The Prey

“What’s the matter?” he called out. “Can’t face facts?”

That did it. I spun around and leaped toward him and we tumbled hard on the rain-soaked ground. My fists began pummeling him. Roundhouses and jabs and uppercuts, one after another, landing first on one side of his face and then the other.

The other LTs made a halfhearted attempt to break us up, but they seemed all too happy to watch. And then I realized: Cat wasn’t fighting back. He was letting me hit him, barely blocking my punches. It made me all the angrier.

“That’s enough,” Cat finally said, and he sent a fist in my direction. I fell to the side.

I pushed myself to a sitting position, blood trickling from my nose. Cat’s one punch had drawn blood; it had taken me a couple dozen to do the same to him.

“You showed him,” said Flush.

But I knew I hadn’t. The LTs drifted off to the barracks.

“Why didn’t you fight back?” I panted.

“I only beat up people if I have reason to. I don’t have a good reason to beat you up.” He sipped a breath. “Yet.”

He pushed himself up until he was sitting in the mud, his face near mine.

“If you’re so smart, let me ask you this,” he said. “What do you know about the men outside camp?”

“You mean the Brown Shirts?”

“I mean the other men.”

I could’ve bluffed my way through an answer, but I was too exhausted for lies. “Nothing,” I conceded.

“I figured as much.” Then he said, “They know about all of you. And if you don’t do something about it, you’ll be dead within the year.”

Although I tried to hide it, my eyes widened. “Prove it,” I said.

“What’re you doing tomorrow afternoon?”

That night I couldn’t stop thinking about what Cat had said, his words jangling around my head like pebbles in a tin can. When I finally fell asleep I dreamed of her again: the woman with long black hair. She existed in some distant memory of mine, but who she was and how I knew her were details forever lost. All I knew was that she’d been appearing in my dreams more and more often until I no longer knew what was memory and what was imagination.

In the dream, we were racing through a field of prairie grass, my child’s hand encompassed in hers. Although she was far older, it was all I could do to keep up with her—two of my short strides matching one of hers.

Behind us came a series of sharp pops, like firecrackers. There were other sounds, too. Shrill whistles. Shouting. Barking dogs.

The land sloped downward to a hollow and we drifted to a stop. She put her hands atop my shoulders and stared at me. Wrinkles etched her face. Crow’s feet danced at the edges of her eyes.

I realized the pops were bullets; I could hear them pinging off the rocks and whistling past my ears. Someone was after us. Someone was trying to kill us.

Even though the woman seemed about to tell me something, I didn’t want to hear it—I didn’t want to be there—so I jolted myself awake, the blackness of the Quonset hut pressing down on me, my breathing fast.

It was another hour before I fell back to sleep, wondering who the woman was and what she was about to say.

8.

HOPE AND FAITH ARE jammed into the back of the Humvee. The convoy makes its way across nonexistent trails until they reach something resembling an actual road.

It’s the first time they’ve ever been in a vehicle. Well, a moving vehicle. They’ve slept in plenty of abandoned ones during their years on the run, but this one is actually in motion. Nothing could prepare them for the sheer speed of it.

The sun sets and an eerie calm settles over the landscape. The Humvee’s twin headlights cut two jagged holes in the darkness.

Hope wonders where they’re being taken. Every so often, the heavyset man swivels his thick head and peers back from the passenger seat. He says nothing.

In the distance, Hope catches a fleeting glimpse of structures. Listing log cabins, tar-paper shacks, old wooden buildings with peeling paint. All surrounded by a ten-foot-high fence, topped with an unending coil of razor wire. Anchoring the four corners are guard towers with Brown Shirts poised behind machine guns.

Hope’s mouth goes dry. After sixteen years, ten of them on the run, she and her sister are about to be imprisoned.

“Camp Freedom,” the obese man says cheerfully. “Your new home.”

The camp’s colossal gates shriek open and the vehicle rolls to a stop. A soldier pulls open the passenger door. There are Brown Shirts everywhere, each wearing the Republic’s distinctive dark badge with three inverted triangles. But it’s the others who draw Hope’s attention.

