Son of Sun, page 9
“The water bottles,” Nola said, “the ones they gave people after they burned the city. We found trackers in them.”
“It could have been the bottles,” Jeremy said. “Or the Outer Guard could have followed those people here.”
“Or those could be the Northerners we’ve been looking for.” Julian led them down a rocky curve in the hillside where water would have run after a heavy rain.
“Sending guards out this far is dangerous,” Jeremy said. “They’d have to stay on foot, going through the woods.”
“The Outer Guard have always relied on their ability to quickly retreat to safety,” Julian said. “Attack a nest of vampires, bundle into their trucks, and be whisked away to the protection of the domes.”
A rock shot out from beneath Nola’s foot. Jeremy caught her under the arm before she could try and right herself.
“That was before Graylock.” Jeremy kept right behind Nola’s shoulder. “They don’t need trucks for speed—”
“But they’ve never been out of the city,” Julian said. “The forest and mountains are an entirely different world. It took Nightland a long time to learn that lesson.”
“That’s why my dad never ran patrols past the highway,” Jeremy said. “Even if he took a hundred Outer Guard into the wild, there’s too much ground to cover, too many unknowns.”
“Does Salinger care?” Nola asked. “Would a monster like him really care that he’s putting his guards in danger?”
“No,” Jeremy said. “They’d be collateral damage.”
They entered a stand of trees with withered and twisted branches. A few thick leaves still clung to life even as the yellow and orange brought on by the cold touched their tips. Fluttering on their perches in the darkness, the waxy coating of the leaves had dulled in patches, marred by the acid rain.
People aren’t the only things to adapt.
“Jeremy,” Julian said, “I don’t mean to be cruel, but I do need you to remember the guards Salinger is sending into the woods, no matter how doomed and helpless they may seem, are still, in fact, our enemies.”
“The guards destroyed the city,” Jeremy said. “I’m not dumb enough to think any of them are innocent. The only guard I want to find is my sister.”
“We’re not going to stop looking,” Nola said. “We’ll find Gentry.”
A skeleton lay on the forest floor in front of them. Nola held her breath, waiting to see what horrible thing the forest hid. But the bones belonged to an animal, perhaps a long dead deer. The white of the skeleton shone unnaturally in the first light of the rising sun.
Nola glanced east.
Through the branches of the trees, the sky had barely begun to turn a pale gray.
“We should find a place for you to hide before the sun gets too high,” Nola said.
“I have the sun suit.” Julian slowed to a walk.
The forest of twisted trees ended, opening up to a wide and barren field. The expanse reached in front of them, leaving a gap as wide as Bright Dome, and stretched in either direction before twisting out of sight.
“I don’t like this.” Jeremy stood next to Nola, right behind the last of the trees.
There had been trees in the barren strip. Remains of the stumps still stuck out of the ground at odd angles, as though someone had given up on trying to wrench them from the earth. Patches of fire marked the dirt as well, as though an attempt had been made to burn the stumps away.
“It’s like they were trying to clear the land for farming.” Nola peeked out from behind the tree. “If the soil is good enough for trees to grow, it might be fertile enough for crops. I think someone was trying to make a field.” She leaned farther out to the side.
“We should backtrack,” Jeremy said. “Head a bit farther into the woods and hunker down for the day.”
“I am well protected by the sun suit,” Julian said.
“A sword could slice through your sun suit,” Jeremy said.
“I’ve seen pictures of old plows,” Nola said. “You could make one from rocks and wood. It might take time to figure it out, but it could be done.”
“If there are Northerners or guards watching this strip, I don’t want to get into a fight with them when tearing through the suit could get you killed,” Jeremy said. “We can wait and try crossing in the dark.”
“It could work.” Nola pictured it in her mind, a strip of farmland running between the trees. Protected from wind and erosion by the surrounding forest.
We’d have to build shelters from the rain. Kieran could help me.
