The Release Read online

  As they ski single file down the mountain, headed for the ring of fire encircling Libertyville, Hope thinks about Book. The truth is, he can ask about her all he wants, but Hope won’t let him see her this way. She won’t accept his pity. As much as she likes Book, as much as she remembers every last detail of their time together, she knows there’s no going back. Not now. Not ever.

  She zips down the mountain, ignoring the tears that press against her eyes. She blames them on the cold, on the setting sun, on anything but the truth.

  Live today, tears tomorrow.

  Later, after Diana has gone to the party and Hope can hear the muted, faraway sounds of laughter and music, she reaches beneath the tarp wall and sticks her hand into the snow, fishing around until she finds the two dead mice. She hasn’t had a chance to examine them since they returned, and the thought of them bothers her. At a time when every single person and animal is foraging for food, how is it that two mice died so oddly, and are left uneaten? It doesn’t make sense.

  She pinches one by the tail and dangles it. It exudes a whiff of rot, and her eyes pore over the brownish-gray rodent. Although there’s no blood, she spies something she didn’t notice before: the belly puckers unnaturally, as though the two seams of skin don’t quite match up. She lowers the mouse to the table and pokes at it, revealing a razor-thin gash that runs from head to tail. An eviscerating slice like from a sharpened knife.

  Or a wolf’s claw.

  She examines the other mouse and finds the same. Another slit that runs the length of the tiny animal’s belly.

  Okay. So a wolf killed these mice. But why go to that trouble and then not eat them?

  Hope has heard the wolves at night, gobbling up the avalanche victims. If they’re as famished as the LTs and Sisters, why leave two mice to fester and rot?

  Unless …

  The hair rises at the back of Hope’s neck as she comes to a sudden realization. A moment later, she rushes out of the tent.

  3.

  GROWING UP IN CAMP Liberty, we never celebrated birthdays. The only exception was when we turned seventeen, because that was the day we went through the Rite. There was a big ceremony on the parade ground, and following that, the birthday boys—the graduates—were shipped off to become the new lieutenants of the Western Federation Territory.

  Or so we were told.

  The truth was that the Less Thans were sold off to Hunters to be tracked down and slaughtered like prey. A very different future than what was promised us.

  But now that we were free of Camp Liberty and there were a number of us who had turned or were about to turn seventeen, we decided to throw a proper birthday party. This was going to be a genuine celebration.

  A couple of the guys even made decorations out of paper they’d found blowing around in camp. Personally, I enjoyed the irony of it. I doubt that anyone ever dreamed that the official Republic of the True America stationery would be turned into party hats and paper chains.

  Some of the LTs had created a stage at one end of the mess hall and were performing skits. At the moment, two guys were prancing around in an improvised horse costume, and that was getting huge laughs, especially when the rear of the horse got separated from the front.

  I found Flush and Twitch sitting at a table in the very back of the mess hall, poring over sheets of paper.

  “You’re missing the fun,” I said.

  “Some of us are preoccupied,” Flush said, cocking his head toward Twitch.

  “I can still hear, you know,” said Twitch. “I know you’re talking about me. And I bet you’re cocking your head in my direction.”

  Flush’s face turned bright red, and Twitch pointed at the paper.

  “Look at this,” he said. “We’ve started working out some combinations.”

  I bent down and inspected the paper. An elaborate chart showed numbers along the side and letters across the top.

  “If we choose the column where ‘four’ is ‘n,’” Twitch went on, “then that means that ‘five’ is ‘o,’ ‘six’ is ‘p’ and so on. So then we get something like—well, read it, Flush.”

  Flush picked up the paper and tried to pronounce what they’d come up with. “Nomsllkk-mskn,” he said.

  Nomsllkk-mskn. If it was a word, it wasn’t an obvious one.

  “I admit,” Twitch said, “it’s nothing definite yet, but if we added some more vowels in there, who knows?”

  “You might be onto something,” I said, patting him on the shoulder. “Keep at it.”

