The Prey

“Where am I go—”

“You’ll see,” he answered, cutting me off.

Sweat trickled from my armpits as I sat waiting. Colonel Westbrook and Major Karsten emerged from the headquarters and climbed in the Humvee with me, neither saying a word. We took off. It wasn’t until we’d left Camp Liberty that Westbrook turned around in the passenger seat, his coal-black eyes drilling into me.

“We’re in search of a missing LT,” he said, “and we thought you might be able to help us find him.”

“M-me?” I stammered. “I just met the guy. I don’t know where he is.”

“So you know who I’m talking about.”

“Well, sure, I mean—”

“And that wasn’t you leaving camp with him yesterday afternoon?”

My face burned red, and it was all the answer he needed. The rest of the drive was long and silent.

The roads we followed were gravel and narrow, trailing the foothills of Skeleton Ridge and cutting through dense forests of spruce and pine. All at once we reached a clearing. There before us was a prison.

While it bore a certain similarity to Camp Liberty, there was one glaring difference: the entire site was encircled by a tall barbed wire fence. Guard towers anchored each of the four corners, with Brown Shirts poised behind machine guns.

I wondered who these inmates were who demanded such high security. I could only guess they were the most ruthless of prisoners, the most vile of criminals.

At just that moment the door opened to the tar-paper barracks and out streamed the inmates, all dressed in plain gray dresses and scuffed work boots.

Girls. Dozens and dozens of girls.

The only females I’d ever seen were two-dimensional ones from the movies. To finally see them in the flesh—and my own age, no less—took my breath away. A part of me felt like some ancient explorer encountering tribes from a far-off land.

All around me, girls in drab uniforms marched wearily from one side of camp to the other. But there was something I didn’t understand. How was it these girls—these prisoners—were so highly guarded, while the Less Thans of Camp Liberty could come and go? What had these girls done that made them such dangerous criminals?

Also, there was something about how they moved—something about them—I found oddly disturbing. With downcast eyes and feet shuffling through the dust, they seemed almost … haunted. Like their physical bodies were present but their minds were a thousand miles away.

Colonel Westbrook seemed to read my mind. “So you see, Book,” he said, swiveling in his seat, “there are places in this world worse than Camp Liberty.”

He climbed out of the vehicle.

“Don’t move,” Major Karsten added, fixing me with a skeletal stare.

He and Westbrook disappeared into the headquarters building and I sat in the stifling backseat, trying to make sense of what they had said, of what I was seeing.

Four guards escorted a handful of prisoners past the idling Humvee, marching them through a side gate to a barn on the other side of the fence. As I watched them, my eyes were drawn to one prisoner in particular. She was of medium height with light brown skin—skin the color of tea—and her hair was covered in a head scarf. There was something about her that caught my attention. It wasn’t just that she was good-looking, although there was no doubt about that. There was some undefinable quality that drew me to her. It was almost like we had something in common—like there was something about her I already knew. Even from the distance that separated us I could make out the expression on her face … and I knew that expression. Had seen it countless times staring back at me in the mirror.

If anyone could help me understand what was going on, I knew it would be her.

12. (#ulink_e9c7bcd3-ebe5-5a59-9eaa-cf7e4cba97ac)

HOPE STACKS HAY BALES in the barn’s loft. The work is hard and repetitive, but she doesn’t mind. The intoxicating scent of fresh hay reminds her of the home she left ten years earlier.

A home with a mother and a father and life free of Brown Shirts.

A flash of movement out of the corner of her eye steals her attention, but when she peers through the loft window, all she sees are trees and the jagged cliffs of Skeleton Ridge. Strange. She could have sworn she saw something. Someone.

A moment later, it’s the sound of footsteps that causes her to stop midlift, muscles straining. A Brown Shirt races through the fields.

When she turns around to stack the bale, she’s shocked to see someone standing directly in front of her. He’s about her age, with light brown skin and dark hair. The bale falls from her hands with a thud.

“Who are you and what—”

“Shh,” he whispers. “I won’t hurt you.”

She takes an involuntary step backward but there’s nowhere to go. The heels of her feet peek over the edge of the loft. “You shouldn’t be up here.” She eyes the pitchfork that lies a couple feet away. If she’s quick enough, she can dive for it, reaching it before this stranger.

“I won’t hurt you,” he says again, palms raised.

Her fists clench. “What do you want?” He doesn’t answer, so she asks again. “What do you want?”

He opens his mouth to speak, but at just that moment the Brown Shirt comes stumbling into the barn, badly out of breath. The guy—the intruder—ducks behind the pyramid of hay bales, crouching in shadows.

Down below, the soldier circles in place, then raises his eyes until they land on Hope. “Did you see him?”

“Who?”

“An LT—a boy. Came running through. Just a moment ago.”

Hope is about to speak but stops herself. She has no reason to trust this intruder—no reason at all—but she has even less reason to trust the Brown Shirts. Why should she help them? All they’ve done is make her life a living hell.

But if she covers up the fact that she’s hiding someone and the boy is found, she’ll be the one who’s punished. Why should she help him out—a perfect stranger? For all she knows, he’s the enemy. One of the Crazies her father warned her about.

“Well?” the Brown Shirt prompts.

Is it her imagination or does she feel the boy’s eyes boring into the back of her head?

“I didn’t see anyone,” she says at last.

“Then where’d he go?”

She shrugs.

The soldier does another circle, then makes a step for the ladder. “You sure he’s not up there?”

Hope spreads her arms wide. “Come see for yourself if you don’t believe me.”

The Brown Shirt stares at her, unsure whether to climb up. Finally he hurries away and exits the barn.

Hope doesn’t move. Now that the soldier has gone, it’s just her and this intruder. If she’s made a mistake—if she’s misjudged him—she’ll pay for it.

She slowly pivots in place. At first, she thinks he’s disappeared—his departure as abrupt and secret as his arrival. Then she finds him—peeking through a crack between hay bales. His eyes flick anxiously from one side to another.