This is a nightmare. It must be.
A rat crawls up onto my lap. I shout and swat it away, nausea rising in my throat. It hits the wall with a sickening thud, squeaking; then it scrabbles back to its feet and joins the stream again, blurring past me. I’m so disgusted I can’t even move. A whimper works its way out of my throat. Maybe I’ve died and gone to hell, to be punished for deliria and all the terrible things I’ve done—to live in squalor and chaos, just like The Book of Shhh predicts for the disobedient.
“Stand up.”
I raise my head. Two monsters stand above me, holding torches. That’s what they look like: beasts from the underground, only half-human. One of them is enormous, practically a giant. One of his eyes is milky white, blinded; the other is as darkly glittering as an animal’s.
The other figure is hunched over, back as crookedly swollen as the warped hull of a boat. I can’t tell if it’s a man or a woman. Long, greasy hair mostly conceals the person’s face. She—or he—has twisted Julian’s hands behind his back and bound them with a cord. The Scavengers are gone.
I stand. The bandage on my neck has come loose, and my skin feels slick and wet.
“Walk.” The rat-man gestures with his torch toward the darkness behind me. I see that he is slightly doubled over and is clutching his right side with the hand not holding the torch. I think of the gunshots and hearing someone shout. I wonder if he was hit.
“Listen.” My voice is shaking. I hold up both hands, a gesture of peace. “I don’t know who you are, or what you want, but we’re just trying to get out of here. We don’t have much, but you can take whatever you want. Just—just let us go. Please, okay?” My voice breaks a little. “Please let us go.”
“Walk,” the rat-man repeats, and this time jabs so close to me with his torch I can feel the heat from the flames.
I look at Julian. He gives a minute shake of his head. The expression in his eyes is clear. What can we do?
I turn, and walk. The rat-man goes behind me with his torch, and in front of us, hundreds of rats disappear into the darkness.
then
No one knows what to expect at the third encampment, or whether there will even be a third encampment. Since Tack and Hunter never made it home, we can’t know whether they successfully buried supplies just outside of Hartford, Connecticut, roughly 180 miles south of Rochester, or whether something happened to them along the way. The cold has buried its claws in the landscape now: It is relentless, and will not let go until spring. We are tired, hungry, and defeated. Even Raven can’t maintain the appearance of strength. She walks slowly, head bowed, not speaking.
I don’t know what we’ll do if there is no food at the third encampment. I know Raven is worried too, although she won’t talk about it. None of us talk about it. We just push blindly, obstinately forward.
But the fear is there. As we approach Hartford—threading through the ruins of old towns, bombed-out shells of houses, like dry insect husks—there is no sense of celebration. Instead there is anxiety: a hum of it, running through all of us, making the woods feel ominous. The dusk is full of malice; the shadows are long, pointed fingers, a forest of dark hands. Tomorrow we will reach the third encampment, if it is there. If not, some of us will starve before we make it farther south.
And if it is not there, we can stop wondering about Tack and Hunter: It will mean that in all probability they are dead.
The morning dawns weakly and is full of strange electricity, like the waiting feeling that usually precedes a storm. Other than the crunching of our shoes in the snow, we move in silence.
Finally we reach it: the place where the third encampment should be. There is no sign that Tack and Hunter have been here: no gouges in the trees, no tattered pieces of fabric looped over tree branches, none of the symbols we’ve been using to communicate, and no indication that any goods or supplies have been buried here. This is what we’ve all feared, but still the disappointment is almost physical.
Raven lets out a short exclamation of pain, as though she’s been slapped; Sarah collapses, right there in the snow, and says, “No-no-no-no-no!” until Lu tells her to shut up. I feel as though my chest has caved in.
“There must be a mistake,” I say. My voice sounds too loud in the clearing. “We must be in the wrong place.”
“There’s no mistake,” Bram says in a low voice. “This is it.”
“No,” I insist. “We took a wrong turn somewhere. Or Tack found a better place for the supplies.”
“Be quiet, Lena,” Raven says. She’s rubbing her temples, hard. Her fingernails are ringed with purple. “I need to think.”