Shadows (29 page)

“More than you know.” The man’s face seemed to close. “Alex talked them into a rescue. Believe me, it wasn’t easy, but she was a pit bull about it. Everyone knew it was a huge risk, but when she told the boys in charge that you were a soldier and knew explosives . . . well, you shoulda seen their faces light up. They couldn’t hustle out of Rule fast enough. But when we got there, you were already gone. Everyone figured you were dead.”

So he’d been right. A terrible, black foreboding washed through him.
If Alex thought I was dead, would she stay? Oh God, what if she didn’t believe it? What if she went looking for me?
“Is she . . . did she leave? Where did she go?”

“Where did
you
go?” Mellie had been so quiet and watchful that Tom had forgotten she was there. Mellie laid a hand on his shoulder. “Where were you, exactly?”

“Wisconsin.” Blame the shock and his confusion, but the word tumbled from his mouth before he had time to think.

“
Where
in Wisconsin?” Mellie asked.

“Uh . . .” He ran his good hand through his hair. “A couple . . . Jed and Grace, they came through on their way west. I was pretty out of it. I honestly don’t remember much. All I know is I woke up four or five days later, and we were at their cabin. Grace was a nurse and—”

“Cabin?” Mellie echoed.

“Odd Lake, yeah.” Still reeling, Tom returned his attention to the man. He could feel his brain trying to put all the pieces together. “I don’t understand. You’re from Rule. You came to find me. So why are you fighting Rule now? What’s going on? Why are you here and not in Rule? Who
are
you people?”

“My name’s Weller, Tom. And I hate to say, but Alex . . .” Weller showed his teeth in a grimace.

Oh no. I’m too late, I waited too long . . .
“What? But
what
?”

“I’m real sorry, Tom, but the last I knew, Alex was in the prison house.”

“
What? Prison
house?” he cried, aghast. That she was alive should’ve buoyed him, but this was five times worse. If
prison house
had the same meaning in this village as it did in Afghanistan—if they tortured people—Alex might be as good as dead. “In Rule?
Why?
”

“Well . . .” Again, Weller’s hand slowly wiped his mouth. It was the reluctant gesture of a man thinking, and very carefully, about what he should say next.

“Jesus,” Tom said. He could feel the sweat beading on his upper lip. “Just
say
it.”

“They’re . . . let’s just say they’ve got some real bad actors in that village,” Weller said, finally. He looked straight into Tom’s eyes. “We’re not only talking the way the village has been run before everything went to hell. I’m talking
now
: how they treat people, the things they’ve done to secure the borders, in particular.”

“What does that have to do with Alex? Why would they throw her in a prison?”

“Let’s just say she, ah, wouldn’t
cooperate
.” Weller’s features arranged themselves into an expression of regret.

“Meaning?”

“You seem like a smart boy, Tom,” Mellie interrupted. “You’ve been to war. You’ve seen how fast things break down. So what do you think happens to young girls at the hands of old men?”

“And not all of ’em old,” Weller added, softly. He and Mellie traded another long look before he repeated, “Not all.”

Oh my God.
He had to close his eyes. Now Weller’s reluctance, how carefully he’d seemed to search for words, made perfect sense.
This is my fault. If she hadn’t been alone, if I hadn’t gotten myself shot, none of this would’ve happened.

He heard his voice rise as if from the hollow blackness at the bottom of a well. “Tell me what to do to get her out, and I’ll do it.” He opened his eyes and found Weller. “I’ll do whatever it takes.”

There was a tiny, nearly invisible tug at one corner of Weller’s mouth, a look of satisfaction there and gone in the blink of an eye. “Well, the kid who
called
the shots,” he said, “his name was Peter. But you don’t have to worry about him. He got himself killed in an ambush, and good riddance. But the kid who’s taken over? Son of a bitch is a psychopath.”

“What kid?” Tom asked. “What’s his name?”

“Boy by the name of Prentiss,” Weller said. “Chris Prentiss.”

“Are you all right?” Still huffing, winded from the desperate struggle, Chris pushed up from the bloodied snow. He looked toward Nathan, who sprawled against the school’s north wall. Nathan was breathing hard, a hand clamped to his left bicep. Blood oozed between his fingers. His parka was shredded from shoulder to elbow. “He bite you anywhere else?”

