THEY WASTE NO TIME building their defense. Some arm crossbows, others sharpen logs, still others dig pits, covering them with false blankets of leaves. Twitch and Flush head up a crew tasked to build a series of small catapults. There were hidden pits and booby traps before, but if the Hunters are daring enough to attack Dodge’s Log Lodges, they’ll have to work their way through twice as many of them.
The woods are filled with the sounds of hammering and sawing.
At one point, Hope finds herself next to Book, setting traps at the camp’s outskirts. For the longest time they work in silence, spreading out nets on the snow.
“So you’re not talking to me anymore?” Book finally asks.
She shrugs and keeps working, bending branches to attach to the corners of the nets.
“Or do you think I’m invisible?” he goes on. “’Cause I’m right here, you know.”
“I can see that.”
“So?”
“Maybe I don’t have anything to say.”
She slips a knot around a corner of netting and pulls it taut.
“So what happened between us, what was that?” Book asks.
“The past. That was then, this is now.”
“That kiss on the plateau—”
“The past.”
“The one in Camp Liberty after Cat killed Dekker—”
“The past.”
“Lying together in the tunnel, holding you—”
“Let it go, Book! All of it!”
A couple of Sisters glance in their direction.
“Why?” he asks.
She sighs noisily and lowers her voice. “We’re too different. We don’t have anything in common.”
“Sure we do. I don’t believe in myself, and you don’t believe in me either. I’d say we’re perfect for each other.”
If he’s hoping that she’ll smile, it doesn’t work. Her mouth is a straight, unwavering line.
“My feelings for you haven’t changed,” he whispers. “Have yours?”
She looks up at him. Her mouth opens, but no words come. Instead, she flings her net to the ground and stomps off, leaving Book alone, his breath pulsing slow and steady in the winter air.
That night, it takes Hope forever to get to sleep. It’s not soreness from work, it’s not even the gnawing hunger. It’s the conversation; she can’t get it out of her head. Although she regrets her words, she can’t seem to make it clear to Book that things are different now. Two scars have changed everything.
When she finally falls into a sleep, it’s a deep and soundless one. Diana has to nudge her to wake her up.
“Morning already?” Hope asks, her words slurred.
Diana presses her finger to her lips and whispers, “Shh.”
An oblong of moonlight splashes the floor—enough illumination for Hope to see Diana’s worried face. Hope quickly throws on clothes and grabs her weapons. They slip into the dark, snow crunching beneath their feet. Others are up as well, moving soundlessly between cabins. Hope wonders what’s going on. Why does everyone seem to be creeping to the lake, to the back edge of the resort? If they’re about to be attacked, shouldn’t they be getting into position?
When they crouch on the snowy beach, Hope is surprised that everyone else is already there, their breaths ballooning in front of them. What Hope can’t understand is why their backs are turned away from Dodge’s.
“What’s going on?” she asks.
Cat points across the frozen lake, but Hope doesn’t know why. Finally she sees them: a series of dim yellow lights, small as fireflies, wavering like mirages just above the surface of the ice.
ATVs.
But they aren’t coming from the surrounding countryside where the Sisters and Less Thans expected them to come from; they’re riding across the frozen lake for a sneak attack.
“What do we do?” one of the younger Sisters asks. It isn’t just panic that laces her voice, it’s more like terror. She’s heard the stories of how the Hunters have massacred Less Thans.
“Just turn around,” Sunshine says. “Hide ourselves behind trees and boulders and fire at ’em from this direction.”
“It won’t stop ’em,” Cat says.
“But if we take cover and our shots are good—”
“You haven’t seen these people.”
Sunshine has the sense to realize no one else supports him—especially those who fought the Hunters in the Brown Forest. They know this enemy.
“We could run,” someone suggests, but that won’t work. The Hunters have vehicles. They have guns. It wouldn’t be a fair fight at all.
“So if we don’t face ’em and we don’t run,” Sunshine says, “what do we do?”
“The only thing we can,” Hope says. “We surrender.”
They take pillowcases and tie them onto sticks. A dozen of them venture onto the beach, waving flags of surrender. The white cloth snaps in the midnight air.
The four-wheelers draw closer. There are several dozen in all. The rumble of their engines is muffled and far off. Hope tries to see the riders’ faces, but only their silhouettes are visible, wreathed by headlights and exhaust. If the Man in Orange is among them, she can’t yet tell. In the past, he’s been their leader—the one who seems to take the most pleasure in killing Less Thans.
“You sure this is the right thing to do?” Sunshine asks.
No one answers him, in part because no one knows. Besides, it’s too late to change plans now. They’ve made their decision.
“Will they honor our surrender?” Diana asks.
“They’d better,” Hope says.
“And if they don’t?”
Before Hope has a chance to answer, the first bullets go whizzing by, embedding themselves in trees and the backs of buildings. Shards and splinters rain down. A window shatters. The Sisters and LTs scramble for cover. They had never intended to surrender, but they’d hoped to trick the Hunters longer than this.
When the firing comes to a lull, Cat yells out, “Rocks!”
A long line of Less Thans springs up, each holding a miniature boulder. The line stretches far and wide, and when they step onto the frozen lake, it’s a struggle to maintain their balance while lugging the heavy stones.
“Arrows!” Hope shouts.
Another line pops up behind the first. These are the archers—Sisters mostly—who nock their arrows quickly, efficiently.
“Draw!” Hope yells, and the archers do.
The four-wheelers near. Their rumble vibrates across the ice.
“Fire!”
A rush of arrows sails through the sky, their whoosh like a flock of screaming birds. When the arrows strike, their flint points clatter against the frozen lake, a hailstorm of stone on ice. Not a single Hunter goes down. The ATVs slow but keep coming.
“At will!” Hope cries, and the night rains arrows. Whoosh whoosh whoosh.
Led by Cat, the Less Thans have ventured out to a good twenty feet from shore. He motions them to stop. A couple crumple to the ice when hit by bullets. The others hold their ground. Then Cat hefts the rock above his head and counts out loud. “One . . . two . . .”
On three he brings the boulder down with all his might, chucking it into the ice in front of him. The rock breaks through the frozen lake and sends up a fountain of slushy water. The other Less Thans do the same. The ice is suddenly dotted with a series of boulder-sized holes. It’s one thing to walk or ride atop a frozen lake; it’s something else altogether to hurtle small boulders into it.
The LTs race back to shore, passing a second line of LTs who also carry boulders. They venture to the same place as the first group and heave their heavy rocks into the ice. Geysers arc skyward as more holes mar the surface. Bullets strike two more Less Thans, and their friends drag them to shore.
The Hunters keep coming, their headlights growing sharper.
Cat’s group returns with another set of rocks.
“Throw!” he shouts, heaving his rock through air. The other Less Thans do the same.
Hope has that coppery taste of fear in her mouth. They had hoped the holes would connect, creating a chasm of frozen water between the Hunters and them. But it hasn’t worked that way. The ice is too thick, and all they’ve done is make a series of gaps. It’s enough to slow the Hunters down . . . but not enough to stop them.
Out of instinct, Hope looks at Book, just as he looks at her. For the briefest of seconds, their eyes lock, and then he rises from behind an overturned picnic table and yells at the top of his voice, “On the ice!”