Craning my neck, I can just make out two men sitting together in a small clearing. One of them is drawing something in the dirt with a stick. “Here,” he says, using the stick to mark a spot on his crude map. “We’ll go in here, once it’s dark. Take as much food as we can, any weapons we see, and get back out fast.”
“There are going to be people around,” the other man says, “even if we wait until the middle of the night.”
The first man shrugs. “Then we’ll take care of them.”
While I’m wondering what Caleb will do with this information, whether he’ll set up additional people on watch around the camp or maybe move the food supplies, he’s already moving away from us. I glance over at him, startled, and he gives Ash a quick motion with his hand. She nods, puts her own hand down flat between us, gesturing for me to stay where
I am, before creeping off in the opposite direction from Caleb, leaving me alone.
My heart is beating so loud I’m surprised the men can’t hear it from where they sit. My thighs ache, but I don’t dare adjust my position. I know which way Caleb went, but when my eyes scan the tree line I can’t find any hint of him. I would feel better if I knew what Ash and Caleb were doing, how long I might have to wait here, and what I should do if the men turn in my direction.
The man with the stick suddenly stops talking, holding up a finger to silence the man next to him. I hold my breath, move my eyes just to the left of them, as though my gaze is what drew their attention and looking away will solve the problem. Both of the men stand, one of them swiveling his head toward my hiding place. I don’t know whether he’s spotted me, if it’s wiser to hold my ground or flee. Every muscle in my body tenses, ready to spring up and away if he moves closer. But before the man can even take a step, something whistles through the trees and he crumples to the ground. One of Caleb’s bolts protrudes from his eye. I suck in a breath, my legs suddenly numb. I have to put a hand down to steady myself, my fingers sinking into the warm dirt at my side.
I hear Caleb’s voice from a distance, but can’t make out his words, my gaze pinned on the dead man. His companion stumbles backward, eyes swinging from the body to the woods where Caleb is hiding. He has some kind of sword in his hand, but doesn’t seem to know where to aim it with no visible adversary. He turns toward the sound of Caleb’s voice, and Ash streaks out of the trees behind him, buries her knife in the base of his skull, and pulls it free again before his body even hits the ground.
My ears ring, my breath coming in panting gasps, like I’ve suffered a blow to the head or been smothered in a thick blanket, everything muffled and distant. Sound returns slowly—the faint buzz of flower-drunk bees, a gurgle of blood erupting from the mouth of the man Ash killed, the crack of Caleb’s footsteps through the trees. I fall forward on my hands and knees, my view of the carnage partially blocked by tangles of my own hair. Ash stands between the bodies, blood dripping from her knife, her face hard and remorseless. Caleb emerges from the trees to my left, crossbow held loosely in his hand.
“You all right?” he asks me, not waiting for my answer before he steps around me to meet Ash in the clearing. He pulls his bolt from the dead man’s eye socket with a wet squelch that pushes my stomach up into my throat. I thought I was tougher now, had grown a thicker skin. But I am still too innocent; part of me has remained sheltered, even here beyond the fence, from what really happens when the world falls apart.
I lever myself to standing, stumble into the clearing after Caleb. Ash glances at me as she wipes her knife on the pants of the man prone at her feet. Her eyes are kind, but hold no apology. She does not seem like a friendly puppy now. She looks as quick and deadly as I imagined her to be that morning I first spied the knife on her hip. A shiver ripples up my spine as I think what she could have done to me back in Birch Tree if I’d been any type of threat instead of half dead already.
“Guess you figured they weren’t worth saving,” I say, my voice high and giddy, like I might burst into laughter at any second. Or tears.
Caleb looks at me. “We don’t do second chances out here. Not with people like this. You protect you and yours the first time. Because that might be the only chance you get. You waste time asking questions, second-guessing when you already know the answers, and you end up dead.”
I nod, force myself to look at the bodies, blood seeping into the dirt in black-red halos around their heads. The air is heavy with the metallic tang of death. Bishop once told me that the world we lived in was brutal and that we tried to pretend otherwise by hiding behind normality, scared to face the truth. No one here is pretending. Caleb told me life beyond the fence was dangerous, and now I’ve seen it firsthand. No one’s sugarcoating the reality, trying to convince me things are better than they seem. There’s a relief in that, an honesty that makes this brutality somehow more bearable than the kind cloaked in wedding dresses and courtroom trials.
“Now what?” I ask, straightening my shoulders. “Do we bury them?”
Ash glances at Caleb. “No,” she says. “It’s too much work. And we’re far enough away from camp that even if the bodies draw predators, it won’t put the camp in any danger.”
“Okay,” I say. My voice already sounds more my own. Stronger. I point to the knife in Ash’s hand. “I need one of those. And lessons on how to use it.”
Ash and I practice with our knives every afternoon. Luckily for me, she is a more patient teacher than Caleb. I’m quick to learn how to properly hold the knife and how to thrust with it, but throwing it is a whole other story. After days of practice, I still haven’t hit the tree by the river we are using as our target, let alone the bull’s-eye painted on its bark. Caleb would probably have stabbed me with my own knife by this point, just to save himself the aggravation.
“Aaargh!” I scream when my knife flies through the air only to hit the ground and bounce. “I’m never going to get this.”
“Yes, you will,” Ash says with a smile. She releases her own knife with a quick flick of her wrist, and it buries itself in the center of the bull’s-eye with a quiet smack.
“Now you’re just showing off,” I tell her as I walk to retrieve my knife.
“It takes time, but you’ll get it. You have to. Sometimes there’s no way to get in close, so throwing is your only option.”
“Where do I aim, exactly?”
“Not the heart,” Ash says, matter-of-fact. “It’s too hard to get the knife positioned right. You don’t want it hitting a rib and not doing any major damage.” She makes a fist and presses it to the middle of her chest, right into the soft hollow in the middle of her rib cage. “Here. Hit them here and they’ll go down. They might not die as fast, but they won’t have much fight left in them.”
“Have you had to do it a lot?” I ask her, eyes on the tree. “Kill people?”
Ash yanks her knife from the target. “Enough,” she says. “It’s just a reality.”
Lately, every time I close my eyes at night, those men dying at Caleb’s and Ash’s hands plays like a movie against my eyelids. It’s not horror I feel or fear; more of a realization that life has a way of coming full circle. I refused to murder Bishop, dropped the rock rather than kill Mark. But this world may turn me into a killer regardless. But if I’m going to survive, I know Ash is right: I have to learn how to defend myself, and I can’t be afraid to use the lessons she teaches me.
“Those men we killed the other day?” Ash says, like she’s a mind reader. “That’s how my dad died.”
“I thought he died of an infection.”
“He did. But it was from a wound. He was stabbed in the leg. We tried to heal it, but…”