The Wounded (The Woodlands Series) (32 page)

I
blinked, and a shadow crossed my vision briefly, like a cloud that was there one minute and gone the next. Then something hit my face. My fingers grazed something hard and grassy. A coil of rope.

A black figure landed beside me with the lightest thump, covering my mouth with a leather-clad glove. His face was shadow, his voice
light, melodic and almost cheery. “Shh! You don’t want to die, do you?” An accent I’d never heard before. I shook my head vigorously, my face stinging from his tight grip, my eyes trained on the sliver of silver I could see at Joseph’s throat. Black shadows tumbled from the sky, accosting every Survivor and clamping down on their faces before they had a chance to scream.

*****

The muffled surprise of Survivors bounced off the insides of their assailants’ hands. Some managed to get upright. Sneakers scuffled across the moldy carpet, making zooming noises. The Survivors strained and shoved against a solid, skilled foe. We were fighting shadows. The enemy darted, disappeared, and popped up behind you, always avoiding the punches. Some Survivors jumped out of their sleeping bags and fell forward, tangled by their own feet. Fists swung out and connected with black mist. It was a bundle of black cloth and flesh. There were too many. They were too fast as one by one, our men’s throats were grabbed tightly and arms wrapped around necks in an unbreakable hold. We pulled our feet back as we were dragged into the street, still struggling and flapping about futilely like fish in a net.

As we passed the door and were forcefully led down the path,
I watched Matthew’s head forced to bow forward at the pressure of the hold. His teeth gritted, he slammed his head back in a flurry of golden brown and head-butted the person strangling him. The shadow let go, cursing, and holding their now bleeding nose, but we were so outnumbered that by the time Matthew had managed to stumble forward a few feet, someone else had a hold of him.

All the while, I was silent, my captors damp hand still tight over my mouth, my eyes bugging out as I watched my friends break free only to be caught again like
flies in a web. It was a mess of scrabbling bodies and shadow. But the shadows were winning. They were in complete control.

One of them stopped and turned to us, all still fighting against our bindings and getting nowhere. “Hey!”
He held a Survivor by their dark brown hair, jerking his head back violently, exposing his throat.

Joseph yelled, “No!”

Gus screamed, “Wait!”

But the silver edge nipped swiftly at the young
man’s skin, a red line appeared, and then blood poured from the wound. He dropped to his knees and slumped forward, landing awkwardly on the ground with one cheek pressed to the pavement in a soundless prayer.

“Who’s next?”
the shadow yelled in an accented tone.

Our eyes darted from side to
side, trying to connect and tell each Survivor not to move, not to fight. I caught Rash’s expression, and it reflected my own terror.

Everyone stopped struggling. Our own wills
slumped as the poor Survivor had. Joseph strained against the vice-like grip to get to him, two men attempting to hold him back. They let him go suddenly, and he stumbled forward into a puddle. I gagged when I realized it was blood. He lifted the man’s head, which lolled at an unnatural angle, and swore. Then he was hitched up by his underarms and dragged away from the man. A Survivor I hadn’t even learned the name of yet, dumped in the street, lifeless like so many other inanimate objects that had been left behind. He was part of the prams and shopping trolleys now. I strained my neck, watching him as we were dragged further away, hoping he might move. But as the distance gained, he became a pile of immovable clothing, nothing more.

Joseph
walked slowly, trying to stay in line with me, his eyes angry, his muscles begging for a fight. I shook my head and gestured towards the motionless man in the street.
Not now.

As we were pushed further down the road, m
y eyes moved frantically from Olga, who was struggling to keep up, to Pelo, who strode proudly down the street, not letting them see his fear, to Rash, who looked bewildered and frightened. We were prisoners.

I
couldn’t believe we’d assumed we were alone in this world. This big world. It was so drummed in we didn’t question it. We were stupid.

Our sneakers dragging
and limping across the broken-up road were the only noises save the breath of the men guiding us. They were intent and silent, walking quickly through the center of the town and out the other side, where buildings five-stories high gleamed with unbroken windows turning towards a browning patch of overgrown lawn in a semi-circle. They were glum-looking buildings, despite being intact. I glanced up, noticing a white clotheshorse dangling over one the balconies, only to have my head pushed back to my feet. At the base of two of these grey buildings, we turned sharply and squeezed into the narrow gap between them. We bumped and scraped as our arms grazed the dimply, rough render and then popped out the other side into an old basketball court. I grinned stupidly, envisioning them challenging us to a game—my mind was hysterical. The men stopped dead.

F
abric rustled, and then what little I could see was blacked out as sacks were thrown over our heads. We were prodded in the back and forced to walk forward.

*****

I counted our steps to five hundred, and then gave up. When we finally stopped, earthy and unfamiliar smells filled my nose. Metal scraped against metal, and the people spoke in a language I didn’t understand. A lot of shushing and swaying filled the words, making it sound fast yet comforting, despite the situation. Female voices dominated the conversation. I heard a child cry, and it spiked my heart. Where were we?

My captor pushed me
roughly to the ground, one hand still pressing deeply into my shoulder blade. They grabbed my arms and yanked them back, tying my hands tightly around a small tree. Someone’s fingers grazed my lower back reassuringly.

“
Rosa, is that you?” Joseph whispered through the cloth.

