Run (The Hunted) (11 page)

Still, Milo’s initial rejection makes Reid pause. Pride reaches out and slaps him so hard he flinches.

“I know when I’m not welcome.”

He holds his place anyway, waiting for one more encouraging word.

Relief floods him when the girl obliges. “Please,” she says, gesturing with one hand. “We need to stick together.”

At last, someone understands. Reid thinks of Monica. If only he had gotten to her before her mind snapped and fear took her over. He slides into the cave and out of the path of the light, allowing the cool darkness to wrap around him. The scent of the earth is stronger here, and unwashed bodies. But he doesn’t mind, pretty sure he’s just as fragrant.

The girl leaves the light, Milo right beside her. She shines even in the dark, pale blonde hair almost glowing. “I’m Leila.”

Reid lets his legs buckle and slides to the floor, wrapping his arms around his knees.

“This is Drew.” She introduces a second boy. There is a subtle flash, the hint of light on glass as the kid nods once.

“Wish I could say it’s nice to meet you.” Drew’s voice is almost as high as Milo’s, but with an odd accent. Reid’s mind says New England. So this kid is local.

Leila makes the first move, easing forward until she is face-to-face with Reid. She is about his age, her eyes as light as her hair, dark bruises underneath highlighting them. Even her skin is ghostly pale, thick eyelashes transparent. Reid almost laughs when his heart tells him she is beautiful.

Not the kind of thing he needs to be thinking about at a time like this.

“How long?” She sits next to him.

“This is my second sunrise,” he says.

Drew and Milo join them, Leila’s bravery obviously setting them free of their wariness.

“I’m on day three,” Milo says. His white teeth flash against his dark skin when he speaks.

“Me too,” says Drew. Glasses, braces, chubby cheeks. Pushing fourteen if Reid could guess. Drew hitches up his pants as he sits. They bag around his still-thick waist.

“I’m two days in.” Leila smiles at the boys. “They found me right away. I’m pretty lucky.”

Reid agrees. A jagged stab of jealousy takes his breath away for a moment.

“Drew found me,” Milo says. “Not like being together helps all that much.”

Drew is nodding, glasses hiding his eyes, the dark turning them into oval mirrors.

“If I ever get out of here,” he says, “I’m never running another step ever again.”

The other two laugh. Reid can’t bring himself to.

“How long have you been hiding here?” It would be nice to think the cave could be a more permanent refuge, but Leila sighs.

“Since early this morning, just before dawn. They seem to find us no matter where we go.”

Reid fights off the instinctual panic. “Is there another way out of here?”

None of them say a word. It’s answer enough.

“We tried to hide the entrance,” Drew says. “Didn’t do a good enough job, obviously.”

“Do you have any food?” Milo sounds pathetic and Reid instantly recoils from the boy’s need. He knows then, even if he had any left, he would lie and wonders what he is becoming.

“No,” Reid says. Then, reluctantly, he tells them about the cabin and what he found.

They listen to him like he is a prophet, locked onto his words.

“We should go right now!” Drew is on his feet, hands tugging at his falling jeans. “I bet we could sneak in and out and they’d never know.”

Reid reaches out and pulls the boy back down to the ground.

“They know I was there,” he says. “They’ll be watching now.”

“But we’re starving.” Reid despises the whine in Drew’s voice and resists the urge to slap it out of him. He reminds Reid of Lucy and how she used to beg their parents for the things she wanted. It makes him sick to his stomach.

“There are things in the forest we can eat.” He has been so focused on running he forgot that was true. But his father showed him what to look for. The right kinds of mushrooms. Fiddleheads. Bird nests could hold eggs. He just needed enough time to look.

Reid realizes he is still thinking in singular terms, sad he is obviously ready to abandon the others at the first sign of trouble.

“Do any of you know why we’re here?” More than food or water or shelter, Reid wants answers. But the three shake their heads all at once.

“We’ve asked ourselves the same questions.” Leila’s eyes drift toward the light coming through the entrance of the cave. They are so pale they are transparent in the glow of the sun. “But we all have the same story. I was taken from my bed in the middle of the night by a group of men who drugged me. I woke up in the back of a van, was carried out here and dumped in the dark.” Her thin shoulders rise and fall once. “The boys found me, got me loose. Told me we had to run.” She turns back, eyes meeting Reid’s. “Do you have anything new to add?”

