Wanderers (10 page)

“That's fine,” Joseph said. He seemed frightened by the boy's attention. “Never mind.” Then he disappeared behind the tarp.

Lewt settled again into the shade of his vehicle. “You a good friend to that boy, pretty.
Esther,
I mean,” he said hastily when he saw the flash of anger in her eyes. “You wanted to save him embarrassment. Or worse. That speaks good of you.” He paused, then lowered his voice. “I bet you a good friend to your partner, too.”

His tone was suggestive. Esther ignored it and kept her eyes ahead, although her cheeks flushed. He continued speaking, keeping his voice soft and low so no one else could hear.

“I could use a friend like you. All three of us could. I think maybe you got enough friendship in you to go around.”

Again, Esther said nothing but threw her weight behind the wagon, pushing it onward. “Hey . . . everything okay?” Skar called from the front.

“I'm fine,” Esther replied, her throat tight. To her relief, they had passed Rafe's wagon by now and within moments pulled even farther ahead. Yet she imagined she could feel Lewt's gaze, boring into her from behind.

Esther managed to avoid Lewt for the rest of the day. By the time the sun began to drop in the sky, she saw that he was on his bicycle and riding in front of the caravan with Rafe. Without drawing attention to herself, she fell back so she was well out of his view.

“Getting late,” commented Rafe. He had bicycled a great deal that day and had the sore legs to prove it. The caravan was approaching an exit and he raised his arm, ready to pull everyone over for the night. But Lewt shook his head.

“We're near that shortcut I mentioned,” he said. “Why don't we get a start on it before we break? It's a lot more protected than we are here.”

Rafe hesitated, then agreed. By now, he had no idea where they were; there was no choice but to trust Lewt.

Time, he knew, was of the essence. Lewt and his boys, especially Quell, ate a shocking amount. They winked at the food restrictions and helped themselves to seconds, especially when Caleb wasn't around. Rafe was aware of this, yet felt helpless to enforce the rules; he needed Lewt's directions too much. As a result, even with strict rationing for the rest of them, their stores of food and water were dangerously low and getting lower.

Taking any shortcut that would trim a day or two off their journey would be well worth it, Rafe decided. So he dropped his hand and let the caravan continue. It wasn't until the sun brushed the horizon that they finally reached the exit Lewt spoke of.

“That way,” Lewt said, indicating an off-ramp.

The caravan swung its way up the ramp and around a wide circle, where it joined with a smaller road. By now, Joseph had peeked his head from the tarp again.

“Where are we headed?” he asked.

“They say it's a shortcut,” Esther replied. She too was wary.

The caravan now found itself on a narrow, two-lane road that cut its way through a darkening forest. No one spoke; everyone was too exhausted, and it was a difficult path to navigate, badly damaged by earthquake and deeply pitted and split. Still, they continued.

Skar caught up with Esther. “Why aren't we stopping for the night?” she asked in a low voice. Esther shook her head. She didn't know, either. But up ahead, Lewt was waving everyone on, pointing them toward a turn in the road.

“There's a place to rest up ahead,” he called. His voice was faint but it carried well in the windless dusk. “We just about there.”

Esther saw that the road they turned onto was no more than a street, narrow and heavily wooded on both sides. Next to her, Skar stumbled on a fallen branch and Esther grabbed her by the arm to keep her from falling. Lewt ordered them to take one turn, then another.

Eventually, they all came to a stop. They couldn't help it; there was simply no way to proceed.

They faced an immovable barrier, a wall of a fallen bridge, which blocked any forward motion. On either side, they were hemmed in by the forest and its dense undergrowth. The travelers were crushed together, wagons overlapping, bicycles pushed into others. There was general confusion as people milled around, looking to Lewt for an explanation. But he had disappeared from his position at the head of the caravan. Esther looked for Caleb but couldn't find him in the squall of others, in the growing darkness.

“Look,” someone said, pointing.

Several townspeople turned. They saw something too bizarre to comprehend.