“How far from the city are we?” Nola asked.
“I’d say about twenty-five miles,” Julian said.
“The guards still made it to those bodies,” Jeremy said. “We can’t take any chances.”
“Twenty-five miles from the city should mean the run off from the factories never made it this far. Or if it did, it won’t be as bad.” Nola stepped out from behind the tree. “There could be a real farm here.”
A whoosh cut through her thoughts.
“Nola!”
She spun at Jeremy’s scream. His eyes were wide with horror as he reached toward her.
Pain shot through her side, buckling her knees.
Jeremy grabbed her before she hit the ground. He dodged to the side as an arrow hit the tree trunk next to his head. He had her under the arms, dragging her sideways, on top of her pack. The movement sent a fresh wave of burning pain shooting through her. Hands pulled her pack away, and she lay flat on the ground.
A scream tore from Nola’s throat, but using the air in her lungs only made the pain worse.
“I think we’ve found the Northerners.” Julian had his back pressed against a tree only a few feet from Nola.
“Nola,” Jeremy said. “Nola, I need you to look at me.”
Nola blinked, trying to think beyond the searing in her side to find Jeremy’s brown eyes.
“I have to pull the arrow out.” Black blurred the edges of Jeremy’s face. “It’s going to hurt, but I promise you’re going to be okay.”
“Jeremy.” Nola reached for his hand. Blood coated her fingers. She looked down. An arrow had lodged in her side. Red seeped from the wound, staining her shirt.
“Just hold still,” Jeremy said.
But she needed to touch the arrow. To be sure it really was sticking out of her body. She’d been stabbed before, through the chest. The pain felt the same, but her mind hadn’t been stolen from her this time.
Her finger recognized the grooves of the hand-carved arrow shaft. The stickiness of her blood made sense.
I am bleeding. I am hurt.
The horrible pain of her wound didn’t panic her. She closed her fist around the arrow shaft and pulled.
“Nola, don’t.” Jeremy reached for her hand, but she kept pulling, dragging the arrowhead back out of her flesh.
Spots of pain danced through her vision as she wrenched the arrow from her body and tossed it aside.
“Well done,” Julian said. “But I do recommend you hold still for a bit.”
“Don’t move.” Jeremy pressed his hands over the hole in Nola’s side.
“I’ll heal.” Nola’s voice came out rasping, but strong. The pain in her side began to recede, turning from a horrible red to a dull, throbbing gray. “It’s already happening, isn’t it?”
Jeremy leaned closer to Nola’s stomach.
An arrow thudded into the tree behind him.
“Watch out.” Nola coughed, and the pain tore itself back open. “Shit.”
“Hold still.” Jeremy leaned close to her, sheltering behind the same tree that protected her. “Your skin is already knitting back together, but internal organs are a bit more complicated.”
“We can’t wait, we have to move.” Nola tried to sit up, but Jeremy pressed on her shoulders, keeping her pinned to the dirt.
“Waiting a few minutes now will save us a lot of time in the long run,” Jeremy said. “They’re firing from a distance. We can hide here.”
“Why the hell did they shoot me?” Nola said.
“Because this is where the arrows fly,” Julian said. “We came looking for survivors of the apocalypse. I never expected to find a polite society.”
Chapter Twelve
An arrow shook the tree behind Nola’s head as it landed with a heavy thud.
“They didn’t clear the strip for farming did they?” Nola said.
“It might have started that way,” Jeremy said, “but it gives them a clean line of sight for attacks, too.”
“No wonder people don’t return from the north,” Julian said. “I’m not certain even I could make it across the strip alive.”
“We can’t just turn back,” Nola said. The thud of another arrow punctuated her words. “Look at what they’ve done. They have enough people to clear that much land, which means they’re managing to feed a real population. We have to talk to them.”
“They shot you,” Jeremy said.
“Only a little.” Nola lifted his hand from her wound. A dull ache throbbed through her side, like a bruise from a bad blow.
