Maverick freezes.
So do I.
Birds… I haven’t heard birds in ages. The entire time we’ve been out in the woods, there’s been no sign of any sort of wildlife. If there is any, they’re hidden well enough that they can avoid lurkers, and that means they’re as good as gone. So a bird? A small sliver of relief flashes through me as I think that there was at least one that the lurkers—or the flames—haven’t found a way to destroy.
That relief is short-lived when it sounds again and, this time, it’s not birdsong.
It’s a whistle.
My stomach sinks to my boots.
It’s not queasy. I don’t sense any lurkers approaching us. Of course not. The sun is still shining brightly, another warm September day, though my whole body goes suddenly cold.They’d shrivel in the sunlight like a vampire if a stray sunbeam hit any of the unnaturally pale skin under their cloaks.
Only there’s no way it’s a lurker.
Lurkers can’t whistle.
“Rogue?” I breathe out.
Maverick sucks in his breath, his cheekbones jutting out of his face as he goes gaunt. “Worse.”
Worse?
“What do you mean, worse?”
Rather than answer me, he slips his pack from his shoulders. It lands with a thump on the grass. There’s a velcro section on the backside that he tears open with a crunching sound that makes my teeth ache. He yanks out a battered old baseball cap that’s covered in a mixture of dirt and ashes that makes the dark blue look like it’s speckled with brown and grey.
He tosses it at me. “Put this on.”
“Why—”
“No time for questions,” he snaps. “Just do it.”
I jam the hat on my head.
“Better,” he mutters. “Too bad we don’t have time to get the sweatshirt out. The hood would’ve covered you up more. Does that jacket have a zipper?”
“What? Yes. Yes, it does.”
“Good. Zip it up. We gotta hide your tits.”
I don’t know what freaks me out more: that Maverick finally acknowledges that I’m a woman after all, or that there’s some reason that he really wants to conceal that fact.
Well, duh. Isn’t that what Chase was so worried about? He thought that Maverick might make a move when it was just the two of us outside of the Grave. He never has. Up until this moment, I got the vibe that he was treating me like I was one of the guys, or—thanks to his nickname for me—a little girl.
He did. The rogue who’s out there might not. And I’m wearing a dingy white tank top and a stretched-out bra. My cleavage has been on display for days now, a fact that I’ve gotten used to… until right this very second.
Fuck. Fuck, fuck,fuck.
I grab the zipper. It catches. I mutter a curse out loud as I tug anxiously. Yes! The leather releases, allowing the zipper to go all the way up to my chin.
His eyes dart past me, over to where we might have heard the whistle coming from. I don’t know what can be worse than a rogue survivor traveling through the Outside, but this is the most worked-up I’ve ever seen Maverick and, for the first time since I left the Grave, I’m undeniably nervous.
“What’s going on?”
His lips purse the way they always do when I ask a question he doesn’t want to answer.
And then, before I can prod him to explain, he says, “I fucked up. Kid… I’m sorry, but I fucked up.”
