The Defectors (Defectors Trilogy) (7 page)

Greyson said uncontrolled killing was just a survival technique. Significantly weaker than humans and hunted by the PMC, carriers moved in groups and treated all humans as a threat. They were unregulated and unstoppable in large packs. Almost no one ever survived a carrier attack.

No one ever survived.
 

It took a moment for that fact to wash over me. Was this how I was going to die? A brutal murder? A long, slow torture to the death? Maybe they
would
eat me — cook me slowly over the fire and cut out my eyes for dessert. If the carriers couldn’t find any animals to feed on, why
wouldn’t
they resort to cannibalism?

I slumped back against the tree, my self-pity and terror competing for dominance. How had this happened? I was just a college student going about my life. I was documented. I followed the law . . . mostly. How had I ended up an orphan on the run, in the woods and about to be killed by a gang of monsters?

I’d never given much thought to how I would die, but I’d always imagined I would have an opportunity to say goodbye to the people I loved — to make some final grand statement about the meaning of life and what I had stood for.
 

There was no chance of that. My parents weren’t alive to mourn my loss, and Greyson would probably die in prison without ever knowing I was trying to save him. He would probably think I had made it out west with my dad and was living happily without him.
 

Maybe that wasn’t so bad.

I let my head fall back against the tree, overwhelmed by thoughts of my own mortality. My blood-matted hair stuck to the rough bark, causing a searing pain that rippled down my shoulders to my fingertips.
 

Is this really it?
I thought, utterly disgusted with myself.
Is this how I am going to die? Tied to a tree, waiting for it to happen?

I imagined what my dad would think if he saw me tied up like this, waiting to be killed. Surely he would berate me for being so unobservant. They weren’t quiet in their approach by any means — I should have heard them coming. After all my precautions, all my worrying, I still hadn’t been alert when it counted.

My mom would cry over my predicament, but my dad would expect me to come up with some way to get out of this. I could practically hear his words:
You got yourself into this mess. You better get yourself out of it.
 

Greyson would. He would do something bold and unexpected. They wouldn’t know what hit them. But me? I was the planner. I should be able to come up with some kind of plan to escape.

Maybe that was my downfall. As soon as my original plans fell apart, I was helpless to adapt. I had no plan B. The plan had been simple: avoid the carriers. That was my survival strategy with the PMC, too. Avoid, avoid, avoid. Avoid attracting attention, avoid getting caught helping Greyson, avoid death. My strategy wasn’t panning out too well.

Why was I going to just sit there and let them kill me? I couldn’t accept it. I had to try to fight back — to free myself —
something.
My death would be just as horrible if I died trying to fight against it.

I twisted my wrist in the restraints, gauging the tightness of my bonds. I could feel my hand stopped by the plastic near the lower knuckle of my thumb. It was tight, but ripping my own hand off still seemed better than being their prisoner, and much better than being their next kill.
 

I tried my other hand. It seemed even tighter. Desperately, I looked around for my knife. Of course, it was nowhere within reach. That would be too easy. Maybe carriers were smarter than I gave them credit for.

Taking a deep breath, I yanked both of my hands at once. This accomplished nothing but the painful scraping of the plastic against my skin. I pulled, eyes watering.
 

I must have made a noise — a slight whimper or a rustle of leaves — because the carriers stirred, looked around, and one made a move to get up. I froze, watching them watch me.
 

They looked at each other. The big one who seemed to be the leader made an eerie gargling sound in his throat, and they turned their backs to me.
 

I sighed with relief. I would have to be more careful. If they decided I was a flight risk, they might speed up whatever they were planning and kill me instantly.
 

Maybe if I waited long enough, one would leave to get water or go to the bathroom. Surely they wouldn’t all leave at once, but if even one or two of them were gone, I might be able to fend off the others. The ratio of humans to carriers that would be an even match wasn’t a sure thing, but I knew for certain I wouldn’t be able to defend myself against four.