“No. Lucky his feet went out from under on the ice, though.” Nathan’s face was the color of ash. “Little bastard latched onto her like a damned leech.” The old man pulled his head around his shoulder and called, “He get you bad?”

“No.” Lena huddled in a heap of clothing at the corner of the building and beneath the breezeway where they’d tethered the horses. The breezeway ran on the east wall and led to a snowcovered jungle gym and the tatters of a lonely basketball hoop. The Changed had torn her parka open at the throat. Livid, brightred scratches stood in parallel tracks on her neck where his nails had first stripped away her scarf before clawing at her sweater. That he hadn’t used his teeth was a miracle. “Where did he come from? Why was he here? The school’s all by itself. No houses nearby, nothing.”

“I don’t know.” Chris stared down at the boy. The Changed wasn’t quite dead but still gulping, trying to pull in air through the blood pulsing from his mouth and around the knife jammed halfway in his throat. His feet scraped snow in a slow shamble. Then the boy managed a faint, gurgling caw, and Chris couldn’t stand it any longer. Kneeling, he wrapped his hands around the knife, felt it move against his palms as the boy’s throat convulsed—and rammed the blade home. He felt the tip scrape bone, the slight hesitation as it parted tough tendon and muscle along the boy’s spine. Chris let his weight fall.

The boy flopped as the steel found his spinal cord. A bright crimson gusher boiled from his mouth. His hands were fluttery starfish that twitched and jumped before folding, going limp, and, finally, dying. Chris waited a few more seconds to make sure, then tugged out his knife. There was blood everywhere: on the snow, the boy, his own hands.

“She’s right. I don’t get it,” Nathan said. “There are no tracks out here. He had to be in the school.”

Which meant that the boy had bypassed
them
to get to Lena, and that made no sense. When Lena screamed, Chris had been on the second floor, slipping from room to room. There had been many bodies, people-popsicles, really: all of them frozen solid and only some with portions—an arm here, a foot there—gnawed to bare bone. The halls were filmed with a fine cover of ice and snow, but he’d seen no tracks except his own. So there had been plenty of food and no need for the boy to show himself at all. From his tracks, the Changed had vaulted out of the school’s library, which was the way both he and Nathan had entered. Still on the ground floor and at the back of the school, Nathan had made it out first.

But Nathan was right there. Why not go after him, or me? We were inside and much closer. Why leave? Why go outside for Lena? Hell, why go after her in the first place?

He looked back at Lena, still cringing, a hand bunched to her scratched throat. Although he’d had plenty of time, the boy hadn’t bitten her anywhere.
It’s like he wanted to get
at
her
. He eyed the tangle of green scarf and that torn parka.
Like maybe he wanted to . . .
A chill shivered over his skin. The idea that the boy might have had rape on his mind disturbed him almost more than if the Changed had only wanted to tear out Lena’s throat.

“Do you think there are others?” Lena asked.

Good question. He rifled a glance at the horses, but they’d quieted. Not that horses were all that reliable an indicator: dogs were much more sensitive to the Changed. “I don’t think so, but we probably should get out of here. Even if he was by himself, there are a lot of bodies in there. Might be others who decide to drop by for a meal, you know? Our horses were pretty loud and so were we.”

“Move?
Again?
” Lena’s skin was milky, the circles under her eyes as dark as charcoal. She was sick, eating barely enough to keep a tick alive, but she wouldn’t talk about it. He was starting to have a nasty suspicion why. The question was, what could—
would—
he do about it? “Chris,” she said, “we haven’t gotten any rest in—”

“In days. I know.” Trotting over to the roan, he unhooked his pack and then came back to kneel by Nathan. Through the rip, he could see the blood welling through a jagged rip but no pumpers. He dug out a medical kit. “But we can’t stay here, Lena. Not now.”

“We’re in the middle of nowhere. The school’s all by itself. There are no other tracks, so he’s probably the only one. Chris, we have to rest
sometime
.”

He bit back an impatient reply. Getting angry wouldn’t help. Instead, he turned his attention to Nathan, easing the old man’s injured arm from its sleeve and then setting about sponging off blood. He had no answers for Lena, and she
was
right. They were all tired. Although they’d finally decided to start looping back north and west, they’d been on the road for eleven days now. At their current rate, Oren was still a good ten days in the future if they were lucky, and two weeks if they weren’t. They had to get some rest.