Girls. Scores of them. All wearing the same coarse, gray dresses that hang limply below their knees. Faded, scuffed boots adorn their feet. Based on their expressions, they seem to regard Hope and Faith as a couple of feral cats.

A tall, stooped man with a tidy mustache and a balding pate emerges from a cinder block building.

“I see you’ve met Dr. Gallingham,” he says. “I’m Colonel Thorason.” He pauses briefly, as if expecting the girls to bow or otherwise show how impressed they are to meet the camp overseer. “Life here is very simple: you abide by the rules or face the consequences. Is that clear?”

Hope and Faith nod.

“In that case—” He interrupts himself when he spies a woman walking their way. She is tall, with straight blond hair and enormously round cheekbones. An ankle-length coat is draped atop her shoulders. Thorason takes a deferential step backward as she approaches.

“Which one threw the spear?” she asks. Her tone is as sharp as the razor wire atop the fence.

“I did,” Hope says.

Hope waits for a reaction. A slap. A punch from a soldier. Something to teach her a lesson. Instead, the woman reaches forward and fondles Hope’s hair, letting the silky strands run between her fingers.

“Such pretty hair,” the woman murmurs. “It’s obvious you take good care of it.” The woman forces a brittle smile and begins to walk away.

“Do what you need to do,” she says over her shoulder to Colonel Thorason. “But that one”—pointing her finger in Hope’s direction—“gets shaved.”

Hope and Faith are taken to a bathhouse, where they’re stripped and showered with a white powder.

“Delousing,” the female guard explains in a flat monotone. She has a square block of a face that seems incapable of smiling. She throws two dresses at them: ill-fitting gray things. A pair of dirty combat boots finishes the ensemble. When the guard turns her back, Hope retrieves her father’s locket from her pants pocket and stuffs it in her boot. That and the scrap of paper.

The woman turns back around, brandishing a large pair of scissors, the blades nicked with rust.

“Don’t move,” she orders, “unless you want this through your eye.”

She snips the scissors twice, then seizes Hope’s hair. Watching her long strands of hair ribbon to the ground, it’s all Hope can do not to cry.

Live today, tears tomorrow.

When the woman finishes, she grabs a broom.

“Here,” she says, thrusting it in Hope’s hand. “Clean up your mess.”

Hope grits her teeth and does as commanded, but not before running a hand over her bald, patchy head. She feels as naked as a plucked bird. But it’s more than that; it’s almost as if—somehow—she’s lost a piece of herself. A piece of her mother.

A male guard with a jutting chin enters. In his hand dangles an odd-looking tool with a pointy end. His gaze lands on Faith.

“Right arm,” he commands.

When Faith doesn’t move, the Brown Shirt sighs noisily and yanks up Faith’s sleeve. He turns on the device, tattooing a number on the outside of her arm. Tears roll down Faith’s cheeks as F-738 is branded into her skin. The guard motions for Hope. She pulls up her sleeve without being told. Her skin prickles as F-739 is engraved.

F-738 and F-739—their new identities.

Photographs are snapped, and then the Brown Shirts usher them back outside to a tar-paper shack. On the front, painted in garish yellow, is a large letter B. A thick chain snakes between the door’s handle and a security bar. The guards open the lock and shove the twins inside.

“You’re in luck.” Jutting Chin smirks. “We have a vacancy.”

Once their eyes adjust to the gloom, Hope and Faith see a series of cots crammed too close together.

And girls. Around twenty or so, all approximately their age. Their expressions are openly hostile.

No one bothers to say anything. “I’m Hope. This is my sister, Faith.” No response. “We’re new.”

“No shit,” someone mutters.

Finally, one of the girls asks, “What happened to your hair?”

Hope runs a hand over her head, still not used to the stubbled absence. “They cut it off.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Maybe ’cause I killed a Brown Shirt.”

If Hope thinks that will impress the others, she’s wrong. The girls don’t react at all. They just climb into their narrow cots and prepare for sleep.

“Come on,” Hope says to her sister. “Maybe they’ll be more talkative in the morning.” She leads Faith to two empty beds jammed into the corner.

“I meant what I said back there,” Faith says, her first words in hours. “About Dad wanting me to die.”