He shakes his head. “Sounds about right.” Reid sighs, his weariness settling around him like a blanket. If he doesn’t get up and start moving soon he knows he will pass out. “Are you foster kids too?”

All three nod. “We figure we’re easy targets.” The bitterness in Drew’s voice is nothing new to Reid. “No one will miss us, you know? The system will call us runaways so no one comes looking or gives a crap.”

“Have you seen anyone else?”

“Just other kids,” Milo says. “And not for long.” By the way he says it Reid figures those kids didn’t make it.

“Have you gotten a good look at the hunters?”

Milo’s shudder is so violent he has to hug himself. But it’s Drew that speaks.

“Why?” The boy trembles, hands rubbing across his thighs over and over.

“Just wondering.” Reid isn’t sure he wants to voice what he is thinking. He cares enough about the possibility of staying with them at this point he doesn’t want them to think he is crazy. But Drew won’t let it go. He reaches forward, chubby fingers tapping Reid’s sneaker. He pulls back before Reid can react, a frightened animal looking for attention.

“Why?” Drew repeats the question. Reid can’t tear his eyes away from his reflection in the boy’s glasses.

“Because,” he finds himself saying, “I don’t think they are human.”

No one says anything for a moment and in that time Reid berates himself for making a terrible mistake. He may have been willing to abandon them for his own safety at first, but the past few minutes have made it harder and harder to consider running by himself again.

“I knew it!” Drew reaches over and punches Milo in the arm. The smaller boy rubs the sore spot and scowls at his grinning friend.

“You did?” Relief is welcome. They won’t shun him after all. Although the look on Leila’s face is suddenly so lost and grief-stricken Reid wishes he hadn’t spoken at all.

“There’s no way they are human.” Drew shoves his glasses back with one finger, head bobbing in his excitement. “They move too fast. Those claws they’ve got! Their eyes…” he shudders. “And that howl. Like an animal.”

Reid finds himself nodding. “Then what the hell are they?”

“Alien invasion.” Milo groans at that and even Leila rolls her eyes and offers a ghost of a smile. But Drew is adamant. “What else could they be?”

Reid is as skeptical as the others, but doesn’t have an answer.

“Dude, you watch too many movies.” Milo doesn’t sound convinced.

“I’m telling you,” Drew goes on, his excitement obvious, “it’s got to be an invasion. Some kind of foothold situation.”

“Then why the fence?” Reid gets the impression this is an old argument because Leila has looked away from them, lost in her thoughts. At the word
fence
she swivels her attention back to him.

“What fence?” Milo is the first one to ask, his voice squeaking out at the end of the word.

“Big, metal, deathly electric.” Reid looks from face to face. They obviously have no idea what he is talking about. “I was following it for a while, but had to stop.”

They are all quiet for a bit as they process this.

Reid gives them a little time before telling them about the two men and how easily the hunters took them down, weapons or no weapons. They are visibly shaken.

“It’s hopeless, then.” Milo shudders out a sob. “No one can save us.”

“We already knew that.” Drew tries for tough but Reid sees right through him, hearing the tears the boy chokes off. “We’re on our own out here.”

Leila is silent, eyes on the ground, her whole body still. “How did they get in?”

Reid is impressed with her. “The fence.”

Drew’s glasses flash as he turns his head to refocus on Reid. “There’s no way,” he says. “If it’s electric, like you say, it would have killed them getting over.”

“Somehow they did it,” Reid snaps back. Drew shrinks from him and Reid instantly feels guilty. “I don’t know how,” he says, gentler this time and Drew relaxes. “But I mean to find out.”

“Do you really think we can get out?” There is no hope in Leila’s voice. Only the same calm and quiet she has shown him all along.

Reid doesn’t answer her.

“Why would someone fence us in?” Leila looks so tormented by this new information Reid wishes he kept this information to himself.

“Maybe they are specimens,” Drew says, still clinging to his alien theory. “Being tested or something.”

“More like we are,” Reid mutters.

“That’s the lamest ass thing I’ve ever heard.” Milo turns away from Drew. Lost to his usual audience, the chubby boy turns his attention to Reid.

