The Taking (The Taking 1)

“So what happens now?” Tyler asked. “How long do we have to hide before they give up?”

A long silence engulfed the cab. Willow shifted her gaze away from us as if suddenly the road was the only thing worth noticing. Simon didn’t ignore us exactly. He continued to dart nervous gazes back and forth between us and Willow. But he’d gone all radio silent too.

Finally I said what neither of them would, because they were too afraid to say what we all knew. “Forever,” I answered. “We have to stay hidden for the rest of our lives.”

I didn’t say the part where Tyler’s life would be way shorter than it should be.

Three hours after we left the rest stop we were at Simon’s camp.

It was in the mountains, too, but these mountains were less snow-capped peaks and densely packed fir trees than the Cascades we’d just traveled through and more like scrubby sagebrush and rocky outcroppings and spare-looking pine trees that might burst into flames if a match were lit anywhere in their vicinity. This was what my mom had always referred to as “rattlesnake country.”

By late morning the temperature was already approaching the eighty-degree mark. It was hard to imagine what it was like out here in July or August.

I wiped the sweat from my upper lip as I climbed down from the truck, kicking up a cloud of dust as my feet hit the gritty earth.

Tyler was asleep inside the cab.

He hadn’t thrown up again, but he’d bled. Not from his nose this time but from his right ear. I’d dabbed at it while he slept. I didn’t say anything but caught Willow watching me as I swiped at the trickle.

He was getting worse.

“We’ve got a place for you two already set up in the bunkhouse. We can get him in there, and then we should talk,” Simon told me, coming around behind me while I watched Tyler sleep. “I know this is hard, Kyra, but there’s nothing you can do for him. He’s only got a day or so left.” He put his hand on my shoulder, and I shrugged it off, not wanting to hear what he had to say. “We’ll make him as comfortable as we can. We have drugs we can give him—they won’t cure him or anything, but they’ll . . .” He faltered, just like he should falter, I thought. Because this was bullshit. It shouldn’t be happening. “. . . they’ll make it easier on him.”

I clenched my jaw, biting back every terrible thing I wanted to say to him because I knew he was right; it wouldn’t do any good.

The bunkhouse we were taken to was rustic to say the least: four walls and a few cots, which looked barely used and smelled like deep-rooted dust. With the windows closed it was even hotter in there, and I had to prop them all open just to get the scant breeze moving through the ramshackle building so Tyler wouldn’t suffocate when I laid him down.

I sent Simon to get us some water and a washcloth so I could sponge Tyler’s burning skin.

When a boy came back with what I’d asked for, he offered me a grimy-looking water jug and a worn-looking rag. “I’m Jett,” he explained, pushing a mop of sandy-brown hair out of his eyes. “Simon had to take care of some things and asked me to look after you.” His eyes drifted to Tyler, to his limp form on the cot, and then skittered away from him again as if looking at him for too long was difficult. It was, really. I was the only one unwilling to admit it. “Can I get you anything else?”

I shook my head, turning back to Tyler and ignoring the boy.

After a minute I heard footsteps and knew the boy had left us alone. Good, I thought. I didn’t want him here anyway. I didn’t want anyone here unless they knew how to fix Tyler.

I dug into my pocket and pulled out another packet—Advil this time. I tore it open with my teeth and forced Tyler awake again. It was getting harder and harder to keep him conscious. “Tyler . . .” I tried not to sob when I said his name, but that was harder too. Guilt shredded me from the inside out. “Take these,” I ordered.

He opened his mouth listlessly but not his eyes, and I let the pills fall on his tongue, which didn’t really look like a tongue should—not pink and soft and moist. Instead, it was desiccated, like leather. Pretending not to notice, I lifted the jug to his lips and trickled the water into his mouth.

After he finally swallowed, I thought he’d go back to sleep. Instead, he moved his lips to talk. At first all that came out were these garbled, whispering sounds, like muffled breaths, and then I heard him.

“‘Stuff your eyes with wonder,’” he croaked. “‘Live as if you’d drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. . . .’” He paused, taking a breath. I tried to figure out what he was saying and wondered if he was hallucinating. But he wasn’t finished. “It’s more . . . ‘more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories.’” I recognized it then. It was from Fahrenheit 451, the book he’d shared with me. His favorite one.

My eyes burned, and then that burning gave way to the tears, because I understood what he was saying. I bent over him, weeping as I clutched his hands, desperate to make him know how sorry I was. “You . . . you . . . know?” I managed to say between choked gasps.

Tyler’s face remained still, his eyes closed. When he breathed, it sounded like it was coming from too far down inside his chest and each breath had to be dredged up. Labored for. Speaking was an effort. “I heard you . . . when you were talking. I know . . .” He paused to take a long, determined pull of the dusty air around us. “I know I don’t have long.” He strained to open his eyes, and again it was a struggle, that task that should have been so incredibly simple.