The Reaping (4 page)

“Terra, look at me.” His voice is soft but forceful. “Please.”

Something in his tone compels me, and I finally meet his eyes.

“It wasn’t your fault. What happened to Mary happened because there are horrible people on this earth. You are not one of those people. You brought hope back into so many lives. You’re just up here where you can’t see it. But when I was down in the colony, I saw it every day. I saw how happy they are. You did that.”

I close my eyes, and the tears stream down my cheeks. I try to keep the whimper in my throat, but it escapes and gurgles out.

“I don’t know what I can do to convince you. You are good, Terra. You can’t take responsibility for all the bad that happens.”

Something in his voice changes, and I open my eyes. His face is inches from mine, and though my sight is blurry from crying, I can still make out the green in his eyes. His brown hair is wild from sleep and running, and he has a faint sheen of sweat on his forehead. His lips turn down at the corners, and worry is written there and in the crease between his eyebrows.

Somehow, I’m able to put aside the pain and look just at him. With the earnestness in his eyes, I believe every word he says. In my brain, I know Jack is right. It’ll just take a little longer to convince my heart. Jack leans his forehead against mine.

I clutch his hands, sure that if I let go I’ll wake up from this dream and be back in the cabin, sleeping in the loft and wondering when I’ll run across another desperate band of nomads; surrounded by people but all alone. But Jack clutches me back just as hard, not even considering letting go. I’m thankful for that. He still understands me so well.

We stay that way for I don’t know how many minutes before I realize my fingers are going numb and I finally loosen my grip. As I turn around, I freeze, staring at the black box thirty feet in front of me.

A scanner is there—one that wasn’t there before.

“What is it?” Jack follows my gaze to the scanner box. “Does that one still work?”

Oh, it’s so much worse than that.
It’s brand new.

His arms drop to his sides. “You’re sure?”

I nod and take two steps forward. Jack grabs my wrist.

“Don’t go any closer. There’s something strange about that one.”

I pause, cocking my head to one side as I stare at the scanner. He’s right. Most functional scanners make a faint mechanical whirring sound. This one is quiet as a grave. Only the sun reflecting off the glass at its top offers some semblance of life.

What do you think?

“Let’s give it a wide berth.”

It seems silly to avoid a machine that reads trackers, seeing as neither of us has one. But still, we step in a wide circle around it. It isn’t until we’re ninety degrees from where we started that I look at it closely again and realize what’s been going on. Its glass head has been slowly pivoting to watch us. My gut clenches.

It knows we’re here.

Jack looks back at it and frowns. “Is it an automatic sweep? Or is it watching us?”

I crouch down and Jack falls beside me. As we hit the ground, I watch the head keep its steady rotation until it’s facing away from us.

Automatic.

Jack lets out a breath. “Okay. Hurry while it’s not looking.”

I don’t know if it scans for anything else besides a tracker, and I don’t want to stay around to find out. I jump up and lead the way through the woods. I follow a winding path between trees, hoping we’re well out of sight before its head swivels back our way.

“How far to the cabin?”

Not very.

A shallow creek cuts across our path and burbles down the gentle slope south of us. I hop across the rocks in the stream, being careful not to get my shoes wet. Then I notice another of the new scanners. I stop behind a tree.

“Another one?” Jack’s chest rises and falls, and he turns his head to peek out.

I nod.

“And we’re going straight ahead?”

I nod again.
About a mile.

“We’re almost there.”

My gut clenches when he says it.
Not coincidence.

“What isn’t?”

New scanners so close to the cabin.

His brow furrows. “Let’s get to the cabin before we decide that. The scanner is turning away. Get ready.”

And then he’s off running through the trees again, his long legs stretching into bounding strides. I follow him, ducking under low branches and hurtling over snaring vines. When we’ve gone a ways, he slows to let me pass him so I can lead the way to the cabin.

We’re almost there. We jog past the tree with the huge hole in its side, past the skinny tree with a ragged bird nest in the first fork, past the small clump of mushrooms I found last week. Only a minute more and we’ll be to the clearing and the cabin. The light has just begun to brighten and the trees thin when I screech to a halt. Jack almost runs into me I stopped so fast.

“What is it?” He puts his hands on his knees.

I point.

Three watchers stand guard over the clearing.

Chapter Three

“What is it?”

If you hadn’t been here before, it could be easy to miss them. Two are buried in the trees, the other is mounted on the eave of the roof so it’s tucked in shadow. But I know every tree and every shingle of the cabin.

Watchers.
I point them out.

“I’m assuming those weren’t here before, either.”

I can’t even move to shake my head. My clearing, my cabin, my
home
, and I don’t even dare take another step closer. I’m trembling all over, shaking so hard I can’t even think straight. I’m angry. Angry at the government for once again taking something that was mine, something they had no right to, something that they wouldn’t even have cared about except for the fact that I had been there.

Jack prods me with his elbow, and my legs shuffle into motion, taking me to the nearest tree. We slump down behind it.

“How long have you been gone?”

Six days
.

“If they knew for sure you lived here, they wouldn’t have put the watchers up. They would have just camped out and waited for you to come back. They’re still not sure. That’s in our favor.”

My head sinks into my hands. Jack the eternal optimist.
If you say so.

“We could take them down. We could disable them somehow.”

No. They’d be even more suspicious. I don’t want to prove them right. I was never here.

