Silas (25 page)

“
I’m sorry,” she said. Her
voice was quieter too. “I shouldn’t have said that. I don’t know
what it was like for you. It’s only that sometimes you seem so…
untouchable. Hard. Unfeeling.”

“
I’m not,” I said. “Really,
there are lot of things about me—”

“
And then other times,” she
continued as if I hadn’t spoken, “you don’t seem that way at
all.”

“
I’m not that way,” I said.
“I care about people.”

“
I know that,” she
said.

There was a long pause.

Christa turned to me,
gesturing with her rock. “I, um, interrupted you. Keep going. So,
Sylvia hired you to have sex with her.”

“
Right,” I said. “Well,
that’s about all there is to it. You wanted to know how I was
forced into it. Now you know.”

“
But what happened? How did
Rolf find out that you were sleeping with her?”

“
I think he beat it out of
her when she confronted him about his little hobby of hunting down
people and killing them.”

“
Oh.”

“
But that was my fault,” I
said. “Through Op Wraith, I found out about what Rolf was doing,
and I thought Sylvia should know. She was unhappy in her marriage
or she wouldn’t have hired me. And I thought she should know what
kind of man he was. I thought maybe that if she knew he was a total
jerk, she’d gather up the courage to leave him. Maybe then she
could have been happy.” I sighed. “But that wasn’t what happened.
She was afraid to leave him. She’d had a taste of being wealthy.
She didn’t want to give it up. I guess she thought that she meant
more to him than she did. She thought that if it was a choice
between her and his hunting expeditions, he’d pick her. But he
didn’t. He picked hunting. He made her his prey, and he killed
her.”

“
Jesus,” Christa
whispered.

“
Yeah, the whole thing is
fucked up.”

“
You cared about her, didn’t
you?”

I didn’t say
anything.

“
Sorry, was that question
too intrusive?”

I took a deep breath. “I
cared about her. I didn’t want her to die.”

“
Did you want her to leave
Rolf and be with you?”

I turned to her. “What?
No.”

“
It’s only that you seem to
have—”

“
There was no being with me.
I lived at Op Wraith. I slept in a bunk-lined room with a bunch of
other assassins. I spent my time killing people or sleeping with
rich socialites or trying to keep bad things from happening to
Sloane. No, it wasn’t like that. Not exactly.”

“
But if that was different,”
she said. “If you could have been together, would you have wanted
to?”

I sighed. “I don’t know.
Maybe. I might have thought… I was barely nineteen years old, you
know, and I’d been an assassin for two years, and I hadn’t… you
know, been with women since before. Since high school. That was all
I knew about any kind of relationship or anything. And she was…
they were
all
so
poised and coiffed and mature.” I swallowed. “I didn’t want her to
die, and I didn’t mind fucking her, and I even, you know, might
have kind of… liked her. I mean, I felt sorry for her. But she
was
using
me, you
know? Even if I didn’t mind being with her so much, that doesn’t
mean that I wanted to run off with her. I knew she didn’t feel like
that about me. I didn’t…” I dragged a hand over my face. “I don’t
even know if I know how to feel like that about someone
anymore.”

“
Like what?”

“
Like how to be in love or
whatever. Hell, I don’t even know if I believe it
exists.”

“
I know what you mean,” she
said.

I set down my rock. “No, you
don’t.”

“
I do,” she said. “We’re
similar, Silas. Neither of us let people in easily. And we both
kind of sleep around, you know?”

“
I don’t throw myself at
people,” I said.

She glared at me. “Neither
do I.”

“
You’ve been throwing
yourself at me since we got out here.”

“
Yeah, but that’s not
because of… love,” she said.

“
You know, maybe you should
respect yourself more. You know, respect your own body or
whatever.”

She rolled her eyes. “Oh my
god, do you even know how you sound? Are you a guidance counselor
or something?”

I picked my rock back up.
“Forget it.”

“
Do you respect your body,
Silas?”

I began attacking the wood.

“
Is that why you agreed to
be a prostitute?”

“
Stop it.” I kept hacking at
the stick. “You know, you looked at me in a fucked-up way that
night that you got me off. You looked at me just the way Sylvia
used to, like I was some wind-up doll that you’d figured out how to
make dance. Maybe your problem isn’t respecting yourself, it’s that
you don’t fucking respect anyone else.”

“
I…”

I glared at her.
“What?”

“
I’m really sorry,”
she said. “I’m sorry I made you feel bad. It was the last thing I
wanted. I did it to make you feel
good
. I wanted you to like
it.”

“
You didn’t think it was
kind of inappropriate, given the circumstances?”

“
Maybe,” she said. “But
that’s the way I am. I’m inappropriate. Before, I thought you liked
that about me.”

I sighed.

“
Look,” she said. “That’s
really the closest to love that I ever get, you know? Feeling like
I want to make someone else feel good. Beyond that, I don’t feel
the kinds of stuff other people feel. I look at Griffin and Leigh
together, and they seem so intensely into each other. They’ve got
this bond. Sometimes, I swear, they read each other’s
minds.”

“
They’ve been through a lot
of shit together,” I said. “Sloane and I are like that. It’s what
happens when you kill together. It’s not love, it’s just that
shared horrible experience.”

“
What?” Sloane said in a
tiny voice.

“
Fuck,” I said. “I keep
spilling all your brother’s secrets.”

“
Leigh?” she said. “Is she
an assassin too?”

