My blood curdles in my veins and I start to sweat. Sitting perfectly still, I start moving my eyes around, searching for the source of the sigh.
I glimpse something from the corner of my eye—a human-shaped shadow standing in the darkness on my side of the fence—and grapple for my gun. In one practiced move I slide it from my belt and put my finger on the trigger. My sweaty hand starts trembling so badly, the gun falls and bounces off my shoe. The ground rustles when the gun hits it, and the shadow drops out of sight.
Completely panicked, I fall to my hands and knees and run my hands over the ground, searching for my gun, but don’t find it. I stand and pull the knife from my belt and unzip the bottom pocket of my tackle vest, removing a small flashlight. My fingers feel for the spot on the knife that releases the blade and it swings open. With the flashlight in one hand and the knife in the other, I spring to my feet and turn the light on, pointing it at the prowler. The shadow—a lone person—turns toward my light and starts running straight at me.
Full frontal attack. I have trained for this, trained to fight, fight, fight, and I am ready for his body to crash into mine, to use his own momentum to throw him off balance, to use both knife and flashlight as weapons. In half a heartbeat he’s diving at me, hand wrapping around the top of the flashlight as if that is the only thing he’s after, and everything turns dark.
Warm flesh contacts mine, and I lash out with my knife. He struggles against me, but I’m faster. I have learned speed over strength in a world ruled by physical prowess. With one practiced move, I whip him over onto his stomach and wrench his arms behind his back. The flashlight clatters out of his hand, the beam lighting up the bushes like bright, hopeful encouragement.
“The light!” my attacker gasps, struggling. I wrench his arms more tightly against his back, making his shoulder blades strain, making him whimper. “The light! Turn it off!” he says again, then adds a beseeching, pain-filled, “Please.”
I glance between him and the light.
“You have just broadcast your location to a whole group of raiders. If you want a chance to run before they get here, let go of me and turn off the light!” he growls.
I am torn. If I let go, he might attack me. It’s the perfect story to make me release him. He grunts and thrashes and manages to throw me off of him, and then dives for the light and smashes it into the ground. It goes dark as the glass shatters. And then he turns his back to me, falls to his knees, and puts his hands behind his back. For a moment, I stare at him, too stunned to react. Then I tackle him back to the ground, pinning his arms, but not quite as tightly as before. He lies perfectly still beneath me.
“What are you doing out here?” I ask, my quivering voice belying my rigid tone.
“I was getting water from the golf course pond.” He says it like it should be obvious.
“What do you want?” I clarify.
“I can tell you what I didn’t want,” the stranger says, deep voice muffled by the ground. “I didn’t want you to practically cut my arm off. Your bite is a lot worse than your bark. Here I am, trying to help you, and you cut the crap out of me! Every beast and carnivore within a mile is going to be coming over here to get a taste.”
“What do you want?” I ask again.
“First off, featherweight, I want my pride back. You’ve got to weigh eighty pounds max, and you took me down.” He makes a sound, a bumpy, weird sound from deep in his throat. It takes me a minute to realize what it is. Laughter. He’s laughing!
I tighten my grip on his arms. “You’re insane. Will you shut up before you blow my cover?”
His laughter stops. “Before I blow your cover? Me? First rule of desolation is never use a light after sunset! You can be spotted from ten miles away. You’re the crazy one, my friend. Not me.”
One of my dogs back home is a Rottweiler-hound mix. When she senses danger, a Mohawk of fur rises on her back. The hair on the back of my neck bristles, and I let go of him, spinning in a circle, searching the darkness. “What have I done?” I whisper, and fall to my hands and knees, feeling around until I find my gun. Without waiting to see what the stranger does, I run.
The dead grass is smooth and even under my feet. At the house, I take the deck steps two at a time and burst into the family room with the leather sofa. “We have to go. Now!” I blurt. “I totally messed up.”
Fiona stands up from the sofa and steps in front of her brother. Bowen walks through the front door. Behind me, footsteps pound up the deck stairs. I whip around in time to see the silhouette of a man cross the deck and stop at the back door. From inside the house, two guns click and I know precisely where they are aimed.
“Please don’t shoot me. Please.” The man lifts his hands, a gesture barely visible in the dark. “The kid cut me and I’m bleeding pretty bad. I was wondering if you could help me out real quick.”
“Who’re you?” Bowen asks.
“My name is Kevin. You’ve got about ten minutes before the raiders get here, since your watchdog was stupid enough to turn on a flashlight.”
My face starts to burn with fury and embarrassment. The beast-boy grumbles in his sleep, and I can see the gleam of Jonah’s good eye in the darkness.
“Jack? Please say you didn’t turn on a light,” Bowen says.
I don’t reply because the room lights up with a rosy glow that makes our shadows sweep across the walls. I look out the window as a pink flare arcs across the sky.
Bowen groans. “That looks close. Fo, keep your gun on Kevin. Let’s get him to the master-bedroom closet where we can turn on a light. Jonah, come and get us if you hear or see anything.”
“Got it,” Fo says, voice gruff. Jonah doesn’t say a thing.
“Jack, you lead.”
Without a word I walk past Bowen, with Kevin hot on my heels. The master bedroom is on this level, past the kitchen and down a wide hall. The master closet is massive, with tattered clothes hanging on wooden hangers above rows and rows of rat-eaten shoes. I can’t see any of this in the dark, but I memorized everything about this house during the day—just in case.
Inside the closet, Bowen shuts the door and turns on a flash-light, shining it in the stranger’s face. He flinches and covers his eyes. There is a tattoo on the back of his hand—the mark. But there are no lines drawn through the circle, no recorded doses of vaccination.
