Silas (23 page)

I wandered a few feet away, turned my
back to her, and unzipped my pants to take a piss.

“
Can you like go somewhere
further away to do that?” she said, clearly annoyed.

“
Yes, hide your blushing
eyes.” But nothing much came out anyway. I really was dehydrated. I
zipped back up.

She stood up. “We have to go
back to the stream, Silas. We have to go back the way we
came.”

I raised my eyebrows at her.
“No way. We walked all day to get away from the hunters. They lost
them. You want to walk right back to them?”

“
We need water,” she said.
“That’s the only place we saw it.”

“
It’ll take us a day to get
back there,” I said.

“
We need water.”

“
I don’t even know how to do
that,” I said. “I wasn’t paying attention to where we were
walking.”

“
I was,” she said. “We
walked north. I watched the sun. I’m pretty sure if we go south
again, we’ll run into that stream.”

I sighed. “It’s going to
take a day.”

“
I’m thirsty,” she
said.

I was thirsty too. “There’s
got to be water somewhere else.”

“
There’s not,” she said.
“I’ve been walking around all over.”

“
There’s got to be,” I
said.

* * *

An hour later, I conceded
that there wasn
’t any water. I was
beginning to feel really weak. The sun was hotter today than it had
been, and walking around caused a lot of effort.

We found some more berries, and we ate
as many of them as we could, sucking the scant amount of liquid out
of them.

It wasn’t enough, but it was
something.

My belly full of berries, I
finally gave in. “Okay, we’ll go back to the stream.”

“
I don’t want to do it
either, Silas,” she said. “But we need water.” She eyed me. “Well,
I need it anyway. Can
you
die from dehydration?”

“
I don’t know,” I said. I
didn’t want to tell her that I figured I probably couldn’t. But I
wasn’t sure, of course. My body needed water to survive. If I
didn’t have any, I was pretty sure I’d be worthless, even if I was
technically still alive.

“
Let’s go,” she
said.

“
Fine,” I said. “Which way’s
south?”

She glared at me.
“Seriously?”

I shrugged
self-consciously.

She rolled her eyes. “Just
follow me.”

* * *

By mid afternoon,
we
’d been walking all day. We hadn’t found
any more berries or anything else that we could eat. And, of
course, no water.

We were tired. I felt like
my body could hardly move. It was a struggle just to put one foot
in front of the other. But I pressed on because it was the only way
we were going to find water.

To save energy, we didn’t
talk.

But at one point, I looked up, and we
were walking directly into the afternoon sun.

“
Um, Christa?” I said. My
voice was hoarse.

“
What?” Her voice didn’t
sound too good either.

“
I know you’re like the
navigator or whatever, but we’re not walking south right
now.”

“
What are you talking
about?”

I pointed at the sun. “We’re
walking west. We’re walking right at the sun.”

She looked up at it. “No,
we’re not.”

“
Actually, we
are.”

She rounded on me, her hands
on her hips. “Silas, you’re completely stupid in the woods, so
maybe you just shut up.”

That made me mad. “I’m not
great with direction out here in the middle of nowhere. But I know
that when you’re walking towards the sun, and it’s afternoon,
you’re walking west.”

“
Look,” she said. “We
couldn’t keep going directly south because there was that big briar
patch back there. We’re going around it.”

“
We passed that thing ages
ago,” I said.

“
Stop arguing with me,” she
said. “I know what I’m doing.”

“
How could you?” I said.
“How could either of us? We’re both thirsty and tired and hungry
and scared and terrorized. I don’t think it would be hard for
either of us to get confused.”

She dragged her hands over
her face. “Just shut up, okay? Just shut up. Let me think.” She
began to massage her temples.

I waited.

She stood there, rubbing her forehead,
her eyes squeezed shut.

“
Listen,” I said
gently.

“
No,” she said. “I don’t
have to listen to you. This is all your fault, anyway. If you had
just left me alone—”

“
You think I don’t know
that?” I said. “You think it doesn’t kill me that you’re here? That
you’re in danger?”

She scoffed. “Kill you?
Don’t even try that. Emmett was right about you. You don’t care
about anyone except yourself.”

“
That isn’t true, Christa,”
I said.

“
It isn’t?” She raised her
eyebrows. “I was only a piece of ass to you and don’t deny
it.”

“
You were a piece of
ass to
me
? What
the hell was I to
you
? Don’t even act like I’m the one trying to take advantage of
you right now.”

“
Take advantage? Is that how
you feel, Silas? Did I use you and hurt your little
feelings?”

I clenched my hands in
fists.

“
You want me,” she said.
“You want me very, very badly. That’s what this is about. It’s not
about what I want at all. Maybe I don’t even really like sex. Maybe
I didn’t like having sex with you. And you know what? If I could be
anywhere except here with you right now, I’d be there.”

“
So would I,” I said.
“You think I
want
to be stuck in the woods with no water?”

“
Fine,” she said. “Why don’t
we split up then? It would be better not to have to look at your
stupid face. You can walk whatever direction you want,
okay?”

What? “No,” I said. “We’re
not splitting up.”

“
Why not? Because you can’t
find the water without me?”

“
No,” I said. “Because I’ve
got the gun. And if the hunters find you, they might hurt
you.”

She narrowed her eyes.

