Читать книгу: «The Capture»

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Part One: The Road Back

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Part Two: Capture

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Part Three: Return

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Also By Tom Isbell

About the Publisher

PART ONE
THE ROAD BACK

When men take up arms to set other men free, there is something sacred and holy in the warfare.

—PRESIDENT WOODROW WILSON

PROLOGUE

HE WALKS THROUGH THE valley of shadows, surviving fire and flood, flames and torrents. Marching across the barren wilderness, he carries in his heart the faint memory of those who went before him. In his veins runs the blood of warriors, the pulse of poets.

Pursuing him are those who will not rest. Like lions, they track him, chasing him across the smoke-filled prairies, the desolate hills, the sun-stroked plains. The rivers shall turn against him, as shall the fields and forests.

Though he gathers friends, there are those who will betray him. Friend will become foe and foe become friend.

But my beloved fears not. He shall mount up with wings like the birds of the air, shall burrow beneath the earth like creatures of the dark, shall carry great loads like beasts of prey, shall run and not grow weary.

My beloved, in whom I am well pleased.

1.

THEY LOOKED AT ME with hollow, vacant stares—their sunken cheeks more like ghosts’ than human beings’. Festering sores tattooed their bodies, and their pleading eyes cut circles in the black.

Please, their expressions said, as they strained against the chains that pinned them to the bunker walls. Get us out of here.

There were a dozen of them, boys my age, and the more I took in their emaciated bodies—the bones pushing against skin, the bloodshot eyes and skull-like faces—the more I realized I didn’t know how to help them. I had no idea, no solution for unlocking their shackles and setting them free.

You must, one of them said, as if I’d voiced my thoughts aloud, and soon all of them were saying it—You must, you must—their voices growing louder and more insistent until it was a kind of song, a raspy chant from begging faces.

You must. Help us.

“But I can’t. I don’t know how …”

You must help us.

“I don’t know how!”

YOU MUST HELP US!

I woke with a start, my T-shirt damp with sweat. With trembling hands I tried to rub the sleep from my eyes … and the image from my mind.

“Same one?” Cat asked. He was hunkered in the shadows, his long knife scraping the edge of a cedar branch.

Every night it was the same: dreaming of those Less Thans shackled in the bunker beneath the tennis court. I couldn’t let it go. As bad as the memory was, my dreams only made it worse, distorting the boys’ bodies until they were more skeletons than living, breathing human beings.

It was why we had to get back to Camp Liberty. Why we had to free those Less Thans.

I lifted my head and looked around. Orange light from the campfire flickered across the faces of the others. With the exception of Cat and me, the others huddled around the fire and shared stories and laughter. Three squirrels roasted on spits; the grease sizzled in the flames. On the surface, at least, everything seemed fine.

Just one week earlier, twenty-six of us had crossed into the other territory—the Heartland. Eleven had stayed over there; fifteen had decided to return. Seven Less Thans, eight Sisters. For the past seven days we’d been gathering food, carving bows and arrows, setting up an archery range and firing till our fingers bled. Still, I wondered: Were we up for this? Could we really pull it off?

“Do you think it’s a mistake?” I pulled myself over to the log where Cat was sitting.

At first he didn’t respond. No surprise there—his least favorite thing was conversation. “Do I think what’s a mistake?” His knife dug into the wood. Cedar shavings whispered in the air.

“Going back?”

He thought a moment. His glinting blade stripped off a layer of bark as effortlessly as peeling a banana. “Nah, it’s definitely the right thing.” Then he added, “We don’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell, but it’s definitely the right thing.”

I couldn’t argue with him. Who were we to take on Brown Shirts and Crazies, Skull People and wolves? What made us think we could even make it back to Camp Liberty, let alone free the Less Thans there? What on earth were we thinking?

“If the odds are so bad, why’re you going back?” I asked.

Cat shrugged. “Like I said at the fence, it’ll be the adventure of a lifetime.”

I got the feeling there was more to it than that, but there was no point asking. Cat would tell me only when he was good and ready.

Laughter erupted from the far side of the campfire—Flush and Twitch bickering like an old married couple. Tweedledum and Tweedlesmart. The oddest set of friends I’d ever come across. Twitch was tall and supersmart. Flush was short and, well, not as smart as Twitch.

“How about the others?” I asked. “Think they’ll be in it for the long haul?”

