The Prey

Put that way, it didn’t seem so bad. And it was true: I did know a thing or two about secrets. “Okay,” I said.

“It’s settled then. I’ll have Major Karsten check in with you from time to time.”

I looked up at the major. The scar that edged from his eyebrow to his chin seemed to pulse like a living, breathing thing.

I couldn’t get out the door fast enough.

4.

HOPE KNOWS HE’S DEAD the moment she returns from watch. Faith is tucked into the curve of their father’s body, her tears soaking his shirt.

Hope places her fingers against the crook of his neck. Cold to the touch. No hint of a pulse. It hits her like a punch to the gut.

“Come on,” she says, pulling her sister off.

“We have to bury him,” Faith says, eyes red.

“I know.”

“How’re we going to do that? We don’t have a shovel.”

“We’ll think of something.”

“But what? We can’t leave him like this.”

“I know that …”

Faith is screaming now. “We have to do something! What’re we gonna do?”

Hope slaps her sister hard across the face, regretting it instantly. Faith’s head snaps to one side, the red imprint of Hope’s fingers tattooing her face.

“I’ll take care of it,” Hope says, finding a reason to look away. “We’ll cover him with rocks. That way the animals can’t get him.”

“Is that a proper way to bury someone?” Faith whispers.

“Proper enough. You go take watch. I’ll do this.”

Faith drags herself to the cave’s entrance, running the back of her hand across her runny nose. Hope feels a stab of guilt for the way she treated her. Still, someone has to be the strong one, she tells herself.

The first thing she does is retrieve her father’s few belongings. A knife. A leather belt. Flint from his front pocket. It feels like an invasion, going through his clothes, but she has to do it. Flint means fire. A knife means survival.

There’s something else there, too. A small, gold locket, attached to a thin, tarnished chain. As soon as Hope’s eyes fall on it, she has a distant memory of it dangling from her mother’s neck. And when she undoes the clasp and opens it, she knows what she will see before she sees it.

Two miniature oval photographs. One of her father, one of her mother. From younger days. How innocent they look. And happy. Now encased in a locket’s tomb, facing each other for all eternity. No wonder he carried it with him all these years.

She slips it into her pocket.

The process of dragging rocks is tedious, and she carefully places them atop her father’s body as though—even in death—he can feel the weight. Faith weeps steadily by the cave’s entrance. Hope’s eyes are as dry as sand. There is no time for tears. Her father taught her that.

Live today, tears tomorrow.

Hope has crossed her father’s hands atop his chest when she notices the curled, clenched fingers of his right hand. They are stiff with death and it’s no small struggle to straighten them. More surprising than the effort itself is what she discovers within his gnarled grip.

A small, crumpled slip of paper.

Hope tugs the paper free from her father’s hand. She sees one word written there, scrawled in charcoal.

Separate.

Hope shakes her head and crumples the note back up.

When she finishes the burial mound, both girls gather by the body. They have never been to a funeral before. Or a wedding. Nothing.

In lieu of a prayer, Faith says, “I heard what he told you. About separating.”

Hope tries to hide her surprise. “He was delirious,” she says. “Out of his head with fever. I’m not thinking of it if that’s what you’re asking.”

“I’m not.” Their eyes run up and down the grave of rocks. “But I think we should.”

“You think we should? Separate?”

Faith nods. “If he was right about that twins stuff, it sounds like you’d”—she pauses to correct herself—“we’d have a better chance on our own.”

“Faith, you wouldn’t last a day out there. No offense.”

Faith bristles. “I’m not as helpless as you think.”

“Uh, yes you are.”

Hope can see she’s hurt her feelings. If Hope isn’t slapping her sister with her hand, she’s doing so with her words.

“I’m going to get some food,” she says, impatient and angry all at once.

Faith doesn’t respond.

At the edge of a swampy bog Hope spears half a dozen plump bullfrogs. She brings the meat back to the cave late that afternoon and it cooks up good. They wolf it down without a word. After dinner, they settle on their makeshift beds, still not having spoken since the morning. Hope falls into a deep sleep, dreaming of everything and nothing.

When morning sunlight wakes her, there’s no sign of her sister anywhere.

