The Death Code

  I want to throw my dagger at the strange men, then turn and run, because no one is safe, and they walk with a purpose and strength that can only mean one thing.

  This is their territory. And they want us to know it.

  “You come with us, dark one”—the other, taller man nods at Sketch—“and you live.”

  His friend smiles. Black teeth. Some of them are missing. It reminds me of my mother.

  I’m about to throw my dagger, tell Sketch and Zephyr to run. But then the man says something that stops me.

  “Your faces. You have the Mark.”

  I reach up, my fingers skimming my Catalogue Number.

  “Yessss.” He nods, his voice as slithering as a snake’s. “We know about your kind.”

  “You’ve seen more of us?” I ask, wasting time. Trying to think of a way out.

  The man whirls his weapon, and I know in an instant that he could kill us from where he stands, if he wanted to. And his eyes say that he does. “The train runs along the tracks. Once every few months. But you didn’t come on that train, now did you? No, if you had, you’d already be dead. They shoot them. Soon as they leave the walls. No one escapes the guns.”

  I have always wondered what happens to those people on the other train, on the Evaluation day. The train that leaves the Shallows behind, packed with citizens.

  Now I know.

  The man grins again, but it isn’t a welcoming grin. It sets my bones on fire.

  “How did you escape? We want inside the walls.”

  Sketch barks out a laugh behind me. “Trust me, ChumHead, you don’t want inside those walls.”

  “You’re new here,” he says. “You don’t know what you’re facing.”

  What could be worse than the Shallows?

  Nothing, my gut tells me. Nothing at all.

  But his eyes are hungry. He does want inside the Perimeter. Maybe he thinks safety is on the other side. He doesn’t know the Shallows is full of darkness and death.

  He shrugs. “I’ll offer you a choice, right now. You either tell us how to get inside of those walls . . . or you come with us.”

  “We don’t answer to anyone but ourselves,” I say, twirling my dagger, and in this moment, in the face of fear, I find my strength. “There are three of us, and two of you.”

  “You counted wrong.” The man’s eyes fall on to mine, and he laughs, just as three more men emerge from the tree line.

  They have rifles.

  “We can run,” Zephyr says with a gasp, beside me.

  I take a deep breath. “They’ll shoot us, Zephyr. You can’t outrun a bullet. Our best option is to wait. Then take them out at close range.”

  “This is their land,” Sketch says. “Not ours.”

  I frown. We are at the disadvantage, even if we do run. Others could come.

  “We’ll go with them,” I say, clutching my dagger tighter. “Wait for me to move first.”

  I take the lead, walking forward into what I pray is not our first and last mistake.

  CHAPTER 42

  ZEPHYR

  The men take us across the beach.

  Two in front, three in back.

  The whole time, I keep waiting for Meadow to use her father’s psycho training on them, use her dagger to break us out of this. But she walks with her eyes straight ahead, her face totally calm. It scares the crap out of me, seeing her this way.

  We reach the rocks, scramble up to the top and peer down. I gasp when I see the people on the other side.

  Men, women, a few kids. About twenty people in total, and they all look well fed enough. They sit around a fire, laughing. A few boys wrestle in the back of the crowd, and two older women are stitching clothing. It looks strangely normal. Like a family.

  I smile sideways at Meadow. “Maybe this won’t be so bad,” I whisper.

  But she shakes her head, so subtle I almost don’t catch it. “The smoke,” she says, her eyes set in slits as she stares at the bonfire. “It’s black.”

  “Black?”

  “It shouldn’t be so dark,” she whispers.

  I don’t get what she’s talking about, and I don’t have time to ask, because the men prod us with their weapons, and we start the climb down the other side of the rocks.

  Everyone cheers when they see us. It’s like some weird welcoming committee. Two little kids run up to us—a boy and a girl—both small like Dex, and for a second the pain of missing her hits me in the gut. I wonder what happened to her, when I left. I wonder if Rhone took control, or if the Leeches regained their power.

  The kids touch our foreheads, stare at our Catalogue Numbers.