“No you didn’t,” Hope says.

She cleans her sister’s wound as best she can and helps her get ready for bed. They haven’t slept on anything resembling a mattress in ten years, and Hope can’t get comfortable. Only when she lies on the floor is she able to find a position that’s right.

Stretched out on raw, warped pine, she can’t get her mind off these girls. There’s something odd about them that Hope can’t put her finger on. Something deeply … disturbing.

9.

CAT TOOK TWO OF us: Flush and me.

It was midafternoon when we exited the north side of camp. A couple of Brown Shirts watched us with mild interest; there were no fences at Camp Liberty, and in its twenty-year history, no one had bothered to escape. Where would you go?

After a thirty-minute climb, we veered west, heading up Skeleton Ridge. Finally, we came to a stop, lowered ourselves to the ground, and poked our heads above the ridge. Far below us lay a quiet valley: a meandering stream, dozens of scattered boulders.

“Why are we here again?” Flush asked. He was a few years younger, and not as patient as some of the others.

Cat just gave him a look. You’ll see.

An hour passed. Just when I thought I couldn’t take it anymore, we heard the growl of an engine and watched as a faded red pickup truck rounded a far ridge. It came to a stop and two Brown Shirts emerged from the cab, each sporting rifles.

They made their way to the back of the pickup and unhitched the gate, revealing six LTs. One of the soldiers reached up and grabbed an LT by the back of his shirt and tossed him to the ground. We could hear the muffled thud as his body slammed against the earth.

I couldn’t believe it. Why would a Brown Shirt treat an LT that way? Then the soldier jumped up into the truck and began kicking the boys, yelling at them. Each time a boy tumbled to the ground, the soldiers laughed. I wondered why the LTs didn’t fight back—until I saw their bound wrists.

Cat fished a pair of binoculars out of his pack and handed them to me. I adjusted the focus … and nearly lost my breath.

I recognized the LTs. They were a year older than me and had gone through the Rite the month before. One I knew very well: Cannon. The athlete we all wanted to be. And here he was, wrists lashed together, pleading with the soldiers. One of them sent a boot into his ribs. We heard the crack from a quarter mile away.

“I don’t understand,” I mouthed.

“Just watch,” Cat said.

Once all six LTs were on the ground, the pickup driver whipped out a large knife and cut the ties that bound Cannon’s wrists. Cannon rubbed his wrists gratefully.

The soldiers got back in the pickup and drove off.

“What’s going on?” Flush asked. “Is it like a test? Do they have so much time to get back to camp or something?”

Cat barely acknowledged us.

When Cannon untied the other LTs’ ropes, they scrambled to their feet and began to run. In the quiet of the early evening I could nearly hear the whisper of their legs parting grass …

… soon drowned out by the whine of motors. From the same bend where the truck had exited, four ATVs appeared. I’d seen four-wheelers around camp, but these were different. These had been outfitted with metal plates so they resembled some unearthly cross between military machine and triceratops. While the man in the lead wore an orange vest, the others were clad entirely in camo, dressed like it was hunting season.

Which, in a sense, it was.

Slung on their arms were black assault rifles. But somehow different from the M16s the Brown Shirts sported back at camp. Cat read my thoughts.

“M4s,” he explained, “can do everything an M16 can, but with shorter barrels and stocks.”

The Man in Orange stopped, shut his engine down to an idle, and waved a Be my guest gesture. One of the other three took off, exhaust trailing from his ATV. He stopped when he was within a hundred yards of the LTs, whipped up his rifle, and fired. A tendril of smoke plumed from the barrel.

One of the boys stumbled forward, arms flailing. I squeezed the binoculars until my knuckles shone white. But something was missing.

“No blood,” I said, confused.

“Rubber bullets,” Cat explained. “Not meant to kill. Not at first, anyway.”

It was a game: four men with assault rifles versus six LTs with none. Predators vs. prey.

With Cannon supporting his injured friend, the LTs continued running. When they’d covered a good quarter mile, the three men revved their engines and took off. They weren’t letting the LTs go; they were merely giving them a head start. For sport.

