The Prey (26 page)

“And them?” he mumbles, barely audible.

“The Sisters are with us now, Twitch,” Book says. “We're all working together.”

“Not them.
Them
.” His gaze settles on the vast expanse.

Everyone turns to see what he is looking at. At first, they assume he's hallucinating. Then they see them: distant shapes. Wavy figures in the desert heat. Cat retrieves his binoculars.

“Wolves?” Flush asks.

“Brown Shirts?” Diana adds.

Cat shakes his head. “Hunters,” he says.

“Hunters?” Hope asks. “Who are they?”

Cat's answer is short and to the point. “You'd better hope you don't find out.”

The Less Thans help Twitch to his feet and resume marching. Hope and the Sisters hurry to catch up, suddenly aware there's a new enemy they know nothing about.

It's late afternoon when they stop next. Some of the Sisters and Less Thans seem incapable of walking in a
straight line; others look on the verge of collapse. They're desperately in need of water. And food. And sleep.

Hope unzips her backpack and reaches for her last chunk of squirrel meat.

The moistness of the package surprises her. Despite the heat and dryness of the desert, the bundle is damp. Has her canteen leaked?

Cursing her luck, she unwraps the meat . . . and sees the reason for the wetness. The heat has baked the salted squirrel into something green and rotten, and now it's a playground for a thousand larvae. They squirm in and out of the putrefying meat, turning it a ghostly white.

“What is
that
?” Flush asks, horrified.

“Well, it ain't sugar,” Diana says.

“Maggots,” Twitch answers. He's still weak and speaks blankly, but there's no turning off his brain.

The others unwrap their own packages and discover the same. Some drop the squirming packages as if they're on fire.

“How'd those get here?” Dozer asks. “We didn't see 'em on the mountain.”

“No, but we saw flies,” Twitch says. “And flies lay eggs.”

Hope stares at the rotten meat. Its stench is disgusting and it looks like a bowl of moving oatmeal. Flush wipes a string of vomit from his chin.

“So what do we do?” he asks.

“We eat,” Twitch says, matter-of-factly.

He scoops up a handful of squirming squirrel meat and stuffs it in his mouth. One white worm dribbles down his chin. He pops it on his tongue as though it were a delicacy.

“You can do that?” Hope asks.

“They're better cooked,” Twitch says, “but they're fine this way too.”

“Won't they eat your stomach?”

Twitch shakes his head casually. “Stomach juices kill 'em before they have a chance. Assuming you haven't killed 'em already.” As if to prove his point, he munches down on a particularly juicy maggot. They hear the squish in his mouth.

Helen and Scylla and all the Sisters look to Hope. She turns to Cat. When she sees him eating, she closes her eyes, dips her hand into the squirrel jerky, and stuffs the rancid food in her mouth. She swallows quickly. The putrid smell fills her senses, but there is a certain satisfaction in having
something
in her stomach, even if that something is white, squirming larvae.

Pretty soon everyone is forcing the rotten meat down their throats. All except Dozer. He takes one bite and makes a point of hurling his maggot-infested jerky onto the desert floor. White worms writhe in the harsh sunlight.

“I can't eat this crap,” he says.

“Fine,” Four Fingers says. He scoops the meat from the ground, gives it a good shake, then pops it in his mouth.

“I need
food
,” Dozer says.

“We all do,” Cat answers. “This is our only choice.”

“It's not our
only
choice.”

Something about his voice alarms Hope, and she sees where he is looking: Argos is panting off to one side.

“You can't be serious,” Book says.

“Why not? He's just dead weight,” Dozer says. “And if we don't eat something
real
, we'll never make it out of this hellhole.”

“No one's eating Argos.”

“So you want to kill us, is that it, Book
Worm
? We were doing just fine in the mountains. Then you bring us down here to starve and make us eat infected meat.”

“It's not infected. . . .”

“It's got maggots! In
my
book, that's infected! And I'm not going to stand for it.”

