“You enjoyed that.”
“I remember what he did to us,” Fade said. “And what happened to Pearl because he dragged her out, hunting for us. I set it aside because we needed his blades on the journey, but he’ll never be my friend.”
I saw things in less immutable terms. Raised in the gangs, I’d be a submissive Breeder. Considering where he came from, Stalker wasn’t as bad as he could be—and he showed willingness to learn—but Fade would never share my point of view; and it seemed like a bad idea to provoke him when we’d only just gotten close again. So I let Fade revel in this moment without chiding him.
To my relief, Longshot tracked down the missing seeds in short order and at last the final wagon was ready to go. The distance wasn’t far, but since most food had to be grown outside the walls, it seemed like a monumental undertaking to those who spent their lives within the safe confines of Salvation. They had marveled that four young people could survive in a wilderness filled with Freaks, wild animals, and heaven knew what else. Heaven was a new concept to me, like that of a soul, the place where people supposedly went after they died. Sometimes I wondered if I’d see those I’d lost or if the blind brat I’d failed to save would be waiting for me with a swift kick. It didn’t seem like the sort of thing I could rightly ask my foster mother. But I wouldn’t be going there anyway because only people who followed all the rules got into heaven.
The gates opened with a tormented squeak, doors gaping to let the convoy out—thirty-two guards, plus nearly as many growers. Such a to-do for the annual planting, but as far as I could tell, this was customary. The surrounding land was bleak as it had been the first time we passed through, but the promise of spring had kindled greenery on the trees. Likewise, the brown grass was coming back to life, but nothing on the horizon gave me hope that there were other settlements nearby. In its way, Salvation was every bit as remote as the enclave had been down below.
Since the mules couldn’t set a fast pace, we walked alongside the wagons, alert to trouble. Twin plaits struck my back gently as I moved. There had been Freak presence in the area for some weeks, since well before our arrival, and this would be their first opportunity to strike at settlers outside the walls. If the Freaks were smarter, they’d figure out a way to get inside or to attack the town fortifications; it was as well for us that they weren’t clever enough to strategize.
I smelled the monsters long before I saw them. In daylight, my vision was never the best, but it was impossible to mistake the stench carried on the spring wind. It reeked of dead and rotten things, of hopes irreparably lost, and the torment of endless hunger. In Mrs. James’s history lessons, she said mankind held the responsibility for the creation of these monsters, something to do with hubris and meddling with matters better left to God. It was the first time I had heard the word “hubris.” Ordinarily I didn’t speak up in class, but that day, I raised my hand.
“What’s hubris?” I’d asked.
The class tittered.
Mrs. James didn’t quiet them, and her smile took a sly turn. “Excessive pride or self-confidence. Arrogance, if you will.”
I could tell she thought the word applied to me, after our conversation where I said I didn’t need to learn anything she could teach. I’d hunched my shoulders and wondered what humanity had done to fashion the Freaks. When I got time, I intended to ask Longshot or Edmund about the origin story.
“They’re near,” Fade said then, loud enough for the rest of the guards to hear. He already had his knives in his hands, and it gave me a thrill of pleasure to see his lean body tense, ready to fight.
Our fellows cocked their weapons, a clicking noise that prompted the growers to terrified whimpers, and one of them whispered, “Perhaps we should turn back. The planting doesn’t have to be done today.”
“And what day will be perfectly safe?” Longshot asked in disgust.
I could understand his impatience … and why he chose to go off on the long, lonely trade runs. The townsfolk he protected were as timid as mice, hiding in their walls. I much preferred having the enemy within reach of my blades, where I could see an end to the battle before the next one began.
Longshot didn’t wait for a response. “Keep those mules moving. We’re almost to the first field.”
They could not have expected trouble in the degree we encountered it, a few straggling Freaks, perhaps, survivors of the last run at the walls. But a veritable host of them swept out of the trees, loping toward us with their monstrous gait. Inhumanly fast they came, misshapen skulls, yellowed skin, and bloody lesions. Their eyes swam in their heads as they ran, taking in the feast we represented.
Shots rang out atop the panicked growers’ screams. They huddled in the wagons, covering the seeds with their bodies, as if that was what the Freaks had come to steal. But these creatures were eaters of meat; they did not forage for food from forest plants. They ate game when they could find nothing bigger or better, and they seemed to view humanity as their natural enemy.
There are too many, I thought, even as they fell, holes blown in skulls and torsos. The weapons were fearsome at a distance, but too many of them had charged, and soon they would be upon us. I hoped the other guards could fight at close range as well as they could shoot.
As for Fade and me, we fell in back-to-back, as we had ever done, and something sweeter than fear sang in my veins. I had my blades in my hand, and my partner at my back; therefore, I feared nothing, not even death.
