The Prey (6 page)

As I tried to get back to sleep, I thought of what Cat had said as we descended the mountain.

Right under the Brown Shirts' noses.

Something else, too. The stuff about that dad and his daughters. I wondered where they were now—if they'd escaped the soldiers and made it to freedom. Wondered if I'd ever find out.

H
OPE NOTICES THE OTHER
girls seem oddly subdued. Repressed.
Haunted
, even.

The only thing that's clear is that Hope and Faith aren't the only sisters. In fact, as Hope looks around the mess hall at the hundred or so other girls, it seems as if the vast majority are related.

“What's with all the twins?” she asks the girl opposite her. She's tall with red hair and there's something in how the other girls look at her that makes Hope think she's in charge.

“You'll find out,” the girl says.

“You're not going to tell me?”

The girl's eyes narrow. “What's to tell? Everyone's experience is different.”

Grabbing her tray, the red-haired girl rises and rushes out. She's followed by another who has identical facial features but is shorter and more fragile-looking. This frailer version of Red Hair hesitates, seems about to say something, then changes her mind. Hope shrugs it off. Another unanswered question.

Roll call follows breakfast. On the grassy infield, the girls line up by barracks in perfect geometries of rows and columns. Colonel Thorason removes a sheet of paper from a binder and calls out a series of
Participants
. The girls cringe when their numbers are called. Once the announcement is complete, the Participants are met by the pudgy Dr. Gallingham and marched off.

Hope has no idea where they're being taken. It's all a nightmarish blur.

She's assigned to work in the barn; Faith is put on a cleaning crew. Milking cows and shoveling manure reminds Hope of when she used to help her father. Before they were on the run. Back in happier times. The barn is also outside camp, on the other side of the fence, which makes it feel that much closer to freedom.

When she returns to the barracks at the end of her shift, she is met by the same hostile glares.

“Don't bring that barn stink in here,” one of the girls says. “Latrine's in back.”

Hope grits her teeth. A number of other girls stand at
the metal trough. They grow quiet when Hope enters.

“Can I get in there?” Hope asks, motioning toward the running water.

She's so focused on scrubbing the dirt from her nails that when she turns around, she's surprised to see she's surrounded by a circle of girls, over ten of them.

Hope feels a stab of panic. While her instinct is to run, there's no possible way she'd make it to the door. Instead, she remembers her father's advice about not showing fear when facing wild beasts. And what wilder beasts are there than the girls of Barracks B?

Red Hair steps forward.

“Where'd you come from?”

“Out there,” Hope answers, shaking the water from her hands.

“All these years?”

“That's right.”

“No one could evade the Brown Shirts that long.”

Hope shrugs. “We did.”

Red Hair leans in until their noses are practically touching. Hope doesn't notice the girl behind her—not until she yanks Hope's arms back. Hope struggles but it's no good. The girl who has her arms is one giant slab of muscle.

“You better not be working for the Brown Shirts,” Red Hair says, sending a fist into Hope's stomach.

Hope's lungs collapse. Red Hair grabs Hope's chin
and hits her hard across the face. Pain explodes from Hope's jaw and she crumples to the cold cement floor, tasting the metallic tang of blood.

Through swollen eyes, Hope sees Red Hair bending over her.

“We were just fine until you came along,” she hisses. “And don't you forget it.”

The girls exit, leaving Hope bruised and bleeding on the latrine floor.

That night at dinner, the other prisoners seem slightly more talkative than before.

But there are two exceptions.

The stub of a girl who grabbed Hope's arms; her bowl cut of black hair frames a permanently grim expression. And the frail sister of Red Hair. She averts her eyes and doesn't look at Hope once.

One by one, the girls finish their meager rations and leave the mess hall. When the frail girl walks by, she drops something next to Hope's plate. A piece of fabric. Hope regards it warily. When she unfolds it, she discovers it's a head scarf. She fashions it atop her bald head, grateful for the covering.

