The Retreat (The After Trilogy Book 1) (28 page)

She jumped as Phobos shuffled beside her. He reached out an arm and rubbed her back. Romy usually liked it, but at that moment it felt like he was grinding gravel into her skin. Her brows drew tight and she pushed his arm away, turning to stare at the fence. Bile rose in her throat for the umpteenth time as she remembered the blood spurting from Lucas’s throat. Romy whimpered, rocking a little in place as the ringing intensified.

Thrym held his finger against his lips. The moonlight shined off his dark skin.

Soft voices drifted towards them from the other side. The voices sounded just a few metres away in the silent night, but Romy knew from Eddie that the patrols moved fifty metres or so inside the tree line. On the hour.

As agreed, the group waited a further ten minutes once the patrol had passed.

Romy was first to stand.

She had to move. If she didn’t move, she’d scream.

She approached the fence and slid the hidden panel aside. “Packs over the top,” she murmured through stiff lips.

“What happened to her?” the whisper came from behind.

Romy ignored the question. Ducking through, she quickly surveyed the area for signs of life.

All was quiet.

Romy winced at the grating noise as Phobos forced his body to move through the fence. Leaving the others to deal with the packs, Romy crept to the vehicle and in rustling increments drew the leafy cover to the ground.

On second thought, she rolled the material up into a bundle and shoved it into a corner of the car boot.

“This is a heap of junk,” Elara hissed.

Phobos snorted. “Feel free to go get us the most recent model, princess.”

“Quiet,” Romy snapped. “Elara, go take off the stopper so we can roll it.”

“
Handbrake,
” was her muttered reply.

Thrym pushed in the fourth pack. The fifth wouldn’t fit.

“It can go on our laps.” Romy took the supplies from him and laid it inside the car.

She leant over and pointed to one side of the trees. “See that gap there?” She pointed. “That’s how we normally get out.”

Elara squinted. “Right. Got it.”

Romy went around the back and the others followed her cue as she put the side of her body to the car and began to push. This was it. The moment where they were most likely to be caught. Tension held her body like a trigger.

They pushed for over half an hour, losing their way twice. Even then, nerves jolted through Romy when Elara turned over the engine.

The vehicle coughed to life.

“Thank the comets for that,” Phobos puffed. He wiped a forearm across his face.

“Everyone in,” Romy said.

She took the front to guide. It also meant she didn’t have to touch anyone. The three men piled into the back, the fifth pack on their laps. Ironically, it was just as crowded in the car as the daytrips with Nancy had been, though they had just over half the number of people.

They turned the lights on dim after Elara nearly rolled them into a ditch.

“Watch out for the big ditch around the corner,” Romy instructed.

Elara drove much slower than Eddie. Instead of the usual twenty minutes, another hour passed before the vehicle ambled into the target area.

“Where to now?” Elara asked. “I’d guess we’re moving west of Jimboomba at the moment. But it’s hard to tell.”

Thrym stuck his head out of the window and looked up at the stars.

Elara’s mouth snapped shut.

Deimos cleared his throat. “I’m sure if it weren’t so obvious we would have thought of it.”

Phobos chuckled.

“Southern cross is that way.” Thrym pointed to the left. “We’re travelling west.”

“West will take us away from the other settlements,” Romy said. The map was still vivid in her memory.

“It will also take us to water,” Deimos said.

Romy twisted to look at him in the backseat.

He answered her silent question drily. “Not all of us were focused on the settlements. The updated map had other things on it. Like water.”

“There’s a mother of all lakes in the middle of this continent,” Phobos added. “Towards the lower half, as we suspected.”

“How far?” Thrym asked.

“No idea,” Phobos replied cheerfully.

Elara pursed her lips and looked at Romy. “Away from the camps and towards a water supply.”

Romy breathed heavily through the ringing. “Sounds like a good place to get our bearings.”

“Westward,” Dei cried.

Romy flinched horribly at the noise, and saw Phobos scowling at his twin in the rear-view mirror.

“Where to now?” Elara asked.

Romy shook her head. “I’ve never been past this point.”

It was then Romy realised she had led her knot down an unknown path.

Elara shook her head, glimpsing Romy’s terror. “Ro, if we’d taken another road, we would have had to abandon the car by now to avoid a sentry point. You did well.”

She tried to smile at her friend’s reassurance.

