Sophie Littlefield - Unforsaken

At last it was only Bryce who remained, cradled in a dozen decaying hands, and then even his serene face slipped below. Bubbles rose to the surface and then disappeared.

I trembled with the horror of what I’d witnessed. But now I knew: Bryce really had repented in the end. He’d done the one thing that would prevent anyone from forcing him to replicate his work ever again. He’d given Kaz the passwords, and together they’d wiped out the data once and for all.

“Anyone else?” Rattler demanded. I’d noticed the staff slipping away one by one toward the doors, skirting the mess that had been Prentiss. Kaz gave Dr. Grace a little push, and she stumbled after the others.

“I said, anyone else want to step up?” Rattler demanded again. “No? We’ll be leaving, then. I imagine your little deal with the townfolk’s officially over now. This place’ll be crawlin’ soon, and I was you, I guess I’d be trying to get outta here.”

Kaz reached for my hand and drew me close. I hugged him hard, making room for Prairie to join us, but she didn’t-and then I saw that Rattler was holding her hand tightly.

When her gaze met my eyes, for a moment I thought I saw something of her old spirit there-a flash of defiance-before she turned away. But then her shoulders slumped as she trailed behind Rattler.

She was his now. She had bought our freedom with her promise.

CHUB HAD FALLEN ASLEEP in the cab of Rattler’s truck, curled up with his fist pressed to his cheek. He woke when I opened the door. Then he yawned and held up his arms. Prairie picked him up and held him close, and he wrapped his arms around her neck and went back to sleep as she kissed him.

“I’ll ride up front,” Prairie said.

She had directed her words to Rattler, who was stowing his firearms in a metal box behind the seat, but there was a note of uncertainty in her voice.

She was asking his permission.

My heart constricted. This was her new life, then; Rattler was now her mate and her master, and she would have to beg for every favor and freedom.

She’d done it for me. And Kaz and Anna and Chub.

I wanted to protest, to tell her that she and I would take our chances together. I had survived too much to be afraid, and I’d go anywhere with Prairie, face anything. And I knew Kaz would too. But the problem was that it wasn’t just us.

Rattler snapped the lid of the box and spun the padlock, then put a hand on the driver door and considered Prairie, who was shivering in the cool of the evening.

“You ride next to me. Put the boy on your lap. You two, in back.”

Prairie complied without a word, settling Chub onto her lap, where he snuggled in and fell back asleep. Kaz shut her door gently.

Then it was just me and Kaz. Out on the road I saw the first of the cars peeling out of the garage. County fire and emergency would not be here for a while, I guessed, since Prentiss had no doubt paid them handsomely to keep their distance. Eventually, though, they would come, and they would find the place deserted except for the bodies in the atrium. Bryce and the zombies would wash up on the edges of the pond. Depending how long it took, maybe their decomposition would be chalked up to the time in the water.

One thing was sure: no one would ever know what had really happened here.

Bryce and Prentiss were dead. The research was finally destroyed. The Banished, once again, would be free to live their lives in peace.

Kaz offered me a hand, and we scrambled up the bumper into the truck bed. The cold wind whipped our faces, but Kaz wrapped his arms around me and I closed my eyes and held on.

BUT THE TRUCK DIDN’T MOVE.

I waited, shivering in Kaz’s arms, for the engine to turn over. Off to the west of the office park I saw a bobbing, flickering light. Someone had had the sense to find a flashlight before running. Good for them-they’d be glad to have it when the moon went behind a cloud.

After several long moments, the passenger door opened and Prairie got out, carrying Chub. He was sleeping soundly, loose as a rag doll in her arms.

“Get out, hurry,” she said. “I need you to hold him.”

“What about-”

“Rattler’s taken care of.” Prairie cut me off, flashing me a quick, humorless smile. “Come on, Hailey, that trick you pulled with Maynard?”

“What-”

“You’re not the only girl in town who can do that,” Prairie added. “Only I did it with a kiss.”

I imagined how it had gone: Rattler, alone with his love at last, Chub sleeping between them. Rattler, unable to wait, stealing a kiss before he took her home to start his new empire.

The determination and loathing I’d glimpsed, which she’d kept coiled and hidden all through her ordeal, bursting free, coursing through her body into his. Intensified by the blood bond between them, the eternal attraction of the Banished.

“Hurry,” Prairie urged, and Kaz and I scrambled out of the truck bed. I took Chub from her and hitched him up on my shoulder as she leaned back into the truck and rooted around behind the seat.

When she straightened, she was holding one of Rattler’s guns-the smaller one, which still seemed plenty big to me. It looked at home in her hand and I realized that I’d never asked her if she knew how to shoot.

She seemed to read my mind as she gestured at Rattler with the gun. He was slumped over the steering wheel, his arms limp at his sides. “Who do you think taught me?” she asked, her voice as hard and cold as steel. “Him and Dun Acey. First it was BB guns in the woods. Didn’t take long to move on from there.”

She took aim and I almost stopped her, because I was remembering the photo in the room Rattler had prepared for her: two skinny kids playing in the creek. The look of longing on his face as she sparkled and danced in the sun. He’d been a dangerous and reckless child; he’d grown into a dangerous and twisted man. But he had loved her always and that love refused to die.

He was my father, but he’d never loved me. Only one woman would ever shine for him, and every terrible thing he’d done since I met him, he’d done for her.

That was my last thought before she shot him.

PRAIRIE WANTED TO LEAVE HIM THERE, lying in the dirt outside the office park. She figured his death would be chalked up as one more casualty of the night’s violence, and I knew she was right.

But I insisted we take him home to die.

He never regained consciousness. Blood bubbled from his nostrils and trailed from his slack mouth. Prairie had shot him in the chest, and there was a rattling wheeze as he struggled to breathe.

We laid him out in the passenger seat, and I held Chub on my lap in the back with Kaz as Prairie drove through town and into the darkened streets of Trashtown.

Curtains moved and lights flickered in the windows of the houses along Morrin Street. Despite the late hour, people were up: restless souls looking for a high; bitter men looking for a target for their anger; fearful women hiding in their own homes. The Audi was still parked in front of Rattler’s house where I’d left it, and I imagined that everyone in town had noticed it and wondered who had come to call. Unsettled by indecipherable waking dreams of water and blood, the Seers would have known something was coming.