Three (Article 5 #3)(82)

“Hold still,” Sean said between his teeth. Never in my life had I been so happy to see him.

The net ripped, and I fell halfway out, suspended upside down. He tried to catch me, but his arm was weak and couldn’t support my weight. A flash of a knife, and another rip, and I fell flat on my back, the wind knocked out of me.

“Come on!” He dragged me to my feet. “I wasn’t kidding—there’s soldiers fifty yards behind us!”

“Wait!” I felt my way across the ground as another burst of shots echoed in the woods behind the trailer. Finally, my fingers grasped the metal chain, and I snatched it up, running after Sean into the darkness.

He hesitated twenty steps in, and I smacked into his back. Without so much as a glance at me he cocked his head to the side as if looking for something.

“Soldiers?” I whispered. As if in answer, another round of gunfire erupted from behind us. Several male voices began to yell all at once.

“This way.” He sprinted to the right, and I tore after him. We ran until we reached a small dirt road, and then kept to a ditch, sloshing through the muck toward a series of houses. I didn’t hear Sean’s labored breathing, or the grunt of pain that came every few steps, until we slowed.

A small delivery truck came into view, parked in the high grass between two houses. Only then did we speak.

“Where’s Chase?” I gasped, a new panic enveloping my senses.

White stars were twinkling in my vision and I blinked them away. I was so thirsty and tired since we’d stopped.

Sean didn’t answer. He swung open the passenger door and fell back against the seat. His shirt, though still drenched with blood, was bulky around the shoulder, and as he drew back the collar I saw that it had been bandaged with the supplies we’d brought from Endurance.

“Did you get her?” came a low voice through the darkness.

I turned to find Jesse stepping from the shadows into the weak ring of light cast from the overhead lamp in the cabin of the truck. A small boy was thrown over his shoulder, carried like he weighed no more than a sack of flour. It was the boy they’d called a dog, and he stared straight ahead blankly as Jesse set him down. It took a moment to connect the slash of blood on Jesse’s shirt with the boy’s presence.

That was why the trailer door had not reopened.

Jesse and the boy were not alone. Several other boys followed him. A half dozen, a dozen. Almost all that I’d seen, including the little psychopath with the gun, Charlie. He didn’t look so tough with his dirty cheeks tear-stained.

“The hunter,” I heard one whisper. “The one that took Will.”

“He came back for us,” said another.

Jesse had done this before. That meant he’d been to Endurance before. My head felt muddled. I couldn’t make sense of it right now.

“Get in the back of the truck, all of you,” Jesse ordered.

“Where you takin’ us?” asked Charlie.

Jesse faced me, not those behind him. It was only Sean and I who saw his mouth tighten and his gaze fall.

“Somewhere safe, kid,” he said.

Another wave of dizziness took me and I gripped the open car door for support. It was because of all the running, I told myself. Lack of food and water.

Sean stood and gripped my forearm.

“We’ve got soldiers on our tail,” he told Jesse.

“They took Chase,” I said. “Why didn’t you go after Chase?”

Jesse’s eye twitched as he looked down over me.

“You’re bleeding, neighbor.”

He nodded at my waist, and when I looked down I saw that the glass puncture wound from the mini-mart was bleeding again. The patch of rose red on my shirt had blossomed to half of my torso.

“Ember…” Sean pulled me back, toward the car, but I stumbled into his arms. “Hang on,” he said. My cheek rested against the bandages on his shoulder.

“You shouldn’t have left him,” I whispered.

I didn’t remember much after that.

*

WHEN I woke again I was lying on a couch, blinking up at the yellow water rings on a white ceiling. It was late afternoon, or maybe early morning based on the red light seeping across the floor.

I tried to sit up, but was stopped by a shooting pain that emanated from the right side of my waist. When I pulled up the hem of my clean shirt I found a swell of bandages tied to my skin by long strips of cloth. My wound had been cleaned.

I took in my surroundings, recognizing the antique coffee table beneath the box of medical supplies, and the wilted magazines, now stacked on the carpet beside one of the legs.

The house with the supplies. The address: 3. The bodies on the bed.

The mini-mart where Chase had been taken was now miles and miles away.

I wasn’t alone; against the wall on a blanket lay a girl. I shimmied up to my elbows. The rest of the room was empty, though the floor was covered with muddy footprints, some tinged with red.

I swung my legs to the floor, stretching a little from side to side to test my range of motion. It pinched, and stole my breath.

Dark fingers of dread curled around my chest. How long had I been here?

The girl on the floor lifted her hands to her face, fingers probing through a crop of dark hair. She had blond roots, so it must have been dyed.

I looked closer; there were red welts around her neck and unconsciously my own hand went to my throat, finding only rough skin where the rope had previously burned. My necklace hung loosely there, the ring and the pendant resting just over the notch in my collarbone where a round burn had been left from the Knoxville fire.