But that’s not the worst part.
It’s his body.
He’s covered, from his neck down to his bare arms and legs, in boils. They ooze green. One of them pops on his neck, and Sketch backs away, disgusted.
“What the hell’s wrong with you?” she asks.
The boy struggles under Meadow’s grasp, but she’s too strong for him. “Let me up. Do it, ’fore Scout comes for ya.”
“He’s just a kid, Meadow,” I say. A kid covered in some nasty stuff that I don’t want her touching. “Let him up.”
He wears a green cuff on his wrist, scuffed and scratched. The screen has a number 37 on it. There is no Catalogue Number on his head. He stares at us like we are the aliens, but he’s the one who looks like he came from another world.
“If you run, I’ll catch you,” Meadow says to him. He nods, whimpering. “Now just tell me where everyone else is, and I won’t hurt you.”
“Okay.” The kid nods. “Just let me go, please.”
Meadow sets him free.
He leaps to his feet. He tries to take the knife back from Sketch, but she lifts it too high.
“You’ll pay for this,” the kid says.
Then he does the one thing he shouldn’t have.
He turns and sprints into the trees.
Meadow laughs under her breath. “That’s exactly what I hoped he would do. Come on.”
She takes the knife from Sketch, then sprints after him, silent as a predator as she follows his trail.
CHAPTER 77
MEADOW
The boy runs fast, dodging in and out of trees with an animal-like swiftness.
He is well practiced at this, and he knows this land.
But I was trained by my father. Trained to run faster, harder, than anyone in the Shallows. With my strength back, I can make my father proud and be the fighter he always pushed me to be. I don’t know how much time I have left. I want to make every single second count.
I stay far enough away that the boy has the illusion of safety. Because I want him to lead me to his home. As I run, I can see things that don’t seem right. A splash of blood on a tree trunk. A crumpled bundle lying in a pile of sticks and leaves. A broken shell of an Initiative Cam. I scoop up a curved, sharp piece, tuck it into my belt loop to use as another weapon.
Behind me, I can hear Zephyr and Sketch calling my name, begging me to stop. They’ll catch up soon enough.
The boy leaps, cutting across a river that runs through the forest, the same one I saw from my vantage point in the tree. My throat is dry, and everything in me begs for me to stop and drink from it. But I have to keep going. Keep following.
Soon a massive rock formation comes into view, like a small version of the giant mountains outside the Ridge. It is circular, almost like a Perimeter of its own.
I duck behind a fat tree, slide close to the trunk so the boy can’t see me.
When I peer back out, I see him smile. He thinks he’s lost me. A boil on his face pops, dripping a horrible, purplish-black liquid, and my stomach lurches. He drops to hands and knees and sweeps aside a curtain of tangled vines, then disappears into a small opening in the rock wall.
Zephyr comes up behind me. “Meadow!” he yells, but I whirl, put my hand over his mouth to silence him, slam him up against the tree.
“Just like old times,” he whispers, grinning.
“Would you just shut up?” I sigh, then point at the top of the rock formation. Smoke trails into the air. It isn’t black, a sign that at least, hopefully, they aren’t cannibals like on the Outside.
With smoke comes the promise of people.
Food.
Answers. So far, we have been the only ones with Catalogue Numbers. Which means that the only others in here with them will be my family. The citizens of the Ridge will remember if they’ve seen them.
“Ladies first,” Sketch whispers, as she comes up behind us. She nudges Zephyr in the back. “That would be you, Zero.”
“I swear to the stars, Sketch . . .” he says, but I hold up a hand to cut him off.
“Go.”
He sighs, then steps into the clearing, drops to hands and knees, and disappears through the vines and into the rocks.
CHAPTER 78
ZEPHYR
I duck into the opening.
The space is way too small for me, so I have to turn sideways to slide through.
And then I get stuck.
I can’t see what’s happening on the inside of the rock fortress, but Sketch is coming up behind me.
“Go, Zero,” she whispers. She nudges me.
“Hang on,” I hiss. “I’m stuck!”
And I don’t want to go any farther. Because there are voices coming from inside the rocks. Lots of them.
“Stop being such a whiny ChumHead,” Sketch says. And then she shoves me, hard.
I fall forward, my face scraping against the rocks. And land right on the edge of a crowd of people. They turn to look at me, at least twenty of them.
Their eyes go first to my wrist. See the red of my cuff, the C on the screen.
Theirs are all green, with numbers.
And something tells me that’s not good.
CHAPTER 79
MEADOW
Zephyr has fallen right into the entrance of a camp.
It’s a large circular clearing, surrounded entirely by tall boulders. A fire blazes in the center, people surrounding it, and all of their eyes are on us.
Zephyr stands up, scurries to my side.
“Way to go, skitzface,” Sketch mutters.
Overhead, at the tops of the boulders, the forest starts back up again and the trees are linked together by sharp hooked wires that make a tall fence.
It is a good home, a solid place to stay.
But the people who own it look like savages, like an army of the living dead.
My eyes fall on a young boy by the fire. He has what almost looks like an extra arm sticking out of his side. The others are just as bad.
I see a woman across the bonfire, her face strangely swollen and covered in a mask of angry red boils. An older man lying on the ground close to the fire, one of his arms with thick, rippling muscles, the other arm limp and atrophied.
The General was right about the Ridge.
The people here are mutated. Destroyed.
Horrific, like they have stepped out of a nightmare, come to life. As soon as we can, I will send the signal to him, the one we talked about in whispers, when everyone was asleep, the night before we left to come here.
I take a few steps backward into Sketch.
The people here all wear green cuffs. They look at ours.
Red.
Out of place here.
“That’s them!” the boy shouts, the one I followed. “Caught ’em right by the entrance. Told you they’d follow me.”
When they see us, our faces fresh and clean, our Catalogue Numbers on our foreheads, our clothing unworn, they stare hungrily.
Hatred is a tangible thing, and when I face a predator, I can sense it.
But these people don’t look like predators, or fighters. They look weak, and broken.
And starving.
“Who are you?” I ask.
“Reds, huh?” A man rises from the crowd. “Welcome to the Rock.”