Читать книгу The Capture - Tom Isbell, Tom Isbell - Страница 16

I HAD NO APPETITE. Even though the Sisters carved lances from driftwood and caught a dozen brown trout feeding in the shallows, I couldn’t eat. How could I put food in my stomach as long as Cat was gone? And just when I thought I was okay with my decision to leave him behind, Hope had to bring it back up.

Thanks a lot.

I sat by the fire’s edge, my eyes trained on the swirling smoke. Maybe it was silly of me to be so paranoid, but I couldn’t help it. It was impossible not to notice how the others regarded me. My decision to “abandon” Cat brought scorn from my fellow Less Thans, raised eyebrows from the Sisters, suspicion from everyone. I could just imagine what they were thinking: Book was jealous of Cat, so he decided to leave him behind.

And it was true: I was jealous of Cat. I saw how he and Hope looked at each other. I’d even caught them red-handed, sneaking off in the woods together.

Which hurt even more because Cat was my friend. We’d confided in each other. Told each other things we hadn’t shared with anyone. My suicide attempt. The fact that Major Karsten—the most ruthless officer at Camp Liberty—was his dad. Secrets.

There was no way I’d leave him back there out of jealousy.

Was there?

Whatever my reasoning, the stark reality was that things would never be the same. We could maybe return to Camp Liberty and free those Less Thans—maybe—but we’d miss Cat’s skills, his insights, his smarts. Him.

I remembered what he’d been telling me at the campfire that night, that not everyone was committed. What more was he trying to let me know?

I’d seen someone tiptoeing away from camp the night of the ambush. Was that same someone secretly helping out the Brown Shirts?

A million stars exploded in the sky as I marched to the other campfire, the one surrounded by Dozer, Red, Angela, and Lacey. Once the four of them caught sight of me, they cut off their conversation and eyed me in silence.

I held out some leftover trout to them.

“We don’t need your pity,” Dozer said, turning his back to me.

“I’m just offering some food, that’s all.”

“Yeah, well, we don’t need it.”

He threw a log into the fire. A flurry of embers exploded into the black.

I looked at the other three. One by one they met my gaze … and then found reasons to look away. Lacey studied her feet. Angela ran her fingers through her stringy blond hair. Red picked at the dirt beneath his fingernails with the tip of his knife.

This was going to be more difficult than I’d imagined.

Dozer’s head swiveled back around. “You still here?” he asked.

“I just thought maybe we should talk.”

“Now? After you made the decision to leave Cat back there, now you wanna talk?”

“About those Brown Shirts,” I said. “How do you think they were able to ambush us?”

That got everyone’s attention.

“How should I know, Limp?” Dozer said, and even in the dark I could see his eyes were blazing. “They found us and opened fire. End of story.”

“But how’d they find us?”

“What do you mean how? We saw them earlier, we saw their bulldozers. They probably just followed us.”

“Those were construction workers. It was soldiers who ambushed us.”

Dozer’s hand fell to his knife, and I could see the white of his knuckles as he squeezed the handle. “What’re you saying, Limp? That one of us squealed?”

I took a deep breath; I didn’t want to make a bad situation worse. “I’m saying it seems awfully coincidental they just happened to show up when they did. Like maybe they got help or something.”

Dozer hauled himself to his feet and took a step forward. Angela and Lacey also rose, bookending him on either side.

“If you’re accusing someone of something, why don’t you just come out and say it instead of pussyfooting around? Unless that’s what you are. Pussyfoot.”

The two Sisters laughed maliciously.

“No, I’m just saying—”

“And I’m just saying: why don’t you speak your mind? Pussyfoot.”

“Skip it,” I said, my legs suddenly rubber. If I’d thought I could get Dozer to admit to being a traitor, I was sadly mistaken. I turned and walked away, half expecting to feel the point of his dagger somewhere between my shoulder blades.

“Hey!” Dozer yelled after me. “Next time you start accusing people, make sure you have some evidence to back you up.”

Even as I strode farther and farther away, their spiteful laughter rang out in the night air.

A sharp kick to the ribs jolted me awake. I opened my eyes to find Dozer holding a torch. He was flanked by his posse of three.

“Some of us have been talking,” he said. The pain in my ribs was nothing compared to the sudden knot in my stomach.

“Yeah?” I asked, rolling to a sitting position, hands pressed to my side.

“We wouldn’t be in this situation if you hadn’t convinced us to cross back from the other territory.”

“I didn’t convince you. I made the decision to come back; the rest of you followed.”

A hiss of contempt escaped his mouth. He shook his head and spat into the coals. A glob of frothy white phlegm dribbled down a log. A number of Sisters sat up, wanting to know what was going on.

“And it goes without saying that we don’t like what you did to Cat back there. So my tribe here doesn’t exactly trust you, and I can’t say I blame them.”

