Chapter Forty-Seven

CONNOR DIED IN my arms. The spear that had been meant for me buried itself deep in her ribcage. It was a quick death, but not an easy one.

The spear pierced her lungs, and she drowned in her own blood. Despite the horror of her death, she handled herself with courage that words could not adequately convey. Every breath was an agony, and it took her closer to that final precipice. Not once did she give in to fear or self-pity. When she could speak, she urged me to find Matt and the professor, and when she could no longer, she squeezed my hand as I tried, vainly, to reassure her she would be okay.

And then she died, leaving me shaking and covered in her expelled blood. Hers was a death that would haunt my nightmares as long as I lived.

We lost Cohen that day too. He’d fallen to an axe. The blow split his skull and severed one half of his brain from the other. Death would have been instantaneous. In that, at least, he’d been lucky.

But he was dead, one of the Rangers’ best, a kid in the prime of his life. Dead.

Ours weren’t the only losses. Several of the Nation’s warriors had fallen too. I didn’t know them, but their companions took their deaths very hard, and their grief amplified my own.

We accomplished our goal though. We retrieved Matt and the professor.

I tried to focus on that. I tried not to consider whether or not it had been worth the cost. It wouldn’t have done to leave them to their fates with the cannibals. I knew that. And so I resisted the urge to measure the men we’d saved against the people we’d lost.

They’d both been pretty roughed up. Bruises and lacerations covered Matt’s entire body, but he could walk. The professor, on the other hand, had been shot in the leg. This, we learned, was the source of those gunshots we’d heard.

One of their captors had been examining Matt’s pistol, peering into the barrel as he did so. Predictably, this did not end well. He’d inflicted a mortal wound on himself with the first shot we heard. His companions put his body into the pile to be eaten.

As for the second shots…well, the professor had laughed at the dead cannibal’s suicide-by-curiosity. Language barrier or not, his captors took his point. So the group’s leader—the grizzled commander I’d seen earlier—picked up the fallen gun and mimicked the action he’d witnessed. Only this time, he pointed the barrel the professor’s way.

The professor had two bullet holes in his right leg as a consequence, one through both the upper and lower thigh. If the gun hadn’t run out of rounds first, he might have fared worse yet. As it was, he was in a world of agony and completely unable to move on his own.

Gat gave the order to construct a shallow grave for the fallen—Connor and Cohen being buried under a skimpy layer of soil along with the Nation’s lost sons—and to bind the professor’s leg to stop the bleeding. Then, we moved out.

We stuck to the forest floor until we reached one of the highways, after which we ascended. The professor had been carried all this way, and now they hoisted him up on a rope. He howled the entire time, even after one of the Keplerites gave him some bitter root.

And he kept on howling for the entire return trip.

I was ready to shoot him myself by time we reached the City, a day and a half later. Marge and Kayleigh, and half the city’s residents, waited for us. Alerted to our coming, no doubt, by the professor’s screams.

Kayleigh wrapped me in a wordless hug, so fierce it nearly took my breath away, and then turned her attention to the patient. At Marge’s urging, they gave the professor bitter bark.

Mercifully, he passed out shortly thereafter.

*

OUR RETURN BROUGHT both joy that we were safe and victorious, and sadness that we’d incurred so many losses. It seemed to have effected a change in Gat. He didn’t speak with regret for our venture; he seemed instead consumed by our success.

“The Nation,” he confided, “has struck a blow at them. Now it is they who will fear us. Your Kayleigh—she was right. We will not live in fear anymore.”

Whether this was a good thing or not, I didn’t know. Nor did I spend much time considering. I was too busy mourning our dead to think of causing more death.

Kayleigh and Marge had to operate on the professor’s leg. I waited with Caspersen and Matt while they worked and, in the interval, learned something of the rest of their capture.

As we’d already heard, Matt had gotten news of the professor’s capture from Will. He’d given the Keplerite orders to get more help and descended at the site of the ship. Will, instead of fetching reinforcements, had followed to watch, and when Matt met up with the cannibals, he’d been quite alone.

They had filled him with sleep darts. By time he’d pulled one out, another ten bit into him. He quickly lost consciousness and awoke sometime later to find himself a bound captive.

