“Hey,” I call out. “Are you okay?”
He jumps, twisting toward my voice. When his eyes find us, they linger on Bree’s weapon and he backs away slowly, until he’s leaning against the far wall. His dog stands before him, growling.
“What happened here?” I ask.
“Sickness,” the boy says, lip trembling. “One got sick. Then another, and another. They died.”
Bree lowers her rifle. “From what? What kind of sickness?”
“Don’t know. Mama said it came from the east—a city under a dome. She said they brought it here knowing we would die.”
Bree and I exchange worried glances. Not more than two months ago, we infiltrated Taem to track down a vaccine that would protect the Rebels against a virus engineered in Frank’s labs. We feared he’d capture one of our own and send him back infected, eliminating all the Rebels in the process.
“Who brought it here?” Bree asks. “The sickness?”
But the boy just sinks to the floor, hugging his dog around the neck. He’s so scared he’s shaking, or maybe he’s just cold.
Bree walks up the aisle, pausing in the center of the t. The dog growls, and she decides not to risk the stairs. “Come on,” she says, holding out a hand to the boy. “We can get you warm. Help you—”
“No!” he says. “They carried weapons, too. I don’t trust you!”
Bree looks at me for help, but I’m as confused as she is. She turns back to the boy, cautiously walks up half the stairs.
“Go away!” he shouts. “You’re like them. You’re just like them!” He keeps screaming like she’s attacking him, which causes the dog to lunge at Bree. She jumps back, barely avoiding a bite.
“Look, we’re offering to help you,” she snaps, sounding like she wants to do anything but.
“Can’t you see you’re scaring him?”
The voice startles all three of us. We twist, and find Emma standing in the building’s entrance.
“I’m not trying to scare him,” Bree says through her teeth.
“But you are.” Emma walks up the aisle, passing me and slowing only when she reaches the stairs. The dog growls a bit more adamantly now that there are two potential threats to his master. “Maybe only one of us should do this,” Emma says.
Bree rolls her eyes. “Fine.” She stalks over to me and mumbles, “This will be fun to watch.”
I don’t say anything because I already know that Emma will be successful in calming the boy. Emma’s voice sounds like a fresh snowfall, whereas Bree’s comes out like a slammed door. And Emma moves the way a deer might in an open field, cautious and smooth. I’m not sure she could startle someone if she tried.
Bree and I watch Emma climb the stairs and sit down an arm’s length from the boy, seemingly unaware that the dog is baring his teeth more than ever. She tosses her wool hat toward them.
“Take it,” she says to the boy. “Go on. You must be cold.”
He moves so quickly, I nearly miss it. A hand juts out, grabbing the hat. He wrestles it over his disobedient hair.
“I’m Emma. What’s your name?”
The boy blinks, eyes wide. “Aiden,” he says finally.
“How old are you, Aiden?”
“How old are you?”
Emma laughs, and a smile spreads briefly across the boy’s lips. “I’m eighteen. Just had a birthday last month.”
The boy counts on his fingers. “I’m eighteen minus ten.”
Emma compliments him on how smart he is and Bree crosses her arms. “Lucky,” she says to me. “I could have gotten him to talk if I’d had more time.”
“Sure you could have.” Bree shoots me a look and because I don’t feel like being punched in the shoulder, I add, “I couldn’t have done much better, you know. Emma’s good with people.”
“And we’re not?”
Bree’s eyes are narrowed and she looks like she wants to kick something.
“No. Definitely not.”
Ahead, Emma is offering a hand to Aiden. “We’re going to make a fire and cook some dinner. Would you like to eat with us? Get warm?”
He nods and slowly takes her hand. As soon as Aiden has chosen to trust Emma, his dog seems to trust her as well. Not fully, because he won’t stop growling, but he trots behind them as they walk up the aisle, his teeth no longer visible.
Aiden freezes a few paces from us. “I don’t like the one with the gun,” he says.
Bree snorts. “See? I was doomed from the start.”
Emma drops to her knees alongside the boy and takes both his hands in hers. “Aiden, I don’t know what happened to you here. And you don’t have to tell me—not unless you want to—but just know that not everyone carrying a gun is bad. Some people let the power of a weapon go to their heads and they do terrible things with it. We are not those people.”
Aiden nods, peering up at Bree and me. “What’s for dinner?”
“Meat of some sort,” I say, and my stomach growls at the thought of it.
“With potatoes?” he asks. “And fresh bread?”
“You’re dreaming, kid.”
We find the rest of the team in a building that looks like some sort of woodworking shop. It has a vaulted ceiling and a series of workstations lining the walls. They are covered in sawdust and half-finished projects. Carving knives and planes wait patiently, as if they suspect the carpenter simply stepped out for fresh air.
Someone has cleared out the center of the room, save for a few chairs and benches, and September has started a fire on the slate floor. She’s found a large pot from one of the abandoned houses, and based on the smell, several cans of chicken stock as well. The broth is boiling while a skewered chicken sizzles over the fire.
“Where did you find chicken?” I ask.
“There were a few still alive in a coop down the west side of town,” Xavier says, poking at the fire. His eyes fall on Aiden. “Where did you find a boy?”
“I didn’t think there were any survivors,” my father says, looking up from the maps he’s examining with Bo and Clipper.
“There aren’t,” Aiden answers. “It’s just me and Rusty.” The dog bounds forward, ecstatic.
“I told Aiden he was welcome to join us for dinner,” Emma explains.
My father frowns but says, “Of course.”
Not much later we are huddled around the fire, feeling warm for the first time in days and devouring chicken soup that tastes so delicious no one bothers with talking.
“They came three weeks ago tomorrow,” Aiden announces suddenly. “I’ve been carving lines on my bedpost to keep track of the days.”
My father pauses, a spoonful of soup halfway to his lips. “Who came?”
“Men. In black uniforms. They said they needed our water. I was upstairs in my bedroom when they arrived. Mama told me to stay there.”
Aiden looks at the door as though the black-suited men may be waiting there.
“The well is right outside our house,” he says finally. “I sometimes lean out my bedroom window and shoot pebbles into it with my slingshot. Sophie—she was my cousin—played, too.”
Was. The boy has already adjusted how he refers to people who just three weeks ago were alive.
“The men walked right up to our well and started hauling out the water,” Aiden continues. “Mr. Bennett, who worked at the blacksmith shop, came running and tried to stop them. He said bad words, a lot of them. The man in black said something about the country needing our water, and when Mr. Bennett didn’t stop yelling, the man took out his gun and then Mr. Bennett was dead.”
The room is so still the crackling fire sounds as loud as gunfire. Aiden starts shaking again, so Emma pulls him into her lap.