I stalked close to her and
took her by the elbow. “Look, think whatever you want about me. I’m
not saying that I haven’t been an asshole. Sure, I’ve done a lot of
dick things. But whatever you think, the truth is that I do care
about what happens to you, and I’m making it my personal mission to
make sure you live through this. So, we’re not splitting up. You
got that?”

She pulled her elbow away. She searched
my gaze with her own, as if she was expecting to see if I was lying
or not written all over my face.

She must have decided to
believe me, because she looked away. She looked back up at the sun,
and then she turned. “This way’s south. Come on.”

* * *

I put my finger in
Christa
’s face. “Wait.”

“
But the water!” Her voice
was shrill.

The stream was ahead of us.
It was evening, just starting to get dark, and the sound of the
rushing water was driving me crazy too. I was barely holding myself
back. I pulled out the canteen that I’d gotten from the hunter
yesterday. “I’m going to fill this up.”

“
Silas—”

“
Listen to me, Christa, they
could be waiting for us.” We’d walked directly past the place where
the scuffle had happened yesterday. Emmett’s body was still there,
but the hunter’s wasn’t. That meant that they knew what had
happened. They’d wanted us bad before, but now that we’d hurt
someone, they were going to want us even more. “They could be
watching the stream, knowing that we’ve got to come back for water
at some point.”

She drew in a noisy breath.
“Okay, okay.”

I took the gun off of my
shoulder and handed it to her. “These are the shells. You put them
in here.” I showed her. “Then you pump it. Then you can shoot. You
got that?”

She furrowed her brow. “I
don’t know.”

“
It’s fine,” I said. “You
won’t have to shoot. I’ll just go up to the stream, and I’ll fill
up this canteen, and I’ll come right back to you, okay? I swear,
I’ll give you the first drink.”

She nodded.

“
But if I get shot, then you
might need to use this. Don’t use it unless you’re sure they saw
you. It’ll give away your position for sure. Okay?”

“
Silas, don’t get shot,” she
said. She looked nervous.

I shrugged. “Better for me
to get shot than you, huh?”

She bit her lip.

I darted forward to the edge of the
stream, unscrewing the cap on the canteen as I moved.

I knelt down by the babbling
water and submerged the canteen in the water.

It began to fill up.

I looked across the stream.
My gaze flitted from left to right. I didn’t see anyone. But it was
dark. And they were good at hiding. I hadn’t seen them the first
day, when we’d come out of the cellar where they’d kept
us.

I listened too, but all I could hear
was the gentle chirp of night insects.

The canteen was full.

I pulled it out of the stream and
straightened up.

Now I needed to get back to
Christa.

“
Drake.” It was a deep
voice. Male. Threatening. It was Rolf.

I turned in a circle.

“
You killed Granger,” said
Rolf. “He was one of my friends.”

“
Gee sorry about that,” I
said.

“
Doesn’t matter,” he said.
“No matter what you do, I’m not going to stop. I’m going to make
sure you understand what it feels like to have a woman you care
about stolen from you.”

“
I already know,” I said.
“You already did.”

“
Bullshit, Drake,” he said.
“Bullshit.”

Then there were shots. A volley of
them, coming from several different directions.

They tore into me—into my
chest and belly and arms.

I screamed.

The shots kept coming. Big shotgun
shells exploded into my flesh.

I fell. The water in the canteen was
spilling.

And then I went dark.

CHAPTER
FIFTEEN

When I woke up, I
didn
’t move. I wasn’t sure how long I’d
been out, and I didn’t know if Rolf and the others were watching
me. It was full dark. I was cold.

I was afraid to get up. I
was afraid to call for Christa. What if they were waiting for me to
go to her, and they’d ambush us then? What if they’d kill her right
in front of me, and it would be my fault, because I called out to
her.

So I waited.

It felt like hours.

I was covered in my own sticky, dried
blood. My clothes were ruined, full of bullet holes, drenched in
blood.

I felt half-dead already,
even though I was still breathing.

“
Silas?” A whispered
voice.

I didn’t move. That sounded
like Christa, but maybe it was a trap.

“
Silas, Jesus, don’t
actually be dead.” She knelt down next to me.

I looked up. It was her.
“Christa. What about Rolf?”

“
Gone,” she said. “He and
the others left a while ago. I could hear them talking about how
they were going to have fun hunting you down over and over again.
They said you were the best prey they’d ever had, because you never
die.”

I got to my feet, groaning.
“Great. That sounds like a blast.”

She handed me the canteen.
It was full of water. “I filled this up after they left. You were
still out of it.”

I drained the entire thing,
sucking down the cool, sweet liquid. Water had never tasted so good
to me. Dying and coming back really took a lot out of me, and my
body wasn’t at its best. “How long was I out of it?”

“
A long time,” she
said.

“
It’s taking me longer than
usual to recover,” I said. “My body must be worn down. Can’t heal
quickly if I’m run down.”

“
What do you think that
means? Do you think that you could get to point where you don’t
heal at all?”

“
I don’t know. Far as I
know, no one else who has the serum has ever let their bodies get
so run down.” I chuckled. “That’d show Rolf, wouldn’t it? He
wouldn’t be able to hunt me forever if I eventually just died of
sheer exhaustion and hunger.”

She didn’t laugh. “Why did
he say that he was going to show you what it was like to see a
woman you care about stolen from you?”