CHAPTER SIXTEEN
We begin our return to the bookstore that afternoon, our cart now filled with cans of food and a trap that Maeve took from a nearby hunting-supply store. She said we needed it just in case, and I didn’t have the energy to argue.
Maeve stops by a hiking trail about fifteen minutes away from my home territory. I’m not sure why we’ve stopped, because I certainly did not sign up for hiking and am by no means wearing trail-appropriate clothing. She pauses at the sign designating the trailhead. Small symbols dot the edge. 8 MILES. WATER VIEWS. PETS ALLOWED. I look over at Maeve.
“If you make me walk the full eight miles, I swear to god that you won’t make it off this trail alive,” I grumble. My throat feels like sandpaper, making me annoyingly aware of how thirsty I am.
“Nah, no hiking, princess,” she replies. “There’s a water source nearby that can be accessed only via trail. We’ll fill up, turn around, and be back on the road in no time.”
I shake my head. “Why couldn’t we just get some at the store? I’m sure they have some sort of bottled beverage for you to steal.”
“I like to make you walk.” She pauses, waiting for a reaction. “Kidding. Did you see anything left back there? We’ll get some naturally occurring water. It’ll be good for you to take a little hike.”
Maeve starts down the trail, boots smacking against the rocks and roots. For the first time in a long time I wish I were wearing adequate footwear instead of a pair of Converse with absolutely no arch support. I’m beat up enough already as it is. I’m not sure how much more I can take.
Maeve pushes forward, avoiding every single root and rock that attempts to take me out. She doesn’t even stop to take in the leaves and the ferns and the green that surround us. I haven’t been out in woods like this in over a year, not since an ill-fated family camping trip right before everything went wrong. I forgot the way it makes your lungs feel, like they’re fresh and new. The way the air tastes crisp.
Maeve moves constantly, even though the sun is high in the sky and the trees aren’t offering as much coverage as I hoped. Rays of light beam through the gaps in the branches and land on my bare skin. I can feel it starting to burn.
We make it to our destination in less than twenty minutes, stopping about a mile in. There’s a small stream no more than a few feet deep, and the sight of natural water stops me dead in my tracks.
“Isn’t it acidic?” I ask, my voice wavering slightly.
“Not anymore,” Maeve responds. “It’s been slowly watered down for the past year.”
Even though that makes sense, I don’t move any closer. I can’t. Instead I watch, doing nothing, as Maeve slowly wades in. As the water rises above her ankles, my breaths become shallow, something solid sitting inside my chest, right above my ribs. Blood rushes to my temples, my heartbeat thudding in my ears, and I seal my eyes shut. Everything inside me is screaming that this is how it happened last time, something harmless turning deadly in mere seconds. Everything inside me is certain that I’ll hear Maeve’s voice soon, terror rippling at its edges. And when I open my eyes, I’ll see the blisters forming, the blood bubbling up beneath her skin.
But the seconds continue to tick past, and my eyes open, and Maeve is fine, staring at me with a look on her face that asks a million questions I don’t want to answer. Instead, I choke down the bile at the back of my throat and force a smile. She’s fine. Everything’s fine. Deciding to trust her, I tentatively dip a foot into the running stream, the water seeping through my shoes. When that feels fine and not flesh eating, I wade in, being careful to keep my bandaged hand dry.
The water is freezing cold, like plunging straight into ice, but I don’t mind. I allow my feet to lose feeling completely, the water up to my knees. I’ll get it back eventually. The water is so clear, it’s as if I’m staring through glass at colored stones. It feels so good, so clean, and so real. For the first time in a long time, my surroundings truly feel alive.
Maeve takes my backpack from me and clomps out of the water, tossing it to the side by her cart before returning, a canteen gripped in her hand.
“Will that be enough?” I can hear the sound of the river trickling through larger stones.
“We’ll get the jug too. Don’t worry,” Maeve explains, gesturing haphazardly as she leans down toward the water. She slowly fills up her canteen, air bubbles escaping frantically to the surface. When she’s done, she holds the metal bottle out toward me. “Drink.”
