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“Oh. I see. ” She gave him another close look, then seemed to recover herself. Stripping off her gloves, she laid two fingers on his neck at the angle of his jaw. “Sorry. I’m Hannah. I’m here to help you. Let me check your pulse. ”
“H-how . . . ” His throat clicked when he swallowed. “How b-bad . . . ”
“Shh. ” Her lips moved as she silently counted the seconds on her wristwatch. “How’s your breathing?”
“H-hurts. Hard to . . . ”
“To breathe? Like you can’t pull in enough air?” Her gray gaze studied his face. “What about pain?”
“Like nuh-nuh-knives. ” He grimaced against another inhalation. “Get . . . getting . . . ”
“Harder to breathe?” When he moved his head in an incremental nod, she continued, “Is the pain worse on one side?”
“R-right. ” He closed his eyes a moment to gather himself. “How b-bad?”
“Very. ” Her fingers traced the hump of his Adam’s apple, and then her gray eyes clouded. “Where else does it hurt?”
“St-stomach. ” His tongue was so huge he was afraid he might choke. “B-b-back. ”
“The back, I’d expected. That door’s very heavy. Can you move your toes?”
It hadn’t occurred to him to try. Had he before he passed out? He focused, sent the command down to his feet. After a few anxious seconds, he felt the bunching of wool, but the sensation was very distant, as if the signal were being relayed on a very long and sluggish cable. “Yes. ”
“Okay,” she said, although Chris thought her expression didn’t match the word at all. “Listen, I’m going to slide my hand under and press on your stomach a little. I’ll try to be as gentle as I can, but I have to check, okay?”
He steeled himself as her fingers wormed beneath his sopping parka and began working their way along his right side. When she pressed, he winced. “That hurts?” she asked, those eyes never leaving his face. “How about . . . ?” She abruptly pushed in, then let go.
“Ugh!” A bolt of nausea streaked up his throat, and he could feel sudden tears oiling down his cheeks. “D-don . . . don’t . . . ”
“Okay, okay. ” She touched a hand to his cheek. “Try to relax. ”
“Jus . . . ” He was shuddering, and that only made the pain much worse. Not moving was best. “Puh-please, get m-me out, g-get me . . . ”
“We will,” she said. He wasn’t sure if it was his panic, but it seemed to him that her smile didn’t make it to her eyes. “I’m going to get you some water, all right? Are you thirsty?”
“Y-yes, but d-don’t leave . . . don’t leave m-me here. ” He heard how freaked he sounded, and didn’t care. The fear and a sudden sensation of doom draped him in a dense, airless mantle. “Puhplease. ”
“Of course not. Try not to panic, Chris. Just let me . . . ” Turning away, she rolled, pushed back a corner of the emergency blanket, and called, “I need my water bottle, please. ”
“Which one?” It was the older boy, Jayden.
“Left saddlebag. ”
A pause. “Okay,” Jayden said, at the same moment that Ellie said, “What? Wait—”
Hannah cut her off. “Eli, I think you and Ellie should make sure we’re in the clear. ”
“In the clear . . . ,” Ellie began.
“Okay,” the younger boy, Eli, said. “Come on, Ellie. ”
“No, don’t,” Ellie said. Her tone was sharp and—through the filter of Chris’s fear—angry, verging on horrified. “You know it’s—” Whatever else she was going to say was lost in the crunch of snow as someone, probably Eli, took her aside.
Upset. Why? He watched as Hannah took a Nalgene bottle that was passed through, tugged out a long drinking tube, and slid the mouthpiece to his lips. “Here,” she said.
Both the water’s scent, warm yet somehow sweet and earthy, and the scream of his need were so overpowering his fear and apprehension vanished. Yet he was so horribly weak that when he pulled at the mouthpiece, only a thin trickle spilled over his parched tongue before dribbling from the corner of his mouth.
“Oh. ” She made a small sympathetic sound. “Wait a second. ” Moving closer, she unwound her scarf before slipping a gentle hand beneath his cheek. “Let’s raise you up a bit,” she said, supporting his head and balling the scarf into a makeshift pillow. She was so close, he could smell her skin, an aroma of milk and warm oatmeal. Cradling his head in the crook of her arm, she offered him the mouthpiece again. “Try now,” she said.
He sucked, the first precious drops slithering over his tongue to course down his tortured throat. The sweetness of the water was balanced against a yeasty aroma that reminded him of fresh-baked bread. He let slip a low moan.
