing his customary smirk beneath his oily hair, and Major Karsten, sitting ramrod straight by the window. Perspiration trickled down my side.

Westbrook's eyes focused on a manila folder opened before him. His finger traced one line of information after another. “You're John L-183,” he said at last. “The one they call Book, yes?” He said my name as though it was something unpleasant tasting.

“That's right.”

“Nothing to be ashamed of. We need more scholars. They're the future of the Republic.” His tracing finger halted, and I knew exactly where he'd gotten to in my life history. Blood rushed to my face.

“Liberty has a new member,” he said, his coal-black eyes boring into me. “We want you to show him around. Any problem with that?”

“Um, no, sir.”

“Get him situated. The sooner he's one of us, the better for all concerned.”

“Yes, sir,” I said, relieved. This wasn't a punishment after all.

“And, Book?” Colonel Westbrook leaned in, his fingers splayed on the desk like talons. “See what you can find out. Where's he from? He's got no marker and we don't know much about him. After all, if he's in need of help we have to know what he's been through. You can understand that, can't you?” A pointed reference to my own past.

“Yes, sir,” I said. “But I don't want to rat on people.”

“It wouldn't be ratting. It'd be
informing
.” He smiled grimly. “It's very simple, Book. You help us, we help you. And who knows? A year from now, when you go through the Rite, we might look into making you an officer.”

Put that way, it didn't seem so bad. And it was true: I did know a thing or two about secrets. “Okay,” I said.

“It's settled then. I'll have Major Karsten check in with you from time to time.”

I looked up at the major. The scar that edged from his eyebrow to his chin seemed to pulse like a living, breathing thing.

I couldn't get out the door fast enough.

H
OPE KNOWS HE
'
S DEAD
the moment she returns from watch. Faith is tucked into the curve of their father's body, her tears soaking his shirt.

Hope places her fingers against the crook of his neck. Cold to the touch. No hint of a pulse. It hits her like a punch to the gut.

“Come on,” she says, pulling her sister off.

“We have to bury him,” Faith says, eyes red.

“I know.”

“How're we going to do that? We don't have a shovel.”

“We'll think of something.”

“But what? We can't leave him like this.”

“I know that . . .”

Faith is screaming now. “We have to do something!
What're we gonna do?”

Hope slaps her sister hard across the face, regretting it instantly. Faith's head snaps to one side, the red imprint of Hope's fingers tattooing her face.

“I'll take care of it,” Hope says, finding a reason to look away. “We'll cover him with rocks. That way the animals can't get him.”

“Is that a proper way to bury someone?” Faith whispers.

“Proper enough. You go take watch. I'll do this.”

Faith drags herself to the cave's entrance, running the back of her hand across her runny nose. Hope feels a stab of guilt for the way she treated her.
Still, someone has to be the strong one,
she tells herself.

The first thing she does is retrieve her father's few belongings. A knife. A leather belt. Flint from his front pocket. It feels like an invasion, going through his clothes, but she has to do it. Flint means fire. A knife means survival.

There's something else there, too. A small, gold locket, attached to a thin, tarnished chain. As soon as Hope's eyes fall on it, she has a distant memory of it dangling from her mother's neck. And when she undoes the clasp and opens it, she knows what she will see before she sees it.

Two miniature oval photographs. One of her father, one of her mother. From younger days. How innocent
they look. And happy. Now encased in a locket's tomb, facing each other for all eternity. No wonder he carried it with him all these years.

She slips it into her pocket.

The process of dragging rocks is tedious, and she carefully places them atop her father's body as though—even in death—he can feel the weight. Faith weeps steadily by the cave's entrance. Hope's eyes are as dry as sand. There is no time for tears. Her father taught her that.

Live today, tears tomorrow.

Hope has crossed her father's hands atop his chest when she notices the curled, clenched fingers of his right hand. They are stiff with death and it's no small struggle to straighten them. More surprising than the effort itself is what she discovers within his gnarled grip.

A small, crumpled slip of paper.

Hope tugs the paper free from her father's hand. She sees one word written there, scrawled in charcoal.

Separate.

Hope shakes her head and crumples the note back up.

When she finishes the burial mound, both girls gather by the body. They have never been to a funeral before. Or a wedding. Nothing.

In lieu of a prayer, Faith says, “I heard what he told
you. About separating.”

Hope tries to hide her surprise. “He was delirious,” she says. “Out of his head with fever. I'm not thinking of it if that's what you're asking.”

“I'm not.” Their eyes run up and down the grave of rocks. “But I think we should.”

“You think we
should
? Separate?”

Faith nods. “If he was right about that twins stuff, it sounds like you'd”—she pauses to correct herself—“
we'd
have a better chance on our own.”

“Faith, you wouldn't last a day out there. No offense.”