Silas (14 page)

Instead, I found some
different berries. These weren’t at all like raspberries. They
resembled cranberries. I picked one and smelled it. Did it smell
like a cranberry? I wasn’t sure what cranberries even smelled like.
Besides, didn’t cranberries only grow someplace up north? Someplace
like Nantucket or something. I couldn’t remember, exactly. These
berries probably weren’t cranberries.

I ate some anyway. They
weren’t nearly as good as the berries I’d had the night before, but
I was too hungry to care.

I really wished that I could
find some nuts—something substantial, something that would give me
some protein and energy.

But I didn’t have any luck
with that.

The sun was struggling into
the sky, and I decided that I’d follow it again. Going east seemed
like the best idea. It was what Emmett had said to do. Assuming
that Christa had done the same thing, we’d be likely to run into
each other at some point. She and the others had a head start on
me. I’d catch up to them today though. I was sure of it.

The morning sun made me
optimistic.

I started off through the underbrush,
feeling almost cheerful.

I continued to feel cheerful
for a few more hours.

That was when the first cramps hit
me.

I felt as if my stomach was
being ripped open from the inside. It was so painful that I
couldn’t keep walking. I had to sit down on the forest
floor.

After I sat down, it was
only a matter of minutes before I started throwing up the red
berries I’d eaten that morning.

Poisonous
, I thought to myself as I
heaved.
How could I be so stupid as to eat
little red berries?

I was violently ill for so
long that I lost track of time. I retched and vomited—more than
what was in my stomach. At some point, the berries were gone, and I
was only bringing up bile from my stomach. But still, I couldn’t
stop throwing up.

And it hurt.

I hadn’t thrown up from
sickness in a long time. My occasional interaction with vomiting
only came on the rare occasion that I had way too much to drink.
Vomiting when drunk, though unpleasant, actually felt kind of good.
I had forgotten what vomiting felt like on other
occasions.

This was excruciating.

And it went on and on. I thought it
would never end.

Just when I was beginning to wish that
I could die after all, because at least it would be an end to
agony, I heard a gun shot.

It startled the urge to
throw up right out of me.

My head went up, and I glanced around
like a frightened rabbit. Where had the shot come from? Could
whoever was shooting see me? Would it be safer to move or safer to
stay put?

I waited. There wasn’t
another shot.

Everything was still and
quiet except for the breeze rustling through the trees.

My stomach hurt. I heaved
again.

I fought it, pushing myself to my feet.
I started through the woods.

Within two feet, I was sick again. I
bent over to vomit, but there was nothing in my stomach.

I stumbled forward, moving
noisily through the underbrush.

Something caught my foot.

I let out a startled sound and looked
down to see a face peering out at me through the
underbrush.

It was Brandon. He was holding onto my
foot.

“
Down,” he hissed. “Shut
up.”

I hit the ground, wincing and trying to
stifle my urge to throw up again.

We lay still for what seemed like
several eternities.

* * *

Eventually, when we
didn
’t hear anymore shots, Brandon moved.
And someone else moved behind him. They both got up, but they moved
stealthily, gracefully. Not like me.

“
Emmett?” I
whispered.

“
You’re like an elephant,
Silas,” he said. “Can’t you be quieter?”

“
Sorry,” I said, getting to
my feet. The minute I was standing straight up, my stomach clenched
on itself. I bent over and retched.

“
Jesus, what’s wrong with
you?” said Brandon.

“
Red berries,” I managed. I
wiped my mouth. “I think they were poisonous.”

Emmett shook his head at me.
“You ate red berries?”

I hung my head.

“
What’d they look like?”
said Brandon.

“
Kind of like cranberries,”
I said. “Obviously, they weren’t cranberries.”

“
You idiot,” said Brandon.
“They don’t grow cranberries out here. They grow cranberries in
Cape Cod.”

That was right. Cape Cod. I
knew it was someplace like that. “I didn’t think they were really
cranberries.”

“
They were probably red
baneberries,” said Brandon. “They’ll give you cramps and make you
throw up, but they’re not lethal. At least, there’s no reports of
them be—”

A bullet punched into
Brandon’s face, shattering his nose, burrowing between his
eyes.

Blood spurted out of his eyes. He made
a strangled noise in the back of his throat.

Emmett grabbed me and pulled
me down into a bush with him. “Duck and cover. Duck and cover,” he
was saying over and over again.

There was blood on me.
Brandon’s blood. I’d been close enough to get the
spatter.

Emmett crawled ahead of me, through the
underbrush.

I followed him, feeling
shocked. I’d killed a lot of people, but when I pulled the trigger,
I knew it was coming. Brandon and I had been talking.

One minute he’d been
alive.

The next?

Dead.

I scrambled after Emmett, trying to
move as quickly and as quietly as I could.

CHAPTER TEN

“
I think we lost them,” said
Emmett. He stopped moving and sat up.

I stopped moving too. “They
could have shot any of us. They were right there. Close enough to
get Brandon in the face, and we didn’t even know they were
there.”

“
They’re good at what they
do,” said Emmett. “It’s not easy to shake them.” He looked me up
and down. “You weren’t lying about being hard to kill, were you? I
could have sworn that you were dead yesterday. They shot you so
many times.”

“
I’m not dead,” I told
him.