“Show me your palms and arms,” Bowen demands. The man holds out his arms and hands, palms up, and Bowen moves the light over them, searching for raider marks. I don’t look for the marks because my eyes are riveted on the stranger’s left arm. It is covered with blood that is dripping onto the hardwood floor. Bowen moves the flashlight to the source of the bleeding—a gaping gash, exposing muscle, two inches above the man’s elbow.
Bowen’s eyes meet mine. “Not bad,” he says. I shrug.
“Do you have coagulant?” Kevin asks, gently prodding the wound. Compared to me, he’s tall, but not nearly as tall as Bowen. He looks right at me and I almost gasp. He’s not quite a man. He’s young. And surprisingly handsome.
“We have coagulant, but we don’t have much. I don’t think we should waste it,” Fo says, still aiming her gun at the guy.
“Waste it?” Kevin looks at his wound again. “It’s not like I did this to myself. Your little watchdog did it. I can’t be bleeding like this and wander around out there.”
I take a closer look at the gash. I’ve seen worse. I’ve also fixed worse. “I can suture it.”
Fo, Bowen, and Kevin all turn and stare at me.
“My dad does this sort of stuff all the time. Only, I’ll need water. To clean it out first and to wash my hands. I’ll go get Jonah’s pack.”
Fo and Bowen look at each other, as if communicating a silent message. “We don’t have any water to spare,” Bowen says. I keep quiet, but I have to fight the urge to remind him that we have a backpack loaded with water. More than enough.
Kevin glares at Bowen and Fo, then turns his fuming, accusatory gaze on me before rifling through the clothes hanging in the closet. He stops rifling when he gets to a white cotton button-down shirt. Taking it from the hanger, he holds his right hand out to me, palm up. “I need your knife,” he snaps, brows furrowed.
“Why?” I ask, wary.
His jaw tenses and releases, and then he shoves the shirt at me. “Please cut me a large triangular bandage.”
Aha. Now I understand what he is doing. I take the shirt and, without putting it on the filthy ground, do my best to cut a large triangle. When I am done, Kevin holds his arm out. I wrap the fabric around his biceps and pull it tight to slow blood loss. He gasps as I knot the bandage into place.
“Sorry,” I say.
The closet door swings open and Jonah, still holding the sleeping child-beast, strides inside. “Someone is coming,” he says. “A big group. They’re on the far side of the golf course. We need to go. Now.”
“How many?” Bowen asks.
“I don’t know, but they’re carrying weapons. They’re reflecting moonlight.”
“Where should we go?” My voice trembles. I don’t want to be doing this. I want to go home. I want to be safe. I close my eyes and mentally push my fear aside. A warm hand comes down on my shoulder, and I open my eyes and find myself staring at a close face. Kevin’s.
“It’s going to be okay,” he says, his voice filled with gentle reassurance. “Don’t be scared.”
“I’m not scared,” I snap.
“I am,” Bowen says, looking at Fo. “We need to find somewhere to hide. Somewhere safe.”
“I have a safe place a few miles from here. If you want my help?” Kevin asks.
“Yes, for now,” Bowen says.
“Come on, watchdog.” Kevin ruffles my short hair like we’re old friends, and then he strides out of the closet like he’s the one in charge.
We scramble through the house for our possessions. I get my backpack. Fo and Bowen get theirs. Jonah carries the beast-boy. Without asking, Kevin takes Jonah’s massive backpack from the kitchen counter and eases it onto his shoulders, careful not to bump his injured arm.
“Don’t you have any stuff of your own?” I ask him as we make our way toward the front door.
“Oh, I do all right. It’s down there on the golf course, probably about to be intercepted by raiders.”
“Well, that wasn’t very smart.”
He leans in close to me so our noses are almost touching, and I force myself not to take a step back. That would show weakness. “Here’s the thing, Jack,” he says. His breath smells like bubblegum. “I wasn’t planning on getting stabbed tonight. If I knew you were going to turn on a flashlight and attack me when I tried to help you, I would have been sure to have my backpack on.” Stepping away from me, he rolls his shoulders under the backpack’s weight. “What’s in this thing?”
“Water,” Fo answers. “Lots of it.”
“And you wouldn’t spare any for me?” Kevin grumbles.
“No, sorry. And be careful with it!”
We step out the front door and as one, pause, looking toward the golf course. Everything is quiet and I wonder if Jonah was wrong about seeing something. Slowly, so slowly I don’t realize I am hearing it at all for a moment, the night begins to pulse. The thump of feet grows steadily louder and becomes accompanied by the occasional clink of metal. I focus my eyes in the direction of the sound, and my knees knock together. The newly risen moon shines red against the eastern horizon and gleams against metal objects moving just beyond the edge of the property—weapons. I put my clammy hand over my gun.
“They’re too close! We can’t outrun them. Not with Jonah carrying the beast,” Bowen whispers.
“I can outrun them,” I blurt, and then realize what I’ve just volunteered to do—be the decoy.
“So can I,” Kevin whispers.
Bowen’s eyes go from me to Kevin and back to me again. Fo puts her hand on my arm. “Are you sure you’re willing to do that for us?” she asks.
I stare at her, silent, because I’m not sure. Kevin’s hand comes down on my shoulder. “We’re sure,” he says. “It’s our—your—only chance for survival. Trust me.”
Bowen nods. “Okay. Just don’t lose Jonah’s backpack! And meet us at Leyden Lake tomorrow at noon!”
“Leyden Lake, tomorrow at noon. Got it. You ready, featherweight?” I grit my teeth and nod. Kevin grins and shoves me forward. “Oh no!” he yells. “Here they come! Run!”
My heart explodes in my chest, my feet dig into the driveway, I put my head down, and I sprint.