Astray (30 page)

“Are you okay?” I say. I need to see his face, put a hand on his cheek to make sure, but I can’t.

“Yeah, I’m fine. I’m home. Dad’s home. We’re good. And we don’t blame you, Lyla. Taylor feels awful about what she said, I mean she should, but you know, she only said it ’cause she was scared.”

I feel like I might burst into tears.

“It’s you I’m worried about,” he adds. “What were you thinking, going back there?”

I lean up against the tree nearest me and grip the phone a little harder. “I didn’t know where else to go. I
thought maybe if I went back they’d leave you and your family alone.”

Cody makes a frustrated sound into the phone. “But you have no problem letting them hurt you? I heard about your hair. What else have they done to you?”

“I’m okay,” I say.

“No, you’re not. Steve said you looked bad this morning and that you were chanting and acting strange. Look, I’m coming to get you. Now.” I can hear him moving, the sound of rustling sheets and stuff getting knocked around.

“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes,” Cody says, and I can hear him opening his car door and shutting it. “Wait out by the road for me.”

I open my mouth to argue with him, but before I can I hear a noise on the road, a car coming. I can see the first faint beams of its headlights.

“Someone’s coming, I have to go,” I say as I sprint across the road and dive back into the trees.

“Fifteen minutes,” Cody says, and I hang up and put the phone in my jeans pocket because I can’t figure out how to make the light turn off.

I work my way as deep into the shadows as I can and hunker down against a tree. The sky is changing now, the dark becoming more gray than black. It makes everything crisper, easier to see, which means I’ll be easier to spot too. The headlights get brighter. I try not to freak out. It could be anyone out there, but then the lights move past me and I can see the vehicle behind them. It’s one of
the Community vans and it’s slowing down, pulling off onto the hard-packed dirt. The driver’s-side door opens and Jonathan gets out. A thrill of terror runs through me. I wish I’d hidden farther in, but it’s too late to move now. I don’t like that he’s stopped out on the road.
What will he do when Cody shows up?

I have to find a way to get to Cody before he ends up here. I can’t call him, because the phone’s light will give me away. If I could only find a way to move to the left and work my way farther down, maybe I could run parallel to the road in the direction of town. The trees don’t thin out right away. If I go fast, I’ll be able to get far enough away that Jonathan won’t see me leaving when I finally pop back onto the road.

I am just about to risk moving when I hear another car. Another of the Community vans pulls up next to Jonathan’s. The door opens and Mr. Brown and Brian get out. I can feel the terror taking over now. They’re going to find me, I can feel it. My teeth start to chatter and I have to clench my jaw hard to make them stop. I put my hand on the shears.

Mr. Brown walks over to Jonathan. “Are you ready, son?”

“I’ve been ready for a long time,” Jonathan says.

“Good. Very soon you will officially earn your place as one of the Chosen.” He claps Jonathan on the back.

“Three hours left to get everything in place,” Jonathan says. “You have the rest of the fuel?”

Brian holds up a red gas container. “There’s more in the van. I managed to get the last ones filled today.”

Jonathan moves to the back of his van and opens the double doors. I can’t see him anymore, he’s hidden by one of them, but I watch Brian move around to where he is and hand him the red container. Mr. Brown goes back to his van and pulls out more red cans. They make a sort of assembly line from one van to the other.

Every minute that goes by, I get more and more panicked. Cody will be here soon and I can’t move.

“That’s all the cans. Brian, come help me with the other package,” Mr. Brown says. Jonathan disappears into the back of his van. I watch as Brian follows Mr. Brown back to the other van again. Mr. Brown climbs in and the van rocks a little. There’s a shout of surprise or pain and then a moment later someone else emerges from the van, falls out of the back into Brian’s arms, knocking him to the ground.

“Hey!” he hollers. The person on top of him scrambles up. It’s a woman. Her hands are bound and there’s a gag in her mouth. Still, I can hear her muffled screams. She almost trips, then finds her footing and starts to run past the vans, out into the road. It’s Mrs. Rosen. They took Mrs. Rosen. That’s why she never met with Jack or came to get Will and the others.

Mr. Brown hurtles out of the van. “Get up and get her!” he hollers, and Brian pushes up off the ground and takes off.