Thrym leant over. “Ro, are you okay? You. . . . You’re acting a little strange.” He was talking to her, but avoiding her gaze. He’d been doing it ever since he’d seen her covered in blood and continued to do so although she’d wiped off most of the blood in the bungalow.

Dizziness assaulted her and she squeezed her eyes closed.

The boys were whispering, but she could hear every word.

“She’s been like that since she killed him.”

Killed him. Killed him. Killed him.

“Uh, you guys?” Elara threw a worried look at Romy.

Romy realised she was rocking and stopped.

Deimos reached forwards and squeezed her shoulder. She shrugged him off.

Thrym was staring out the front window, deep in thought. “I think we can assume it’s a little surprise from the Orbitos.”

“What are you thinking?” Elara whispered to him, still casting furtive looks Romy’s way.

“I’m not sure, yet.” Thrym met Romy’s gaze for a fleeting moment.

This time she turned away. “We shouldn’t be wasting time sitting here.” They were talking about her like she wasn’t there. “Keep driving. We take the vehicle as far as we can to save Deimos’s energy.”

Elara’s eyes lifted to the mirror, exchanging a look with the boys. Whatever she saw there had her shifting the middle stick into position. “Roger that, Ro.”

The car lurched forwards into the unknown.

T
hey walked through dense bush, only stopping for a couple of hours at a time. Hardly enough time to generate the energy to continue, and definitely not enough time to think about Atlas. So Romy wasn’t complaining. Knot 27 had ditched the car three days ago, covering it with the leaf netting, after emptying it of their supplies.

An AK-103 now bounced against Romy’s side.

There was only one thought on their minds: the people on their trail. Through Atlas, the Mandate and the Oribitos would be well aware of their escape by now.

Deimos held up an arm. “I need to rest.”

His usual olive complexion was haggard and white. Deimos had looked near collapse all morning. Already, the night breaks had extended to three hours to give his nanos time to ready his body for the next day. Romy guessed burning hatred was the only thing keeping her knot mate going.

Phobos leaped forwards and guided the swaying man to the ground.

Elara was watching her. They hadn’t stopped watching her since the car. She wished they wouldn’t. It made her feel as though they were planning something behind her back.

“How are you feeling?” Elara asked.

Romy’s mouth spoke the word, “Fine,” before she turned away from Elara. How could she tell them that the ringing was still there? That the only time it lessened was when she moved, or ran.

They thought she was losing her mind.

She
thought she was losing her mind.

And it happened when she killed Lucas. When she let her mind slip back to the sound of the knife slicing across his throat, an odd floating feeling came over her. With every passing second, she had to fight the urge to slip away in nothingness.

She was deathly afraid.

Thrym looked up at the sky through a patch of the dense bush they were trekking through. The sun was low on the horizon. “I say we stop for the night.”

“No, I can keep going,” Dei objected.

A surge of anger came over her. Romy dropped her pack in the shrubs and forced Deimos back to the ground. Defiant green eyes blinked up at her.

“If you collapse in two days when we’re being chased, because you didn’t take the offer of rest when it was given, I will feed you to a crocodile,” she snarled.

Romy glared at the others. Thrym instantly looked away and Romy bit down on a fresh rush of irritation.

Blood. Bright red blood.
Romy squeezed her eyes shut.

“You heard her, Dei.” Phobos tried to cover the awkwardness with a joke.

Deimos relaxed underneath her. Romy forced her eyelids apart and found his green eyes were already falling into slow blinks. Shaking ever so slightly, Romy rose and picked up her pack, laying it to one side.

Elara was rolling out her lightweight swag. It was a mix between a sleeping bag and a tent. Deimos and Phobos had found them in the soldiers’ supply room.

“You guys sleep. I’ll take first watch,” Romy offered.

The others shared a look. But she turned away before they could object.

Romy wedged her back against a tree and watched as her knot mates slipped into their swags and sank into an exhausted sleep. This was when the ringing was the worst. When she stopped moving; when her heart rate slowed. When it was quiet.

Romy climbed to her feet, opting to pace around the campsite instead. She knew her body could only be pushed so far, even with the nanotech, but until that happened she’d do anything to keep the ringing at bay.

Hours later, she rustled Elara’s swag to wake her. It wasn’t that Romy was tired; no, she just didn’t want the knot to become warier of her than they’d already become.

