Three (Article 5) (31 page)

I couldn’t fix this. I couldn’t get home.

He was no more than a tiny speck now, on a shore far away, and his voice came to me as a whisper.

“I’ll find you,” he said. “And I’ll bring you back.”

*   *   *

A LOW
groan came from my raw throat, magnifying the pounding in my head. I blinked, but was confused by the sight that greeted me: thick ropes, branches and leaves, and through them, the clear night sky.

Side to side I swayed, as if I was lying in a hammock.

Not a hammock—a net, strapped to a tree. I tried to twist, but my legs were tangled up, and I only managed to tighten the ropes around my knees. The ground below was six feet away, and as I stared at it my temple throbbed, and the patches of grass wavered in my vision.

I grasped my neck, feeling the heat from the rope that had cut off my air supply, and the spike of panic when I realized my necklace was no longer around my neck.

The memories cropped up, fuzzy at first, then sharper, driving my pulse like the beat of a drum. Tucker outside the mini-mart. The bodies within. The soldiers surrounding us. Sean—had he made it?

Chase.

My heart clenched so hard I grit my teeth so I didn’t cry out.

He’d been taken. Tucker as well, and maybe even Jesse.

I’d
been taken. Though … not by the same people.

Voices came from my right, and I pretended to be unconscious as several sets of footsteps crunched over the dead leaves.

“Watch this,” said a boy excitedly. I held still but tracked them through my lashes as they approached. I recognized the speaker; I’d met him in the grove weeks ago, before we’d been brought to Endurance, where he’d told me to shut up and kicked me in the side. A dirty blanket was wrapped around his shoulders, but the mean, hungry look on his bony face was still the same.

He grabbed my ankles and spun me in a circle. I went faster and faster until my stomach heaved and I had to swallow the bile. The net dug into my arms and my chest and my face. And then I paused, and the boy hollered in glee as I began to unwind, whipping around with greater speed than before. The branch above groaned and I braced for the fall that never came.

“What’re you gonna do with her?” asked another.

“Don’t know,” the boy answered. “Maybe we’ll cut off her fingers an’ feed ’em to the dog.”

Chills raced over my skin.

“Shuddup.” This voice was farther removed from the others, and higher pitched. When I followed the sound I recognized the younger one that I’d been foolish enough to follow in the grove. He was still shirtless despite the cold, and covered in mud.

“What’s that, dog?”

The boy who’d spun me disappeared from my view and I heard the familiar thump of a solid hit, and a high whine that followed.

“Bad dog! Bad dog doesn’t get a bone!” shouted the boy. Several others laughed. While they were distracted I freed my arms completely, feeling for any break in the net. The branch above me groaned again.

I glanced at the boys, my body still. There were more of them now, maybe fifteen, standing by a large campfire, surrounding a child who crawled around on his hands and knees. Every few seconds someone kicked him. He began to bark and howl, and they clapped their hands and laughed.

I went to work on the net again, but the boys suddenly grew quiet. From behind them came the sound of scraping metal, and I squinted through the darkness to where a series of torches sticking out of the ground surrounded an old trailer home. A fat man wearing only a stained undershirt stumbled down the steps and belched loudly. Several of the boys laughed.

“Quit all that racket!” he yelled. They silenced.

He walked among them, pushing a few out of his way. “Charlie, I think I owe you somethin’, don’t I?”

The mean boy stepped forward timidly, hands clasped down low in front of him. With more dexterity than I would’ve thought possible, the man swung his fist toward Charlie’s face, but stopped an inch away. Charlie flinched, and when the man began to laugh, smiled weakly.

“Naw, I owe you better’n that. I take care of my boys, don’t I?”

“Yes, sir,” said several of them.

“What’s that?”

“Yes, sir!” they chimed together.

“Ungrateful bastards,” muttered the man. Finally I found a weak link in the net and succeeded in ripping a hole large enough to shove my wrist through. Frantically, I began pulling at the ropes, but a flash of pain in my side made me grit my teeth and hold perfectly still while it passed. The glass puncture from the mini-mart had reopened. When it was manageable again I resumed my attack on the net.

“Charlie got me a little prize today, and for that, he gets a little prize of his own, don’t he?”