“Jonathan!” Mr. Brown shouts, and then Jonathan’s out of his van with a rifle in one hand. She’s not going to make it. I will her forward, but already I’m sure that this is it. They’re going to kill her. Mrs. Rosen appears on the other side of Jonathan’s van. She’s running, but there’s nowhere for her to go. I can’t see her face, but I can tell by the way that she keeps looking back that she knows it.

There’s a loud bang. It echoes out into the almost morning, scaring a bunch of birds from the treetops over my head. They rise into the air, a swirling, panicking mass that quickly wings off to the left and disappears.

Mrs. Rosen turns around. Her coat front is covered in bits of down tinged red with blood. Behind her Jonathan lowers his rifle. At close range like that, he had to have blown a terrible hole in her chest, but I can’t see it from here. She looks down at her chest and her body falls forward. I feel like I’m seeing everything in slow motion, but then she’s on the ground before I can blink. I can feel the thud her body makes in my chest.

I look over at Jonathan. He raises the rifle once more, aiming it at her. He waits for her to move, and when she doesn’t he closes the distance between them.

“Stupid cow!” he yells before kicking her body with his boot.

Mrs. Rosen’s body shudders just a little before going perfectly still.

I bite down on my lip. Hard. I want to scream. I want to run, but I can’t. They’ll shoot me too.

“We should’ve killed her two days ago,” Jonathan says. “Mistakes like that can derail everything. We can’t afford them anymore.”

“Pioneer wanted her to die with the others today. Are you questioning his instructions?” Mr. Brown asks.

Jonathan shakes his head. “No, no, I’m not. It’s just …”

“We can discuss this later. Get her off the road quickly. There could be a car coming any minute.”

Jonathan opens up the van doors and stoops down. For one heart-squeezing moment I can’t really see him and I have this awful conviction that he’s scrabbling across the ground like a beetle, scurrying toward me on all fours. But then he stands up and starts dragging Mrs. Rosen’s body to the van. I can hear her shoes scrape across the ground. The sound makes me want to vomit.

Jonathan lifts her up, favoring his bad hand as he does. His bandage is more red than white. He inches her upward a little at a time until her backside leans against the van’s bumper, and then he lets her upper body fall backward into the van itself. Brian comes up beside him and throws her legs in after her. The van is all white, but now there’s a long swipe of blood across the side where Jonathan put one hand to steady himself. Mrs. Rosen’s blood. Jonathan shuts the van doors again and shakes his head, runs his bloody hand through his hair. He kicks at the tire and then looks around, up the road in both directions. He’s making sure no one’s around.

I have to hide better.

Get lower.

Now!

I try to readjust, to make myself small, and make a tiny move backward—right onto a fallen tree branch. It gives immediately, the cracking sound every bit as loud to me as the gunshot. I wince and look up. Just in time to see Jonathan startle and peer into the trees. I know he sees me when he lunges forward to grab his rifle. I don’t know what to do. So I do the only thing that comes to mind.

I run.

If you aren’t with us, you are against us, and I will not mourn you one bit when you die.

—Brian Wallace

I hurtle through the trees, leaping over fallen limbs and trying desperately not to fall. Still, I fall twice, my feet slipping on patches of snow. I scramble up and look back. He’s coming.

Fast.

I face forward and lean over to try to propel myself faster, my eyes focused on what’s just ahead of my feet so I don’t fall again. I can’t, he’ll have me if I do. I can hear him crashing around behind me, the sounds getting louder and louder. Much too close.

He shoots at me once. The bullet takes out a chunk of the tree trunk to my left. Bark hits my sweatshirt, a light tap on my shoulder. I scream—one short burst before I’m out of breath. I suck in more air and try to go faster.
I need to go faster
. I can see the top of the barn up ahead. I’m getting close to the trailer park now.
But can they help me? Will they want to?

The trees begin to thin and the ground becomes less
treacherous. I full-out sprint, putting every ounce of my energy into it. But then so does he.

I can see the first trailer. The lights are on. I open my mouth to scream.

There’s a sudden breeze behind me and then Jonathan slams into my back. All the air rushes out of me. I hit the ground. My chin knocks against a tree root and my teeth clack together. There’s pain, sharp and bright inside my head, and I can taste blood.

