I reach out for his arm, but he brushes my arm aside.
“Stop it.” Spoken quietly but with command. “We all stay together. Every one of us.” Sissy is looking past us, west, back to where the Institute lies.
“We can't trust him,” Epap says.
“We can and we will . He's right. There's no time. Those clouds mean business.”
Epap spits into the ground. “Why are you so quick to believe him?”
She looks at him for a long time, as if giving him a chance to come up with the obvious answer on his own. “Because,”
she says, walking to the carriage, “he didn't have to come out here, did he?”
Ben sits next to me on the driver's seat. The other four squeeze into the carriage as we race back to the Institute.
They are quiet in the back, gazing out the windows. Sissy is nose- deep in the journal, studying it intensely.
“What's the horse's name?” Ben asks.
“I don't know.”
“Maybe you and I can think of a name together.”
“I don't think so. Let's just be quiet, okay?” I say tersely. I'm not in the mood to talk. Something about leading a boy to his death kil s conversation.
He's quiet for only a little while. “So glad you came. As soon as I saw the dust cloud, I knew it had to be you.
Everyone else was freaking out, they thought it was one of them. I knew it couldn't be, not with the sun out.” He gazes awestruck at the horse. “So awesome that you came by horse. We've been trying forever to steal a horse from the stable.”
Despite myself, I'm curious. “Why's that?”
“Sissy wants out. She hates the Dome. Cal s it a prison.”
“Why didn't you all just escape years ago? Dome wal s come down, you get away, as far as you can.”
Ben shakes his head with too much sadness for a boy his age.
“Wouldn't be able to get far enough. Even in the summer, when the sun's out fourteen hours, we'd only be able to travel forty miles, tops.
Once night comes, they'd only take three hours to cover that distance. Besides, there's nowhere to go. It's all just open land, endless.”
The wind has picked up again, stirring the clouds into a more ominous hue. More plumes of sand sail across the plains, ghosts scurrying as if afraid of their own shadows.
At times the wind catches the carriage at an angle, whistling through it with an eerie jubilation.
An unbroken swath of clouds moves across the face of the sun.
Sunshine peeks through the gauzy haze, then disappears altogether.
The Vast plummets into the gray darkness of a day gone dead.
Ben places his hand on my thigh, afraid.
I look down at his hand, chubby and guileless. We hit a bump and he scoots even closer to me.
“It's okay,” I tel him.
“What?”
“It's okay,” I shout, “everything's going to be okay.”
He looks up at me, his lips drawn tight across his face, his eyes tearing up. Two streaks cut across his face, across the caked dirt.
He nods once, twice, his eyes never leaving mine.
Something breaks inside me. I tear my eyes away.
Be quick.
It's one thing to plan for something like this, another to execute it.
Never forget.
I pul up on the reins, stopping the horse. Ben looks quizzical y at me. “Hey,” I say, staring straight ahead, “you need to go into the carriage.”
“There's no room.”
“Yes. There is. I need to be alone for this last bit, okay?”
“Why have we stopped?” Epap says, leaning out of the window.
“He's joining you all ,” I say matter- of- factly. “There's no room up here.” I jump down, indicating to Ben to fol ow suit.
“There's no room in here,” Epap replies. “Seems like you've done plenty fi ne so far.”
“Why don't you shut your trap?” I yel .
They pour out of the carriage at that, tension fi l ing the air between us. I look at David and Jacob standing by Epap.
“Do you always need their help in your fi ghts?” I ask.
“Shut up!” Epap yel s.
“Easy, Epap,” Sissy says, climbing out the carriage, “he's just trying to provoke you.”
“And do you always need her around tel ing you what to do?” I ask him.
He's gathering his body to throw himself at me— I see his legs bend, his mouth downturn— when a horn sounds across the plains.
Coming west, from the direction of the Institute.
For a moment, we're so completely stunned that we simply stare at one another. Then, slowly, we turn our heads.
We see nothing across the plains. Just a gray band of darkness, sitting on the horizon.
Then another blast of the horn, a forlorn, meandering sound.
“What's happening?” Epap asks. “What's that sound?”
all eyes turn to me.
“The Hunt,” I say. “It's begun. They're coming.”
