The Reaping (5 page)

“But you can’t walk all the way to Salt Lake.”

I raise my eyebrows and my hands go to my hips.
Yes I can.

Jack takes my face in his hands and laughs. I can tell he’s trying hard to let go of his anger. “Stop being so stubborn. I’m not telling you not to go. I’m just telling you there’s another way.”

My eyes dart down. Of course I was being stubborn. I’ve been out here by myself for too long. I’ve lost the sense of depending and trusting someone else while Jack’s been away from me. I need to relearn it.

Jack’s lips brush across my forehead. “I’ve missed the way you furrow.”

I smile.
How?

“There are freight trains. That’s how the government transports most of their supplies. Salt Lake is one of the largest designated cities. There’s bound to be trains headed there regularly. We just need to find the tracks.”

How do you know trains?

His hands fall from my face, and my cheeks still glow from his touch. We pick up the pace. “Dave and I sometimes watched the trains come into Seattle for the supply drops. And my father and I watched the trains as we traveled west. We hid, of course. There are soldiers—and sometimes agents— on the trains. Most of them have a mounted gun on the top to keep off the nomads. One night we were camping out in the prairie. It was flat and the night was clear and the moon was so bright you could see perfectly. We had passed a group of nomads during the day. We had actually risked talking to them—one of them was dehydrated and needed help. They were kind. That doesn’t happen too often.”

Jack’s hand grabs mine, and from the urgent pressure of his fingers, I know this story does not end well. I step closer to him and touch his arm. We step over a fallen tree together.

“We stayed with them during the day, but at dusk we parted ways. They headed toward the tracks.” He looks down at our clasped hands and then studies the trees stretching before us. He clears his throat. “I’ve seen too many nomads do too many stupid things. I think that’s why I’m nervous for you, Terra.”

I tilt my head.

He smiles bitterly. “I don’t think you’re a stupid nomad—not by any stretch of the imagination. But the government assumes nomads will try things, and so most government property is armed to the gills. That’s why this rescue is so dangerous. They’re planning on someone coming and trying something.”

Trains?
I want to keep him focused. If I let him go on about dangers and weapons and what could go wrong, then I’ll start to think about what might happen to
him
if we do this. That’s not something I can think about for too long.

He leans his head against mine, and we jostle together as we hike. “You just can’t let yourself be distracted, can you?”

Nope.

“Can’t consider the important things going on here?”

He’s trying to make me rethink this again. I can’t help the impish grin.
Not a chance
.

Jack sighs. “I’m not surprised. You’re just lucky that I love you and Nell and Red. Otherwise you’d all be on your own.”

I shudder at the thought of doing this by myself, of what my life was like just a few days ago without him. I squeeze his hand.
Trains?

“When we had stopped with them during the day, the nomads had mentioned something about a supply train coming through that night. Food and medicine, so it was a rare one—usually they’re just one or the other. Those nomads were in sorry shape. I don’t know if they had just left a city and weren’t used to traveling, but they were desperate. They said the train would come through around eleven. I don’t know how they knew that, but they found out somehow. If a nomad has an advantage of some sort, they’ll never share it with you. But they knew when that train was coming, and my father and I stayed hidden in the long grass and let them pass us by. They never even knew we were there.

“We could feel the train coming long before it reached us. It seemed to take hours. I watched the train barrel toward us and saw the shapes of the nomads as they hunched down, waiting. As soon as the train was close enough, they jumped up and ran along, trying to grab hold of one of the cars and get into it. The soldier at the gun on the top saw them. They were too close to shoot with the mounted gun, but that didn’t matter. Soldiers started pouring through the doors like ants out of an anthill.”

Jack looks up through trees, squinting at the fading gray clouds peeking through the leaves. His eyes glisten.

“Every single nomad—there were ten of them—was thrown from the train. Then the soldiers disappeared back inside as if they had never even been there. Dad and I watched that stretch of track for a full hour. Not a single nomad got up.”

We walk for a while in silence. I have no words. Every new horror I hear of affects me just the same—I can’t believe how cruel people are. You’d think I’d start getting used to it, but I’m glad I don’t. I would start to be too much like
them
—the agents, the soldiers, the government, whoever they are—if I got used to this. Then I stop walking.

So why do you want to take a train?

Jack looks at me for several long moments, his hazel eyes flashing. A bird chirps off to my right, but I hardly hear it with his intense gaze on me. “Because I know you, Terra. I know you’re going to do this with or without me. Honestly, I think you’re better off risking the train. Hiking would take far too long. If the government is as close to unlocking the serum as you think they are, then I don’t know how much time Nell and Red have left.”

What do train tracks look like?

“They’re two parallel metal rails with wood ties—slats—in between.”

A long metal path five miles to the east of the cabin comes into focus. Sometimes I would walk along it on my way to a small lake teeming with fish. I never knew what that path was. I always thought it strange that the leaves and other forest debris never accumulated on it. But now it makes sense. If those metal rails are train tracks and the train travels at night, then the train would have passed by and I’d never know.

I’ve seen some.

Jack’s eyes are strange mixture of relief and disappointment. “Where?”

East of the cabin
.

“Do they run north and south or east and west?”

North south.

“Then they’ll head us in the right direction. I don’t know if there are any direct lines, but it’s a start.”

We turn southeast. I just wish there was some way we could tell Nell and Red that we were coming for them, that they needed to hang on for just a little while longer.