“Is it safe?” I might not be some rugged survival expert like she is, but I did go to summer camp. The most important camping rules were don’t wipe with poison ivy, leave no trace, and don’t drink unpurified water. Maeve just looks at me expectantly, still holding out her bottle. “Aren’t we supposed to boil it?”
She rolls her eyes, a small smile forming on her lips. “Liz, when was the last time you had cold water on a hot day?” I say nothing at all as I wiggle my toes around in the river. “One sip won’t kill you; you’ll just have horrible stomach problems for a while.” Maeve laughs. “And if it does kill you, your ghost can haunt me for all eternity.”
“Don’t think that I won’t,” I grumble, before taking the canteen. I relish the feeling of the freezing surface, cooling my fingertips. The icy water travels down my throat, and I swear I can feel it as it moves, snaking down my intestines, reviving my body. Pure bliss. I hand the bottle back to Maeve as I slosh my way out of the water, retrieving the blue Culligan jug from the cart. I can hear Maeve snickering as I struggle to get a proper grip on it with one hand.
“I swear to god,” I mutter. “You better not be making fun of me, Maeve.” She neither confirms nor denies this.
I’m finally able to wrap my arm around it, clutching my right shirt sleeve with my left hand. I hug the bottle as tightly as possible, keeping it close to my body so that it doesn’t fall. As I turn back to the stream, I’m met by a jet of water to the face. The blue canister tumbles from my arm as I stare at Maeve, her hands soaking wet. Her shirt sleeves are pulled up, revealing her tattoo.
“Oh, no, you didn’t.”
“What are you going to do?” she taunts. “Splash me? You can’t get your right hand wet.”
“Touché,” I mutter as a childish grin forms on my lips. “It’s a good thing I have two hands.”
Maeve just keeps laughing, as if daring me to follow through with my threat.
And I do. My good arm slaps the water, sending a spray of liquid straight at Maeve. When the surface settles I stare at her, dumbfounded. Her shirt is soaked through, clinging to her skin, revealing the outline of her body beneath. She makes a vain attempt to wring out her shirt, while I try to force my eyes to look anywhere else. It’s hard, though. She’s lean and strong, and when she lifts her shirt to squeeze out the last bits of water, she looks like something out of an epic. Like Botticelli’s Venus, if the goddess of love were known to wear cargo pants and maroon boots. She doesn’t seem to care that her shoes are soaked. I’m sure they’ve been through worse. I can feel my cheeks burn as I stare, stopping only when Maeve makes her declaration of war.
“Oh, it’s on.”
Her boots slosh through the water as she half jogs toward me, attempting to tackle me.
“Whoa, there!” I exclaim. “Careful with the merchandise.”
Maeve pays no heed, wrapping her arms around me and sending me tumbling down into the river. The only thing I can do is raise my bad arm in an attempt to keep it dry.
We resurface and I laugh, swiping the wet hair away from my face with my functional hand. I spit out a mouthful of water in her direction.
My spine comes to rest against the stream’s rocky bottom, Maeve on her knees by my side. We pause there, just breathing, as Maeve looms above me. It’s so quiet, no sound except for the faint trickle of running water. For an instant, everything else fades away, and all I know is how right this moment feels.
“Oh no! It looks like you might have gotten a little wet.”
I shake my head. “You don’t look so dry yourself.”
“Hey, I did what I had to, to take you down. You have to be humbled sometimes, Ms. Flannery.”
I’m about to dip my hand into the water again when I see a shadow in the woods, dashing past the shoreline on the other side of the stream. I blink quickly, just to ensure that my mind isn’t playing some dirty trick on me. It tends to do that.
Maeve pulls back her arm for another splash but hesitates, seeing the flicker of worry that passes across my face. Just a brief moment. But Maeve doesn’t miss it. I watch as her muscles tense, and the playful mood of the past few minutes slowly dissipates.
“What?”
