The Host (The Host #1)(29)

“Enough,” I said out loud, cringing away from the whiplash of pain. “Enough! You’ve made your point! I can’t live without them either now. Does that make you happy? Because it doesn’t leave me many choices, does it? Just one—to get rid of you. Do you want the Seeker inside you? Ugh!” I recoiled from the thought as if I would be the one to house her.

There is another choice, Melanie thought softly.

“Really?” I demanded with heavy sarcasm. “Show me one.”

Look and see.

I was still staring at the mountain peak. It dominated the landscape, a sudden upthrust of rock surrounded by flat scrubland. Her interest pulled my eyes over the outline, tracing the uneven two-pronged crest.

A slow, rough curve, then a sharp turn north, another sudden turn back the other way, twisting back to the north for a longer stretch, and then the abrupt southern decline that flattened out into another shallow curve.

Not north and south, the way I’d always seen the lines in her piecemeal memories; it was up and down.

The profile of a mountain peak.

The lines that led to Jared and Jamie. This was the first line, the starting point.

I could find them.

We could find them, she corrected me. You don’t know all the directions. Just like with the cabin, I never gave you everything.

“I don’t understand. Where does it lead? How does a mountain lead us?” My pulse beat faster as I thought of it: Jared was close. Jamie, within my reach.

She showed me the answer.

“They’re just lines. And Uncle Jeb is just an old lunatic. A nut job, like the rest of my dad’s family.” I try to tug the book out of Jared’s hands, but he barely seems to notice my effort.

“A nut job, like Sharon’s mom?” he counters, still studying the dark pencil marks that deface the back cover of the old photo album. It’s the one thing I haven’t lost in all the running. Even the graffiti loony Uncle Jeb left on it during his last visit has sentimental value now.

“Point taken.” If Sharon is still alive, it will be because her mother, loony Aunt Maggie, could give loony Uncle Jeb a run for the title of Craziest of the Crazy Stryder Siblings. My father had been only slightly touched by the Stryder madness—he didn’t have a secret bunker in the backyard or anything. The rest of them, his sister and brothers, Aunt Maggie, Uncle Jeb, and Uncle Guy, were the most devoted of conspiracy theorists. Uncle Guy had died before the others disappeared during the invasion, in a car accident so commonplace that even Maggie and Jeb had struggled to make an intrigue out of it.

My father always affectionately referred to them as the Crazies. “I think it’s time we visited the Crazies,” Dad would announce, and then Mom would groan—which is why such announcements had happened so seldom.

On one of those rare visits to Chicago, Sharon had snuck me into her mother’s hidey-hole. We got caught—the woman had booby traps every-where. Sharon was scolded soundly, and though I was sworn to secrecy, I’d had a sense Aunt Maggie might build a new sanctuary.

But I remember where the first is. I picture Sharon there now, living the life of Anne Frank in the middle of an enemy city. We have to find her and bring her home.

Jared interrupts my reminiscing. “Nut jobs are exactly the kind of people who will have survived. People who saw Big Brother when he wasn’t there. People who suspected the rest of humanity before the rest of humanity turned dangerous. People with hiding places ready.” Jared grins, still study-ing the lines. And then his voice is heavier. “People like my father. If he and my brothers had hidden rather than fought.… Well, they’d still be here.”

My tone is softer, hearing the pain in his. “Okay, I agree with the theory. But these lines don’t mean anything.”

“Tell me again what he said when he drew them.”

I sigh. “They were arguing—Uncle Jeb and my dad. Uncle Jeb was trying to convince him that something was wrong, telling him not to trust anyone. Dad laughed it off. Jeb grabbed the photo album from the end table and started… almost carving the lines into the back cover with a pencil. Dad got mad, said my mom would be angry. Jeb said, ‘Linda’s mom asked you all to come up for a visit, right? Kind of strange, out of the blue? Got a little upset when only Linda would come? Tell you the truth, Trev, I don’t think Linda will be minding anything much when she gets back. Oh, she might act like it, but you’ll be able to tell the difference.’ It didn’t make sense at the time, but what he said really upset my dad. He ordered Uncle Jeb out of the house. Jeb wouldn’t leave at first. Kept warning us not to wait until it was too late. He grabbed my shoulder and pulled me into his side. ‘Don’t let ’em get you, honey,’ he whispered. ‘Follow the lines. Start at the beginning and follow the lines. Uncle Jeb’ll keep a safe place for you.’ That’s when Dad shoved him out the door.”

Jared nods absently, still studying. “The beginning… the beginning… It has to mean something.”

“Does it? They’re just squiggles, Jared. It’s not like a map—they don’t even connect.”

“There’s something about the first one, though. Something familiar. I could swear I’ve seen it somewhere before.”

I sigh. “Maybe he told Aunt Maggie. Maybe she got better directions.”

“Maybe,” he says, and continues to stare at Uncle Jeb’s squiggles.