Deadfall (16 page)

CROSS KEEPS HIS
arms in the air. He closes his eyes as he kneels, lowering himself down.

“Clever,” he says. “Very clever.”

You look down the end of the rifle, arm steady. Rafe steps to the side, still holding the spear. The forest is quiet, still.

“I’ve learned a lot from you these past weeks,” Cross says as he lowers his face to the dirt. Strangely, he is smiling, which makes your stomach turn. “Seeing you together. Two is always better than one, isn’t that right?”

Then you hear the shot.

You look down, wondering if you accidentally fired the rifle, but it is still by your side, your finger on the trigger. You look up just as Rafe drops to his knees. His hand goes to his chest, where a bullet has buried itself, a patch of red
spreading just below his collarbone. He pushes down on it with his hand but he can’t stop the bleeding.

You spin around. The other hunter is twenty yards off, half hidden by a tree. You fire three shots, hitting him once in the shoulder, then again in the leg. When you turn back Cross is up, running in the opposite direction.

You aim, you fire. The shot hits a tree trunk to the right of him. You aim again, firing twice in succession, but he’s already disappeared through the woods.

“We have to get out of here.” You turn to Rafe. He is still pressing his hand to the wound, his chest heaving. “Come on, just a little bit farther. Just out of sight.”

You put an arm under his good side, carrying as much of his weight as you can, and move to the nearest tree. He sinks down against the trunk, slumping forward.

You pull off your sweatshirt, pressing the cloth to his skin. “I just have to put pressure on it. It’s all right, you’re going to be all right.”

You’re lying—you know you’re lying—but you want to believe it yourself. It seems too unreal. This isn’t how it was supposed to happen. You weren’t supposed to lose him here, not like this.

“Where did he come from?” Rafe says, grabbing your hand. “I didn’t see him. I never saw him pass.”

His breaths are low and uneven. He doesn’t look at you. Instead his eyes are on the ground. Then he looks at your
hands covering his chest. “I just didn’t see him,” he repeats.

“I didn’t either. We couldn’t have known.”

When you look back down his fingers are pale. He’s shaking. His hand falls to his side. Your palm is still on his chest, pressing uselessly on the wound.

As his breaths get slower, raspier, you let go. You take his head in your hands, landing kisses along his forehead, on his cheeks. “I’m here, Rafe.” You stroke his hair away from his face, hold his chin in your hands. “I’m here, I’m here. . . .”

You press your lips against his, not wanting to pull away.

He is already gone.

NOTHING IN YOU
hurts anymore. There is no pain, no exhaustion. Just a cold, empty feeling, as if your chest has been hollowed out.

He killed Rafe. Rafe is dead.

You repeat it to yourself as you move through the woods, the rifle at your side.
Rafe is dead, Rafe is dead
. It doesn’t feel real. Your hands are covered in dried blood. Your shirt is stained a brownish red. You had to leave his body there, no matter how much you wanted to stay. Staying there would have meant dying, and you could almost hear Rafe urging you not to stop, to keep going.

You saw the second hunter fall after you shot him. There’s no way he’s kept up with Cross, that they’re still hunting as a team. He’d be too much of a liability. Cross would’ve left him behind.

The rifle is heavy in your hand. You want Rafe to be here now, to tell you what to do. How can you tell yourself you’re not like them? How can you keep going, pretending there’s another way to end this? It’s you or Cross now. Only one of you can get out of here alive.

The wind changes direction, pulling strands of hair from your ponytail, whipping them across your face. You listen to the sound of branches bending, the hush of dry leaves as they tumble across the ground. There’s something else beyond it, something familiar—a quiet bubbling. The sound of running water.

You circle back, sensing that the stream lies somewhere to the west of you. You scan the trees to the north, making sure nothing is off. It was impossible to decipher in the dark, but it didn’t seem like Cross was carrying supplies. The jacket he wore was a dark blue, maybe black. He’ll be easier to spot if he’s still wearing it. The forest is a vast expanse of browns and greens.

Just ahead, the ground slopes down to the bank. You slow your pace, moving behind the trees to stay out of sight. The river is about six feet across, a little wider downstream. It’s deep, with large rocks breaking the surface, white water rushing up around them.

You move toward the bank, using the thick, winding tree roots to steady yourself as you climb down. You kneel, letting the cold water rush over your hands. You flick the mud from beneath your fingernails and rub the blood from your
skin. Then you set the gun on your lap and dip one hand in, cupping it to collect a few sips of water.