I scan the woods. Suddenly I’m wishing that we weren’t so far from the main road. So far from home. Maybe we shouldn’t have left. But I shake my head. “It’s nothing,” I reply, turning back toward Maeve’s cart. “Just my brain playing tricks on me. I’m just tired. It’s fine.”
But Maeve doesn’t seem to buy it. She pauses, staring at me, scanning me for some sort of clue about what’s going on inside my head.
With my functioning hand, I reach for the blue canister and force it underneath the water. “I told you, it’s fine.”
Maeve narrows her eyes before carefully lifting my full canister out of the water, her arms straining. Her boots splash through the stream as she makes her way back toward the cart. With a thud, she drops it back in, the paint chipping from the force of contact.
I’m about to turn and make my way back toward the trail when I see it again, out of the corner of my eye. A blur, barely visible through the cover of the trees. The sound of a single twig breaking sends a shiver up my spine. I whip my head around to Maeve, but it doesn’t seem like she’s heard anything. The sound of the rushing water is too loud. I must be making this up, right?
“Are you sure you’re okay?” she calls out.
I’m about to nod, about to tell her that of course I’m fine, could you stop asking that? when Maeve’s eyes go wide. Her mouth opens, ready to say something, shout something, but nothing emerges.
And then, I feel cold steel on my neck.
Maeve moves quickly, but the figure behind me is even faster. Before Maeve is even able to unsheathe her hunting knife, the blade at my throat is digging into my skin.
“What the hell do you want?” Maeve asks, her voice hoarse. The figure behind me doesn’t answer, and instead clamps a sweaty hand over my lips. “What are you doing?”
I’m forced to watch, silent, as two more people emerge from the woods behind Maeve. She notices the fear on my face and spins, blade outstretched, before they’re able to approach.
“What the hell is going on?” Maeve asks.
The man and woman wear all gray. At least, it’s gray now, dulled over time by dirt and sheer sunlight. I’m not sure what I expected people to be like. Things end up like this in the books I read, but my people, the ones who come through the bookstore, they aren’t like this. They haven’t been turned into this yet. The man has a patchy beard and long hair, halfway down to his shoulders. He’s younger than the woman, maybe midthirties, while she has to be over forty. Her hair is pulled back in a series of intricate braids, the type of thing you might expect to see on a Viking. In her hands she holds a well-worn pistol, her finger hovering over the trigger. Suddenly, Maeve and her small knife don’t seem so tough.
The person behind me finally drops their hand from my mouth, but they don’t loosen their grip.
As Maeve scans the faces of our attackers, her posture changes. She stands up straight, and the hand holding the knife steadies out. She’s no longer shocked or confused.
She knows who these people are.
It’s unmistakable, the look of recognition in her eye. She must know what they want. Why they’re here. I’m just wondering why she didn’t fill me in before she persuaded me to leave home. I feel my anger start to rise as I try to meet Maeve’s gaze. Did she know that she was putting me in danger when she was trying to get me to come with her?
“What do you want?” she growls.
“We have nothing to give you,” I add. “We haven’t done anything!” I’m unable to muster the same strength that Maeve does.
The man speaks first. “We can never get rid of you, can we?”
“I’ve never been in these woods before, I promise,” I offer.
The woman shakes her head, advancing closer to Maeve, who just grips her blade harder. “We were talking to her.”
Of course—this altercation isn’t about me in the slightest. I’m caught in the middle. Collateral damage.
The figure behind me, a young man by the sound of his voice, laughs harshly. “Just a few weeks ago we caught you hunting in these woods, didn’t we?”
I’m about to deny everything when Maeve steps forward, nodding, her face full of indignation. “And so what if I was? I have no choice. You know that.”
“You managed to weasel your way out of your punishment last time,” the woman says. “We can’t afford to be kind this time around. We were clear about the terms of your banishment.”
“You don’t own these woods,” Maeve barks back. “Where else was I supposed to go?”
The man behind me finally releases me from my choke hold, pushing me into the center of the triangle. My neck hurts from the pressure of his blade, and I can’t help but rub my hand across it, the skin now raw.
Maeve looks at me, her shoulders shaking. “I’m sorry,” she whispers, her voice barely audible. “This is my fault. I shouldn’t have brought you here.”
