Kate spun on him. “What do you want me to do, August? I can’t just go back—”
A set of doors burst open behind them.
“Hey, you,” called a voice.
August and Kate both turned. It was one of the truckers from inside the store, a hard-looking man with a pistol hanging loosely from his fingers, a second, unarmed man trailing in his wake. August started to shift in front of Kate when another pair of doors flew open behind her, and two more figures spilled out into the pool of light. The man had a bat, the woman a knife, edge glinting in the glaring light. Beneath the UVRs, they cast no shadows—four more people, and none of them were sinners.
The ground tipped dangerously beneath August’s feet.
He started to slide the violin case from his shoulders, hoping he could at least disarm them, when the first man moved, swinging up his gun and firing. The bullet ricocheted off the tarmac inches from August’s feet. The sound was deafening, and for a moment he was back in a school cafeteria staring down at the small black tallies on the floor before Kate’s voice brought him back.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” she snapped at the man.
“Is it true?” said the trucker, his gun leveled on August’s chest, but his gaze on Kate. “You’re Harker’s kid?”
“Does that make you the monster?” cut in the man behind him.
Before August could answer, the man with the bat caught Kate’s wrist and dragged her toward him. She kneed him, and he went gasping backward, but the woman with the knife grabbed Kate and forced her back, shoving the blade beneath her chin.
August started forward, and the gun went off again, this time nearly grazing his cheek.
The woman with the knife smiled, her teeth half metal. “Finders keepers, boys. Reward’s mine.”
“Only reward you’re gonna get is a bullet.” August almost wished the man would follow through. He was having trouble staying on his feet, his focus swinging from the bat to the knife to the gun while the tension rose around them all like heat.
“Tell you what,” said the man with the bat. “We’ll take the girl, you can take the boy.”
“I think we’ll take ’em both,” said the one with the gun.
Kate hissed as the knife pressed against her throat. “How do you plan to do that?” asked the woman.
The air was humming now, the woman with the knife and the man with the gun locked in a kind of standoff; the man with the bat and the one with nothing but fists inching closer.
Their eyes were shining strangely, the way people’s did when they spoke to August, greed and violence all starting to surface . . . as if they were feeding on his hunger. August’s head spun; he knew he couldn’t quiet the chaos as long as it was rising in him . . . but maybe he didn’t have to. Leo knew how to twist these feelings in people, how to sharpen and focus them.
Mind over body.
Instead of fighting the influence, trying to rein it in, he turned the volume up, let it roll across the tarmac and over the men.
Kate must have also felt the shift in the air, in the attackers, in herself, because her eyes met his. Her fingers twitched, and an instant later he caught sight of metal in her palm.
“I’ll take the bitch with the knife,” said Kate, driving the switchblade into the woman’s thigh. She shrieked, and Kate got her hands up and shoved the woman’s arm, ducking out from under the blade. At the same moment, August lunged, knocking the man with the gun back as hard as he could into the one behind him. The gun went off, then clattered to the tarmac as the two went down, a foot away from where the others grappled and swore, knife and bat forgotten. August heard the rumble of an approaching truck, the short, sharp burst of its horn, and grabbed Kate’s hand and ran. Shouts rang out after them, along with the sound of a body hitting pavement and muffled curses, but August didn’t look back as he and Kate sprinted around the corner of the truck stop and across the glaring tarmac toward the open gate.
The truck pulled through, and the barricade began to close. The guards were turned away, eyes fixed on the darkness beyond the semi, and by the time they saw August and Kate coming, it was too late. They were out, and through, moments before the gate slid home and locked.
They veered off the light-lined road and into the fields, August straining to hear the sound of tires over his pounding heart, but the trucks didn’t follow, the guards didn’t fire, and the gate didn’t open.
Still, they didn’t stop. Didn’t look back.
August lost track of the seconds, lost track of the fact that Kate’s hand was still tangled in his, lost track of the fever and the pain. Was he crazy, or was it actually starting to fade?
They ran, cutting a jagged path through wild grass, past bunkers and lines of trees, and by the time they finally slowed to a walk and then at last a stop, they were alone, surrounded by nothing but darkness and the distant glow of the road.
Kate gasped for breath, pressing a hand to her wounded stomach, and August sank to his knees, fingers splaying in the cool, damp dirt.
He wanted to lie down. To press his cheek to the ground, the way Ilsa did, and just listen. Kate dropped to her knees beside him, her shoulder against his, and for several long moments they sat there, swallowed up by the wild grass. The night was so quiet, the world so calm; it was hard to believe there was any danger in it.
August caught the distant grumble of trucks and tensed, but the semis held to the road, none of them bold enough to venture beyond the safety of the light.
When they finally got to their feet, the first light of dawn was beginning to break across the horizon, turning the world a bruised purple instead of black. His vision swam, and Kate reached out a hand to steady him. “You okay?”
The question echoed in his head, rippling his thoughts like a stone in a pond, becoming an answer as it spread. Okay. Okay. Okay.
And it was crazy, it was impossible, but he was. The pain was thinning, his muscles and bones finally starting to loosen. He drew in a shuddering breath, shock mixing with joy. Leo was wrong. He’d done it. He’d come through.
