Ruins

Even though she tried to avoid the forests, they were still so prevalent that she ended up tramping through a number of thickly wooded hills and gullies. Crossing a stream near Padanaram Road, she found another bright IV carved into a tree and gave it a wide berth. The land rose steadily from here, a gentle but continual slope, and a quarter mile later she passed a fallow farm, the fields completely overrun with ten-year-old trees. Across the field lay the prison, and she crept through the underbrush slowly, cautiously, practically crawling, and stopping every few seconds to listen for any sounds, either ahead of or behind her. She heard nothing, and when she dared to use the link, she felt nothing there either. The crossing seemed to take hours, and the sun was well past its peak when she drew near to the prison. The light’s behind me now, she thought, lying low in the weeds as she planned her approach. If I stand up I’ll be silhouetted for everyone to see, but if I stay low they’ll have the sun in their eyes, and I’ll be hidden in shadows.

She crept forward silently, holding her breath.

The prison was as empty and decrepit as every other building she’d passed.

She watched it for another hour, just to be sure, forcing herself to be patient and avoid giving herself away. Only when the sun sank low behind the horizon did she dare move out from her hiding place at the edge of the trees, slipping across the buckling parking lot to the ragged prison fence. It was torn and warped, and the inside was lined with skeletons wrapped in faded orange jumpsuits—a thirteen-year-old prison break stopped in its tracks as the last dying prisoners tried to claw their way out before the plague claimed their lives. She wondered how many had escaped, only to collapse and die in the field behind her. The bodies behind the fence had been picked by crows, their clothing ripped and torn; where the fence had gaps, wild dogs had gotten in, and the bodies had been worried and dragged across the field. No living person, human or Partial, had set foot in the compound since the Break. Kira walked the full perimeter, just to be sure, but the story was the same on all sides. There was nowhere to look but the lake itself, and whatever homes around it the Ivies had chosen for their community.

She slept that night in the prison, not daring to light a fire, and ate her last apple. Her stomach growled, but she didn’t dare go looking for more food. The linked message from the bloody tree still haunted her.

DEATH.

BLOOD.

A narrow forest road wound out from the prison toward a dock on the bay, but when Kira crept out in the morning she cut through the trees, still trying to stay off the obvious paths. The bay was wide, perhaps five hundred feet at its narrowest point, and while the near side was nothing but trackless forest, the far shore was rimmed with houses, each with a private dock. The homes she could see were shrouded in foliage but appeared empty. She walked north along the western shore, keeping a few dozen yards back from the water to stay hidden, watching alertly for any sign of life or movement.

After a mile she hit a wide promontory, where the bay ended and the lake began, and at the end of it stood a small pier. She walked toward it cautiously, trying to get a better look across the water, and stopped in shock at the sight of the pier itself. Standing tall on the edge of the cracking wood was a thin log, perhaps an old signpost, but the sign was gone, and in its place was a hand—human or Partial—pinned to the post with a thick, feathered arrow.

Kira felt her eyes go wide, and covered her mouth with her fingers to stifle a cry. She crept forward a few steps, trying to get a better look at the hand without giving herself away. The hand was severed at the wrist, the palm pressed tightly to the log, the arrow plunging straight through the back of the hand. The wood below the wrist was dark and discolored, and Kira thought she could see a blade mark in the wood itself—someone had pinned the hand to the wood while it was still attached to a body, then chopped it off and let it bleed out. The skin was gray, but not decomposed. This had happened within the last few days.

She took another step forward, looking for the body, but stopped herself and retreated farther into the forest, crouching down in the lee of a giant boulder and shaking her head compulsively. “This isn’t right,” she whispered. “It isn’t right.” She drew her handgun, just for the comfort of holding it, and peered out through the trees. A soft breeze stirred the fletching on the end of the arrow. “It’s just a warning,” she told herself. “A warning against Morgan’s forces, which are the only enemy they have in this part of the country. They might still be friendly to me—they might be friendly to the humans—”