Unzipping a side pocket on my pack, I extract three packets of powdered purifier for our water. Two lychee, one strawberry. Groping around, I count only five more, all lychee-flavored. I have been purposely giving Howl the lychee ones in retribution for the poison scare. Looks like I’ll have to grimace along with him after today.
We’re so far down now that the trees are different, the land immediately next to the river thick with long, skinny plants that I hesitate to even call trees. They are thin and dull green in the cold, growing together in clumps to make a bushy taillike burst of leaves far over our heads. The river flows only a few feet deep by the river’s shore, water-smoothed rocks sticking up from the calm surface every few feet. I perch on a white boulder that kisses land, half in, half out of the water, a crooked old tree perched next to it on the shore twining snakelike roots around its base.
The water skin comes up cloudy and brown. Odd. I must have kicked up some dirt when I put it under. My second try is also unsuccessful. Confused, I look more closely at the river. Instead of being clear to the bottom, the water is murky.
“Howl!” I yell. “Something is off down here.”
June strolls down, kicking at rocks and taking her time. But when she sees the muddy water, she’s off like a shot, back toward our camp. Howl is on his way toward me, looking back over his shoulder after June. She throws dirt over the ashes from our fire from last night and begins frantically stuffing our food and utensils into the packs.
“What’s her problem?” I ask.
He shrugs, still watching her. “What do you need?”
I hold up the bag of water, the dirt slowly settling to the bottom. “The water is . . . weird here.”
Howl jumps back like I’ve come at him with a knife. His head jerks back and forth between the cloudy water skin and the muddy river. “We have to go. Now.”
He snatches the other water skin off the ground and grabs my arm, the two of us running back toward the camp. June already has my pack put together and holds it up for me.
Howl kicks dirt and dry leaves across the campsite, trying to obscure our footprints. June grabs his arm, pulling him away. “We don’t have time. Run.”
He nods, barely taking the time to buckle his pack across his shoulders before taking off under the umbrella trees, June and me following.
The trees are smaller here, with huge, open, grassy meadows in between thickets. Howl ducks down as he runs to keep under as much cover as possible. June scampers right behind him, pushing to go even faster. Low branches snap across my face and chest, but keeping up is so difficult that I hardly notice. After fifteen minutes of dodging branches and barely keeping sight of the black and golden heads bobbing ahead of me, I’m determined not to be the one who slows us. Unfortunately, a tree root decides differently.
I go down with a clatter. June is on me in seconds, pulling me up and towing me along like a puppy tugging on its leash. Howl slows and lets us pass him, choking down heavy breaths. I’m sullenly glad that he is out of breath too.
“Tell me what we’re running away from, please!” I gasp.
Howl coughs, his voice coming out in a growl. “There are Reds here. Using growth regulators.”
“Growth regulators?” I ask, looking at June.
She shrugs.
“They accelerate plant growth so much that they die. Makes it easy to clear land for crops.” Howl swears as his toe catches on a rock. “When the compounds mix with water, it creates a gas cloud. You have about fifteen minutes to get out.”
My eyes find the water skins hanging from the back of Howl’s pack, still dripping. “It just hurts plants? Why are we running?”
“It has the added benefit of killing any Outsiders crowding up the land the City wants to use. If you aren’t wearing a gas mask, the chemicals will have you vomiting within an hour. By ten, swallowing is a stretch. After a day, your muscles all start to seize up. Then it moves to your lungs. You suffocate. And it probably means there are Reds crawling all over the place through here.”
A gunshot sounds over our heads. I flop to the ground. June is beside me, crawling fast toward a cluster of thick bushes. Howl pauses to let me follow her into the underbrush. June is still moving, hand over her mouth to block the sound of her breathing. Howl puts a hand on her ankle and she stops, all of us going still.
Two sets of boots run past the bush we are hiding under, crashing through the trees. Howl grabs my hand and mouths, Don’t move.
The boots come walking back, pausing in front of our bush. One set starts back up the path, but the other remains, scuffed toes pointed toward me.
June worms her way deeper into the bush, away from the boots. Howl tries to stop her, but the soldier kicks at the bush, making Howl go still.
We are close enough that I can see the sweat dripping down Howl’s face, streaking weeks’ worth of dirt into random stripes, indecision twisting his expression until the soldier calls for help. Howl grabs my hand and drags me after June, the soldier’s shouts hardly penetrating the sound of blood pounding against my eardrums as he tries to shove through the bushes after us. Worming our way along the ground is quicker than trying to cut through the undergrowth; the soldier punctuates every swipe with another yell of frustration.
When we come out from under our bushes, June is nowhere in sight. Howl unbuckles his pack, throwing it to the ground, and before I realize what he is doing, he starts grappling with the clasps on mine, barely giving me time to wrench the straps from my shoulders. He swings it onto his back, grabs the waterskins with one hand, my hand with the other, and we sprint into the forest.
My feet keep catching on fallen branches, but Howl’s grip on my hand keeps me upright and moving. My screaming lungs hardly even register as we duck behind a cluster of tightly knit trees. Our feet aren’t quiet, but the man following us doesn’t appear. The only sound I hear is my own gasping breaths. Howl lets go of me to stick his hand inside his coat, grasping something. Probably that stupid knife.
We stop behind a cluster of boulders and wait for what seems like hours. Days. My ears strain toward the trail of destruction we just left for the Red to follow. Silence.
When nothing happens, Howl uncurls from his crouch, stuffs the waterskins into the pack, and offers me a hand up. “We have to find June and get out of here.”
“Why did you take my pack?”
“Because I’m better at—”
“No, why my pack?”
“You have all the Mantis.”
“Not all of it. You had that first package that was meant for me.”
“But most of it is in your pack. The Mountain needs it.” He fiddles with the straps on the pack for a few minutes, adjusting them so they fit his wider frame, and I try not to think of what would have happened to me if we had somehow abandoned all of our Mantis on the forest floor.
We backtrack a bit, keeping our heads down as we listen for soldiers, evidence from our sprint obvious even to me. The trees down here bare their roots from the ground, the ropy twists looping around one another across the top of the dirt. I carefully step over these, hoping a Red won’t jump out of the bushes and catch me with my foot trapped in the snakelike mess sprawled across the forest floor. Every time Howl stops to examine the ground for signs of June, my mind screams that standing still will kill us. That we need to move.
“She wants us to find her,” he informs me. “She’s leaving marks for me.”
“The rebels must have been pretty sure of your loyalty if they taught you how to find people in the forest.” I look at the tree he is examining and see a leaf pinned with sap to the branch that doesn’t match. A Junis leaf. Like June. Cute. “Won’t the soldiers see this? That man was calling for help,” I whisper.