  There’s a woman who comes out of the crowd. Her dark hair almost reaches her toes, and as she walks forward, everyone stops. They bow at her feet.

  Meadow and Sketch and I stand in front of her like ChumHeads. Not knowing what the hell we’re supposed to do.

  “I am Medin,” the woman says. Her voice is silkier than the men who brought us here. She lifts a hand, touches my forehead. “Welcome to my family.”

  I want to flinch away from her for some reason. But I sit still as she strokes my Catalogue Number.

  “A Marked one,” she says. She looks at me like I’m holy, her eyes wide. “How did you cross the wall?”

  I look sideways at Meadow and Sketch. “We’re looking for the fastest way to the north,” I say. “Do you know how to get there?”

  “Maybe.” Medin smiles, then touches my forehead again. Her fingernails are sharp, and for a second, there’s a pinch of pain. “But you must earn the answer. How did you cross the wall?”

  “We . . .”

  She pulls her thumb away. A drop of my blood sits on her skin, bright red in the sunlight. She lifts it to her mouth, and my stomach whirls.

  She licks my blood.

  That’s when I realize that her eyes are tinged with red.

  And as she signals for all the people to come closer, I notice that their eyes, too, are red. Their hands shake. Some of them twitch.

  “Black smoke,” Meadow says. “I remember the story now. Koi told it to me, when I was little, to scare me . . .” Then her gray eyes go wide, and she flips her dagger out, holds it in front of her. “They’re cannibals.”

  “What the hell is that?” Sketch asks.

  “Cannibals,” Meadow says again. “They eat . . . people.”

  “Get them!” Medin hisses to the crowd. “Get the Marked ones!”

  The group screams, hands reaching. They rush toward us, too many of them to beat. I’m pulled away from Meadow and Sketch. I can hear Meadow’s scream as she lashes out with her dagger.

  She takes out two people with her hands, then lunges for Medin, but the crowd surges around the woman. It takes three men to hold Meadow back. She uses her Regulator to smash one’s nose in, but others take his place.

  Sketch curses as they tackle her, and soon the three of us are lying facedown, side by side in the sand with our hands and feet tied up.

  “Well, we’re fluxed,” I hear Sketch breathe beside me.

  It’s such an obvious, stupid thing to say that I laugh.

  Meadow laughs, too, and Sketch joins in, and it feels good, the three of us in this together.

  But it also really sucks.

  Because we’re about to be eaten.

  CHAPTER 43

  MEADOW

  The fire blazes hot and high. The crowd chants.

  I wish now, more than ever, that my father were here.

  Find a way out. Find a weakness in your enemy, and crush them.

  My mother’s voice takes his place. You can’t win, Meadow. You will never survive out there.

  Peri’s screams drown them both out.

  I bite my tongue hard enough to taste blood, to force myself back to reality. I have to think. I have to find a way to escape.

  They took my dagger. There is nothing sharp to cut my bindings with, and even if there were, Sketch and Zephyr and I are in the middle of the crowd. They watch us al
l with hunger in their eyes, stomachs growling.

  It makes me want to retch.

  To take a human life is one thing. But to devour one, crave the taste of one . . . It is far more evil than anything I ever experienced in the Shallows.

  And suddenly I miss it. I miss knowing that the darkness was my greatest enemy, that the ocean would keep me safe, that I knew every street and alley so well I could run with my eyes closed and make it back home.

  The man who captured us, the one with the trident, approaches. “We’re ready for the blonde one,” he hisses.

  His eyes fall on me.

  He stoops down, runs the blades of his trident across my neck. It touches the Regulator, makes a screeching noise. “Medin wants the black box first.”

  I spit up at him, and he cackles. The crowd joins in as the man lifts me by my bound wrists, then starts to drag me across the sand.

  “I’m sorry!” I say to Zephyr and Sketch, but I can’t see them anymore. I can only hear commotion from behind me.

  Zephyr’s voice, screaming, “Take me! Take me instead of her!”

  The man dragging me stops for a second.