Charlie unclasped his hands, and looked up at the man with interest.

The man reached into his pocket and removed a handgun. I froze. It was
my
gun.

He placed it in Charlie’s hands.

“Thanks, sir!” The others gathered close around him as the man began to stumble in my direction. He belched again as he came close, and then smiled, revealing a mouthful of crooked, rotting teeth. His breath was enough to make my stomach heave again. The smell of alcohol wafted off of him.

“Pretty little thing,” he whispered. I watched him, holding my breath. He stuck a finger through the net and poked me in the side. I couldn’t help wincing; his finger pressed right against the cut the glass had made.

“Tickle, tickle, tu-tu!” He giggled. The net began to sway again.

I fought the urge to scream.

“Now why were you all alone out there?” he mused. “I know you must have friends.”

I sensed he wasn’t asking me. The boys had gathered in a half circle behind him.

“She had friends,” said Charlie. “But some Blues came and snatched ’em up.”

“They see you?” asked the man.

“Nah,” said Charlie. “They might’ve though, what with that dog making all kinds of noise. Nearly got us found out.” He kicked the ground, spraying dirt on the youngest boy. “He’s always trying to blow it for us. Can’t keep his yap shut.”

The boys silenced as the man turned around. He clucked and shook his head from side to side. “You gonna handle this, Charlie?”

Charlie looked confused. “Sure. Sure, I’m gonna.”

“Well?” said the man expectantly when Charlie didn’t move. “When a dog gets unruly, you got to put him down.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. As I waited, the small boy began to weep. He fell to his hands and knees and managed a weak bark. He crawled up to Charlie’s leg and pawed at his knees.

“Ruff,” he said between sobs. “Ruff, ruff, right, Charlie?”

Charlie, scrawny armed and trembling, held out the gun.

“Stop it,” I said, unable to hold my silence any longer. “I let my friends go, not the kid.”

“My pretty bird sings!” The man clapped his hands together, then paused and frowned, his neck doubling as he pulled his chin down. “I’ll hear you sing some more later, I think. First, someone needs a lesson.” He made a pouty face and pretended to sniffle.

He grabbed the back of the dog boy’s shirt and hoisted him up, then began to drag him toward the trailer.

“Stop!” I struggled against the net, ripping a larger hole. My whole arm was free now.

“Charlie, she’s gettin’ free!” whispered one of the boys.

Charlie watched the door to the trailer slam shut, and then stalked toward me.

“You have to stop that man,” I told him desperately. “Let me go, I’ll do it.”

Charlie’s face contorted into a twisted smile. He reached in his pocket and removed my silver necklace, and then swung it like a pendulum in front of my face. The Saint Michael pendant, along with Chase’s mother’s ring, were still hanging from the end.

“You want this?”

I couldn’t help it; I reached through the hole and tried to snag it. Charlie pulled the necklace away at the last second, laughing. He tried it again, only this time I glared at him, losing his gaze only briefly as the net made a slow turn.

From within the trailer, a shot rang out. I stared at it in horror, as if I might be able to see through the walls, see what the man had done.

“Soldiers!” called a male voice from beyond the brush encircling the campfire. This voice was older than the others, vaguely familiar, though distorted by the forest, and I searched madly for some sign of origin.

For a moment no one moved. Then Charlie dropped my necklace, and the gun, and he and the boys scattered into the darkness. I threw every bit of strength into peeling back the net, but it spun and swayed, making the task more challenging.

The door to the trailer never opened.

A shadowed figure raced from behind the trees and I bucked against his sudden hold on the net.

“Hold still,” Sean said between his teeth. Never in my life had I been so happy to see him.

The net ripped, and I fell halfway out, suspended upside down. He tried to catch me, but his arm was weak and couldn’t support my weight. A flash of a knife, and another rip, and I fell flat on my back, the wind knocked out of me.

“Come on!” He dragged me to my feet. “I wasn’t kidding—there’s soldiers fifty yards behind us!”

“Wait!” I felt my way across the ground as another burst of shots echoed in the woods behind the trailer. Finally, my fingers grasped the metal chain, and I snatched it up, running after Sean into the darkness.

He hesitated twenty steps in, and I smacked into his back. Without so much as a glance at me he cocked his head to the side as if looking for something.

