“Let's go, please let's just go.” It's Ben in the carriage, smeared tears glistening on his cheekbones.
“It's okay, we're going to leave now, okay, everything's fi ne,”
Epap says.
We're all piling in. Something is wrong, though, something I can't put my fi nger on.
“Wait,” I shout. I grab Epap's shoulder to stop him from getting in. “Get out!”
“What is it?” His eyes aren't angry, as I thought they might be. Instead, fear dots his eyes.
I spin around, trying to fi gure something out. My eyes catch Sissy's eyes. They're a refl ection of my own: a sense of impending danger, that we've forgotten something— Someone.
“The Director,” I whisper.
I spin around, eyes scanning the darkness. Nothing.
“Nobody move,” I whisper.
We all freeze, barely able to breathe. He's out there, behind the wal of darkness, watching us. I know it. Waiting for us to expend all our weapons, to tire ourselves out on the other hunters. Watching and waiting for us to crowd into the carriage; once we're packed in like sheep in a pen, he'l fl y in for an enclosed orgy of frenzied feasting, his teeth and claws slashing wildly like razor blades, turning the carriage into a bloody coffi n.
Sissy knows it, too. Without moving, she whispers, “David, give me the FLUN we left with you.”
“It doesn't work,” he says. “I tried to shoot it, but it wouldn't fi re—”
“The safety,” Sissy says. “Gene told you to disengage—”
“How?! I don't know how—”
The horse's head suddenly snaps to the left, its nose fl aring in panic.
A black shape fl ows out of the darkness, unnervingly fast.
The Director comes at us silently, bounding on all fours, twenty yards at a time, the speed pul ing his cheeks back, peeling his lips away, leaving his teeth bared in what looks like a sickening, jovial smile.
He fl ings his body upward, toward me. He is coming for me fi rst.
I close my eyes to die.
Seconds later, I'm still alive; when I open my eyes, he's standing in front of us, ten yards away. He is not looking at me. Or at Sissy.
He's looking behind us.
I turn. David is standing on the driver's seat, the FLUN pointing at the Director. Behind his hand, hidden from the Director, I see the safety switch. still engaged.
“It's on the highest setting,” David says, his voice sturdy.
“Set to kil .”
The Director scratches his wrist. “A little boy wants to play hero. So cute.”
“The FLUN that's strapped on your back,” David says, ignoring his words, “throw it over here.”
“What's it to you? I can't possibly hurt you with it—”
“Just throw it now!” David yel s, fear sparking off his words.
His eyes fl icker toward the boulders. Dark shapes are beginning to pick themselves up off the ground.
“Ahh, I see,” the Director says, observing. “You're worried about the other hunters.”
“No,” David says. “Just you. You're the only one I'm worried about right now. And that's why I'm about to shoot you in three seconds unless you hand over the FLUN.”
And there must be something about David's tone, because the Director does just that. The FLUN lands at Sissy's feet.
She picks it up.
“Now what?” the Director asks. He studies David's face.
“Are you really going to kil me? Why, I've known you since you were born.
I've seen you grow up, from when you were just a little bay- be. I was the one who sent you all those gifts on your birthday, the books, the cake, do you remember that? Are you real y—”
“Yes,” Sissy says, and fi res a round into his chest.
In a blur, the Director darts back. The beam grazes off his chest, superfi cial damage. But enough to slow him down.
He fl its away into the dark, retreating.
Sissy nods at us; everyone quickly piles into the carriage. I jump onto the driver's seat, grab the reins. Sissy sits next to me, her body twisted around, scanning the dark, her fi nger on the trigger of the FLUN.
“You think you've won?” The Director's voice, booming out from the darkness. “You think you've gotten the better of us? You?
You stinkin' hepers.”
I look at Sissy; she shakes her head: Can't see him.
“You've just delayed the inevitable. Listen: Can you hear it?”
Nothing but the wind.
And then I hear it. A faint rustling, like dry autumn leaves trampled on. But mixed in, sharp, nattering sounds, metal fi lings rubbed in glass shards. Sissy turns in the direction of the noise, toward the distant Institute. Her face drops, aghast with horror.
A hazy wal of deeper darkness rises up like a tsunami wave crashing toward us.
“The good citizens are coming,” the Director jeers. “Al the guests, all the staffers, all the media. Hundreds of them.
