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Before the war, humans in the first world had lost almost all connection with the natural world, preferring instead to live virtual lives in exchange for convenience and—they believed—relative safety. Little had they known, abdicating hands-on knowledge would eventually be the thing that allowed them to be enslaved.
“Pa!” Blue called. I looked over and her excited eyes shone in the waning light. Her little pale hand pointed toward something on the ground. A clump of red mushrooms grew on a patch of moss at the base of an old tree. She looked up at me with bright blue doll’s eyes. “Can we eat it?”
I pulled out my dog-eared wilderness guide and flipped through to the chapter on mushrooms. “Says here its nickname is emetic russula.” I pointed to the words on the page that explained the mushroom caused extreme vomiting. Blue’s eyes squinted without comprehension. Like most of the youngs, the war had put an end to any hope of literacy or basic schooling. “It says it’s poisonous.”
Her hopeful expression faded. “Oh.”
I patted her on the shoulder. “You were smart to ask first, though.”
A little of her smile returned. “Papa—”
“Zed!” I spun around at the panic in Bravo’s voice. “Bats!”
The darkening quiet of the woods shattered in an explosion of high-pitched electronic pulses. The sound stabbed at my eardrums, but I scooped Blue up into my arms. “Run!”
Bravo jumped into motion, too, grabbing Mica and pushing him ahead of her. My skull felt as if it might fracture from the noise and my ribs were bruised from my knocking heart. But I didn’t stop running. We couldn’t return to the cave where we slept or the bats would find the others. Veering the opposite direction, I stumbled through an icy stream toward the decoy camp.
I looked over my shoulder to check on Bravo’s progress, but she wasn’t there. Blue whimpered in my arms. I turned fully and squinted into the dusky shadows. Had she found a hiding spot?
A scream answered my unspoken question. My heart stuttered. Without thinking, I set Blue on the ground and knelt before her. “Hide. Don’t come out no matter what you hear.”
Her small hands grasped my shirt. “Don’t leave me, Papa.”
I gripped her chin between my forefinger and thumb. Not hard, but firm enough to demand attention. “I have to go help the others. If I don’t come back, wait until dawn before you return to camp.”
She cried, but I ignored it. “Go.” I shoved her away. “Hide in the bushes.”
After she’d wiggled under a low thatch of hobblebush, I took off back over the creek. It was darker now. No birds sang, no insects chirped, not even the wind dared rattle the leaves. The heavy silence pressed in on me like a weight.
Cold sweat coated my chest in an oily film. Fear threatened to freeze my feet to the dirt. But some part of my mind was blessedly immune to the paralytic effects of panic. Bravo was still out there. The other youngs too.
I forced my feet to move and drew hard on the reservoir of adrenaline pooling in my diaphragm. Low-hanging branches and undergrowth disguised m
y advance toward the spot I’d last seen Bravo. With each step the silence gained weight and darkened like a shadow. I was almost to my goal when a mechanical whine cut through the black and green like a yellow laser.
I dove behind an ancient tree trunk and peeked around its rough bark. The bats were gone now, and in their place a Troika rover sat like a great parasitic iron insect on the forest floor. The whine I’d heard had been its engine coming to life—preparing to rise into the night like a mosquito with a belly full of fresh blood.
I closed my eyes and cursed. Acid churned in my gut along with the knowledge I wasn’t ready to accept—Bravo and the young were on that craft.
A synthetic wind rose as the craft lifted from the earth and into the inky dusk. I opened my eyes to watch it go. My muscles yearned to run, to punch, to fight. But I was alone and armed only with a chain and a small knife. Launching myself at the hovercraft would be like a mouse attacking a hawk.
At least they were alive, I thought. But the idea brought me no comfort.
Were any of us truly alive?
I’d been around long enough to know that the Troika would take Bravo and the youngs directly to a labor camp. Neither had high blood so they would not be taken to a blood camp for exsanguination.
A dark shape in the clearing caught my eye. It took me a moment to realize it was the deer we’d killed earlier. Its eyes were open but vacant. That, I thought, was an honorable death.
What waited for Bravo and the others at the camp was not honorable. The path they were on now was a slow slide into hell. There would be no quick death for my friends. Vampires liked to play with their food.
I glanced toward the deer again, thankful I could no longer see the blood pooled underneath its too-still body.
Three
Bravo
Gray ash coated my skin and lined the interior of my mouth with grit. It mixed with the blood on my palms and the wounds on my arms. After hours trapped in a wooden box with no food or water and the beating that closely followed our arrival at the camp, my arms hung useless at my sides and my legs hurt so much I couldn’t walk without a limp.
