“We can walk from here,” Xander says. “It’s only about another half hour.”
The light is fading though, and our last encounter with the Nahx was in this exact spot in broad daylight, so I can’t say that I think slowing down is a good idea. My legs disagree. I heave them, like lead pipes filled with concrete, dragging one after the other. When I realize that my clothes are nearly dry but still freezing cold, I begin to giggle.
“You’re losing it,” Xander says with a smile.
“Oh, you noticed?”
Past the burnt forest we finally veer away from the river, up toward the dense scrub where we left our camp. I turn back and take a last look at the rushing current, now dark and brooding in the dusk rather than emerald and sparkling. My eyes drift to the other shore, and my mind to the solitary Nahx that stood there, watching us but not shooting. There is something more to think of that, but I can’t quite connect with it.
As we lose the light, every tree and branch becomes a shadow. By the time we reach the campsite, my nerves have unraveled like an old sweater, expecting a Nahx or some other horror with every footstep. Somehow, I end up walking ahead of Xander, so I’m the one who hears the distinctive creak of a bow being drawn back and finds an arrow pointing in my face.
“Boo,” I say halfheartedly. Emily lowers her bow, squinting in the dark.
“Bloody hell, we thought you were dead.”
“Don’t look so disappointed.”
For my part, I’m flooded with relief, relief that they waited longer than six hours, and relief because in the darkness behind Emily, I can see Topher’s shocked face. Among the others the news of our survival is greeted with restrained jubilation until we confess we lost two rifles in the process. Then Sawyer is furious again, but lucky for us, he takes it out on Topher. I have a few things I want to say too.
“You left without me,” I say, plopping down beside him.
“Are you all right?”
Suppressing the urge to punch him makes me grind my teeth. “Cold, bruised, but unbroken,” I say. “What the hell were you thinking?”
“There was a firebreak, a trench. I was going to lure them into it and then . . .”
A question forms in my mind. Something like Have you taken leave of your senses? But then I realize there is no real reason to ask it. It’s clear he has.
We stare out into the dark together, a dark so deep it’s hard to tell if my eyes are open or closed. I blink, and in that blink see the lone Nahx on the shore, not shooting, letting us float away. Its shape, blurred like an indistinct shadow, is like a photograph of a moving object. The memory of that instant stretches out like a slow-motion film. It tilted its head to the side before it raised its gun. It didn’t shoot. It thought about it. The Nahx think? What was the Nahx that killed Tucker thinking in that moment? What do they think of us, the occupants of this planet that they have taken by force?
The strength of these questions derails me. It’s as though I’m able for a moment to see the world through their eyes, see myself through the eyes of that lone Nahx on the shore. What did it think of me when it decided not to fire? The idea of it thinking about me at all is repellent and violating. Topher senses my unease. He has the same infuriating sixth sense that his brother had. Always able to tell when something was the matter, never able or particularly willing to do anything about it.
“If you have something to say to me, say it,” he says, as though I’ve been sitting there thinking about him the whole time.
“This isn’t about you,” I say. “No one here is going to let you disappear into the night. Everyone is just stupid enough to get themselves killed going after you. So . . . wait, okay? Wait until we get everyone somewhere safe. Then you can go off on your vengeance quest.”
“So you don’t want to come with me?”
“God, Topher, the days of being allowed to want things are over. We’re running on absolute nothing left to lose, we’re dead-unless-something-miraculous-happens desperation here. Maybe I’ll go with you to kill some Nahx. What’s the alternative? Wander around, freezing, starving? Waiting for them to find us?”
At least the more I think about it, the less likely it is that I’ll let Topher go off on his own.
He doesn’t speak again for a long time. Behind us we hear the murmurs of our friends, the rustle of sleeping bags, the rattle of a plastic wrapper. They seem like normal noises, but nothing about this is normal.
“We all thought you were dead,” Topher says. “When you fell into the river, we thought they must have shot you and you were both dead.”
“So I heard,” I say. “How did you feel about that?”
I don’t even know why I’m asking this. I suppose to make the commitment to go on a murderous vendetta with someone, or to make their salvation your life’s project, you should really know how they feel about you, or something. Or maybe I’m attempting to strengthen our bond, so that if I go off with him, eventually I might be able to convince him to abandon his vendetta and head west.
There’s another long pause, during which I get slightly nervous, like I’m about to hear something I’ll never be able to unhear.
“I don’t think I could explain it,” Topher says cryptically. “Even if I wanted to.”
That answer is not unexpected. Topher was always the one who kept his feelings in check. But those hours we spent together next to Tucker’s body and lying by his grave tell me there are depths to Topher that are rarely plumbed. Depths to his capacity for grief anyway. Perhaps if I was really dead he could explain it. Perhaps one day I’ll die in front of him just to get to the bottom of his emotional repertoire.
Maybe Topher got the brains and Tucker got the soul. Wouldn’t that be perfect?
EIGHTH
I crouch in the back of the transport, next to the ammunition storage. The First pilots, meticulously searching the dark landscape below, while her Offside, a Third, faces me, silently watching.
Rank? he signs at last. I was beginning to think he would never lower himself to speak to me. But I lose my nerve somewhat, tapping my left thumb with my right index finger.
Sixth.
Third nods and does the sign for “good,” a palm flat on the chest, so fast that the sarcasm is painfully clear. I’m beneath him and the First, and he’s not happy to be stuck with me. I sense his suspicion, too. There is no trust among my kind. Maybe he can tell I lied about my rank. He might think I’m a Rogue, searching for others like me, an Eleventh or Twelfth bent on desertion and disobedience.
In our signs “disobedient” is the same as “defective.” I remember Sixth snapping it at me angrily.
What are your directives? Third asks.
I reply without hesitation. Dart the vermin. Leave them where they fall. Making the sign for “human,” I read my own hands as “vermin.” Sixth used this sign for a nest of mice we found once and for large insects I wanted to eat.
Vermin. Human. I suppose they were the same to her.
Have you received revised directives?
No.