The Survivors Read Online Free PDF Page A

too relieved.
    â€œWith Mr. Soames. That’s in room 10-B,” Mackenzie says.
    Ray has not gone anywhere. He continues to stand close by, just watching. It doesn’t seem to bother him that the girls ignore him.
    Mackenzie looks Sarah up and down one more time. “You can sit with us during lunch.”
    Sarah smiles weakly. “Great, thanks,” she answers.
    â€œOr with me,” Ray says to Sarah.
    â€œDon’t sit with him,” Mackenzie says before Sarah can answer. “Ray is creepy. All he does is draw people—mostly girls.”
    â€œIt’s what artists do,” Rays says easily.
    â€œThere are artists and then there are creeps,” Mackenzie says.
    â€œUh, sounds like there’s some history here. I should go,” Sarah says. “Literally, I mean. Where’s the bathroom?”
    The other girls giggle.
    Mackenzie points while continuing to glare at Ray.
    Sarah escapes down the hall, and once inside the girls’ room she chooses a toilet stall, closes the door, and locks it. She drops her jeans and sits down. Who knew a toilet seat could feel so good? Other girls come and go, laughing and flushing and running water. Sarah takes her time. When the bathroom is finally quiet, she emerges. In the mirror is a tanned Minnesota girl—so generic looking that for an instant Sarah doesn’t recognize herself. She lets hot water run on her hands—silky, warm water—and all the soap she needs. Glancing around, she bends to the sink to wash her face. Handfuls of hot water steam her skin. “Mmmmmmm,” she murmurs, then freezes.
    Another girl has emerged from a stall. She is thin, with dark, short hair and quick-moving eyes. She looks at Sarah; her eyes go to the running hot water, the foamy soap. There’s a long moment of recognition: You’re one of us . Then the girl leaves in a rush, without washing her hands.

CHAPTER FOUR
MILES
    AFTER BACKTRACKING FROM THE BUS stop, Miles pauses, then leaps from the asphalt to the road bank. He tries to leave no tracks in the ditch. Mr. Kurz would be proud. A slight breeze stirs the dust and softens the edges of his boot prints.
    He angles through the woods, then to the hill above their cabin. Below there are no signs of life. His parents have gone back to bed—either they’re fooling around or they’re just lazy today. But white motion flashes behind the riverbank brush. It’s his mother in the swimming hole, splashing, bathing. He turns away—not that he saw anything—and heads upstream along the ridgeline.
    Carrying his gun loosely over his shoulder, he walks slowly, first planting the heel and then the rest of the foot: heel-toe, heel-toe. Goat Girl walks like an elephant: clump, clump, clump . He has tried to teach her the hunter’s walk to spread out the impact, but she just doesn’t get it. Or she gets it briefly, but soon it’s back to clump, clump, clump .
    The deer trail on the high bank follows the path of least brush, but with easy escape routes. Deer are not dumb. This would be a good spot for hunting deer, but the weather must be colder or else the meat would spoil. This morning he is on the hunt for a grouse.
    Grouse are not dumb either. They do not like open spaces where an owl or a hawk can fly in and get them. Look for grouse in the thickest brush, the kind a man can’t walk through. A good hunter sometimes has to crawl . Mr. Kurz’s gravelly old voice comes into Miles’s head, like it does several times a day.
    He eases through the brush, its bristles sweeping his bare arms like a coarse broom. He pauses. Sniffs the air. A fruity, sweet-and-sour odor drifts up from the river’s edge. He heads that way, eyes on the ground, until he realizes that the scent is above him: clusters of translucent red-orange berries. Bears won’t eat them; birds won’t touch them unless there’s nothing else to eat. So much acid in them that they