“I went walking,” she whispered to the half-asleep girl. “There’s a waterfall a couple of hundred metres away.”

Elara groaned and Phobos’s swag shifted. “I’m having a bath tomorrow morning, I don’t care who’s chasing us.”

The knot hadn’t dared to stop at either of the two rivers they’d passed. Her white-blonde hair was still red at the tips with blood. Romy felt
sure
the ringing would go if she could get rid of the rest. She swore the smell of the blood’s stench was still there, reaching her in the heat of the day.

And how could her knot forget what she’d done when Romy was still drenched in the evidence?

Every one of them had killed. But, it seemed, killing a human was different.

* * *

P
hobos woke her at first light the next morning. He thought he did, anyway. Romy hadn’t slept. Just closed her eyes and attempted to hold herself together.

“You and Elara go wash,” he said. “We’ll go after.”

The promise of being clean was the brightest point of the last four days.

Elara stood on the bank next to her ten minutes later

Instead of a deep pool, the waterfall emptied into a shallow area dotted with boulders and stones. At most, the water looked knee deep, the bottom clearly visible and crocodile-free.

Elara shed her clothes in excitement and with a soft yelp, splashed her way into the small pool. Hesitation tugged in Romy’s system. The bloody strands of her hair were a red blur in her peripherals.

In a few minutes, a dripping Elara climbed back up the bank, frowning at the fully-clothed Romy.

“What’s the matter?” she asked.

How did Romy tell her that she didn’t want Elara to see the water running red? That she was worried she was about to lose it? Romy didn’t know if she could control her reaction to the sight.

“I. . . ,” she started. “Would you give me a moment?”

She avoided Elara’s heavy stare.

Romy scratched at her forearm where small dried flecks of blood dotted her tanned skin. “I need a moment.”

A small hand lay on her arm. Romy surprised both of them by jerking away. But she couldn’t help it. The sensation was like splinters of wood shoved under her fingernails.

Sad, sparkling hazel eyes met her own. “I’ll see you back at camp,” Elara said hoarsely.

Romy waited until Elara was out of sight before peeling off her grimy garments. She’d changed her clothing at Jimboomba, too. This wasn’t the stickiness of blood; it was the stale sweat of walking eighteen hours a day in the savage heat.

She picked her way across the boulders, neck hairs rising at the cold spray from the waterfall.

Starting with her feet, she used her balled-up T-shirt to scrub at her skin. When that didn’t prove good enough, she grabbed a handful of gravel from the riverbed and scoured the skin, relishing in the sharp pain. She sobbed as she worked upwards to her waist—kneeling in the shallow water, spending the most time on her hands, and her face where the warm blood had poured onto her. She closed her eyes briefly and Lucas’s glassy eyes flashed across her vision.

Hiccupping, Romy waited for the water to run clear before submerging her head. She did it ten times, scratching at her scalp in the cool water. She had to get rid of it all. She keened as she scrubbed at her scalp harder and harder.

Occupied with the crazed, frantic scrubbing of her head, she didn’t notice the person behind her until a shadow fell across the rock in front of her.

The person said something, but it was lost in her terror as her muscles tensed to bolt. But she didn’t have time to move before she was encased in iron arms—a man’s. One arm under her breasts, and the other firm across her mouth. Recovering, Romy screamed into the hand and threw herself backwards.

The tall man grunted and fell back, but otherwise didn’t budge.

Romy kicked her legs, trying to dislodge the person’s hold. Water was erupting everywhere, and the muffled yells she made seemed loud to her own ears, but she knew the sound would never travel the two hundred metres to her knot.

Why did she make Elara leave?

On second thought, Romy had never been happier that she did. Maybe her knot would make it out alive.

“Rosemary. Stop.”

That voice!

Romy wrenched her head to one side to confirm it. Grey eyes stared down at her. Angry eyes.

Atlas.

Anger gave her strength she never knew she had. Romy ripped her head to the other side, dislodging the hand from her mouth. Then she bit down on his forearm. Hard.

She took a huge breath, ready to let out an almighty scream as he yelled in pain.

“Really, Atlas,” another voice reprimanded.

A sharp sensation stabbed into her shoulder.

Romy’s vision blurred. Her head lolled against the arms of a man she
loathed
. She hated that her death was in his arms.

Shining spectacles twinkled in front of her.

Houston.

Everyone on Earth was a lying traitor.