The Capture (21 page)

G
OODWOMAN
M
ARCINIAK INSISTS THEY
take the bows and arrows, and the Sisters and Less Thans hurry away. For Hope, it's as if she's in a fog. First the assault by Crazies, then the destruction of the Compound itself, and now Book's encounter with his grandmother. Like she's living out some bizarre dream.

“You know where we're going?” Cat asks.

“I know where I
want
to go,” Book responds. His eyes are puffy from crying, but he seems more determined than ever.

Twice they reach dead ends and have to double back. They hear an ear-shattering explosion, and Hope can only pray it isn't Crazies firing more rocket-propelled grenades.

The black smoke grows thick and burns their lungs. The pops of semiautomatics echo off the limestone walls. The Compound has been transformed into a living, breathing hell.

Finally, they come to a stop.

“
This?
” Flush asks. It looks to be just another of the Compound's cramped rooms.

“The Chief Justice's office,” Book says.

“That's great and all, but I don't see—”

“And that's the largest fireplace in the Compound.”

Scylla is the first to understand what Book is getting at. She grabs a torch and rushes to the hearth, scattering blackened logs. She sticks her head up the chimney, then gives an enthusiastic nod.

“If that chimney can take all that smoke away,” Book explains, “it must be wide enough to climb. And where do chimneys lead?”

Flush actually smiles. “Above ground.”

They're just preparing to begin their ascent when Diana appears from a back room . . . shoving a prisoner.

“Look who I found,” she says, and Hope's heart jolts to a stop.

It's the girl. Miranda. The one who kissed Book on the cheek.

Her face is smudged, her hair disheveled. Although Hope's first instinct is to slap her across the face, something prevents her. Maybe it's the flicker in Book's
face—some vague expression she can't quite place.

“So it's true?” he asks.

“Of course,” Miranda says, defiant.

“And the stuff about your mom dying and your dad being a lowly clerk?”

“My mom did die . . . just maybe not how I described it.” Everyone waits for an explanation, but she doesn't offer one.

“Why?” Book asks.

“Why do you think? To see if you were telling the truth. You think I meant all that?”

Book looks like he's just been punched. As angry as Hope is, she's surprised that she feels a pang of pity for him as well. Miranda's words are like a razor slicing across a soft patch of skin.

“So what'd you find out?” Diana asks.

“You're not bright enough to be spies. I don't know who or what you are, but you're definitely not spies.”

Diana jabs an elbow into Miranda's side.

“Oops,” Diana says. “My bad.”

From down the hall they hear approaching footsteps. Time is running out. If they're going to climb the chimney, they have to do it now.

Book turns to the others. “She's coming with us.”

“Nuh-uh,” Diana says. “No way, nohow.”

“We can't leave her here. The Crazies'll kill her for sure.”

“Guess she shoulda thought of that when she was lying to you.” She raises her knife to Miranda's throat. “Why don't I just kill her now?”

Hope gives her head a shake and takes a step forward. “We don't do that anymore,” she whispers. It's the first time she's spoken since they left the cell.

Everyone stares at her, surprised by her words. Diana lowers the knife and meets Hope's eyes.

“You sure about this?”

Hope gives a nod. “I'm sure.”

The footsteps outside the chamber grow louder.

“Fine,” Diana says. “But one false move and she gets it.”

Hope doesn't disagree, and a part of her even wonders why she suggested sparing Miranda's life in the first place. Probably something to do with the look on Book's face and how he came to her defense against those two Crazies.

One by one they begin hoisting themselves up the soot-covered chimney. Black powder rains down. The last to go are Hope and Book. He stops her just as she's about to climb.

“Are you all right?” he asks. They both know he's talking about the Neanderthal back at the cell.

She gives a subdued nod . . . then disappears up the shaft.

Inching up blackened limestone, she reaches a
horizontal part and joins the others at an intersection of passageways. Everyone is crouched beneath the three-foot high ceiling. Book is the last to join them.

“What now?” Flush asks when everyone is there. “We'll never make it through that thing.”

His eyes are trained on an enormous fan fifty feet above them. It sucks up the air and discharges it into the night sky. But he's right; there is no way they can climb the steep shaft, let alone crawl through a whirling fan without getting chopped to pieces.

“There may be another option,” Book says, and turns to Miranda. “You know your way around up here?”

“Are you kidding?” she answers. “I've never been up here in my life.”

“So where're we headed, Book?” Diana asks.

Everyone looks to him and waits.

“The Wheel,” he says.

“What's that?”

“Either our ticket out of here or our last stand.”

On hands and knees he pushes past the others and scrambles down a narrow passage.

