Tom Isbell - The Capture

What are they building? And why here?

When they finally tear themselves away, Hope feels her heart hammering against her chest. She knew they’d run into soldiers—she just didn’t think it would be so soon. But it’s more than that. It’s the mystery of not knowing what they’re up to that disturbs her most.

“Come on,” Cat says. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

They march the rest of that afternoon and evening, sleep little, and march all the next day, trying to put as much distance as possible between them and the Brown Shirts. When they stop the following night, the few words they speak are colored by exhaustion and anxiety.

“Are we safe here?” Helen asks.

“Should be,” Hope answers. “That wasn’t a search party. It was a construction project.”

“For what?”

She shrugs.

“Whatever it is,” Twitch says, “they want it hidden.”

“Great job leading us to safety,” Dozer says to Book, magnifying an eye roll. A few others laugh in support.

They drift away and prepare for sleep, and Hope and Cat exchange a glance. Not tonight , her expression says.

As Hope lies down on a bed of weeds and pine needles, she remembers her conversation with Book—about what they intend to do after freeing the Less Thans. What she didn’t tell him was that, yes, she does have something in mind. In fact, it’s the other reason she didn’t stay in the Heartland. She has unfinished business—that she knows for certain.

Colonel Thorason. Chancellor Maddox. Dr. Gallingham.

The camp overseer. The ruler of the territory. The sadistic doctor.

She doesn’t care what order; she doesn’t care how it happens. But she will see to it that they pay for what they did to her sister.

THE NIGHTMARE WAS THE same: the hollow, vacant stares of Less Thans imprisoned in the bunker. They gazed at me with oozing sores and pleading eyes and begged me to do something. To free them. To get them out of there.

They reached for me with their bony fingers and I jerked awake. But it wasn’t the dream that woke me, it was sound. I’d heard something.

I lifted my head and looked around. Everyone was fast asleep … except a lone figure tiptoeing through the woods. I couldn’t tell who it was—just a fuzzy silhouette in passing moonlight—but I figured it was probably someone going off to take a leak. Guys did it all the time in the middle of the night, and now that there were Sisters with us, we had to travel a little farther to find some privacy.

I lowered my head and had nearly dozed off again when it suddenly occurred to me: who would be tiptoeing ? Who was that considerate? Normally, when guys had to whiz, they just tromped off into the woods, did their business, and tromped back. No one tiptoed .

I sat back up. Argos was awake, a low growl rumbling in the back of his throat. The two of us peered into the dark.

A moment later I saw fireflies, tiny white dots etching circles in the black. They hovered and swooped and I was mesmerized by their movements.

But as they grew closer I realized they weren’t fireflies at all—and my heart nearly exploded from my chest. At the very top of my lungs I yelled the first and only word that came to mind.

“Ambush!”

We scrambled to our feet, simultaneously grabbing weapons and shouting questions.

“What’s going on?”

“What do you see?”

“Who is it?”

It was like we’d never been in a battle before. Cat was the smoothest of all, of course, nocking an arrow before the rest of us were even standing.

In no time, bullets were whistling past our ears, the headlamps poking through the woods. Headed straight in our direction.

A flare rocketed skyward, bathing the night in eerie luminescence, and I got my first glimpse of the attackers. There had to have been at least fifty of them. Two bullets bit the earth at my feet. I did a little dance and stumbled to the ground.

I was just pulling myself up when I heard a sharp whistling sound, growing steadily louder. A moment later there was a huge explosion. Dirt and rocks and shrapnel sailed through air, throwing everyone off their feet. Whoever was standing next to me went flying, as if some giant hand had swatted him aside.

More mortars followed, but even scarier than that was the sight of Brown Shirts, surging toward us like a tidal wave. The flare’s green light made their silhouettes flicker like monsters’.

“Douse the fire!” I yelled. As long as there were even smoldering coals, the soldiers would have no trouble picking us off. Someone threw the contents of their canteen on the embers, and white smoke billowed up.

I scrambled to find the person who’d been hit. His moans led me to him, and even by weak moonlight it was clear who I was looking at.

Cat.

His left arm was like spaghetti, an explosion of red sinews and dangling muscles. He’d already lost a ton of blood and was barely conscious. At the sight of it—his limp arm and ashen face—I grew suddenly clammy. The horizon tilted. It was all I could do to keep from passing out.

I felt a pull and realized Flush was tugging at my shirt. “What do we do?!” he shouted.

I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to calm myself. Steady breaths. Steady. And suddenly it wasn’t Cat I saw, but the woman from my dreams—the one with the long black hair. She was kneeling on prairie grass, hands atop my shoulders, her eyes locked with mine.

“Book!” Flush screamed, and my eyes popped open. “What do we do?”

Flares exploded in the sky and mortars exploded on the ground. These Brown Shirts meant to kill us then and there.

Meanwhile, the Less Thans stood in a half circle staring down at Cat, their expressions vacant and disbelieving. The sight of him gasping for breath stopped us in our tracks. It was as if we’d lost the power to act. Lost even the ability to think straight.

Without knowing what I was saying or why I was saying it, I began barking out commands. “Twitch and Dozer, lay cover with your arrows. Hope, spread out your best shooters and hammer the Brown Shirts from the sides. Red and Flush, pound them with rocks. The rest of you, get back up that ridge ASAP.”

Everyone went into motion.

“Who’s got Cat?” Twitch asked, nocking his first arrow.

“Me,” I said, and before anyone could object, I grabbed Cat’s good arm, hoisted him over my shoulder, and began carrying him up the hill.

It made no sense, of course. I was the weakest of the bunch with a permanent limp, but at that particular moment I could’ve lifted all the LTs. After all, it was Cat—my friend Cat. Sure, I didn’t know what he was doing with Hope behind my back, but I knew it was up to me to save his life.

It was a mad scramble up the steep slope, everyone making for the woods at the crest. Bullets zinged around us, digging up the earth and embedding themselves into trees. Adding to the chaos were the flares washing the night in shades of eerie green, turning the world into a lurid nightmare—as vivid and terrifying as hell itself.

“Twitch, get out of there!” I yelled.

He nodded but didn’t stop firing, pulling one arrow from his quiver after another. It was like he was a man possessed, and I saw at least three Brown Shirts lying on the ground, arrows protruding from their bellies like flags. Twitch had done his job, and then some. Frank would’ve been proud.

“Twitch!” I yelled again.

But too late. A mortar screamed from the heavens, landing not far from where he knelt. The explosion catapulted him into the air. Red and Flush raced to his side and grabbed ahold of his hands. They began dragging him up the hill.

The only thing that saved us was the dark. Each time the flares faded, the soldiers were shooting at shadows.