  Flush rolled his eyes. “Now we’ll never enjoy the party,” he moaned good-naturedly.

  “When we get to the Heartland,” I said “the first thing we’ll do is throw a real party. And we’ll have those foods we’ve always read about.”

  “You mean like cake and ice cream?”

  “And cookies and brownies and everything else we can think of.”

  Flush turned back to Twitch. “What’re you waiting for? Let’s crack this code so we can get out of here and celebrate.”

  I turned back to the stage. The rear of the horse was chasing the front, trying to catch up. It had been a long time since I’d heard my friends laugh so much.

  The one actor had just about caught up with the other when a voice interrupted them.

  “We need to leave.”

  I knew that voice. Had dreamed about that voice.

  The actors hesitated, unsure if they should go on or not.

  “We need to leave,” the voice said again, and the audience laughter came to an abrupt halt.

  Heads turned. Standing by the back door, concealed in shadows with a hoodie drawn tight around her face, was Hope. It had been forever since I’d seen her, and I could feel the butterflies in my stomach.

  “We know that, Hope,” Flush said, stepping toward her. “That’s what we’ve been talking about in our meetings.”

  “I mean soon.”

  “Exactly. Once the snow melts—”

  “Tomorrow. The next day at the latest.”

  Jaws hung open. Eyes widened. We’d just lived through the most dangerous year of our lives … and she was proposing something to top even that.

  “You’re kidding, right?” asked Flush.

  “I’m not.”

  “But we’ve got three Less Thans who can barely get out of bed. It’s the middle of winter, the snow’s practically to our knees, and we don’t have nearly enough food to take with us on a trip.”

  Others began chiming in; everyone had an opinion and wanted to voice it.

  Hope listened to it all, calmly nodded, then walked down the aisle toward the front of the mess hall. She tossed two objects onto the stage, where they landed with a muffled thud. The two actors backed up and everyone grew quiet.

  “What are those?” Flush asked.

  “Mice,” she said.

  “So?”

  “The wolves killed them.”

  He shrugged. “Wolves kill mice all the time.”

  “They didn’t eat them.”

  It slowly sank in what she was getting at.

  “They’ve developed a taste for humans,” she went on, her voice eerily calm. “They’re no longer interested in other animals. It’s people or nothing.”

  Her words were followed by a silence louder than the avalanche.

  “That may be true,” Flush said, “but that doesn’t mean—”

  “We leave tomorrow,” she insisted. “We rejoin the Sisters we left behind at the lake and go from there.”

  An LT named Sunshine let loose a high-pitched laugh. “Now you’re dreaming. Like we’re gonna be able to make it all that way—especially with them.” He pointed in the direction of the infirmary, housing those Less Thans still too weak to walk.

  “We’ll get there,” Hope said.

  “Right. And the world’s flat.”

  I understood where Sunshine was coming from, but Hope was right. If we didn’t leave soon, there was a chance we wouldn’t leave at all.

  Again, a chorus o
f voices chimed in, most claiming that Hope was being alarmist. Chicken Little, and all that.

  I listened to the debate, then looked at Hope to gauge her reaction. But she’d already gone, slipped out without anyone noticing.

  4.

  IT WAS FOOLISH, LEAVING the tent like that, exposing herself to the stares of others. But after examining those mice, Hope knew things that others didn’t. If she didn’t say something, they’d wait until springtime to leave and then it’d be too late. That’s why she spoke up.

  Well, that’s the main reason. There’s also the matter of unfinished business.

  She’s preparing to go to bed when she catches a glimpse of herself in the shard of mirror that hangs on a side wall. She stands there a moment, studying her face. Each time she happens to see her reflection, she is startled. The Xs are as unsightly as ever. As though it’s someone else she’s looking at, some stranger. Definitely not Hope.

  She draws her arm back and sends an elbow flying, smashing it into the mirror. The glass shatters, obliterating her reflection. Blood drips from her elbow.