“There is no such thing as being only a little shot,” Jeremy said.
“We came here for answers,” Nola said. “This isn’t like the city. The people we’re searching for are actually here. We have to talk to them.”
Jeremy held Nola’s gaze for a long moment.
“I’ll go across,” Jeremy said.
“Like hell you will.” Nola wriggled out from under his grasp to lean against the tree.
“I don’t think any of us trying to get across is a good idea,” Julian said.
“But—”
“Stop thinking like a guard,” Nola cut across. “These aren’t wolves on the streets of the city trying to kill you. They aren’t mobs attacking the domes. We’re invading their home. So let’s try and talk to them before anyone else bleeds.”
“Okay,” Jeremy said, “but you stay behind the trees.”
“I think I just learned the value of cover.” Nola wiped the blood from her hands onto the cleaner side of her shirt. The red didn’t leave her skin. “I don’t think I’ll forget anytime soon.”
“Always good to learn from one’s mistakes,” Julian said.
Nola shifted to stand, keeping herself behind the tree as she turned to face the strip. Jeremy moved with her, leaving only a few inches between them. The heat from his body radiated toward her. She longed to sink into his warmth and disappear to a place where pain couldn’t follow.
An arrow thudded into the tree in front of them.
“We didn’t come here to hurt you,” Nola shouted. She stood frozen, straining to hear any sound beyond her heart thundering in her ears. “I know you don’t have any reason to believe that, but it’s true. We came here to talk to you. The Teachers told us about you, said you had lived up here for a long time.”
She waited again, digging her nails into the bark of the tree.
I will not panic.
She had tried to speak to people who wanted to hurt her once before. That night had ended in blood and fire.
She shifted her weight, letting her back touch Jeremy.
“We found the bodies,” Nola called, her voice stronger than before. “Did you move them to the burnt out valley? We know the Outer Guard killed them, but we don’t think they moved them. Were they your people, or people from the city?”
“Keep talking,” Julian said.
“What the domes did to the city is unforgivable,” Nola said. “We have a place where we live away from the city. The domes have tried to come after us. Have they come after you yet? Did they kill your people with little silver darts? If they haven’t, if the corpses were just people who fled in the wrong direction, that doesn’t mean the domes won’t come after you. It only means they haven’t found you yet.”
“You’re one of them,” a man’s voice shouted across the strip. “I saw the arrow hit. You shouldn’t be talking.”
Nola closed her eyes, trying to picture the man hiding behind a tree just like her.
Afraid. Desperate.
“I’m not a guard, but I was injected with the same drug that makes them strong. The domes, they’d”—Nola let out a shaking breath—“they’d probably kill me if they knew I’d taken Graylock.”
“One of you has a glass suit,” the man shouted.
Nola glanced to Julian, whose hat tipped up and down as he nodded.
“He’s a vampire,” Nola said. “The sun’s coming up. He has to wear it to stay alive.”
“Prove it,” the man shouted.
“Prove that he’ll die in the sun?” Nola said. “No. I’m not going to let him leak blood out of his eyes and die a horrible death just to prove a point.”
A voice lighter than the man’s laughed.
“All we want is to talk to you,” Nola said. “We have an enemy that wants to see both of our people dead. There are murderers living on our doorstep. Don’t you think having an ally would be a good idea?”
Silence stretched over the gap.
“We need to move,” Jeremy whispered. “They haven’t had Vamp or Graylock. We can outrun them.”
“The entrance to Nightland,” the man called. “How do you get in?”
“The tunnels under the city have been rigged to kill,” Julian shouted. “There is no entry to Nightland now.”
“Not the tunnels,” the man called, “the new home of the nightwalkers. How do you get in?”
The subtle sound of Julian’s sword clearing its sheath stilled Nola’s racing heart.
“You have to jump up,” Nola said. “Jumping up is the only way in.”