I don’t say anything in response; I just stare into the eyes of my assailant. He looks like a ghost as he peers at me, unmoving. Something looks familiar about his eyes. His nose. Like I’ve met him before. Maybe in the bookstore? But this teenager doesn’t seem like the type of person to come to the bookstore. Maybe before, but not now.
His hair is long, just like his companion’s, but he’s clean-shaven. He squints slightly as he looks at me, staring me up and down. He knows me too. I’m sure of it.
Behind us, Maeve continues to argue with the man and woman, but I can’t hear her clearly. Their words float into one ear and out the other. The teenager in front of me doesn’t seem to be listening, either, his knife hanging limply from his arm.
“I know you,” I mutter, the words getting stuck in my throat. I’m not sure if I’m even talking to him or trying to convince myself. “I know you,” I repeat. Then, in an instant, it all comes together. With a better haircut and less dirt on his face, he’s unmistakable. How many times had I seen him sitting on my couch, canoodling with Thea?
“Benji?” I ask, my voice breathless. My sister’s boyfriend. He made it. He’s alive.
“Liz.” It’s clear that he recognized me first. He looks down at my heavily bandaged arm. “What happened?”
“Generator,” I murmur, trying to hear the conversation between Maeve and the woman.
“A generator?” Benji asks, eyebrows raised. “You have a generator?”
“Yeah. And I’m not so happy with it.”
“And it works?” He pauses before adding, “How’s Thea? I tried to come back and find her after everything, but you all were long gone.”
I swallow, wondering how I could possibly explain what happened, when our conversation is interrupted.
“We should have killed her the first time!” the woman sneers.
I spin around. “What?”
“Becca,” Benji says, a hint of desperation creeping at the edge of his voice. “You know that isn’t protocol.”
One thousand questions whirl around in my brain. “Protocol? What protocol?”
“What about your little friend?” Becca asks, striding past Maeve. “Would that send you a message?”
It takes me a second to realize that I’m the little friend that Becca is referring to, but I don’t realize it fast enough. She quickly wraps her arm around my chest and shoves her pistol against my temple. I try to lift my arm and break her grip, but a shock wave of pain shoots up my side. Once again, I’m useless.
Maeve lunges toward me but is quickly caught by the man, who grabs the back of her jacket with his fist. She struggles against his grip.
“Let her go.”
“Whatever you think she’s done, I promise you, she hasn’t,” I choke. Whatever anger I had has dissolved into distress. Maeve has her secrets. I’ve known that since I met her, just as I have mine. But nothing that bad. She wouldn’t be capable of that. She couldn’t be.
“You don’t know anything about her,” Becca replies.
“She’s a good person.”
The man sneers. “Good people don’t exist anymore.”
Becca tightens her grip around my chest, forcing the air out of my lungs. “Since Benji is so keen on protocol, I say we kill the girl and bring Maeve back with us.”
“No,” Maeve growls. “Just take me instead. She didn’t do anything wrong.”
“You should know that I’m not the one who is gonna get your friend killed,” Becca says. “This is all your fault, Maeve.” She pauses before whispering in my ear, “You might want to close your eyes. It’ll be easier that way.” Maeve struggles for a moment, thrashing as the man holds her tight, before Becca adds, “Tristan, keep her quiet.”
The pistol is pressed even harder against my temple, and I can hear her fingers fumbling with the trigger. She doesn’t want to shoot me. None of them want to shoot me. They just think that they have to. We all think that we have to do horrible things to survive.
“You don’t have to do this,” I say, and yet I can’t bring myself to fight against Becca’s grip.
Tristan laughs as he shifts his hold on Maeve, restraining her in a choke hold with one arm and using the other to fish for something in his pockets. Something to bind her hands. But the transition is all the time she needs. She lunges toward Becca, blade in hand, and grabs for the pistol, forcing it away from my skin.