I hesitated to try to break free again. Every move I made caused the leaves under me to crunch loudly. I sat there, mind racing, as the sun rose in the sky. The warmth of the noon sun should have been comforting after the cold night, but I felt myself break into an anxious sweat.

What were they waiting for? At this rate, my best guess was that they were planning to cook me for dinner, but that didn’t fit what I knew about carriers. They foraged in abandoned houses for food, fed from dumpsters, and ate roadkill when they were pushed out of cities. But why else would they wait to kill me?
 

As the sun beat down, they started to move more slowly, as if they were getting lethargic. Then, as if the unseasonably hot sun were my own personal gift, they began to fall asleep.
 

This was my chance — probably the only chance I would have to break free without attracting their attention. As quietly as I could, I shifted to try to free my hands once again, but the bonds were as tight and unyielding as ever. No matter how I twisted my wrists and pulled, I could not squeeze free.

Perhaps it required more finesse. I tried to push my hands together instead, in hopes of slackening the plastic bonds like a Chinese finger trap. This accomplished nothing except to wear on my quickly diminishing hopes of escape.

I decided to focus on the hand with the loosest restraint. I pulled to the point of excruciating pain. My eyes watered, and I felt the coolness of the wind on blood and knew I had cut my wrist open. The blood trickled down my hand, and I suddenly had an idea. It was gruesome, but much better than the alternative.

I pulled again, pain throbbing in my wrist and pulsating up my arm. The blood was pounding in my head, and I could feel the fresh wound at the back from all my exertion. Tears were streaming down my face, but I pulled and pulled until the blood flowed freely.
 

Don’t pass out. Don’t pass out,
I chanted in my head.
Fight the pain.

If I could just slide one hand through . . .

I continued to pull, twisting my wrists in the bonds until blood coated the plastic. I felt a heavy throbbing of blood rushing to the wounds. The pain was excruciating. The zip tie moved a quarter of an inch up my hand. If I could just pull a little farther . . .

Suddenly, my hand was free. I felt a rush of gratitude and relief so strong I wanted to cry from joy.

Examining my wrists, I could see the cuts were pretty bad — especially on the one I had freed — but there was no time to worry about first aid. I wiped my wrist hastily on my shirt. It was throbbing, but I still had full motor function in my hand.

Positive my heavy breathing would wake my captors, I got to my feet as quietly as I could. I stepped slowly toward the fire, one foot at a time. Even taking great care, each step resulted in a loud crunch of leaves. There was nothing to do but move quickly and hope I could get away.

Most of my belongings were still lying where I had left them. My canteen was within reach next to my pack, and Greyson’s knife glinted near a sleeping carrier. My flint starter still hung from my keychain.

Carefully, I retrieved any food the carriers hadn’t touched and backed slowly away from the campsite. I left all my extra clothes and the supplies that were laid out, but there was nothing to be done. At least I was armed and could still start a fire.

As soon as I was on the trail out of earshot, I broke into a run to put as much distance as possible between me and the band of carriers. The bloody zip ties still hung from my less injured wrist, but I didn’t want to bother sawing off the one that was still attached until I was farther away. With any luck, they would take a long nap, and I would have a few hours before they noticed I was gone.

Adrenalin pumped through my veins, and I felt a rush of energy from the sheer joy of being alive. I had survived a carrier attack! If I made it to Sector X and back alive, I would be telling my grandchildren about this one day.

After I had put about a half a mile between me and the carriers, I began to feel dizzy. I stopped to saw off the bloody plastic restraint and splash some clean water over the cuts on my wrists, but I wasn’t sure how to bandage them. My shirt and jacket were made of the same tough synthetic material, and I hadn’t thought to bring a first aid kit along. My sweaty sock would have to do.
 

I ripped it in two and tied the pieces tightly around the wound, hoping it would at least stem the flow of blood. The wound in the back of my head was throbbing, too, but I had no way of knowing how bad it was.

Despite my injuries, I felt almost giddy for the first time in as long as I could remember. Maybe the feeling of lightness was from the loss of blood, but I didn’t care. I was going to make it. I could survive.

