Already he’s bucking and thrashing in the circle of her arms. Sam’s lips are moving, but I can’t hear what she’s saying to him over the crackles and pops of the fire roaring through the trees.
Lucas is yelling now, not words, just—screaming, his hands clenched at his sides, his eyes squeezed shut. There’s smoke rising from Sam’s coat, but she doesn’t let go, even when I would have.
He kicks at her, his ragged fingernails coming up to rake the backs of her arms. She doesn’t let go.
He goes limp in her arms and my heart stops dead.
She doesn’t let go. Her back bows under his weight, the effort it takes to keep both of them upright. The gravel shoots out from under my feet as I scramble to get to them.
“Are you okay?” The words tumble out of me. “Are you hurt?”
“He’s passed out,” Sam says, ignoring my questions. “Can you find something to cut my hands with?”
A piece of glass is sharp enough to cut the plastic tie. Sam gasps as her hands are released, and we both stoop to take Lucas’s arms, looping them over our shoulders. Lucas is so hot to the touch, I wonder if the fire is moving through his blood, too.
“The car is…a few streets over…we can make it….” Sam has to stop and adjust her grip on Lucas again before we start down the curve of the driveway. Lucas really is out of it; he’s so much taller than both of us that his feet drag and bob against the ground, and there’s nothing we can do to stop it. We’ve just reached the street when a wave of heat and pressure knocks us forward. The truck goes up in a ball of fire, streaking into the night sky.
“This way—” Sam starts to tug us left.
No.
I blink, eyes watering, as the wind finally starts playing games with the thick gray smoke, tugging it down the street. I think I’m imagining it at first—spots in my vision that just need to clear after staring so long at the flames.
A single word forms in my mind: No.
I can’t squeeze out the rest. My mind is shutting down, turned to ash by shock.
No. Way.
No way out.
No way forward.
The dark spots in my vision take shape, sharpen into something so much worse.
Neighbors, their coats pulled over pajamas, talking to each other in tight circles of concern. Soldiers in their baby blue berets and armbands, guns in their hands, shouting. A fire truck, firemen rushing past us with a hose. I think about the sirens I heard earlier; I stare, hypnotized by the red, blue, red, blue lights, and I don’t understand how I have been so stupid to let this happen. To not know what would be waiting for us.
This town isn’t empty at all. It’s full of people who stare at us like the monsters we are.
It won’t matter what we say to defend ourselves. It won’t matter now if we try to protect ourselves the only way we can. It doesn’t matter that I can’t see the snatchers, the ones responsible for all of this.
“Get down, hands behind your backs!”
I look toward Sam in question, but she only shakes her head and starts lowering Lucas to the ground.
There are too many people for me to fight.
Too many chattering radios and guns. Every part of me—every atom—screams in protest as I drop onto my stomach on the cracked road, as my cheek is licked by its rough tongue. The plastic zip tie the soldier puts around my wrist eats at my skin and what little control I’ve got left over my fear.
I twist around as the soldier hauls me up to my feet, trying to see what’s happening with Lucas. Another man is carrying him over his shoulder, and all I can think is Don’t let them find out what he is, don’t let them hurt him, not again, not again—
All Sam can say is “I’m sorry,” over and over.
She’s right.
This isn’t a fairy tale.
But we’re somehow still the villains.
THE SOLDIERS WHO PROCESS US into their custody use zip ties to secure us, but their hands are careful, and they ask in accents I’ve never heard before if they’re too tight. They watch us out of the corner of their eyes as we sit on the curb, not to make sure we won’t run, but because I doubt most of them have seen one of us up close. When