The Host (The Host #1)(42)

“Don’t you ‘Now, Maggie’ me, you old fool! She’s probably led a legion of them down on us.” She backed away from me, her eyes measuring my stillness as if I were a coiled snake. She stopped beside her brother.

“I don’t see anyone,” Jeb retorted. “Hey!” he yelled, and I flinched in surprise. I wasn’t the only one. Jeb waved his left hand over his head, the gun still clenched in the right. “Over here!”

“Shut up,” Maggie growled, shoving his chest. Though I had good reason to know she was strong, Jeb didn’t wobble.

“She’s alone, Mag. She was pretty much dead when I found her—she’s not in such great shape now. The centipedes don’t sacrifice their own that way. They would have come for her much sooner than I did. Whatever else she is, she’s alone.”

I saw the image of the long, many-legged insect in my head, but I didn’t make the connection.

He’s talking about you, Melanie translated. She placed the picture of the ugly bug next to my memory of a bright silver soul. I didn’t see a resemblance.

I wonder how he knows what you look like, Melanie wondered absently. My memories of a soul’s true appearance had been new to her in the beginning.

I didn’t have time to wonder with her. Jeb was walking toward me, and the others were close behind. Kyle’s hand hovered at Jeb’s shoulder, ready to restrain him or throw him out of the way, I couldn’t tell.

Jeb put his gun in his left hand and extended the right to me. I eyed it warily, waiting for it to hit me.

“C’mon,” he urged gently. “If I could carry you that far, I woulda brought you home last night. You’re gonna have to walk some more.”

“No!” Kyle grunted.

“I’m takin’ her back,” Jeb said, and for the first time there was a harsher tone to his voice. Under his beard, his jaw flexed into a stubborn line.

“Jeb!” Maggie protested.

“’S my place, Mag. I’ll do what I want.”

“Old fool!” she snapped again.

Jeb reached down and grabbed my hand from where it lay curled into a fist against my thigh. He yanked me to my feet. It was not cruelty; it was merely as if he was in a hurry. Yet was it not the very worst form of cruelty to prolong my life for the reasons he had?

I rocked unsteadily. I couldn’t feel my legs very well—just prickles like needle points as the blood flowed down.

There was a hiss of disapproval behind him. It came from more than one mouth.

“Okay, whoever you are,” he said to me, his voice still kind. “Let’s get out of here before it heats up.”

The one who must have been Kyle’s brother put his hand on Jeb’s arm.

“You can’t just show it where we live, Jeb.”

“I suppose it doesn’t matter,” Maggie said harshly. “It won’t get a chance to tell tales.”

Jeb sighed and pulled a bandanna—all but hidden by his beard—from around his neck.

“This is silly,” he muttered, but he rolled the dirty fabric, stiff with dry sweat, into a blindfold.

I kept perfectly still as he tied it over my eyes, fighting the panic that increased when I couldn’t see my enemies.

I couldn’t see, but I knew it was Jeb who put one hand on my back and guided me; none of the others would have been so gentle.

We started forward, toward the north, I thought. No one spoke at first—there was just the sound of sand grinding under many feet. The ground was even, but I stumbled on my numb legs again and again. Jeb was patient; his guiding hand was almost chivalrous.

I felt the sun rise as we walked. Some of the footsteps were faster than others. They moved ahead of us until they were hard to hear. It sounded like it was the minority that stayed with Jeb and me. I must not have looked like I needed many guards—I was faint with hunger, and I swayed with every step; my head felt dizzy and hollow.

“You aren’t planning to tell him, are you?”

It was Maggie’s voice; it came from a few feet behind me, and it sounded like an accusation.

“He’s got a right to know,” Jeb replied. The stubborn note was back in his voice.

“It’s an unkind thing you are doing, Jebediah.”

“Life is unkind, Magnolia.”

It was hard to decide who was the more terrifying of the two. Was it Jeb, who seemed so intent on keeping me alive? Or Maggie, who had first suggested the doctor—an appellation that filled me with instinctive, nauseated dread—but who seemed more worried about cruelty than her brother?

We walked in silence again for a few hours. When my legs buckled, Jeb lowered me to the ground and held a canteen to my lips as he had in the night.

“Let me know when you’re ready,” Jeb told me. His voice sounded kind, though I knew that was a false interpretation.

Someone sighed impatiently.

“Why are you doing this, Jeb?” a man asked. I’d heard the voice before; it was one of the brothers. “For Doc? You could have just told Kyle that. You didn’t have to pull a gun on him.”

“Kyle needs a gun pulled on him more often,” Jeb muttered.

“Please tell me this wasn’t about sympathy,” the man continued. “After all you’ve seen…”

“After all I’ve seen, if I hadn’t learned compassion, I wouldn’t be worth much. But no, it was not about sympathy. If I had enough sympathy for this poor creature, I would have let her die.”