Hope (Book 2, Harvester of Light Trilogy; Young Adult Science Fiction) (26 page)

“You’re not
leaving here until you give me the baby.”

Lawrence made to
dash out the door past me, but I was faster.  I grabbed him by the throat and
pinned him against the door frame.  Slowly, I began to squeeze his throat while
he made choking sounds trying to gasp for even the smallest sliver of air. 
With my other hand, I easily took the baby he held and saw that it was Rose he
had almost left with.

I heard more than
saw Zoe come up behind me and take the baby out of my arms.

“Skye, you’re
killing him,” she warned.

“No,” I said.  “If
I were going to kill him, I’d rip his head off.”

“What are you
going to do with him?” She asked in a small voice.  “What are you going to do
with us?”

I knew then what
my choice would be.

I slammed Lawrence’s
head against the doorjamb as hard as I could.  The distinct sound of cracking
bone told me I had crushed the backside of his skull.  His eyelids drooped as
he fell unconscious.

“Skye!” Zoe said
in alarm.  “I thought you said you weren’t going to kill him.”

“He’s not dead,” I
replied, throwing Lawrence’s limp body in the corner of the room.  “He’ll
heal.  I just hope he doesn’t regain consciousness until we’re gone.”

“Gone?” Zoe said
uncertainty in her voice.  “Gone where Skye?”

“Up the river.  We
need to find a way to get you and the babies to Jace’s people.”

“Skye…” Zoe put
her hand on my arm.

I shrugged it off.

“Don’t,” I told
her.  “Don’t touch me.  Don’t thank me.  Don’t do anything but help me get the
babies to the boat.”

“But…” She began.

I never let her
finish the thought.  I had one hand clamped against her lips and the other
behind her head to make sure she was looking at me.

“Just do what I
say before I change my mind,” I said slowly.  “Do you understand?  Because if
you don’t, I swear I will take you to the Queen before you can take another
breath.  Do we have an understanding?”

Zoe nodded.

Zoe carried Rose
to the boat while I carried the other two babies.  After I got them settled in
the cabin, I went back to get the bag of food and the shotgun from the
boathouse.   

I bent down over Lawrence
to check the wound on the back of his head and found that it was already
starting to heal.  Not wanting him to run to the Queen too soon, I banged his
head against the wooden boards of the floor.  Feeling satisfied that he would
be out for a while, I stood back up only to hear the sound of the shotgun being
drawn again for the second time that day.

“Don’t move or
I’ll blow your damn head off.”

Chapter 25

I recognized the
man’s voice but couldn’t quite place where I knew him from.

“Turn around slowly
with your hands in the air,” he ordered gruffly.

I raised my hands
and turned to see who had the shotgun this time.

To my surprise, it
was Jackson, the boy who the Queen had locked up in the basement of the
Biltmore Estate.  I remembered he had the power to manipulate electricity, a
fact which made me smile.

“What are you grinnin’
at?” He asked harshly.

“I’m just glad to
see you, Jackson.  You might find it hard to believe but you’re exactly who I
need right now.”

Jackson raised the
butt of the shotgun to his shoulder and wrapped his finger around the trigger like
he was preparing to shoot.

“Wait!” I said. 
“I can get you out of here.”

Jackson eased his
finger away from the trigger.

“How?” He asked
skeptically.

“By taking the
boat out there up the river.”

“Isn’t there a
fence around this joint?”

“Yes, an
electrified one.  But, if you can absorb the electricity running through the
fence, I can use my strength to make a hole large enough for us to get through
it.”

Jackson’s eyes
narrowed on me.  “How do I know this isn’t just some trap?  Aren’t you a
harvester now?  At least that’s what I was told.”

“Yes, I’m a
harvester.”

“Then why would
you want to help me?”

“It’s not you I’m
trying to help,” I said honestly, “but your power will make it easier to get
past the fence.”

“Why are you
trying to leave?  I thought you’d become that bitches right hand around this
joint.”

“I have to get a
friend out of here before it’s too late,” I said, only then fully realizing why
I was doing what I was doing.