“It's just our ears playing tricks on us, wind hitting those boulders,” Epap says, pointing to our left at fi ve large boulders piled messily on one another.
Nobody responds.
“There,” Ben says, standing on the driver's seat, his fi nger pointing out like a weather vane. Directly ahead of us, in the direction of the Institute. His voice is neutral, almost casual.
“I don't see anything, Ben,” Sissy says.
“Over there!” he says, his voice getting more excited now, afraid.
And then we all see it. In the far distance, a cloud of dust, puff-ing upward.
I feel my internal organs fal ing through a trapdoor suddenly opened.
The hunters are coming. How fast.
I try not to think of Ashley June. still in a dark, cold cel , holding out hope— Somebody grabs me by the scruff of my neck. “You've got some explaining to do.” Epap's voice. “What's going on?”
“Let go of me!” I shout, swinging my arm back. I connect with his cheekbone. His head goes fl ying back, then snaps forward, rage raving in his eyes. He smacks back, a stony fi st surprising me with its bite. Before I can respond, he's pummeled me in my stomach, winding me. I double over, fal to my knees. But he's not done with me yet. He kicks me in the side of my ribs. A fl ash of white washes across my vision.
“You're just a wimp! You're just an emaciated, emol ient fake!
You couldn't blow the pods off a daffodil if your life depended on it.”
Bring the hepers back.
“Tel us what's going on!” he yel s.
I spit blood out on the ground. It splatters the dirt, splintered, like a pigeon's footprint. I close my eyes: everything's still a washed-out white.
“They're coming,” I say.
“Who's coming?!”
“The hunters!”
There is a long silence. I can't lift my head to meet their eyes.
Then we hear it again. This time not just a solitary howl, but a chorus of them.
My blood. They've picked up the scent already.
“Now you've done it, you idiot,” I say. “Now you've made it easier for them to fi nd us.”
“No. To fi nd you, not us.” Epap turns to the others. “I say we leave this guy here. We take off in the carriage. That will —”
“No,” Sissy says.
“No,” Sissy says.
“But Sissy, we—”
“No, Epap! You're right: we can't trust him. There's more going on than he's letting on. But that's exactly why we can't leave him.
We need what he knows.” She walks over, dirt kicking onto me.
“He's a survivor,” she says. “We know that much. If he can survive, then sticking around him will only increase our own chances of survival.” Her eyes blaze into mine. “So start speaking. What do we do?”
I stand up, my crestfal en heart suddenly galvanizing. “We go toe- to- toe with them and fi ght.” I dust off sand from my clothes.
“We surprise them by not fl eeing. Because that would be the very last thing they'd expect from you. They think you're weak, cow-ardly, disor ga nized. But to stand toe- to- toe with them, go blow for blow. That would catch them by surprise.”
Epap starts to interrupt: “We don't stand a chance—”
“Yes, we do! Look, I've seen the way you handle the fl ying daggers and spears. You could infl ict real damage. They never expected you to become so adept— those weapons were only supposed to serve a cosmetic purpose. And look at us.
We've got numbers on them. There's only three hunters left.
And there's six of us. And we've got fi ve freakin' FLUNs between us. We can do this. We can take them down. And then there'l be nothing between us and safety, the Dome.”
“You're nuts, you know that?” Epap shouts. “You have no idea what they're capable of. One of them has the power and speed of ten of us. So we're actual y outnumbered, you idiot, thirty to six. Outnumbered, outpowered, outsped.
Fighting them is pure suicide.”
Epap is right; I know that. There's not a chance of defeating the hunters. But the only hope I have of rescuing Ashley June is if the hepers and I can somehow pummel past the hunters and make it to the Institute. And for that to happen, I fi rst need to convince the hepers to dig in their heels and fi ght rather than fl ee. We fl ee, Ashley June dies. It's as simple as that. But as long as we stay and fi ght, there's stil a glimmer of hope for her, no matter how smal .
Epap spins around to Sissy. “We need to run. Right now.
We leave this guy behind, he'l buy us the time we need to get some distance between us and them.”
I'm already shaking my head. “You just don't get it, do you?
Running will buy you maybe twenty minutes, if that. Less.
The horse is tired, it's been running all day. They'l overtake us, sooner than later.”