Hideout by Jack Heath (iphone ebook reader txt) 📕

I move on to the Abuser. She’s Latina, forties, wearing the torn remains of an evening gown. She looks better fed than the others, and has fewer obvious signs of injury, yet she looks more afraid of me than they do. I wonder how the Guards have punished her. I know from her file that she tied up her husband during a sex game and then burned him over and over with a cigarette lighter before skipping town with all his possessions.

There’s no sign of the Pedo, who was profiled on Cedric’s computer as a priest with exactly the rap sheet you’d expect. Altar boys. Communion wine. A sudden move to a new parish whenever a parent complained. Maybe the Guards killed him before I arrived. There’s no way to ask that won’t sound suspicious.

Gerald is still talking. ‘You know why it’s ironic? They feed dog meat to the humans and human meat to the dogs.’

It takes me a minute to realise what he means. Where the food for the watchdogs comes from.

‘You see that machine behind you? Do you get what they’re gonna do to us?’ He’s shouting now. ‘Do you understand what you’re implicit in, Lux?’

‘You mean complicit.’ I don’t turn around, but I know the machine he’s referring to. The huge steel box with a chute at one end and a spout at the other. Like a woodchipper, but not designed for wood.

I hand some food to the KKK Queen.

‘Shut up, Gerald,’ she says as she takes it, ignoring me completely. I recognise her voice from last night, when she introduced herself as Hailey.

‘You shut up,’ Gerald says weakly.

The sixth prisoner doesn’t take his bowl. I quickly realise that he’s dead. I’ve been holding out a bowl for Scammer’s corpse.

Everyone stares at me in shocked silence, embarrassed on my behalf, like it’s a dinner party and I’ve just farted. Then the Nazi laughs darkly and throws a dog biscuit into her mouth.

CHAPTER 14

I’m one of a kind, and yet no matter where you go, I’m always at your fingertips. What am I?

‘This was the spot, right?’ Fred asks.

I examine the footprints. The hiker had the same size feet as me and similar shoes. It’s basically impossible to tell what happened. ‘Right.’

The others—Donnie, Cedric, Zara and Kyle—scan the forest. Branches creak. Birds twitter. Sleet blows through clearings, settling on leaves. Visibility isn’t much better than it was last night.

‘He was just a hiker,’ Kyle says. ‘Why do we have to find him?’

‘Because Samson attacked him with a knife and Lux with a gun,’ Fred says matter-of-factly. ‘If he makes it back to civilisation, he might tell somebody.’ He frowns. ‘Has anyone heard from Samson?’

Blank looks all around.

‘Thought he’d come back for something to eat,’ Donnie says.

‘Me too,’ Fred says. ‘He seemed kind of gloomy this morning. Zara, can you send him a message?’

‘On it.’ Zara gets out her phone. ‘I hope he’s okay.’

‘Yeah. Everyone else, keep an eye out for him. You see anything, post it in the group chat on your phone. Everyone got push notifications and location sharing switched on?’

Everyone nods. There must be wi-fi repeaters in the forest. Makes sense, otherwise the cameras wouldn’t work.

I nudge Fred. ‘Can I stay with you? I don’t have a phone.’

‘What happened to yours?’ He looks concerned, probably about my data falling into the wrong hands.

‘I swallowed it.’

This might be the first true thing I’ve said to Fred, but he doesn’t look like he believes me. ‘Really?’

‘Yeah. Police can force you to unlock your phone with a fingerprint, but they can’t cut it out of your stomach.’

‘How are you gonna get it back out?’

‘I already did,’ I say. ‘I figured I had two main options—’

Fred cuts me off with an alarmed wave. ‘Jesus, okay. You can stay with me. But we’ll have to walk twice as fast to cover the same search area. Let’s get moving.’

We all march our separate ways into the forest. I’m the only one without a weapon.

Ferns scrape my arms and legs. Something is crawling over the back of my neck. I swat at it. I’m still hungry. I can eat vegetables until my stomach bursts and still feel empty.

The forest looks different without the night-vision goggles. The constantly shifting shadows on the forest floor create fake holes and conceal real ones. Some blood-red flowers light up the gloom, despite the season. I spot a familiar shrub up ahead, shaped like a giant ribcage. I turn—there’s another box camera, nailed to a tree opposite it.

‘Do I need to impress upon you the seriousness of this situation?’ Fred asks, when we’re out of earshot of the others.

I shake my head. ‘No, I get it. If this guy tells the cops about us …’

‘Not that. What you were saying to the others, at breakfast.’

I frantically fast-forward through this morning’s conversation. What did I say?

‘About the prisoners,’ Fred prompts. ‘I know you like to play games, Lux. But if you want to stay here, you have to rein it in.’

He thinks I’ve been feigning ignorance by asking about things Lux would already know. He wouldn’t be pleased to hear that my ignorance was genuine.

‘Sorry, bro,’ I say. ‘I wasn’t thinking.’

He holds up a hand for silence, scanning the trees around us like a Terminator. Then he says, ‘Don’t sweat it. Let’s keep moving.’

As I trudge through the shallow snow, I try to think of things to say. I want to keep him talking and gather as much information as I can, but there are so many pitfalls. Are you and Zara a thing? Lux might be supposed to know that. Where do you keep the keys for the cars? Too suspicious. Does anyone have any blood-borne diseases I