I covered the distance to the blind where Stalker waited in a much shorter time than it took me initially. Straggling monsters gave chase, but it was a starless night, I smelled like a Freak, and other prey confused their senses. We needed to put some distance between the horde and us. If they found us later, a few at a time, we could fight in retreat, as necessary.
“You did it,” Stalker whispered by way of greeting.
Circling my hand in the air in a gesture that meant we’d talk later, I grabbed my gear. Stalker pushed upright; his knee had stiffened while he waited, and he muffled a sound of pain. Fade stood quiet, ominously so, but it wasn’t smart to linger. I heard sounds of pursuit; it wouldn’t take them long to figure out why my scent was confusing—and that other Freaks hadn’t already captured us.
The boys followed me, and I set the pace according to our injuries. Fade’s legs worked, but his ribs pained him, and Stalker limped even with the stick for support. As we moved, I listened to the distant growls and screams behind us. Normally I wouldn’t travel at night, in case we got lost, but necessity trumped caution. I made it to the forest’s edge before Stalker stumbled, his knee giving despite the wrapping.
Through gritted teeth, he admitted, “That’s it for me.”
Little as I liked it, we had to make camp. My eyes felt as though someone had rubbed hot coals in them, and exhaustion set into my muscles, leaving them sore. Even so, I was better off than the boys.
But Fade wouldn’t let me touch him. When I stepped close to look at his bruises, he recoiled. It wasn’t just a rejection; it was soul deep, vehement, reflexive.
“Don’t,” he rasped.
I hunched my shoulders. “Sorry.”
This wasn’t how I’d imagined it would go. He’s injured, I told myself. Head to toe. And you smell just like the Freaks that hurt him. Give him time. After he’s rested and you get a bath, it’ll be all right. Fighting sadness, I backed off and handed him Miles’s blanket; it stunk, but should be better than nothing. He took it without a word, and I wished I could read his face. But between the dark and the swelling, he might as well be a stranger.
Fade wrapped up, but he didn’t lie down. Instead he propped himself against a tree. “First watch,” he muttered.
Stalker said, “I’ll take next. Wake me in three.”
“That leaves me on third. Do you still have your dad’s timepiece?” I asked.
In answer, he flashed his wrist, and the faintly glowing hands showed in the dark. I had one more question. “Do you want my knives?”
“Please,” he said, his voice rusty with hurt.
Without fanfare, I handed them over. Then I offered my water skin, refilled at the lake. He drank deep and handed it back. He nodded at me in thanks, and then his eyes skittered away, like it pained him to see me. No more talking, then. I trusted the boys to wake me if trouble found us, not only because I was the most fit. After the day’s terror and stress, I passed out as soon as I went horizontal.
I woke to a stabbing pain and rolled sideways from sheer instinct. When I opened my eyes, I saw Stalker with stick in hand, but Fade was handling the Freak that almost disemboweled me. It had clawed me through the brush; fortunately, the thing was alone, and Fade fought as I’d never seen before, devoid of his usual elegance. His injuries probably accounted for some of that, as his movements were mechanical, like the toy men they sold at the mercantile. You wound them up and they moved their arms and legs, but there was nothing inside. He used my knives with calm, dead proficiency, and he killed. Efficiently. Silently. The Freak fell.
“We can’t stay.” Stalker’s frustration showed in the low growl. Pushing his wrenched knee might cripple him, but we had to move.
One Freak corpse in the vicinity would draw others. Though Fade hadn’t slept, he said not a word. He just shouldered Miles’s belongings, handed me back my knives, which I strapped to my thighs, and moved off in the dark.
It’s like he’s here, I thought, but not really.
Reeling with weariness, I grabbed my things and followed Fade. At night, his eyesight wasn’t as good as mine, but I’d speak up if he was heading off course. I had a general sense of where the outpost lay from here.
The remainder of the night, we walked without rest. By the dawn, I had to lend my shoulder in addition to the stick, or Stalker couldn’t have continued. Yet he held his tongue, the same as Fade, and their stoicism wore until I wanted to scream. I wasn’t used to this kind of weighty silence. It felt like everything had changed out there—in ways I couldn’t comprehend yet.
By the angle of the sun, it was past noon when the watchtower came into view. The sentry on duty fired in the air, letting the others know he saw us coming. Guards swarmed down the hill and, under Longshot’s orders, formed up a litter of joined arms for Stalker. The fact that he didn’t protest being carried back to camp told me he hurt fiercely. Fade followed, shaking his head at all offers of help.
In the light of day I could hardly bear to look at him. He’d suffered so much, and yet he stood determinedly upright, shoulders back, eyes fixed on nothing in particular. But before I could tend to Fade, I had to talk to Longshot.
The older man escorted us back to the outpost, shaking his head in wonderment. “You made it back. What happened out there?”