“Most of ’em,” he said, his sandy hair catching a sliver of moonlight.

“Not all?”

“Most,” he repeated.

I wondered who wasn’t committed. Flush or Twitch? Red or Dozer? Or was he referring to the Sisters? For obvious reasons I didn’t count Four Fingers. Ever since his head injury back in the Brown Forest, he’d been wildly out of it. On most days he was lucky to remember his name.

As my eyes passed over the others, it struck me how much we’d changed. The sun had weathered our skin. The baby fat had burned away. And we moved and spoke with a kind of quiet confidence. All this despite the fact that our clothes were nothing more than rags, dotted and shredded with holes, singed from fire, bleached from sun. After the inferno in the Brown Forest, all we’d managed to salvage were the essentials: the clothes on our backs, some canteens, a few weapons. The good side of that was that nothing was weighing us down.

Well, not physically.

Argos lifted his head and gave a soft moan. He came padding to my side. I reached over and petted him, the ends of my fingers disappearing into his fur. I was careful to avoid the burns from the fire. The wound from the wolves. The gimpy leg. He was no longer the cute little puppy stuffed in a backpack. He’d been to hell and back like the rest of us.

Cat’s knife bit into the branch—and then stopped. He opened his mouth to speak, but just as he began to talk, Flush set himself down squarely between us.

“Would you please tell Twitch I wasn’t the only one who ate the maggots?” he said. “Red did, too.”

Everyone’s gaze was directed toward us, waiting for a response. It figured: one of the few times Cat was actually going to start a conversation, and we were interrupted. Whatever he was going to tell me would have to wait.

“As I remember,” I answered, loud enough for the others to hear, “Red had the good sense not to like it. You enjoyed your maggots.”

That brought on a roar of laughter. Even though Flush pretended to be irritated, I got the impression he enjoyed being the center of attention.

As I prepared for bed that night, constructing a mattress out of pine needles, my thoughts returned to where they always went: Hope. She was the very last of the Sisters to join us—only reluctantly crossing from the other side of the fence.

Things were different between us now. We’d kissed that day after surviving the fire, but ever since, we’d been so busy—just trying to survive—that it was like we didn’t know how to act around each other. What I wanted was to take her hand, to hold her, to go back to the way we were … but I never had the chance.

So I contented myself with fleeting looks. Stolen glances.

There was something else, too. Something I couldn’t figure out. Her expression. It had changed these past seven days—it was no longer just the haunted appearance she shared with all the Sisters. It was something more. A kind of grim determination I couldn’t quite decipher.

And I saw the way she looked at Cat, her enormous brown eyes lingering on him a moment longer than they needed to. I couldn’t help it. Maybe it was my imagination, but then again, maybe it wasn’t.

2.

IT’S JUST BEFORE SUNUP when Hope and Cat tiptoe back to camp.

The two of them waited till the others were asleep before sneaking off, the dull red glow of the fire’s embers their only illumination. It’s been the same each night since they crawled back from the fence. Seven nights, seven silent journeys. So far, with the exception of Argos, no one seems to notice.

The next morning the rains begin, and with the change of weather comes a change of mood. Despite the fact that it’s now the height of summer, the showers are icy cold and soak the fifteen travelers to the bone. They spend much of the day sloshing through mud.

For Hope, it’s impossible not to sense the resentment from some of the other Sisters. Although she was the last to cross back from the fence, she was the one who originally convinced them to join up with the Less Thans. She can only imagine the questions running through their minds. After all their hard work, after digging a tunnel under Camp Freedom itself, why are they throwing it all away to head back into the heart of the Western Federation Territory? For the sake of saving some Less Thans they’ve never met?

When they stop to make camp, Hope drifts off to look for firewood, happy for the chance to be alone. The rain has stopped. There is birdsong.

“You all right?” a voice asks. It’s Book.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Hope says.

“Don’t know. Just curious.” Then he says, “I woke up last night and didn’t see you.”

Hope feels a stab of panic. She wonders what Book knows, what he saw. Even as she picks up a large, unwieldy branch, she tries to make a joke of it. “You’re not stalking me, are you?”

“No, just happened to look over. Didn’t see you.”

“Right, well, answering a call of nature.”

“Seemed like you were gone a long time.”

“Now I know you’re stalking me.” She laughs and snaps the branch in two. “Plus I couldn’t sleep, so I just, you know, walked around.”