Lewt, Tahlik, and Quell stood at the back of the group, straddling their bicycles at the open mouth of the road. The smallest held a loaded and cocked hunting slingshot at eye level. The largest carried a retractable steel club, which he tapped against an open palm. And Lewt gripped the strangest object of all, an item made of wood and steel, with a long, narrow muzzle.

“If you do what we say, no one gets hurt,” Lewt said. His attempts at charm were over; his voice was cold and businesslike. “Pass up any weapons you got.”

The crowd murmured as, one by one, they began to understand what was happening. They had walked willingly into a literal enclosure, boxed in on all sides; there was no way to escape.

Asha turned to Eli. “What's going on?” she asked in a plaintive voice. “What're my friends doing?”

“Never mind,” he said, his voice dead.

Tahlik had lit a torch, which he held high. Now he moved among the townspeople, collecting items that he handed off to Quell. More than a few resisted. One of them, a sixteen-year-old boy, exchanged sharp words with Tahlik and shoved him. As Tahlik staggered backward, Quell stepped forward with surprising speed and hit the boy, hard, on the skull. As he sank to his knees, two others jumped on the giant and took hold of his arms, as another attempted to seize his club.

In one swift movement, Lewt raised the weapon to his eye and fired. The explosion stunned everyone, who reeled backward in terror. As an unfamiliar acrid smell filled the air, someone screamed. The boy who had tried to take Quell's weapon lay on his side, his legs jerking. The gaping wound in his chest pulsated black as his life bled out of him.

“Now do as you're told!” Lewt yelled. “I ain't playing!”

After that, everyone handed over their weapons: slingshots, knives, clubs. Skar was the last to relinquish her bow and arrow. Yet even as Quell yanked them from her hands, she spat on the ground at his feet.

“Now hand over whatever food and water you got, too,” Lewt said. Silas was already slipping a bottle out of the water wagon and attempting to conceal it in his robes. But without turning around, Lewt seemed to understand what was happening.

“If you don't put that back,” he said, “you ain't gonna have a mouth to drink it with.”

Silas froze. Then he returned what he had lifted. Around him, the townspeople were already unloading their supplies, passing along the remaining water hand over hand, as well as bags of flour, beans, salt, and sugar. As they loaded everything into a single wagon, Quell moved along the line, supervising. Tahlik and Lewt stayed a few feet away, keeping an eye on the others with their weapons cocked.

“Please . . . don't leave us with nothing!” It was Rhea, her voice rising shrill above the silence. But no one answered her plea.

After a final check of the remaining wagons, Lewt seemed satisfied that there was nothing left to take. Turning to Quell, he handed him his rifle.

“Keep an eye on them,” Lewt said. Then he nodded to Caleb, Rafe, and Eli. “You three. Drive this and two extra bicycles to the main road and wait for us. And if you try anything, you'll regret it.”

None of them moved until Quell pointed his weapon at them. With an unreadable expression, Caleb walked to the bicycle attached to the wagon, the heaviest and most difficult to power. With a single glance at Esther, he maneuvered the vehicle until it had turned around. Then he took off down the dark road. Eli and Rafe chose two other bicycles, and they, too, were soon gone. Rafe was trembling, his eyes filled with tears.

Lewt flashed his wolfish grin. He then addressed his partners. “Tahlik, go make sure those three ain't trying anything. Quell, keep an eye on these folks. I'll meet you up at the road in five minutes. I got some business to take care of.”

Lewt lit a torch and lifted it high. In the flickering light, the people of Prin looked like a sea of drawn faces, gaping and pop-eyed with fear. He searched through them until he found the one he wanted.

Esther.

When he saw her, his smile widened.

“You,” he said. “Come with me.”

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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E
STHER RECOILED
.

Next to her, Skar drew a sharp breath and touched her arm. Esther understood her silent question as if she had spoken it aloud:
Should we fight back?
But she saw Quell pivot the weapon their way and had a terrible presentiment of what would happen if they did. She only had time to shake her head, once. Then Lewt grabbed her wrist and pulled her forward.

