Wilder Girls(71)

“Yeah,” I say. And then because she’s still looking at me, still waiting, I try again, stronger. “Yeah.”



* * *



—

She lets me close my eye on the way out, to keep from seeing Taylor’s body, and she tells me to hold on to her, leads me into the hallway.

“What did they do to you?” I ask. I can’t stop seeing that knife.

“Nothing,” she says, and she almost sounds calm, but she can’t keep the tremble out of her voice. I feel a sick churning in my gut.

   “What did they do after they did nothing?”

Reese doesn’t answer. But when I open my eye I can see blood leaking through the rips in her boots. And every step she takes is tentative, like she’s favoring one leg and trying not to let it show. Like they took the knife to the soles of her feet.

I push it out of my head. If I let this burrow too deep, it’ll wreck me from the inside out.

We hesitate at the top of the stairs, noise from below drifting up to us. Down on the main floor the girls are back to barricading the door. Headmistress tried to end it, but they won’t let her. And we’re not saying it, but I know we’re both wondering where she is. Have the girls found her? Or will she catch us and lock Reese up again? She won’t care about me, but Reese knows the island like she’s Raxter turned to blood and bone. Headmistress will never let her go if she can help it.

Somewhere down in the main hall there’s a crash, and somebody yells. A rising clamor of panic echoing up to us. Another horrible slam. It’s a heavy sound, like something hitting hard against the door. Suddenly, that pulsing moan ricochets through.

The bear, battering its way in. With the Tox inside it, it won’t stop until it gets what it’s after.

“Come on,” Reese says. We jog down the stairs, and I try not to think of the footprints I’m leaving behind, the treads in Taylor’s blood. My pulse is pounding in my ears as we burst out onto the mezzanine. The main hall laid out under us, girls yelling, Julia barking orders. Somebody crying in soft, airy gasps.

   It’s chaos as we hurry down the main staircase. The front doors shudder as the bear throws its weight against them, battering its way in. Two girls follow us down from the second floor, carrying a filing cabinet between them. A handful of girls are crouched where the couches have been pushed across the doors, bracing them to keep them from giving way.

“Hetty,” Julia calls when she spots us. She’s standing near the barricade, overseeing the whole thing. “You found her.”

We join her, step hastily out of the way as the girls with the filing cabinet barrel by.

“What’s going on?” Reese asks. “It wasn’t doing this before.”

Julia nods. “It must’ve caught the scent. Hetty’s blood in the music room.”

My bandage stained red, but that’s nothing compared to all that blood upstairs, I think.

“Shit,” Reese says, “look.” I follow her gaze to the front doors, where they’ve started to buckle. The industrial lock, restored and secure, giving way as the bear crashes into it again and again. The noise coming like a heartbeat, and the doors quiver, strain against their deadbolt.

“Get back,” Julia says. And then, yelling as the doors rattle against their hinges, “Everybody get back.”

   The lock breaks and the doors blast open. Cold sun, wind whipping in. Bone jaws snapping. The couch, the desk, they split, scatter like shrapnel, and the doors rip off their hinges, come crashing down and bury girls underneath. Screaming, I hear screaming, and there, the colossal silhouette, the growl shaking the sky as the bear advances.

“South wing!” Julia yells. “Get to the south wing!” Anybody still on their feet makes a break for it. I’m rooted to the ground, watching the bear watch little Emmy crawl out from the ruins on bloody hands and knees.

This, at least, I can do.

“Hetty,” Reese says. “Don’t.”

But I’m running, pushing past Cat and vaulting over what’s left of one of the couches.

“Emmy,” I call.

The bear looks up, fixes its rotting stare on me, and Emmy scrambles toward me, her elbow cracking hard against my shin. I throw my good arm around her waist, haul her up.

“Go,” I say, “go. I’m right behind you.”

“Hurry!” I hear Reese yell. I take a slow step backward, keep myself between the bear and Emmy as she breaks for safety, but the bear snaps its jaws, and instinct sparks to life. I turn, sprint for the south wing, adrenaline clear and cool, and I feel like more than myself. Moving fast, Reese waiting at the mouth of the hallway. They kept the doors open.

“Get in, get in,” she says, and I chance one look over my shoulder as I take my last few steps. The bear is nosing at the body of some girl who took a spear of wreckage through the eye.

   Reese ushers me farther down the corridor, into the waiting crowd as Julia and Cat shut the double doors, closing the south wing off from the rest of the house. Already girls are tearing through the classrooms and offices, shoving desks out into the hallway to build another barricade.

How much longer can we do this? How long until the next set of doors breaks open? What then?

The hallway doors don’t do much to muffle the sound as the bear huffs out a quick breath and moans, calling to us. Emmy’s crouched by the wall, nursing a split lip and pinching her ripped palm shut. And around her, more girls hurting, more girls hungry and alone and dying. This is my fault. I made this world for us.