Slowly, she walked forward. “Cooper?” she tried again. “Are you okay?”
As she moved closer, Clarke realized that it wasn’t Cooper. It wasn’t anyone, really. She squinted, wondering if her eyes were deceiving her. But, no… she could see it clearly—the loose clothes stuffed with straw, the crude human features on the gourd head—it was a scarecrow, a thing she’d once read about.
Normally, encountering pre-Cataclysm artifacts filled her with excitement and wonder, but not this time. Something was wrong. They were too far from any crops for this to be a new scarecrow, and there was no way an old one could’ve survived the Cataclysm.
A few meters away, Clarke froze. No… she blinked… it had to be a trick of the light.
“No,” she breathed. “No, please.”
It wasn’t a scarecrow. Not entirely. Because, while the loose clothes were indeed filled with straw, the head wasn’t made from a gourd like she’d first thought.
It was a real human head.
Cooper’s.
Clarke screamed. She couldn’t stop it. Her shrieks rang up into the trees, sending two birds flapping away wildly. “Help!” she shouted. “Someone, please, help!” And then before she knew what she was doing, a name burst out of her throat. “Bellamy!”
She gasped, her head spinning, but then her initial wave of terror and revulsion receded, and her training kicked in. She staggered forward, steeling herself for what awaited. Cooper’s head had been severed and placed on a spike, on which someone had also affixed the body of a scarecrow—straw stuffed into Cooper’s clothes.
His face was round and bloated, his skin a stomach-churning blue. But the blood near the neck stem was still wet. This had happened recently. Clarke scanned the shadows for signs of movement. She took a deep breath and slowly walked around the gruesome effigy, then let out another gasp.
On the scarecrow’s back were written the words Serve or die. And they’d been written in blood.
“Oh shit,” someone whispered. Clarke spun around and saw Paul staring at the scarecrow, his face white with horror.
“I know…” Clarke said, forcing herself to breathe as tears began to fall down her cheeks. “We should look for the body. We can’t leave him like this.”
“What? No way,” Paul said, backing away.
“Okay, fine, I’ll deal with it later. But we need to figure out what to do next.”
But Paul had already turned around and was breaking into a run.
“Hey!” Clarke called. “Where are you going?”
A crashing sound made Clarke jump to the side. She grabbed a stick from the ground and raised it above her head, ready to pummel whoever emerged from the trees.
“Clarke! Are you okay? I’m coming! Clarke!”
She dropped the stick as Bellamy sprinted out of the shadows. When he saw her, his red, sweat-covered face collapsed with relief and he pulled her into a tight embrace. “I heard you scream and I thought…” His words were drowned out by a sound that was half laugh, half sob. “Thank god you’re all right.”
A few moments later, Luke emerged, moving smartly despite his limp, and dragging Paul with him.
“What’s going on?” Bellamy snarled, turning to Paul. “What did you do to her?”
“I didn’t do anything. They did that.” He gestured wildly at the scarecrow.
Bellamy spun around, seeing it for the first time. “Oh my god,” he muttered, taking a few shaky steps backward. “Holy shit.”
“Let go of me, you idiot.” Paul groaned as he tried to free himself from Luke’s grasp. “I had nothing to do with this.”
“Then why were you running away?” Luke said through gritted teeth, tightening his hold until Paul let out a whimper.
“Because it’d be insane to stick around here. Look what they did to Cooper! We have no chance in hell of rescuing anyone. It’s time to get out.”
“You want to abandon them?” Clarke said, unable to keep the disdain out of her voice. Bellamy shot her a look of pride for standing up to Paul.
“Yes. We are out of our freaking depth here. My thoughts and prayers go out to our people on the inside, et cetera, et cetera, but we are marching home right now.”
“You can go,” Bellamy said, wrapping his arm around Clarke. “But the rest of us are staying. We have work to do.”
Bellamy and Clarke walked a little behind Luke, who was dragging along a whining, whimpering Paul. “Are you sure you’re okay?” Bellamy asked, glancing back over his shoulder. “What you saw… what they did to Cooper…”
“I’m okay,” Clarke said, though the quaver in her voice suggested otherwise. “After we tell the others, I’ll go back and tend to the…” She trailed off before she could say the word body.
Bellamy tightened his hold. “I’ll go with you. We’ll do it together.” Even with her medical training, the thought of the morbid task made her slightly woozy, and Clarke leaned against him, knowing he’d never let her fall.