Chapter 54
I’m bleeding. The glass cuts through my shoes, piercing into the soles of my feet, but I barely feel it.
The rain is beating against my face, the ground slipping under my feet.
I’m slow. Too slow, too clumsy.
But it’s my only chance. Our only chance.
She’s never going to let us out of here alive. None of us.
Martina’s hand is pulling me along now. Somehow, she’s gotten ahead of me. She’s pulling me up the slope, across the gravel, and in the gray, dusky light, I can see the gates, and the car beyond it.
Freedom. Safety.
Is Armin still here? Or did she kill him, too? Did she kill all of them?
“COME ON!” Martina screams at me, and she tugs at my arm, and I run, run as hard as I can, because I have no other choice.
The rain is lighter now, the ground soft as mud, and I’m slipping, and there’s blood in my eyes, blood from somewhere, something, stinging. The air feels like fire in my lungs. I’m gasping, running, and the gates are so very close now, only a few yards away, and we might make it, we might—
I don’t see it. I hear the thud, and I see her falling.
Her grasp on my fingers disappears, and she falls, face forward, into the mud and the water and the gravel, her body limp. She doesn’t try to catch herself.
I fall to my knees next to her. I try to tug at her, get her to her feet, and I’m screaming:
“Get up, get up, GET UP—”
Then I see the blood.
The rock hit her square in the back of the head. It’s lying next to her head. The blood is trickling, oozing down the sides of her head, and she’s so very still, and the scream that tears out of me this time is one of rage.
I turn around.
Anna is standing a few steps away, her chest heaving, her eyes blazing. Her hands are claws, her teeth bared.
In terror, and hopelessness, and madness, I laugh. I keep laughing, as I get to my feet, and stand over Martina.
“Still got your aim, I see,” I say, because what else is there to say? “You should have gone with that softball scholarship, Susannah.”
“Get away from her,” Anna screams at me.
“No,” I say. “You’re not getting her.”
Anna screams, wordlessly, in pure fury.
“I thought you were with me,” she yells. “I thought you understood.”
“I don’t think anyone can understand you,” I say back. “And even if I could, I wouldn’t want to.”
She lunges at me.
I’m too slow to move aside, and she catches me around the chest, raking her nails down the side of my face. I try to push her away, but she’s too strong, and she pulls me to the ground.
I try to kick; I hit, pull, scratch, but she’s stronger.
She puts her knee on my arm, her whole weight on it, and I yell as I feel the bone beginning to give. She grabs ahold of my head, lifting it and pounding it into the ground, making my head ring.
I don’t know if I feel it cracking. My vision goes white for a moment, and when I come to, her face is very close to mine, her breath hot on my skin.
“You’re just like the rest of them,” she hisses. “All of you.”
I try to wrench her off me, but her grip is too tight. I grasp with my free hand after something, anything, to hold on to, to pull myself away, but all I find is water. Water and gravel.
Her blood and tears are dripping onto my face, more intimate than a kiss.
“Say it’s your fault,” Anna orders me. “Say it, and I’ll let you go. Say you’re sorry.”
She puts her hand on my throat, and she pushes, hard enough for my body to convulse, and then go limp.
“We can still do this,” she whispers, and I think that she means it. “Just say you’re sorry. We can take care of it together. I know you know what she is, too.”
Her fingers are still resting, featherlight, against my throat, her nails pricking at my skin.
“Just say you understand,” she pleads.
I feel something against my fingertips. Being pushed into my hand.
I inhale, and I see hope in her eyes. The beginnings of a trembling smile on her lips.
“You can’t go around blaming people and hurting them, hoping you’ll feel better, Susannah,” I say, coughing. “That’s not how it works.”
The hope is extinguished and replaced with anger.
Her grip on my neck tightens again.
I close my fingers around the object in my hand, shut my eyes, and swing as hard as I can.
When the rock connects, I feel it all the way down my arm.
Anna slides off me, and I crawl away, releasing the rock and clutching at my throat, sobbing and retching. I grab her and turn her over, and I see the whites of her rolled-back eyes through her half-open eyelids, see the spot where the rock connected.
She’s breathing, but it’s faint.
Then I turn to Martina.
She’s still lying on her stomach, but her face is turned to me. Her hand is stretched toward me, her fingers still flexed from having pushed the rock into my hand.
I lean over, and I pick it up.
It’s one of the rocks with the inspirational quotes. Despite the blood covering it, I can still read the inscription.
All you need is within you.
Laughing, sobbing, I pull myself to my feet, and I turn and throw up into the gravel.
I guess, in the end, Dr. Martina really did give me the tools I needed.