Читать книгу The Release - Tom Isbell, Tom Isbell - Страница 12

WE LEFT THE NEXT morning.

There were those who disagreed with our decision, but Hope was right. We had to get out of there.

“That wasn’t a wolf attack last night,” Hope said as we were tying up the last of the packs. “It was a scouting mission. That thing was here to let the rest of the pack know what it’d seen.”

It was crazy what she was saying. Ridiculous, even. But I knew that she was right. Like her, I had seen the attack on Skeleton Ridge.

That didn’t mean we were ready to leave. For all the reasons Flush had voiced earlier, we weren’t even remotely prepared for this. But the alternative was worse.

The LT who’d been pounced on by the wolf died during the night, as much from shock as from the attack itself. With no shovels and little time, we topped the grave with rocks to prevent the wolves from unearthing the corpse.

“What’s the point?” Sunshine mocked. “If those wolves want him, they’ll get him. Nothing we can do to stop ’em.”

“The rocks’ll stop them,” I replied.

“The rocks’ll slow ’em down.” Then he added, “Probably better for us if the wolves did get him. That way they won’t come chasing after us.”

No one bothered to respond, and Sunshine ran a hand through his greasy hair. It was so blond it was practically white, and when he laughed, his cheeks turned bright red. He looked like a demented elf. Although he was one of the emaciated ones we’d rescued from Liberty, you wouldn’t know it now. He was brash to the point of cocky. People put up with him because he was a fellow Less Than … and because he was good with a slingshot. We had a feeling we’d need every fighter we could get.

When we finished creating the burial mound, a number of us stood awkwardly around the grave while I recited a poem.

No man is an island,

Entire of itself,

Every man is a piece of the continent,

A part of the main.

A little John Donne to feed our souls—not that anyone had the faintest idea what the poem was or who wrote it.

Our number was down to seventy-four.

After placing our few belongings in the middle of tarps and bundling them into Yukon packs, we squinted into the morning sun.

“Let’s get out of here,” Cat said, impatient to get going.

“Which direction?” Flush asked.

“Where else? East to the river.” It’s how we’d gotten here, and it was how we’d get out.

Cat took the lead, finding an opening in the ring of fire’s dying flames, and everyone else followed. We carried supplies and dragged the two wounded on triangular stretchers through the calf-high snow.

I was the last to leave. I turned and took a final look at Libertyville, at what had once been Camp Liberty. I hoped to never lay eyes on this part of the Western Federation Territory again.