Silas (15 page)

Emmett was gathering sticks together,
putting them in a small pile with dry leaves.

“
Aren’t you going to want
bigger wood to make a fire?” I asked him.

He glowered at me. “You
don’t know a thing about building fires, do you?”

I shrugged. “I, uh, lit a
charcoal grill a few times.”

“
Let me guess,” he said.
“You used the charcoal that lights up right when you touch it with
the flame?”

“
I don’t know,” I
said.

He went back to his task,
rolling his eyes. “Listen, you can’t start a fire with big logs.
You need to get the flames going with some smaller stuff first.
Otherwise, you just smother the flame.”

“
Oh,” I said. Huh. I never
knew that.

“
Why don’t you go scavenge
for some though, huh?”

“
Okay.”

He showed me about how big
he wanted the pieces of wood to be, and I went off looking for
them. It wasn’t too difficult to find them. There were a good
number of fallen down trees close by. However, it would have been
easier, I have to admit, if I’d had something like a saw or an ax.
As it was, I had to bring things back in big pieces.

When I had a nice pile, I
stopped to watch Emmett. “You going to rub two sticks together?” I
said.

“
No,” he said.

“
Make sparks with flint? Use
eyeglasses?”

He pulled a lighter out of
his pocket. “Figured I’d use this.”

“
You have a
lighter.”

“
Yeah,” he said. “They gave
them to us when they locked us up in that cellar. Gave us
cigarettes too. Of course, they’re all gone now. Smoked them
all.”

I sat down next to his pile
of sticks and leaves. “They didn’t give me a lighter.”

He just shrugged.

“
Well, what are you waiting
for?” I said.

“
I’m not going to start the
fire yet,” he said. “That would be a complete waste of resources.
No, we’re going to use this fire for two purposes. First, we’re
going to cook something to eat. Then, we’re going to make it smoky,
and try to signal your girl. But the whole time the fire’s going,
we’re vulnerable, you understand that? Because the hunters can see
us too.”

My stomach growled. “Eat?
We’re going to eat?”

“
Yeah,” he said.

“
What are we going to
eat?”

“
We have to kill something,”
he said. “Obviously.”

“
Oh,” I said, looking
around. “How?”

* * *

Emmett held up a rock to
show me. It had a jagged, sharp edge.
“You
need one like this.”

I knelt down, searching. We
were a few feet away from the place where we’d made our fire. There
were more rocks here—flat ones in heaps beneath the undergrowth. I
sifted through them, looking for one like the one that he’d shown
me.

“
Like this?” I picked one up
and offered it to him.

He scrutinized it. “That’ll
work.” He gestured to the long, thin tree saplings that he’d
instructed me to pull up out of the ground. “We’re going to use
these to make spears.”

I looked at the saplings. Really? How
did he propose we do that?

“
First we’ve got to strip
the branches off of it, get it down to one long, smooth piece of
wood,” he told me. “Then we use these rocks to whittle away at the
end, sharpening it into a point.”

Oh. Okay. Maybe it would
work. It wasn’t going to be quick or easy, that was for
sure.

We set to work.

It was easy enough to strip the
branches from the tree. When I had trouble, the sharp rock worked
almost like a saw, helping me remove everything. Emmett worked at
his too. We were silent and efficient, both going as quickly as we
could.

It wasn’t difficult, but it
was time consuming. It took quite a bit of time to get the branches
off.

Then we had to work on sharpening the
ends of the spears. That was a bit tougher. Emmett showed me how to
use my rock like a knife to whittle away at the wood.

After some time, we finally
both had spears with lethally sharp tips.

But now came the real work. We had to
kill something.

* * *

Emmett decided fish would be easiest.
There was a small stream trickling through the woods, and he
thought it must have some fish in it.

For hours, the two of us
balanced on rocks jutting out of the stream, each holding our
makeshift spears up, hovering over the water, waiting for the fish
to swim by.

I knew about water
refraction, so I rolled my eyes when Emmett tried to explain it to
me. Yes I knew that I should stab lower than where I actually saw
the fish, because the water was tricking my eyes to see it in the
wrong place.

What I didn’t realize,
though, until after a few failed attempts, was that fish were
slippery as hell, even if you were aiming in the right place. They
darted through the water, easily evading our strikes.

Not to mention the fact that
they didn’t come by that often. We were there for a long time. The
sun moved halfway across the sky. My neck got sore from staring
down at the water.

And all the time, we both
knew that Rolf and his hunters were out there somewhere. They could
be watching us, and we’d never know it. A shot could burst through
the air and take either one of us down. I’d get back up.

Well, probably, anyway.

Who knew when Rolf would get sick of
killing me, and decide it was better if I stayed dead.

I figured the first thing
he’d try, if he knew that the regular ways of killing me didn’t
work, was to cut off my head. And that would do me in, all right. I
couldn’t survive that.

Every noise made us twitch in fear.
Every stirring could be the only signal we had to our last
moments.

But after all of that, I was the one
who stabbed a fish.

Me.

It was a lucky strike,
honestly. I didn’t do anything differently than I had the last
seven times I’d tried, but, for some reason, this time it worked. I
nabbed it.

I crowed in triumph, lifting my speared
fish up for Emmett to see.

He laughed. “All right,
Silas. You got it.”

