The Capture (2 page)

H
E WALKS THROUGH THE
valley of shadows, surviving fire and flood, flames and torrents. Marching across the barren wilderness, he carries in his heart the faint memory of those who went before him. In his veins runs the blood of warriors, the pulse of poets.

Pursuing him are those who will not rest. Like lions, they track him, chasing him across the smoke-filled prairies, the desolate hills, the sun-stroked plains. The rivers shall turn against him, as shall the fields and forests.

Though he gathers friends, there are those who will betray him. Friend will become foe and foe become friend.

But my beloved fears not. He shall mount up with
wings like the birds of the air, shall burrow beneath the earth like creatures of the dark, shall carry great loads like beasts of prey, shall run and not grow weary.

My beloved, in whom I am well pleased.

T
HEY LOOKED AT ME
with hollow, vacant stares—their sunken cheeks more like ghosts' than human beings'. Festering sores tattooed their bodies, and their pleading eyes cut circles in the black.

Please,
their expressions said, as they strained against the chains that pinned them to the bunker walls.
Get us out of here.

There were a dozen of them, boys my age, and the more I took in their emaciated bodies—the bones pushing against skin, the bloodshot eyes and skull-like faces—the more I realized I didn't know how to help them. I had no idea, no solution for unlocking their shackles and setting them free.

You must,
one of them said, as if I'd voiced my
thoughts aloud, and soon all of them were saying it—
You must, you must
—their voices growing louder and more insistent until it was a kind of song, a raspy chant from begging faces.

You must. Help us.

“But I can't. I don't know how. . . .”

You must help us.

“I don't know how!”

YOU MUST HELP US!

I woke with a start, my T-shirt damp with sweat. With trembling hands I tried to rub the sleep from my eyes . . . and the image from my mind.

“Same one?” Cat asked. He was hunkered in the shadows, his long knife scraping the edge of a cedar branch.

Every night it was the same: dreaming of those Less Thans shackled in the bunker beneath the tennis court. I couldn't let it go. As bad as the memory was, my dreams only made it worse, distorting the boys' bodies until they were more skeletons than living, breathing human beings.

It was why we had to get back to Camp Liberty. Why we had to free those Less Thans.

I lifted my head and looked around. Orange light from the campfire flickered across the faces of the others. With the exception of Cat and me, the others huddled around the fire and shared stories and
laughter. Three squirrels roasted on spits; the grease sizzled in the flames. On the surface, at least, everything seemed fine.

Just one week earlier, twenty-six of us had crossed into the other territory—the Heartland. Eleven had stayed over there; fifteen had decided to return. Seven Less Thans, eight Sisters. For the past seven days we'd been gathering food, carving bows and arrows, setting up an archery range and firing till our fingers bled. Still, I wondered: Were we up for this? Could we really pull it off?

“Do you think it's a mistake?” I pulled myself over to the log where Cat was sitting.

At first he didn't respond. No surprise there—his least favorite thing was conversation. “Do I think
what's
a mistake?” His knife dug into the wood. Cedar shavings whispered in the air.

“Going back?”

He thought a moment. His glinting blade stripped off a layer of bark as effortlessly as peeling a banana. “Nah, it's definitely the right thing.” Then he added, “We don't stand a snowball's chance in hell, but it's definitely the right thing.”

I couldn't argue with him. Who were we to take on Brown Shirts and Crazies, Skull People and wolves? What made us think we could even make it back to Camp Liberty, let alone free the Less Thans there?
What on earth were we thinking?

“If the odds are so bad, why're you going back?” I asked.

Cat shrugged. “Like I said at the fence, it'll be the adventure of a lifetime.”

I got the feeling there was more to it than that, but there was no point asking. Cat would tell me only when he was good and ready.

Laughter erupted from the far side of the campfire—Flush and Twitch bickering like an old married couple. Tweedledum and Tweedlesmart. The oddest set of friends I'd ever come across. Twitch was tall and supersmart. Flush was short and, well, not as smart as Twitch.

