Tom Isbell - The Release

WE LEFT THE NEXT morning.

There were those who disagreed with our decision, but Hope was right. We had to get out of there.

“That wasn’t a wolf attack last night,” Hope said as we were tying up the last of the packs. “It was a scouting mission. That thing was here to let the rest of the pack know what it’d seen.”

It was crazy what she was saying. Ridiculous, even. But I knew that she was right. Like her, I had seen the attack on Skeleton Ridge.

That didn’t mean we were ready to leave. For all the reasons Flush had voiced earlier, we weren’t even remotely prepared for this. But the alternative was worse.

The LT who’d been pounced on by the wolf died during the night, as much from shock as from the attack itself. With no shovels and little time, we topped the grave with rocks to prevent the wolves from unearthing the corpse.

“What’s the point?” Sunshine mocked. “If those wolves want him, they’ll get him. Nothing we can do to stop ’em.”

“The rocks’ll stop them,” I replied.

“The rocks’ll slow ’em down .” Then he added, “Probably better for us if the wolves did get him. That way they won’t come chasing after us.”

No one bothered to respond, and Sunshine ran a hand through his greasy hair. It was so blond it was practically white, and when he laughed, his cheeks turned bright red. He looked like a demented elf. Although he was one of the emaciated ones we’d rescued from Liberty, you wouldn’t know it now. He was brash to the point of cocky. People put up with him because he was a fellow Less Than … and because he was good with a slingshot. We had a feeling we’d need every fighter we could get.

When we finished creating the burial mound, a number of us stood awkwardly around the grave while I recited a poem.

No man is an island,

Entire of itself,

Every man is a piece of the continent,

A part of the main.

A little John Donne to feed our souls—not that anyone had the faintest idea what the poem was or who wrote it.

Our number was down to seventy-four.

After placing our few belongings in the middle of tarps and bundling them into Yukon packs, we squinted into the morning sun.

“Let’s get out of here,” Cat said, impatient to get going.

“Which direction?” Flush asked.

“Where else? East to the river.” It’s how we’d gotten here, and it was how we’d get out.

Cat took the lead, finding an opening in the ring of fire’s dying flames, and everyone else followed. We carried supplies and dragged the two wounded on triangular stretchers through the calf-high snow.

I was the last to leave. I turned and took a final look at Libertyville, at what had once been Camp Liberty. I hoped to never lay eyes on this part of the Western Federation Territory again.

THE SNOW IS DEEP, the going slow, and by the time they reach the river—a winding sheet of ice—they’re huffing for air. They head south along its banks.

The sun is a blinding splotch of yellow that bounces off the snow and spears their eyes. Hope is glad for the hood. It shields her eyes from the glaring sun … and conceals her scars from others.

“Hey.”

Book is suddenly walking alongside her. She angles her head in the other direction.

“You doing okay?” he asks.

“Doing fine.” There is defiance in her voice. Even a touch of contempt. Only the weak and helpless accept pity. Hope is neither of those.

“You sure?”

“I said so, didn’t I?”

Book allows the silence to stretch between them. All around them is the muffled thud of footsteps as seventy-four stragglers wade through snow.

“What do you want, Book?” Hope finally asks.

“Isn’t it obvious?”

“Not to me, it’s not.”

“I’m looking for someone—someone I used to know who’s gone missing.”

“Who’s that?”

“A girl named Hope.”

Hope gives her head a violent shake. “Not gonna happen.”

“Why? Because of those?” He gestures vaguely to the Xs on her face. “You think you’re the only one around here with scars?”

“No …”

Book tugs up a sleeve and displays the crisscrossing lines on his wrist. “What do you call these?”

“Sure, they’re scars …”

“But?”

“They’re hidden. You’re not disfigured like me.”

“Right, because yours are on your face, that makes them somehow worse,” he says sarcastically.

“That’s right.”

“Because everyone can see them, that somehow makes them more noticeable than everyone else’s.”

“Exactly.”

“And my limp?”

“That’s different and you know it.”

“Is it? What about my internal scars? How about those?”

“What’re you talking about?”

“Feeling responsible for the deaths of my friends. Those scars don’t heal.”

“You think I don’t have those, too?”

“I know you have them. That’s my point. All of us do.”

She stops abruptly. “So these are just nothing?”

“I don’t care about those. No one does.”

“I do!”

Her voice carries farther than she intends, and Diana makes a move to come to Hope’s side. Hope shakes her off.

“I care about these scars,” Hope says in a fierce whisper. “I care because I know that’s all that people see. They can say they don’t, that they can look past them, that all they really see is my soul , but that’s bullshit and you know it.” She whips the hoodie back so that the Xs catch the full brunt of sunlight. The scars pucker the skin; shadows crisscross her cheeks. “Tell me you don’t see these.”

Book shrugs. “I don’t see them.”

“And you see into my soul.”

“I see into your soul.”

Hope grabs Book’s hand and slaps it against her cheek, resting his fingers on the cold, raised edges of her scars. “And now?”

“They don’t exist.”

She throws his hand away. “You’re crazier than I thought.”

Then she pulls the hood around her face and stomps off, joining the seventy-some others who trudge past Book in the vast expanse of snow.

HOPE WOULD HAVE NOTHING more to do with me the rest of that day. Or the day after that. When we set up camp each evening, I put my bedroll on one arc of the circle, and she put hers directly opposite. Then she’d go off in search of food, not returning for hours.