“
No,” I said. “Her father
was one of the heads of Op Wraith. He gave Leigh the serum to save
her life when she was in a really bad car accident. Op Wraith went
after her, trying to get her under their thumb, because they
thought she was a loose cannon. And that’s how Griffin met Leigh.
He was protecting her from Op Wraith.”

“
But they killed people
together.”

“
They had to,” I said.
“Those people were trying to kill them. It was
self-defense.”

Her voice was cold. “And you
think that’s all there is between them. You don’t think they’re
really in love?”

“
I don’t know,” I said. I
shook my head. “I’m sorry I said anything.”

* * *

Christa and I crawled on our
bellies through the tall grass near the stream. We knew that the
hunters would be watching our only water source, and we
didn
’t want to give ourselves away. I’d
tried to convince her to let me go on my own, but she was too
freaked out that I’d never come back and insisted on coming
along.

The stream was ahead of
us—above five or six feet away. The grass was tall enough to cover
us, but we had to move slowly enough not to give ourselves
away.

It was taking quite a while to reach
the stream.

Our plan was to get there
and to fill up the canteen. If it seemed safe, and no one was
around, we were going to try to spear some fish too.

Christa nudged me. “Silas,”
she breathed.

I looked back at her.
“What?” I whispered.

“
Look.” She
pointed.

I followed the direction of her finger,
and I saw one of the hunters standing about twenty feet
away.

So close.

He wasn’t looking in our
direction. He was watching the stream, his gun slung over his
shoulder. He was wearing a camouflage backpack. It looked like it
was stuffed full. What the hell did he have in there?

Shit.

We couldn’t get up there and
get to the water.

I’d brought the shotgun with
us, and I could shoot him from this distance, but that seemed like
a bad idea, because I figured the sound would bring the
others.

But we needed to get rid of
him, because I wasn’t going through being dehydrated again. “If I
shoot him, they’ll find us,” I whispered. “Too loud.”

She nodded.

The hunter turned, his brow furrowed.
He was looking right at the place where we were hidden.

He couldn’t see us, though.
If he could see us, he would have done something by now.

Wouldn’t he?

He unslung his gun
slowly.

Shit.

I moved my own gun. If he was going to
shoot at us, you could be damned sure that I was going to shoot him
first.

But before I could raise it, Christa
stood up.

“
Christa!” What was she
doing?

She raised a sharpened stick
we were going to use to fish.

The hunter whipped up his
shotgun.

Christa hurled the makeshift spear at
him.

It burrowed deep in his neck. He
clutched at it, his eyes widening.

Blood spurted out of the
wound.

And then he fell.

Christa hit the ground
again.

I stared at her,
stunned.

“
I was on the track team in
high school,” she said. “I did the javelin throw.”

“
That was…” I shook my head.
“That was awesome.”

She gave me a small smile.

“
Stay here.” I got up into a
crouch, and I scrambled over to the fallen hunter.

I knelt over him. First, I checked for
a pulse at his wrist.

Nothing.

He wasn’t breathing either.
Dead. Christa had done a very good job.

I took his gun, tore the bulging
backpack away from him and hurried back to Christa.

“
Jackpot,” I said to
her.

“
What’s in
there?”

I unzipped it and began to
take things out. A bag of trail mix. Some beef jerky. Two cans of
Coca-Cola. Extra ammunition for the shotgun. A canteen. Another
camouflage jacket. (I’d been wearing the one we took from the other
hunter, because my shirt had gotten ruined the time I got
shot.)

Christa’s eyes were huge.
“Wow.”

It was like Christmas
morning. Nuts. Dried fruit. Dried meat. Enough of it to last for
days. We were going to feast. And Coke. I never thought I’d be so
happy to see soda in my entire life.

I grabbed Christa, pulled
her close, and planted a kiss on her forehead. “Nice going. You
rock.”

She grinned up at me,
wrapping her arms around me. “I can’t believe I hit
him.”

“
You were perfect,” I
said.

We smiled at each other like
idiots.

Then, slowly, her face grew more
serious.

And I realized how close we were.
Embracing. Our bodies pressed against each other.

Her gaze flitted from my eyes to my
lips and then back up.

I swallowed.

She licked her lips.

Did she want me to kiss her?

Suddenly, I really wanted to
kiss her.

Her lips were pink and
perfect, and I wanted to nudged my tongue into her mouth
and—

I let go of her. I cleared
my throat. “Uh, we should fill up the canteens and get back to the
cave before the others find us.”

She looked away.
“Right.”

* * *

Christa held up one of the
cans of Coke to the light filtering in through the tiny opening to
our cave.
“We should ration them, shouldn’t
we?”

I took the can from her.
“We’ll ration this one.” I pulled out the other can. “This one
we’re drinking right now.” I pulled up on the tab on the can and
heard the familiar hiss of the gas escaping. Immediately, the smell
of sugary soda hit my nostrils. I held the can out to Christa. “You
get the first drink.”

“
Are you sure?”

I nodded, still holding it
out.

She snatched it from me and
guzzled it. Then she handed the can back to me. “Oh my god,” she
moaned. “I never thought something could taste that
good.”

I took a long swig. Between
the two of us, we’d drunk half the can already. “You’re right,” I
said. “That’s delicious.” I handed it back.

She took another drink. Then she let
out a loud belch and started giggling.

I took the can back,
laughing. “Um, excuse you?”