This was too much to absorb. Chris could feel his thoughts storming around and around the limits of his skull. “What does any of this have to do with the Banned? Or the Zone?”
“It’s pretty simple, Chris,” Weller said. “Why is the southwest corner, where we send the Banned, the least guarded?”
“I don’t know,” Chris said. “What are you saying? What are you talking about?”
“We’re talking about what’s beyond the Zone. We’re talking about why Peter sends the Banned there, and nowhere else. Why Peter decides that certain routes should be traveled only at certain times.” Weller leaned forward. “We’re talking about why Peter has us stealing children. Why are we taking kids, by force, from their families?”
“Oh shit, oh shit,” Lena said before Chris could answer. “You did it. You staged the ambush to get Peter out of the way!”
“Don’t be stupid, girl,” Weller said. “Peter had things to answer for, I’ll give you that. But I tried to save that boy.”
“Things to answer for?” Chris echoed. “What things?”
“Answer me this, Chris,” Weller said. “Where are the children of Rule? Where are the grandkids?”
“They . . . well, they Changed, right? Didn’t you . . . you must’ve killed them.”
“But where are the graves? We buried everyone native to Rule, even the Changed we had to shoot. But how many kids do you think there were in a village of two thousand? I can tell you, for a fact, that there aren’t near enough graves out there. So what I’m asking is . . . where are the rest of them?”
“I—” Chris’s voice came in a harsh croak. “I don’t know. They left. They ran away. They’re . . . they’re gone.”
“Really?” Weller leaned forward. “And what makes you so sure?”
20
Nothing. No dreams, no sound. No thought. Just . . . nothing. Then, pain: a red shriek that went on and on and on. Voices, too, but they bled into one another: hold him watch out he’s tanking working as fast as I . . . Screams and other sounds, but they were garbled and elusive as thin mist. Only at the end—right before his fade to black—did his mind grab at a single, clear thought: those awful, bloody screams were his.
More blank. More dark. Every once in a while, his mind sputtered to life like an ancient engine that refused to turn over, no matter how gently that pedal was goosed. Sometimes, he heard himself moan and there were other shrieks, but those felt detached and . . . elsewhere, like voices trapped in those floaty cartoon bubbles. A longer blank.
Then, all at once, he jammed to consciousness in a great searing, molten shriek of pain. The transition was shattering. His body was a white blaze of agony, but he was in the dark. His eyes wouldn’t open. Or they might be wide open and he just didn’t know it.
Oh God, I’m blind, I’m blind, I’m . . . A scream boiled from his throat, and then he was straining, trying to move—and couldn’t.
“Easy,” someone said. “Take it easy, I’m right here.”
He couldn’t tell if the voice belonged to a man or woman. “I . . . I . . . ,” he wheezed. He tried turning his head, but another red arrow of pain pierced him to the core, and he let go of another scream.
“Stop.” This time, a hand touched his shoulder. “Try not to panic.”
If he wasn’t hurting so much, he might’ve laughed. My God, what is wrong with me? He could smell himself: sour flesh, old blood, and fear. “Can’t . . . s-see . . . can’t m-move.”
“That’s because of the restraints, boy-o.” This voice definitely belonged to a man. Peter heard the hard boom of command but also a rough weariness he associated with the old. “You’re a fighter, I’ll give you that.”
Restraints? His heart crowded into his mouth. “K-Kincaid . . . wh-where . . .”
“Easy.” The first voice again: a soothing contralto. A woman. “You’ve been out so long that we put bandages over your eyes to keep the corneas from ulcerating. Take it easy.” Her fingers spidered over his cheeks and then she tugged. His skin bunched as the gluey adhesive let go. Air sighed over his closed lids. “Try now.”
The simple act of opening his eyes took tremendous concentration. His muscles were creaky, like long-unused gears mucky with coagulated oil and grime. A sliver of light appeared and then his lids were rolling back. Another lurch of panic clawed his chest. “Bloo.” He wanted to cry. His tongue was thick, a flap of muscle that refused to cooperate. “Blooor.”
“Blurry?” Beads of water dripped onto his forehead. “Close your eyes again . . . that’s good. Just give it a couple minutes, okay? I had to use animal tranks. I’m sorry about that, but it’s the best we have. Good thing you’re strong as a horse and your heart’s young. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
The cloth felt so good and cool and wet. He stopped fighting and let her work. There was a gurgle and splash, and then she was swabbing his forehead, his face, the underside of his neck. Her fingers worked at buttons, and then she was sponging his chest. He moaned, this time with relief.
“Yeah, I’ll bet that feels good.” The cloth went away again, and then she was tugging a shirt over his chest and drawing up a rough blanket that smelled of old wool and death. “Try opening your eyes now.”
He did. His vision was still foggy, but he could make out green canvas above his head. A tent. His gaze roved over a metal pole at his left shoulder, and a bottle of clear liquid that dripped fluid into the big vein at the crook of his elbow through a plastic tube. Leather restraints with big metal buckles were clamped around his wrists. From the pressure around his ankles, he knew his feet were tied down, too.
Some kind of infirmary. He lay beneath several blankets on a metal stretcher that felt flimsy and too light, like one of those pop-up gurneys EMTs used. The air smelled chilly and damp. Military?
“Better?” Above and to the left, the woman’s face took on angles and substance. She wasn’t heavy but solid and blunt. Her hair was scraped back into a knot at the nape of her neck. Her murky eyes were set in weathered skin. She was much older than he expected: maybe mid-seventies or early eighties. Her fatigues were dated, like they were from a surplus store. But the flash on her left shoulder looked new: a Colonial flag with a Roman numeral III dead-center in that circlet of thirteen stars.