The Hatching (The Hatching #1)(15)

It wasn’t until the next morning, on his way to the factory, that he noticed just how many soldiers had come to the area. Then he saw the coils of wire going up and realized that the boys in uniform, boys his own age, were clutching their rifles a little too tightly. He normally kept to himself at work, but during his lunch break he sat with a group of older men. He was shocked when he heard that the mine had been sealed off, that none of the men who’d been working when the incident occurred had been allowed to go home. Then, later, near the end of his shift, the foreman came on over the loudspeakers and announced that they were expected to continue on, that nothing was wrong, and they should keep coming in for their shifts.

His cell phone still wasn’t working, and nobody else could get a signal either, but he was smart enough to know that when soldiers started flooding in and razor wire started going up, when the people in charge tried to reassure him that nothing was out of the ordinary even though, clearly, things were out of the ordinary, it was time to worry.

That was when he stole a key to one of the trucks. That was when he filled a bottle of water and tucked an apple and some crackers into the pockets of his jacket. He thought about packing a bag, but on the way to work, only yesterday, he saw a man beaten to death by the soldiers. The man was in a car with his family, the trunk tied down to keep the bags from spilling out, and he’d stopped at the new gate that had been installed after the army fenced off the village. The gate was the only way out now. He’d heard the man and the soldiers exchange sharp words, and then, as he tried to glance over without being terribly obvious about it, he saw the man pulled from the car and beaten down with rifle butts. Even from a distance, it was clear the soldiers kept driving the metal into the man well past the point it was necessary.

All of which was why he’d driven the truck right through the gate without slowing down. He just plowed through the metal. All during that night there had been the intermittent sound of gunfire. At one point there was something from the direction of the mine that must have been an explosion. He couldn’t sleep, and then, finally, just after four in the morning, he crept from his apartment and snuck through the night. The streets and alleys were empty and dark, and the factory was quiet. There was no fence around the parking lot where the trucks were sitting, and the key was in his hand before he even noticed something was wrong.

There was a single light on at the corner of the building, and though the yellow bulb was strong, it wasn’t enough to do more than cast shadows over the parking lot. He suddenly wished it were brighter but tried to bury the thought. He knew he was just spooked from the stories and rumors and from the influx of soldiers and the new fence, from the sound of shots and explosions in the night. He should really calm down, he thought, and then he laughed to himself. Why should he calm down? Those all seemed good reasons to be spooked. He took the last few steps to the truck and had his hand on the door handle when he heard the sound. It was a sort of scraping. No. Something quieter than scraping. Like the sound of a leaf being blown across pavement. Or several leaves. He looked around, but there was nobody there. And then he noticed there was something wrong with the light. No, not the light, but the shadows. Over there, maybe twenty paces away, one of the shadows seemed to be moving a little, pulsing. He watched it, fascinated, and it wasn’t until a thread of black seemed to fall out of the shadow and unspool toward him that he broke from his reverie.

He didn’t know what it was and he didn’t care. Even though he’d dithered on it, he realized he’d already made his decision the moment he stole the key to the truck, and he didn’t see any value in waiting to find out what exactly it was he’d decided to run away from. He pulled himself into the cab, and as he was jumping in, he felt something brush across the back of his neck and then his neck felt all icy. He swatted at it, and something small and solid banged off his hand. Then he was inside the truck, key in the ignition, foot on the gas, leaving whatever the shadow was behind him.

He drove carefully through the village, toward his sister’s apartment. He hadn’t told her about the plan. He knew she would have told her husband, and her husband wasn’t the sort of man who could be trusted with a secret. But he also knew that if he just showed up at the apartment with the truck, his sister would be able to persuade her husband to make a break for it. He didn’t like his brother-in-law very much, but the man was not completely stupid.

But as he turned onto his sister’s street, it was clear that things were more wrong than even he had thought. He’d been so preoccupied that he hadn’t noticed the glow from the portable lights, but once around the corner, the brilliance of the lights showed the street in stark relief. There were five or six army trucks already parked and dozens of soldiers running with rifles. He saw somebody down on the ground, but the artificial color of the lights meant that it took him a few seconds before he realized the black pool around the body was blood. And up ahead, was that a tank? Oh my god, he thought. It was a tank.

Without even thinking about it, he turned the wheel and took the truck through the alley, turned the wheel again until he was headed out of town, mashed his foot against the accelerator and smashed his way through the gate. He was lucky that the soldiers had expected him to stop. They fired at him—the back window was shattered—but the truck seemed to be running fine and he hadn’t been hit. He was fine.

That had been an hour or two ago. He’d lost track of time. But if anything, now that he’d put some distance between himself and the village, he was more than fine. He was great. The back of his neck was bothering him where something had hit him in the parking lot, but he couldn’t see what it was in the mirror. He could feel a small bump with his fingers, maybe a cut, but it was more numb than sore. The real problem was his stomach. He could feel it roiling. He supposed it could be the flu, but more than likely it was just anxiety. Who the hell knew what he’d just escaped from, but he was pretty sure he was never going to see his sister again, never hold his nephew or his niece. He had to choke down a sob, and then he had to choke down another round of gagging.