“Yeah,” Mack says. Gone. Brandon’s gone. Could she have saved him? Maybe if he had known Ava was coming back. Or maybe if Mack had been the one to go after beautiful Ava, been the brave one. She’s sure Ava would have seen what was going on with Brandon, would have been able to save him, or talk him out of it.
Shaking her head to try to shift the memory of the sound—all the hard and soft bits of bodies hitting the ground—Mack focuses on walking, supporting Ava, trying not to think about where they’re going or what they’ll do when they get there. She feels dizzy, disoriented, oddly disappointed. Like she was robbed of the first good decision she’s made in her life.
“Oh shit,” Ava says, stopping. They’ve reached the swings.
Jaden is gone, yes. But Brandon is there, lying broken and still, exactly as they left him.
“It didn’t eat him.” LeGrand states the obvious, but the obvious is all his brain is able to latch on to. There is a monster. It did not eat Ava. Ava is going to save them. The monster ate Jaden, but left Brandon. Suicides don’t get to live with their families in the highest degree of glory, or be with Jesus, his brain tells him, but he dismisses that. It’s not fact. It’s what he was taught, but he knows now that no one who taught him anything knows how the world really works. He thinks Jesus would like Brandon, would understand that Brandon made his choice to save others. They have a lot in common, really.
LeGrand is relieved in more ways than one that Ava is back. Because with Ava on his side, he has a real chance at escaping, yes, but also at kidnapping his sister. Saving her from the monsters of men keeping her prisoner, letting her suffer when they could all help her if they wanted to. If they chose to.
Ava means he lives. Ava means Almera lives. Ava is everything the elders would warn him about, and he understands at last why they are afraid of people like her.
“I’m sorry,” Ava whispers, not closing Brandon’s eyes. He has a nice view of the trees overhead, after all. Why take that away from him? They walk on.
The day is muggy, the late afternoon sullen with impending pressure. Clouds have overtaken Brandon’s blue sky, building fast with a breeze, piling on top of one another. The park forces them through several winding misdirections, but between Ava’s sense of direction and LeGrand’s ability to climb trees to reorient them, they make it to her section of the fence.
Ava holds a fist in the air, and while only Mack has seen enough shows to know what that means, LeGrand understands the way Ava stands, taut and ready. She pulls out the radio, a walkie-talkie of sorts, and listens, but no one is sending out a warning, no one is using the devices. No one is calling Ray. Inside the park, Brandon Callas is lying, eyes open to the clouding sky, and outside the park, Ray Callas is lying, eyes against the dirt beneath the bush where Ava dragged him.
“Here.” Ava limps along the fence border, taking them to Ray’s empty guard tower. “If you climb on the tower only, you won’t get electrocuted. Don’t touch the fence, though.” She’s relieved she doesn’t have to climb the fence again. It had enough give to move around, making it a nightmare to scale. It took forever, carefully placing each hand, maneuvering her leg. The tower hurts, too, but at least it’s steady. She has Mack go first, spurred by the irrational fear that if she let Mack go last, Mack would disappear back into the park.
At the top, Mack turns and surveys what they left behind as Ava and LeGrand climb. From the tower she can’t actually see much. They have the section all around the fence cleared, a naked buffer circling the entire park, but beyond that it’s only trees, with the occasional landmark rising in the distance. The Ferris wheel. The peak of a roller coaster’s spine. The swing ride. The other guard towers are hidden by the trees and the landscape, none of them tall enough to be viewed from this one. If the guards wanted to actually see what was happening in the park, or to see the maze and what it leads to, they’d need much higher towers.
They don’t want to see. They want it all to happen without having to look.
Ava arrives at the top, grimacing as she adjusts her pants as though that will somehow give her leg some relief. She can imagine her doctor’s concerned expression, his warnings not to push it. Bone on bone in her knee, no cartilage there or in her ankle, more metal than bone in her foot. You don’t want to lose the whole thing, he’d caution, reminding her how fucking lucky she was. Lucky, lucky her.
“Okay,” she says, trying to distract herself from the agony pulsing through her ankle, spreading up her leg. “Now we have a decision. He came in on a four-wheeler like Linda’s. If we take that, it’ll be loud but faster. But we’ll also have to stay on the road. We’ll be vulnerable.”
“Going on foot would give us more time until they figure out we’re gone,” LeGrand says.
“Unless the guard changes again soon, in which case they’ll figure it out regardless.” Ava knows sneaking out is the best idea, but the pain is so bad she can’t keep it boxed up for much longer, and she knows she won’t be in fighting shape then.
Mack points to a sheet of paper tacked to the post of the guard tower. It’s a schedule, carefully written in blue ballpoint pen. Cursive, even. “No new guard until midnight.”
“Dammit,” Ava says, flinching. Daydreams of riding out, a roaring motor beneath her, her leg relieved of any weight, fade into nothing. They still have a shot at secrecy, so they have to take it. “Okay. We walk. Sneak into town. No way of knowing who’s in on it, so we treat everyone like they are. Steal a car and go. Car will draw less attention than a four-wheeler, anyway.” Even with the length of the bus ride in here, and her leg paining her, Ava knows they can make it to town and get a car well before midnight. It’s the safer bet.
The fucking agonizing safer bet. She grits her teeth. “Let’s get moving, then.”
When they climb down and head into the trees to walk parallel to the road, Ava doesn’t spare so much as a glance for the man she left dead. Her only regret is that she didn’t kill him fast enough to save Brandon. It seems unfair that they should both be dead, that she couldn’t trade one life for the other.
LeGrand feels lighter. He knows they escaped something terrible, but that’s not the main reason he feels like he could sprint, like he could fly. He’s going home, finally, at last. And he’s doing it with Ava, and Mack, and a gun.
Mack walks with Ava on her arm, and she knows they’re outside of the park, that they’re moving toward freedom, but she can’t shake the feeling that she’s going the wrong direction.
* * *
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