Page 21 of Chaos

On another man’s head. Another time I fought for my life. The motion is almost the same. Only there’s no glass, just the sickening dullthunkof metal meeting bone.

I hit him again, and again, until I’m swaying on my feet, and he’s quit moving.

Gunfire cracks outside.

When I straighten, stars flicker behind my eyes, sweat slicking down from under my arms.

I’m breathing hard. Too hard. I can’t hear anything.

Surely someone must have heard him shrieking, the sound of me beating him. I hold my breath so long my lungs burn, but I hear nothing inside the house, only the sound of guns firing outside the farmhouse, somewhere nearby.

Who is it?

Is it Yorke?

It’s impossible to believe I could be so lucky. More likely it’s wherever Ben was planning to trade me to.

I need to leave.

I start tugging at Scraggle’s boots, trying not to look at the misshapen leg that’s bent halfway down his calf at a sharp right angle. He bleats when I pull, and the boot doesn’t come off. With shaking fingers, I squat down, gorge rising up my throat, as I tug desperately on the laces

A noise stops me.

A person appears at the top of the stairs, a massive man holding a massive gun, the light behind him, splaying around his body, turning him into nothing but a silhouette as he peers down the stairs and into the dark. He moves with eerie smoothness, concealing his body around the door jam.

I drop the boot and lift the gun. He doesn’t need to know it’s empty.

Scraggle whimpers feebly.

“I’m not going with you,” I say in a grating voice that doesn’t sound remotely like my own as I shift my grip on the gun.

Whoever is up there, their face is obscured by a helmet and a dark neck cover.

Still though, there’s something about how he stands, the breadth of his shoulders as he ducks around the doorway, revealing his full body to me, relinquishing his cover.

I lower my gun.

He flips on a flashlight, a blinding beam, and trails it over me, the mess of lank, tangled hair that covers most of my face, my ripped-up shirt, torn, filthy jeans, then down along the busted-up, bloody, scraggly man beneath me.

Whatever he sees, he doesn’t move.

He just watches me, veiled in darkness and layers of gear. Unmoving. Almost like he’s not even breathing.

And then …

“Frankie?”

That voice. My skin rises in prickles, like it knows it just found home.

It’s …

“Yorke?”

6 |Towers blocking out the sun

YORKE

FOR A MONTH,I’ve run a replay torture reel of agonizing scenarios—Frankie freezing, Frankie crying, Frankie starving, Frankie raped, Frankie beaten, Frankie missing forever, Frankie dead.

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