Variant

Carrie screamed, leaping forward, and then dozens of voices exploded.

Isaiah simply stood there, his arm still outstretched, staring at the growing puddle of blood forming around Curtis. He didn’t move as the thugs behind him slowly moved away. And he didn’t move as Oakland stepped forward and took the pistol from his hand.

Chapter Twenty-seven

We ventured outside slowly and somberly, nearly silent as we crossed the lawn—more than fifty of us now. The sky was growing dark, and puffs of frozen breath rose above us as we moved.

A deer stood on the edge of the woods.

We left Isaiah tied to a radiator, but the dozen or so staunch Society members who stayed with him were probably already untying him.

Not everyone who was with us was armed, either. It was more about time than trust. We only had so many tools from maintenance and groundskeeping. I was carrying my paintball gun and a three-pronged rake. Becky held a pair of pruning shears.

Curtis was nearly unconscious, his arms around two other guys as he hobbled along on his good leg. The bullet passed through his upper thigh—it looked like a clean hole—but he’d lost a lot of blood. Carrie followed right behind. We wanted to take Curtis on the back of a four-wheeler, but none of them would start. One of the Society’s former guards said that they only ever started for certain people—people Isaiah designated.

Despite his condition, Curtis had the pistol. The wound had proven one thing all too plainly to everyone who tried to help him. He was human. They’d seen inches of bloodied muscle and the white of his femur. He was the only one out of all of us who could prove he wasn’t a robot.

I worried he wouldn’t make it. We had hardly any medical supplies and no expertise to apply them. He was bandaged and given pain meds, and that was it. We didn’t even have any antibiotics. I’d heard that Anna had rubbed hand sanitizer onto the wound.

We stared into the forest around us, watching for signs of trouble. It could come from anywhere in that dark forest. It could even come from the middle of our group, if anyone else turned out to be a robot. Would they have a gun, like Isaiah?

Becky held a small battery-powered reading light, but it only lit up the ground directly in front of us.

“What are you going to do?” Becky asked. “You know, when we get away.”

Her voice sounded timid and nervous. I actually missed the confidence of the tour guide.

“I don’t know,” I said. “College. Do you think our credits will transfer from here?” I grinned at her and she smiled back.

“I think I might write a book about this place,” she said.

“I didn’t know you were a writer.”

“I’m not really. Just my journal. I brought it, you know. So we can tell people what happened here.”

“Well, maybe we’ll all go on Oprah,” I said.

She laughed softly, and rolled her eyes. “That’s always been my dream.”

Oakland and Mouse were leading the group. I wasn’t sure why they chose the direction they did, but I supposed it was mostly guesswork anyway. After a lot of arguing we’d decided not to go to the culvert or the front gate—both of those seemed too obvious for escape, and we needed all the luck we could get.

We weren’t moving directly opposite of the place with campfires, but we certainly weren’t close.

“You were outside the wall a lot more recently than I was,” Mason said, moving up next to me. He was using the mattock as a walking stick. “How far is it between that and the fence?”

“I don’t know. Maybe half a mile? It’s just more forest in between.”

“That’s where I’d be if I were them,” he said. “Wait for us to get over the wall and then come after us. We’ll be trapped.”

“There’s still room to run,” I said, trying to be optimistic.

Becky held the shears at her side, but she looked uncomfortable with them. Not like Mason who had the heavy pipe wrench tight in his grip and his paintball gun slung over his shoulder. He was eager for a fight.

We were deep into the woods now, passing the first paintball field I’d played on, back when Havoc had ambushed me. It felt weird to be following Oakland’s lead.

I looked back at Curtis, who was still hobbling along. He was at the back of the group, but seemed to be keeping up fairly well.

Becky’s hand gently gripped my arm.

“Look,” she whispered.

I turned and gazed out into the forest where she was pointing. The deer was there, walking alongside us, about thirty yards away.

“It’s been following us for a few minutes now,” she said. “It’s awfully tame.”

I bent down and picked up a stone, and then threw it at the deer. It bounced off a tree only inches from the animal, but there was no reaction.

“What’d you do that for?” Mason asked.

I shook my head. “I don’t think that deer is real.”

Becky frowned and then picked up and threw a stone of her own. I lost sight of it in the dark, though it clattered loudly on something hard.

The deer didn’t change its course at all.

Becky’s eyes met mine. “I don’t like that.”

“We made it!” someone shouted up ahead.

They’d reached the wall, a wide black line cutting through the dim gray forest. As far as I could see, there weren’t any security cameras nearby. Unless that’s what the deer was. I’d seen plenty of animals in the woods.

Oakland called Mason up to the front, and they unloaded all of the extension cords from his pack. There were three big ones—fifty-foot heavy orange cords from the maintenance room—and half a dozen twelve-foot cords we’d taken from various lamps around the building.

Hector climbed up into a tall skinny pine, carrying one of the heavy cords over his shoulder. The tree looked sickly, its needles rust colored and dry. When he got about thirty feet up, he tied the cords off and then scrambled back to the ground.

“Okay,” Oakland barked. “Let’s get this first one down.” He pointed to several of the older, stronger students, including me, and we all grabbed the cord dangling out of the first tree. I wasn’t going to be much help—after breaking into the steel door early that morning, the pain in my injured arm was strong and sharp. Even so, I took my place on the cord.

“Let’s rock it back and forth,” he said. “When it starts to break, get out of the way.”

On Oakland’s count, we tugged, the tree swaying a little bit toward us. We let it swing back the other way.

“Pull,” he shouted, as the tree naturally swung back in our direction. We yanked harder this time, pulling it farther and building more momentum. Then we let it swing toward the forest, away from the wall.

As we repeated this, over and over, I couldn’t help but think of that first day in the school when I’d tried the same thing, except stupidly doing it from up in the tree. Three members of the Society had been there that night. Two of them were now dead. Well, one was dead and one was turned off and plugged into the wall. The third, a kid I still didn’t really know, was now standing behind me on the cord, pulling with us.

The tree was swaying wildly now, back and forth, back and forth. With each bend toward the wall we pulled harder, until finally it roared with a thunderous crack. We scattered and the old tree collapsed, smashing into the wall.