Book 2 - Page 39 (2/2)

“Did you think I’d just let you eat me?” I demanded.

“Eat me,” it growled.

I almost dropped my knives. Just a mindless echo. Not real speech. Right? Just in time, I recovered, stabbed the Freak through the neck. I took another with a spinning slash that Stalker had taught me. Another kill. Another. My arms were tiring, and I took two wounds in quick succession. Claws, not bites. Cleaner.

How much longer? I watched a man die in agony, screaming for his wife.

“The wagons are clear,” a boy shouted from behind me, a valiant messenger from Salvation come to tell us we had been brave enough for long enough.

“Fall back!” Longshot called.

The feeding Freaks raised their heads from our fallen dead, yellow fangs dripping blood, and watched us break. Some gave chase. Longshot held his ground, covering our retreat with fierce determination. He clutched Old Girl like she was the only woman he’d ever loved, and fired. Again. Again. I looked back to see he still wasn’t moving. Holding his ground as he fought for us.

“No!” I shouted. Turned. “No!”

“Go on, Deuce.” Longshot touched his fingers to his brow in a final salute and then pumped his weapon. Another Freak died. He was backing up slowly, giving them reason to fear him. He could make it if he would just run.

Come on, don’t do this. I need you alive.

I took two steps in the wrong direction, and I’d have gone back, if some guard hadn’t grabbed me. He half lifted me and ran. I beat at him as the Freaks overwhelmed Longshot, the man who had saved my life, all those months ago. The outpost commander went down firing under their combined weight.

The guard dragged me, still screaming, toward Salvation, toward safety. Toward the guilt of surviving when Longshot had not. Finally, the watchman slapped me, openhanded, and glared. “Don’t make his sacrifice worth nothing. He had a bad leg. He couldn’t have made it … they’d have taken him from behind, and he didn’t want to go out that way. Can’t you understand that?”

I could. I did. The Huntress in me respected his choice, but the girl wept endlessly inside, mourning the man who died a hero. I recalled standing on the wall with him, seeing him rub his knee. With bitter knowledge, I shut the tears away. Sometimes I had to be all Huntress or there was no surviving the pain. Someday I might let the girl cry for him, but not today.

“Let me go,” I demanded.

He took me at my word, and we ran together for the gates, open just enough for the survivors to slip inside. Of the twenty who had fought at the gate, four returned—the guard who grabbed me, two others … and me.

It seemed all too terribly familiar with the families waiting inside for word. Most broke down into sobs when they realized what a ma.s.sacre it had been. Momma Oaks would be searching for me, frantic, her hand in Edmund’s. I couldn’t move. The area was a mess of wagons, mules, and weeping women and children. I scrubbed shaking hands over my face and sank down into a self-protective squat. My wounds didn’t matter since I didn’t care how badly I was hurt.

Longshot, I thought, and the name stabbed me. I hated him for being a hero.

Outside the walls, the Freaks feasted and prowled.

They weren’t going away this time.

Stalemate

Tegan found me first. Beneath my despair, relief stirred; I was so glad she’d made it back since I’d suggested she volunteer to help with the planting. If anything had happened to her, I couldn’t bear it. Eyes worried, she knelt in the dirt beside me, heedless of her skirt.

“Let’s get you to Doc’s office,” she said.

I shrugged. It seemed like a lot of trouble to get up.

Then she took a closer look at me. “You’re bleeding.”

“Am I?” In more than one place, most likely. Because she seemed determined, I let her lever me up.

“Deuce!” Momma Oaks found us before we moved more than a few steps. Tegan fixed a stern look on her. “I’m taking her to my dad.”

I wondered if she’d noticed what she said and how Doc Tuttle felt about it. But he’d fought hard for her life and her leg, so maybe he was happy to have gained a daughter. His wife probably was too. In Salvation I’d learned that family ties didn’t always come from blood.

My foster mother went to hug me, and then stopped, hands on my shoulders. “Tegan’s right. You need medical attention. Edmund!”

He came up behind me and gently lifted me into his arms. I wouldn’t have guessed he had the strength, but in his shuffling way, he managed. My foster father delivered me to Doc Tuttle without mishap. On the way, my head went fuzzy, and my vision blurred around the edges.

“Another patient?” Doc Tuttle asked. “d.a.m.n those Muties. They’re keeping me busier than I like. Tegan, honey, get the soap and water and my instrument tray.” She murmured something that I didn’t catch, and he answered, “Yes, you can a.s.sist.”

I drifted off around the time Edmund laid me down on the exam table, and when next I woke, I lay in my own bed. Sitting up hurt more than I expected. Confused, I glanced beneath my nightgown and discovered four new scars, neatly st.i.tched together. I’d been hurt worse than I realized.

<script>