This gets a light chuckle from the group. I met Sammy over a game of darts back in Crevice Valley, but it wasn’t until this mission that I truly came to know him. He’s good-natured, endlessly sarcastic, and has a quick-witted sense of humor that’s been a welcome distraction.
“We all know you’re cold, Sammy,” my father says sternly.
“I’m not just cold, I’m freezing,” he responds, wrestling a hat down farther over his pale hair. “And think of what this wind is doing to my face! How am I going to win over any girls when I have these windburned cheeks?” He pats them with his palms.
“The only girls you’ll be seeing for the foreseeable future are the three in our group. And they’re not interested.” Sammy raises his eyebrows as if he means to accept Owen’s words as a challenge, and my father adds, “Don’t get any ideas.”
“Let’s start moving,” Bo says. “Standing still only chills a person further.” His customary twitch surfaces—a forefinger tapping frantically against his mug of grits—and I decide he looks the coldest of us all. His aged frame appears thinner and paler with each day. He’s younger than Frank, in his early sixties, but the years he spent cramped in Taem’s prison weren’t kind to his body. Sometimes I’m amazed Bo’s made it this far without complications. I half expected him to turn back to Crevice Valley during the first few days of hiking. I’m pretty certain Blaine would have expected the same.
But of course Blaine isn’t here to confirm or deny the theory, and sometimes, his absence hurts worse than the cold. I always feel slightly lost without my brother, my twin. Next time I see him, he’d better be back to his old self. I miss the brother who could keep up with me while hunting, and run without getting winded. I even miss his disapproving, judgmental looks, although I’ll never tell him that.
September spreads out the coals and the team scatters to break down the rest of camp. We’ve all become so proficient at the process that in mere minutes, our bags are packed and we’re falling into a thin line.
I tell my feet to move, one in front of the next. Bree joins me, assuming her usual place at my side.
“Think it’s too late to turn back?” She says it like she’s joking, but I can see the seriousness on her face.
“What? Why would you say that?”
“The more I think about it, the more I worry we won’t find anything. I mean, the Order confirmed Group A extinct years ago. Maybe we saw what we wanted to in Frank’s control room.”
“No. There were people moving through those frames. We both saw it. Bo and Emma, too. We didn’t all see something that wasn’t there.”
She lets out a long exhale.
“And it was the most advanced of the test groups,” I add. “Even if we find it empty—which we won’t—we’re still going to see if there’s anything we can salvage. Ryder thinks—”
“It could make a good secondary base. I know. He yapped about it enough before we left. There’s just that small problem about it being without power.”
“And that’s why we’ve got Clipper. He’ll work his magic.”
She nudges me with her elbow. “When did you become so positive?”
“When I decided Sammy alone wasn’t enough.”
She grins at that and even though I know Emma is behind us, I throw an arm over Bree’s shoulder and pull her closer.
It’s late afternoon and we’re staring at a town that shouldn’t be nestled in the base of the valley before us, at least according to Clipper. He’s been using his maps and location device to steer us down the least populated routes. Sometimes we’ll cross an abandoned, deteriorating stretch of road, or spot a town so far away it looks like a minuscule set of children’s building blocks on the horizon; but this community, practically at our feet, is a first. Surprising, too, since we left the Capital Region a few days back and have since entered the Wastes, a giant stretch of mostly unpopulated land that Clipper claims will take close to two weeks to cross. At least it’s flatter. The mountain pass that filled the first week of our journey was so brutal I still have sore calves.
Owen pulls out a pair of binoculars. “No lights or movement that I can see. Deserted, probably.”
“Maybe we should hike around it,” Bo offers. “Just to be safe.”
People this far west are likely harmless—average civilians trying to make a life for themselves beyond Frank’s reach—but we’ve been extremely cautious about revealing our presence to anyone, especially since Ryder called about the captured Rebel.
I’m as surprised as anyone when my father stows the binoculars away and says, “We’re cutting through. The town’s abandoned, and we could all do well with a night inside four walls.”
I’m thinking about sleeping in comfort—being truly warm for once—when I spot the crows. There are dozens of them, circling over the buildings waiting ahead. I don’t like the way they hover, or how their shrill cries echo through the valley.
Owen pushes open the wooden gate that borders the community and waves Bree and me in first. We pass beneath a sign reading Town of Stonewall, weapons ready. The crows’ shadows glide across the snow as we walk up the main street.
The homes are in rickety condition, but not because they’ve been long abandoned. There are signs of life everywhere: an evergreen wreath on a door, hung in recent weeks given how lush it still is. A wheelbarrow on its side, as though it was dropped in a hurry. Clothing, strung up on a warmer day, now frozen and stiff, that creaks on a line.
Something crunches beneath my boot. I look down.
Fingers, hidden beneath a thin layer of snow.
Fingers that attach to a hand, an arm, a torso. I step back quickly. Then I spot another. Human remains slouched alongside a well just ahead. And suddenly, they are everywhere. Mounds I thought to be snowdrifts are bodies, rotting and festering and rigid in death.
Bree uses her rifle to roll over the one at my feet. Two hollow eye sockets stare back. When she speaks, it is nothing but a whisper.
“What happened here?”
TWO
MY FATHER MAKES A FEW swift gestures, ordering Xavier and Sammy down a side street, September and Bo down another. He nods at me and Bree to continue up the main one, and heads into the nearest building with the others to check interiors. We all know his order, even if he never said the exact words: Spread out. Look for survivors.
Somewhere in town a wind chime is clinking, singing an uneven melody as Bree and I move up the street. The road dead-ends before a whitewashed building, tall, with a cross on its peak. Its heavy wooden doors hang open. There’s a dog between them, copper in color, and on the brink of starvation, given his thin, wiry frame. He bares his teeth, a low guttural growl escaping him, and then runs inside. Bree and I glance at each other and dart after the dog, taking the stairs two at a time.
The inside of the building is composed of a single room, large and cavernous and shaped like a t. Snow has drifted up the aisle we stand in, which bisects rows of benches. The seats are burdened with the dead, heads resting on shoulders, hands clasped as they sleep eternally. Even in the intense cold, the air smells like spoiled meat.
“Gray?” Bree nudges her rifle toward a raised platform at the front of the room. I follow the motion and I see him.
A boy, tucking candles into a tattered bag. He is young. And scrawny. And dirtier than a wild animal, with dark skin, and hair that stands up in all directions.