Back in the barracks, it's as though Hope and Faith don't exist. The prisoners go about their routines without the slightest regard for them.

Everyone has climbed into their cots when they hear
a loud rattling sound: Brown Shirts stripping the chains from the door. A moment later, a girl appears, haloed by moonlight. Once she's inside, the door is shut, the chains and locks refastened.

With halting steps she shuffles forward, seemingly unaware of her surroundings. She speaks to no one.
Sees
no one. She has wet herself and the sharp aroma of urine fills the room.

Red Hair gets up, placing her hands on the girl's shoulders. “You're back here now, Diana. We'll take care of you.”

Diana, a tall, willowy girl with angular features and auburn hair, nods vacantly.

“You're safe now, Diana.”

“Safe?” Diana echoes.

Her voice is distant, otherworldly.

In the pale moonlight Hope can make out Diana's eyes. They are glazed and faraway, focused on some remote horizon. It's like seeing the shell of a person only—a human being without a soul.

Hope shudders.

Too many questions run through her mind.

What's going on here?
she wonders.
What kind of world are we in?

Later that night when she uses the latrine she notices a prisoner standing in the back hallway, leaning against the wall as if keeping watch.

Stranger still is the ticking sound she hears as she returns to bed—a metallic clink. As she drifts off to sleep, fingering her father's locket, she swears she can hear it in her dreams.

Clink. Clink. Clink.

T
HE NEXT MORNING
C
AT
was gone.

His bed was made, his trunk empty. There was a good deal of speculation about where he might have gone—abducted by Crazies, recruited by Brown Shirts—but no one could say for sure.

I was out on the field when Sergeant Dekker came marching over.

“The colonel wants to see you,” he said.

“Now?”

“
Right
now.”

For the second time in a week, I felt my stomach bottom out at the prospect of meeting Colonel Westbrook. With the eyes of every LT—every
Less Than
—on me, I followed the oily Sergeant Dekker to the headquarters.
Instead of being led inside, I was ushered into the back of a Humvee.

“Where am I go—”

“You'll see,” he answered, cutting me off.

Sweat trickled from my armpits as I sat waiting. Colonel Westbrook and Major Karsten emerged from the headquarters and climbed in the Humvee with me, neither saying a word. We took off. It wasn't until we'd left Camp Liberty that Westbrook turned around in the passenger seat, his coal-black eyes drilling into me.

“We're in search of a missing LT,” he said, “and we thought you might be able to help us find him.”

“M-me?” I stammered. “I just met the guy. I don't know where he is.”

“So you know who I'm talking about.”

“Well, sure, I mean—”

“And that wasn't you leaving camp with him yesterday afternoon?”

My face burned red, and it was all the answer he needed. The rest of the drive was long and silent.

The roads we followed were gravel and narrow, trailing the foothills of Skeleton Ridge and cutting through dense forests of spruce and pine. All at once we reached a clearing. There before us was a prison.

While it bore a certain similarity to Camp Liberty, there was one glaring difference: the entire site was encircled by a tall barbed wire fence. Guard towers anchored each of the four corners, with Brown Shirts
poised behind machine guns.

I wondered who these inmates were who demanded such high security. I could only guess they were the most ruthless of prisoners, the most vile of criminals.

At just that moment the door opened to the tar-paper barracks and out streamed the inmates, all dressed in plain gray dresses and scuffed work boots.

Girls. Dozens and dozens of girls.

The only females I'd ever seen were two-dimensional ones from the movies. To finally see them in the flesh—and my own age, no less—took my breath away. A part of me felt like some ancient explorer encountering tribes from a far-off land.

All around me, girls in drab uniforms marched wearily from one side of camp to the other. But there was something I didn't understand. How was it these girls—these
prisoners
—were so highly guarded, while the Less Thans of Camp Liberty could come and go? What had these girls done that made them such dangerous criminals?

