The Wanted (3 page)

JOSEPH

I hadn’t moved since I told them what had happened to Rosa. My back was against a tree, my body tense and rough. I pictured her blinking her beautiful eyes open to the white light, cold and stark over her bare skin. A lonely light. It would drive in the realization that I abandoned her. It would tell her—in certainty—that I wasn’t coming back. I could feel her devastation. I could hear the empty sound of the glass moving away from her body. Exposing her, leaving her to fight without my help.
I should be there.

My sighs lacked breath.

After a few pats on the shoulders and small bursts of tears, everyone had started to busy themselves. Move around me. But I was waiting for something, though I didn’t know what. When they did look up from the ground, from their packs, which they were mindlessly rearranging, it was too much. Their eyes were red. Wet. Angry. I banged the back of my head against the trunk harder than I should and watched the sky, clouds tearing open to reveal the stars. My tears had stopped but the raw, empty feeling was only beginning. I wanted to wish for something, anything. A different outcome, a way through, but there was nothing. Just the bruises on my back and the blood on my hands.

Rash was missing, my fault as well. After Pelo pulled him off me, Rash shoved him too and ran deeper into the forest. They were sending someone to get him. I would have volunteered, but he didn’t want to see me.

I wish I had the option of escaping myself like he had.

A shirt landed in my lap. “Put this on, you must be freezing, man,” Desh said, attempting to sound light and failing.

“I’m not cold.”
I’m as cold as stone, but I can’t feel it because I’m not here. I wonder if I’m dying inside?

“Please, Joe, you’ll get sick,” he said quietly. If I were myself, I would have told him people didn’t get sick from being mildly cold. Cold was a state, not a sickness. But I was a man I couldn’t recognize, so I sighed and pulled the shirt over my head.

Desh held a cup in front of my face. “Here. Drink.”

I shook my head but took it. I knew he wouldn’t leave me alone until I drank, so I took a sip. It tasted like blood and bitterness, stinging all the way down to my empty stomach.

“It’s just water. Why the face?” Desh’s head leaned to one side as he blinked at me, confused.

A man I hadn’t learned the name of yet threw a metal flask at me. It landed in the dirt, the word ‘courage’ etched into the silver metal.

“Maybe he needs something a little stronger.”

I picked it up and smelled the contents. It was pungent, like sterilizing fluid mixed with honey. I replaced the cap without sampling it, holding it in my fist. Desh yanked it from my hand and threw it back to the man.

“That’s the last thing he needs right now!” The thick eyebrows skimming the mustard-colored beanie the man wore rose slightly, then he shrugged and put it in his pocket, patting it like an old friend.

I stared at my friend, kneeling in the dirt with concern plastered all over his face. It was hard to handle. I didn’t want him taking care of me. I didn’t deserve it. I planted my hands in the grass and eased myself up, looking left and right, but there was no direction I wanted to go other than the one I wasn’t allowed to go in, so I collapsed back down.

How would I get a grip on this?
I was a father too. I had to be better, for Orry. I owed her that at least.

“The handhelds,” I whispered. Desh didn’t know what I was talking about. I rolled my eyes and searched for Matt, finding him stacking packs against a tree. As I approached, he stopped, still bent over.

“Where are they? Where’s…” Patiently, he waited for me to finish. Her name felt like a gravelly lump in my throat. “Where’s Rosa’s handheld?”

Matt’s face fell as he stood up straight. “We hid them, past where the wolf carcasses were hanging, where we’d arranged with you. You didn’t retrieve them?”

I stood very close to him now. “Does it look like I did?” I growled, my palms open and empty.

Matt put his hands on his hips and took a breath. “Right.” I thought he was going to tell me I couldn’t go back, but his kind eyes relaxed. “We better run then.”

Desh stumbled across the campsite towards us. “I’ll come with you,” he said breathlessly.

I shook my head. “You’ll slow me down.”

He looked deserted. Scared. She would feel deserted. Scared. I closed my eyes and tried to shut out the windmill of emotions that kept turning in front of my face, never giving me a chance to catch up.

There was no guarantee, but I said it anyway. “I’ll be back soon.” We emptied our packs and put a single water bottle in each.

“We won’t wait for you if you’re late,” Gus warned. He tapped his watch.

We nodded.

We wound through the black trunks of the trees, sprinting as though we were being chased. My muscles burned, but it was a welcome distraction.

Matt kept up easily, running next to me. He didn’t try to talk. I got the sense no one knew what to say to me anyway. It was just the sound of our feet hitting wet ground and our own breathing.

