The Prey by Tom Isbell Read Free Book Online Page B

the door. A moment later, a girl appears, haloed by moonlight. Once she’s inside, the door is shut, the chains and locks refastened.
    With halting steps she shuffles forward, seemingly unaware of her surroundings. She speaks to no one. Sees no one. She has wet herself and the sharp aroma of urine fills the room.
    Red Hair gets up, placing her hands on the girl’s shoulders. “You’re back here now, Diana. We’ll take care of you.”
    Diana, a tall, willowy girl with angular features and auburn hair, nods vacantly.
    â€œYou’re safe now, Diana.”
    â€œSafe?” Diana echoes.
    Her voice is distant, otherworldly.
    In the pale moonlight Hope can make out Diana’s eyes. They are glazed and faraway, focused on some remote horizon. It’s like seeing the shell of a person only—a human being without a soul.
    Hope shudders.
    Too many questions run through her mind.
    What’s going on here? she wonders. What kind of world are we in?
    Later that night when she uses the latrine she notices a prisoner standing in the back hallway, leaning against the wall as if keeping watch.
    Stranger still is the ticking sound she hears as she returns to bed—a metallic clink. As she drifts off to sleep, fingering her father’s locket, she swears she can hear it in her dreams.
    Clink. Clink. Clink.

11.
    T HE NEXT MORNING C AT was gone.
    His bed was made, his trunk empty. There was a good deal of speculation about where he might have gone—abducted by Crazies, recruited by Brown Shirts—but no one could say for sure.
    I was out on the field when Sergeant Dekker came marching over.
    â€œThe colonel wants to see you,” he said.
    â€œNow?”
    â€œ Right now.”
    For the second time in a week, I felt my stomach bottom out at the prospect of meeting Colonel Westbrook. With the eyes of every LT—every Less Than —on me, I followed the oily Sergeant Dekker to the headquarters.Instead of being led inside, I was ushered into the back of a Humvee.
    â€œWhere am I go—”
    â€œYou’ll see,” he answered, cutting me off.
    Sweat trickled from my armpits as I sat waiting. Colonel Westbrook and Major Karsten emerged from the headquarters and climbed in the Humvee with me, neither saying a word. We took off. It wasn’t until we’d left Camp Liberty that Westbrook turned around in the passenger seat, his coal-black eyes drilling into me.
    â€œWe’re in search of a missing LT,” he said, “and we thought you might be able to help us find him.”
    â€œM-me?” I stammered. “I just met the guy. I don’t know where he is.”
    â€œSo you know who I’m talking about.”
    â€œWell, sure, I mean—”
    â€œAnd that wasn’t you leaving camp with him yesterday afternoon?”
    My face burned red, and it was all the answer he needed. The rest of the drive was long and silent.
    The roads we followed were gravel and narrow, trailing the foothills of Skeleton Ridge and cutting through dense forests of spruce and pine. All at once we reached a clearing. There before us was a prison.
    While it bore a certain similarity to Camp Liberty, there was one glaring difference: the entire site was encircled by a tall barbed wire fence. Guard towers anchored each of the four corners, with Brown Shirtspoised behind machine guns.
    I wondered who these inmates were who demanded such high security. I could only guess they were the most ruthless of prisoners, the most vile of criminals.
    At just that moment the door opened to the tar-paper barracks and out streamed the inmates, all dressed in plain gray dresses and scuffed work boots.
    Girls. Dozens and dozens of girls.
    The only females I’d ever seen were two-dimensional ones from the movies. To finally see them in the flesh—and my own age, no less—took my breath away. A part of me felt like some ancient explorer encountering tribes from a far-off land.
    All