Tom Isbell - The Prey

She smiled briefly and then disappeared, vanishing into the gunpowdery haze.

I woke with a start, my T-shirt clinging to me from perspiration. All around me, LTs slept soundly. I wondered if any were haunted by dreams as I was. Wondered too if I would ever begin to understand mine.

As I tried to get back to sleep, I thought of what Cat had said as we descended the mountain.

Right under the Brown Shirts’ noses.

Something else, too. The stuff about that dad and his daughters. I wondered where they were now—if they’d escaped the soldiers and made it to freedom. Wondered if I’d ever find out.

HOPE NOTICES THE OTHER girls seem oddly subdued. Repressed. Haunted , even.

The only thing that’s clear is that Hope and Faith aren’t the only sisters. In fact, as Hope looks around the mess hall at the hundred or so other girls, it seems as if the vast majority are related.

“What’s with all the twins?” she asks the girl opposite her. She’s tall with red hair and there’s something in how the other girls look at her that makes Hope think she’s in charge.

“You’ll find out,” the girl says.

“You’re not going to tell me?”

The girl’s eyes narrow. “What’s to tell? Everyone’s experience is different.”

Grabbing her tray, the red-haired girl rises and rushes out. She’s followed by another who has identical facial features but is shorter and more fragile-looking. This frailer version of Red Hair hesitates, seems about to say something, then changes her mind. Hope shrugs it off. Another unanswered question.

Roll call follows breakfast. On the grassy infield, the girls line up by barracks in perfect geometries of rows and columns. Colonel Thorason removes a sheet of paper from a binder and calls out a series of Participants . The girls cringe when their numbers are called. Once the announcement is complete, the Participants are met by the pudgy Dr. Gallingham and marched off.

Hope has no idea where they’re being taken. It’s all a nightmarish blur.

She’s assigned to work in the barn; Faith is put on a cleaning crew. Milking cows and shoveling manure reminds Hope of when she used to help her father. Before they were on the run. Back in happier times. The barn is also outside camp, on the other side of the fence, which makes it feel that much closer to freedom.

When she returns to the barracks at the end of her shift, she is met by the same hostile glares.

“Don’t bring that barn stink in here,” one of the girls says. “Latrine’s in back.”

Hope grits her teeth. A number of other girls stand at the metal trough. They grow quiet when Hope enters.

“Can I get in there?” Hope asks, motioning toward the running water.

She’s so focused on scrubbing the dirt from her nails that when she turns around, she’s surprised to see she’s surrounded by a circle of girls, over ten of them.

Hope feels a stab of panic. While her instinct is to run, there’s no possible way she’d make it to the door. Instead, she remembers her father’s advice about not showing fear when facing wild beasts. And what wilder beasts are there than the girls of Barracks B?

Red Hair steps forward.

“Where’d you come from?”

“Out there,” Hope answers, shaking the water from her hands.

“All these years?”

“That’s right.”

“No one could evade the Brown Shirts that long.”

Hope shrugs. “We did.”

Red Hair leans in until their noses are practically touching. Hope doesn’t notice the girl behind her—not until she yanks Hope’s arms back. Hope struggles but it’s no good. The girl who has her arms is one giant slab of muscle.

“You better not be working for the Brown Shirts,” Red Hair says, sending a fist into Hope’s stomach.

Hope’s lungs collapse. Red Hair grabs Hope’s chin and hits her hard across the face. Pain explodes from Hope’s jaw and she crumples to the cold cement floor, tasting the metallic tang of blood.

Through swollen eyes, Hope sees Red Hair bending over her.

“We were just fine until you came along,” she hisses. “And don’t you forget it.”

The girls exit, leaving Hope bruised and bleeding on the latrine floor.

That night at dinner, the other prisoners seem slightly more talkative than before.

But there are two exceptions.

The stub of a girl who grabbed Hope’s arms; her bowl cut of black hair frames a permanently grim expression. And the frail sister of Red Hair. She averts her eyes and doesn’t look at Hope once.

One by one, the girls finish their meager rations and leave the mess hall. When the frail girl walks by, she drops something next to Hope’s plate. A piece of fabric. Hope regards it warily. When she unfolds it, she discovers it’s a head scarf. She fashions it atop her bald head, grateful for the covering.

Back in the barracks, it’s as though Hope and Faith don’t exist. The prisoners go about their routines without the slightest regard for them.

Everyone has climbed into their cots when they hear a loud rattling sound: Brown Shirts stripping the chains from the door. A moment later, a girl appears, haloed by moonlight. Once she’s inside, the door is shut, the chains and locks refastened.

With halting steps she shuffles forward, seemingly unaware of her surroundings. She speaks to no one. Sees no one. She has wet herself and the sharp aroma of urine fills the room.

Red Hair gets up, placing her hands on the girl’s shoulders. “You’re back here now, Diana. We’ll take care of you.”

Diana, a tall, willowy girl with angular features and auburn hair, nods vacantly.

“You’re safe now, Diana.”

“Safe?” Diana echoes.

Her voice is distant, otherworldly.

In the pale moonlight Hope can make out Diana’s eyes. They are glazed and faraway, focused on some remote horizon. It’s like seeing the shell of a person only—a human being without a soul.

Hope shudders.

Too many questions run through her mind.

What’s going on here? she wonders. What kind of world are we in?

Later that night when she uses the latrine she notices a prisoner standing in the back hallway, leaning against the wall as if keeping watch.

Stranger still is the ticking sound she hears as she returns to bed—a metallic clink. As she drifts off to sleep, fingering her father’s locket, she swears she can hear it in her dreams.

Clink. Clink. Clink.

THE NEXT MORNING CAT was gone.

His bed was made, his trunk empty. There was a good deal of speculation about where he might have gone—abducted by Crazies, recruited by Brown Shirts—but no one could say for sure.