Page 81 of The Last Sanctuary
If her calculations were correct, she needed to travel approximately one hundred and forty-seven miles if she took the roads, or only a hundred miles as the crow flies if she could circumvent most of the main roads.
If she pushed herself, she could reach the cabin in a week or a few days more, if she could hike fifteen miles a day. Of course, that pace depended on how many towns and cities she’d have to skirt between her current location and the Blue Ridge Mountains.
A week or so. It felt like a lifetime. If she had the Hydra Virus, she’d be dead by then. If she wasn’t sick, she still had to figure out how to travel long distances within proximity to other humans and not die.
One thing she did know for certain: days of heavy exertion without water would be impossible. Her water bottle was bone dry. No clouds in the sky promised rain, either.
Frowning, she scanned the map again. The closest body of water by several miles was the Ocmulgee River, which waslocated approximately two miles to the west of her current location. Entirely the wrong direction.
Despite how far it felt like she’d fled, she was still within three miles of Haven. Not far enough to feel safe from the threat of the Headhunters. The dense underbrush had slowed her down considerably. Every instinct urged her to get as far from the Headhunters as she could, as fast as she could.
Thirst parched her throat. Her tongue felt gummy in her mouth.
She had no choice. She couldn’t survive without water.
She had to reach the river first and fill her water bottles before heading north toward the mountains. Raven checked her compass and reoriented her direction to the west.
She set out toward the river. Shadow and Luna were off somewhere, but they could track her scent—they’d find her when they wanted to. The first spark of hope flared to life somewhere deep inside her chest. Maybe she could actually make it.
Maybe she would survive the end of the world, after all.
Chapter Thirty-Five
An hour later, the midday sun burned bright in the sky, which revealed itself in patches between the canopy of the forest. The day had warmed considerably, into the low fifties.
Raven wore her jacket around her waist, sweating and thirsty as she followed the narrow deer trail that she’d discovered an hour ago, which meandered in the direction of the river.
The burble of the river reached her over the birdsong and breeze rustling the branches overhead. She was almost there.
A loud yip sounded from somewhere ahead of her. Shadow or Luna? Or one of the timber wolves? Pausing, she listened hard but heard nothing else over the rustling leaves.
Pushing through heavy underbrush, she moved off the deer trail and headed in the direction of the sound. She eased through a thicket of sumac and mountain laurel. The rush of the river grew louder.
Just before she stepped out of the woods onto the pebble-strewn riverbank, she paused, moving aside a branch to take a look before she revealed herself. The long winding river was thirty feet at its widest point. Rushing brown water splashed over smooth stones and slick fallen logs.
At the edge of the water, about fifty or sixty yards downstream, a car-sized boulder loomed next to a copse of shagbark hickory trees. The shaggy bark peeled from the trunks in great swaths like wood shavings.
Beneath the shagbark trees, the white wolf stood over something on the ground. Luna bent her head, sniffing at the object. Her black lips curled back from her teeth eagerly, hungrily.
Squinting, Raven took a step closer. The object on the ground took shape. It was a calf carcass, lying on the ground beneath the tree along the riverbank.
Alarm shot through her veins. Something was wrong. The calf carcass belonged in the wildlife refuge, stored in the walk-in freezer of the meat house. It did not belong out here in the woods. A carpet of pine needles spread across the ground beneath the trees. Too flat, too even. No pine trees, either.
She opened her mouth to shout a warning.
Too late. Luna sank her jaws into the carcass. The movement triggered the trap. A roped log dropped from the tree above the wolf, a counterweight to the hidden net spread beneath the wolf’s paws. Simultaneously, the net snapped up and closed over Luna’s body. The net rose into the air, hauling the wolf seven feet above the ground.
Luna thrashed fiercely, her paws tangling in the netted rope. She yelped in mingled fury and fear. The net swung but held the wolf fast.
Raven shrank back. Instinctively, she crouched low behind the cluster of bushes. Rage burned through her veins. Every fiber of her body longed to burst from the trees and rush to save Luna, to cut her down with the whittling knife in her pocket, yet she resisted the urge. Forced herself to wait and watch, to surveil the scene first.
Her caution was warranted. A moment later, a man stepped out from behind the huge boulder downriver. One of the Headhunters. A second man soon joined the first. Cobb and Dekker. And then three more burly men she didn’t recognize emerged from the trees.
The Headhunters carried rifles. They wore wolf pelts slung across their shoulders like capes. The pelts still raw and oozing blood.
Raven’s chest constricted. Aghast, she recognized the distinctive markings on the pelts: Titus’ streaks of black and Shika’s beautiful, brindled coat.
A surge of grief burned the back of her throat. Cold rage iced her veins. How dare they mutilate such beautiful creatures for their own craven benefit. She loathed them with every part of her. She wanted the Headhunters to die horribly and painfully.