  “Quit it, Zephyr!” I yell back. He needs to shut his mouth. He needs to stay alive, and let me die, because he is too good for death.

  “Yes, let them take him, Meadow!” Sketch yells, as they drag me farther away. “Take the boy! He tastes way better!”

  “Sketch!” I glare at her. “What the hell?”

  The three of us start arguing, yelling at each other, and the crowd is rising with their cackles and chants.

  But it all goes silent when an arrow comes from the sky.

  And lands itself right in the middle of my captor’s forehead. He drops me. I watch from the ground as he staggers for a second. It almost looks fake, as if there were a target right in the center of his head. He gasps, and deep-red blood trickles from the wound, down his cheek, then splatters onto the sand.

  He falls.

  The crowd’s chanting turns to screams, as more arrows come, one after the other, taking out every man, woman, and child. The people who aren’t hit scatter, sprinting across the beach, chasing the train tracks into the distance.

  By the time the sand is stained red from blood, Zephyr and Sketch and I are alone.

  And then, from the trees, comes a monster.

  CHAPTER 44

  ZEPHYR

  I don’t know what the thing is.

  It looks like a walking mass of plants.

  “What the hell is that?” Sketch growls. She rolls across the sand, trying to get closer to Meadow and me.

  “Just shut up for a second, Sketch!” Meadow hisses.

  She’s able to sit, hands still bound behind her back.

  The creature comes closer, walking on two thick legs. It steps into the sunlight, and I almost laugh. Because it’s not a creature at all. It’s a person covered in palm fronds, overgrowth, ripped branches.

  They could have been there the entire time, hiding in the tree line, and no one ever would’ve noticed.

  Stars, it’s amazing.

  It’s also totally creepy.

  Meadow scoots backward and puts her wrists against the dead man’s trident. She’s able to cut her bindings, grab her dagger lying forgotten on the sand. She sprints right for the person.

  They’re holding a bow, and when they whirl it around and nock an arrow into place, Meadow dives. The arrow barely misses her. She flings the dagger. The person reaches up.

  And catches it. By the blade. Blood drips from their skin. They drop the dagger to the sand.

  “That was a warning shot!” It’s a man’s voice. Deep, rumbling. Probably someone old. “And now Martha’s gonna rip me a new one for this hand.”

  Meadow freezes, kneeling in the sand. “Who are you?”

  The man reaches up, takes off a mask of palm fronds. We see his face.

  He’s old. Wrinkled, tan, his face covered in sunspots. And he’s smiling.

  “You’re from the Shallows,” he says, still standing over Meadow. He’s the first person to actually know the name. He nods at her barcode tattoo. “You have Catalogue Numbers. All three of you. Only reason I’d stick my neck out to save a bunch of idiots that fell into the Eaters’ hands.”

  “You know about the Shallows?” Meadow tightens her fists like she’s about to snap.

  “What’s it to you if I do?”

  Meadow stands up, brushes sand from her thighs. “What do you want?”

  “For you to trust me.” The man laughs when Meadow snarls and backs away a step. “If I wanted to kill you, you’d already be long dead.”

  He shoulders past her, toward Sketch and me. When he gets close, he pulls out a hand-carved knife.

  “Touch us and die, old man!” Sketch screams. She tries to stand up, but she wobbles, then falls to the sand again.

  The man sighs and leans down to Sketch’s level. She spits in his face, and that only makes him laugh. “Oh, Martha’s gonna love you,” he says. He flips his knife around and points it at her.

  He cuts her bindings loose.

  He moves to me and cuts mine off, too.

  “Strange group, you three,” he says, over his shoulder to us. He puts his face mask back on, then heads up the beach, toward the trees, passing Meadow as he goes. “You’re lucky the Initiative ain’t come by yet today. You’d already be right back to where you came from.”

  “You know about the Initiative?” Meadow asks.

  The man shrugs. “’Course I do. They got outposts, too. Closest one’s ’bout a hundred miles down the tracks.” He sighs. “They’ll find you, if you ain’t got a place to hide. You may as well come with me. Eat some real food. Get some rest. The three of you look like hell.”