“So where do we go?”

I peer around the clearing. One watcher is trained on the cabin’s front door. The one on the roof watches the path we were about to follow to the cabin. The third is on a tree at the very edge of the clearing, watching the entire scene. But there isn’t a watcher watching the back of the cabin.

We get a few supplies.

Streams of light drift down through the leaves and reflect off the watcher’s lenses. The black eyes don’t move. They sit passively, lurking. We stay low and keep just beyond the clearing, following the edges until we’re behind the cabin. We stalk through the brush even though I’m sure the watcher can’t see us here. As soon as I’m behind the cabin and I can’t see a watcher’s lens any longer, I creep across the few feet of open space until I’m pressed up against the wood slats. I push on the window. It groans in protest and then swings open.

Jack glances up. “Unlocked? That’s not very safe.”

No one lives here, remember?

“Of course.”

I pull myself up, swing a leg through the window, and then drop to the cabin floor. The opposite window—the one by the door—is nothing but a thin pane of glass to keep us from the staring eyes of the watchers. The curtains hang in ragged strips on either side and the cameras can see right in. The glare of sunlight should be enough to keep them guessing for a few minutes what’s inside the cabin, but it won’t last for long. I keep to the floorboards and get a shirt covered in grime for my secrecy.

Jack looks around, but the cupboards are bare. “Where is everything?”

I point to the floor. I fold back a ratty rug and then pull up the floorboard that reveals the hiding space under the cabin. Jack has a look in his eyes—admiration, I think.

What?

“I admit I wondered how the government never realized you were here. But that’s smart.” He peers inside the hiding space. “You never stop surprising me, Terra.”

I blush and reach in and pull out some freeze-dried food packs and some foil pouches of water. Two blankets, a hatchet, another first-aid kit, and a mess kit. It should all fit in our packs. We are dividing up the supplies when I hear a mechanical whir. My fingers freeze over the food, and I convince my muscles to move enough to turn my head.

A watcher perches over the cupboards in the kitchen. The gleam in its lens and the faint hum tell me it’s focusing on us. How long until someone sees this feed?

Jack turns to me, sees me paralyzed over the food, and almost laughs until his eyes settle on my face. Then he follows my gaze to the small black box that hangs over us like a guillotine.

Without even speaking, we burst into action, stuffing supplies into our packs—forget carefully selecting what we need and arranging it properly—and flying out the front door in full view of the watchers. I thread my arms through the straps as my legs churn into a sprint. The food cans at the bottom of my pack thud against my back until I fasten the waist strap.

“How long?”

I can’t see Jack; I’m too focused on making my way between the trees before us. I don’t know what he’s asking. So I make a sound that I hope he understands as,
What?

“How long before someone sees what the watcher saw and soldiers come?”

I risk a glance back, seeing my beloved cabin—my home for the past six months—disappear behind garlands of leaves. My throat burns and my breath comes thickly, and the crash of my legs through the forest rips through my mind. I can never have a home. It’s always being taken away as if it’s something I’m just not meant to have. I push myself faster and I’m sweating now as the hazy afternoon light turns violet and the color in the trees washes to gray. What had I been expecting? That Jack and I could have grown old in that cabin together? The thought is laughable now because in an instant everything has changed. I’m running too fast, but the adrenaline and anger racing through me fuel my speed and I can’t bring myself to slow down.

As my feet pound and my heart pounds, my mind begins to clear and I’m able to think about the past few days, my brain finding details it had been too busy to notice. I think about the moments leading up to Jack’s return. I think about what the talker told me before the sub came. My heart clenches.

“Slow down!” Jack calls, and I realize his voice is too far away. I pull up.

A few moments later, Jack stumbles to a stop and puts his hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath.

“Where are we going?”

If he had asked me a minute ago, I wouldn’t have been able to tell him.

Salt Lake City.

He blinks. “Why?”

The words of the talker solidify in my mind. Why didn’t I hear him before?

Nell and Red.

My hand is suspended over Jack’s. Can I trust the words of that kid? Surely there are dozens, maybe hundreds, of people like Nell and Red on the Burn, but the way he described them—there’s no one else it could be. The odds are stacked against me, but I’m sure. I don’t know why, but something tells me it’s them. And they need us.

Jack clings to my hand. “How do you know they’re there?”

No time.
I’ve already pulled away from him. I turn south and start walking.

“Tell me, Terra. How do you know?”

I sigh and hitch up my pack, holding the straps as we walk. It takes a while, but I tell him about the last sub rendezvous.

“You think he was talking about Nell and Red?”

I nod, squinting into the coming darkness, ready for Jack to tell me it’s a wild goose chase.

“Then we’ll go.”

I glance at him, and his jaw is set resolutely and his gaze focuses straight ahead. My hand slips from the strap of my pack and finds his. He looks at me out the corner of his eyes, and with that momentary gaze, I can see he trusts me implicitly.

“But why Salt Lake City?”

I laugh, and the bitterness in it echoes through the trees.
Remember the movie at the camp? The hospital.

“Yes.” Jack’s voice hesitates over the word.

They test loyalty serum.

The concern on Jack’s face vanishes, and the usually gentle features harden. “Then we need to hurry. If Nell and Red are there, who knows what they’ve gone through.”

I lengthen my stride into a lope and skirt around a thick bramble of vines.