“In the dark?”

“I think better that way.”

“Right.”

“Can’t say no to thinking.”

“Nope.”

Hope can hear the pathetic nature of her lies. They’re so obvious, so blatant. So bad. She tries to change the subject.

“I hear there are Skull People between here and your camp,” she says.

“That’s what we’ve heard.”

“You never saw them?”

Book shakes his head. “Hunters. Brown Shirts. Wolves. Crazies. No Skull People.”

“Consider yourself lucky.”

Her father once pointed out a camp of Skull People to Hope and her sister, Faith. With their painted skin and helmets made of animal skulls, they were the most frightening sight Hope had ever seen in her life. They were terrifying.

“How do we avoid them?” Book asks.

“Any way we can.” She means it as a joke, but Book doesn’t laugh. Doesn’t even smile.

“What happens after?” Hope asks.

“After?”

“Once we free your friends?”

“Head back to the Heartland. Get everyone to safety.” He studies her expression. “Why, you have something different in mind?”

“No, just, you know … curious.”

“Oh.”

They continue to scrounge, their boots squishing in mud.

“Good luck sleeping,” Book finally says, and heads back to camp with an armful of branches. Hope’s face burns crimson.

He was right, of course. She does have something in mind—but she’s not ready to share it. Not with Book. Not with anyone.

As for what she and Cat do each night, well, she wants to break that to Book as well. She does. But there are some things she just doesn’t know how to say.

3.

I SLOGGED BACK TO camp and released the branches from my arms. They clattered on the pile with all the rest. If Hope wouldn’t tell me what was really going on with her, maybe her friends would.

Of the seven other Sisters, Hope was close to three. Diana was tall and willowy, terrific with a crossbow, and never afraid to speak her mind. Then there was Scylla, who had never uttered a single word in all the weeks I’d known her. I wondered if she was even capable of talking. She was short and compact and basically all muscle—not someone you wanted to meet in a dark alley late at night.

The third friend was Helen, who was frail and shy and seemed always on the verge of being blown away by a gust of wind. Small in stature with strawberry-blond hair, she looked at Hope with adoring eyes.

It was Helen I decided to approach.

She was sitting on a log, fletching arrows. Next to her was a pile of goose feathers.

“I can’t believe you’re able to attach those tiny feathers with just animal guts,” I said.

She smiled shyly. “Sinew. Once it dries, it’s there forever.” She expertly split a quill in half, then wrapped a short thread of dried animal gut around the base of the quill and the arrow’s shaft.

I sat on a nearby rock. “Helen, can I ask you something?” She flinched slightly but said nothing. “Are you okay with heading back into the territory?”

“If it’s the right thing to do, then we should do it.”

“And your friends? They feel the same?”

“I think so.”

Her voice had a sudden wariness to it. Like Argos detecting an unfamiliar scent. I realized I was in dangerous territory here.

“Everyone’s on board?” I asked. “Everything’s normal?”

“Yes …”

“And Hope? She’s fine with all this?”

Helen’s body shrank in on itself, and I suddenly realized I’d crossed the line. I was asking about the very people she was closest to. Helen nodded quickly, her fingers deftly wrapping the animal gut around the top of the fletching. She placed the finished arrow in a pile.

“You’re close to Hope, aren’t you?” I asked.

“She saved my life.”

“Then you and I have something in common.”

I pushed myself up and walked away. Although I needed to know what was going on with Hope, it felt somehow traitorous to ask about her behind her back.

But I was still convinced that she was up to something—I just didn’t know what.

4.

THE AIR IS MOIST and heavy, and Hope’s breath frosts with each exhalation.

Cat’s does too, as he walks beside her.

They glide through the damp, dark woods, easing around trees, stepping over stones, hurrying away from camp—the pale light of the moon their only illumination. Hope’s heart beats with a kind of feverish anticipation, and every so often Cat’s arm brushes against her own. A cadence of crickets accompanies their every step.

They’re not more than a mile from camp when they hear the creak of a branch. The sound is unmistakable, and they freeze. Something’s out there.

Someone is out there.

Cat doesn’t need to motion her to stay silent; she knows the drill. She was brought up in the woods. She and her dad and Faith were on the run for ten years. She knows what it is to go from hunter to prey.