“Take it easy,” he heard her say, and realized that his eyes had slid shut. The water was so good, so good. “There’s no rush,” she said. “I won’t leave you. They won’t do anything else until I say it’s okay. ”
He felt his body relax against her, and for a few blissful seconds, he did nothing but drink. As the water trailed a warm finger down the middle of his chest and into his stomach, his fear vanished. He forgot to be embarrassed about the fact that a strange girl was holding him as close as a baby. With every swallow, he felt his heart, racing before with fear and pain, begin to slow.
After another minute, she touched his cheek. “That’s enough for now,” she said. He opened his eyes to find her gray ones intent on his face. She had very high cheekbones, but her face was square, her mouth wide, her nose a little too big. “Wouldn’t want you to bring that back up. Let’s wait a little, see how it goes. ”
“Thank you. ” The rustiness in his voice was gone. He skimmed a lazy tongue over his lips. “Sweet. ”
“That’s the honey. ” Her tone was very calm yet somehow familiar, like the tune of a favorite song he only half-remembered. “We keep our own hives. Let me . . . ” She slid back, carefully withdrawing her arm. “Chris, what were you doing out here? Where are you from?”
“Trying . . . ” He was feeling better, almost peaceful. “Trying to . . . to get to O-Oren. F-find . . . ” He licked his lips again. “Settlement. ”
“A settlement in Oren. ” Her tone betrayed nothing. “Why?”
“Mmm. ” A strange but not unwelcome sensation of drowsiness swept through him. He could feel his muscles beginning to relax. “C-came from R-Rule . . . ”
“Rule. ” The word sounded flat and hard. “Why? And why come this way? It’s not the fastest, or even a straight shot. ”
“R-running. ”
“You were running away?” When he nodded, she continued, “Were you followed?”
“D-don’t think so. Been on the trail . . . long time. ”
“I see. ” She offered him the mouthpiece again. “Drink. ”
The water, still so wonderfully wet, was nevertheless a touch off this time. Just beneath the honey and that yeasty tang, he detected something weird, a brackish aftertaste.
“Have you been to Oren before?” she asked.
“Mmm. ” He had to work at breathing, timing his words so he had enough air. His chest was heavy again. “T-took kids. ”
“Yes, everyone knows Rule does that. ”
“N-not what you think,” he said. “Sick kids. ”
A pause. “That was you? You’re that boy?” He registered the note of surprise in her voice. Another pause. “Tell me how you found them. ”
Was this a test? “The . . . the designs, on the barns. ” His lips tingled as if he’d eaten too many jalapeño poppers. “That’s how . . . that’s how . . . ” He fumbled for the thought, lost it.
“Yes, that’s right,” she said, as if confirming something to herself. “What are you doing here, Chris? You’ve never come this way before. ”
“Running. Came to f-find . . . ” Who? Maybe it was the light, but her face was going out of focus. Tired. How strange that time felt as if it was
unwinding like a spring at the end of its useful life. The tick of his heart was slowing. His lids kept wanting to slip shut. I want to sleep. “Hunter. ”
The corners of her mouth tightened. “Why do you want to see Isaac?”
Isaac. “You . . . you know him?”
“Why do you want to see him?” she repeated.
“N-need . . . ” His thoughts were beginning to fuzz. He couldn’t remember what he was there to do. He was growing cold again, the sunny feeling in his chest beginning to dissipate even as the trembling that had seized him earlier was nearly gone. “Need him to . . . ”
“Need Isaac for what?” She tapped his cheek. “Chris?”
He barely registered her fingers. He had the feeling her gray eyes were watching, very closely, but his own gaze was wavering, his grip on consciousness beginning to slip. His mind was drifting again, the string tying the tiny, bobbing balloon of his mind to the here and now loosening. He couldn’t think, didn’t remember. In his chest, there was a blackness, a blight, that was first a fist and now a slow and insidious palm with sinuous fingers unfurling, worming their way through his lungs, following the course of his blood: a cold, dark hand reaching into his brain, cupping his mind and smothering his thoughts, who he was and where.
Ellie. A tiny spark flickered in his mind. Ellie had been upset, and then she’d been hustled away. When Hannah asked for the bottle of—
And then he understood.
They weren’t saving him.
They were killing him.
“Wuh?” Chris didn’t know if he meant what or why, and it really didn’t matter. His eyes skidded, as slippery as oiled ball bearings in his sockets. If he could just hold on . . . Dark, so dark, like my chest . . . not right. “Ha . . . uhh,” he grunted. Had she left him? Was she gone? Why was it so dark? “What—”