He shook off my grip. “Get out of here.”
“But that’s a person!”
“That’s a grupped-up man-eater.”
I looked past him at the limp tiger-man. Fine orange fur striped with black covered his chest and arms. His face, though upside down, seemed tigery too. My nerves jerked taut. He wasn’t unconscious like I’d thought — he was watching me through slitted eyes. “How do you know he’s a man-eater?” I asked.
“He’s infected with tiger,” Rafe said as if that were proof enough. Lifting the crowbar, he prepared to swing again. “Adios, cat chow.”
“But what if you’re wrong?” I darted between him and the upside-down man. “What if he hasn’t done anything?”
“There will be one less feral in the world, which is fine with me.”
“You’re the feral!” I shoved him so hard that he stumbled back, tripped over a chunk of asphalt, and hit the ground. “You can’t murder someone because he’s sick. Sick people have rights. They have families who love them and aren’t ready to lose them just because you’re scared of a virus.”
Rafe didn’t answer. In fact, he didn’t move at all.
I bolted forward, dropping to my knees, and touched his face. He was out cold! But he’d landed on a patch of prairie grass.
I slipped my hand under his neck to feel the ground, and went numb. A jagged rock jutted out of the dirt right under Rafe’s head. “Oh no, no, no, no …” What had I done? I rolled him onto his side and touched his hair. “I’m sorry.” At least there was no blood.
What was happening to me? He was the second boy I’d knocked out today.
Something squeaked and I twisted to see the tiger-man swinging back and forth in the air, turning his body into a pendulum, even though the movement had to be making the wire cut deeper into his ankles. He was reaching for the steel post on the right, claws extended from his fingertips.
He was going to escape from the snare!
Just because I didn’t want Rafe murdering him in cold blood didn’t mean I wanted to be here when the tiger-man got loose. Would he come after Rafe for trying to kill him? I shook Rafe’s shoulder. “Wake up,” I whispered in his ear. “We’ve got to get out of here.” I slapped his gorgeous face, too softly at first, and then harder. That’s for cutting my arm, I thought. He moaned but didn’t wake. I lifted his limp arm and dragged him across the gravel and weeds to the bush at the edge of the median strip.
I stepped back to catch my breath and saw the tiger-man swing toward the steel post again and snag it this time. He then pulled himself up the pole, hand over hand, until he could reach the crossbar. Hooking his knees over the bar like a trapeze artist, he swung himself up to sit on it. Without his body weight pulling the snare tight, he was able to loosen the wire and slip it over his feet.
Was that my cue to run? No. I couldn’t just leave Rafe lying here, not when it was my fault that he was unconscious. I hurried back to the road for the crowbar, but then hesitated to pick it up. Would the tiger-man see me as a threat and feel compelled to attack? My mind ran in circles, which meant I froze — exactly what my self-defense instructor had said never to do. Great. Now I had her voice in my head, telling me to get out of my head, and I still wasn’t moving.
The tiger-man flipped backward off the highway sign’s crossbar and landed on his feet. Right — cat.
Despite being upright, he seemed unsteady. Blood streamed from his wide, flat nose into the black scruff that framed his face like a beard. He had the slightest deformation of his upper lip, like the split lip of a cat. All I could do was gape as he pulled a handkerchief from a pocket of his pants and wiped the blood from his face. His bare feet made no sound as he padded through the weeds toward me, staring with auburn eyes as if unable to believe I was real. The feeling was mutual, though my disbelief made me shiver. He seemed more curious than menacing … which didn’t mean he wouldn’t kill me. My cat, Gulliver, would bat a cricket around for twenty minutes before making his final pounce. Cats liked to play with their food.
Whatever the tiger-man was planning, I couldn’t tear my eyes from him. He was a fairy-tale creature come to life. Rings glinted on his fingers and diamonds sparkled in his ears. He was heavily muscled, with pale orange skin and luxuriant fur covering his chest and arms. The pictures I’d seen in Dr. Solis’s office had made it seem like the Ferae virus deformed its victims, but this man’s appearance was more alluring than horrifying.
“Your kindness astounds me.”
He could talk! My stomach flipped over in excitement, but then the truth hit me. I was standing face-to-face with an infected person. People woke up screaming just from dreaming about this. I edged back and brought in a slow breath. “Are you, um, okay?”
“I will be, because of you.”
His voice was low and rumbling and his pronunciation odd, maybe because of the curving split in his upper lip. Or maybe because his ivory fangs — top and bottom — were so long and thick they didn’t fit neatly into his mouth. Still, I was conversing with a tiger-man. When had I taken a hard left out of reality and into a bedtime story?
The man cleared his throat. “I am Chorda,” he said formally. “And I can’t thank you enough.”
He seemed to have forgotten about Rafe, which was a good thing. I was also relieved that he didn’t extend his hand, because chances were I couldn’t have gotten myself to shake it. “I’m Lane.”
Chorda’s gaze lingered on my face and then skimmed down me. “You’re not from here,” he said, as if trying to work out the puzzle that was me. “No one here is so … human.”
Rafe had said he was 100 percent human. So were the little girl at the gate and the wounded man, so there were humans living in the Feral Zone. “You mean humane?”
“Yes, humane.” His coppery eyes glowed as if he’d just come across a beautiful stone. “No one here has such a humane heart.”
“I’m from the West.”
He chuffed in surprise. “Someone pushed you out of a plane? I don’t believe it.”
A laugh rose in my throat, but I stifled it. “No, I’m not a criminal.” Well, at least I hadn’t been until I snuck across the quarantine line.
“Then what are you doing here, Lane, risking your humanity?”
That sounded so much worse than just risking my health.
Suddenly Chorda’s eyes narrowed and his lips pulled back. He was looking past me. I turned to see Rafe striding out from behind the bush with the shotgun in his hand.
When I turned back, Chorda was streaking across the road, heading for the trees beyond, faster than I’d ever seen anybody move. Rafe took aim, cursed, and then sprinted after him. I decided I had better not be there when he returned. He being the human.
I ran back to the median strip, dashed through the overgrown brush, breaking spiderwebs with my face, and snatched up my messenger bag. When branches crashed to my right, I choked back my scream and sprinted onto the other side of the highway.
Farther up the road, Rafe pushed through the trees, carrying the pack and still gripping the gun. Spotting me, he dropped his pack and rushed toward me. I took off for the river. My only hope was to swim back to Arsenal Island.
With my heart hammering in my ears, I didn’t hear the water until I was right on top of it. I skittered to a stop at the edge of the bluff — too high for diving and too sheer to climb down. I thought Rafe must be right behind me by now, but when I whipped around, I didn’t see him anywhere. He wasn’t in the clearing in either direction. I scanned the tree line along the median strip — nothing. The sky was empty and blue with the start of the day. Where could he have gone?