“You can stand for it or not,” Cat says, finishing the last of his jerky and wiping his hands on his pants. “But that dog saved our lives up on the mountain because someone fell asleep on their watch.”

“But I told you—”

“Yeah, I know what you told us.”

Dozer looks away and grumbles. “Relax, I was just kidding about the damn dog.”

They nap briefly before setting out, once again marching through the night. When the sun finally edges upward, they're given their first reward in days: a hazy silhouette of mountains. And before them, rippling like waves: rolling foothills, covered in green.

Grass.

When they stumble ahead they're faced with another surprise: a road. It's a two-lane blacktop, swept in sand, stretching from one horizon point to another. It's more potholes and gullies than anything resembling an actual highway, and years of heat have buckled the pavement. Still, it's a road, and roads lead to places. They follow it.

Soon, a distant object appears. At first Hope thinks it's a tree, but as they draw closer she sees that it catches the glinting reflection of the sun.

“An old gas station,” Cat explains, holding the binocs to his eyes.

“Maybe there'll be food in there,” Flush suggests.

“Maybe water,” Diana adds.

Some of the Sisters and Less Thans take off in a slow trot, and Hope can see it clearly now: a decrepit structure covered in peeling paint and orange rust. A swaying sign, a rusted propane tank, the empty stalls of a car wash, strips of rubber flapping in the wind.

Flush is the first to reach it, and he yanks open the
glass door and disappears inside. Four Fingers and Diana follow.

The rest are just approaching when Flush comes bolting back out. He falls to his knees, spewing vomit. Four Fingers and Diana come running out and do the same. All three of them are dry heaving like sick dogs.

“What is it?” Cat asks, drawing an arrow.

Faces green, they jerk their thumbs behind them. Cat and Hope ready their weapons and edge their way past the puking LTs. The glass door, coated in a streaky layer of grime, groans as they pry it open. Inside is a counter, a propped-open cash register, and aisles and aisles of vacant shelves. On the counter, written with a finger in inch-thick dust, are the words
WASH ME
. Beneath it are two more words.

SAVE ME
.

They spy an open door, made of stainless steel and approach it cautiously, drawing deep breaths before turning the corner. They stare into its dark interior.

There lies a woman—or what was once a woman—in the far corner on a wooden pallet. Her legs are splayed, her head cocked to one side as if pondering a complex question. But most disturbing is her skin; it has decomposed to something leathery and unnatural. A skeleton mummified in a thin layer of decay. Teeth bared. Sunken eye sockets.

Clutched in her bony hand is a small metallic object.

“Cell phone,” Cat explains.

Hope wonders who the woman was calling. At that last moment of her life, who did she want to talk to? Husband? Mother? Son or daughter? Or maybe . . . sister? Hope's own aloneness has never been more obvious. Without Faith, she's on her own. She has no parents, no sister. Will she die like this, sprawled in a gas station freezer, all alone?

Hope averts her gaze and gives a glance to Cat. He's obviously the leader of the group, fearless, like herself. It's not just that he saved her from the wolves, it's more than that. It goes back to the very first time she saw him—when he stayed with them in the cave. Even then she recognized him as a kind of . . . protector.

As for the corpse, it does little to affect her. But then a large worm the size of a garden snake slithers out one eye in the woman's skull, and Hope's stomach heaves. She turns away.

“Who was she, do you think?” Hope manages, when she's caught her breath.

“An employee,” Cat says. “Still has her name tag on.” He takes a step closer. “Lois. Her name was Lois. Come on, let's see what we can salvage around here.”

Hope is all too happy to have a reason to step outside.

They get lucky. The car wash has an enormous water tank with plenty of water left. All they have to do is
figure out how to turn the valves back on, which Twitch and Scylla manage with ease.

Though the water is orangish-brown in color, tastes of metal, and smells of rust, they don't care. It's water. Four Fingers and Flush drink so much they puke it right back up. Then they just drink some more. They stay in that car wash the whole rest of the day.

They even take hot showers in the stalls. There's enough propane left to warm the water, and the nozzles tear away the layers of grit and dirt that have caked their bodies like plaster casts. Hope is able to clean out her wound. They dry off with paper towels, smelling of car wash shampoo.

