Wilder Girls(51)

“That’s ridiculous,” I say. “I was supposed to let you die? I was supposed to sacrifice myself? Reese, that wasn’t even your dad anymore.”

She pushes me away, injured arm hanging uselessly by her side. “No. It was him. He was here.”

“He wasn’t.” And my patience is gone, bled out of me. “Look, you don’t get to put this shit on me just because you’re angry at yourself.”

   “For what?” A stillness, suddenly, about her, and I know she’s waiting for me to make a mistake, to say the wrong thing. Well, fine. Have it.

“Angry at yourself for helping me kill him.” She looks stricken, but I don’t stop. “I’m not the only one who held that knife.”

Nothing, for a moment, and then she smiles and says, “Fuck you, Hetty.”

My mouth drops open. She’s hurt me before, but until right now, she’s never seemed like she wanted to.

“If this is what I get for saving your life,” I say, “I should’ve let him take you.”

She laughs, a horrible flatness to it, and I wait for her to stop. But she doesn’t. She bends over, braces her silver hand on her knee, and the sound keeps coming, ripping out of her like Mr. Harker’s heart from his chest.

“Reese,” I say, because I need this to stop before it turns to something worse, but before I can say anything else, a noise rumbles through us. The growl of a motor coming nearer, and fast. We both startle, Reese’s laughter cutting off. It must be whoever Welch was supposed to meet.

I make for the back door and peer outside. There’s a boat drifting in at the dock, motor idling, and in it the ballooning shape of a person, proportions strange and obscured by a hazmat suit. Like the doctors who came that first week of the Tox, who took our temperatures and took our blood and disappeared into their helicopters and never came back.

   “Shit,” I say, hurrying back to Reese. I grab the shotgun, tuck it under my arm. “We have to get out of here.”

Through the gap in the wall I can see a billow of plastic as the person in the hazmat suit climbs out of the boat. If we don’t move now, they’ll see us, and they’ll know we’ve broken the quarantine. And everything will fall apart.

Reese shakes her head, stumbles away from me. “No,” she says. Stubborn like always—at least that part of her is together. “I’m not leaving him.”

“Someone’s coming,” I say, and she’s being so unreasonable, and I’m talking too loud but I can’t help it. “We have to go.”

“I can’t.” She’s looking at her father, laid out on the ground, his chest open, heart still oozing next to him. Black teeth gleaming darkly in the red light. “He’s all I have. I can’t just—”

I snap. Lock my arm around her waist and drag her away, back toward the door. At first she fights, scratches at my hand with her scaled fingers, and it hurts, but we have to go. Doesn’t she understand? We have to leave.

We stumble past the birch tree, past Byatt’s initials carved there, and at last she finds her feet, and we’re running—out of the house, into the woods. Through the pines growing tight and narrow, pushing farther and farther into the green. I can hear something behind us, but I can’t look, can’t do anything but keep on, the shotgun jabbing me in the ribs as we stumble forward. Crashing through the brush, loud and leaving a trail. Branches catch on my hair and pull at my clothes, and we’ll look like a mess when we get home, but we’ll get there. We will.

   Eventually, we hit the road, the broad stretch of it a familiar relief. It’s still dark, and we’re far enough from the house that nobody can see, so I stop, and turn to scan the woods behind us. No waxy gleam of the hazmat suit. No sound but us.

“I think we’re okay,” I say. Reese doesn’t answer. When I look down she’s dropped to her knees, clutching her injured shoulder and biting so hard on her lip I’m surprised it hasn’t split. “I thought you said you were fine.”

“I am,” she grits out. Her breath coming slow and labored, her face paper white in the moonlight.

I don’t try to help her. The sting of her words is still fresh, and I got her out of that house, after all. That’s enough for now. “Get up. We have to make it back over the fence.”

We can’t go through the gate, so we’re heading for the north edge of the island, where the fence ends in great brick columns at the lip of the cliff. We’ll have to scramble up them and over the fence, back onto school grounds.

I know where we are now, and Reese is in no shape to be leading anybody anywhere, so I shoulder the shotgun, bend down, and pull her to standing. I’d carry her, but even if I could, I don’t think she’d let me.

“Come on,” I say. She’s heavy against me as we stagger down the road.

There’s light snatching at the sky by the time we hit the fence. I can’t bring myself to look up at the roof deck. If somebody’s on Gun Shift, let them shoot us now and get it over with. But nobody does, and we follow the tree line where it presses up against the fence, branches yearning and straining through the iron bars, follow it to the edge of the island.

   Sea spray whipping at my skin. Pines pressing close on one side, the fence on the other, and out ahead the earth falls away. Just the cliff, granite worn by the wind, and a twenty-foot drop to the water below. I glance up at the house. Every window dark, no lantern on the roof deck. Nobody’s up looking for us. And nobody out on the horizon, either—the ocean empty and endless, waves breaking in ranks.