They hit us like a wave from that great water I had seen, falling away from the rocky land. I wheeled into the fight with a laugh that made the other guards shiver a little. Strike, parry, thrust. This was the reason I had been born—to fight these predators and drive them away from my people. I wasn’t a child. I was a Huntress.
Their blood spattered as I slew them, stinking of rot. It was a mushroomy smell, one that stayed on skin and clothes through several scrubbings. I had almost forgotten that over those months behind the wall. Beside me, Fade spiked his knife into a Freak’s throat, and before it had fallen, another was on him, snapping with its bloody teeth. Gobbets of meat hung from its mouth, a taste granted from a guard who had not been so skilled with a blade as he was his rifle. I wouldn’t think about that, not now. Longshot used Old Girl like a club, swinging free enough to cave in the skull of any Freak that drew too near the wagons. Stalker needed this fight, I thought. His rage manifested in every slash of his blades, and the Freaks went down before him in great piles.
But I couldn’t watch anyone else for long. It required all my concentration to keep myself from being overrun—and by the time the last Freak fell, my arms burned from the unaccustomed motion. Despite my best efforts, Salvation had made me soft—and that, in turn, filled me with outrage. I had to train more. Fight more.
Breathing hard, I took a moment to survey the scene. So many corpses. Two growers had panicked and tried to flee; they lay dead some distance from the wagons, ripped to shreds. Four guards had been lost. From the grave, heavy expressions of those around me, this was not typical of the start of planting season.
“Leave them,” Longshot said quietly. “If we don’t get these seeds in the ground, then they died for naught.”
It was a grim procession that continued on toward the fields, and I wondered what greater woe the season had in store. If I had known then, perhaps I would have chosen my course differently.
Or not.
I was, after all, born to be a Huntress.
Unnatural
The surviving growers rallied enough to go about their business, at least, but they did it with a mournful air. It seemed to me that seeds planted with bloody fingers should yield a bitter fruit, but I didn’t express my reservations. It was probably nonsense that would make everyone laugh.
But they hadn’t chuckled at my fighting.
A few guards asked about my training as we watched over the field. Frank, the one I’d beaten to earn my place, seemed particularly interested. “Is it hard to learn to use knives like that?”
“It takes time,” I answered.
“Is it dangerous?”
“You don’t train with live blades when you’re starting out.”
“Would you mind showing me some moves sometime?”
“Not if you don’t mind learning from a girl.” Other men laughed at this.
But Frank shrugged.
He fell quiet then, and I waited for instructions. Ordinarily, the force split, and they planted more than one field at a time, but Longshot felt uneasy with that practice. He thought, given the numbers we’d faced earlier, that it was safest to plant them individually and not dilute our strength. After the battle that morning, I agreed.
I went over to Longshot after he settled against the wagon, Old Girl propped across one arm. “What’s the planting usually like?”
“Not like this.” His tone was grim. “Not in years anyway. Those numbers were downright … unnatural.”
That couldn’t be good news. All the way here, we’d seen evidence of heavy Freak infestation, but since I was newly arrived Topside, I didn’t know what was normal. Fade had said they didn’t live aboveground when he was a brat, but it was impossible to say when they’d first found their way out. I only knew they hadn’t spread into Stalker’s part of the runs, as he’d never seen them before hunting us.
As I considered, I decided Freaks couldn’t have been born underground, as I had been, or they wouldn’t be so widespread. The whole world seemed swollen with them, like a rotten corpse. Where they had first come from, I didn’t know, but there must be a center, the deepest part of an infected wound.
“So there were more than usual?” Stalker asked, joining us. Some of his rage seemed to have burned down during the fight, but he still wouldn’t look me in the eye.
“That was more than we’d ordinarily see in a year,” the older man answered, brow furrowed.
“You don’t usually guard the fields?” Fade asked.
Longshot shook his head. “No need. They don’t organize. They rove.”
“I told you, the ones we ran into have gotten smarter.” I’d warned him on our arrival, but I didn’t know how seriously he’d taken me.
Now he sighed. “Just what we need, as if life out here isn’t tough enough.”
The rest of the day passed without mishap. If there were other Freaks in the area, they decided to go after easier prey. But the attack left me with a strong sense of apprehension. They had lain in wait, and apparently they’d known the route that the convoy would take. They also must have been aware there would be more trips back and forth to the fields, not for a while, granted. But once the plants sprouted, the growers would return, and so the patrols would resume.
It made sense to me that they would try again.
My instincts were also telling me that if these Freaks were bright enough to plan a rudimentary ambush, there was no telling what else they might think up. These were definitely the smartest I’d ever seen, and it was downright terrifying. Stalker didn’t have enough experience with the creatures to judge; I fell into step with Fade on the way back, wondering if he felt the same.