Silas (16 page)

She didn’t hear me. “What?”
she whispered.

“
Shut up,” said
Emmett.

I shifted again, moving my hard-on away
from her body.

We lay there quietly, not
moving.

Minutes passed.

It was silent except for the
noise of insect in the distance.

Then a voice, not too far
away. “Look. Here’s their fire. Still hot.”

“
Yeah, they probably just
put it out. Can’t be too far off.”

I tensed. Should we move
now?

“
Let’s let them
run.”

“
Really?”

“
There’s only four of them
left at this point. We could find them now and blow them all away,
but—”

“
But then the fun would be
over.’

“
Exactly.”

“
All right, let’s head back
for some cold beers.”

The sounds of footsteps through the
underbrush.

Still, we didn’t move.
Didn’t speak.

Maybe they were bluffing. Maybe they
were trying to draw us out.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

“
Is that a cave?” said Milo.
His voice was strained and agonized.

I was leading the four of us as we
walked in the stream (to avoid leaving a trail) in the general
direction of the power lines. We were looking for some place to
take cover for the night.

“
Where?” I said, looking
back at him.

He pointed using his good
arm. “Right there.”

I squinted. “I don’t know.
Maybe.”

“
Looks like a cave to me,”
said Christa.

“
Can we stop there?” said
Milo.

We all looked at Emmett.

Emmett sighed. “Why you
looking at me?”

“
You’re the man with the
plan,” I said.

“
Cave’s fine with me,” he
said.

“
Oh, thank god,” said Milo,
heading for it.

I started to follow him, but Christa
caught me by the elbow.

I turned to her.
“Yeah?”

“
I want to talk to you,” she
said.

Emmett pushed past us.
“We’ll be in the cave while you two have a moment
alone.”

“
Thanks,” I said.

We waited until they were
gone.

Then I raised my eyebrows at
Christa questioningly. “What’s up?”

She twirled a strand of her
hair around her finger. “They both think we’re
together.”

“
I know,” I said. “I figure
it’s better. Keep them from messing with you, you know, if they
think you’re taken.” A thought occurred to me. “Hey, Milo
didn’t—”

“
No,” she said. “No one’s
tried anything. Except you.”

I blushed, looking at my
feet. “Look, uh, I’m sorry about earlier. I didn’t, you know, do
that on purpose.”

“
You were dry humping me on
accident?”

“
I wasn’t dry humping you,”
I said. “I didn’t do anything like that.”

She raised her eyebrows. She
didn’t believe me.

Suddenly, I was irrationally
angry with her. “I got an unfortunate, unexpected erection. It’s
not my fault. It’s your fault. Your body is all soft and squirmy
and sexy or whatever.”

She made a face.
“Squirmy?”

I dragged a hand over my
face. “Look, I’m sorry. I really don’t know why that happened.
Sometimes, you know, it just does that. I really can’t control
it.”

“
So, you’re saying that
you’re not going to try to get in my pants, then?”

“
Christa, we’re running for
our lives,” I said. “That’s the last thing I’m thinking
about.”

She stepped closer to me.
“Bullshit. You got hard for me because you want me.”

“
No,” I said. “I’m trying to
explain that it was a biological response that I had no control
over.”

She tossed her hair over her
shoulder. “You’re annoyed. When we were in that parking lot, you
were going to take me home, and you missed out on it.”

“
No,” I said. God, she was
making me flustered. “To be honest, I was kind of freaked out about
the way you were acting in the bar. Because, you know, you were all
hands-off before, and then out of nowhere, you wanted to get it on,
and that was really confusing.”

She took another step closer
to me. She trailed fingers over my chest. “What do you think,
Silas,” she whispered, “you want me to take the pressure off for
you?” Her fingers stopped at the waist of my pants.

“
What?” I was feeling
flustered. “No. Why would you say that?”

She fingered my zipper. Her
voice was breathy and seductive. “I could get down on my knees
right here and put you in my mouth and suck your big,
hard—”

“
Stop.” I moved her hand
away. I squeezed my eyes shut. Okay, so I was now hard again, but
it was a very confusing erection. Because the last thing I wanted
was to get a blow job in the woods while being chased by crazy men
with guns.

Right?

She was acting weird. That
was a weird way for her to act. Wasn’t it?

Her hand darted back to my
crotch, squeezing me. “You
do
want me.”

I snatched her wrist and
yanked it up in front of her face. I stared at her hand. “What are
you doing?”

“
You want me. Admit it.” She
gave me a knowing smile.

“
Maybe,” I said. “Maybe,
yeah, but not… now. Not here. This is… You are being so weird right
now.”

“
Silas,” called Emmett’s
voice. “You guys done making out? I need a hand with trying to wrap
up Milo’s arm.”

I let go of her. I pointed
at her. “Can you stop being weird, please?”

I stalked off.

* * *

“
Don’t lie to me,” said
Milo. “It’s probably going to get infected, isn’t it?”

We were inside the cave. It
was completely dark outside, and we all sat inside the dankness of
the stone opening. I had to admit that it was warmer in here than
it had been last night exposed to the elements.

“
I dressed it as best I
could,” said Emmett.

“
We washed it in the
stream,” said Christa.

“
There’s no way to know
what’s going to happen,” I said.

“
If it were you, you’d be
healed up already,” said Milo.

I could hear a body shifting, as if
Emmett was turning to face me. But it was too dark to make out
features in this darkness. He might as well not have
bothered.