  As she wraps the wound in cloth, she wonders if they can do it. Can they really make it all the way to Helen and the other Sisters, huddled in Dodge’s Log Lodges on the shores of a distant lake? Can they cover that kind of distance with little food and no shelter?

  She snuggles beneath a thin blanket on the floor—a bed would be entirely too foreign—and as she does most every night, she fingers the locket around her neck. She can sense the stares of her mom and dad from the miniature photos.

  Not for the first time, her fingers edge away from the locket and move toward her face, tracing the raised scars on her cheeks, down one diagonal and up the other. The two Xs remind her of what she wants.

  Revenge.

  For her mother. For her father. For her sister, Faith. It’s not that she doesn’t want to escape from the territory and save the country and all that other rah-rah stuff. But mainly she wants revenge. And she will get it … or die trying.

  She settles in for sleep, comforted by the soothing tap tap of raindrops on the tarp. As she’s drifting off, she remembers Book’s expression when she threw the mice on the stage. He was as surprised as everyone else, but she got the feeling, from a single glance, that he agreed with her. Which is why she was hurt he didn’t say anything in support of her. Still, even if he had—

  She jolts up in bed.

  Something’s not right. She replays her thoughts, stopping when she remembers the soothing sound of raindrops. Straining to listen, she hears it again: tap tap. It sounds like raindrops, but there’s no way it can be raining—not in the dead of winter. She whips into her clothes, grabs her bow and a quiver of arrows, and hurries out of the tent.

  The night is cold and clear. No moon, which makes the stars glimmer extra bright.

  Now that she’s outside, she can hear the sound more clearly, and she realizes the tap tap is more a pitter-pat, a muffled padding. As much as she doesn’t want to believe it, she knows the sound. A wolf. When they run, they do so on their toes, but when they stalk, their whole pad hits the ground.

  This one’s stalking.

  Hope follows the sound, her moccasins slipping through freshly fallen snow. The tendons of her knuckles glow white as she grips the bow. She still can’t believe it. How did a wolf get past the ring of fire?

  She comes upon a single set of tracks. Even in scant starlight, she’s able to make out the distinctive wolf print: the triangular pad, the four oval toes in perfect symmetry. The good news is that it’s just one wolf. The bad news is that it’s big. The paw prints are larger than the palm of her hand.

  She picks up her pace, her breath ballooning in front of her. Rounding the corner of a hut, she comes to a small intersection. Before her is the infirmary. The wolf prints lead right to the flap that serves as the lone entrance.

  Hope tiptoes forward, parting the flap with an outstretched elbow.

  Her eyes adjust to the dark, and it takes her a moment to locate the wolf. It’s as big as she feared, and prowling the aisles. Its fur is singed from where it went through the fire. She assumes that at any moment it’s going to stop and attack one of the three Less Thans there, but instead it keeps moving—as though it’s checking out the situation. Counting its prey.

  The wolf rears back its head and sends a piercing howl toward the ceiling. The sound sends a shudder down Hope’s back.

  The emaciated Less Thans start to wake. One sits up in bed.

  “Don’t move,” Hope whispers fiercely.

  They obey. The wolf turns and stares at her, just as she stares at it. For the longest time, neither of them moves. Then Hope slowly nocks an arrow and draws the bowstring back. But just as she’s about to shoot, the wolf leaps forward, landing on the Less Than who’s sitting up. Hope wants to release the arrow, but the wolf is smart enough to get behind the LT, shielding itself.

  Trying to get a better angle, Hope runs to another aisle. But every time she moves, so does the wolf, repositioning itself behind the sick LT. Hope could run back in the other direction, but the wolf will just move again. Meanwhile, it continues to howl, its piercing wail blasting her ears.

  “Have it your way,” she mutters, and draws the bowstring back until her thumb tickles her cheek. She waits until the wolf is midhowl, and then she sends the arrow flying. It zips through the infirmary in a horizontal blur, missing the LT by an inch and impaling the wolf in the neck. It shrieks, then crumples to the ground.