It smells like heaven.

That night, Hope sleeps with a canteen tucked against her body. As she lies down, her eyes settle first on Cat, then drift to Book. The one rescued her from the wolves. The other seems to know her pain, just by looking in her eyes. When she eventually falls asleep, she dreams of both, imagining a place where she's no longer alone.

I
WOKE TO THE
scent of burning sage, and saw Cat tending to a small fire. I stumbled over.

“A fire?” I asked.

“Breakfast.”

My eyebrows arched. There was no food left.

“Lizards,” he said. “The place is crawling with them.”

He motioned to the side of the building. Sure enough, an army of green lizards clung to the wall, basking in the morning sun.

“Are they edible?”

“
Anything's
edible.” He held out a branch, whittled to a fine point. At its tip was a charred lizard. “Have one.”

I was starving, my mouth salivating from the smell alone. Any other time I would've accepted the offer
in a heartbeat. But I wasn't in the mood. I couldn't handle the way Hope looked at him. It was hard to have an appetite when jealousy was tying my stomach in knots.

“Come on,” he said. “You know you want it.”

He was right—I desperately needed food. I took the burned lizard and ate it whole, letting the greasy meat slide down my throat. It was delicious.

“Thanks,” I muttered.

Cat just shrugged.

“What's your deal?” I finally asked.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean even after all this time, I still don't know anything about you. None of us do. Like why'd you leave the Young Officers Camp?” A part of me wanted to get to the bottom of it, but a bigger part wanted to find some dirt—something to hold against him.

He gave his head a shake. “You don't want to know.”

“Sure I do.”

“No, you—”

“I do.”

He sighed loudly.

“They're so messed up over there,” he said, talking more to himself than me. “They're convinced the only way to survive another Omega is to eliminate others. Dissidents, political activists . . . Less Thans.”

“Why should you care? You said it yourself: we're not normal.”

“Because they made us do some of the actual
eliminating
.”

He gave his head a shake, as though trying to erase an image from his mind. Fat from the lizards dripped into the fire.
Sizzle. Pop.

“That's why you got out of there?” I still wasn't sure I understood.

“And didn't stop until I reached the mountains. At first I liked it up there. I was able to catch enough food. I could stay up late, sleep in, fish when I wanted. . . .”

“But?”

“I couldn't stay forever. Didn't
want
to stay forever. So I burned off my marker, descended the mountain . . .”

“. . . and came across the No Water,” I finished.

“
Tried
to cross the No Water. Didn't quite make it.” He shook his head, probably remembering how close he'd come to dying.

“Why Camp Liberty? Why not someplace else?”

“Because I knew someone there.”

It suddenly dawned on me. “Your source.”

“That's right.”

“But you asked me to get you out of there.”

“Because I didn't mean to be found like that. Didn't want to be discovered by Brown Shirts.”

“So . . . who was it? Your source?” I ventured.

Cat let the silence lengthen to something odd and uncomfortable, and his eyes flickered. When he finally
looked back, he
really
looked at me.

“Major Karsten,” he said at last. I felt the air leave my lungs.

“Major Karsten? But . . . how? Why?”

“Because he's not just my source. He's my father.”

It was like movie night in the mess hall when the picture'd be all blurry and out of focus, and then,
presto
, one adjustment later, it was clear. All the details sharp. That's what happened when Cat told me about his dad. Everything suddenly turned crisp and clear.

“That day we found you in the No Water and Karsten checked your arm, he wasn't looking to read your marker, he was making sure it was burned off.”

Cat nodded. “Otherwise, they would've been able to identify me for sure.”

“And the slaughter up in the mountains. You'd seen one before.”

“
Dozens
, actually. My dad used to take me. Officers teaching their sons to be men and all that
rah-rah
bullshit.” He spat on the ground. “That's why I ran away. I wanted to get away from all that.” He hesitated. “As it turns out, there's no avoiding it.”