“What do you think?”

It’s a moment before Reid answers. In the meantime Leila and Milo focus on him. Reid thinks about it, considers what Drew said before shrugging his shoulders forward when the truth of the whole thing rolls through him.

“I think it doesn’t matter all that much,” he says, finally admitting it to himself. Answers aren’t what he needs. He doesn’t care anymore. Reid just wants to get away.

The others are silent. Reid shifts positions at last, breaking the quiet, his head aching and body unable to rise.

“So what now?” He hadn’t meant to ask them, the question more aimed at himself than the others, but Drew speaks up.

“We don’t know.” He exchanges glances with first Milo, then Leila. “The fence thing sounds good.”

Reid slumps sideways, his eyes so heavy he can barely focus. “Yeah,” he says, stumbling over his words, “it does.”

A cool hand touches his cheek, long hair tickling his ear as Leila bends over him.

“Get some rest,” she whispers. “We’ll watch over you until it gets dark. Then we’ll decide what to do.”

He fights the exhaustion, still not trusting completely, but his body doesn’t give him a choice. Reid is dragged under and into sleep.

He surfaces briefly, twice. The first time he jerks awake from a horrible dream he can’t recall and falls right back into unconsciousness. The second time he wakes to heated whispers, but even that can’t keep him up for long.

When he wakes the third time, he instantly notices the utter quiet. Reid sits up, bones and muscles crying out in protest, but he ignores them as he looks quickly around.

He is alone. His heart clenches, stomach a solid knot of rage. They left him, abandoned him there after they promised they would watch over him.
She
promised.

So much for trust.

A howl echoes nearby. Reid freezes, his anger running out of him, shoved aside by terror. A flicker makes it through, the thought that they set him up to save themselves, but he has no time to let it trouble him. Fear shoves him toward the gap and out into the night. He has slept the day away, his only consolation. And yet, if that rest gets him killed, it will have done him little good.

Reid eases down the hill toward the thicker trees, all senses wide open and alert. He waits for another call to reach him, but none comes. Reid finds the head of a path into the trees and runs for it.

He slams right into Leila. She falls back but he catches her, holds her up until she has her balance again. She looks up into his eyes, hers full of the terror they share.

“Hurry!” Her whisper is a hissed command. She turns without another word and runs down the trail. Reid follows right on her footsteps, keeping up with her easily. She leads him on a winding run through the trees, dodging the path over and over. He realizes she too understands the value of avoiding straight lines.

She stops once, alert and frightened. Reid waits with her, heart in his throat, as a shuffling black shape snorts its way through the forest. Panic gives way to more ordinary fear as the black bear fixes them with its shining dark eyes. Rather than attacking, it growls gently before plodding off into the dark.

Leila rests against a tree, her breath easing out of her. When her eyes meet his, she smiles. “If this wasn’t so horrible, that would have been amazing.”

He finds himself smiling back. “I’m sorry.” The words blurt out of him. “I thought you left me behind.”

She is quiet for a long time before shrugging her shoulders once. “We did,” she says. “But I had to come back for you.”

Reid’s blood, once warmed by her friendship, runs cold again. “Why is that?”

“Who knows,” she says, moving off, “maybe we need you after all.” She stops, turns, looks at him. “Are you coming?”

He wants to say no. They betrayed him, left him to die. Why should he? But he can’t bring himself to be alone again. Instead, he follows her into the forest while he builds walls around his budding trust and compassion.

***

Chapter Fifteen

It isn’t long before they catch up with Drew and Milo. Both boys look guilty, refusing to meet Reid’s eyes. He ignores them, turning instead to the two other kids huddled nearby.

“This is Carly and Trey.” The girl Carly is so skinny it hurts Reid to look at her, her gigantic dark eyes pleading for someone, anyone, to save her. Stringy hair sways around her as she shivers in the cool of the night. The boy Trey’s skin is lighter than Milo’s, his body taller. He has a constant twitch in one cheek. Reid wonders if it’s new since he was dumped here.

“We have to go.” Leila glances over her shoulder. She doesn’t have to say it twice.

Reid takes the lead without thinking about it, so accustomed to being alone he barely considers what the pecking order might be in the little group. But when he glances back at them no one complains. In fact, if anything, they look relieved.