Baring the Thorn (The Mountain Tribe #3)

Chapter 11

Samara

I can’t make sense of Thorn’s bizarre reaction, just like I can’t make sense of the trap in front of me.

I might be new to this time, and I might know next to nothing about survivalism or tracking, but I’ve spent the past three days looking at Thorn’s trap, and I know what they look like new, fresh from any rain, mud, or leaves.

I know that they don’t stick out like the little spear on this one does, as if it was just freshly sharpened.

I know enough to be interested, which only makes his response all that more confusing.

Thorn hangs back now, hovering over me in dark silence, and when I glance back at him, I find that his eyes are just as dark, just as unreadable.

Did he want us to be left alone? Did he tell his hunters not to follow us out here and is upset they disobeyed?

All I know is that this whole thing reeks of secrets, of things beyond my understanding, things kept from me, and I’ve begun to feel this awful sick churning in my stomach.

“I’m going to keep looking,” I tell him.

We still have some hours of light, even with the sun behind a cloud right now. I have a good amount of time to search before it gets too dark.

Thorn says nothing but stands to follow me.

I turn my back to him and walk in the direction of the trap, and then past it.

Our earlier conversation is lost in the thrill - or rather, dread - of my new hunt, and goosebumps rise on my skin where desire had just moments ago warmed it. Thorn hangs back while I poke around, silent and brooding, and I can’t help but feel a slight sting of rejection in his behavior.

Shouldn’t he be helping me? Shouldn’t he be just as interested as me? Does he not have any thoughts as to what this could be?

I can see where the underbrush has been trampled, as if stepped on, and I use this as my guide forward.

We walk for a brisk half an hour or so, until we stumble on some crushed branches. I’m now positive someone walked here, that their footfall crushed twigs and flattened the mud.

“Look at this,” I break through the quiet. “This is footprints, right?”

Thorn comes beside me, and his body is a hard, tall line of tension. “It is hard to say. Samara, we should stop and have something to eat. We can continue our search later.”

I look over at him in confusion. “What? Why would we stop? I just found the first interesting thing in days.”

Thorn doesn’t want to, it’s clear in the little frown that pulls at his features, but he doesn’t offer anything else, and I roll my eyes and continue on my hunt.

In the distance, I see a patch of darkness in the ground, and I rush forward, falling to my knees in a big area of tamped down grass, staring down into the perfectly cylindrical hole in the earth.

“Oh my god,” my voice comes out high and reedy, “Oh my god, Thorn. This is it. This is where the cache was.”

It’s so obvious to me now, this perfectly cylindrical hole and the little pile of dirt beside it.

Fuck, this is it.

The discovery is both relieving and sends a chill down my spine, because now it’s just that - an empty hole.

I lean forward until my nose is almost within the dark hole, the chunk of dirt so perfectly removed that it looks almost machine-made.

I’m so positive that I’d stake my fucking career on it. This was where the cache was buried.

Yet all that’s left now is the ruined patch of ground and flattened grass around it, with discarded chunks of dirt and pebbles tossed about as if someone dug with their hands.

I reach my hand into the hole, just to be sure, and am met only with chilly, damp earth.

My voice sounds faraway, as if I’m muttering the words to myself because I can hardly believe they’re true, “It’s gone… it was dug up. Who would… who would do that?”

I look to Thorn, and beneath the thin veil of calm that he’s plastered on his face, I can see his stricken expression.

Perhaps I wouldn’t have noted it in the camp, but the days of us travelling have lent me a better understanding of him, and at the panic in his widened eyes, dread begins to pool in my stomach.

“Someone took it? Who would do that?” I demand, racking my brains.

Only the other women and Thorn knew of the reason for this journey, and I asked them to keep it amongst themselves until I came back, just in case there wasn’t anything to be found.

But now I’m facing the empty hole where the cache - where the life-saving medicine is supposed to be - and its completely barren. Without the evidential pile of dirt beside me, it would be as if the cache vanished into thin air.

Who knew we were coming here to find it?

Who could possibly beat us here?