Also, there was something about how they moved—something about
them
—I found oddly disturbing. With downcast eyes and feet shuffling through the dust, they seemed almost . . . haunted. Like their physical bodies were present but their minds were a thousand miles away.

Colonel Westbrook seemed to read my mind. “So
you see, Book,” he said, swiveling in his seat, “there are places in this world worse than Camp Liberty.”

He climbed out of the vehicle.

“Don't move,” Major Karsten added, fixing me with a skeletal stare.

He and Westbrook disappeared into the headquarters building and I sat in the stifling backseat, trying to make sense of what they had said, of what I was seeing.

Four guards escorted a handful of prisoners past the idling Humvee, marching them through a side gate to a barn on the other side of the fence. As I watched them, my eyes were drawn to one prisoner in particular. She was of medium height with light brown skin—skin the color of tea—and her hair was covered in a head scarf. There was something about her that caught my attention. It wasn't just that she was good-looking, although there was no doubt about that. There was some undefinable quality that drew me to her. It was almost like we had something in common—like there was something about her I already knew. Even from the distance that separated us I could make out the expression on her face . . . and I knew that expression. Had seen it countless times staring back at me in the mirror.

If anyone could help me understand what was going on, I knew it would be her.

H
OPE STACKS HAY BALES
in the barn's loft. The work is hard and repetitive, but she doesn't mind. The intoxicating scent of fresh hay reminds her of the home she left ten years earlier.

A home with a mother and a father and life free of Brown Shirts.

A flash of movement out of the corner of her eye steals her attention, but when she peers through the loft window, all she sees are trees and the jagged cliffs of Skeleton Ridge. Strange. She could have sworn she saw something. Some
one
.

A moment later, it's the sound of footsteps that causes her to stop midlift, muscles straining. A Brown Shirt races through the fields.

When she turns around to stack the bale, she's shocked to see someone standing directly in front of her. He's about her age, with light brown skin and dark hair. The bale falls from her hands with a thud.

“Who are you and what—”

“Shh,” he whispers. “I won't hurt you.”

She takes an involuntary step backward but there's nowhere to go. The heels of her feet peek over the edge of the loft. “You shouldn't be up here.” She eyes the pitchfork that lies a couple feet away. If she's quick enough, she can dive for it, reaching it before this stranger.

“I won't hurt you,” he says again, palms raised.

Her fists clench. “What do you want?” He doesn't answer, so she asks again.
“What do you want?”

He opens his mouth to speak, but at just that moment the Brown Shirt comes stumbling into the barn, badly out of breath. The guy—the
intruder
—ducks behind the pyramid of hay bales, crouching in shadows.

Down below, the soldier circles in place, then raises his eyes until they land on Hope. “Did you see him?”

“Who?”

“An LT—a boy. Came running through. Just a moment ago.”

Hope is about to speak but stops herself. She has no reason to trust this intruder—no reason at all—but she has even less reason to trust the Brown Shirts. Why
should she help them? All they've done is make her life a living hell.

But if she covers up the fact that she's hiding someone and the boy is found, she'll be the one who's punished. Why should she help him out—a perfect stranger? For all she knows, he's the enemy. One of the Crazies her father warned her about.

“Well?” the Brown Shirt prompts.

Is it her imagination or does she feel the boy's eyes boring into the back of her head?

“I didn't see anyone,” she says at last.

“Then where'd he go?”

She shrugs.

The soldier does another circle, then makes a step for the ladder. “You sure he's not up there?”

Hope spreads her arms wide. “Come see for yourself if you don't believe me.”

The Brown Shirt stares at her, unsure whether to climb up. Finally he hurries away and exits the barn.

Hope doesn't move. Now that the soldier has gone, it's just her and this intruder. If she's made a mistake—if she's misjudged him—she'll pay for it.

She slowly pivots in place. At first, she thinks he's disappeared—his departure as abrupt and secret as his arrival. Then she finds him—peeking through a crack between hay bales. His eyes flick anxiously from one side to another.