The professor had been sure their captors recognized them as the ones who had collapsed the Mountain. One in particular, he identified as the cannibal who had discovered us in the ravine, before the explosion.

Matt didn’t know how much stock to put in the professor’s theories. The professor had been the only one to get a good look at our unwelcome visitor, but he’d also been panicked at the time—and panicked later when the cannibals caught him. So how reliable his witness account was, neither of us could guess.

At any rate, the cannibals had been very careful to keep both of them alive. Which, of course, didn’t mean gentle treatment. But their captors had taken care not to kill them.

The professor had developed a theory about this, too—that they meant to skin them alive for their skin walkers. Matt hadn’t been persuaded by the idea—not until the cannibals’ leader had traced a few slicing motions up and down their backs and across the soles of their boots, while the entire crew howled with expectant laughter. Now, he fervently believed they’d barely escaped that terrible fate.

The professor’s surgery took some time, and when it was done, the herbalists had to tend to Matt’s wounds. Silence descended on us when they left, and my mind turned back to Connor.

“They’re in good hands,” I assured Caspersen, trying to clear the image of Connor’s dead body from my thoughts.

“I know,” she said, then glanced up at me. “Thank you for coming with us, Johnson. I know you didn’t have to.” She shrugged in the direction Kayleigh had gone. “You had a damned good reason not to, in fact.”

“It’s our job,” I said simply.

“I know. We lost two good people, just doing their jobs. We would have lost more if Gat hadn’t changed his mind.”

“That we owe to Kayleigh,” I said.

“Yes.”

“But we couldn’t leave them. They wouldn’t have left us.” I frowned. “At least, Matt wouldn’t have.”

Caspersen laughed at that. “Yeah. I’m not so sure about Carter though.”

“Maybe if we were computers…”

*

SOME TIME PASSED before the herbalists concluded their work, and Kayleigh was free to go. Caspersen went to find Matt, and Marge left to check in on the professor. We stood alone for the first time in far too long.

“You sure you’re okay?” Kayleigh asked me, wrapping me in a hug.

“I am now.”

“I heard about Connor. And Cohen.” She stepped back to look me in the eyes. “I’m so sorry, Nik.”

“Me too.” It was all I could say. There was a wealth of emotion behind the words, but I couldn’t find a better expression for it.

She seemed to understand. Somehow, she always did. “You ready to go home?”

“Very.”

“All right.” She took my hand. “Let me just say goodnight to Marge, and we can go.”

I followed where she led. There was something cathartic simply in being with her, and I could already feel the weight of the past days lifting. She headed to the rear of the dwelling, where the newest patients’ rooms were. We passed a few empty spaces on the way.

It was in front of one that was occupied that I stopped short, struck dumb and immobile by what I saw therein.

Kayleigh’s hand pulled against mine, and I saw from the corner of my eye that she had stopped and turned to see what the holdup might be.

I stared into Matt’s room, agape, too stunned to respond to the query in her eyes. He and Caspersen were there, wrapped around each other in a kiss of such passion I would have been ashamed to be caught spying had I not been so thunderstruck by the sight.

In all of these months, the idea of Caspersen and Matt together had never so much as crossed my mind. On the contrary, the pairing seemed utterly unthinkable.

Kayleigh tugged at my hand, and I turned to her. She signaled for me to move on. I gestured at the couple, confident she hadn’t—couldn’t have—seen, to respond so nonchalantly. But she only urged me on a second time.

I acquiesced, but as soon as we were out of earshot, hissed, “Did you see that?”

“Well, I was trying not to,” she said bemusedly, “you damned Peeping Tom.”

“I’m serious, Kayleigh. That was Caspersen—and Matt.”

She regarded me with an eyebrow raised. “And…?”

I frowned. The objections seemed self-evident. “Matt? Do I really have to explain?”

She laughed. “Look, I know you don’t like him, but they’re in love, so…”

“What? In love? With Matt?”

“You’re really upset about this, aren’t you?” She nudged me. “Should I be worried?”

“Kayleigh…this is Frat Boy we’re talking about. How can she be in love with him?”

She laughed again. “Jesus, Nik. How can you be so surprised by this?”

“How can you not be?”

“Umm…because it’s been painfully obvious for months now. You didn’t really just figure this out, did you?”