We scatter, panicked and blind. We’ve had no time to load our weapons, and we have no strength to fight. My knife is in my pack—useless to me now. No time to stop and retrieve it. The Scavengers are fast and strong: bigger, I think, than any normal people should be, bigger than anybody should be who makes a home in the Wilds.
“This way! This way!” Raven runs ahead of me, dragging Sarah by the hand. Sarah is too scared to cry. She can barely keep up with Raven. She is stumbling in the snow.
Terror is a heartbeat drumming in my chest. There are three Scavengers behind us. One of them has an ax. I can hear the blade whistling in the air. My throat is burning, and with each step I sink six inches, have to wrench my legs forward. My thighs are shaking from the effort.
We come over a hill and suddenly, looming ahead of us, there is an outcropping of rock, large boulders shouldering together at angles like people crowding together for warmth. The rocks are slick with ice and form a series of interlinking caves, dark mouths where the snow has not penetrated. There is no way to go around them, or climb over them. We will be caught there, pinioned, like animals in a corral.
Raven freezes for just a second, and I can see the terror in her whole body. A Scavenger lunges for her, and I cry out. She unfreezes, dragging Sarah forward again, running straight for the rock because there is nowhere else to run. I see her fumbling at her belt for her long knife. Her fingers are clumsy, frozen solid. She can’t work it out of its pouch, and I realize, heart sinking, that she intends to make a stand. That is her only plan; we will die out here, and our blood will seep into the snow.
My throat is grating, aching; bare branches whip my face, stinging my eyes with tears. A Scavenger is close to me now, so close I can hear his heavy panting and see his shadow running in tandem with mine—to our left, twin figures cast long on the snow—and in that moment, just before he catches up to me, I think of Hana. Two shadows on the Portland streets; sun hot and high; legs beating in tandem.
Then there is no place left to run.
“Go!” Raven is screaming, as she pushes Sarah forward into a dark space, one of the caves made by the rocks. Sarah is small enough to fit. Hopefully the Scavengers will not be able to get to her. Then there is a hand on my back, and I am tumbling roughly to my knees, teeth ringing as I bite down on ice. I roll onto my back, six inches from the wall of sheer rock.
He is above me: a giant, a leering monster. He raises his ax, and its blade glitters in the sun. I’m too scared to move, to breathe, to cry.
He tenses, ready to swing.
I close my eyes.
A rifle shot explodes in the silence, then two more. I open my eyes and see the Scavenger above me collapse to one side, like a puppet whose strings have been suddenly cut. His ax falls blade-first in the snow. Two other Scavengers have fallen too, pierced cleanly with bullets: Their blood is spreading against the whiteness.
Then I see them: Tack and Hunter jogging toward us, rifles in hand, thin and pale and haggard and alive.
now
When I come to, I’m lying on my back on a dingy sheet. Julian is kneeling next to me, his hands unbound.
“How are you feeling?”
All of a sudden I remember—the rats, the monsters, the woman with the half face. I struggle to sit up. Little fireworks of pain go off in my head.
“Easy, easy.” Julian puts his arm under my shoulders and helps move me into a seated position. “You cracked your head pretty badly.”
“What happened?” We are sitting in an area that has been partially blocked off by dismantled cardboard boxes. All along the platform, flowered sheets are strung up between broken slats of plywood, offering some privacy to the squatters inside; mattresses have been placed inside enormous, sagging cardboard structures; walls and blockades have been made by interlocking broken chairs and three-legged tables. The air is still hot, stinking of ash and oil. I watch the smoke trace a line along the ceiling, before getting sucked up and out through a tiny vent.
“They cleaned you up,” Julian says quietly, in a tone of disbelief. “At first I thought they were going to—” He breaks off, shaking his head. “But then a woman came, with bandages and everything. She wrapped up your neck. It was bleeding again.”
I touch my neck: It has been taped up with thick gauze. They’ve taken care of Julian, too; the cut on his lip has been cleaned, and the bruises on his eyes are less swollen.
“Who are these people?” I say. “What is this place?”