Enclave by Ann Aguirre Read Free Book Online

brushed by me and jogged toward the first turn. If I didn’t keep up, he’d leave me alone in the dark; I didn’t doubt that at all.
    We ran all morning without a break. I sipped from my water bottle on the move. It was made of a light, strong substance, a relic of the old days. Someone had scavenged it from the tunnels, brought it back and cleaned it up. Even as a brat, I’d coveted it, knowing how valuable it would prove to a Hunter. As soon as I got my hands on something good, I bartered for it.
    I got used to stepping where he did, running in the dark. Sometimes rays of light through broken stone illuminated the murk, but that only made it worse. Then I had to see the bleak tunnels, dirty water standing in the center, and the things that scurried away from our feet.
    Like Fade, I’d memorized our route early on, so I tracked his leadership. I wouldn’t put it past him to head away from College, away from Nassau, and lead me into the black to die. He’d seemed mad enough the day before to make sure I came to a bad end. Not for the first time, I wondered about the death of his first partner.
    He wasn’t as good as Silk claimed, he’d said. But maybe what Fade really meant was he’d disappointed him by not sharing his crazy, selfish ideals. Maybe the poor guy had only been guilty of serving the enclave first. Fear tightened my stomach. I would have to be on my guard at all times out here alone with him. At a few points along the way, I smelled Freaks, but we moved too fast for them to hit us. They cried and growled from adjacent passages.
    I had no way to gauge how long we’d been running, but he called a halt, long after the stitch in my side became a brand. The tunnels even looked different here, splashed with red and black paint, more remnants of the old days. Our smoke hadn’t penetrated this far. We were unquestionably in the wilds.
    The stone ledge to the right permitted us to scramble off the ground, away from the metal and chunks of fallen rock. With a wall behind us, we rested without worrying about threats from all sides. I opened my bag and pulled out a chunk of dried meat. We didn’t have a lot of variety even in the enclave: fresh meat, dried meat, and mushrooms. Occasionally, someone found a tin and once we pried it open, the contents smelled fine and enticing, but that was the exception, not the rule.
    I ate and drank a little more water. We had to make it last until we reached Nassau. Worse, there was no guarantee we’d be able to access their supply. If the brat had spoken truly and the settlement was lost, the place might be overrun with Freaks.
    “It’s time to get moving,” Fade said, after a while. Those were the first words he’d spoken to me all day. “We still have four more hours to go before we can make camp for the night.”
    “How do you know?” At the enclave, we had a few clocks that kept time for us, scavenged in long ago Topside runs. We had no idea whether they reflected the correct time, of course, but it didn’t matter. We only needed to share a common schedule.
    In answer he pushed up his sleeve and showed me his wrist. Unlike most, he preferred to keep his marks covered. He wore a small clock; I’d never seen anything quite like it.
    “What is it?”
    “A watch.”
    The glowing hands meant he could see it, even in the dark. That explained how he knew when our patrols were done, and that we still needed to run for four hours. Nodding, I stowed my gear and vaulted down from the stone ledge. We had been lucky to eat undisturbed. Time to get moving again, though my muscles felt weak and watery.
    This time, I set the pace. I didn’t like letting Fade run at my back, but I didn’t want him to think he frightened me, either.
    Along the way, four near misses with Freaks kept us sharp. They tried to hit us as we ran, but they were weak and slow. By tacit agreement we didn’t stop to fight. Fights risked injury, making us even more attractive targets. We killed them near