A tree crackled across the strip. A man dressed entirely in brown leapt from the branches, a bow in his hands with an arrow nocked and pointed toward Nola.
“I never thought any of the nightwalkers would come this way.” The man squinted in the early morning light, his gaze fixed on the tree sheltering Nola.
“I didn’t think we’d be coming here either,” Nola said.
“End of the world drives people to all sorts of things,” the man said. “I’ll let the three of you cross. But there are people in the trees you’ll never find. If you show one hint of wanting to hurt us, you will die. Glass drugs in you or not.”
“Okay.” Nola lifted her pack and moved to step out from behind the tree.
“Me first.” Jeremy slipped his Guard gun back into its holster and stepped around Nola. He stood between two trees, facing the man. He raised both hands, displaying his empty palms.
Panic seized Nola’s heart. An arrow would fly across the gap and sink into Jeremy’s chest.
I won’t lose him.
“I was wrong. We shouldn’t do this,” Nola whispered.
“Just stay behind me.” Jeremy stepped out onto the barren dirt.
“I feel it, too, you know?” Nola stepped up next to Jeremy, raising her hands as he had. “The horrible fear when you could be hurt. I hate it.”
“You’re stronger than I am.” Jeremy walked forward. “I’ve always known that.”
Julian stepped up to Nola’s other side, his sword sheathed, his gloved hands raised.
“Should things go terribly,” Julian said, “find out how they know the entrance to Nightland’s new home. More important than how they’ve managed to survive is how they found us.”
“Agreed,” Jeremy said.
They were halfway across the strip.
Time stretched as they crossed the barrens. Nola didn’t know if it was because she had grown accustomed to moving so quickly, or if dread of the unknown had somehow slowed the seconds.
Nola studied the Northern man. An uneven beard covered his chin, and scars marked the parts of his face not hidden by hair. Not the dots of acid rain burns that marred Desmond’s face, or the scratch marks Nola had seen on some of the vampires who attacked humans. These scars were different, varied, as though life had unleashed a hundred unique torments on this man and each of them had left its own individual mark.
His clothes weren’t of the make Nola had seen in the city. Baggy and plain, as though someone had made the fabric and fashioned the clothes by hand, their dull brown blended perfectly with the trees, though Nola didn’t know if it had been done intentionally or had happened slowly as dirt ground into the fabric.
The man’s hands stayed steady, his arrow now pointed at Jeremy’s chest, as they reached the far side of the strip
“Thank you for letting us cross,” Jeremy said.
“Doesn’t mean we won’t kill you if you threaten us,” the man said.
“I know,” Jeremy said, “just like you know we’ll defend ourselves.”
The man smiled. A gap had taken the place of a tooth in the front of his mouth. “Good to have an understanding.”
They all stood silently for a long moment.
“The one who laughed,” Nola said, “are they coming out, too?”
“I don’t think so,” the man said. “It’s probably best if we keep our people where they’re happiest. Hidden.”
“Hard to hide when you’ve made a wide tract around your land,” Jeremy said. “We wouldn’t have thought we’d reached you if it weren’t for that.”
“Blight hit the trees.” The man shrugged. “Had to kill the bad ones before the whole forest died.”
“That was smart,” Nola said.
“I know,” the man said.
“What’s your name?” Nola asked.
“Doesn’t matter.” The man slid his arrow back into his quiver and his bow over his shoulder as he walked into the trees, giving a wave for them to follow. “I’m not the one you want to talk to.”
Jeremy’s fingers twitched as though longing to reach for his weapon. Nola took his hand, tugging him to walk with her. He bit his lips together but didn’t argue as they followed the man deeper into the trees.
“Not to be old fashioned,” Julian said, keeping pace right behind Nola and Jeremy, “but whether or not you think we’re here to speak to you, I still feel incredibly rude not knowing your name.”
The man laughed. The sound was more like a cough.
Who did we hear laugh before?