Zoe needed my
help.  The babies needed my protection.  The fact that I was betraying the
Queen seemed inconsequential for some reason.

“So where is this
friend?”

“She and her
children are already on the boat waiting for me.” I let my hands fall to my
side.  “By helping them escape you get a free ride out of here too.”

“Well I need you to
help
me
get a friend out too.”  Jackson took two steps backwards and
looked to his right while still holding the gun on me.  “Ava, come on.  We
might have a way out of this joint after all.”

Ava, the girl who
could make plants grow, stepped into the doorway.

“You sure we can
trust her?” She asked looking me up and down like I might attack her at any
moment.

“Hell no,” Jackson
said.  “But I’ll keep an eye on her.  I’ve got the gun.”

I smiled.  They
didn’t seem to like it.

“What the hell are
you smiling at this time?” Jackson said, his finger easing back towards the
trigger.

“I find it amusing
you think that gun is what’s protecting you.”

“Let’s see how
funny you think it is if I have to shoot you.”

“You won’t,” I
said.  “I need you.  And as long as you help me, I won’t let anything or anyone
harm you.”

“And I’m just
supposed to take your word on that?” Jackson scoffed.  “I’m supposed to believe
you and just trust you’ll do what you promise?”

“Well, like you
said, you have the gun.  Keep it aimed in my direction all you want.  It doesn’t
make any difference to me.  Just don’t get in my way and I’ll stay out of
yours.  We’ll use each other until we get out then we can go our separate ways.”

“We don’t have
anything to lose at this point,” Ava pointed out to Jackson.

Jackson lowered
the gun but held it close to his side.

“Let’s go then,” Jackson
said.

“Hold on a sec.” I
turned to Lawrence and kicked him in the head seeing the tip of my shoe make
and indentation in his skull.

When I looked up
at Jackson and Ava they both looked stunned by my action. 

“Just want to make
sure he doesn’t wake up anytime soon,” I explained before grabbing the canvas
bag with the food and walking past them out the door.

Before Jackson
would even let me on the boat, he asked Ava to search the cabin, presumably to
double check my story about Zoe and the babies.  The cry of the babies could be
heard clearly as she opened the door to the cabin.

“Close the door
unless you want every harvester within a half mile radius coming to
investigate,” I told her.

Ava closed the
door quickly cutting off the cries.

“I’ll drive the
boat,” Jackson said, actually sounding excited about it.  “My dad used to have
one of these before the war.  We’d take it out almost every weekend.”

“So, what you were
like five or six?” I said, remembering that Jackson had been born around the
same time as me.  “How can you even remember how do to it now?”

“You don’t forget
the good stuff,” he said.  “Why don’t you go down and help your friend with the
babies?  Sounds like she’s got her hands full.  Ava and I can handle the boat.”

I shrugged.  “Just
make sure you keep an eye out for the fence.  I don’t want to be roasted
alive.”

I went down into
the cabin and quickly shut the door.  Whatever was wrong with the babies, they
were being very vocal about it.

Zoe was sitting on
the padded V- shaped bench which conformed to the bow of the boat holding a
baby in each arm trying to rock them and sooth their agitation with a hummed
tune.  I walked over to her and picked up Hope who was quietly sleeping.

“How can she sleep
through all this noise?” I asked.

“I don’t know, but
her brother and sister are about to drive me stark raving mad,” Zoe complained.

I stared at Hope’s
thin pale face and wondered why the Queen hadn’t seen her deformity before she
was born.  Or had she seen it and just not worried about it since Rose and
Simon were so healthy?  All she needed was for one to survive to prove or
disprove her hypothesis.

As if sensing my
presence, Hope slowly opened her little eyes and yawned.  She stared at me with
her bright blue eyes which seemed too large for her small round face.  A happy
smile lit her face as she gurgled at me.

“She likes you,”
Zoe said.

“She doesn’t know
me,” I replied, completely sure that if the babe I held could understand what I
was she wouldn’t look at me with so much trust.

“She knows you
better than you know yourself right now, Skye.”

I sat back and
relaxed against the wood paneling.

“I don’t know what
I’m doing,” I confessed to Hope.  “But I know if I take you back to the Queen
she’d have you killed before she wasted her time fixing you.”

