The Prey Read Online Free PDF

can’t have a bunch of Less Thans holding us back.”
    My head was swimming. Not only was he suggesting we weren’t normal but that we might not even be orphans. “This is an orphanage,” I managed.
    â€œWho said?”
    â€œThe Brown Shirts.”
    â€œYou don’t think they’d lie, do you?”
    My knees felt weak. Was it even remotely possible he was telling the truth? That we’d been ripped from our mothers’ arms and sent here because we were considered “less than normal”? I felt the sudden need to get away.
    â€œWhat’s the matter?” he called out. “Can’t face facts?”
    That did it. I spun around and leaped toward him and we tumbled hard on the rain-soaked ground. My fists began pummeling him. Roundhouses and jabs and uppercuts, one after another, landing first on one side of his face and then the other.
    The other LTs made a halfhearted attempt to break us up, but they seemed all too happy to watch. And then I realized: Cat wasn’t fighting back. He was letting me hit him, barely blocking my punches. It made me all the angrier.
    â€œThat’s enough,” Cat finally said, and he sent a fist in my direction. I fell to the side.
    I pushed myself to a sitting position, blood trickling from my nose. Cat’s one punch had drawn blood; it had taken me a couple dozen to do the same to him.
    â€œYou showed him,” said Flush.
    But I knew I hadn’t. The LTs drifted off to the barracks.
    â€œWhy didn’t you fight back?” I panted.
    â€œI only beat up people if I have reason to. I don’t have a good reason to beat you up.” He sipped a breath. “Yet.”
    He pushed himself up until he was sitting in the mud, his face near mine.
    â€œIf you’re so smart, let me ask you this,” he said. “What do you know about the men outside camp?”
    â€œYou mean the Brown Shirts?”
    â€œI mean the other men.”
    I could’ve bluffed my way through an answer, but I was too exhausted for lies. “Nothing,” I conceded.
    â€œI figured as much.” Then he said, “They know about all of you. And if you don’t do something about it, you’ll be dead within the year.”
    Although I tried to hide it, my eyes widened. “Prove it,” I said.
    â€œWhat’re you doing tomorrow afternoon?”
    That night I couldn’t stop thinking about what Cat had said, his words jangling around my head like pebbles in a tin can. When I finally fell asleep I dreamed of her again: the woman with long black hair. She existed in some distant memory of mine, but who she was and how I knew her were details forever lost. All I knew was that she’d been appearing in my dreams more and more often until I no longer knew what was memory and what was imagination.
    In the dream, we were racing through a field of prairie grass, my child’s hand encompassed in hers. Although she was far older, it was all I could do to keep up with her—two of my short strides matching one of hers.
    Behind us came a series of sharp pops, like firecrackers. There were other sounds, too. Shrill whistles. Shouting. Barking dogs.
    The land sloped downward to a hollow and we drifted to a stop. She put her hands atop my shoulders and stared at me. Wrinkles etched her face. Crow’s feet danced at the edges of her eyes.
    I realized the pops were bullets; I could hear them pinging off the rocks and whistling past my ears.Someone was after us. Someone was trying to kill us.
    Even though the woman seemed about to tell me something, I didn’t want to hear it—I didn’t want to be there —so I jolted myself awake, the blackness of the Quonset hut pressing down on me, my breathing fast.
    It was another hour before I fell back to sleep, wondering who the woman was and what she was about to say.

8.
    H OPE AND F AITH ARE jammed into the back of the Humvee. The convoy makes its way across