“
Why is it that you heal so
easily?” said Emmett. “And how is that you know this Rolf, the one
who’s doing this to us?”

“
Long story,” I
said.

“
I’m in too much pain to
sleep,” said Milo. “And I’m going to die one way or another, I
think. So, I got time. Tell me.”

I considered telling them to
fuck off. I didn’t owe them a story about my past. But there wasn’t
any reason to keep it in. Not really. And Christa should
know.

I took a deep breath. “Well,
Rolf buys a lot of his weapons from an arms corporation called
Dewhurst-McFarland. They make the guns he’s using to hunt us down.
But Dewhurst-McFarland does more than make guns. They also have
projects that they’re working on, innovative things that they can
sell. They created a serum, and it was to make supersoldiers. It
made it so a person healed really quickly, so that he couldn’t die
as easily as everyone else. They figured an army of men like that
would be unstoppable.

“
But,” I continued, “they
couldn’t find anyone who was interested in buying the product, so
they stopped working on it. Except that some of the people who
worked for Dewhurst-McFarland thought that they could find
lucrative ways to make the serum work for them. They started
injecting it in people—mostly terminal patients who everyone had
given up on. They called themselves Operation Wraith, and they used
their new supersoldiers as assassins for hire. I was one of
those.”

“
So, you met Rolf because he
was a client of Dewhurst-McFarland?” said Milo.

“
Yes,” I said. It was a
little more complicated than that, but I didn’t want to get into
it. “He’s very rich and very entitled, and he sort of thinks of
himself as above the law. Personally, I think he’s
crazy.”

“
But he wants to kill you
for some kind of personal reasons?” said Emmett.

“
Yeah, he kind of hates
me.”

“
Tell them why, Silas,”
Christa spoke up. “Tell them why you and I are here.” I could hear
the disgust in her voice.

I didn’t say
anything.

“
Well?” said Milo. “What did
you do that pissed him off?”

I still didn’t say
anything.

“
He slept with his wife,”
said Christa. “He’s a big freaking slut, and now I’m going to die
because of that.”

“
You’re not going to die,” I
said. “I’m not going to let him—”

“
You can’t stop him,” said
Christa. “You don’t have any reason to think you can.”

“
I can,” I said. “I
will.”

Milo snorted. “She’s right,
you know. He’s got us running scared. The only reason we’re not
dead yet is luck.”

“
I’ll find a way to stop
him,” I said. I had to do that. There was no way I was letting
Christa get hurt.

“
We need to get to the power
lines,” said Emmett. “That’s our way out.”

“
I don’t know,” said Milo.
“I think if there was any way out of here, he’d have done something
to make sure that we couldn’t find it or use it. He seems to have
this all planned out pretty good.”

“
Maybe not,” said Emmett.
“He’s a real General Zaroff all right, but he can’t have thought of
everything.”

“
Who’s General Zaroff?” I
said.

“
From ‘The Most Dangerous
Game,’” said Christa.

“
What’s that?” said
Milo.

“
It’s a story about this
hunter who gets shipwrecked on an island where this crazy man
lives. He hunts humans for sport,” she said.

“
Yeah, the literary irony
isn’t lost on me,” said Emmett. “But you know what happened to
Zaroff at the end of that story? He got fed to a pack of dogs.
Silas is right. We can’t give up hope. We have to believe we can
find a way out of this.”

I did believe it. I wasn’t
going to stop believing it until I made it happen.

Milo laughed loudly and
bitterly. “That’s fine for you guys. I’m the one with a shot in my
damned arm. I’m the one who’s going to die.”

“
Don’t say that,” said
Christa.

“
Guess you’re right,
though,” said Milo. “Rolf is crazy. If he’s hunting you and your
girlfriend down to get revenge, he’s over the deep end.”

“
But that’s why he picked
people like you and me,” said Emmett. “He picked us because we were
already going to die.”

“
I don’t even think he sees
it as wrong,” I said. “I think he figures that you were going to
die anyway, so why not use you for his amusement?”

Emmett laughed a little. “It
does make a certain kind of sense. You could almost make the
argument that it’s moral.”

“
No way,” said
Christa.

“
Morals are a funny thing,”
said Emmett. “People do bad things. They deserve punishment. Lots
of people think that. What Rolf’s doing here is a variation on that
theme. Even his revenge against you, Silas.”

“
You’re defending him?” said
Milo.

“
I’m not,” said Emmett. “But
I used to be in the military, and I know that people twist things
around to try to make sure they feel their actions are moral. If
you think hard enough, you can excuse anything.”

“
Oh bullshit,” said Milo.
“Things are either right or they’re wrong. It’s not all confusing
like that.”

“
Really?” said Emmett. “And
what about you, Milo? What about what you did to get sentenced to
death? Were you wrong?”

“
Hell, I was wrongfully
convicted,” said Milo.

Emmett’s laugh was caustic.
“What’s the point in lying about it now?”

“
Who says I’m lying? You
don’t know. I could be telling the truth.”

Emmett didn’t say
anything.

“
Are you innocent?” said
Christa. “Really?”

Milo cleared his throat.
“Nah. I guess not. I didn’t mean to kill nobody, you know. But I
did rob that store with a loaded gun, and I shot that guy. I didn’t
really think before I did it. But I guess he’s still
dead.”

“
Oh,” said Christa in a tiny
voice.

“
Hey,” said Milo, “I would
never hurt you, though. Didn’t I keep you safe those two days we
were together?”