“Yes
,” I sighed.

The sack was ripped from my
head, and a pour of warm, golden light hit my eyes. Leathery tents formed a circle around three fires. Dark-haired women with plaits snaking down their backs squatted over large, metal pans, scraping and shaking. Their clothes were layered and dark. The men wore black. The smell wafted towards me, and I licked my lips without meaning to.

“What do you see?” Joseph asked
from the other side of the tree, as I watched the men walk towards the women cooking, leaning down to kiss them and smell the food.

“Um, I don’t even know how to explain what I’m looking at
,” I said, my eyes widening as a small child ran from a tent to his mother’s arms. She mussed his wiry hair, blew on spoonful of food, and fed it to him, cupping her hand under his chin lovingly. “What can
you
see?” I asked carefully.

“Trees, chickens
, and horses.”

Trees,
chickens, and horses?

“Can you see the others?” I asked.

“They’re all tied to trees just behind you,” Joseph answered.

I craned my
head, but all I could see was the tip of one sneakered foot. I couldn’t tell whose it was.

One of the women closest to me
snapped her head towards in our direction, like she’d only just noticed us. She turned to the man who’d just kissed her and shoved him, her words fast and angry. The man shrugged and gave an explanation, which she didn’t seem to like the sound of since she slapped him. He grabbed her wrist and I winced, expecting him to hit her back, but he just laughed and helped himself to the food she’d been cooking.

She shook her head, scooped some food into a
metal bowl, and made her way towards me.

Her eyes were crinkled, her skin as dark as my own but with a more yellowish tinge to it. Her hair was silken black
, almost blue, like the wing of a crow. She held a spoonful of food to my lips. I tried to decline, but she shoved it in my mouth anyway. I swirled it around, the complexity of the flavors bursting in my mouth.

“What’s going on?” Joseph
asked, trying to shift his position. He soon found out as the woman shuffled around to him and force-fed him some of her soup.

“Just eat it. You saw what they did to that guy back there.”

“His name was Ansel,” Joseph said sadly between mouthfuls.

She fed all
of us, throughout the day. Groups were led to the toilet and then tied back up. The day passed dusty and kind of hot, despite the ice creeping around the edges of the camp. They kept their fires so high and strong it fought back the weather.

The day
ebbed, and night flowed.

A child of maybe eight or nine dragged a handful of coarse-looking blankets through the dirt and up to us. A woman stood back from him, hands on her
hips, eyeing him carefully, proudly. He looked back at her, unsure, and she nodded. He gently draped a blanket over each of our laps, averting his eyes. When he got to me, I tried to catch his eyes and smile at him. He narrowed his eyes and smiled back, revealing a mouthful of fangs, each tooth sharpened to a point. I shuddered. The woman who was watching approached us, tapping the young boy on the bottom and ushering him away. She then proceeded to tuck each blanket awkwardly up to our chins. Then, through a series of hand gestures, ordered all of us to sleep.

I tried to keep my eyes open but once the guards were posted and the fire had burned down to amber coals, my
heavy head dropped to my chest, my chin grazing the rough rug, and I was out.

The morning was filled with clanging and water boiling. Children played in front of me, as I struggled to comprehend what I was seeing. This was a small community of people who all looked very similar. They were certainly not All Kind; they were Own Kind, descended from the same race.

With nothing to do except sit and observe
, my eyes soaked in the details of this tiny tent town. They had simple dwellings and no technology. Small vegetable patches decorated the spaces in between and in front of the tents, and I watched the women harvest what they needed for our food as they cooked. It was like we had stepped back in time to thousands of years before the war. This was how humans eked out a life when there was nothing to help them. I appreciated the idea, but these people were not kind. They were animalistic. The children fought with teeth bared, the men were rough with each other and even rougher to us. Only one woman fed us and not out of kindness, it was her assigned responsibility.

Gus tripped one up with
a protruding foot to get attention. The middle-aged man he tripped, hissed and jumped up agilely, about to walk away. “Wait! What do you want from us? Why are you holding us here?” Gus clamored. The man smiled, giving me chills, and looked past the circle towards the sharp-looking trees. Woods so thick that they held together like a bundle of kindling. He shrugged and shook his head, unwilling or unable to answer. The trees weren’t offering one either, so he moved, kicking dirt in Gus’s face when he was a safe distance away.

An hour later,
I stomped the earth as the one who grabbed and threatened me in the brick building passed. Everything was still there, our packs, our handhelds, and my link to Orry. “You.” He stopped and turned, smiling and revealing a mouthful of gaps where teeth should be. “Yeees,” he said in a heavy accent.

He knelt
down, and I noticed his face was smudged with soot and dirt. His breath smelled of the strong flavors of last night’s dinner. I had to try. “What do you want with us?”

He cocked his head to the
side, thinking over his answer. His hand went to my face, his strong fingers digging hard into my jawbone as I tried to resist. “Preeeetty,” he kind of whistled through his teeth. He ran his hand down my shirt collar to my breastbone. I pushed my chin to my chest anxiously and looked up, locking eyes with the young man, with dark brown lips and narrow eyes. “You didn’t answer my question,” I said in a hard tone.

He removed his hand and dusted it off on his muscled thigh.
“Waiting. All Kind will tell.”