Page 132 of The Outsider
Asha huffed. “I wouldn’t expect a Wastelander to grasp what it’s like to go from beingchosento live the elevated life we had in the Cave…to this. Before I lived in the Wasteland, I was skeptical. After, I knew they’d told us that the ‘people’ who lived out here were lesser because it was true.”
“Even Kimmy?” I asked. “Because she welcomed you when nobody else would’ve.”
Asha bowed her head, surprising me. “Kimmy’s…different.”
“But not enough to not completely fuck her over, I guess,” I said, unable to keep the anger out of my voice.
“In the Wasteland, sacrifices have to be made,” Asha replied coldly. “Don’t condescend to me about morality when you’d do exactly the same to save your precious Valley if it came down to it.”
“Not gonna dignify that with all the ways you’re wrong.”
I didn’t know what to do now. I knew what I should do: kill her the same way I had Zach. Leaving her alive was too much of a risk. But she’d wormed her way into the hearts of my sister and my fiancée, and I wondered if they’d ever forgive me. I could tell them that she was a massive traitor that’d been plotting against us for months, but hearing it second-hand left room for doubt.
I made up my mind. “You’re coming back with me. You’re going to tell your story to the council. I’ll let them decide what to do with you.”
I didn’t say that they’d put her in front of a firing squad, but she seemed to know, because she tensed and shot me a look of pure hatred.
“Move,” I said, nudging her with the barrel of my rifle. “Back toward The Post.”
Asha gritted her teeth and started walking. We’d only been walking for a couple minutes, though, when I stopped again.
A column of thick, black smoke rose above the trees, back the way I came. That was when the screams started, followed by the sound of an amplified man’s voice. I couldn’t make out words, but my blood ran cold.
“What the hell did you do?” I demanded.
“Nothing!” she replied, her tone fearful. “Except…I only ever got one reply to my radio calls. But it wasn’t the Delta.”
“Christ,” I muttered, pinching the bridge of my nose. “And what, you just invited the Order? Have you lost your goddam mind?”
“No!” she cried. It was the first time I’d heard Asha sound genuinely rattled. “I didn’t tell them anything. I didn’t think…I didn’t know they could track the signal.”
“Idiot,” I answered sharply. “Get on the ground.”
She whipped around, slashing upward with a tiny blade. I leapt back and avoided the worst of it but gasped at the slice of pain across my chest. Asha started running. Fuck.
Panting, I turned and shot from the hip. She’d made it to a sea of tall grass nearby, but she jerked as the bullet blew through her shoulder. She collapsed.
I automatically touched the thin cut across my chest. I was bleeding, but not badly.Claire, my thoughts screamed at me. I had to find her before they did.
I sprinted towards the smoke.
Chapter 37
Claire
It started with the low hum of engines.
Barely audible over the music, they eventually grew louder, until they couldn’t be ignored. The musicians stopped playing, and there was confused murmuring in the crowd. It hit me that most of the residents had probably never heard a combustion engine before. Even in the compound, only the military had non-electric engines for a few of their larger vehicles; access to biodiesel was limited and precious.
Whoever it was, it meant nothing good. I tugged on Kimmy’s hand, pulling her small frame through the crowd. She followed, a frown creasing between her brows, one hand on her holstered pistol. We both looked in all directions, but John and Asha were nowhere to be found. My heart was in my throat; a sour, frantic feeling had settled in my stomach. The feeling a rabbit might have just before its leg was crushed in a trap.
We made it out of the crowd to the other side of the dirt road.
“We need—” Kimmy began, but someone near us yelled out a warning andpointed.
On the horizon, an enormous convoy truck had appeared, approaching fast, followed by several smaller, armoured passenger trucks that I recognized as being military-issued Cave vehicles. The only difference was that they were black—a hasty painting job, from the look of it, since bits of green still peeked out in various places. And emblazoned on the side of each was a shining gold eye. Odessa’s Eye.
They’d come.