It feels so good to drink the crisp, cool drops, the dry, dusty feeling in your mouth finally gone. You can feel the first sip as it goes down, waking your insides. It makes you all the more aware of how empty your stomach is.

You are reaching for another sip when you notice the silence. The woods are still. No background sounds—no birds above or squirrels cutting across the dirt. Just the low gurgling of the water as it rushes by.

He’s here, somewhere. You can feel him watching you. You try to act like you haven’t realized, letting your hair fall in front of your face so he can’t see your eyes. It takes a few seconds of scanning the trees before you spot him. He’s thirty feet to the right, above you, just a small sliver of black behind a tree.

He’s taken the other hunter’s gun. You can see it silhouetted at his side. You pretend to clean your hands, scrubbing your fingers, but still keep your eyes on him. When he raises the gun to aim you plunge headfirst into the water. You break the surface as he fires the first shot.

The water is deeper than you thought, the current stronger. The world underneath the surface is a rush of greenish blue. You try to hold on to the rifle, but it keeps slipping from your grasp. The river is already taking you downstream, pulling at your arms and legs.

Your shoulder collides with something, and there is sharp, shooting pain. You tumble over the side of the rock and the rifle is gone, lost somewhere in the water. There’s no thinking about how and when to come up for air. You are deep below the surface and then you are not.

When you finally get a breath you see him, kneeling by a tree above the bank. He tries to keep aim, but the current is pulling you too fast. The second shot hits a boulder several yards behind you. You’re moving farther away, turning as the stream does, pulled behind a cluster of rocks.

You take in as much air as you can and submerge yourself deep under the surface, where you can’t be seen.

IN MINUTES YOU
are downstream, out of sight. But the water is deeper here, and there are more rocks. Your left arm knocks into one beneath the surface and it takes a few moments for you to register the pain, you’re so numb from the cold water.

Up ahead, a branch stretches over the shore. As the river curves you reach out, catching it, your palms burning as they scrape against the bark. You hold tight as the water pulls your legs downstream. It takes all the strength you have to move hand over hand, climbing the branch to where the water is shallower, until you can get your footing against the rocky bank.

You crawl onto the shore, regaining your breath. The woods to the north are still quiet. How far did the current take you? It couldn’t have been more than five minutes in
the water, maybe ten, but you feel miles from where you started.

The river took you to the west, curving away from your original path. Cross is likely to stay along the bank to look for signs of where you left the stream. Your sweatshirt is soaked. It will leave a clear, wet path in the dirt. Even if you stripped off the jeans and shirt you’d have to carry them with you—you can’t afford to part with any of your clothes with another cold night coming on.

You eventually want to go south, so instead you turn north, starting into the woods. You don’t try to hide your tracks. If you can lead him somewhere you can hide, you might have a chance at disarming him. You are bone-tired and you don’t want to keep running. You want this to end, one way or another.

You pull off the sweatshirt, wringing it out as you go. The water that drips down is pink, from a bloodstain on the sleeve where you hit the rock. Your left elbow is bleeding, the skin ripped and raw. You let the blood run onto the dry leaves below. He’ll know you’re injured now, and might think it’s more serious than it is. You want him to believe he is winning.

You continue for more than an hour, and finally the woods end, opening to a lake below. The drop is seventy feet, covered in jagged rocks. It’s too steep to climb down. A few clusters of stones line the cliff ledge behind you, some almost six feet tall. The wind has picked up; it would make
sense for you to try to find shelter between them. You need Cross to believe that you would.

You spread the sweatshirt out on the ground in a patch of sun, roughly four feet from the rocks.

You’ll need another spear. And then you’ll need a place to hide.

His approach is so slow, so methodical, that you don’t notice him at first. He moves from tree to tree, staying hidden as he comes toward the lake. His gun hangs by his side. He’s focused on the sweatshirt you left out.

He starts and he stops. Once, he kneels on the ground, examining something there. Blood? The dried, broken leaves that were crushed as you went through?

As he gets closer to the edge of the water he reaches out and pulls something from a thin branch. He holds it up, examining it between his fingers. Even from a distance, you can tell by the way he stretches it between his hands that it’s a strand of hair.
Your
hair.