Far behind them sat the Man in Orange, arms crossed, observing from a distance. He was their guide. The hunt master.

The men steered the ATVs to the outer rim and corralled the six LTs, shooting wildly. Another boy went sprawling, clutching his face. When he pulled his hands away I saw a slick coating of blood dribbling down his cheek. A bullet got him in the eye.

The ATV whizzed away in search of moving targets. More challenging game.

One Less Than jumped into a stream. He lost his balance and fell face-first into the water with a splash. A four-wheeler followed, coming to a stop directly on top of him. The LT’s arms flailed as he struggled for air, his head below water. The driver laughed.

Two more were brought down in quick succession. Pop! Pop! They lay motionless on the ground.

One of the remaining LTs ran for a scraggly pine, leaping for its outstretched limbs. He swung his legs up over the branch and began to climb.

The men treated him like target practice and riddled him with bullets. When the LT fell, his body sailing through twenty feet of air, he landed hard atop his head. There was no mistaking the sickening sound of his neck snapping in two.

Only two were left: the boy with the missing eye, and Cannon, standing by his side, shielding him from further bullets.

The men seemed intent on prolonging the moment, orbiting the two LTs in ever-closing circles. The heaviest of the group reached into a back compartment and pulled out a jug. They passed it around, each taking deep gulps from whatever homemade brew it contained. Only when the sun settled behind the far ridge did the shooters put away the jug to finish off the LTs.

But when one of them lifted his rifle, Cannon cocked his arm as though making that familiar throw from third to first and gunned a rock forward. It hit the rifleist square in the face. Blood gushed from his nose like a fountain.

While his two companions looked on in a drunken stupor, Cannon raced forward, kicked the wounded man off the ATV, and hopped on himself. He picked up his injured friend, and the two of them went zipping across the pasture, wind sailing through their hair.

When the two other shooters finally understood what was happening, they began to fire wildly. The alcohol made them too unsteady to get off a decent shot.

Cannon and the wounded LT inched closer to the far edge of the valley. They were going to make it. It took everything in my power to refrain from cheering.

I had forgotten about the Man in Orange.

He gave his head a weary shake, and uncrossed his arms. Removing his rifle from its scabbard, he placed Cannon squarely in his sights. From a distance of half a mile he pulled the trigger. Smoke plumed from the barrel; the crack of the rifle shot followed a full second later.

The bullet struck Cannon in the back of the head and both LTs went flying.

By the time the other two men raced forward—now no more than ten yards from their quarry—Cannon had pushed himself to a standing position and round after round landed in his abdomen, his arms, his legs.

He remained standing longer than any human could under such circumstances. He refused to be brought down. Finally, a bullet exploded in his face and he flew backward, landing hard on the ground. This time he did not move.

The Man in Orange joined the others. When he was a couple of feet away, he finished off Cannon and the other LT himself. We could see the bodies quiver with each shot.

The shooters made their way to Cannon’s corpse. One of the men posed with the body as though it were big game he’d brought down on safari. His friend snapped a picture—the camera flash a miniature lightning strike.

When the four ATVs rode out of the valley, their sport completed, they left behind the corpses of six Less Thans, each only a year older than me.

Then the red pickup returned, jostling to a stop when it reached a corpse. The two Brown Shirts went to the body and swung it back and forth until they had enough momentum to fling it into the truck’s bed. Thud! They drove to the next bodies and repeated the process—thud! thud!—their movements weary and nonchalant. As if they’d done this a hundred times.

When all six dead LTs were loaded in the back, the truck bounced back the way it’d come, its red taillights shining like devil’s eyes before disappearing into the darkness.

Just like that the valley returned to its peaceful self.

“Who were they?” Flush demanded as Cat led us back to camp.

“Hunters,” Cat said.

“But why’d they do that?”

“’Cause you’re a bunch of Less Thans.” He said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “You’re not only less than normal, you’re less than human.”

“So what’d those LTs do that got them punished?”

Cat stopped. “You’re not listening. You all are prey, and your camp is one big hatchery. Those six LTs did nothing more than have the bad luck to get sent here. Period.”

“A hatchery?” Flush repeated.

