The Travels of Scout Shannon: Books 4-6

Chapter 11

11

Slowly the girl turned around, hands raised in a nonthreatening gesture. The blue-gray eyes were the same, exactly the same. The times Clementine had leaned menacingly close to Scout’s face when Scout had been tied to a chair or pinned under Clementine’s unnaturally heavy body, there was no way she could ever forget those eyes.

And yet, the face wasn’t quite right. This one looked both older and yet softer, the cheeks rounder with more color, the arch of her brown eyebrows a friendlier curve.

A sister? It was the only thing that made sense. But it was no comfort to Scout. Clearly, this girl was as resourceful and potentially as dangerous as her sister, perhaps more so since Clementine must have been the younger of the two. This girl was closer to Scout’s age. A girl could learn a lot more ways to be deadly in four years.

What would she do if she knew what Scout had done to Clementine? Scout hadn’t wanted to kill anybody. Not even after she had watched the twelve-year-old Clementine stab the galactic marshal Gertrude Bauer, the woman Scout had come to know under the name Warrior. Even then Scout had only wanted to escape, but the ongoing solar storm had made that impossible.

And killing Clementine had been the only way to save her dog Gert. There had been no other choice.

But she doubted Clementine’s sister would see it that way.

What was her sister doing on Schneeheim anyway? Why was she taking out other assassins for Scout’s benefit? It made no sense.

Scout was still standing in the doorway, slingshot raised but arms starting to tremble from the effort of keeping it drawn and ready to fire. Her dogs, finished with whatever they had been exploring in the kitchen, came up behind her to sniff at the bedrooms.

Shadow was distracted by the plethora of boy smells from the room across the hall, but Gert came right up beside Scout. The vest she wore made it impossible to see if her hackles were raised in that fearsome way that made her look so intimidating, but she was growling a low warning that was almost subsonic, and Scout knew that meant Gert was in full hellhound mode.

Scout lowered her weapon to quickly touch her palm to the top of Gert’s head, hoping to calm her.

She was afraid of what this girl might do if the dog attacked her.

Then a different sort of low roar grew louder than Gert’s growl. Scout frowned, not sure what she was hearing, but the girl’s face transitioned from a careful projection of her lack of harmful intent to high alert in one blink of her wide eyes.

“They’re coming,” she said. She brushed past Scout and Gert in the doorway without a second glance, only touching the back of her hand to Scout’s shoulder to move her to one side, but even that little gesture sent Scout stumbling into the doorframe.

“Hey,” Scout said as she regained her balance and followed the girl back to the living room. “We weren’t done talking.”

“No more time,” the girl said, touching the screen on the desk in its little nook. Scout didn’t know how she had done it, but the screen was filled with little boxes showing different angles of the storm outside. A few showed lights dancing in the distance.

“Your friends?” Scout asked.

“No more than yours,” the girl said, again moving Scout to one side so she could get at the couch in the far corner of the room. Two backpacks were waiting there, the exact same packs Scout had seen on the assassins. The girl thrust one into Scout’s arms, then pulled the other onto her own back.

“Where did you get this?” Scout asked.

“From the fallen,” the girl said before settling her goggles over her eyes and wrapping her scarf around the rest of her face. “Hurry!” she said again, voice muffled but urgency clear.

“Where can we go in this storm?” Scout asked. “None of the other cabins will open up.” But even as she said it, she was pulling the pack onto her back. This girl seemed to have a plan, which was more than Scout had. And she knew they had to get out of here. Those lights must have been attached to vehicles.

There had been a lot of lights.

The girl charged out both of the cabin doors, out into the thickening swirl of falling snow. Scout pulled the doors shut after she and the dogs were both through. The outer door made a heavy clanking sound when she closed it, and something inside beeped a single warning beep.

Scout had to jog to catch up with the girl, stopping to pick up Shadow, who had quickly realized the snow was just as cold as ever. Gert stayed close to Scout, but she never stopped growling.

The girl led the way up to the higher cliff where the other cabin stood, but she shied away from it, finding another path that led them up to an even higher cliff that overlooked both of the other two plateaus.

She didn’t bother trying to hide, just walked straight up to the edge to look down. Scout stayed further back. She could see the lights converging on the McGillicuddy cabin. It wouldn’t take them long to realize she wasn’t there, to start looking around.

“Get down!” Scout hissed at the girl, who ignored her. The edges of her gray coat snapped in the air so loudly Scout was certain the assassins below would hear it just as soon as they cut off their engines.

Scout hugged Shadow tighter, squatting to put an arm around the still-growling Gert as well. Gert paused in her growl to nestle closer to Scout’s warmth, but her eyes never left the new girl.

“What are we waiting for?” Scout asked, but the girl didn’t answer, just watched as the others below circled the cabin, failed to break in through the front door, then gathered in a huddle to discuss what to do.

