“Like what?” Annie asks, sharply.
“I don’t know,” Elyse admits. “It might just be an animal. Sometimes I feel like I hear something running down the streets.” She looks to both of them, then swallows. “Something… galloping.”
Tasha sighs. “It’s probably just deer,” she says. “There are probably so many more animals in the city now that the people are all gone.”
Annie perks up at this. “If it’s a deer,” she says, “maybe one of us should try and catch it. We could use the meat.”
“No,” Tasha says. “No going out alone. It isn’t safe. We can go a little closer to the mountain in the morning and see if we find anything.” She tries to ignore the sudden light in Elyse’s face.
“And then what?” Annie says.
Tasha watches the ceiling. “Then we get ready to leave.”
19
Everything hurts. Dark shapes come into focus—a man, a woman, another man behind her. One has a gun at his hip; there’s another gun in the corner where the woman is sitting. Estajfan remembers humans shooting the animals in their forest, terrified deer trying to get up the mountainside. His abdomen aches at the memory. No, not a memory. They shot him.
He tries to flex his hands—they are stiff, and barely move. He’s lying on a floor that moves and jostles and bumps him—he recognizes the sound of wheels beneath him, that great whir and whine of machine.
The truck hits something on the road and his head bounces and hits the truck bed. He can’t help it; he whimpers in pain. The woman crouches close to him, a worn boot near his eye.
“Is it moving?” a man says.
“No,” another man grunts. “It’s the truck, you fool. It’s the goddamned fucking road. I told you we needed to keep cutting those fucking weeds.”
“We can’t fix all the roads,” the woman says. “There’s no one else left to do it, in case you haven’t noticed.”
The first voice sounds panicked. “It’s moving. I can see it.”
A hand on his head, suddenly, and the woman’s face dips into view. Brown eyes, a sharp, crooked nose. “You’ve been hurt. You’ve got nowhere to go, so don’t move. You hear me?”
“You’re talking like you think it’ll answer back.” The drawl again, coming closer. A man’s boots. “For all you know, it can’t even talk.”
“He can talk,” the woman says. She crouches on her heels and looks into his face again. “He understands everything we’re saying. You can see it in his eyes.”
“So it’s a he, now?” The man squats to stare at him, the rifle spread out across his knees. His muddy-green eyes remind Estajfan of the mountain centaurs; he has a tattoo of a cross on his left cheek. “Stop it, Moira. It doesn’t matter if it can hear us or not. It’s not going anywhere now, thanks to you.”
“I wasn’t going to let him bleed out,” she snaps. The man only shrugs.
“But—but what if there are others?” The third voice again, younger, almost a boy. “Darby—what are we going to do?”
“We’ll take this one wherever JJ wants to take it. Then we’ll see what happens.”
Take him where? Estajfan has lost track of how long he’s been in here. How long have they been driving? He can’t see outside but he can sense, from the way that the wheels jostle, that the humans are driving as fast as they can. It makes everyone nervous—he can feel it in the air.
Sure enough, there is a loud bang and they jolt to a stop. Everyone swears. There’s a pause, and then the back doors roll open. The man called Darby steps to the back of the truck and jumps down. Someone outside is talking, but Estajfan can’t make out the words.
“The engine blew,” the boy says. The panic in his voice hasn’t gone away. “The engine fucking blew.”
The woman stands and goes to the boy. She’s afraid too—they all are. Afraid of him, of the road, of themselves. “We’ll fix it. Darby and JJ will know what to do.”
“JJ works with bikes, Moira—that’s what he said! And it’s already halfway through the afternoon. By the time we fix this, it will be dark.”
“So we camp,” she says, wearily. “We all need some sleep anyway. The truck has broken down a hundred times, Brian. It’s not like we haven’t done this before.”
“But what if there are more of—them—outside?”
Moira shrugs. “Then I guess it’s good I saved this one, isn’t it? Maybe he’ll be able to vouch for us.”
She’s half joking, but as usual, Brian doesn’t get it. “How are we supposed to negotiate with these things? I mean, look at it. Him. Whatever.”
Moira is silent for so long that Estajfan thinks she isn’t going to respond. But then she bends toward him. “I’m looking,” she says. She’s talking to Brian but Estajfan feels the words go right through him. “I’m watching, Brian. There’s nothing you need to worry about, at least not right now.”
“Where did it come from, anyway?” Brian asks. “It didn’t just appear on the road. It came from somewhere.”
Moira shrugs, then locks eyes with Estajfan again. He hasn’t blinked—he can tell that has unnerved her a little.
“JJ said he knew where we could take it,” Brian says. “He didn’t say he knew where it came from.”
“Whatever. Go ask him.”
The boy jumps down from the truck and shuffles away. Estajfan hears voices at the side of the vehicle, though he can’t make out the words.
Moira walks away from him and slumps down against the wall, her arms resting on her knees. She stares at him. He blinks, slowly.
She saved his life, he thinks.
He flexes his fingers, and they move a little more.
A long time passes. Hours? Estajfan can’t be sure. The light fades, eventually. Every now and then someone swears or bangs the side of the vehicle.
Then Brian appears. “We’re spending the night,” he says to Moira. “JJ says to get that thing out of the truck.”
Moira rolls her eyes. “And how am I going to do that?”
“Not you,” the boy mumbles. “I just wanted to tell you what was happening.”
The other men jump into the truck. Together with Brian, they grab Estajfan by the legs and haul him toward the doors.
He can move more than his fingers now, but he stays limp as a fish.
“Jesus,” says JJ. “This thing is heavy.” As they tip Estajfan over the edge, his head thumps against the frame, hard. He fights to keep from grimacing in pain, but he can’t help it.
“Hey,” Moira says. “Did you see that?”
“See what?” JJ again.
“He hit his head,” Moira says. “And I think he winced.”
“So? Fucker’s tied. He’s not going anywhere.”
They drag Estajfan away from the vehicle. When they drop him, his head hits the ground again, but he doesn’t react. He’s staring straight at Moira, who looks away.
“Is the truck fixed?” she calls.
“It’s fixed, princess,” Darby drawls back. “But we’ll camp here for the night.”
“Since when do we stop because it’s dark?” Brian says.
“Since now,” JJ snaps. “I don’t want to have to fucking stop and fix the engine because we’re driving over God knows what in the night. What the hell kind of hurry are we in, anyway?”
Moira points to Estajfan. “We just play prison guard until the morning? Why didn’t we leave him in the truck for the night?”
“Sure,” Darby says, slowly. “You can be the one to open the door in the morning, Moira, and see if it’s broken free of the ropes and is ready to jump down and crush us all.”
“I meant keep him in there, with us,” she snaps. “No one’s sleeping outside.”