Chapter 34
T hey agreed to leave the helper’s body where he’d fallen. It bothered Nick, though Raven assured him that the abundant scavengers in the forest would consume the corpse in due time. Nick knew all those things, of course, but the barbarity of it all disturbed him.
He hadn’t been in a physical altercation, of any kind, since third grade.
He didn’t grow up on the streets, battling it out with local hoods and packing guns whenever he walked out his front door.
He was raised in the suburbs, went to private school, and lived a sheltered, meticulously planned life.
But out here in the woods, it was survival of the fittest, and he had barely survived his first true test. Raven was only a teenager, but she was better acclimated to this place than he was, and he was fortunate to have her help.
She left the shotgun with Nick, while she took the rifle that was strapped to the helper’s dead body.
“That’s my granddad’s rifle,” Nick said. “I was going to tell you, I talked to him.”
“I was about to ask why you didn’t bring back help,” she said. “That’s what you left for, wasn’t it?”
“It’s not that straightforward,” Nick said. “If I brought the cops in here and they tried to take all of you away, the mark on you?—”
“We’d all die,” Raven finished for him. “Up in smoke.”
“Yeah.” He shrugged. “Grandpa Lee says there’s only one way to free everyone. We have to kill the Overseer.”
“Well, there’s a plan that no one ever thought of.” Strapping the rifle over her slight frame, she marched through the woods. “Kill the Overseer—why didn’t anyone else ever think of that?”
“Hey.” Nick caught up to her, pain stitching his gut as he ran.
That punch he’d taken to his stomach was going to hurt like hell for days.
“I get the sarcasm, all right? But that’s what he told me, and I know it’s the truth.
So do you. The Overseer, whoever he is, is the one driving Westbrook.
He brought down the curse on this place—he’s like the living embodiment of the curse. ”
“You couldn’t kill that man back there on your own,” Raven said. Her lips curled in derision. “You haven’t seen the Overseer before. You have no idea what you’re talking about doing.”
“Maybe not,” he said. “But that’s what we’ve got to do. I want to get my girlfriend out of the mansion and then kill the Overseer.”
“Stupid plan.” Raven knocked back a branch with the rifle. “We can try to get her out—I’ll help you with that. But I’m not messing with the Overseer.”
“If you were going to kill the Overseer, how would you do it?” he asked.
“It’s a waste of time talking about it,” she said.
“Please, indulge me.”
She stopped walking. She checked the sky, and looked at him.
“I’d set him on fire—and make him burn until he was nothing but ash.” She brushed her fingers against the mark on her forehead. “It’s exactly what he deserves for what he’s done to us.”