I grinned, feeling proud of
myself.

He raised his eyebrows. “I
bet you have no idea how to clean and gut that thing, do
you?”

* * *

The fish
didn
’t taste good, not exactly. We didn’t
have any seasonings. We managed to cook it over the fire, but we
didn’t have anything else to go with it.

It mostly tasted…
hot.

And fishy.

I didn’t care. I was so
hungry. I hadn’t filled my stomach with anything since I’d thrown
up all the berries.

It wasn’t enough either. I
could have eaten three fish all by myself, I was so hungry.
Instead, Emmett and I had to share one between us.

After we were done eating, the sun
started to sink low in the sky.

Emmett started stomping on the fire,
putting it out.

“
Hey,” I said. “I thought we
were going to use that fire to signal Christa.”

He shook his head. “It’s too
dark. At night, that fire is like a beacon. It’ll draw the hunters
straight to us. We’ll have to try again tomorrow when it’s light
outside.”

“
Tomorrow?” I said. “But
that’s another whole night she’s got to spend out there
alone.”

“
Sorry,” he said. “Too
dangerous any other way.” He stomped the fire completely out. “Come
on, let’s go.”

“
Go?” I said.

“
We can’t stay near the
fire,” he said. “If the hunters are coming for us, then they’ll
come right to this spot. We’ve got to get away, so that they can’t
find us.”

I hated this. I had to find Christa,
and I felt like I was getting farther and farther away from her
every minute.

“
Look,” said Emmett, “I
don’t mean to be an ass, but she might not even be alive
anymore.”

“
She’s alive,” I said. “Rolf
told me that he wants me to watch her die. He’ll keep her alive
long enough to make sure that happens.”

“
Rolf?”

“
That’s the guy who
organizes all of this,” I said.

“
So you know him? He’s got
some personal reason for going after you?”

“
Yeah,” I said.

He started into the woods,
motioning with his head. “You can tell me about it while we
walk.”

I heaved a huge sigh, looking at the
remains of the fire, debating whether I wanted to go with Emmett or
not.

He was my best chance of
staying alive and getting help, I decided. And that was the best
way I knew to help Christa.

I started to walk too.

“
You first, remember?” he
said.

Right. I got in front, doing my best
not to make an incredible amount of noise as we walked through the
underbrush.

A gun shot splintered the
air.

I froze, looking up. Was it
close?

Next to me, Emmett hadn’t
moved either. He was also staring at the sky.

Then there was a noise. The sound of
something crashing through the woods.

“
Move,” said
Emmett.

I started forward.

“
Quieter!” he
whispered.

But before I took another
step, Christa burst through the woods and hurled herself into my
arms. “Silas!”

“
Christa?” I couldn’t
believe she was here. I hugged her tightly, relief pouring through
me. “You’re okay?”

“
We saw your fire.” Her
voice was muffled because her face was pressed into my chest. “We
came in this direction, but they saw us.”

Another gun shot.

“
We?” I said.

Milo appeared behind
Christa, pushing through the leaves and branches. “They’re right
behind us.”

“
Fucking excellent,” growled
Emmett.

There was one more
shot.

Milo screamed. His arm exploded in red
gore just above the elbow.

“
Shut up,” said
Emmett.

Milo grabbed onto his arm.

Emmett hit the forest floor.
“On the ground, all of you. Don’t move. Don’t talk.”

I got down, pulling Christa with
me.

We lay on our sides in the
foliage, face to face. We were still holding onto each
other.

More gun shots. A volley of
them.
Bang bang bang!

She felt incredibly small
and fragile pressed against me, like a baby bird or something. I
had the feeling that I might move the wrong way and accidentally
crush her.

She gazed at me with wide, frightened
eyes.

I tightened my grip on her, wondering
if that was reassuring, if that helped her at all.

I was just as afraid as she
was.

Close by, Milo’s breathing
sounded labored. He was having trouble not making noise. He was
probably in a lot of pain.

I knew what it felt like to
get shot like that, but I couldn’t fully fathom how he was doing,
because my body went to work healing me right away. I only felt the
excruciating agony at first. Afterward, it faded pretty
quick.

More gun shots, exploding just above
our heads.

Christa squeezed her eyes shut. She
started to tremble, shaking in my arms.

I felt helpless. There was
nothing I could do to make it better for her. And all I wanted was
for her to be safe. I wished like hell there was some way to get
her out of this. She shouldn’t be here.

I rubbed her back, slow, barely
perceptible motions, trying to sooth her.

And then something really
embarrassing and horrible happened.

I got an erection.

Like out of nowhere, it just popped
up.

Christa’s eyes snapped
open.

I cringed. I guess she could
feel it. I tried to shift away from her, keep it from… poking
her.

It was so fucked up. I swear
to god, the last thing on my mind at that moment was sex. I was
thinking about getting away safely, about not getting shot, about
not letting Christa get shot, about staying still and
quiet.

It wasn’t my fault. It was
just that my body was stupid. Apparently, it interpreted trembling
girl in my arms as a universal sign that I was about to get lucky
and prepared accordingly.

Stupid, stupid body.

A shot cracked again—this
time even closer. You’d think that would encourage my moronic dick
to lay back down and go to sleep, but it seemed
oblivious.

“
Sorry,” I said in a very
low, barely audible voice.