“A place where fish are raised, then released into rivers so fishermen have something to catch. You’re just a bunch of Less Thans—being raised to be hunted.”

“So why teach us anything at all?” I asked.

“’Cause otherwise it’d be like shooting fish in a barrel. If it’s too easy, it’s not sport. There’s gotta be some challenge.”

In its own sick way it made a kind of sense.

For the next hour no one spoke. We descended through dense woods, moving as quickly as darkness allowed. Skeleton Ridge was no place to be at night. I don’t think I took a breath until we caught sight of the camp far below, its lights sparkling.

“How do you know all this?” I asked.

“Because I’ve been on the run. I’ve seen people. I’ve talked to them.” His eyes grew suddenly distant. “Before I came here, I stayed with a man and his two daughters. They put me up in their cave. They told me things—like how afraid they were of the Republic and its Brown Shirts. They were running from soldiers. Everyone’s running from soldiers.”

“But that doesn’t—”

“Listen,” he said, his piercing blue eyes cutting through the dark. “All of this is true—the proof is right under your nose. Or under the Brown Shirts’ noses. You rescued me in the desert, I told you about the Hunters. That makes us even. What you do with this is up to you—I don’t give a shit. I’m getting the hell out of here and going to the next territory.”

With that, he turned and scrambled down the mountain.

That night my mind was reeling. I dreamed of her again: the woman with long black hair. We were running through the field of prairie grass, the air so pungent with gunpowder it wrinkled my nose. Behind us came the same awful sounds as before: screams, explosions, the sharp crack of bullets.

Only this time there were others running, too. Cat. My friend K2. Cannon. All running for their lives.

The old woman pulled me low to the ground, and when she opened her mouth to speak, I didn’t force myself awake. This time I let her talk.

“You will lead the way,” she said.

I waited for more.

“I—I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I stammered. “What way? And who on earth will listen to me?”

She smiled briefly and then disappeared, vanishing into the gunpowdery haze.

I woke with a start, my T-shirt clinging to me from perspiration. All around me, LTs slept soundly. I wondered if any were haunted by dreams as I was. Wondered too if I would ever begin to understand mine.

As I tried to get back to sleep, I thought of what Cat had said as we descended the mountain.

Right under the Brown Shirts’ noses.

Something else, too. The stuff about that dad and his daughters. I wondered where they were now—if they’d escaped the soldiers and made it to freedom. Wondered if I’d ever find out.

10.

HOPE NOTICES THE OTHER girls seem oddly subdued. Repressed. Haunted, even.

The only thing that’s clear is that Hope and Faith aren’t the only sisters. In fact, as Hope looks around the mess hall at the hundred or so other girls, it seems as if the vast majority are related.

“What’s with all the twins?” she asks the girl opposite her. She’s tall with red hair and there’s something in how the other girls look at her that makes Hope think she’s in charge.

“You’ll find out,” the girl says.

“You’re not going to tell me?”

The girl’s eyes narrow. “What’s to tell? Everyone’s experience is different.”

Grabbing her tray, the red-haired girl rises and rushes out. She’s followed by another who has identical facial features but is shorter and more fragile-looking. This frailer version of Red Hair hesitates, seems about to say something, then changes her mind. Hope shrugs it off. Another unanswered question.

Roll call follows breakfast. On the grassy infield, the girls line up by barracks in perfect geometries of rows and columns. Colonel Thorason removes a sheet of paper from a binder and calls out a series of Participants. The girls cringe when their numbers are called. Once the announcement is complete, the Participants are met by the pudgy Dr. Gallingham and marched off.

Hope has no idea where they’re being taken. It’s all a nightmarish blur.

She’s assigned to work in the barn; Faith is put on a cleaning crew. Milking cows and shoveling manure reminds Hope of when she used to help her father. Before they were on the run. Back in happier times. The barn is also outside camp, on the other side of the fence, which makes it feel that much closer to freedom.

When she returns to the barracks at the end of her shift, she is met by the same hostile glares.

“Don’t bring that barn stink in here,” one of the girls says. “Latrine’s in back.”

Hope grits her teeth. A number of other girls stand at the metal trough. They grow quiet when Hope enters.