As Cat reaches into his quiver and nocks an arrow, Hope readies the grip on her spear and finds the balance point. They stand there, poised to strike, their breathing shallow. There are footsteps now, scuffing through twigs and leaves. The snap of a stick.

“Don’t move!” Hope shouts.

The figure stops in place.

Hope and Cat approach from different sides, weapons poised, ready to cast their spear and arrow. The lone figure stands there, hands raised.

It’s Book.

“What the hell,” Hope says, and Cat rolls his eyes. They each release their grip on their weapons. “You coulda gotten yourself killed.”

“I didn’t know it was dangerous to follow your friends,” Book says.

“It is if it’s the middle of the night and your friends don’t know you’re following them.”

Book doesn’t respond, and Hope realizes he’s waiting for an explanation. She has no intention of giving one.

Cat’s gaze shifts uncomfortably between the two. He slips the arrow back into the quiver and lowers his bow.

“See you back at camp,” he mutters, disappearing into the woods, swallowed by the black. Hope turns to Book.

“So you are stalking me!” she says.

“Not stalking. Following.”

“Forgive me for not seeing the difference.”

“The difference is you lied to me. The difference is you said you went to the woods alone.”

“That was last night, and who says I wasn’t alone?”

“Were you?”

Hope averts her eyes. She wants to lie again … but she can’t. “No,” she says beneath her breath.

Book takes a step back as though he’s been punched. “That’s why I followed you—to see what you were up to.”

“And what’d you find out?”

“You tell me.”

Their eyes lock. Again, it seems that Book is expecting an explanation. Again, she doesn’t give one.

“Look,” he says, “you can do whatever you like with whoever you want—”

“We weren’t doing anything.”

“—but don’t tell me one thing and do something else. Don’t—”

He stops himself midsentence, but Hope knows exactly what he was going to say. Don’t kiss me one moment and then ignore me the next.

She wants to respond—wants to tell him everything—but she doesn’t know how, and before she knows it, the silence stretches to something long and awkward and painfully uncomfortable. When she does open her mouth to speak, she’s interrupted by a sound—something mechanical. A growling engine.

Hope and Book immediately slip into hunter mode. They crouch low to the forest floor and bend their ears to the sound, determining direction, speed, object. Hope takes off first, Book right on her heels—two runners skirting the darkened landscape like ghosts.

Alder thickets slow them to a crawl, the thick brush tugging at their clothes. The sound grows louder, and suddenly it’s doubled. Not just one engine, but two.

They reach the edge of the thicket and stop. A pair of headlights carves tiny holes in the dark, snaking around a bend. And from the other direction: another set of headlights. The vehicles are headed right for each other on the same small road. Even in the black night, it’s possible to see the plumes of gravel that follow.

Hope realizes she hasn’t seen actual cars outside camp since the day she and Faith were captured.

Faith. Which makes her think of Dad. And Mom.

She shakes her head and grips the spear. Her fingers shine white.

The two vehicles slow, then come to a grinding stop. Book and Hope share a grim look.

The headlights of each illuminate the other vehicle, and Hope sees they’re both Humvees. Pure military. Car doors open and slam, the hollow sound echoing toward them.

Feet crunch on gravel, and for the first time Hope can make out two figures walking toward each other. When they step forward and headlights wreathe their silhouettes, Hope gives an audible gasp. She recognizes those silhouettes—she’d know them anywhere. The woman with the ankle-length coat draped around her shoulders; the obese man waddling forward.

Chancellor Maddox and Dr. Gallingham.

They meet between their vehicles, too far away for Hope and Book to hear the conversation. Dr. Gallingham deposits a gleaming steel box on the ground. It’s cubical in shape, and the metal glimmers in the light. He undoes a series of clasps, reaches into the bowels of the box, and removes … something. His body blocks Hope’s view and she can’t see. Whatever the object is, it makes an impression on Chancellor Maddox. Her beauty-queen smile flashes white, cutting through the dark like a sharp knife.

What could it possibly be? Hope wonders, darkness clouding her thoughts.

Whatever the answer, Gallingham returns it to the bottom of the box, fastens and reattaches all the clasps, and presents the steel box itself to the chancellor like a Wise Man presenting frankincense or myrrh.

Chancellor Maddox takes it, walks back to her vehicle, and climbs inside. Both Humvees return in the direction from which they came, the sound of gravel crunching beneath the tires growing more and more faint until, at last, the night returns to silence.