Silas (13 page)

Outside the door, it was
empty. There was a clearing, dirt with patches of scraggly grass.
We were situated in a small valley. On all sides, the forest jutted
up, surrounding us like the walls of a bowl.

I didn’t see anyone out
here.

I ran, pumping my legs, still
yelling.

And the first bullet tore into
me.

It caught me under my rib, searing pain
ripping through me.

I stopped moving, gasping at the
pain.

And I was hit again. This time my
neck.

Once they’d started, it
seemed that they wouldn’t let up. Bullets riddled my body, burning
into my torso, my arms, my legs, my head—

Darkness
.

CHAPTER NINE

My eyes snapped open. I was lying on my
back, staring up at a deep blue sky. It was clear, not a single
cloud marring its perfection. I gazed at it for a second, taking it
in.

The sound of gunfire
shattered my reverie and reminded me where I was and what was
happening.

Rolf was hunting me. He was hunting
Christa.

Christa!

I leaped to my feet, looking
around.

I could see that everyone had left the
makeshift prison. They were running towards the woods.

I made out Emmett, dashing into the
trees.

A few yards behind him were
Ken and Christa. Ken had Christa running in front of him. He was
shielding her body with his own.

Good. She was okay. At least for the
moment.

I looked in the direction it
seemed the bullets were coming from, hoping for a glance at the
hunters.

But I couldn’t see anyone. I
had no idea where there were. They had taken good cover someplace.
It was as if they were invisible.

No time to waste, I took off running
for the woods myself.

Another bullet hit me in my
arm.

It hurt, and blood poured out of the
wound.

But I didn’t stop. I didn’t
let it faze me. I kept running. I needed to get to the
woods.

I saw one of the guys ahead
of me. I was pretty sure it was Ross. He was puffing as he dragged
his leg behind him. He’d been hit. The bottom of his pants leg was
soaked in blood.

I was going to overtake him. Should I
try to help him?

Emmett had said it was every
man for himself out here. Not only that, Ross was the one who’d
made ugly comments about Christa. I wasn’t sure if I
cared—

A bullet whizzed past me and
exploded into Ross’ skull.

He turned, unsteady on his feet. His
gaze seemed to focus on me, uncomprehending and confused. Blood
gushed over his forehead, into his eyes.

And then he fell, thudding into the
ground.

I picked up the pace,
careening around his body.

I needed to get to the
woods.

Scanning for Christa and Ken, I caught
sight of them just outside the tree line. Christa had moved to the
right, and her back was wide open. She was a perfect
target.

I wanted to yell at her,
tell her to take cover.

But I knew that would only
draw attention to her. And maybe they weren’t focused on her right
now. Maybe they were focused on someone else.

I ran faster. I picked up my legs and
pumped my arms and pushed myself.

But I kept my eyes on
Christa and Ken. I needed to make sure she was okay. That she made
it into the woods safe.

Ken stopped short. It was as if he
froze in midair.

It took me a second to
realize that he’d been shot. I could hear the gun fire, but I
didn’t associate it with what was happening right away.

They’d shot him in the
back.

Christa screamed. I heard
her across the clearing. She caught Ken, holding him up so that he
didn’t fall.

“
No,” I yelled. I couldn’t
help myself. “Leave him. Go!”

Maybe she didn’t hear me.
Maybe she just didn’t want to listen to me.

She wound Ken’s arm around
her shoulder. I could see that she was talking to him, urging him
on.

The two made a few slow steps towards
the woods.

I wished I could run faster.
They were too far away from me. I couldn’t get to
Christa.

Another shot.

Blood arced out of the back
of Ken’s skull. He went lifeless in Christa’s arms.

She dropped him, too stunned to make
noise.

“
Run!” I screamed at her, my
voice hoarse.

She looked at Ken. She looked at the
woods. And then she took off.

I watched in relief as she disappeared
between the trees.

But then another bullet drilled into my
head, right below my earlobe.

My head felt as if someone had taken a
hammer to it.

I grunted.

And I went dark again.

* * *

When I woke up, it was silent. No gun
shots.

I could see the bodies of
Ken and Ross still lying on the ground where they’d fallen. The
hunters hadn’t gathered up the bodies. Maybe they would just leave
them lying there. I wasn’t sure.

I didn’t see anyone else,
however.

But I was close to the woods, so I got
to my feet and ran until I was safe in the dark shadows of the
trees.

I headed in the direction of
the last place I’d seen Christa, about a hundred yards to my left.
I hiked through the foliage, the thorn bushes and brambles. But she
wasn’t there.

No one was there.

I hiked around in the woods
for hours, and I didn’t find any of the others.

I wasn’t much of a woodsman,
not really. I hadn’t grown up in the country, and I hadn’t spent
much time out in the woods. I found crawling through the
undergrowth to be annoying at best, and downright awful at
worst.

Everything was growing. The
trees were jutting up out of the earth, of course, but there were
things growing on the trees—vines winding around their trunks,
creepers hanging from their branches. The forest floor was covered
in various other green plants. Some were only leafy. Others were
outfitted with thorns and other sharp points. I stepped over all of
them, doing my best to navigate everything.

