The-Infinite-Sea-Pdf

17
AT SUNSET, Grace killed the fire, slipped the backpack and rifle over her shoulder, and scooped Evan
from the ground for the sixteen-mile hike to her station house on the southern outskirts of Urbana. She
would keep to the highway to make better time. There was little risk in it at this stage of the game: She
hadn’t seen a human being in weeks. Those she hadn’t killed had been taken by the buses or had taken
refuge against the onslaught of winter. This was the in-between time. In another year, perhaps two,
though no more than five, there would be no need for stealth, because there would be no more prey to
stalk.
The temperature plunged with the sun. Ragged clouds raced across the indigo sky, driven by a north
wind that toyed with her bangs and playfully flipped the collar of her jacket. The first stars appeared,
the moon rose, and the road shone ahead, a silver ribbon twisting across the black backdrop of dead
fields and empty lots and the gutted shells of houses long abandoned.
She stopped once to rest and drink and spread more salve over Evan’s burns.
“There’s something different about you,” she mused. “I can’t put my finger on it.” Putting her fingers
all over him.
“I didn’t have an easy awakening,” he said. “You know that.”
She grunted softly. “You’re a brooder, Evan, and a very sore loser.” She wrapped him back up in the
blanket. Ran her long fingers through his hair. Looked deeply into his eyes. “There’s something you’re
not telling me.”
He said nothing.
“I felt it,” she said. “The first night, when I hauled you out of the wreckage. There’s a . . .” She
searched for the right words. “A hidden room that wasn’t there before.”
His voice sounded hollow to him, empty as the wind. “Nothing is hidden.”
Grace laughed. “You should never have been integrated, Evan Walker. You feel far too much for them
to be one of them.”
She picked him up as easily as a mother her newborn child. She lifted her face to the night sky and
gasped. “I see her! Cassiopeia, the queen of the night.” She pressed her cheek against the top of his
head. “Our hunt is over, Evan.”