“How about the others?” I asked. “Think they'll be in it for the long haul?”

“Most of 'em,” he said, his sandy hair catching a sliver of moonlight.

“Not all?”

“Most,” he repeated.

I wondered who wasn't committed. Flush or Twitch? Red or Dozer? Or was he referring to the Sisters? For obvious reasons I didn't count Four Fingers. Ever since his head injury back in the Brown Forest, he'd been wildly out of it. On most days he was lucky to remember his name.

As my eyes passed over the others, it struck me how much we'd changed. The sun had weathered our skin.
The baby fat had burned away. And we moved and spoke with a kind of quiet confidence. All this despite the fact that our clothes were nothing more than rags, dotted and shredded with holes, singed from fire, bleached from sun. After the inferno in the Brown Forest, all we'd managed to salvage were the essentials: the clothes on our backs, some canteens, a few weapons. The good side of that was that nothing was weighing us down.

Well, not physically.

Argos lifted his head and gave a soft moan. He came padding to my side. I reached over and petted him, the ends of my fingers disappearing into his fur. I was careful to avoid the burns from the fire. The wound from the wolves. The gimpy leg. He was no longer the cute little puppy stuffed in a backpack. He'd been to hell and back like the rest of us.

Cat's knife bit into the branch—and then stopped. He opened his mouth to speak, but just as he began to talk, Flush set himself down squarely between us.

“Would you please tell Twitch I wasn't the only one who ate the maggots?” he said. “Red did, too.”

Everyone's gaze was directed toward us, waiting for a response. It figured: one of the few times Cat was actually going to start a conversation, and we were interrupted. Whatever he was going to tell me would have to wait.

“As I remember,” I answered, loud enough for the others to hear, “Red had the good sense not to like it.
You enjoyed your maggots.”

That brought on a roar of laughter. Even though Flush pretended to be irritated, I got the impression he enjoyed being the center of attention.

As I prepared for bed that night, constructing a mattress out of pine needles, my thoughts returned to where they always went: Hope. She was the very last of the Sisters to join us—only reluctantly crossing from the other side of the fence.

Things were different between us now. We'd kissed that day after surviving the fire, but ever since, we'd been so busy—just trying to survive—that it was like we didn't know how to act around each other. What I
wanted
was to take her hand, to hold her, to go back to the way we were . . . but I never had the chance.

So I contented myself with fleeting looks. Stolen glances.

There was something else, too. Something I couldn't figure out. Her expression. It had changed these past seven days—it was no longer just the haunted appearance she shared with all the Sisters. It was something more. A kind of grim determination I couldn't quite decipher.

And I saw the way she looked at Cat, her enormous brown eyes lingering on him a moment longer than they needed to. I couldn't help it. Maybe it was my imagination, but then again, maybe it wasn't.

I
T
'
S JUST BEFORE SUNUP
when Hope and Cat tiptoe back to camp.

The two of them waited till the others were asleep before sneaking off, the dull red glow of the fire's embers their only illumination. It's been the same each night since they crawled back from the fence. Seven nights, seven silent journeys. So far, with the exception of Argos, no one seems to notice.

The next morning the rains begin, and with the change of weather comes a change of mood. Despite the fact that it's now the height of summer, the showers are icy cold and soak the fifteen travelers to the bone. They spend much of the day sloshing through mud.

For Hope, it's impossible not to sense the resentment from some of the other Sisters. Although she was
the last to cross back from the fence, she was the one who originally convinced them to join up with the Less Thans. She can only imagine the questions running through their minds. After all their hard work, after digging a tunnel under Camp Freedom itself, why are they throwing it all away to head back into the heart of the Western Federation Territory? For the sake of saving some Less Thans they've never met?

When they stop to make camp, Hope drifts off to look for firewood, happy for the chance to be alone. The rain has stopped. There is birdsong.

“You all right?” a voice asks. It's Book.

“Why wouldn't I be?” Hope says.