As Hope struggles to keep up, she knows that time is running out, and her many feelings for Book—hurt, jealousy, anger,
love
—won't matter a single bit if they can't get away from the Crazies and escape the Compound.

L
IKE RATS IN A
maze, we tried one passage after another, the shafts so narrow they scraped the skin right off our hips and shoulders. When we finally reached the Wheel, we lowered ourselves into the construction site: filthy, exhausted, covered in a black paste of soot and sweat.

There wasn't a soul in sight, but we knew it was only a matter of time before the Crazies found us. We had to hurry.

“Which way?” Flush asked.

There were dozens of tunnels, some of which I knew were miles long. If we chose the wrong one, we'd have to double back and start all over again, and by then the Crazies would have reached the Wheel. There was no
time for a wrong choice. We got one shot at this.

I turned to Miranda. “Do you know?”

She shrugged and shook her head. For some reason I believed her.

Since I was the only one who'd been there before, it was up to me. I pivoted in place. A handful of guttering torches threw flickering light against the walls. The lingering aroma of their burning oil drifted to where we stood.

“Grab those torches,” I said, “and go stand in front of the entryways.”

My command was greeted with puzzled expressions.

“Book, there's not time to look in all the tunnels,” Flush said.

“We're not looking in the tunnels. We're looking at the flames.”

Scylla, Diana, and Flush each took a torch, yanking them from their sconces. They ran from one tunnel to the next, standing at the entrance and watching the torch's fire. Did the flames burn straight up, or did they bend with a breeze?

In the meantime, my eyes landed on a wooden trunk off to one side. The explosives trunk, if I wasn't mistaken. I jimmied open the lock, revealing stacks of dynamite and C-4. There was a canvas knapsack nearby, and I began stuffing them inside. Who knew when some explosives just might come in handy?

Miranda drifted to my side.

“You're wrong about one thing,” she said. I didn't look up. “My father gave me the assignment of befriending you, and it's true, I didn't want it—”

“You made that clear already, thank you.”

“—but it was for the safety of the Compound. We can't have spies.”

I didn't bother to respond. I knew if I opened my mouth, I'd just say something sarcastic or mean. I piled coils of fuses into the canvas knapsack.

“What I didn't expect,” she went on, “was that I'd like you. That wasn't an act.”

I gave her a hard look. Frankly, I didn't know what to believe anymore.

“That's all fine and good,” I said, “but you missed the spy right under your nose: Goodman Nellitch. We saw him in a town, meeting with Hunters and Crazies.”

“That's not possible. . . .”

“So while you were writing me cute little notes, you missed the biggest danger of all.”

Miranda's eyes widened in shock. “If that's true,” she said, “then I've got to tell my father. Now.”

“I already told him, and he didn't believe me. Too bad too, 'cause I bet Nellitch is the one who let the Crazies in.”

As if on cue, muffled gunfire echoed through the tunnels. The Crazies were nearly to the Wheel.

“I'm sorry,” Mandy said suddenly.

“For what?”

“For what happened between us.”

“Nothing happened between us,” I shot back, and started to walk away.

Then she reached beneath her shirt and pulled out a flat, square object. When she unfolded it and spread it out on the stone floor, I nearly lost my breath: it was the map of the western Republic.

“What, you're going to frame us again?” I asked.

She placed the tip of her index finger on the map—on a thin ribbon of blue in a vast expanse of nothingness. “Here's where we are. And here”—she traced her finger along the winding river—“is Camp Liberty.”

Sure enough, there it was, just south of Skeleton Ridge. Some of the others gathered round.

“Follow the river upstream and veer off when you get to this fork, and then this fork after that. That's how you get back.”

The river would be our guide. And the best part was that it allowed us to skip the Flats entirely.

“Why're you showing us this?” Hope asked. Her tone was hostile, threatening.

Miranda tugged at her necklace and looked Hope in the eye. “To make up for things,” she said, and left it at that. She refolded the map and extended it to me.

I took it just as Flush shouted, “Found it!”

He stood in the entry of a tunnel, a breeze slapping the torch flame sideways.

“Let's go,” I said, pocketing Miranda's map and slinging the canvas knapsack over my shoulder.

We had just entered the tunnel when gunshots shattered the silence. They pinged off limestone walls and dropped us to the ground. The Crazies had found the Wheel . . . but they hadn't yet found us.

“Don't fire,” I hissed, even as a couple of the girls nocked their arrows. It would give away exactly where we were.

“We can't outrun 'em, Book,” Cat said.

“I know.”

“Even if they don't know which tunnel we're in, all they have to do is follow the sound of our footsteps.”

“I know.”

Distant gunfire clattered off rock. We'd found the escape tunnel, but now it seemed doubtful we could make it out in time.