I claw at the ground. Several of my nails tear off as I struggle. I keep trying to grab hold of something. Anything. The ground is too hard and cold to give me traction. Jonathan’s breath is in my ear. I feel his mouth brush against my skin and his spit on my cheek. I grunt, try to take in some air so I can yell, but he’s pressing my chest into the ground and I can’t get my lungs to work right after the fall.

He yanks me onto my back and puts one hand over my mouth. It’s cold and wide and rough against my lips. Then he puts his other hand around my neck, his palm pressing hard under my chin, and starts to squeeze. He settles his weight more fully on my chest. My heart thunders in my head. I kick my feet against the ground and slap at him with my arms, but I can’t get a good hold on him through his jacket. Panic rushes through me like a speeding train. I can’t get away. I can’t
breathe
.

Black spots start to drift in front of my eyes—a nightmarish blizzard of them. I can barely see. I keep kicking,
but it’s getting harder and harder to. Jonathan moves his hand off my mouth and adds it to the one around my neck. He squeezes so tightly that I feel the cords of my neck shift. I’m pressed so hard into the ground that my lower back is burning. It must be on top of a rock or root or something that keeps jabbing into my skin.

I can’t move my head. He’s all I can see now, his face ringed in black where my vision is already failing. He’s not looking at me at all. He’s looking above me, toward the trailer park. The last thing I see before the whole world goes black is the underside of his chin.

I’m feral when I come to, all clawing hands and kicking feet. But he’s not on top of me anymore. I’m not where I was, in the trees. I’m staring up at a quickly blueing sky, my hands resting on blacktop. I don’t know how long I was out. I try to turn my head to see if I can make better sense of where I am—the road maybe—but the pain is a live thing, writhing and screaming inside every muscle there.

I move my eyes to the right, but I can’t see anything. There’s a dark spot on my right eye that blots out most of my vision. It’s red along the edges. Is my eye bleeding?

I bring a hand to my neck, but I can barely touch the skin. It’s like someone rubbed it with sandpaper, then doused it in rubbing alcohol. Tears roll down the sides of my face. There’s noise somewhere close by, a flurry of slamming doors and footsteps. We must be back by the
van. Very, very carefully I sit up. The world tilts violently and I have to lie back down. Mr. Brown is above me a second later, his face tense and angry.

“What were you doing out here?”

I try to answer, but I have no voice. Literally. All I can do is wheeze.

“You’re never going to be right again, are you?” He runs a hand through his hair. His nose is bright red from cold. His hands are shaking. “She has to go with you,” he says.

Jonathan and Brian are here now too.

“I know.” Jonathan grabs me under my arms and pulls me to a sitting position before I have time to protest. My whole existence revolves around trying to keep my neck still. I whimper as he jostles me into his arms and walks with me the few feet to the van. The road’s empty in both directions.

Brain’s opened the back doors to the van again. Inside is a pile of empty white bags with the words
AMMONIUM NITRATE
on them, a crowd of large blue plastic barrels, the red gas cans, and several propane tanks lined up like soldiers, all turned in the same directions. Beyond them, mashed into the far right-hand corner, is Mrs. Rosen. I can’t see her face because her head is tucked into her chest like she’s just dozed off. There’s a puddle of blood under her legs.

Jonathan leans into the van and dumps me onto the floor. My hands land on Mrs. Rosen’s legs. Her shoes poke into my chest. I move out of the way, try to scramble back
out of the van, but Brian’s got a rifle pointed at me. “Don’t,” he says. He makes me lie on my stomach so Jonathan can tie my hands behind me. The ropes are so tight that my fingers tingle. Then he leaves and Jonathan shuts the van doors and I’m trapped inside.

I press myself against the side wall and work my way up into a sitting position. Up front Jonathan settles into the driver’s seat. There’s a wire mesh screen separating the front of the van from the back. He looks back at me through the rearview mirror. “It’s locked from the outside. You can’t get out.”

He starts the van and the radio blares on. That song about “walking in a winter wonderland” fills the car—so bright and cheerful and completely wrong right now that it hurts to hear it. He pulls out onto the road, swinging the van wide so that he can head in the opposite direction, toward town. I fall against Mrs. Rosen before I can steady myself. Her body topples over into the blue barrels and her head lolls back. She doesn’t look like she’s sleeping now. My eyes fill with tears and the red film on the right one makes everything in the van look drenched in blood.