  He stoops down and picks up Meadow’s dagger. That’s when I see behind his ear, a small tattoo.

  It’s an eagle, with outspread wings. The same kind of bird on a coin that Talan once found.

  “An eagle,” I whisper. “What does that mark mean?”

  The man smiles. The first real smile he’s given us. “You can decide that for yourself, once we get to where we’re goin.”

  He flips Meadow’s dagger around, handle out. “Name’s Ray,” he says. “You?”

  Meadow doesn’t answer. Instead she takes the dagger, her eyes on him the entire time.

  “Suit yourself. There’s more Eaters out here, too. This is their territory, and I ain’t gonna save you twice. And keep up. It’s a long way home.”

  He disappears into the trees.

  It might be a death wish. But we follow.

  CHAPTER 45

  MEADOW

  Ray runs the whole way.

  We follow, breathless, and the landscape changes from beach to marsh, then marsh to dry grasslands. We come to a wall made of wood timbers, held together by thick bands of metal. A trail of smoke rises from the center, and voices carry over the top of the wall.

  “You want to survive out here, you gotta stick with the strong ones,” Ray says, pointing at the wall. “They’re strong. Which is exactly why we need to keep moving. Come on.”

  We head into tall grasses that sway past our hips.

  “Where is everyone?” I ask. “My father said that the Outside was overrun with people.”

  “Oh, we’re overrun, that’s for sure,” Ray grunts from up ahead. “This is the outskirts, Chickadee. That big wall that surrounds the Shallows . . . It’s got rumors. Some say it’s cursed. Lots of people have tried to climb it, and bad things happen. Paralysis. Death. Besides, Initiative Collectors come this way all the time.”

  Crickets leap from the grass, hitting our faces. I swat them away.

  Soon we come to a patch of trees. They are thicker than the ones in the Shallows, and moss hangs like curtains from their branches. There is a fence of sorts, laced around the outside of the trees.

  A sign hangs from the entrance, carved out of old wood. For one moment, there is a pang in my gut.

  It reminds me
of something Koi would have done. Only his would have been so much more beautiful, alive with life.

  This sign has only words.

  THADICUS.

  “People crave the way things used to be, ya know?” Ray explains. “They try to create things from the past. Cities. Governments. It’s all good and well till the stronger ones come and take what ain’t theirs.”

  We enter Thadicus.

  Or what is left of it.

  There is a small natural clearing in the trees. Once, this might have been a good place for a camp. There are remnants of shelters made of wood and sticks. Some of them have fallen over like broken limbs. Others have been seemingly picked clean of the strongest branches, perhaps taken for shelters elsewhere. An old, headless doll sits in the leaves, and scattered all around are the remains of burned-out fires, like scars on the earth.

  Something catches my eye, at the far side of the clearing.

  A rope swings from low-hanging branches.

  A skeleton hangs from the rope. My stomach lurches. It is missing its hands.

  “What happened here?” I whisper.

  Ray stops next to me. “Death,” he simply says, and then he shrugs. “This is nothing. Welcome to the Outside, Chickadee. It only gets worse from here.”

  CHAPTER 46

  ZEPHYR

  One second we’re walking in the trees, shoving through moss and sticks, and the next, we’re standing on a concrete road. Miles away, the outline of a city towers into the sky like a ghost.

  The camps start here.

  It’s like the Reserve back in the Shallows, just tons and tons of tents everywhere. Shelters made up of whatever people can find. Old metal cans, sticks, doors ripped from houses, window screens, tarps. We pass, and no one pays us much attention. At first there’s only a few here and there. But the farther we walk, the greater the number becomes.

  It’s like the Shallows, countless faces and voices that rise all around. The only difference is that here, the land goes on forever. There’s no Perimeter surrounding this place.

  Which means that there’s probably far more people than the Shallows ever could have had. I imagine that the Murder Complex can still reach me here. I imagine all of these people with Catalogue Numbers, just waiting to be picked off by Patients like me.