“August?” pressed Kate. “Are you okay?”
“Yes,” he said, the word filling his body and mind. It was the truth.
“Good.” She had something cupped in her hand. She turned it toward the thin dawn light, and then started walking.
“Where are we going?” he asked, falling in step behind her.
Kate didn’t look back, but the answer reached him, catching on the air and carrying like music.
“Home.”
VERSE 4
FACE YOUR MONSTERS
For six years, home had been a house at the eastern edge of the Waste, far enough from the darkness that no one came, far enough from the nearest town that the lights didn’t reach.
V-City was a place from the past, a place for the future, but Kate and her mother lived in the present. She wanted to remember it as boring, dull, restless, but the truth was, it was perfect. And she was happy. The kind of happy that smoothed time into still frames.
Arms wrapped around her shoulders while she read.
A warm voice humming while fingers braided her hair.
Wildflowers in vases and cups and bowls, wherever they would fit.
Color everywhere, and sunsets turning the fields to fire.
Somewhere else, the world was really burning.
Somewhere else, shadows had claws and teeth, and nightmares came to life.
But there, in the house at the edge of the Waste, it hadn’t reached them. There it was easy to forget that the world was broken.
The only thing missing was her father, and even he was there, in the photographs, in the shipments of supplies, in the promises that soon they could come home.
After, she told herself a lot of things. That she’d always wanted to leave. That she was sick of the little house. That when she spoke of home, she meant the capital.
The sun rose against Kate’s back, showering the fields ahead of her with light. Dew glittered
on the tips of the grass, and dampened her pants from shoe to knee, and the world smelled fresh and clean in a way the city never did. August walked a few steps behind, and Kate watched the coordinates on the watch shift up and down, inching closer.
He was quiet, but so was she.
They skirted factories and storage facilities, each guarded as heavily as the Horizon, and caught the wary gaze of a haggard-looking woman standing outside a squat compound, checking to make sure she hadn’t lost anything in the night. Midmorning Kate saw a skeletal town in the distance, light glinting off the metal roofs and outer walls. They steered clear, kept to the tree lines when there were trees and the tall grass when there were none. And the whole time, Kate kept her eyes on the watch, the numbers edging closer, closer, closer.
Up ahead, the woods came into sight. Memory flickered behind her eyes. The barricade of trees that looked dense but gave way to a smaller field, half a mile in.
And a house.
They crossed the tree line before Kate realized that she couldn’t hear August’s steps behind her anymore. She turned and found him a little ways back, running his fingertips thoughtfully over a chestnut tree.
“Come on,” she called. “We’re almost there.” He didn’t move. “August?”
“Shhh,” he said, closing his eyes. “It finally stopped.”
She walked back toward him. “What stopped?”
“The gunfire,” he whispered.
Kate frowned, looked around. “What are you talking about?”
August’s eyes drifted open again, his gaze fixed on the rough bark. “Leo was wrong,” he said softly, his voice strangely musical. “He told me it was who I was, what I was, and I believed him, but he was wrong, because I’m still here.” He broke into a boyish grin. She had never seen him smile, not like that. “I’m still here, Kate.”
“Okay, August,” she said, confused, “you’re still here.”
“The hunger hurt so much at first, but now—”
Kate froze. “How long have you been hungry?”
He just laughed. A simple, delighted noise that sounded so wrong coming from his lips. And then his gaze met hers and Kate caught her breath. His eyes were burning. Not just fever-bright, but on fire, the centers icy blue, the edges licked with gold.
It was like staring into the sun. She had to look away. “August—”
“It’s okay,” he said cheerfully, “I’m better now, don’t you see, I’m—”
“About to set the woods on fire,” she said, coming toward him with her hands up. “Why didn’t you tell me?” She looked around, as if there might be a sinner conveniently waiting, but of course, there were no sinners nearby, because there were no people nearby. They were in the middle of a fucking forest in the middle of the fucking countryside. Kate closed her eyes, trying to think, and then felt a flash of heat and opened them to find August’s fingers grazing her cheek.
“It’s okay,” he said gently.
She pulled back. “Your hand.”
“My hand,” he echoed, considering it. “It looks like yours but it’s not because I’m not, I’m not like you, you look like me . . . but that’s wrong isn’t it—”
“August.”
“—I look like you, but you were born and grew and I wasn’t and then was, not like this, not exactly, smaller, younger . . . ,” he rambled, a kind of manic energy rising in his voice, “. . . but I start from nothing and then all of a sudden I’m something, all at once, like the opposite of death, I’ve never thought of it that way. . . .”
She touched his forehead, jerked away. “You’re really burning up.”
He smiled, that dazzling, delighted smile. “Just like a star. Did you know that all the stars are burning? It’s just a whimper and a bang, or a bang and a whimper, I can’t remember, but I know that they’re burning. . . .” She turned, and started pulling him through the trees. Heat wicked off him now, and flowed over her skin where it met his sleeve. “So many tiny fires in the sky, and so much dark between them. So much darkness. So much madn—” He cut off. “No.”
“What is it?”