“What if I lead them to another tunnel?” Miranda suggested. “That'll give you a head start. Maybe time to reach the end.”

I looked at her like she was crazy. “You'll never make it out alive.”

“I'll find my people. They'll protect me.”

“Who says there are any left?”

She acted as though she didn't hear me. “Follow the
river. That's how you get back to Liberty.”

I opened my mouth to speak, but she wouldn't let me.

“Follow the river,” she said again, then kissed me, not on the cheek this time but on the mouth. We watched as she ran out of the tunnel and disappeared from sight. My heart shuddered with a sadness that surprised me.

Everyone took off in a mad dash down the tunnel; only Hope and I remained. She gave me a long look, and I had no doubt her brown eyes could see to the depths of my soul. Finally, she turned and jogged after the others. I followed, Miranda's kiss on my lips still warm, its imprint as distinct as the tattoo on my arm.

T
HE BREEZE TUGS THEM
down the tunnel. Even though they're caked in sweat and grime, there's a sudden sense of optimism, of exhilaration. They're going to make it. They're going to escape the Compound.

As Hope runs, she thinks about Miranda's sacrifice and how she's risking her life for Book and a group of strangers. Hope doesn't know what to make of it. A part of her admires Miranda for it . . . and a part of her is wildly jealous.

They race on without words. It's just the scrabble of feet, muffled coughs, the occasional clatter of stones. The torches' flickering flames throw orange light on the umber-colored walls. With each bend of the cave, they expect to spy the opening and an endless field of
corn. But the tunnel goes on. And on.

“Why are we going down?” Diana asks.

It's what they're all thinking. The tunnel angles down, not up. How can it deposit them in the cornfield if it keeps sloping downward? Something isn't right. Still, the breeze seems to suggest that there's an opening ahead of them.

It is scent, not sight, that alerts them to the end. A smell of dust and wet and pure night air. An intoxicating fragrance. The tunnel narrows . . . and there it is: the outside world. A rainy downpour makes a curtain across the opening. Black night presses against it from the other side.

But there's a problem: it isn't a field the tunnel empties out on, but air itself. Space. The sky. They are smack-dab in the middle of a cliff, and when lightning flashes, Hope catches a glimpse of the brown river below them.
Directly
below them. She pulls herself back, gasping for breath.

Diana steps out onto a small ledge. When she comes back in, water drips from her hair.

“There's no path,” she reports flatly.

“There's gotta be,” Book says. “Why build this tunnel otherwise?”

But when he goes to inspect, he sees she's right: there is no trail. They've come all this way, only to be confronted with the fact that it's nothing more than a
glorified air shaft. A hole for letting fresh air in and sucking bad air out.

At just that moment, distant gunfire clatters off the walls. The Crazies—in this very tunnel. It's only a matter of time before they find the eight Sisters and Less Thans.

“This
is
an escape tunnel,” Hope says.

Diana bristles. “I was just out there, Hope. There's no path.”

“You didn't look directly above.” Hope knows a thing or two about escape routes, like how the best way to hide one is to put the trail above the tunnel itself.

To prove her point, she steps outside. The rain comes down, not in sheets, but thick, cold, suffocating blankets. With fumbling, outstretched hands she reaches above the tunnel. Fingers curl around a jutting stone, first one hand, then another. A burst of lightning shows the river directly below her, several hundred feet down. If she loses her grip, there is nothing between her and the river. Death on impact.

“Is there a path?” Flush calls out.

It's not so much a path as it is a limestone cliff angling straight up with a series of tiny notches and indentations scattered here and there. Nothing more. And somewhere far above her the cliff plateaus out, but where that is she can't yet tell. She lowers herself back into the tunnel. Her clothes are soaked, and Diana holds
the torch close so Hope can steal some of its warmth. Her teeth chatter as she explains.

“I'm not sure all of us can make it,” Flush says. His eyes fall on Four Fingers, on Argos, on Twitch, on Cat with his one arm.

“Don't worry about me,” Cat says. “Besides, we don't have a choice.” Gunfire punctuates his comment.

“We could maybe manage if we had a rope,” Flush says.

Their eyes fall to the few supplies they carry. Nothing comes close to a rope.

Hope rips off her outer, long-sleeved shirt . . . and Book suddenly does the same. The others look at them as if they're out of their minds, watching Book and Hope knot the sleeve of one to the sleeve of the other. In no time, two shirts equal six feet of rope.

“What're we waiting for?” Diana asks. She rips off her outer shirt as well, and soon all of them are in their T-shirts, tying their long-sleeved shirts together. As they work, Hope's gaze returns to Book. There are times he seems to know exactly what she's thinking . . . and that makes her more nervous than she dares admit.