“Soldiers?” I whispered. As if in answer, another round of gunfire erupted from behind us. Several male voices began to yell all at once.

“This way.” He sprinted to the right, and I tore after him. We ran until we reached a small dirt road, and then kept to a ditch, sloshing through the muck toward a series of houses. I didn’t hear Sean’s labored breathing, or the grunt of pain that came every few steps, until we slowed.

A small delivery truck came into view, parked in the high grass between two houses. Only then did we speak.

“Where’s Chase?” I gasped, a new panic enveloping my senses.

White stars were twinkling in my vision and I blinked them away. I was so thirsty and tired since we’d stopped.

Sean didn’t answer. He swung open the passenger door and fell back against the seat. His shirt, though still drenched with blood, was bulky around the shoulder, and as he drew back the collar I saw that it had been bandaged with the supplies we’d brought from Endurance.

“Did you get her?” came a low voice through the darkness.

I turned to find Jesse stepping from the shadows into the weak ring of light cast from the overhead lamp in the cabin of the truck. A small boy was thrown over his shoulder, carried like he weighed no more than a sack of flour. It was the boy they’d called a dog, and he stared straight ahead blankly as Jesse set him down. It took a moment to connect the slash of blood on Jesse’s shirt with the boy’s presence.

That was why the trailer door had not reopened.

Jesse and the boy were not alone. Several other boys followed him. A half dozen, a dozen. Almost all that I’d seen, including the little psychopath with the gun, Charlie. He didn’t look so tough with his dirty cheeks tear-stained.

“The hunter,” I heard one whisper. “The one that took Will.”

“He came back for us,” said another.

Jesse had done this before. That meant he’d been to Endurance before. My head felt muddled. I couldn’t make sense of it right now.

“Get in the back of the truck, all of you,” Jesse ordered.

“Where you takin’ us?” asked Charlie.

Jesse faced me, not those behind him. It was only Sean and I who saw his mouth tighten and his gaze fall.

“Somewhere safe, kid,” he said.

Another wave of dizziness took me and I gripped the open car door for support. It was because of all the running, I told myself. Lack of food and water.

Sean stood and gripped my forearm.

“We’ve got soldiers on our tail,” he told Jesse.

“They took Chase,” I said. “Why didn’t you go after Chase?”

Jesse’s eye twitched as he looked down over me.

“You’re bleeding, neighbor.”

He nodded at my waist, and when I looked down I saw that the glass puncture wound from the mini-mart was bleeding again. The patch of rose red on my shirt had blossomed to half of my torso.

“Ember…” Sean pulled me back, toward the car, but I stumbled into his arms. “Hang on,” he said. My cheek rested against the bandages on his shoulder.

“You shouldn’t have left him,” I whispered.

I didn’t remember much after that.

*   *   *

WHEN
I woke again I was lying on a couch, blinking up at the yellow water rings on a white ceiling. It was late afternoon, or maybe early morning based on the red light seeping across the floor.

I tried to sit up, but was stopped by a shooting pain that emanated from the right side of my waist. When I pulled up the hem of my clean shirt I found a swell of bandages tied to my skin by long strips of cloth. My wound had been cleaned.

I took in my surroundings, recognizing the antique coffee table beneath the box of medical supplies, and the wilted magazines, now stacked on the carpet beside one of the legs.

The house with the supplies. The address: 3. The bodies on the bed.

The mini-mart where Chase had been taken was now miles and miles away.

I wasn’t alone; against the wall on a blanket lay a girl. I shimmied up to my elbows. The rest of the room was empty, though the floor was covered with muddy footprints, some tinged with red.

I swung my legs to the floor, stretching a little from side to side to test my range of motion. It pinched, and stole my breath.

Dark fingers of dread curled around my chest. How long had I been here?

The girl on the floor lifted her hands to her face, fingers probing through a crop of dark hair. She had blond roots, so it must have been dyed.

I looked closer; there were red welts around her neck and unconsciously my own hand went to my throat, finding only rough skin where the rope had previously burned. My necklace hung loosely there, the ring and the pendant resting just over the notch in my collarbone where a round burn had been left from the Knoxville fire.