Tom Isbell - The Prey

She slowly pivots in place. At first, she thinks he’s disappeared—his departure as abrupt and secret as his arrival. Then she finds him—peeking through a crack between hay bales. His eyes flick anxiously from one side to another.

“He’s gone,” she says. “You may as well come out.” Just to be safe, she picks up the pitchfork. Her damp palms grip the wooden handle.

The boy eases forward, brushing hay from his arms. He walks with a slight limp.

“Thank you,” he says. “He would’ve killed me.”

“He would’ve killed me ,” she responds, not hiding her irritation.

A look of regret sweeps across the boy’s face. “I’m sorry I put you in that—”

“You shouldn’t have. I’m in enough trouble as it is.”

“I’m sorry. I just thought—”

“It’s bad enough the other girls want to kill me, now the guards will as well.”

“I said I’m sorry.”

They stand there, facing each other, saying nothing. Separating them is a slice of sunlight, dancing with dust.

“Can I just ask one question and then I’ll get out of your hair?”

She nods curtly.

“What is this place? What’s going on here?”

“Camp Freedom,” she says.

“Why are you here? Why’re there guards and barbed wire? Are you all criminals or orphans or what?”

She doesn’t know how to answer that—not in any brief kind of way.

“Look, I don’t have much time,” he says, “and I know I shouldn’t have bothered you …”

“I’ll say.”

“… and I’m sorry if I’ve gotten you in trouble, but I’m a Less Than from Camp Liberty and—”

“A Less Than?”

He waves his hand dismissively. “It’s what they call us. We’re looking for an escapee and we thought he might’ve come here.”

She gives her head a shake. “Here? Why on earth would someone come here ?”

“What I’m really asking is: If someone wanted to get to the next territory, what’s the fastest way?”

For the longest time Hope doesn’t speak. Ever since she and Faith came into camp, they’ve been ignored by everyone. Now, finally, someone is talking to her. Needing something from her. And that someone is this boy, whose honest expression and probing eyes set her heart racing.

“Can you help me or not?” he asks.

That’s when she realizes what she recognizes in him. It’s not like she’s met him before—it’s not like that—but there’s something in his eyes. Kindness. Maybe even warmth. She doesn’t mean to stare, but she can’t look away.

“The Brown Forest,” she blurts out.

“What about it?”

“That’s where you want to go.”

“Where is it? How do we get there?”

Hope leans the pitchfork against the hay bales and wipes a section of floor with her hand. “This is where we are,” she says, hastily sketching a map.

He crouches next to her. She can feel the heat from his body. Smell traces of sweat and musk and woodsmoke. Masculine smells.

“You need to get east of the mountains,” she says, her fingertips tracing the outline of Skeleton Ridge. “Until you hit the Flats.”

“The Flats?”

“A white desert. Cross it and you’ll reach the Brown Forest. Somewhere on the other side of that is the next territory.”

“Have you been to the Brown Forest?”

“Once. A long time ago. My father took us.”

“Is it safe?”

“Safer than here,” she says.

They happen to lock eyes at the same moment, and Hope feels the blood rushing up her neck.

“Thank you,” he says.

She nods. Her breathing is unnaturally shallow.

“I’m Book,” he says, extending a hand.

She hesitates. A long moment passes before she reaches forward. “Hope.”

They shake. His grip is surprisingly strong, and it’s like a jolt of electricity shoots up her arm. She pulls her hand back.

From outside comes the sound of footsteps. Book shoots a glance toward the barn door.

“If we ever escape,” he says, “I promise we’ll come for you.”

“Don’t. Not if you want to live.”

A moment later, the Less Than named Book scrambles down the ladder and out the barn. Long after he’s gone, Hope can still feel the touch of his hand, the heat of his skin. For reasons she doesn’t understand, it’s the first time she’s felt alive since she and Faith were captured.

ALTHOUGH THE BROWN SHIRT chewed me out for disappearing, more than anything he seemed relieved I showed up before the colonel found out. That way both of us avoided punishment.

Westbrook and Karsten didn’t say a word the entire drive back to Camp Liberty, but I swear they looked at me differently. With a new kind of suspicion.

The feeling was mutual. After witnessing the gruesome slaughter in the mountains and the inmates of Camp Freedom, I was more convinced than ever the world was not what I thought it was.

As for finding Cat, the colonel never once asked for my assistance. It was almost as if he was more interested in threatening me with what I could expect if I didn’t play along.

When we returned to Liberty, I didn’t return to my barracks—not right away. I needed time to think, to process everything I’d seen. Like the girl.

The girl named Hope.

I couldn’t stop thinking about her—especially those eyes. They were two brown pools. She didn’t so much look at me as through me.

There was something else swimming in my brain—something Cat said on the way down the mountain. Right under the Brown Shirts’ noses.

That night, once lights-out was called, I waited. When all the other LTs were snoring with a kind of clocklike efficiency, I tiptoed to the latrine. The cistern’s edges scraped when I removed the lid, revealing a lone object taped beneath it. A flashlight. Not many to be found these days, but Red had managed to sneak one off a Brown Shirt months earlier.

I snuck outside. The night was cool, the grass stiffening with frost.

I made my way to the Soldiers’ Quarters—a large rectangle of brick barracks where the officers and Brown Shirts lived, with soccer fields and a softball diamond in the very center. There was also an enclosed tennis court and an area for free weights. Barbells littered the ground, moonlight catching metal.

But there was nothing to be found—just some ball fields and workout equipment. What was Cat talking about? What was suspicious about all that? The windscreen surrounding the tennis court flapped in the breeze and I decided to give it one last look.

The door was partially ajar and I turned my body sideways to slip inside. My eyes roamed from one corner of the court to the next. It was exactly what it appeared to be: a tennis court with a frayed net and fading green pavement. There was nothing there.

I was gliding back to the entrance when my foot sent something clattering across the court. I froze, praying no one had heard.

My hands fumbled on cool pavement until they landed on something small and round. A button. A measly button.

I cocked my arm and was ready to toss it over the fence when I gave it another look. My thumb nudged the flashlight on, producing a fuzzy, weak beam. There was nothing special about the button. Small. White. Four tiny holes for thread.