“We need to find Tack.” I know I’m not helping; I know I’m half-hysterical. But the cold and the hunger have turned my thoughts dull too, and this is the only one that stands out. “Tack has our food. We need to find him. We need to—”
I break off as Bram says, “Shhh.” Sarah scrambles to her feet again. Suddenly we are all tense, alert. We all heard it—the crack of a twig in the woods, sharp as a rifle report. As I look around at us—all of our faces still and listening, anxious—I’m reminded of the deer we saw two days ago in the woods, the way it froze, and tensed, just before bounding away.
The woods are stark-still, brushstrokes of straight black leafless trees, expanses of white, collapsed logs and rotten tree trunks hunched in the snow.
Then, as I am watching, one of the logs—from a distance, just a mass of gray and brown—twitches.
And I know that something is very, very wrong. I open my mouth to say so, but in that exact second everything explodes: Scavengers appear from all around us, shaking off their cloaks and furs—trees becoming people becoming arms and knives and spears—and we are scattering, running, screaming in all directions.
This is, of course, how they want us: panicked, weak, and separated.
We are easier to kill that way.
now
The tunnel we are following slopes downward. For a minute I imagine that we are tunneling toward the center of the earth.
From up ahead, there is light and movement: a fiery glow, and sounds of banging and babbling. My neck is wet with sweat, and the dizziness is worse than ever. I am having trouble staying on my feet. I trip and barely manage to right myself. Rat-man steps forward and seizes one of my arms. I try to wrench away from his grasp, but he keeps one hand firmly on my elbow, walking beside me now. He smells terrible.
The light breaks, expands, and becomes a cavernous room filled with fire and people. The ceiling above us is vaulted, and we emerge from the darkness into a space with tall platforms on either side of us; on them, more monsters—tattered, ragged, dirty people, all of them bloodless and pale, squinting and hobbled—move among metal trash cans where several fires are burning, so the air is clotted with smoke and an old, oily smell. The walls are tiled, and papered with faded advertisements and graffiti.
As we advance along the tracks, people turn and stare. They are all withered or damaged in some way. Many of them are missing limbs, or have other kinds of defects: shriveled infant-hands, strange tumor-growths on their faces, curved spines or crippled knees.
“Up,” the rat-man says, jerking his chin toward the platform. It is impossibly high.
Julian’s hands are still tied behind his back. Two of the larger men on the platform come forward and grab him under the armpits, help haul him up out of the tracks. The hunchback moves with surprising grace. I get a glimpse of strong arms and delicate, tapered wrists. A woman, then.
“I—I can’t,” I say. The people on the platforms have stopped now. They are staring at Julian and me. “It’s too high.”
“Up,” Rat-man repeats. I wonder if these are the only words he knows—stand, walk, up, down.
The platform is at eye level. I place my hands flat on the concrete and try to heave myself up, but I’m far too weak. I collapse backward.
“She’s hurt!” Julian cries out. “Can’t you see that? For God’s sake—we need to get out of here.”
It’s the first time he has spoken since the Scavengers tracked us down, and his voice is full of pain and fear.
The rat-man is piloting me back toward the platform, but this time, as though by silent agreement, some of the observers move simultaneously forward toward us. They crouch at the platform lip; they reach out their arms. I try and twist away, but the rat-man is behind me. He grabs me firmly by the waist.
“Stop it!” Now Julian is trying to break free of his captors. The two men who helped him onto the platform are still holding him firmly. “Let her go!”
Hands are grabbing me from all directions. Monstrous faces loom above me, floating in the flickering light.
Julian is still screaming. “Do you hear me? Get off her! Let her go!”
A woman comes through the crowd toward me. She seems to be missing part of her face; her mouth is twisted into a horrible grin.
No. I want to scream. Hands are gripping me, lifting me onto the platform. I kick out; there is a release. I land hard on my side, rolling onto my back. The woman with the half face looms over me. She reaches for me with both hands.
She is going to strangle me.
“Get away from me!” I scream out, flailing, trying to push her away. My head smacks back against the platform, and for a second my vision explodes with color.
“Be still,” she is saying, in a soothing voice—a lullaby voice, surprisingly gentle—as the pain stops, and the screaming stops, and I drift away into a fog.
then