Somebody disengaged the lockdown. Once they realized that, there was no holding them back, the good citizens, no containing them. I could only hope to beat them, the hunters and I, by using the hunting accessories to get a head start.
Alas . . .” His voice droops off.
More sounds from afar now, distant cries and squeals of desire.
“My goodness, can you imagine the frenzy when they realize all the hepers are still alive?”
I grab the reins, pound them on the horse. We lurch forward.
Toward the only option left to us. The boat. If it even exists.
I'm sorry, Ashley June, I'm sorry. . . .
“They're coming!” he screams, his voice trailing us as we begin to fl y across the plains. “They're coming, they're coming, they're coming, they're . . .”
We skim along the harsh terrain, the horse fl ying faster than ever before. But where its form was once graceful, it is now jerky, desperate, panicked. As the minutes pass, the strain becomes more obvious.
The pursuing wal of dust has faded slightly. But it is the deepen-ing darkness, and not increasing distance, that gives the il usion of disappearance. The volume of snarls and screams has only grown.
Sissy sits next to me now, looking at the map. With sunlight long gone, the map is fading on the page, colors receding into the blankness of white. Her fi ngers trail a rough path across the map, her head swiveling around for landmarks.
“We've got to go faster!” she yel s into my ear.
Blood still seeps from the cut on my hand. I do my best to stem the fl ow, pressing a cloth against it, a tricky maneuver while trying to steer a horse.
I feel fi ngers on my hand, prying the cloth away.
She folds it over, presses it in hard. “You've got to stop bleeding,” she says.
“It's okay, it doesn't really hurt that much.”
She presses in deeper. “I'm not worried about the pain. I'm worried about how your blood is giving our position away.”
I reach out and pul off the cloth. “Don't worry about stanch- ing the blood. They can see us perfectly fi ne in this darkness.”
She looks back for a few second, and when she turns around, worry is etched on her face. I don't need to ask.
The sound of the charging masses behind us grows by the minute.
“The map's gone white,” she says, disheartened.
“It's okay,” I say, eyes focused ahead. “We don't need it.
Just need to keep going straight, and we'l hit the river.
Fol ow the river north, and soon enough we'l come upon the boat. Simple as that.”
“Simple as that,” she repeats. She shakes her head.
“That's what you said about your plan against the hunters. It was a catastrophe back there. I thought you said there were only going to be three of them, not fi ve.”
“Al of you assured me you could handle the FLUNs. Instead you had Epap in utter panic and shooting off all his rounds in the fi rst fi ve seconds. And then there's Jacob, who couldn't get off even a single shot. How many more times could I have said: ‘Don't forget to disengage the safety'?”
She turns her head away, biting her tongue, I realize.
After a few minutes, I say, “Thanks for not abandoning me.
For staying to fi ght with me.”
“We don't do that.”
“What?”
“We don't desert our own. It's not our way.”
“Epap was—”
“Empty talk. I know him wel enough to know that. We don't abandon our own.”
Her words sink into me deeply. It's my turn to be quiet. I'm thinking of Ashley June, alone in her cel . And then I'm hearing the Director's accusing voice: You, running away like a squirrel and leaving her all by her lonesome.
I fl ick the reins to tease out more speed. The horse pounds on, snorting, sweat glistening all over its body now.
A wail breaks clear across the sky. Too loud, too close, too fast.
And then I feel it. Drops of rain, splattering on my cheeks. I look up at the sky in horror. Dark clouds, blacker than the night sky, swol en and bulbous. The rain will soften the ground; to the horse, it will feel like glue.
Sissy feels the drops, too. She turns to me, her eyes gripping mine. They are asking: Did you feel those drops?
Did you feel those drops? There is answer enough in my silence; she bites her lower lip.
Then she stands up, right on the bench, the horse stil gal oping away, the carriage jostling and rattling. Her clothes are pul ed back by the wind, fl uttering madly behind her. Rain starts fal ing down in earnest, the drops splatting on her bare arms, neck, face, and legs like miniature stars.
“There!” she shouts, and her long arm, muscled and creviced like a bronze statute, points directly in front of us. “I see it, Gene!
I see it. The river! The freaking river!”
“What about the boat? Do you see the boat?”
“No,” she shouts, getting back down, “but it's only a matter of time.”