He jerked free, brought his hands to his head. “No, no, no . . . ,” he pleaded, folding to his knees. “Anger, madness, joy, I don’t want to keep going.”
“Come on,” whispered Kate, crouching beside him. “We’re almost there.”
But he’d started shaking his head, and couldn’t seem to stop. She could feel the anxiety rippling off him like heat, seeping into her skin. His lips were moving, and she could just make out the words. “I’m okay, I’m okay, I’m okay.”
She wrapped her arm around his waist to help him up. His shirt was slick and she thought it must be sweat, but the rest of him looked dry and when she pulled back, her fingers came away black.
“August,” she said slowly. “I think you’re bleeding.”
He looked down at his body as if he didn’t recognize it, and when he didn’t move, Kate reached out and guided up his shirt. She could see the place where a bullet had graze his ribs. He touched his side and stared at the streak of blackish blood on his hand as if it was a foreign thing. The manic smile was gone, and suddenly he looked young and sad and terrified.
“No,” he whispered. “This is wrong.”
He was right.
Sunai were supposed to be invincible.
Nothing is invincible.
It had to be the hunger, somehow wearing away at his strength.
“Let’s go,” she said, trying to help him up, but he pulled her down instead. Her knees sank into the mossy earth, and his fingers dug into her arms. He was shaking now, the short-lived euphoria plunging into something else. Tears streamed down his face, evaporating before they reached his jaw.
“Kate,” he said with a sob. “I can’t keep going toward the edge—don’t let me fall.” His breath hitched. “I can’t I can’t do it again I can’t go dark again I’m holding on to every little piece and if I let go I can’t get them back I don’t want to disappear—”
“Okay, August,” she said, trying to keep her voice calm and even. “I won’t let you fall.”
He buried his burning forehead on her shoulder. “Please,” he whispered. “Promise me.”
She reached up, and stroked his hair. “I promise,” she said.
They’d made it this far. They would get to the house. Cool him down. Get the money from the safe. Get the car from the garage. And they would drive until they found something—someone—for him to eat.
“Stay with me,” she said, taking his hand and rising to her feet. “Stay with me.”
Heat prickled through her fingers, at first pleasant, and then painful, but she didn’t let go.
They made it to the house.
Gravel crunched beneath her feet as Kate half led, half dragged August across the field and past the overgrown drive and up the front steps. The blue paint on the front door had faded, the garden plants had all gone wild, and a spiderweb of a crack ran across a pane of glass, but otherwise, the house looked exactly as it had.
Like a photograph, thought Kate, edges frayed, color fading, but the picture itself unchanged.
August slumped against the steps as Kate scavenged under weedy grass for the drainpipe and the small magnetic box with the key hidden inside. She’d knock the door in if she had to, but it had lasted this long, and she didn’t like the thought of being the one to break it now.
“Tell me something,” murmured August, echoing her words from the car. His breathing was ragged.
“Like what?” she asked parroting his answer.
“I don’t know,” he whispered, the words trailing off into a sob of grief or pain. He curled in on himself, the violin case slipping from his shoulder and hitting the steps with a thud. “I just wanted . . . to be strong enough.”
She found the box and fumbled to get it open. She didn’t realize her hands were shaking until the sliver of metal went tumbling into the weeds and she had to dig it out. “This isn’t about strength, August. It’
s about need. About what you are.”
“I don’t . . . want . . . to be this.”
She let out an exasperated sound. Why couldn’t he have eaten? Why couldn’t he have told her? Her fingers found the key and she straightened, shoved it into the lock, and turned. It was such a small gesture, but the muscle memory was overpowering. The door swung open. She knew the place would look abandoned, but the sight still caught her off guard. The stale air, the surfaces covered in dust, the tendrils of weed creeping up through the wooden floorboards. She almost called out for her mom—the urge was sudden and painful—but caught herself, and helped August inside.
Her feet carried her through the front room. She found the generator box in the kitchen, flipped the switches the way she had a hundred times, the gestures simple, automatic. She didn’t wait for the lights to hum on but went straight for the bathroom with its warm blue-and-white tiles, its porcelain tub.
She snapped the shower on, praying the rain tanks still worked. There was a groaning sound in the pipes, and moments later, water began to rain down, rust red at first, but then cold and crystal clear.
August was there behind her, swaying on his feet. He set the violin case down, managed to get off his jacket and shoes before stumbling forward, catching himself on the lip of the tub. Kate went to steady him, but he threw out a hand in warning. The tallies were burning up his arm and back, singeing through his shirt. He dragged it off, and she saw four hundred and twenty-three white-hot lines blazing across his skin.
She didn’t know what to do.
“Go.” The word was a whisper, a plea.
“I’m not leav—”
“Please.” His voice was shaking, heat rippling his hair like a breeze, and when he looked over his shoulder at her, the bones of his face were glowing white hot, while his eyes were turning darker, black pressing in on the flames. She took a step back, and August climbed into the shower half dressed, gasping as the cold water struck his skin and turned to steam.
She turned toward the bathroom door and heard a voice through the hiss and crackle of the shower, little more than a breath, but still somehow audible. “Thank you.”