“I’ll tell it once,” Fade said quietly. “Not here. In private.”
Well, as close as we could manage, anyway. At the outpost, there were no walls to hide behind, except the ones in his night eyes.
As he led the way toward his tent, Longshot asked, “Where are the others?”
“Freaks got Ellis,” I answered. “I killed Miles for attacking me.”
The outpost commander sighed. “I wish I could say I’m surprised. He was a bad seed. Do you mind if I tell his family he died in battle? It might generate ill will toward you if the real story gets out.”
“That’s fine.” Glancing at Fade, I wondered about Frank. I hadn’t seen any sign of him in the horde. “And … I have more dire news.”
Longshot thumbed his mustache. “When do you ever have anything else? Let’s head inside, powwow some, and then get Fade patched up.”
I didn’t know what a powwow was, but I went with him. It was the first time I’d been invited to the leader’s tent, and it was much like everyone else’s except he had a camp stool and a few extra blankets for padding. I didn’t begrudge him that comfort, seeing as he was so old and all. Fade sank down on the bedroll, so distant in manner and expression, that he might not have been there at all. I took my place beside him, leaving the more comfortable seat for Longshot. It should be easier for him to stand up from as well.
“What happened, son?”
“They took us,” Fade said. “Frank and me. Partly, I think, to prove they could. To scare you with your missing men.”
I watched him, my heart heavy with dread. He wouldn’t look at me, maybe because I’d seen the pens.
“But that wasn’t the only reason,” Fade added.
Longshot prompted, “Go on.”
“They came in the back of the tent, up the hill, I guess. Slipped out that way with their prizes too. I came to in the woods. They must’ve hit us. My head hurt like the devil, and it was still dark. They’d tied me like a deer ready to be field dressed.”
Unable to bear the flat recitation, I reached for his hand, but he pulled back and laced his own fingers together. They didn’t tremble. He wasn’t … anything. He might have been talking about whether it would rain.
“They carried us for a while, I don’t know how long. We got free once. Fought. But I was dizzy, and Frank was scared. They killed him first, and I watched how well they butcher a human with their claws. They had a sack to carry the meat that used to be Frank, once they deboned him.”
Longshot sucked in a breath, his face pale beneath the weathered tan. Bile surged into my throat. I could imagine too clearly the scene. No wonder he’d shut down. He couldn’t feel this, couldn’t let it be real. Oh, Fade.
He went on, relentless in his desire to finish the story. “Eventually they bound me up, tighter than before, and went on. I suspected they had plans for me.”
I cut in there. I had to. Invisible knives turned in my stomach, picturing what he’d suffered, remembering what I’d seen. “They took him to the horde.”
Questions rose in Longshot’s face, and quickly, I sketched a picture—the Freaks’ number and the human pens. It was yet another step on the ladder in terms of sophistication, another way in which they were becoming more human. To them, I was sure it seemed no different from what we did to other animals.
“Domesticated long pig,” the elder muttered. I raised my brow in confusion, but he only shook his head. “You’re positive you didn’t mistake the numbers because you were tired and frightened?”
He always asked confirmation on my reports, as if I got the information wrong. But that was tiredness talking. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust me; more that he didn’t want to believe because every time the situation changed, it got worse. At least he wasn’t refusing to hear what I had to say and threatening me with very bad things to keep my mouth shut.
“Did you take those injuries in the fight?” I asked Fade.
He studied me long moments, shifting in and out of shadow from the windswept tent fabric. The swelling made him look monstrous, and distorted his words, though he was still intelligible. So bad I wanted to touch him but he had pulled away from me twice. Some things just couldn’t be fixed with a kiss … and I still reeked of the monsters that abducted him.
“No,” he said finally. “That came later.”
“Why?” Longshot demanded.
“You ever eaten dinner at the Oakses’ house?” Fade wore a peculiar expression, this awful amusement, as if his world had broken wide-open, and he could laugh at everything now, even death itself.
“Sure,” the older man said cautiously.
“Then you know how she pounds the meat to make sure it’s tender.”
There was really nothing I could say to that, nothing anybody could.
Longshot eased upright. “Our time is limited here. We can’t stand against so many. So our only hope is to bring in the harvest and get behind the walls.”
I didn’t think the wooden barriers would hold against what we’d seen on the plains, but sometimes speaking out served no purpose. It only made people hate you. And I had no solution to the problem, no way to avoid the calamity.
I stood too. “How long before the crops are ready?”
“I have no idea, and it doesn’t matter. We’ll fetch what we can, while we can, and run for it. Tend to him, will you?” The elder left then, mumbling about finding a runner to carry a message to Salvation.
“Let’s head over to your tent,” I said, as gently as I could. “And get you cleaned up. I’ll—”
“No.” Just that, a flat rejection.
It made no sense; he’d let me tend him before when he didn’t want Momma Oaks touching him.