Читать книгу The Capture - Tom Isbell, Tom Isbell - Страница 13

THEY SHIVER THEIR WAY westward, sloshing through ankle-deep mud under leaden skies.

Hope’s mind is a million places at once, darting back and forth between Book and Cat and what they witnessed on the darkened road … and her own past.

Just seeing Dr. Gallingham brought it all back, and it’s as if the injections are happening all over again. Her body goes clammy, perspiration dots her forehead.

I’m not sick, she has to tell herself. I am not sick.

It feels like just yesterday that she and Faith were submerged in vats of ice, their body temperatures lowered some twenty degrees. It was a long forever before Hope recovered. Faith never did. Hope can still see her face, blue and lifeless, her unseeing eyes cutting into Hope’s soul.

The tears press against her eyes, but she’s damned if she’s going to give in to them. Live today, tears tomorrow, her father always said.

Her father.

Dr. Gallingham claimed they’d worked together, that her father had somehow been involved in those experiments. Known as the Butcher of the West. Ludicrous to even think about.

And yet the notion lingers. Something Hope needs to find out for herself. It’s one of the reasons she crawled under the fence and joined the others. A search for truth.

She is woken from her reverie when a herd of deer goes bounding past. Everyone looks up and watches them go, their white tails raised as they gallop away. It’s a beautiful sight.

Then a flock of birds flies past, the flap of their wings making ripples in the air. Hope begins to wonder. When a dozen chattering squirrels leap through the trees above, the wonder turns to alarm.

“Cool,” Flush says, admiring the nature parade.

But Hope knows animals don’t just run in herds—at full speed, in the same direction—for the fun of it. Something’s going on.

An instant later they hear a booming crash that shakes the ground beneath their feet. They stand there listening, afraid to speak. There’s another crash. The earth trembles.

“What is it?” Flush asks. His voice is barely a whisper.

“Whatever it is,” Twitch answers, “it’s coming from over there.” He points to the north.

The noises come regularly now: thunderous, splintering booms that rattle the ground. Hope clutches her spear and races forward, the others right behind her. They dart through the woods, ducking beneath branches, skipping over a carpet of dead leaves.

They come to a sudden stop when they spy the crown of a tree swaying forward and backward as though pushed by a violent wind. And then it comes crashing to the earth. Whoompf! They feel the vibration from where they stand. The throaty rumble radiates up their feet.

A moment later, another tree does the same, wobbling in one direction, then the other, before arcing through the air and slamming to the ground. Thwump!

What’s going on? Hope wonders, her body rigid with fear. How can a forest be collapsing on itself? What could be ripping trees from the earth?

All at once, they hear another sound: engines. But different than the Humvees from the other night: louder, gravelly, hulking. And now the biting smell of diesel.

Cat motions them forward, and at the top of a ridge they look down and see a sight they can’t quite believe: enormous bulldozers knocking down trees, clearing out a swath of forest, creating an ugly, barren scar in the middle of the wilderness.

On the sides of the vehicles is a symbol they know too well: three inverted triangles. The insignia of the Republic of the True America. And the drivers of the bulldozers are none other than Brown Shirts, clad in their customary black jackboots, dark pants, and brown shirts.

The Sisters and Less Thans watch, mesmerized. A building project—in the middle of nowhere! It makes no sense. As trees tumble to the ground and great shovelfuls of dirt are ripped from the earth, the Less Thans and Sisters can’t begin to understand it.

What are they building? And why here?

When they finally tear themselves away, Hope feels her heart hammering against her chest. She knew they’d run into soldiers—she just didn’t think it would be so soon. But it’s more than that. It’s the mystery of not knowing what they’re up to that disturbs her most.

“Come on,” Cat says. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

They march the rest of that afternoon and evening, sleep little, and march all the next day, trying to put as much distance as possible between them and the Brown Shirts. When they stop the following night, the few words they speak are colored by exhaustion and anxiety.

“Are we safe here?” Helen asks.

“Should be,” Hope answers. “That wasn’t a search party. It was a construction project.”

“For what?”

She shrugs.

“Whatever it is,” Twitch says, “they want it hidden.”

“Great job leading us to safety,” Dozer says to Book, magnifying an eye roll. A few others laugh in support.

They drift away and prepare for sleep, and Hope and Cat exchange a glance. Not tonight, her expression says.

As Hope lies down on a bed of weeds and pine needles, she remembers her conversation with Book—about what they intend to do after freeing the Less Thans. What she didn’t tell him was that, yes, she does have something in mind. In fact, it’s the other reason she didn’t stay in the Heartland. She has unfinished business—that she knows for certain.

Colonel Thorason. Chancellor Maddox. Dr. Gallingham.

The camp overseer. The ruler of the territory. The sadistic doctor.

She doesn’t care what order; she doesn’t care how it happens. But she will see to it that they pay for what they did to her sister.