“We should go,” Scout said, and when the girl still didn’t answer, Scout rose to her feet to start hunting for another path to a higher cliff, perhaps one more out of the wind. But the girl, without turning around, extended a hand behind her in a sign that Scout and the dogs should stay where they were.

The assassins were circling around the cabin again. This time when they gathered in a huddle some distance away, it wasn’t to whisper together. There was a bright flash of light, a pillar of flash fire rising up into the sky before quickly dying out in the thin air.

When the smoke cleared, Scout saw the entire exterior of the cabin was blackened, bits around the door looking almost melted like wax.

If she had been inside, she would have survived that explosion just fine. And she doubted they had any bigger tricks in their bags to bust inside; she would have been safe.

But that door was impassable now. She had chosen to leave the cabin. Even after Emma had told her how safe it was. All because a girl with no name had told her to?

Scout resisted the urge to beat herself up too much. It wasn’t the time for it. But she needed to figure out how to keep moving forward on the path she had chosen.

“Let’s go,” the girl said, finally turning back to Scout and the dogs.

“No,” Scout said, setting Shadow down so she could straighten to her full height with her arms crossed. This girl had to see she meant business.

“What do you mean no? You’ve been hissing at me to get going since we got outside.”

“Not until you tell me who you are,” Scout said.

“You know who I am,” the girl said.

“I know you’re like them,” Scout said, jerking her head towards the plateau below where the assassins were still in a huddled meeting. “I know you’re one of them.”

“Never,” the girl said venomously.

“You’re not Clementine, but you’re like Clementine,” Scout said.

“It’s complicated. Very complicated. We don’t have the time,” the girl said. There was an edge to her voice that wasn’t exactly panic, but her sense of urgency was overwhelming her attempts at being conciliatory.

“I’ve been led about more than once,” Scout said. “That crew has gotten me just where they want me. For all I know, being on this entire planet was all part of the plan. So how do I know you’re not just another more involved part of the same trap?”

“I saved you,” the girl said, gesturing at the snowy field below, still strewn with paralyzed kids. Some of the newer arrivals were digging them out of the snow, lifting them up onto the backs of the vehicles.

“That could have been part of the plan,” Scout said. “You dress like them. You behave like you’ve had the same training as them. You have the same equipment, and I don’t just mean the packs. You took those kids down with darts.”

“Nonlethal darts,” the girl said. “And an older model than they’re packing.”

“You left them to get buried in the snow outside an abandoned village,” Scout said, feeling her anger rising. “How is that nonlethal?”

“You know them!” the girl said, flinging her hands up in frustration. “You know how hard they are to kill! But what are you accusing me of? Killing them or being on their side?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Scout said. “I just know I can’t trust you.”

“You have to trust me,” the girl said.

They both had more to say, but Gert’s growling suddenly kicked up from that low menace to a teeth-baring snarl, and Scout realized with a start that the dog had left her side, had advanced so far that the girl no longer had a way to get off the jutting rock she had stepped out on to look below.

No way except through Gert, and Gert wasn’t going to back off.

“Don’t hurt her,” Scout said. “I can call her off. I think.”

The girl scoffed at Scout and Scout was afraid she was going to charge the dog, perhaps just to prove she could.

But she didn’t. She changed her posture, letting the anger melt out of her tense limbs and turning sideways, so her silhouette was smaller.

“Hey, girly-girl,” she said softly, not looking Gert straight in the eye. Gert’s snarl settled back into the warning growl, but her own posture was still tense.

Scout started to step forward, to make a grab for Gert’s collar, but the girl glared up at her and shook her head. Then she turned her attention back to the dog, advancing slowly, not directly towards her but off to one side.

“It’s okay, girly-girl,” she all but cooed, peeling off a glove to present one bare hand for the dog to sniff.

Gert held her ground, but when the hand drew close enough, she sniffed it, one quick sniff as if she were determined not to be impressed.

Then, to Scout’s surprise, she sat down in the snow, tail thumping as she looked up at the girl so like that other girl who not so many days ago had tried to kill her.

Scout guessed Gert didn’t hold a grudge. Or this girl smelled very different than her sister.

“Good girly-girl,” the girl said, scratching at the dog’s ears.

“Her name is Gert,” Scout said.

“I know,” the girl said. Then she pulled her glove back on and walked up to Scout. “I’m Daisy. And I know your trust is going to be harder to earn than Gert’s. I’m prepared for that. But if we don’t get higher up this mountain, I’m never going to get that chance. Let’s go.”

She didn’t wait for Scout to voice a decision, just started up a narrow trail Scout could barely even make out under the deep layers of snow. Shadow went trotting after her, Gert bounding to catch up.

Scout hoped her dogs’ instincts were right. But even if this Daisy were someone to be trusted, it would take a unique sort of person not to have pretty strong feelings about the person who killed her own sister.

If she had any other choice, she would take it, but she didn’t. Scout hoisted the pack higher up on her shoulders and followed her dogs.