“Faith,” she calls, first inside the cave, then out. The only answer she gets is birdsong. “Faith!”

Still nothing.

No extra footprints pattern the ground. No sign of wild animals. But Faith’s few possessions are gone. No canteen, no backpack, no shawl.

Hope curses not so silently to herself. She isn’t sure who she is angriest at: Faith, for thinking she can make it on her own, or herself, for basically daring her to go.

Or her father, for bringing up the notion of separating in the first place.

Although Faith’s body is light and her footprints barely dent the ground, Hope will have no problem trailing the flattened grass, the snapped twigs. After ten years of tracking prey at her father’s side, she knows the signs.

Hope finds the trail and determines which way Faith has gone … then promptly goes the other direction. To hell with her sister.

5.

I EXPLAINED THE BASICS: chores in the morning, classes in the afternoon, CC—Camp Cleanup—on the weekends. The boy in the black T-shirt didn’t ask a single question, but I got the feeling nothing escaped his attention.

When we exited the mess hall, I realized I hadn’t introduced myself. “I’m Book,” I said, trying to sound tougher than the name. “Who’re you?”

“L-2084,” he murmured.

Sometime after Omega the government made the decision to label all the boys John. Our last names were what distinguished us: a series of numbers matched with a letter for our camp—L for Camp Liberty, V for Camp Victory, etc. Our “identities” were tattooed on our right arms.

Apparently, all girls were called Jane, but that was only a rumor. We’d never actually seen any for ourselves.

“Not your official name, your nickname,” I said. “Like I’m Book because I read a lot, and there’s Red because he has a red splotch on his face and Twitch because he does and Flush because he doesn’t.”

The boy in the black T-shirt said nothing.

“What’d your friends call you back where you came from?” Then, in an awkward attempt to follow the colonel’s orders, I asked, “Where’d you say that was again?”

“I didn’t,” he growled.

We toured the rest of the camp in silence. Finally, I asked, “What’d you mean in the No Water? About getting out of here?”

“Just what I said,” he answered tersely. As if it didn’t need explaining.

“Why? This is a decent camp. And our grads do really well.”

A small sound escaped Black T-Shirt’s mouth. A grunt? A scoff? But when I turned to look at him, I didn’t get any reaction at all.

Neither of us spoke as we made our way across camp. As we passed two LTs, one of them knocked into me and I nearly lost my balance. The LT shouted out, “Who’s your boyfriend, Book Worm?”

They laughed. So much for making a good impression on the new guy.

Beneath the arched ceiling of the Quonset hut, a hundred-some bunk beds stretched out in long rows. At the base of each bed was a wooden trunk, storing all our worldly possessions. In my case: books. Dozens of them.

Black T-Shirt stopped, pointing to the very last bunk in the room. “This one taken?” He clambered effortlessly to the top and lay on his back like some Egyptian sarcophagus.

Apparently, the tour was over.

“You don’t get it, do you?” he said.

His words startled me. “Get what?”

“This.” He gestured vaguely to the barracks, the camp itself.

“I get as much as I need to get,” I said, suddenly defensive.

He shook his head. “You have no idea.”

I turned on my heels and stormed out, angry I had ever bothered to help save L-2084’s life in the first place.

I walked to the southwestern edge of camp. Below me lay endless desert; above me a jagged range of mountains. The cemetery itself was soundless. I made my way through a labyrinth of sun-bleached crosses until I found the marker I was searching for.

L-175. Known to us as K2.

A series of eerie images danced through my brain like fireflies.

Giant trees crashing to earth. Startled shouts. A final, haunted expression.

Pounding on a door. Red on white. Blackness darkening the edges of my periphery.

My face grew suddenly clammy. I squeezed my eyes shut and gave my head a violent shake, as if it were that easy to chase away demons.

It didn’t work, of course. Never did.

I opened my eyes to blinding sunlight and reached out a hand to the wooden cross, rubbing my fingertips over its weathered ridges. I tried to speak, but the words got stuck in my throat. Those twin demons, guilt and grief, clamped my mouth shut.

Poor K2.

I noticed a yellow school bus heading up the hill below me, trailing a white plume of choking powder from the gravel road.

I knew who was in it, of course. Orphans. Headed for the nursery, where they’d be raised by surrogates until—one day—they’d become LTs.