“
I can see that,” he said.
“Well, from now on, that makes you the one who goes first.” He got
to his feet and gestured for me to go ahead of him.

I began to traipse through the
woods.

“
Jesus,” he said. “Not so
loud.”

“
Sorry,” I said.

“
Look where you’re walking,”
he said. “Try to place your feet where there aren’t any branches
that you’ll break and crunch, huh?”

I did my best to follow his advice. I
took a few more steps.

“
Better,” he admitted
grudgingly. “But not perfect.”

“
I never spent any time in
the woods before,” I told him.

“
Obviously,” he
said.

“
What happened to Christa?”
I said, making my way carefully through the woods. “I saw her get
past the tree line, but then I lost consciousness.”

“
I don’t know about the
girl,” said Emmett. “Brandon and I waited for as long as we could
for the others to meet up with us. No one showed.”

“
Ken got shot,” I said. “Did
you see that?”

“
I was too busy running for
my life to watch and see who got taken down. Watching everyone
else’s backs is a good way to get yourself killed.”

I didn’t respond. I kept
forgetting that Emmett had been on death row. I didn’t know what
kind of guy he was. He seemed like a decent person, except for the
fact he didn’t seem too broken up about anyone’s deaths. He sure
hadn’t shown any remorse over Brandon, and I figured they’d been in
the woods together for an entire day.

Of course, I wasn’t exactly
breaking out in tears over him either. It was awful that these guys
were getting shot down, and I didn’t condone what Rolf did, but I
didn’t have the energy or the inclination to get soft over it. I
needed to find Christa, and I needed to get us out of here. That
was the priority.

“
Hey,” said Emmett. “Go that
way.”

I turned to look at him.
“What does it matter?” It was all woods, wasn’t it?

He pointed. “You see
that?”

“
No,” I said. All I saw were
trees.

“
In the distance,” he said.
“That’s a power line.”

I squinted. He was right.
“Shit, you’re right.”

“
That’s where we’re headed,”
he said. “Well, it’s where I’m headed anyway. You can do what you
like. I guess you’ll want to find your girlfriend.”

I thought about telling him
she wasn’t my girlfriend. But would he think she was open season if
I said that? If a guy thought he was going to die out here, what
would he do to a girl like Christa? Maybe it was better if he
thought she was spoken for. “I do need to find her. I can’t let
anything happen to her.”

“
Well, I’m going to the
power line,” he said. “You can do what you want.”

I considered. I began to
walk in the direction that he’d shown me. “What’s so important
about the power line?”

“
It’s a way out,” he said.
“If they ran a power line through here, then there’s some kind of
civilization out in this wilderness. We follow it until we find
it.”

“
Civilization?”

“
Maybe a housing
development,” he said. “Maybe even a town. But even if it’s only
one house, it’s a house with electricity. They’ll have some way to
call for help. It’s our best hope.”

I nodded. “Yeah, I guess
you’re right.”

“
Course I’m right,” he said.
“So, you’ll come with me?”

“
I need to find the girl,” I
said.

“
It’s a big woods, Silas.
You might never find her.”

I knew that he was right,
but I couldn’t give up on her. I shook my head.

He shrugged. “Suit
yourself.” He moved around me and began trudging through the
underbrush.

I looked around, almost as
if I expected Christa to appear out of a tree nearby or something.
When she didn’t, of course, I went after him. “Hold up.”

“
Not waiting for you,” he
said.

I caught up to him. “She’s
alone out there. She doesn’t know anything about how to take care
of herself. She’s young. She’s probably scared.”

“
So?” said
Emmett.

“
So, you seem like a decent
guy to me. Help me find her.”

He snorted. “Decent guy? You
know that I was serving out a death sentence, right?”

“
That doesn’t mean you’re
not a decent guy,” I said. “I’ve done some things, things I had to
do, and they weren’t always easy, but just because I did them
doesn’t mean I’m an evil person, you know.”

“
Evil person?” He turned to
look at me, narrowing his eyebrows.

“
Yeah,” I said. “Sometimes
you got to do stuff, no matter what it is.”

“
What kind of stuff we
talking about here?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know.
You’re the one who was on death row. What’d you do? Kill
someone?”

His jaw twitched. He didn’t
meet my gaze.

“
Yeah, so
I
killed people,” I
said.

He raised his gaze to mine,
and his expression was hard. “Did you?”

“
If I had to, I did,” I
said. “Probably have to do it again. If I make it out of this, Rolf
sure as shit isn’t going to.”

Emmett nodded slowly.

“
All I’m saying is that I
think you’re a decent guy, okay?” I said. “And I don’t think you
want anything to happen to Christa either. I think you want to
protect her.”

He picked up the pace. “You
don’t know a thing about me.”

“
Well, you don’t know
anything about me either.”

“
And I don’t know anything
about the girl.”

“
She doesn’t deserve this,”
I said. “She got into this mess because of me. Rolf’s got her here
to punish me. She’s completely innocent. She isn’t like
us.”

He stopped, bracing himself
against a tree trunk. “God damn it.”

“
You’ll do it, won’t
you?”

He turned to me. “We need to
find something to eat, okay? We need protein. We’ll make a fire.
Maybe she sees it. That’s all I’m willing to commit to doing. Take
it or leave it.”

It was a better plan than I
had. “I’ll take it.” If it didn’t work, then I guessed I could part
ways with him.

* * *