Who would take it from us?

My hands begin to sweat, and I straighten slightly to wipe them on my leathers, above the knee, in a repetitive movement meant to soothe more than clean.

I think of every man in the camp, conjuring up their faces, and I’m almost positive none of them would hide away a cache of medicine.

What could they possibly want with it? What could they need with tools they don’t even understand?

Besides, they’ve been nothing but kind to us, sharing everything from their food to their tent to the very clothes off their backs.

They wouldn’t do something like this.

Yet I know it was taken recently because of the freshly turned earth, the new trap nearby, the footprints in the ground. Someone was here within the last few days, within our departure from the camp.

But how is that even possible? How could they have reached it faster?

Shock and confusion morph into frustration, and I round on Thorn, leaping to my feet.

“Did you tell anyone why we were coming here?” My voice is shrill in my own ears, but I can hardly change it.

Horror blooms in my chest.

Is there someone we can’t trust in the camp? Is there someone who wishes the women harm? What if something happens to one of us and the medicine that could have saved their life is just missing? What if we can never find it? And why the hell isn’t Thorn saying anything?

I press him further, “The medicine, Thorn, did you tell someone there was a cache?”

Nothing.

I reach out and give him a little shake, an urgent press of my hands over his shoulders.

He’s pale, in the now dimming light. His silence, his horror, only adds to my own.

I demand, “Thorn! Say something. Who knew this was here?”

“No one,” his voice croaks out. “I told no one. Someone must have…found it.”

That only raises more questions than answers.

“But everyone was at camp when we left, they would’ve had to leave right after us and someone walk around us faster than we walked. Did you know anyone else was heading this way?”

Thorn shakes his head. “It is not someone from the camp. It is not possible.”

“Well, it was someone! Someone took it,” the words burst out of me before the gravity of them, the realization, has time to set in. It wasn’t someone from the camp? But who else is there? “You’re sure it’s not someone in the tribe?”

He doesn’t answer me, but he’s cold to the touch under my fingers, his eyes wide, his face pale and drawn.

He looks like he just saw a ghost, like there’s a body in that hole instead of a big empty nothingness.

His expression is answer enough.

It’s not someone from the tribe, which means there’s other people left.

Near us.

On this planet.

In this time.

I cling to his shoulders, more to hold myself up than anything else. And above me, Thorn is a frozen statue of dread, of sheer, heart-stopping alarm.

Oh my god.

Oh fuck.

We’re not the last ones, the tribe isn’t the last ones. There are other people out there.

“Of course,” the words shake out me, “of course there’s others. It wouldn’t make sense it we were the last… I mean... in the whole world? I can’t believe… all this time you thought…I-.”

I’m beyond words.

It dawns on me why Thorn is so still now, it’s earth-shattering news to me and I’ve only been here a month, I can’t imagine what this kind of revelation would mean to someone who’s lived here their whole life.

I can’t imagine what must be going through Thorn’s head, thinking he was the last, fearing the end of humanity, desperately searching for women.

I look up at him in awe. “We have to go find them! We have to look for them.”

I release him, turning to follow the trail, now clearer than ever, even as afternoon turns to evening around us, a trail of dirt from the carried cache.

I’m stopped suddenly by his hand on my forearm.

Thorn whirls me around, fast, rough, my wrist caught in his heavy grasp. I spin to face a far different man than the one I’d just stood before.

His eyes burn with emotions, a forest fire raging deep within, swallowing up any of the green in his irises.

I’m stunned to silence by this new expression, a chilling mixture of fury, of pain, and of fear.

“No,” he snarls the word to me, pulling my wrist until I’m almost pressed up against him. “You will not follow him. You will not seek him out. I will not let you.”

That’s when it dawns on me, the whole horrific, despicable, true betrayal. That’s when the picture comes together, when all the shitty pieces of the terrible puzzle finally fit, and I can step back and see what lies before me.

“ No ,” the word comes out on a breath, a whisper.

There are other people here in the wilderness.

There are other people than the tribe.

There have always been other people.

And Thorn knew.