HOPE TRIES.
As she passes Book on her way out of the circle, she stretches out her hand to touch his. But either he doesn’t see her . . . or he doesn’t care. In any case, he doesn’t respond.
She can’t really blame him. Until she can gather the courage to say what she feels, things aren’t going to change.
They march through the night and all the next day, and Hope doesn’t say a word to anyone. She walks well ahead of the others, not allowing anyone to get close. When they set up camp that next night, they’re hungry and exhausted and fall asleep immediately. Except Hope. She takes in her surroundings and dwells on what could be, what could have been.
Hope tiptoes between sleeping bodies, her path lit by the fire’s dying embers. When she reaches Book, she takes a deep breath, lowers herself to the ground, and places her hand on his shoulder.
“Book,” she says, giving him a gentle shake. “Come on.”
His eyes flutter open, surprised to see her. “Where’re we going?”
“You’ll see.”
She rises and strides off. Book stumbles to his feet and follows.
Hope leads the way through the dark forest, pushing aside branches, stepping through thickets. When she comes to a small creek, rimmed in ice, she stops a moment and absently strokes her necklace.
“Where’re we going?” Book asks again.
Hope doesn’t answer. She jumps the creek and resumes walking.
She walks swiftly now, more confidently. Book has to hurry to keep up. They come to what used to be a dirt road. Even through the snow, it’s possible to see the ruts from pre-Omega vehicles. Hope follows the road.
They climb a small hill, halting when they reach the top. They’re both breathing heavily. It takes Book a moment to understand why they’ve come to a stop, but then he sees it. There, nestled in the hollow of the hills, sculpted by moonglow, is a small cabin. It’s nearly in ruins—the paint is peeling, one window is shattered, there’s a gaping hole in the roof—but Hope inhales sharply at the sight.
“Is this—” Book asks.
She nods. Her former home. Where she grew up. Where her parents rocked her to sleep. Where she and Faith played in the small creek out back. Where her mother was brutally murdered.
They walk down the hill and approach the house, slowly, quietly, reverently. Hope can feel her heart pounding. The porch draws her first. It was where her mother was shot and killed a decade earlier. Hope reaches it and slowly climbs the sagging steps. The wood creaks and groans beneath her weight.
The stain is visible even in the palest moonlight. Kidney shaped and black in color, it represents her mother’s dying moments. Hope’s eyes travel to the outside wall, and there, scribbled in blood, is one word: Dekker. Just as he boasted back at Camp Liberty, the sergeant wrote his name after he murdered Hope’s mother.
Hope can’t turn away fast enough.
Book places his hand on Hope’s elbow and guides her down the stairs. “Come on,” he says, and she nods absently.
They leave the porch and reach the flagstone sidewalk. Hope looks around.
“I wonder where . . .”
She sees it then—a small wooden cross embedded in the earth. Her feet take her there like iron fillings to a magnet.
She has never seen her mother’s grave before. She knew her father came back here years later and buried her—his wife; Hope and Faith’s mother—but he never spoke about it. And Hope and Faith never asked.
There’s only the slightest indication that this is a burial plot—just the vaguest hint of borders and edges that mark the grave. A mound of snow atop a mound of earth. It’s the cross that gives it away.
Hope bends down and crouches at the marker, rubbing her fingers along its grooved edges. Her index finger traces each of the letters of her mother’s name: Charlotte Patterson Samadi. The dates of birth and death are there as well, but they mean little to Hope. Just numbers. It’s the person she misses.
Hope looks up, only then realizing the grave rests in the shadow of a giant ponderosa pine. It was Hope’s mother’s favorite tree.
Hope’s throat tightens up, and tears press against her eyes. She rises quickly and stumbles away. She doesn’t know what she’s doing or where she’s going. All she knows is that she misses her mother terribly, she needs someone to comfort her, to hold her, to tell her everything’s going to be all right. She falls into the outstretched arms of Book—an embrace filled with need and grief and utter longing.
They creep back to camp, silent, and Hope is grateful when they can each return to their beds. The next morning, packing up and setting out, she can barely look Book in the eye. Once more, she volunteers to take the lead position on the trail.
Midway through the afternoon, the group finds itself on a series of rolling hills with hardly a tree in sight. Being so out in the open makes Hope nervous, and she picks up the pace as best she can. When she eventually spies a grove of fir and spruce in the distance, she begins to relax. They can build fires. They can hide themselves in the woods. She ducks her head into the wind and bulldozes through waist-high snow.
Then they hear the howls.
Everyone stops and looks behind them. On a far-off ridge stand dozens of wolves, their faces wreathed in steam. They’ve been trailing the Sisters and Less Thans this entire time. The incident with the Hunters only slowed them down.
