Tom Isbell - The Prey

When he’s gone, Hope swivels her head toward Faith and tries to say, “H and FT,” but she only makes it to the first letter. Her eyes roll back in her head. Her last thought before blacking out is the boy in the barn, the touch of his hand, the press of his skin.

MY WORDS WERE MET with silence. The five LTs—Flush, Twitch, Red, Dozer, and June Bug—all looked at me like I was crazy. We sat on the eastern outskirts of camp, hidden behind a heaping mound of rusted cars. “You really expect us to believe this stuff?” Dozer scoffed. “A massacre in the mountain? LTs in a bunker? A girls’ camp surrounded by barbed wire?”

“I’m not making it up,” I said. “Any of it.”

Dozer laughed derisively and spat on the ground. His name was short for Bulldozer, as he had a tendency to bulldoze his opinions on everyone else.

“So what are you suggesting?” June Bug asked. Unlike Dozer, there was no hostility in his voice. Even though Omega’s radiation prevented him from growing taller than five feet, it hadn’t dampened his spirits. Which was probably why he was our unofficial leader. It was impossible not to like the guy.

“Head for the next territory. It’s what Cat said he was doing. Maybe it’ll be different there. In any case, we can’t stay here.”

No one spoke. Hard enough to just draw breath.

“How would we get to the next territory?” Red asked. “The mountain and desert are bad enough, but then there are those p-people .”

He didn’t need to say their names. The cities were inhabited by roaming gangs of criminals, referred to as Crazies. Even scarier were the Skull People, a tribe of primitive militants who killed anyone who dared approach their compounds.

“Yeah, and what’re we gonna do?” Dozer chimed in. “Wander in the wilderness for years like frickin’ Methuselah, trying to find some Promised Land?”

“Moses,” June Bug murmured.

“Huh?”

“It was Moses who wandered in the wilderness. Not Methuselah.”

“Whatever.”

“I’m not saying we wander through any wilderness,” I said, “just that we have to escape.”

“Yeah, but where to ?”

“Dozer does have a point,” Twitch said, blinking. He’d been born with a nervous condition that caused his facial features to spasm. Still, that didn’t prevent him from being crazy smart. “We don’t know which direction to go. There’re no maps.”

Ever since Omega, all maps had been confiscated. We only knew that we were somewhere in what had formerly been the western United States. Where, specifically, we had no idea. All the Brown Shirts told us was that we were now part of the RTA—the Republic of the True America—and our specific territory was the Western Federation Territory.

“We choose the only logical direction,” I said. “East.” They looked at me like I was crazy. “Think about it. We’re surrounded on three sides by desert, but the south and west are nothing but sand. And we can’t go north because of Skeleton Ridge. If the altitude won’t kill us, the wolves will. So that leaves just one choice.”

When they didn’t respond, I went on. “Also, that’s the direction of the Brown Forest. The girl in Camp Freedom said the new territory was just on the other side.”

Dozer scoffed, but the others nodded quietly.

“Although it’s desert, at least it’s high desert,” Twitch conceded. “There might be springs out there.”

“And I know where the keys are kept in the vehicle compound,” Red said. “What’s to prevent us from taking some Humvees?”

Dozer sensed the tide turning against him. “And when we run out of fuel?”

“Then we hump it.”

“Are you crazy?” Dozer asked, horrified. “We can’t walk across a desert. Look at us. Look at Book .” He pointed his sausage fingers in my direction. With my limp, I wasn’t the fastest.

I had to admit: the realities of the plan were sobering. Miles of sage-covered desert. A dreary landscape as barren as the surface of the moon. And yet, what was the alternative? Stay in Camp Liberty and wait for the day to be imprisoned in a bunker? Or, worse, slaughtered by Hunters?

“We’ll have to be smart,” June Bug said. “Not just take enough supplies, but the right supplies.”

“We’ll stuff our packs with anything we can get our hands on,” I said. “Crackers, jerky—anything that’ll keep.”

“And fill up canteens whenever we spot a water source.”

Soon, everyone was throwing out ideas and a plan took shape. It was scary. Beyond scary. But staying at the camp—the hatchery —was no longer an option. Even Colonel Westbrook’s promise to make me an officer was not tempting enough to make me stay. I didn’t know who to trust anymore.

An uneasy silence settled among us. There was only one thing missing, and we all knew it.

“We need someone who knows the geography,” June Bug said. “Someone who can be a guide.”

No one had to mention Cat’s name for us to realize we were all thinking of the same person.

“Too late,” Dozer said. “That coward’s done gone and run. And I say fine. Let the sonofabitch die for all I care.”

We headed back to camp, each going a different way so as not to arouse suspicion. As I made my way back, one question rattled around in my head over and over: How on earth could a measly bunch of Less Thans escape from Camp Liberty, elude an army of Brown Shirts, and make it halfway across the wilderness to a new territory? It seemed nothing less than impossible.

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