I wondered how much of his “tribe” had come up with that opinion and how much they had been convinced by Dozer himself. The three torch-carrying tribe members had all the makings of a vigilante mob. All that was missing were the pitchforks.

“So what’re you saying?” I asked.

“Someone sold us out to the Brown Shirts. I’m not accusing you necessarily, but someone let ’em know where we were.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Dozer was saying exactly what I’d told him hours earlier. It reminded me of a line from a lawyer movie we’d seen back at camp—Inherit the Wind. Accuse the accuser. A classic legal ploy.

“So what do you want, Dozer?”

Dozer’s response was immediate. “The tribe thinks I should be the new leader.”

I don’t know why his statement surprised me. Maybe because it made no real sense. Why would we want a leader who made it a point to bad-mouth everyone and everything? Who had made a nuisance of himself whenever given the chance?

“Fine,” I said. Truth was, I had no great desire to be the leader, and it was irrelevant to me who got us to Camp Liberty to free those Less Thans—just as long as we did it.

Dozer tried to hide his surprise. It was obvious he expected a fight. “It’s not my decision,” he said, trying to sound humble. “It’s the others.”

“I understand.”

“They trust me.”

“Okay.”

“They know I’ll be a good leader.”

The only response I could have made would have been sarcastic, so I kept my mouth shut. When it was clear I wasn’t going to say anything else, Dozer raised his torch high in the air like he was summoning the gods above.

“Listen up,” he shouted, so that all could hear. “I’m leading this group from now on. I’m in charge. But I won’t be telling you what to do. My hope is that we can make decisions as a group.”

He shot me a meaningful look, as if to say Cat would still be here if we’d followed that policy before. Although I didn’t expect anyone to challenge Dozer and his lackeys, I hoped someone would speak up on my behalf. But no one said a word. Not a single person. Not Flush. Not Twitch.

Not Hope.

I lay back down to sleep, knowing no nightmare could be worse than this reality. Dozer began to walk away.

“Just remember,” I muttered beneath my breath. “‘Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.’”

Dozer stopped in his tracks. “What’s that?” he snapped.

Me and my Shakespeare. I regretted speaking as soon as the words left my mouth. “Nothing.”

He lowered the torch until the heat licked my cheeks. “No, what’d you just say?”

“Nothing.”

There was an almost gleeful expression on Dozer’s face as he looked to his friends. “He said something. You heard him: he said something.” Angela and Lacey nodded like a couple of puppets.

Dozer returned his stare to me. “What’d you say?”

“Nothing,” I repeated, angry that I’d fallen into Dozer’s trap.

“We can’t have that, Book. The worst thing we can have is insurrection.”

“Insurrection? You’ve been talking trash for weeks. You’ve been openly mocking my decisions ever since we left Camp Liberty. You freaked out in the Brown Forest and nearly killed Four Fingers. And you’re accusing me of insurrection?”

“That’s it!” he barked. “I have no choice but to place you under house arrest.”

I thought for a second he was joking. “What’re you talking about?”

Dozer turned to Red. “Take his knife away.”

Before I knew it, Red walked to my side and ripped my knife from its sheath—all because I’d quoted a line from Henry IV.

I appealed silently to the others. Red. Flush. Hope. All averted their eyes, not wishing to meet my stare. Only Argos bristled, emitting a low growl in the back of his throat. Angela and Lacey reached for their daggers.

“No, boy,” I said. I knew if he went after Dozer, they’d knife him in a second and fry him up for breakfast. Argos sat, the growl still vibrating his neck.

Dozer smiled that hyena grin of his and then turned to the others. “If anyone dares arm this Less Than, we’ll have no choice but to consider it an act of treason, and they’ll face similar consequences.” He sounded like some medieval king meting out punishment to a peasant. “Now everyone back to sleep. We’re moving out tomorrow.”

“Which way are we going?” I asked, careful not to add O powerful leader at the end of the sentence.

“Due south,” he answered.

“South?” I wasn’t sure I’d heard correctly. “We’re already way too south as it is, and Camp Liberty is to the northwest.”

“And we’re heading south.”

“Then how can we save the Less Thans?”

“We’re not saving any Less Thans. We’re saving ourselves.”

Dozer was daring me—or anyone—to contradict him. No one did.

As he and his minions disappeared into the black, I was consumed by a gnawing anger. Not just that we were abandoning the Less Thans, but that not one person had uttered a peep in my defense. Fine—if they wanted Dozer to be their leader, they could have him.

I’d get to Camp Liberty on my own. I was damned if I was going to let some power-hungry, lie-spewing, sour-breathed, barrel-chested bully stop me. Even if no one else believed in me, I still did.

One way or the other, I was going to make this happen.