The worst thing about the
woods was that it wasn’t made for a person of my height. When I
tried to walk, I was inevitably tangled up in various branches and
vines, all of which seemed to be reaching out to grab me from the
waist up. Below that, there was a nice clear space. It was probably
a great place for four-year-olds. Maybe that was why kids liked
playing in the woods so much. They weren’t tall enough to get
thwacked in the face by a tree every three feet.

Emmett had said that we
should meet up out in the woods. But I wasn’t finding anyone to
meet up.

This must mean one of the
following things. A) They’d all met up already and left me behind,
assuming I was dead. B) They’d all died, and I was the only one
left. C) The rest of them were around here somewhere, but I was too
big of an idiot to figure out where they were.

I thought A and C were
likely. I didn’t even want to consider B. Not really.

Because if everyone was
dead, that meant that Christa was dead. And I couldn’t face that
idea. She couldn’t be dead. She
had
to be okay.

I’d seen her get safely into
the woods. She was out here somewhere. She had to be.

I picked my way through the
woods, going deeper and deeper into the green darkness. At first, I
walked toward the sun, remembering that Emmett had told us to go
east.

But as time went on, the sun moved
through the sky. I kept moving the same direction, but the sun was
at my back, filtering hot and bright through the
foliage.

The hours wore on. I kept
moving.

Luckily, it was late spring,
and so it wasn’t blazing hot outside. It was a comfortable
temperature in the lower seventies.

I tried to think of other things I
could be grateful for.

I couldn’t think of
any.

And I was starving. I hadn’t
eaten since the meal they’d given us the night before. Our last
meal, or so they’d said.

I couldn’t die of
starvation. At least, I didn’t think I could. I knew that the serum
healed up pretty much everything bad that happened to me. The
intention of the scientists who’d made it was to make a
supersoldier, impervious to harm. They’d wanted someone who
couldn’t be killed. They figured an army of those guys would be
unstoppable. So I didn’t think a little thing like not having
enough food was going to kill me.

On the other hand, I had to
eat. I couldn’t keep functioning without energy. It was basic
physics. My body couldn’t function without fuel.

So, I should try to find some
food.

I walked, casting perplexed
glances at the surrounding plant life. I had no idea what kinds of
things were edible. Could I eat these leaves?

I guessed I didn’t have to
worry too much about poison. The serum would cure me of that.
However, I’d just as soon not go through that. It didn’t sound very
pleasant.

Anyway, leaves weren’t
likely to have a lot of nutritional value, even if they weren’t
poisonous. They’d be like lettuce, fiber with no calories. I needed
calories. I needed fuel.

So…what did that leave? I
needed things that were substantial, like nuts and
seeds.

Okay, great. Where the hell
was I going to find nuts? They grew on trees, right? What kinds of
trees were these? Did they have nuts?

Man, I really wished I knew
more about this stuff. I’d never thought I was going to have to do
some kind of wilderness survival thing.

The sun continued its
traverse across the sky, and I continued my trek east. It occurred
to me that I possibly shouldn’t be walking so far into the woods on
my own. What if I never found Christa again? I wasn’t entirely sure
where these woods were, but I figured they had to be
big.

Rolf wouldn’t have dropped
us someplace where we could walk out of in a day or so. This was a
vast wilderness, a place we could wander for weeks without getting
out. I was just sure of it.

I found some shiny
black-purple berries. They looked like raspberries, only a little
sloppier and bigger—not quite in neat little rows.

Eagerly, I ate handfuls of them as the
sun set behind me, bathing the forest in complete
darkness.

My stomach roiled. It had
been empty all day, and it was now full of berries. I knew from
experience that my body probably wouldn’t process all that fruit
real well. I was in for some discomfort. Still, it was better than
starving.

It was too dark to move forward. I made
a sort of indentation in the foliage, a place I could curl
up.

I lay down. I could see the
night sky through the shadowed crisscross of the tree branches
above me.

There were a lot of stars.

Now that I wasn’t moving, I
was cold. I shivered.

Curling up in a ball, I
allowed myself to panic for the first time since all this crap had
started.

Shit.

Everything was bad. I was
alone in the woods. Rolf was hunting me. I’d lost Christa somehow.
I didn’t even know if she was alive.

She
had
to be alive.

Griffin would kill me if anything
happened to his sister.

I snorted out loud. “Like
it’s really about Griffin, Silas,” I whispered.

It was true. I didn’t want
Griffin to kill me, of course. But I wasn’t only worried about his
wrath. I was worried about her safety. I wanted to make sure that
she was okay. Because Sloane was right. I did care about
her.

And if I didn’t do
something, she was going to get herself killed.

But she couldn’t be dead
yet, I assured myself. She couldn’t be, because Rolf wanted to do
that in front of me. He’d told me I would have to watch her die.
He’d keep her alive until he found me.

As far as comforting
thoughts go, it wasn’t really that reassuring. But it was
enough.

And I slipped into a shivering sleep,
curled into a tight ball, my stomach protesting at its bellyful of
berries.

* * *

Morning found me covered in
dew and even colder than I
’d been before. I
decided to get on my feet and start moving in order to try to warm
up.

My stomach growled. The
upset from the previous night’s dinner of berries seemed to have
passed, and now I was just hungry again.

I tried to retrace my steps
and to go back to the place where I’d found the berries last night,
but I couldn’t find them.