I tried to pretend we were rushing back to the compound to rescue her. But I knew that was why Matt was next to me, his concerned eyes glancing sideways in my direction. He wouldn’t let me do it. After what I’d done, they’d kill me before I reached her, but part of me just couldn’t care. We ran in the direction of the hanging wolves, giving the compound a wide berth. They might be looking for us, although given the chaos I left them with, maybe not.

We got closer and our shoulders collided as we slowed to a jog, our attention elsewhere. To our right, the glow of a compound that would normally be sleeping slowed our pace. Sirens howled. A yellow haze of artificial light hung in the sky.

Matt stopped and put his hand on my shoulder, panting. “I’m not sure this is safe. They must be on high alert searching for you.”

Between breaths, I said, “No. The place is in chaos. I think we probably have a good shot of going unnoticed tonight.”

Matt was just a shadow in front of the glow and the trees. “Chaos? What do you mean?”

The words didn’t want to come out my mouth. If I spoke them, it made them true. It released some of what was inside, and I wasn’t sure I was ready.

“We need to keep moving,” I said, taking a step forward and trying to ignore him.

He caught my shirt and pulled me back. “Joseph. What happened in there?”

Just say it.
I killed Superior Este. I killed all of them.

“Superior Este is dead,” I said.

Coward.

Matt’s hands fell to his sides. Even as a shadow, his body language was clear. Shock. “How?” he asked, his voice high with disbelief.

I shrugged, unwilling to admit it to anyone.

Matt ran a hand through his hair. “Was it Rosa? Is that why they have her?”

I didn’t answer. Which was as bad as saying yes. What was wrong with me? I was letting the girl who saved my life take the blame for my actions.

“Oh no,” he said. “I think we should leave.”

We were so close now. I could hear the red dot on that screen screaming for me. I needed it. Orry
needed
me.

“You can leave if you want. I have to find her handheld,” I whispered tersely. I picked up the pace, pulling away from the glow, from my crimes that felt like they were written in the sky. I needed to know where Orry was. He was my home now.

Matt lagged for a few seconds but caught up with me. We jogged silently, one ear out to the compound, ready to sprint away if we heard soldiers coming.

Cold air cleaned my lungs. I concentrated on the pain in my side and the burn of needing oxygen to feed my working muscles. If I could focus on the mechanics, maybe I could forget the unnatural tearing my heart was doing. Matt puffed beside me. Then he stopped breathing and moving. His hand shot out and pulled me down to the ground with a sudden jerk.

“Look,” he said mutedly, pointing his shadow of an arm. Twenty meters in front of us, torchlight crossed like swords in battle.

Loud voices whined through the dark. “This doesn’t seem important. Este’s dead for God’s sake!” a woman complained, throwing her hands in the air in exasperation.

“Mmhmm. Superior Grant wants everything back the way it was.”

Two women were tying the wolf coats back on to a newly raised line.

“Ugh! Who cares about this, though?”

“Maybe
they
will.”

“Who?”

The woman paused and teetered on her ladder. “The murderers.”

My throat closed, memories of loud shots and falling bodies clamping around me.

Murderer.

I gulped and tried to push it down, hide from it, until I could get out of there.

Matt signaled to me, pointing to a pile of rocks at the foot of the tree the wire line was tied to. My head rolled to the sky. Of course it would be there.

The women were still yapping as I crept closer, keeping my body low to the ground. One stood with the torch in her mouth, her hand clamped over the dried-up paw of one of the creatures. She put an iron peg in it and climbed down her stepladder. As she dragged it along the ground, I stole as close to the tree as I could. When they started talking again, I reached into the pile of rocks to find the handheld. My hand searched for something smooth and plastic and found nothing.

I turned back to Matt several meters behind me. He put his hands up as if to say,
I don’t know
. Desperately, my mind started to hope that maybe she had managed to get here first. I withdrew my hand carefully. It was shaking from fear and hope meshed together. The rocks tumbled, the noise seeming louder than a landslide, and the women stopped talking.
Shit!

I picked up a stone and threw it across the gap in the trees where they stood, just as the handheld nudged my other hand, which was still braced against the pile. The stone hit a turbine, sending a gong-like sound up the tube, and the women turned in its direction. I grabbed the handheld and retreated slowly. Equally crushed and relieved at the same time… more crushed.

We crept backwards for at least another twenty meters, painfully slow, our knees squishing in the mud and leaves. Once we were sure they weren’t coming for us, we turned and ran back to the camp.