Horde (Razorland #3)(57)

“That sounds like a guilty conscience.” Momma Oaks had explained the idea to me a while back, and once she did, I understood the bad feelings I had regarding the blind brat and certain things I’d done to earn my rank as a Huntress down below.

“Maybe,” he said, sounding unsure.

So I ran through the explanation I’d received from my mother, and he nodded. “It wasn’t just her, either. We stole a few other girls, but none of them were treated so bad … because they came from other gangs, and they understood our way of life.”

“So they didn’t fight.”

I hurt for my friend, thinking about how she must feel. Maybe she hadn’t wanted the two brats they’d forced on her, but she couldn’t feel good about losing them, either. While I’d pondered, Morrow had gotten his own staff and was demonstrating the forms. Patient and skilled, he’d teach her without making her feel like she wasn’t good enough. Part of me wished I’d known an instructor like him instead of the Hunters who screamed at us down below, telling us we’d never be fast enough or strong enough—that our best would always be pathetic. It made you strong, I told myself, but all the same, I wasn’t sad that Silk’s voice had gone quiet.

“No,” he said, still standing expectant.

Belatedly, I went back to Stalker’s original question. “No. There’s nothing you can do. She has to live with it and so do you. Some things can’t be made right … but it’s good that you want to.”

“I might be a better person now,” he said with a sigh, “but I’m not happier.”

If his feelings hadn’t lain between us like a spike-filled trap, I would’ve hugged him. But things could never be so simple between us. Now that I understood what he wanted of me and I knew I’d never offer it, I couldn’t cuddle him like he was a brat in need of solace. He’d take it as encouragement and the cycle would start all over again. Maybe someday, like he’d said, we could be friends without all the complications. I’d hated the savage I met in the ruins but Stalker wasn’t that boy anymore, just as I wasn’t a pure Huntress. The world was a big place, full of wonders, and it had taught us both so many things. For his sake, I wished so many lessons hadn’t been hard, sad ones.

“I am. Mostly.” I was also panicked and exhilarated by turns.

“One thing I’ve wondered…”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Why does it have to be you?”

I wasn’t sure what he meant … and I said so.

“You’re out here when you could be safe in Soldier’s Pond or Gaspard, even, if you hadn’t nearly started a riot. At any point, you could lay your weapons down. Nobody’s ordering you to fight anymore. So why? You seem so committed to making things better. And I don’t understand it.”

The answer seemed obvious. “People go about their lives, trying to be small, hoping the Freaks will kill someone else, attack another town. How long does avoidance work until the whole world is drowning in blood? Somebody has to draw the line. And if not me, who?”

It was a compulsion, I supposed. The idea of sitting idle while everything burned? I just couldn’t do it. It would end me to do nothing when I could fight. Maybe I wasn’t meant for a peaceful life, and I could accept that. My only regret would be if I didn’t manage to improve the world a little before I went.

Stalker studied me with a mixture of emotions I couldn’t interpret. “We would’ve owned the ruins, you and me.”

I didn’t dispute his assessment. In another life, I might’ve been queen of the gangs, as he’d envisioned, but never in one where I knew Fade. That, too, was an immutable truth.

It was my turn to ask, “Why do you think there were no Freaks in your part of Gotham?”

“I wondered that. You said they were down below with you, as long as you can remember. Maybe they started there. People died of sickness Topside in our territory, but we never ran across any Muties, not like we saw in other ruins on the way north.”

“So you think the mutations happened belowground, and they were too dumb and weak to find their way out, at first?”

He nodded. “Maybe. As they got smarter, they located the exits.”

A sudden, chilling thought occurred to me. “Then that means the Freaks now swarming Gotham came from the enclaves, however long ago.”

Stalker looked thoughtful. “You told us Wilson said the monsters were born of weapons they created in the old world. It was a disease first, and the … vaccine made it worse?”


I nodded.

“Well, we don’t know how sickness spreads. So maybe people went underground to hide, not knowing they already had it.”

“It makes sense,” I admitted.

That was scary and awful. I hated the idea that diseases could hide in your body and you’d seem perfectly healthy while giving the illness to friends and family. I preferred enemies you could fight. At least the old world, with its hidden perils, was long lost.

And these days, the monsters came with claws and fangs, not in tins and bottles.

Triumph

Eventually the Freaks grew more cunning about their attacks. They came while we slept and in great numbers, but our traps maimed a good third of them, and we decimated the rest, first with death from the trees, and then in a hard-fought ground battles. Between skirmishes, we worked on improving the camp. And after the last fight, we went days without seeing a single monster. I took that as a good sign.