Naturals Read Online Free PDF Page A

word they killed our friends…our family…back at the compound. And then everything went wild here.”
    A violent rush of coughs attacked the girl, her body convulsing against the floor, her legs kicking—she was fighting. She wanted to tell her story. I tightened my grip on her hand.
    “Can’t we do something?” Henry begged Robert. “Aren’t there medical supplies downstairs?”
    “Go on,” I urged the girl.
    “He treated me differently. He cared for me. The other boys did unspeakable things to the girls before…before…they took them downstairs and…killed them. He shot me.” Tears began to stream down the girl’s face.
    “Cared for you? He didn’t care for you. He tried to kill you,” Henry growled. “But we’re going to get you better, and you’re going to help us fight them. They’re going to pay for what they did to us.”
    Us.
    I turned to Robert. “Get him out of here.”
    Robert didn’t need any explanation. We’d always understood each other.
    He sprang up from his position and grabbed Henry, forcing him out of the room. Despite Henry’s urgent protests, it wasn’t a difficult task for Robert. I chose to ignore the names Henry called me as he left. Cold. Unfeeling. Selfish. But he hadn’t heard the way he said us to the girl, the way he had turned her problem into his own insatiable need for revenge.
    He wanted to own her just like the chosen one did.
    I shifted my body so I was lying on my side on the floor next to the girl. My eyes level with hers, I pulled her hand so it was resting on my chest and covered it with mine. This was something I remembered Emma doing whenever she had something difficult to tell me. Whenever she tried so desperately to protect me.
    “That was my friend Henry. He’s very angry, and he doesn’t understand.” The girl bleeding to death next to me seemed so young. Too young. She reminded me of Louisa. “This boy who shot you, he did care for you. He must have thought you were very special. He wanted to protect you, keep you from the rest of them. You must be a wonderful girl,” I said softly.
    A ghost of a smile formed on her face. And then she was gone. No violent outburst, no signal her body was fighting anymore. Because, in the end, there are some things we cannot fight, no matter how much we desire to do so.
    Silent tears slid down my cheeks. I couldn’t leave her just yet, so I lay there for a while. I didn’t know if what I told the girl was true. I didn’t even know her name, but I felt connected to her. I had been marked just like she had. Was my story fated to end the same way, or had everything James sacrificed for me guaranteed a different ending? Her story didn’t have to be mine. Did her boy care for her like James did for me? Was he trying to protect her when he shot her? Feeling there was no other way to save her except by ending her life, unaccustomed to using a gun so he gave her a wound that would take days to die from? Or was he merely selfish, not wanting any of the other boys to take what was his?
    I would never know, but I had told her what she wanted to hear.
    As I made my way downstairs, I held the girl’s book in my hand. I would now carry the stories of two new girls with me, two more to add to my growing collection.
    The crew was assembled at the bottom of the stairs. McNair and the other two men carried new cargo bags filled with supplies salvaged from the training center.
    “You have blood on your dress,” Henry said to me. I looked down at my long-sleeve gray blouse and floor-length black skirt. The clothes given to us by the council were meant to symbolize purity and temperance, but all my dress represented now was death. Henry’s face was pale and he couldn’t look me in the eyes. “Robert found you some clothes.”
    After I changed, we stood on the lawn staring at the training center. Waiting. McNair seemed entranced by the place, unwilling to leave it for some reason. Finally he took a deep, shaky breath and