Sawyer steps back and looks at me. Then he turns me around and checks my back. “What are you looking for?”
“The videos said the darts are sometimes duds. Did you feel anything?” He searches the ground around me.
“He didn’t have a weapon,” I say.
“He?”
“The Nahx.” I try to remember the shape of the shadow in the dark.
Sawyer frowns at me for a moment. I think he’s about to tell me I imagined it, but then he shrugs off his blanket, draws his gun, and clicks the safety off. “Show me where it was standing,” he says.
I take him to the spot by the house. With his free hand he pulls a small squeeze-charged flashlight from his thigh pocket and cranks it, shining the dim light on the ground.
“There’s nothing here.” He shines his flashlight away from the snow on to the clear ground. “I wish that tosser had given you a camera. You’re sure you saw something?”
I don’t know what to say. I had just been thinking about the Nahx when he appeared before me. I’m exhausted and paranoid, half starved and weak with cold. “Maybe . . . ,” I start. Maybe what? Maybe the Nahx who captured me, who delivered me to the edge of the mountain a hundred miles away, who spared my life, followed me here? It’s utterly ridiculous. I don’t even finish my sentence.
Sawyer clicks his safety back on and holsters his pistol, also pocketing his flashlight. He walks back and collects his blanket from the ground, carefully laying it around my shoulders. It smells of hay and horse, but not of charcoal. “You were sleepwalking, I think, Rave,” he says to me, like I am a child, but I don’t know how to argue.
“Maybe you’re right,” I say.
In the morning we fan out from the barn and cover our tracks as best we can. We take what we need for the day, leaving the Humvees and most of the supplies. As the sky lightens we set off. I see Topher and Sawyer walking together, talking in low tones. After a few minutes Sawyer jogs up to the front of the line, and Topher drifts back until he is next to me, matching my pace in a heavy silence.
“Sawyer told you,” I say finally.
“Lots of us see things,” he says. “Xander sees his old dog.”
“I’m not seeing things,” I say. “I think it was the Nahx from the trailer. The one who left me by the fire.”
“How could it find you?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he’s been following us.”
Topher takes off his knitted hat and scratches his head under his tiny ponytail, tucking the hat into his weapon belt. “Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that what you think happened is true,” he says.
“Okay.”
“It can only be bad. If this Nahx developed some kind of interest in you for whatever reason, its motives can only be hostile.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s a Nahx,” Topher says, exasperated. “What kind of creature would try to annihilate an entire species, destroy a civilization, then take benevolent interest in one ordinary girl?”
Rather than protest that he called me “ordinary,” I let it hang there between us for a moment.
“I should take you back to the barn, or back to the base,” Topher says.
“What? What for?”
He steps closer to me and leans over to speak in my ear. “If there is a Nahx following you, even if it means you no harm, what do you imagine its plan is for the rest of us?” This gives me pause. I hadn’t thought of this. “I think we should talk to Liam about it,” Topher says.
“Liam? Are you joking? He’s a half-wit.”
“He’s still our commander on this mission.”
“Ugh, Toph. We’re not the army. He’s not really a commander. It’s all just cosplay.”
“With live ammo and a real alien enemy. There has to be some kind of order, don’t you think?”
He has a point. But Liam knowing about the Nahx can only be bad. He will send me back, or accuse me of colluding, or worse. Either way, he’s not likely to let me continue on the mission. And I’m not going to leave Topher.
“Look, forget it,” I say.
“Raven . . .”
“No, I mean it. Forget it. There’s no way I’m going back to the base. We have a plan. Look for survivors. Look for supplies. That is the only thing keeping me from completely cracking up.” I glance over and see Topher frowning at me. “Don’t tell Liam, please?”
“Fine, but stay close to me.”
I give him a friendly shove. “Why? You scared?”
It sounds like a joke, but I know it’s true. We’re both scared. I steel myself for what we will find today. And Topher doesn’t reply to my joke as we walk on in a silence so persistent it starts to feel brooding.
“Tucker would want me to protect you,” he finally says.
God. That doesn’t really help.
The first thing we see is the sign welcoming us to Calgary. POPULATION 1.1 MILLION AND GROWING! it proudly proclaims.
Liam poses in front of the sign, a stupid grin on his face. Several of the other soldiers laugh as they record it with Liam’s camera. I don’t find it very funny, especially as we pick through the rubble of bombed houses and streets.
Leaving the surface streets, we march down onto a wide freeway, which cuts into the city like a canyon. High stone walls rise on either side of us, giving us a small amount of cover, but I still feel horribly exposed. The sky is bright and blue, and though there is no wind, it is bitterly cold. The quick march is all that keeps me from freezing where I stand. After a few minutes we come upon some cars strewn untidily over the road, like children’s toys.
There are remains in each car, each precisely punctuated with a dart to the forehead, each perfectly preserved. Liam pops open the hatchback of one of the cars. It is piled with boxes of food, bottles of water, clothes, and blankets—provisions for an escape that was never made. “Jason!” he says to one of his recruits. “When we’re done, come back this way and clean this all out into the car with the most fuel. Then . . . borrow it.”
“Check,” says Jason without adding what I’m sure we’re all thinking: If we get out of this alive.
We reach a wide tunnel, where the highway travels under the city streets, and march into it, clicking on flashlights. The tunnel is dark and cold, unlike our underground home, but it is flat, and surprisingly empty. We plod along in the dark, silent but for the sloshing of our boots.
“Anyone remember where this goes?” Liam says. “I don’t think this was built last time I was here.”
Mandy answers. “It comes up near the Stampede grounds, I think.”
“What else is around there? Is there a mall?”
“No,” she says. “But Shoppers is there.” She closes her eyes and points around in the lost world she is imagining. “To the west of the grounds, down from the overpass.”
After a few minutes the light changes, and soon we reach a curve that leads to the tunnel exit. Another tunnel snakes off in one direction, and a ramp climbs up to the ground level. Liam turns and walks backward.
“We need to check out the store,” he says, pointing up the ramp.