“Don't know. Just curious.” Then he says, “I woke up last night and didn't see you.”

Hope feels a stab of panic. She wonders what Book knows, what he
saw
. Even as she picks up a large, unwieldy branch, she tries to make a joke of it. “You're not stalking me, are you?”

“No, just happened to look over. Didn't see you.”

“Right, well, answering a call of nature.”

“Seemed like you were gone a long time.”

“Now I
know
you're stalking me.” She laughs and snaps the branch in two. “Plus I couldn't sleep, so I just, you know, walked around.”

“In the dark?”

“I think better that way.”

“Right.”

“Can't say no to thinking.”

“Nope.”

Hope can hear the pathetic nature of her lies. They're so obvious, so blatant.
So bad.
She tries to change the subject.

“I hear there are Skull People between here and your camp,” she says.

“That's what we've heard.”

“You never saw them?”

Book shakes his head. “Hunters. Brown Shirts. Wolves. Crazies. No Skull People.”

“Consider yourself lucky.”

Her father once pointed out a camp of Skull People to Hope and her sister, Faith. With their painted skin and helmets made of animal skulls, they were the most frightening sight Hope had ever seen in her life. They were terrifying.

“How do we avoid them?” Book asks.

“Any way we can.” She means it as a joke, but Book doesn't laugh. Doesn't even smile.

“What happens after?” Hope asks.

“After?”

“Once we free your friends?”

“Head back to the Heartland. Get everyone to safety.” He studies her expression. “Why, you have something different in mind?”

“No, just, you know . . . curious.”

“Oh.”

They continue to scrounge, their boots squishing in mud.

“Good luck sleeping,” Book finally says, and heads back to camp with an armful of branches. Hope's face burns crimson.

He was right, of course. She
does
have something in mind—but she's not ready to share it. Not with Book. Not with anyone.

As for what she and Cat do each night, well, she wants to break that to Book as well. She does. But there are some things she just doesn't know how to say.

I
SLOGGED BACK TO
camp and released the branches from my arms. They clattered on the pile with all the rest. If Hope wouldn't tell me what was really going on with her, maybe her friends would.

Of the seven other Sisters, Hope was close to three. Diana was tall and willowy, terrific with a crossbow, and never afraid to speak her mind. Then there was Scylla, who had never uttered a single word in all the weeks I'd known her. I wondered if she was even capable of talking. She was short and compact and basically all muscle—not someone you wanted to meet in a dark alley late at night.

The third friend was Helen, who was frail and shy and seemed always on the verge of being blown away by
a gust of wind. Small in stature with strawberry-blond hair, she looked at Hope with adoring eyes.

It was Helen I decided to approach.

She was sitting on a log, fletching arrows. Next to her was a pile of goose feathers.

“I can't believe you're able to attach those tiny feathers with just animal guts,” I said.

She smiled shyly. “Sinew. Once it dries, it's there forever.” She expertly split a quill in half, then wrapped a short thread of dried animal gut around the base of the quill and the arrow's shaft.

I sat on a nearby rock. “Helen, can I ask you something?” She flinched slightly but said nothing. “Are you okay with heading back into the territory?”

“If it's the right thing to do, then we should do it.”

“And your friends? They feel the same?”

“I think so.”

Her voice had a sudden wariness to it. Like Argos detecting an unfamiliar scent. I realized I was in dangerous territory here.

“Everyone's on board?” I asked. “Everything's normal?”

“Yes. . . .”

“And Hope? She's fine with all this?”

Helen's body shrank in on itself, and I suddenly realized I'd crossed the line. I was asking about the very people she was closest to. Helen nodded quickly, her
fingers deftly wrapping the animal gut around the top of the fletching. She placed the finished arrow in a pile.

“You're close to Hope, aren't you?” I asked.

“She saved my life.”

“Then you and I have something in common.”

I pushed myself up and walked away. Although I needed to know what was going on with Hope, it felt somehow traitorous to ask about her behind her back.

But I was still convinced that she was up to something—I just didn't know what.