You’re just yards from the rocks, hiding behind a nearby tree. You inch back so you’re better concealed by its trunk. You keep your breaths slow and even, knowing that as he gets closer, it’s more dangerous to look. Every time you move, you risk him spotting you. Instead you listen. It’s subtle, but when you close your eyes, you can hear the sound of his boots touching down on the leaves.

His steps are light as he pushes closer to the lake. There’s no sign that he’s aware of you here, hidden behind him. He must be twenty feet away. Now ten. As he moves to the outside of the rocks you can see part of his back. He has the rifle up and is getting ready to aim.

It’ll be difficult to disarm him from behind, but he’s within five feet, the closest he’s going to get. You grip the spear tightly, hoping the tether will hold. You take a breath in, then release it as you rush forward, launching into him, jamming the flint into the tender spot below his right shoulder blade.

He drops the rifle with a muffled yell. You pull the spear out and hit him again below the ribs. He grabs the end of the gun with his left hand and spins back, trying to aim. But you’ve caught him off guard. He’s in too much pain to use his other arm. He fumbles, trying to get to the trigger.

You grab the rifle from him, turning it around and pointing it at his throat. He falls back on the ground. You stand over him, so close you can see the lines on his forehead, the way the sweat has flattened the part in his hair. He’s hidden his jacket somewhere and instead wears a green canvas shirt. The front is smeared with mud.

You tap his chest with the end of the rifle. “Game over.”

He leans back on his left arm, propping himself up. “You know I made you what you are, don’t you? The island was only the beginning. The ones who survived were the ones
who were deemed worthy of the Migration—ready to be moved to the real world. But you only knew how to survive in the wilderness. How was that going to help you in a big city? On the subway, on the streets, surviving on your own? You may not remember it yet, but for weeks before we released you into the cities, we trained you—we taught you everything you know.”

“You didn’t make me anything,” you say. “I am more than you—than your twisted, messed-up game.”

The end of the rifle is still against his chest, pressed right above his heart. You keep your finger away from the trigger. You’re afraid of what you might do.
He did this, he did this to you. He killed Rafe. He killed the others. He’s already taken your life.

“Go on now,” he says. “I can accept that I’ve lost.”

“Go on now, and what? Kill you? So you never have to face what you’ve done? So you die here, alone in the woods, a victim?”

“Take your prize.”

“My prize is my freedom.”

You back away from him but keep your aim, making sure you’re far enough that he can’t lunge for the rifle. “Get up,” you say. “You’re going to lead me out of here.”

He stands. You gesture with the end of the rifle, urging him forward, but he doesn’t move. “You won. Take your shot.”

“No.”

“You know why we chose you, right? You were nothing. Disposable. No one wanted you.”

You won’t let him get to you.
We’re not murderers. We’re not like them.

“All this time, you would’ve thought there’d be outrage. Parents searching, desperate to find their kids. But no, nothing. It always amazes me. There are people who can disappear and it’s like . . . like they never mattered to anyone. They never existed.”

“If I didn’t matter you wouldn’t have come for me. We wouldn’t be here.”

You say it, but your throat is tight. He is pushing you. He wants to get a rise out of you . . . he
wants
you to kill him.

“It’s a game, Blackbird. And I’d rather die than lose.”

He turns to face the cliff and runs toward the clear, cloudless sky. He’s three steps away from the edge, then two. He’s going to jump.

He’s almost made it when you lower your aim and take the shot. The bullet hits him in the back of his calf. He stumbles and you fire again, this time aiming for the other leg, just above his knee.

He falls forward. You go to him, kneeling down, letting the rifle drop to your side. You press your palm against his back, running it along his belt to make sure he’s not hiding another weapon. No knife. No rope or ties.

He’s wearing cargo pants, with pockets in the front, back, and by his knees. When you reach for the side of his leg he groans and tries to swat your hand away. You think it must be the bullet wound, that he doesn’t want you to touch it. But then you notice the outline of something flat and square—a cell phone.

He tries to fight you, but he’s bleeding from his wounds, and you are stronger, prying it from him. The phone is on, but the top left corner reads No Service. You tuck it into your pocket.

You rip a three-inch piece of fabric from the bottom hem of your jeans, wrapping it tightly around the wounds in each of his legs. Then you shift him onto his side, tending to the gashes you made with the spear.

He won’t be able to move, but with his wounds bandaged like this, he also won’t bleed to death. You don’t want him to. You want him to suffer.