I didn’t know for sure how far behind the carriers would be, so I didn’t feel safe stopping for rest. It concerned me that they showed some level of remaining human intelligence and self-control by holding me hostage — although I had no way of knowing why they had or if this group of carriers was unique. Maybe everything I thought I knew about carriers was wrong. The authorities fed plenty of lies to the media; there was no reason they wouldn’t lie about carriers’ capabilities, too.

The plastic zip ties disturbed me the most. They showed forethought and introduced the idea that carriers might be taking hostages. Were they organizing? Did they have a plan to capture and infect or kill as many humans as possible? They were all half dead and dying anyway. There was no reason for them to obey laws or care how many people they slaughtered in the process.

To ward off the hunger pangs and lightheadedness I hoped was related to hunger and not the loss of blood, I nibbled on a few nuts and a piece of jerky — the only food I’d managed to salvage from the carriers’ bounty. I stopped only long enough to find water and rest my legs for a few brief moments.
 

The woods had lost their appeal for me. Now they seemed like an endless minefield of danger: carriers lurking in the shadows, waiting for me to stumble into their wake or the PMC tailing me from some helicopter above the trees. I knew I was getting paranoid, but was it truly paranoia if people really were out to get you?
 

Despite my slower pace over the last few hours, I knew I must have put some distance between myself and the carriers. My weary stumble was still faster than the carriers’ lurching pace on their best day.
 

Even so, I decided I would just sleep for a few hours and then continue on my journey. My head was throbbing from the wound, and I knew I needed to find food soon.

Since I had left my sleeping bag behind, I had no choice but to build a fire for warmth. Luckily, the striker still hung from my pack. I used very little wood and let the fire burn low to avoid attracting attention.

It wasn’t difficult to rouse myself after only a few hours of restless shut-eye. I was too cold and hungry and scared to fall into a deep sleep anyway. I had to force myself to push the thoughts of carriers out of my mind. I had much bigger worries than what they might be up to or why I had survived. They were still somewhere behind me, but I had to keep moving and find food.

Too weak to run, I drank some water and continued at a slow walk through the darkness. The only thing worse than walking in a weak, starved daze the day before was walking through the woods in the dark. My eyes adjusted to the night, but that only made the details I could see in the shadows even more terrifying.

As the sky began to lighten, I prayed I would spot a town that might have an abandoned general store or some place I could steal food. My feet ached from constant movement, my head was strangely fuzzy, and my stomach felt as if it were eating itself from the inside.

I was stumbling more than walking now; I felt almost drunk from the weakness that was cannibalizing my body. Blackness curled at the edges of my vision despite the glow of early sunlight around the changing leaves. It rimmed the trees in a sort of halo. Maybe this was heaven.
 

Was I dead?
 

No. Death couldn’t feel this awful — caught between the urge to vomit and a splitting headache. Beads of cold sweat bloomed on my forehead, and as I wiped them away, I had the awful sinking feeling that I was going to pass out.
 

I knew I wasn’t moving as quietly as I should. Carriers would be able to hear me a mile away if they managed to catch up.
Let them get me
, I thought. They would capture me, and I’d become infected and die. Or they would hold me hostage as part of their evil plan. At least they would need to feed me to keep me alive.
 

Up ahead, I could see the trees thinning as the trail turned around the bend. There was a hole in the tree branches where the woods seemed to open onto another man-made trail — as though someone had ridden a mountain bike through in the old days. Or was I imagining that?

No.
 

As I drew closer, I saw a break in the trees and a footpath where the undergrowth had been worn away. Peering through the branches, I could see an open field. I had found a farm.

Staring out at the flat stretch of farmland, my heart vibrated in my chest like a gently humming tuning fork. If it was a farm or if it
had
been a farm recently, there might be food nearby: a pantry, a chicken coop to steal some eggs from, anything. I pushed through the branches in madness, no longer bothering to stay quiet.