There were fewer and fewer buses these days. I didn’t know if that was a good thing or not. All I knew was that I’d go through the Rite and be long gone before these kids could even read or write.

The bus came up the rise. On its fender were three crudely drawn inverted triangles. Inside the vehicle were row after row of boys, some so young they were held in nurses’ arms. Others slightly older, their faces pressed against the window in a mix of fear and wonder. Years from now they wouldn’t be able to recall their mothers or fathers; what they’d remember was the day they arrived at Camp Liberty … and be grateful it wasn’t someplace worse.

I spun around and returned to camp. Gone for the moment was the shame of my past, the guilt I carried, replaced instead with those mysterious words uttered by Black T-Shirt.

You’ve gotta get me out of here.

6.

ORANGE LIGHT FLUTTERS ON Hope’s face. She pulls a gutted rabbit from the spit and eats every last morsel, sucking the bones clean. As she pokes the embers, thoughts of Faith swirl in her head. It’s been nearly a week since they went their separate ways and Hope knows her sister has no flint. Has she been without fire this entire time?

But it was Faith’s decision to go off on her own. Besides, their father said they should make this choice. The thought of him makes her pat her pocket and feel the small gold locket. Also the crumpled bit of paper with that one word: Separate.

No. I can’t think about it.

What she thinks about instead is the boy with the piercing blue eyes. He’d come traipsing through just a few weeks past, looking for a night’s shelter from the rain. Her father allowed it, on the single condition that he stayed at one end of the cave and his two daughters at the other. Hope remembers how she and Faith stared at him long through the night: his sandy hair, the embers’ dull orange light sculpting his face, the rise and fall of his chest as he slept.

He was the first guy her age she’d ever seen, and she often wonders who he was and where he came from. Wonders if she’ll ever see him again. Or if she’s destined to be by herself her entire life.

She tries to sleep, and when she wakes just a few fitful hours later, Hope knows what she has to do. She douses the fire, packs her belongings, and heads out, her route reversed from the day before—she must find her sister.

Faith is ridiculously easy to track. She might as well have left painted arrows on the ground. Did she learn nothing from their father?

Hope suddenly stops. Something has caught her eye.

She retraces her steps. All around her, spring wildflowers poke through the earth: shimmering royal blue, egg-yolk yellow. And a carpet of miniature blossoms, the petals white as snow.

But one is stained with a single dot of red.

Blood. Fresh blood.

Other drops on blades of grass. Faith is bleeding.

Hope takes off in a jog.

Her father’s message echoes in her brain: Separate. What he failed to understand was that she doesn’t have a choice. Faith is her sister—her twin. As different as they are, there’s no separating them.

Late that afternoon, Hope finally spies Faith from a great distance: a solitary figure wading through waist-high weeds. She zigzags back and forth. Is it delirium that pushes her from side to side? Or loss of blood?

Hope has two options: race straight across the valley or hug the tree line and circle around. Her second option will take longer, but it’s obviously safer. A body walking through a barren meadow is just begging for trouble.

Despite her best instincts, Hope chooses the quicker route. Faith is in trouble. She needs Hope now. Hope begins to run, her heart hammering in her ears.

When she finally reaches her, Faith’s words are accusatory. “What’re you doing here?”

Hope is taken aback. “Coming to find you, what do you think?”

“I don’t need to be found. I’m just fine on my own.”

“You’re bleeding …”

Faith clenches her right hand into a fist, but not before Hope sees the thick slice across her palm. “It’s nothing. Knife slipped.”

“Let me see.”

“It’s nothing.”

Hope feels a surge of anger. Here she’s gone to the trouble to find her sister and put her life on the line and Faith wants nothing to do with her.

“Faith, you can’t do this. You won’t make it on your own.”

“I can make it on my own just as well as you,” she says over her shoulder.

“Oh, come on …”

Faith wheels on her twin, nostrils flared. “Why don’t you think I can make it? Because I’m helpless without you? Because he wanted us to separate so you could live and not me?”

“That’s not true and you know it.”

“I heard him, Hope. He was telling you to go your own way. He wanted you to live. Well, guess what? I’m giving him what he wanted.”

