Jude snickers. “Please tell me you still remember where north is.”
“Would you just shut the hell up?” Lucas is looking off ahead. He’s very still. Focused. “I thought I heard something.”
Heard what?
I look around, ears straining again. The darkness that had faded into the background suddenly rises up like a living thing. Ferns dance around my feet like giant spiders. Soot-black branches groan and creak overhead. Shadows reach for my arms, my face.
I’m going crazy, seeing things where there’s nothing. But I don’t hear what he’s hearing.
“Let’s just keep moving,” Lucas says.
“We’re still heading north, right?” I ask.
“We’re doing good, Spielberg. How’s the hand?”
“Fine.” The lie goes bitter in my mouth. My hand is definitely not fine. It’s seeping and throbbing in time with my pulse. I need real first aid.
Jude and Emily fall back a little, and Lucas nudges my shoulder. “Keep me company in the lead?” he asks.
I laugh. “I can try to—”
I’m cut off when he takes my good hand. The darkness recedes just a little, and the air tastes sweet and clean. Pine needles maybe?
“Do you think Mr. Walker woke up yet?” I ask.
Something clatters off to the west. Lucas stops, and my heart trips. There’s cracking and rustling together. It’s pretty far off, but I’m sure I heard it.
Jude almost stumbles into our back. “What the hell, Lu—”
Lucas stops him with a raised hand, then points in the direction of the noise. He touches his ear, and we all listen.
Silence.
Silence.
Crack. My next breath sticks in my throat. There’s another noise I can’t place after—a sound that goes low and then high. Almost like a bird or an animal.
Or a voice.
It comes again—a high-pitched grunt, like someone is struggling or in pain. Moving in from the west. Another vocalization, and this one’s definitely human.
“No. No.” Emily whimpers. I feel her fingers at my back, twisting in my shirt. I clutch Lucas’s hand tighter while Jude swears over and over. We’re all clustered so tight, we’re breathing the same air, and we still aren’t close enough.
“Let’s move,” Lucas whispers.
We’re moving again, ever north, but fear makes us a stumbling mess. Lucas slams into a tree with a cry. A few feet after that, Jude goes down with a whump. We drag ourselves on. My foot hits a dip in the ground, and my ankle pops, but it’s fine. I’m all right.
We are all grabby hands and harsh breathing now, desperate to escape the owner of that strange voice. We are so close that I don’t know whose sounds are whose or what fingers are on me or which arms I’m grabbing. We’re like one body, moving in an awful, terrified synchronicity up the tree-strewn mountain.
I bang my bad hand and jerk back with a hiss. My foot slips, and everyone scrambles, snagging my arm, even my hair, to keep me from falling.
Tears smear my vision. We’re not going to make it. He’s going to hear us.
Something calls in the distance. “Hello? Hello?”
It’s a girl, a girl, so it can’t be Mr. Walker. My insides unfurl.
Emily gasps. “Is that Madison?”
“I thought you said Madison was dead,” Jude says.
“That’s what we thought,” I say. “There were flies everywhere, so we couldn’t cross the—wait, how did she cross the river?”
“Hello? I need help!”
The thin, raw voice lays me open. It’s definitely Madison.
“Help us! Please, please help!”
Adrenaline slams through my veins, throbbing in every joint. I force myself to answer. “We’re coming!”
Jude snags my arm. In the watery snatch of moonlight filtering through the branches, his eyes gleam. “What if it isn’t them? What if it’s another trick?”
“Please!” Madison calls.
“Jude, it’s Madison!” I shake him off at the sound that follows. I’m not close enough to be sure, but I think it’s sobbing.
Lucas doesn’t seem reluctant after that sound. We all jog down the west side of the hill we just climbed.
“Slow down,” Lucas hisses.
“They need help! Listen to her!”
“You don’t need a broken leg to go with that hand.”
I stumble as if on cue, going down on my right knee in the center of a fern. I smell leaves and my own sweat when I look up.
“OK,” I say, gulping in a breath that goes down like a pill that’s too big. “Slower.”
The clouds clear when we get closer. Or maybe I just shift into some sort of adrenaline-fueled super vision. I’m only sure of the fact that it’s brighter. My feet are suddenly visible. Tree trunks aren’t just muddy black lines on a charcoal canvas—they’re trees.
And then I see Madison.
Long hair and a streaky shirt. She’s sobbing. Holding out a stick like she might beat us to death if we get too close. The moment she recognizes us, she drops the stick and rushes Lucas. Her arms wrap around his middle, and he stands there, shoulders hunched and hands awkwardly patting her shoulders.