The long shadows of trees point the way toward the tracks. We hike until the darkness under the trees hazes my vision. Just when I think I can’t possibly take another step without falling asleep, we stumble into a narrow swathe of treeless land that stretches as far as I can see in either direction. The train tracks run straight through it. Finally.

“Let’s rest until the train comes.” Jack yawns and slumps against a tree.

But I can’t sleep yet. I find a spot where I know I’m out in the open. I look up to the sky. The clouds are patchy, but the sky is mostly clear and pierced with starlight. I carefully mouth the words.

I’ll need a sub. Maybe three days. I don’t know where. Please just watch.

This has never felt more risky. I can’t tell Gaea when or where, just that I need it. I hope that my mother can use the satellites to watch me closely enough. She hasn’t failed me yet.

Jack and I bed down under a grove of slender trees. Their branches droop down around us, forming a canopy of entwined branches clothed in bright green new leaves. I try to keep my eyes open, but my head droops again and again until finally I fall asleep with Jack’s arms around me.

Chapter Four

I wake up to rain on my face, and the sleeping bag is covered in a pattern of raindrops. All around me, I hear the soft patter of water. The woods always sound magical during the rain. All other sounds are muffled, and all you can hear is the drip, drip, drip. My breath comes out in puffs and I shiver. Jack’s warmth is gone.

I panic and sit up, the sleeping bag rustling as I do. I wince. I shouldn’t move so suddenly—who knows what might be out there watching me in the pale light of morning—but my heart hammers in my chest.

“Jack,” I croak out, but the word is mangled.

“I wondered when you were going to wake up.” Jack sits on his haunches a few feet away. He’s running his hands through the leaves and then splashing the drops of water on his face. “The train didn’t come last night.”

My heart hasn’t calmed down yet, and I can barely smile through the panic ebbing in my veins.

Jack tilts his head to look at me more closely. “What’s wrong?”

I look at my hands and shrug. I pick at a thread hanging from the sleeping bag.

Jack sits next to me and leans against my shoulder. “I’m never leaving you again. You know that, right?”

If only he knew about those three days in the cabin last winter when I couldn’t even move because of the hole in my heart. I haven’t been able to tell him just how bad it was. It still hurts to think about it, and he doesn’t need to know how I almost didn’t put myself together again. Instead I chance a smile at him. He brushes his lips against mine, and the heat from his lips warms me all the way to my toes.

“Come on. Let’s follow the tracks until the train comes.”

He stands and grabs my hands to help me up. I shake the stiffness from my limbs and roll the sleeping bag. We munch on energy bars and sip water from a pouch for our breakfast. My mouth feels mossy, but we don’t stop to brush our teeth. We keep to the trees that run along the track, always keeping it just in sight. It’s an eerie feeling to see that path carved right out of the forest—knowing it’s the government’s road and that we’re stalking along it so closely they could touch us if they wanted to. I’ve spent months trying to put as much distance as possible between us that it feels crazy making myself so vulnerable now.

But I’m doing this for Nell and Red.

By the time the sun is over the train tracks and shining in my eyes, the sweat trickles down my back and my mouth is dry.

Any trains during the day?
I ask Jack as we pause to take a drink.

“I’m not sure. I would think not just because they’d be easier targets. Who knows? Why? Did you hear something?”

I shake my head.
Tired of waiting.

“I am too. When you’re marching to your possibly imminent demise, you don’t want to wait around for it.”

Too much suspense?

Jack laughs and runs a hand through his hair. “Something like that. You still haven’t changed your mind?”

I zip my pack closed and keep hiking.

“I didn’t think you would. Promise me, though, that you’ll be careful.”

I start to laugh, but then I turn to him and there’s so much pain in his eyes it could go down for miles and I’d never see the end of it. His eyes remind me of the colony’s trench.

Of course.

He looks away. “I don’t think I could bear it if something happened to you.” He speaks quietly, so quietly the faint breeze turning the leaves almost wisps the words away before I hear them.

The sun hangs low in the sky, and the tracks glow orange-black in the fading light. Fluffy pollen drifts in the breeze, glittering like snow. The sweat is drying on my back as the sun disappears altogether and the chill of night falls on us. Through the break above the tracks, the pinpricks of stars appear one by one in the sky. The crickets chirp in rhythm, hushing as we step closer and resuming their music once we’ve passed on.

Then suddenly all those sounds stop and all I hear is the crunch of our feet on leaves. I pause, my body quivering as I rise up on my toes, trying to decide if I should keep walking or if we need to run. Whenever the animals in the woods go silent, something big is about to happen. Jack puts a hand on my arm to steady me. Then the ground begins to vibrate under my feet. I rock back onto my heels and I’ve just put one foot in front of the other, ready to bolt, when Jack grips my sleeve.

“It’s the train.”

He puts a finger to his lips and cuts in front of me, jogging through the brush beside the tracks. He looks back over his shoulder, peering down the long scar cut through the forest. I hear the train in the distance. Not the train itself exactly, but the unmistakable stillness it creates as it creeps through the forest. The animals quiet for it, and they grow silent several miles ahead of it. It’s eerie.

“They try to keep quiet,” Jack says, hunched over as we peer through the bushes toward the tracks. “Trains used to whistle loudly or at least chug. These are electric trains, so all you’ll hear is a hum. The government doesn’t want nomads finding them. They don’t even turn on their lights.”

I nod, straining my eyes on the tracks that gleam in the moonlight. There are no trees and no bushes around them for about twenty feet on either side, and this strange clearing cut through the trees unnerves me. Then in the distance, I see a shape come into view and bear down on us.