“Has it ever been so bad?” Lena persisted. “With the Changed coming after you? This is the fourth kid in two days.”

“I don’t know much about this area,” he said, unrolling Kerlix around Nathan’s wound. “Any time I’ve gone east of Rule, it’s always been with a big group where we had lots of guys and guns and dogs. Nathan?”

The old man only shook his head. “All those prints and bone mounds we’ve found are old. We haven’t run across a single homestead or group of survivors, young or old.”

“Maybe they ran away,” Lena said.

“Or they’re all dead,” Nathan said. “My point is this: there’s no fresh meat, anywhere. There shouldn’t
be
Changed around here at all, right? So what’s the story with that little stash of bodies we found in the school?”

Oh boy.
He’d never considered that possibility. “You’re talking a storehouse, like a . . . a meat locker.”

“I’m talking exactly that.” Nathan pulled in a sudden hiss of pain, exposing yellowing teeth and gums that were the color of putty. “I don’t think that’s a very good sign, do you?”

“You mean, there’ll be more?” Lena’s voice was tremulous. “Like, they might be coming
now
?”

“There are no fresh prints,” Chris said. This private school was secluded and lay at the end of a quarter-mile driveway, and theirs were the only tracks. From the lie of the land, this whole area looked like it had once been pasture. Other than a football field and bleachers humped with snow, there were no other buildings, and the nearest woods were a good half mile distant.

“I don’t know enough to understand what that means,” Nathan said.

He didn’t either. “So what do you think? Stay or go?”

“We should stay,” Lena said. “You said yourself, the prints are old. Look at this.” She used the toe of her boot to scuff a white bloom of icy powder. “It snowed again just last night. This is all fresh. You can tell we’re the only ones who’ve been through.”

“I’m not wild about either choice,” Nathan said, “but we’ve been on the move almost continuously for the last twenty hours. The horses are done in, and humping it back into any kind of woods with good cover means another two, three hours. If the animals were rested and we had some decent moon to light the way, it might be a different story.” After eleven days on the road, Nathan’s skin was drawn and his cheeks hollowed from lack of rest and poor food. “Even if we make it to the woods, sun’s gonna go before we can make camp.”

“We should stay,” Lena repeated. “He was probably alone. This might just have been this kid’s private stash. The others would’ve come out already, right? With no fresh tracks, that means there’s been nobody else in at least two days. We can barricade ourselves in somewhere on the second floor. If we get rid of the body and bring the horses in, maybe no one will know we’re here.”

Those were all good points. Chris’s eyes flicked back to the dead boy. The Changed was young, no more than thirteen, and looked healthy—well, aside from being dead. He was dressed for the weather, too. He studied the kid’s face, which still had a trace of baby fat under the chin.
Eating pretty well, too. So maybe he
was
only defending his stash. But he had to know we’re no threat to
that.
And the only person he went for was—

“Chris?” Lena said.

“Give me a second.”
The kid chose Lena. He could have taken Nathan or me. He could have left us alone. But he had to get at
her
—and he risked his
life
to do it.

God, he didn’t like where this line of thought was going. It might be nothing. But he thought he knew a way to test that.

“Okay.” He let out a long breath. “I vote we stay. Nathan, there’s a corner room on the second floor just above us, with windows east and north, and another on a diagonal south and west. We’ll have a good shot at seeing anything coming.” Stooping, he bent and hooked his hands under the dead boy’s pits. “Lena, let’s get him out of sight and then cover over the blood.”

Lena looked about as thrilled as if he’d asked her to pick up dog crap, but she only nodded. “It’ll be okay,” she said, grabbing the kid’s ankles. “It can’t be any more dangerous than the woods.”

That was when he lied to her for the first time.

“Yeah,” he said. “Probably not.”

“Here.” Sliding to a sit beside him at his lookout, Lena handed him a steaming aluminum camp cup. “I made you some tea.”

“Thanks,” he said, mildly surprised. He’d left Lena and Nathan next door in what had once been a chemistry lab. The room was downwind, but they’d used duct tape along the seams and under the door, just in case. The horses were in the gym because there were no windows and the one exit was easier to block off. The horses would leave mounds of crap on the basketball court, but he couldn’t think of a soul who would care. He cradled the hot metal in both hands. The steam was sweet and smelled orange. “How come you’re awake?”