I’d landed on a person.
A dead person.
Many dead persons.
I was elbow deep in decaying corpses, and only the possibility of being discovered by Brown Shirts prevented me from letting out a horrified scream. I clamped my mouth shut and tried to steady my breathing.
“Oh … my … God,” Flush said. “Are those what I think they are?”
I nodded dumbly.
Easing to a standing position, my eyes peered into the dark, head swiveling first one direction and then the other. We were smack-dab in the middle of a burial ground, surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of lifeless, bloated bodies.
Although we wanted to turn around—wanted desperately to get the hell out of there—we knew we couldn’t. We had come this far; we had to see it through. So we inched forward, tiptoeing around and over the piles of bodies.
What I couldn’t figure out was what it was supposed to be. Was this a cemetery—some sacred place of honor—or just a dumping ground? There was no way to tell.
We headed for the faint glow at the end of the tunnel, hoping to get as far away from the bloated corpses as possible. But of course, just when we thought we’d cleared the last of them, there were still more—piles of bodies stacked like firewood stretching as far as we could see.
“Who are they?” Red asked. I understood what he was getting at. He hadn’t been with us when we’d been imprisoned in the Compound. He didn’t know what Skull People looked like.
But when I bent down and tried to examine the dead bodies in the dark, I suddenly wasn’t so sure myself. On the one hand, it seemed their clothes were leather sandals and wool robes and toga-like garments, which made me think Skull People. But right next to them were men wearing rags, their beards long and matted, which made me think they were Crazies. I couldn’t figure it out.
A noise from farther down the tunnel grabbed my attention. Perhaps the very Brown Shirts whose footsteps we’d been following.
The more we tiptoed forward, the brighter it got … and the more we tried to avert our eyes. It was bad enough we were traipsing through this grisly graveyard—no point making things worse by staring at the corpses themselves. And yet, I caught myself glancing down from time to time, looking for people I might recognize. Like my grandmother. Or Goodwoman Marciniak.
Or Miranda.
It didn’t help that every corpse’s expression was the same—one of horror and fear.
In the near distance, torch flames caressed the cave walls with strokes of flickering light. Flush pulled to a stop, and I followed his gaze … to the bloated face of the chief justice.
My heart gave a lurch. I had no reason to feel any sympathy for him. After all, he was the one who’d sentenced us to thirty years’ imprisonment. But he was also the man who’d changed my sentence from the Wheel to the library—and was Miranda’s father.
So maybe she was here as well. My eyes roamed from one face to the next, and while the bodies were discolored and disfigured, there wasn’t one that looked remotely like the girl who’d kissed me as we watched the setting sun.
I breathed a silent sigh of relief.
We moved on. The only sounds were the quiet shuffle of our feet, a persistent dripping from the ceiling, the steady huff of breathing through our mouths.
When we reached a high-ceilinged chamber at the end of the tunnel, we expected to see the soldiers, but they weren’t there. No living person was. Just hundreds of scattered corpses.
“Where’d they go?” Flush whispered, but I didn’t know. I wondered the same thing.
Red pointed to the side. “Was it always like that?”
He was referring to an enormous rock pile that blocked a far entrance, boulders strewn in every direction. I gave my head a shake. “The Crazies were blowing up the place as we were leaving. Guess that’s what happened.”
We eased forward and began exploring. Some of the tunnels were completely closed off, barricaded by heaping mounds of rock. Others looked remarkably the same. The Crazies had managed to destroy only a portion of the Compound.
Flush began winding his way between a series of scattered objects, bending down to inspect a stack of items in the very center of the chamber. “What’s this?” he asked.
I turned and looked … and my heart stopped. I needed no refresher course to know what I was looking at. It wasn’t just dozens of cans of gasoline, but also explosives—C-4 and sticks of dynamite, heaped atop one another like a jumbled pyramid.
Someone intended to reduce the Compound to a pile of rubble.
HOPE SITS IN THE passenger seat while a Brown Shirt drives. The other four are crammed in back. Whenever the driver peeks to the side, Hope raises her crossbow so it’s aimed at his chest. The message is clear: Don’t try anything.
Before leaving, she instructed Diana to lead the sixty-some Less Thans to Dodge’s Log Lodges. Hope, Cat, and Sunshine will catch up when they can.
“How often do you make these deliveries?” Hope asks the driver. When he doesn’t answer, Hope nuzzles the crossbow against his side. “I asked you a question.”
“Get that thing outta my ribs, and maybe I’ll tell you.”
“Why don’t you tell me and then I’ll get it out of your ribs.” She presses it into his body.
“Just started,” he says, writhing. “Last week.”
“How many more trips will you make?”
“Till the silo’s empty, I guess.”
“You’re taking all those weapons to Chancellor Maddox?”
“That’s right.”
“Why?”
“Got me,” he says, and Hope jams the crossbow between his ribs. “I’m serious! I don’t know.”
For some reason, Hope believes him.
“Tell me about the Eagle’s Nest,” she says.
“What about it?”
“What kind of place is it?”
“A fortress you’ll never get into,” he says smugly.
Questions swim through Hope’s mind. Why are all those guns in an abandoned missile silo? Why are they being transferred to the chancellor’s headquarters? And why now?
The miles slip by—endless fields of white—as they veer farther and farther north, up toward the rolling foothills of Skeleton Ridge.
It’s late afternoon when the vehicle slows to a stop, and Hope realizes she’s been daydreaming. Something to do with Book. A part of her tries to shake the memory away.
Another part doesn’t.
“There,” the driver says, and Hope looks at where he’s pointing.
Perched atop a nearby mountain peak, swathed in swirls of clouds, is a fortress. Its walls are made of stone, and crenellated parapets give it the appearance of a medieval castle. Hope can’t believe it. What’s something like that doing in the Republic of the True America?
“What is this place?” she asks.
“I told you, the—”
“Eagle’s Nest, I know. But what is it?”
“A