Bug bites cover every inch of Faith’s face, and her eyes are nearly swollen shut. But even more painful for Hope is the haunted expression Faith wears. A look of genuine sadness. Hope doesn’t know what to say. What words can possibly ease her sister’s pain?

When Hope is finally about to speak, she’s interrupted by a low rumble. The earth shakes beneath their feet. Their father told them about earthquakes, but they’ve never experienced one. A flash of movement out of the corner of her eye swings her around.

It’s not an earthquake but a thundering of hooves. Horses. Dozens of them, headed straight for the two girls. Atop each of them is a Brown Shirt hoisting a semiautomatic rifle.

It only takes Hope a second to react.

“Run!” she screams at the very top of her lungs.

Hope drags her sister as best she can, tearing through the tall grasses. But there’s no place to hide. Their only hope is to reach the trees and pray the woods are thick enough to keep the horses from following. Then the Brown Shirts will be forced to dismount and lug their heavy weapons.

It’s a long shot, but better than none at all.

The rumble of hooves grows louder. The roar swells like a thunderstorm, hailstones slamming into the ground.

Both girls are sucking wind. Faith’s lungs make harsh, raspy sounds with each inhalation.

“I have … to stop,” she wheezes.

“No!” Hope says.

Faith bends over, clutches her knees. “Go,” she coughs. “I’m done.”

“You’re not done. We can do this.”

The horses are gaining speed. If the sisters leave right now, they stand a chance. But only if they leave this very instant. “Come on!”

Faith shakes her head. “Go,” she says. “It’s what Dad wanted.” She meets Hope’s eyes. “It’s what I want, too.”

Hope looks at her sister. And at the approaching Brown Shirts.

“H and FT,” she says.

Faith doesn’t respond.

“H and FT,” Hope repeats.

It’s their secret code. Has been since they were kids, since that awful day when their mother was shot before their eyes.

H & FT. Hope and Faith Together.

Finally, Faith says it back. “H and FT.”

Hope guides her. In her one hand is Faith’s arm; in the other is her spear. She veers straight for the sun, forcing the Brown Shirts to squint into the sunset. Forcing them to slow down to navigate creek beds and boulders.

The tree line grows closer and Hope can make out the dense underbrush. It’s all shrubs and thick tangles of vines. Good for hiding. Living hell for a horse. No way the Brown Shirts can navigate this maze. Hope realizes they’ve caught a break. They should just make it after all.

The first gunshots blast the trees in front of them. Bark explodes. Small birch trees are sliced in half. Faith slows.

“Don’t stop!” Hope yells.

“But they’re shooting at us.”

“And we’ll stop if they hit us!”

They’re a mere twenty yards from the woods when a lead horse circles around and cuts them off. Then another. And another. There’s suddenly no way out.

Still, when a Brown Shirt draws a pistol, Hope reaches back with her spear and sends it flying. It sails through the air, entering the soldier’s chest, the pointy end sticking out his back. A dazed expression paints his face as he tumbles off his horse.

A dozen other Brown Shirts raise their M16s and target them on Hope.

“Don’t shoot!” a voice cries out.

A trailing Humvee comes to a sudden stop and a man waddles forward. He is heavy to the point of obese, with thin, almost invisible lips. Unlike the men on horseback, he doesn’t wear the soldier’s uniform of the Republic, but a black suit with a white shirt and a thin black tie. His most striking feature is the soiled hanky he grips in his hand, which he uses to dab at the corners of his eyes.

“Don’t shoot,” the pudgy man says again, and rifle barrels lower. He appraises the twins with leering eyes. His sausage fingers cup Faith’s chin. “We’ve been looking for you two,” he says in a nasally voice. “Oh yes, we’ve been looking for you for quite some time.”

7.

THERE WAS A FUNERAL to attend. There were always funerals at Camp Liberty. Another LT had succumbed to the lingering effects of ARS. Acute radiation syndrome. It was a lanky kid named Lodgepole who’d developed a tumor in his neck the size of a softball. Frankly, he was lucky to die when he did.

I didn’t know Lodge well, but had a feeling I would’ve liked him. Which is exactly why I didn’t get to know him. What was the point of making friends if ARS was just going to pick them off?