Becca loosens her hold on me and takes a stumbling step backward, sending me falling toward the ground, a shock wave rippling up my spine, blood pooling in my mouth. Everything is moving too quickly. Maeve is a blur, almost feral, as she slashes her blade at Becca. Tristan takes a few steps forward, trying to look for an opening in the scuffle, but Benji stays put. He doesn’t do anything to stop Maeve or protect his friend. He’s afraid. I understand the feeling.
Maeve pulls her arm back as Becca raises her gun in front of her. My gut clenches, threatening to wring itself apart. But Maeve doesn’t hesitate.
Instead, I watch as Maeve’s knife plunges into Becca’s torso, twisting slightly as it cuts through the fabric of her shirt.
My heart leaps up into my throat, blocking any air from my lungs, as Maeve’s face contorts into something pained. As she realizes what she’s done. What has she done? For a moment, my mind doesn’t even begin to process, each muscle in my body suddenly unmoving. It’s like I’ve lost all autonomy, my soul floating out and staring at the scene from above. What has she done?
I watch as Becca falls backward into the stream and Maeve backs away, each motion slow and deliberate, leaving her knife embedded into the woman’s skin. Becca gasps, her voice garbled, as if she’s drowning before she even hits the water, her pistol slipping from her hand. Red seeps into the running stream, dying the liquid crimson. I don’t need to look down at Becca to know what has happened. There’s only silence. Silence, punctuated by the sound of running water.
Finally, Tristan staggers toward Maeve, no weapon in his hands, but he’s too late. Maeve scrambles to the ground, her hands searching for Becca’s discarded gun. She holds it out, arm shaking. She shoves it in his direction, finger hesitating over the trigger.
“Come closer,” she snarls. “I dare you.” She stands in front of me, crouched on the ground, blocking them from moving closer. Her nose bleeds, staining her teeth red. Once again, she’s protecting me. Once again, I’m useless, left staring at the body in the stream, Becca continuing to take shallow breaths. The body. I am reminded of what death looks like. I am reminded of the toll it takes.
Tristan continues forward, but Benji places a hand on his back, halting his advance.
“Stop,” he mutters, hints of acid in his voice. “She’s not worth it.”
I glance at Benji, but he’s not looking at me. He leans in close to his friend and whispers something in his ear, pausing for a second to gesture to Maeve. She grits her teeth in response. He’s making some sort of bargain, but I don’t know what the terms are.
Tristan pauses, as if holding back a tidal wave of rage, before turning back to Maeve, still standing in the stream, pants soaked through.
“If we catch you in these woods again, you’re both dead.”
Maeve wipes her nose and glares at the man. “You won’t.” She rises slowly, stalking over to me. When she offers me her hand, I hesitate to take it. But Maeve needs me right now. She did this to save me.
“I’m sure we’ll see you again,” he replies.
The man grimaces as Maeve pulls me away, tossing the gun into her cart and pulling it behind us. I watch as the man rushes toward Becca, her chest rising and falling as the blood begins to seep. She’s alive. For now. He stoops down, placing a hand on her shuddering stomach and watches, as we continue to inch away.
As soon as we’re far enough away, Maeve abandons her cart, turning toward me. My breaths are ragged and uneven.
“Thank you for not letting me die,” I whisper as she pulls me close. Her hug is desperate and tight. We stand there, breathing together, our heartbeats blending into one. Our bodies melting into one.
“I’m so sorry, Liz.”
“Don’t be sorry.” I’m not sure if I mean what I’m saying. I’m not sure if I’m afraid of her or grateful. I’m not sure how I should feel at all.
“I shouldn’t have brought you here. I shouldn’t have done this,” Maeve whimpers, burying her face into my shoulder. I flinch, unable to control the response. “I should have found another way.”
I want to reassure her, but I can’t bring myself to. Does she deserve that? She stabbed someone right in front of me. A million questions want to burst out of me in response. Who were these people? What did she do to deserve this? I want to run. I want to hug her back. I don’t know what I want, so I just force the words out. “You did what you had to.”
Maeve chokes out a sad laugh. “We never have another choice. That doesn’t make our actions any better.”
I don’t know what to say in response.