  The infirmary comes alive. The Less Than is sobbing hysterically, and there are startled cries as other LTs race in from the party. But even as they come running to find out what’s going on, Hope is headed the other way. She’s taken care of the situation, and now she’s getting out of there.

  Picking her way through the snowy back alleys of Libertyville, Hope’s heart races. The thing she can’t let go of is that howl. That wasn’t some mournful wail, some aimless baying at the invisible moon. That was a call to arms.

  A signal to attack.

  5.

  WE LEFT THE NEXT morning.

  There were those who disagreed with our decision, but Hope was right. We had to get out of there.

  “That wasn’t a wolf attack last night,” Hope said as we were tying up the last of the packs. “It was a scouting mission. That thing was here to let the rest of the pack know what it’d seen.”

  It was crazy what she was saying. Ridiculous, even. But I knew that she was right. Like her, I had seen the attack on Skeleton Ridge.

  That didn’t mean we were ready to leave. For all the reasons Flush had voiced earlier, we weren’t even remotely prepared for this. But the alternative was worse.

  The LT who’d been pounced on by the wolf died during the night, as much from shock as from the attack itself. With no shovels and little time, we topped the grave with rocks to prevent the wolves from unearthing the corpse.

  “What’s the point?” Sunshine mocked. “If those wolves want him, they’ll get him. Nothing we can do to stop ’em.”

  “The rocks’ll stop them,” I replied.

  “The rocks’ll slow ’em down.” Then he added, “Probably better for us if the wolves did get him. That way they won’t come chasing after us.”

  No one bothered to respond, and Sunshine ran a hand through his greasy hair. It was so blond it was practically white, and when he laughed, his cheeks turned bright red. He looked like a demented elf. Although he was one of the emaciated ones we’d rescued from Liberty, you wouldn’t know it now. He was brash to the point of cocky. People put up with him because he was a fellow Less Than … and because he was good with a slingshot. We had a feeling we’d need every fighter we could get.

  When we finished creating the burial mound, a number of us stood awkwardly around the grave while I recited a poem.

  No man is an island,

  Entire of itself,

  Every man is a piece of the continent,

  A part of the main.

  A litt
le John Donne to feed our souls—not that anyone had the faintest idea what the poem was or who wrote it.

  Our number was down to seventy-four.

  After placing our few belongings in the middle of tarps and bundling them into Yukon packs, we squinted into the morning sun.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Cat said, impatient to get going.

  “Which direction?” Flush asked.

  “Where else? East to the river.” It’s how we’d gotten here, and it was how we’d get out.

  Cat took the lead, finding an opening in the ring of fire’s dying flames, and everyone else followed. We carried supplies and dragged the two wounded on triangular stretchers through the calf-high snow.

  I was the last to leave. I turned and took a final look at Libertyville, at what had once been Camp Liberty. I hoped to never lay eyes on this part of the Western Federation Territory again.

  6.

  THE SNOW IS DEEP, the going slow, and by the time they reach the river—a winding sheet of ice—they’re huffing for air. They head south along its banks.

  The sun is a blinding splotch of yellow that bounces off the snow and spears their eyes. Hope is glad for the hood. It shields her eyes from the glaring sun … and conceals her scars from others.

  “Hey.”

  Book is suddenly walking alongside her. She angles her head in the other direction.

  “You doing okay?” he asks.

  “Doing fine.” There is defiance in her voice. Even a touch of contempt. Only the weak and helpless accept pity. Hope is neither of those.

  “You sure?”

  “I said so, didn’t I?”

  Book allows the silence to stretch between them. All around them is the muffled thud of footsteps as seventy-four stragglers wade through snow.

  “What do you want, Book?” Hope finally asks.

  “Isn’t it obvious?”

  “Not to me, it’s not.”

  “I’m looking for someone—someone I used to know who’s gone missing.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “A girl named Hope.”

  Hope gives her head a violent shake. “Not gonna happen.”