“Come on,” Hope says, and they begin to march again. Faster now. Desperate. Hope is no longer leading; they’re all leading, trying to get to the woods as quickly as they can. There’s only one slight dip of land left to go. After a quick descent into a valley, there’s a gentle rise leading to the grove of trees. Then they’ll be safe. Surrounded by woods. Encircled by fire.
That’s when Cat comes to a stop. Then Book, then Hope, then everyone. A line of wolves, stretching from side to side like a fortress wall, stands between them and the grove of trees. Even in the swirling snow, Hope can see their gleaming eyes, the dried blood that paints their snouts.
“Spread out and weapons,” Cat says. He’s can’t hide the fact that his voice is trembling.
With teeth bared and bodies lowered, the wolves come slinking forward. Their bellies graze the snow.
The Sisters and Less Thans stretch the line and fumble for arrows, spears, slingshots, anything. There may be 120-some of them, but there are easily twice as many wolves.
As the wolves creep closer, Hope can hear their rumbling growls. There’s something awful and ominous about the sound, a tornado drifting across the plains, ready to overtake them.
For one of the few times in her life, Hope’s legs are shaking. She tries to channel her nervous energy into her spear, gripping it harder than ever, but the hand holding it feels slack and worthless.
Live today, tears tomorrow.
She glances down the line. At the very opposite end is Book. He holds his bowstring taut. Is it her imagination, or does he shoot a look in her direction?
The wolves are two hundred feet away now, and the two groups face off. One final battle. One last stand.
When the pack starts to race forward, it does so as a group, as though someone shouted Go. There is an awful beauty in the attack: the sleek motion of legs; paws churning snow; blazing eyes boring through the afternoon gloom like candle flames.
“Draw!” Hope yells at the top of her voice.
“Fire!” she calls out a moment later.
Darts and spears and rocks and arrows whip through air. Many hit their targets. Yelps ring out. Blood splatters snow.
But only a small number of the wolves go down. The rest surge forward, faster now, angry now, and Hope cannot just hear their growls, she can feel them, vibrating her feet, radiating up her legs.
“At will!” she cries, and the LTs and Sisters fire as best they can. Arrows soar. Darts zing. Wolves race.
And then it’s too late. The wolves are on them, launching themselves through air, soaring through space.
The LTs and Sisters turn and run. Hope keeps stopping to fire off arrows, but it’s not enough. The weakest of the LTs have been caught, and even from a distance, she can hear the growling, the snapping of teeth, the rip and snarl as wolves bite into the sick and wounded. The pitiful cries of Less Thans bounce off the wintery sky.
Others stop and fire as best they can: Diana, Book, Cat. Still the wolves come, racing through a nightmare landscape of dead and dying Less Thans, of wounded Sisters. The trees are too far away and there’s nowhere to hide.
A flash of movement out of the corner of her eye swings her around: a wolf, the alpha male, sailing through air, lands on Book. Heart pounding, she runs in his direction.
“Book!” she hears herself calling out. “Book!”
She readies an arrow as she runs. Not stopping, she lets the bowstring go and the arrow catches the wolf in the back flank. It topples to one side, then just as quickly rights itself, reattaching its bloody teeth to Book’s leg. Book is trying to beat it off, but she knows if she doesn’t get there fast, he’s as good as dead. The thought of it is more than she can take. Her mouth opens wide and she releases a scream that shakes the trees.
She reloads and is about to fire again, but an arrow whizzes by her head. She has to duck. Someone almost hit her. Idiot.
Another arrow flies by. And then another after that. Before she knows it, there are hundreds of them. The sky is raining arrows, arcing above the heads of the Sisters and Less Thans and striking the wolves one after the other—thwack thwack thwack thwack—dropping them to the ground like birds smashing into windows.
She goes to release her arrow, but the wolf attached to Book’s leg lies there motionless. A half dozen arrows jut from its side. She can’t believe it. Only a handful of wolves remain, and just like that, they’re taken care of as well.
No wolves. All dead.
Hope stands there, stunned. All the Less Thans and Sisters, too. In the course of sixty seconds, the battlefield has turned into a slaughterhouse. Before her lies a field of dead and dying wolves, their lean bodies riddled with arrows, blood staining the snow as far as the eye can see. Rivers of red atop a landscape of white.
Hope looks to the heavens and offers a silent thanks. Then she turns and stares behind her, peering into the falling snow. And out of the mist comes a horde of people, riding horses and covered in hides, wearing the hideous skulls of beasts.
Skull People. Hundreds of them.
The biggest of the bunch—a man with a bushy beard that’s spotted with snow—reins his horse to a stop and dismounts into the blood-soaked snow. His thick biceps strain against his buckskin jacket.
“Looks like we got here just in time,” he bellows, all smiles. And then he turns his head and spits off to the side. “Well, don’t just stand there. Let’s build some fires and cook these critters.”