He was surprisingly strong and his grip was like a vise. He dragged her into the forest, not waiting for her as she stumbled over tree roots and through piles of dead leaves. They walked this way for several minutes, his lit torch throwing shadows deep into the woods. Soon they were alone, totally surrounded by lifeless trees. There, Lewt released her so quickly that she tripped and fell to one knee.

“You'll leave with us,” he said.

At first, Esther thought she had misheard. “What?”

“Don't make me force you. There ain't nothing for you here and you know it. You ain't weak and stupid like them other girls. I can tell just by looking at you.”

“I don't care what you think of me. I ain't coming with you.” Dazed, she got to her feet, rubbing her wrist where he had hurt her. “Now I got a baby that needs looking after.”

But before she could take one step, he grabbed her by the wrist again and yanked her around, hard. “We can take it with us. There's gonna be plenty for us all in Mundreel. But you can only get there with me. Your boy Caleb's all talk. I ain't.”

There was something to his voice that Esther couldn't understand, something she hadn't detected before. Lewt spoke with a peculiar earnestness; he was, she realized, being as sincere as he knew how. And as this confusing thought dawned on her, he pushed his face forward to kiss her.

“There's something about you,” he said.

She jerked away in time, his stubbled chin scraping her cheek; with a wave of disgust, she caught a whiff of a body that stank of sweat and breath that reeked of decay. Now, a strange wounded expression crossed his face. Angered, he yanked her back, this time grabbing her by the hair. He stabbed the end of his torch into the ground to hold it and pulled her close.

“I don't mind fight in a girl,” he whispered, “as long as she don't mean it.”

Esther reached down and grabbed his thumb. She pulled it backward as hard as she could, digging her nails into his palm. Lewt screamed and let go with a curse. He stood there for a second, wincing and rubbing his hand. Then he started toward her again, furious this time.

Esther turned to run, but caught her foot on a tree root. And as she fell, before she had even hit the ground, she could feel Lewt on top of her, clawing at her clothing.

After Caleb brought the wagon to the highway, he had to wait for the others. When Rafe showed up, he refused to make eye contact; Caleb knew the boy was still stunned and abashed by the betrayal. But Eli jumped off his bicycle, stumbling in his haste.

“As I was leaving—” he began. He was wheezing with exertion. “He's got Esther. I think he was taking her to the woods.”

In a flash, Caleb understood why Lewt had sent him away. He remembered how the boy had looked at all females, Esther in particular, and he cursed himself for not suspecting this. Without a word, he seized the discarded bicycle, even as Eli tried to grab his arm.

“They got weapons. Are you sure you—”

“Yes.”

“Let me help.”

“I don't need it.” Caleb broke away and took off.

Caleb was one against three, and unarmed. If he had stopped to think, he would have admitted he needed all the backup he could get. But he was beyond reason.

Caleb rode fast back to the road. Well before he approached Quell, Tahlik, and the others, he leaped off his bicycle and headed into the woods on foot. He ran blind, his arms held up to prevent branches from whipping him in the face. Yet he didn't have far to go before he saw the flickering of a torch in the distance.

In a circle of light, Caleb saw Esther on the ground, struggling beneath Lewt. He was torn by a surge of emotions more powerful than any storm.

Caleb had seen what terrible things violence could do not only to its victims, but the perpetrator as well. Yet he had not felt this kind of murderous hatred since his first partner, Miri, had been murdered and his son kidnapped. If he had his weapon, he would have reached for it now.

“Let her go,” he said.

Lewt started at the sound of Caleb's voice. He struggled to his feet, yanking Esther up with him, and turned to face Caleb with a smile.

“Why? She wants to come with me. She just playing.”

“I said, let her go.”

Lewt reached under his robes and into a back pocket. His hand emerged holding a small knife with a jagged blade. With a single move, he sliced off the red partnering tie from Esther's wrist. She gasped as it fluttered to the ground.

“She ain't yours no more,” said Lewt, “She free for the taking.” When it became clear that Caleb wasn't going to do anything, his smile widened. “Okay then,” he drawled. “Guess I might as well help myself.”

He brought the knife to the bottom of Esther's sweatshirt. He made to slice it up the middle. At the first glimpse of Esther's pale stomach, Lewt stopped cutting.