telling him he was wrong. No angels, just dust pieces, and two things could not be more different than those.
His belly spoke up next, telling him that it wanted breakfast. He pulled himself from bed, cleaned himself up, dressed, and picked up his hunting knife.
Another day. Many more to follow. He walked in a different way than he usually took when hunting. Maybe it was toward town, maybe not. Maybe he would walk right into the middle of enemy territory. Maybe they would kill him on sight.
Maybe . . . he didn’t care.
He’d thrown himself in front of a huge, wild, crazy pig with sharp tusks and lived. He’d laugh, only it would open his wound back up again, and he didn’t have any clean cloths.
He didn’t know if he could do it anymore, the constant suffering. The winters always coming, the hunger, the loneliness that felt like darkness carved deep into his bones. Why should he fight? For what? Why should he survive? He understood the look in the blond boy’s eyes now. The happiness that it was finally over. Jak should have died on that cliff that night, with the other two boys, maybe three. But he had fought to live. Why? He didn’t want to fight anymore, and there weren’t any pigs nearby.
You could find a bear with cubs. A mother bear would rip you to shreds if you went too close to her babies.
But that would take too long. He didn’t think he wanted to live, but he didn’t want to be torn apart by a bear over a whole day either. Plus, he liked bears. He didn’t want to make one mad.
He came to a canyon and stood at the edge, looking down. He could jump off a cliff. But not this one. This one wasn’t high enough to make sure he died, but there were lots of others that would.
As he stood there thinking about the ways he could make sure of his death, sunlight blinked off something shiny through the leaves at the bottom of the canyon, blinding him for a second.
Curiosity made him pause, the fog that had been hanging over him clearing for a quick minute, the need to know what large shiny item was hiding underneath the leaves, a spark of . . . life. Jak climbed down the canyon slowly, not out of being careful, but because it was all he could do. His body was still healing; he could feel a trickle of blood from the barely closed-up tear on his side, sliding down his skin.
His feet hit the bottom with a crunch, and he moved toward the glint of what looked like blue metal from this closer place. He blinked in surprise when moving the thick leaves aside showed a . . . car. It took him a minute to put together this large thing from that other world, with the one he lived in now. What is it doing here?
Had it been someone trying to escape the enemy, who’d driven far into the wilderness and over the edge of this canyon? How long has it been here?
Glass crunched under his feet and he bent, looking inside the broken window, and pulling back when he saw the skeletons inside. Clothes hung on the bones, and by their look, he could tell that the one at the wheel had been a man, and the other one, a woman.
Another beam of sunlight caught something shiny lying on the seat, and Jak reached for it, bringing it out of the car and opening his hand. A silver necklace with a tiny opening thing on the side. Jak used his thumbnail to pry it open, showing a tiny picture of a man, a woman, and a baby inside. A family. Jak’s stomach knotted up with wanting as he stared at the three smiling faces.
His eyes moved over the people one by one, the man wearing a small smile, one hand sitting on the woman’s shoulder. The woman’s smile was big and shiny, her blonde hair pretty and bright. But it was the baby who drew him in. It was the baby who made him stop and stare. There was something about her eyes . . . something that made his heartbeat go faster and his skin feel sweaty. He gripped the necklace in his hand and moved to the back of the car where the trunk was opened a crack.
He pushed on it, the metal creaking as it went up. There