Another reason why I immersed myself in books.

I read everything I could get my hands on. History, biographies, fiction. If it was on the dusty shelves of our little library, chances were I’d checked it out.

But that wasn’t all. Someone was giving me books as well. It wasn’t uncommon to open my bedside trunk and find some new volume. None of the other LTs got books—just me—and I couldn’t figure out who was doing it.

As for Black T-Shirt, I still hadn’t found out anything about him, other than the fact that he was incredible at everything athletic. Whether it was shooting arrows or kicking soccer balls, he was drop-dead good. Yet another reason he pissed me off.

Now that he wore the camp uniform—jeans, white T-shirt, blue cotton shirt—his old name no longer cut it. So we called him Cat, because he was athletic and mysterious and half the time we didn’t hear him sneak up beside us.

“Lemme ask you a question.” There he was again, standing beside me at the mess hall door. “You’re called LTs, right?”

“That’s right,” I said.

“Why?”

“It’s short for lieutenant. A military abbreviation. ’Cause we’re the future lieutenants of the world.”

“Says who?”

“The camp leaders. Westbrook, Karsten, Dekker, all of ’em.”

Cat shot me a look of disbelief. “Seriously?”

The hair rose at the base of my neck. What was it about this guy that rubbed me the wrong way? “Seriously,” I said.

He tried—not very hard—to stifle a laugh. “So what happens when they leave here? The graduates?”

“You mean after they go through the Rite?”

“Yeah, tell me about the Rite,” he mocked.

“There’s a big ceremony where all the seventeen-year-olds pledge allegiance to the Republic, then they’re bussed to leadership positions elsewhere in the territory. It’s a pretty big deal.”

This time Cat didn’t bother trying to hide his laughter. It was a harsh, mocking laugh, and I couldn’t take it anymore. I brushed past him and stepped outside into the pouring rain. Cat was beside me in a second.

“You don’t have to get all pissy,” he said. “I’m just trying to help.”

“Yeah, well, maybe I don’t need your help.”

“Fine. Your funeral.”

Something about his tone pushed me over the edge. I turned and gave him a shove.

“Who the hell do you think you are?” I demanded.

His expression was blank. Icy rain plastered his hair to his forehead.

“I’ve lived here nearly all my life,” I went on, “but you’re the one who acts like he knows everything. Well, screw you!”

“I don’t know everything …”

“Well, you definitely act that way.”

“… but I know some things. Like you’re crazy to think they call you LT because it’s short for lieutenant.”

“So if you’re so smart, what is it?”

“You really want to know?” His words cut through the rain like a knife. “It’s short for Less Than. Which is exactly what all of you are: a bunch of Less Thans.”

I felt like I’d been sucker punched. I was too stunned to respond.

Cat went on. “When you were a little kid, the Republic decided your fate. They determined where you were going to go, what you were going to be. Soldier, worker, Less Than, whatever.”

“Then how come none of us have ever heard that?” I asked.

“Probably ’cause the Brown Shirts didn’t tell you.”

I struggled to form thoughts. “How do they decide who’s a … Less Than?” Just saying the words made me uncomfortable.

“Handicaps, obesity, skin color, politics, who knows. They don’t announce the criteria, but it’s pretty clear. I mean, look around.”

I thought of the two hundred or so guys in Camp Liberty. Some of it might’ve been true, but that didn’t mean anything. Sure, I had brown skin, and Twitch and June Bug had black. Dozer had a withered arm, Red a splotch on his face, and Four Fingers, well, four fingers on each hand. But all that was just a coincidence. Right?

“Politics?” I asked. “What kid knows anything about politics?”

“Not you, your parents. If they’re dissidents, then you’re branded Less Thans for sure.”

“But why?”

“Because if the normal people want to survive the next Omega, we can’t have a bunch of Less Thans holding us back.”

My head was swimming. Not only was he suggesting we weren’t normal but that we might not even be orphans. “This is an orphanage,” I managed.

“Who said?”

“The Brown Shirts.”

“You don’t think they’d lie, do you?”

My knees felt weak. Was it even remotely possible he was telling the truth? That we’d been ripped from our mothers’ arms and sent here because we were considered “less than normal”? I felt the sudden need to get away.