Hope gurgled in
response.

“You know I’m
right, don’t you?”  I sighed heavily, trying to understand why I felt the need
to save the little human cradled in my arms.  She trusted me with an innocent
openness only someone who’s never had to struggle can have.  But what was I
saving her for?  A life in a dark world where you had to hide and run while
surviving on whatever scrapes the modern world had left behind?  Wouldn’t it be
kinder to just kill her now, to save her from having to live in a dying world?

I heard the engine
of the boat groan to life.  I’d had my doubts the engine would even crank.  It
had apparently been used recently for some purpose.  I just hoped whoever used
it didn’t come looking for it anytime soon.

The boat slowly
pulled away from the dock and set us on our way to freedom.  Something within
me wanted to stop what I was doing and immediately return to the Queen’s side. 
I felt torn between my desire to be with her and my need to see Zoe and the
children somewhere safer.  I knew they would never be safe with the Queen.  She
would never let them go and they would probably never survive her tender loving
care.

“Where are we
going Skye?” Zoe asked me, having finally rocked both Simon and Rose to sleep.

“She needs a
doctor,” I said, looking down at Hope, “a surgeon who can fix her.  If we can
find a way to get to where Jace is, she might have a chance.”

“Where is Jace?”

I thought back to
the map the Queen had in her office.  Michael’s camp had been marked on it.  

“We need to go
South,” I told Zoe, laying a sleeping Hope on the bench.

I walked over to a
small desk near the door of the cabin with a bunch of maps strewn across its
surface.  I found one showing the river we were on and followed it to where it
would take us.  I saw that the waterway would lead us straight to a large lake
called Smith Mountain.  If I were going to bet on a place to find transportation,
it would be there.  Before the war people always loved to live by water.   The
majority of those people were usually wealthy.  Hopefully one of them had left
a large enough vehicle to transport us all.

“Skye.”

I turned from the
map to look at Zoe. 

“Why are you
helping us?” She asked.  “Why didn’t you just let Lawrence take us to the
Queen?”

I turned away from
her unable to stand the worry I saw in her eyes to continue my study of the
map.

“Don’t question
your good luck,” I told her.  “I’m still not sure I won’t change my mind.”

“You won’t,” Zoe
said with more conviction than I felt.  “Your love for us won’t let you.”

I let out a harsh
laugh.  “Love isn’t really an emotion a harvester is supposed to be able to feel.”

“I don’t think
that’s true.  The Queen loves you.”

I turned back to
Zoe.  “What makes you say that?”

Zoe shrugged.  “It
was obvious when I saw you with her.  There was a light in her eyes after she
brought you back with her that wasn’t there before.  They may say harvesters
can’t feel love but I think some of them do.”

I couldn’t deny
what Zoe said might be true.  Even I had noticed the Queen’s love for me. 
Maybe harvesters weren’t as immune to human feelings as they liked to believe.

Chapter 26

About thirty
minutes later, Jackson opened the cabin door.

“Hey, we’re at the
fence,” he yelled down, leaving the door open for me to come out on deck.

“Stay here,” I
told Zoe.  “This shouldn’t take very long.”

When I got up on
deck, Jackson was standing out on the bow an arm length away from the fence. 
The hum of electricity and an odd metallic odor seemed to fill the air around
us.

“Do you think you
can absorb this much electricity?” I asked, looking at the fence dubiously. 
There was so much electricity pulsing though the steel fence that the hair on
my arms was standing on end.

“I don’t know,” Jackson
admitted. “But if we want to get out of here I’m going to have to try.”

I looked around
the deck and saw a large red and white buoy ring with a rope attached around
the outside of it.

“Wait a sec,” I
said, grabbing the buoy and handing it to Jackson.  “Put this around your
waist.  If you start to fry, I’ll pull you back.”

“Thanks for the
mental picture,” Jackson said, taking the buoy from my hands.

Jackson positioned
the floatation device around his waist.

“You might outta
stand back,” he told Ava.

“No, I’ll stand
here with her,” Ava said.  “If she doesn’t pull you back I will.”