The Prey by Tom Isbell Page B

you want to go.”
    â€œWhere is it? How do we get there?”
    Hope leans the pitchfork against the hay bales and wipes a section of floor with her hand. “This is where we are,” she says, hastily sketching a map.
    He crouches next to her. She can feel the heat from his body. Smell traces of sweat and musk and woodsmoke. Masculine smells.
    â€œYou need to get east of the mountains,” she says, her fingertips tracing the outline of Skeleton Ridge. “Until you hit the Flats.”
    â€œThe Flats?”
    â€œA white desert. Cross it and you’ll reach the Brown Forest. Somewhere on the other side of that is the next territory.”
    â€œHave you been to the Brown Forest?”
    â€œOnce. A long time ago. My father took us.”
    â€œIs it safe?”
    â€œSafer than here,” she says.
    They happen to lock eyes at the same moment, and Hope feels the blood rushing up her neck.
    â€œThank you,” he says.
    She nods. Her breathing is unnaturally shallow.
    â€œI’m Book,” he says, extending a hand.
    She hesitates. A long moment passes before she reaches forward. “Hope.”
    They shake. His grip is surprisingly strong, and it’slike a jolt of electricity shoots up her arm. She pulls her hand back.
    From outside comes the sound of footsteps. Book shoots a glance toward the barn door.
    â€œIf we ever escape,” he says, “I promise we’ll come for you.”
    â€œDon’t. Not if you want to live.”
    A moment later, the Less Than named Book scrambles down the ladder and out the barn. Long after he’s gone, Hope can still feel the touch of his hand, the heat of his skin. For reasons she doesn’t understand, it’s the first time she’s felt alive since she and Faith were captured.

13.
    A LTHOUGH THE B ROWN S HIRT chewed me out for disappearing, more than anything he seemed relieved I showed up before the colonel found out. That way both of us avoided punishment.
    Westbrook and Karsten didn’t say a word the entire drive back to Camp Liberty, but I swear they looked at me differently. With a new kind of suspicion.
    The feeling was mutual. After witnessing the gruesome slaughter in the mountains and the inmates of Camp Freedom, I was more convinced than ever the world was not what I thought it was.
    As for finding Cat, the colonel never once asked for my assistance. It was almost as if he was more interested in threatening me with what I could expect if I didn’t play along.
    When we returned to Liberty, I didn’t return to my barracks—not right away. I needed time to think, to process everything I’d seen. Like the girl.
    The girl named Hope.
    I couldn’t stop thinking about her—especially those eyes. They were two brown pools. She didn’t so much look at me as through me.
    There was something else swimming in my brain—something Cat said on the way down the mountain. Right under the Brown Shirts’ noses.
    That night, once lights-out was called, I waited. When all the other LTs were snoring with a kind of clocklike efficiency, I tiptoed to the latrine. The cistern’s edges scraped when I removed the lid, revealing a lone object taped beneath it. A flashlight. Not many to be found these days, but Red had managed to sneak one off a Brown Shirt months earlier.
    I snuck outside. The night was cool, the grass stiffening with frost.
    I made my way to the Soldiers’ Quarters—a large rectangle of brick barracks where the officers and Brown Shirts lived, with soccer fields and a softball diamond in the very center. There was also an enclosed tennis court and an area for free weights. Barbells littered the ground, moonlight catching metal.
    But there was nothing to be found—just some ball fields and workout equipment. What was Cat talking about? What was suspicious about all that? Thewindscreen surrounding the tennis court flapped in the breeze and I decided to give it one last