Part 30 (2/2)
From high up the mountain, the buildings had the look of a burned-out campfire, smoking, crumbling, blackened through and through. Nothing moved in the compound, except a few pieces of paper stirred by the wind.
”Looks like it burned all night,” Tally said.
David nodded, speechless. Tally grasped his hand, wondering what it was like to see your childhood home reduced to a smoking ruin.
”I'm so sorry, David,” she said.
”We have to go down. I need to see if my parents...” He swallowed the words.
Tally searched for signs of anyone remaining in the Smoke. It seemed entirely deserted, but there might be a few Specials in hiding, waiting for stragglers to reappear. ”We should wait.”
”I can't. My parents' house is on the other side of the ridge. Maybe the Specials didn't see it.”
”If they missed it, Maddy and Az will still be there.”
”But what if they ran?”
”Then we'll find them. In the meantime, let's not get caught ourselves.”
David sighed. ”All right.”
Tally held his hand tight. They unfolded the hoverboard and waited as the sun climbed, watching for any sign of a human being below. Occasionally, the embers of the fires flared to life in the breeze, the last standing columns of wood collapsing one by one, crumbling into ash.
A few animals rummaged for food, and Tally watched in silent horror as a stray rabbit was taken by a wolf, the short struggle leaving only a patch of blood and fur. This was what was left of nature, raw and wild, only hours after the Smoke had fallen.
”Ready to go down?” David asked after an hour.
”No,” Tally said. ”But I never will be.”
They approached slowly, ready to turn and fly if any Specials appeared. But when they reached the edge of town, Tally felt her anxiety turn to something worse: a horrible certainty that no one remained there.
Her home was gone, replaced by nothing but charred wreckage.
At the rabbit pen, footprints showed where groups of Smokies had been moved in and out through the gates, a whole community turned into cattle. A few rabbits still hopped around on the dirt.
”Well, at least we won't starve,” David said.
”I guess not,” Tally said, although the sight of the Smoke had stilled her hunger. She wondered how David always managed to think practical thoughts, no matter what horrors were in front of him. ”Hey, what's that?”
At one corner of the pen, just outside the fence, cl.u.s.ters of little shapes lay on the ground.
They edged the board closer, David squinting through a drifting wall of smoke. ”It looks like...shoes.”
Tally blinked. He was right. She lowered the board and jumped off, running to the spot.
Tally looked around in amazement. Around her were scattered twenty or so pairs of shoes, in all sizes.
She fell to her knees to look closer. The laces were still tied, as if the shoes had been kicked off by people whose hands were bound behind them....
”Croy recognized me,” she murmured.
”What?”
Tally turned to David. ”When I escaped, I flew right over the pen. Croy must have seen it was me. He knew I didn't have shoes. We joked about it.”
She imagined the Smokies, helplessly awaiting their fate, making one last gesture of defiance. Croy would have kicked his own shoes off, then whispered to whomever he could: ”Tally's free, and barefoot.” They'd left her with a score of pairs to pick from, the only way they could help the one Smokey they'd seen escape.
”They knew I'd come back here.” Her voice faltered. What they didn't know was who had betrayed them.
She picked a pair that looked about the right size, with grippy soles for hoverboarding, and pulled them on. They fit, even better than the ones the rangers had given her.
Jumping back on the board, Tally had to hide the pained expression on her face. This is what it would be like from now on. Every gesture of kindness from her victims would only make her feel worse. ”Okay, let's go.”
The hoverpath wound through the smoking camp, over what streets remained between the charred ruins.
Beside a long building, now little more than a ridge of blackened rubble, David pulled the board to a halt.
”I was afraid of this.”
Tally tried to picture what had stood there. Her knowledge of the Smoke had evaporated, the familiar streets reduced to an unrecognizable sprawl of ash and embers.
Then she saw a few blackened pages fluttering in the wind. The library.
”They didn't take the books out before they...,” she cried. ”But why?”
”They don't want people to know what it was like before the operation. They want to keep you hating yourselves. Otherwise, it's too easy to get used to ugly faces,normal faces.”
Tally turned around to look into David's eyes. ”Some of them, anyway.”
He smiled sadly.
Then a thought crossed her mind. ”The Boss was running away with some old magazines. Maybe he escaped.”
”On foot?” David sounded dubious.
”I hope so.” She leaned, and the board slid toward the edge of town.
A blotch of pepper still marked the ground where she had fought the Special. Tally jumped off, trying to remember exactly where the Boss had escaped into the forest.
”If he got away, he must be long gone,” David said.
Tally pushed her way into the brush, looking for signs of a struggle. The morning sun was streaming through the leaves, and a trail of broken bushes cut into the forest. The Boss had been none too graceful, leaving a path like a charging elephant.
She found the duffel bag half-hidden, shoved under a moss-covered fallen tree. Zipping it open, Tally saw that the magazines were still there, each one lovingly wrapped in its own plastic cover. She slung the bag over her shoulder, glad to have salvaged something from the library, a small victory over Dr. Cable.
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