Virginia's Arc

Chapter 3 of 4

Three days after Elina's group moved in, Virginia took a shift on the wall. The tower was hot even in the morning. She had a pair of cracked binoculars around her neck and a rifle she was not sure she could hit anything with. She swept the horizon slow, the way Mendez had shown her. Sand. More sand. A dry ridge. Then, past the ridge, two shapes on the ground that did not belong there. She lifted the binoculars. A man on his side. A little girl curled against him. Neither of them moving. She swept the ground around them and her stomach dropped. Something was pushing through the sand toward the man's leg. Bright pink and orange petals. A mouth full of teeth at the center of the bloom. Thorned vines dragging its bulk forward like arms. Virginia had heard the others call them maws. She had never seen one hunt. It was maybe forty feet from the man and closing. She scrambled down the tower ladder and ran across the yard shouting for Elina. Elina came out of the tent already moving, knife on her belt, wings folded tight against her back. Virginia pointed and told her, fast. Elina did not ask twice. "Jeep," she said. They ran to the dune jeep by the gate. Virginia drove because Virginia knew the clutch. Elina climbed onto the roof rail and hooked one boot through it and held on. The jeep hit the ridge hard and came down in a spray of sand. The flower's head snapped up toward the noise. Virginia braked ten feet short. Elina was already off the roof. She ran at the thing straight on. The wings opened as she moved, glass edges catching sun. The maw lashed a vine at her and she ducked under it and brought the left wing down across the stem in one clean swing. The head hit the sand and kept snapping at nothing. Elina put her boot on it. Virginia got out and went to the man. He was breathing. The girl beside him opened her eyes when Virginia touched her shoulder. Black hair with blue in it. Cracked lips. "Emmy," the girl said, before Virginia asked. She pointed at the man. "Thomas. He fell first." Virginia dragged Thomas by the arms to the jeep. Emmy walked on her own and climbed in. Elina swung into the passenger seat. "Go," she said. Virginia turned the jeep back toward the fortress. Halfway home a second maw rose out of a low patch of brush, vines whipping at the tire. Virginia cut the wheel hard and the jeep slid past it, close enough she heard teeth clip the door. She did not slow down. The gate came into view. Riley was already opening it. Virginia drove through and stopped in the yard, and for the first time in a long time she had brought two more people inside a wall instead of walking away from one.