“Gone?” Mack asks.
“Him or us. I chose us.”
And Mack realizes Ava did. She was out. She faced death, she beat it, and she escaped. Outside the park, outside the fence, free and clear. And then she climbed back over and found them.
Mack feels number than ever. Ava should have kept running.
“Not that way,” LeGrand says in response to Ava’s direction. “That’s where we left Brandon and Jaden.” He doesn’t want to go there again. Not because he’s worried the monster is still lurking, but because he doesn’t want to see where it happened, doesn’t want to think about it.
Ava frowns. In this damn loopy park, it’s the most direct route to the section of fence they need. “Doesn’t matter,” she says. “They’ll be gone, right?” She doesn’t want to upset LeGrand or Mack any more than they already are, but they can’t risk wandering off course, like the paths want them to.
“Yeah,” Mack says. Gone. Brandon’s gone. Could she have saved him? Maybe if he had known Ava was coming back. Or maybe if Mack had been the one to go after beautiful Ava, been the brave one. She’s sure Ava would have seen what was going on with Brandon, would have been able to save him, or talk him out of it.
Shaking her head to try to shift the memory of the sound—all the hard and soft bits of bodies hitting the ground—Mack focuses on walking, supporting Ava, trying not to think about where they’re going or what they’ll do when they get there. She feels dizzy, disoriented, oddly disappointed. Like she was robbed of the first good decision she’s made in her life.
“Oh shit,” Ava says, stopping. They’ve reached the swings.
Jaden is gone, yes. But Brandon is there, lying broken and still, exactly as they left him.
“It didn’t eat him.” LeGrand states the obvious, but the obvious is all his brain is able to latch on to. There is a monster. It did not eat Ava. Ava is going to save them. The monster ate Jaden, but left Brandon. Suicides don’t get to live with their families in the highest degree of glory, or be with Jesus, his brain tells him, but he dismisses that. It’s not fact. It’s what he was taught, but he knows now that no one who taught him anything knows how the world really works. He thinks Jesus would like Brandon, would understand that Brandon made his choice to save others. They have a lot in common, really.
LeGrand is relieved in more ways than one that Ava is back. Because with Ava on his side, he has a real chance at escaping, yes, but also at kidnapping his sister. Saving her from the monsters of men keeping her prisoner, letting her suffer when they could all help her if they wanted to. If they chose to.
Ava means he lives. Ava means Almera lives. Ava is everything the elders would warn him about, and he understands at last why they are afraid of people like her.
“I’m sorry,” Ava whispers, not closing Brandon’s eyes. He has a nice view of the trees overhead, after all. Why take that away from him? They walk on.
The day is muggy, the late afternoon sullen with impending pressure. Clouds have overtaken Brandon’s blue sky, building fast with a breeze, piling on top of one another. The park forces them through several winding misdirections, but between Ava’s sense of direction and LeGrand’s ability to climb trees to reorient them, they make it to her section of the fence.
Ava holds a fist in the air, and while only Mack has seen enough shows to know what that means, LeGrand understands the way Ava stands, taut and ready. She pulls out the radio, a walkie-talkie of sorts, and listens, but no one is sending out a warning, no one is using the devices. No one is calling Ray. Inside the park, Brandon Callas is lying, eyes open to the clouding sky, and outside the park, Ray Callas is lying, eyes against the dirt beneath the bush where Ava dragged him.
“Here.” Ava limps along the fence border, taking them to Ray’s empty guard tower. “If you climb on the tower only, you won’t get electrocuted. Don’t touch the fence, though.” She’s relieved she doesn’t have to climb the fence again. It had enough give to move around, making it a nightmare to scale. It took forever, carefully placing each hand, maneuvering her leg. The tower hurts, too, but at least it’s steady. She has Mack go first, spurred by the irrational fear that if she let Mack go last, Mack would disappear back into the park.
At the top, Mack turns and surveys what they left behind as Ava and LeGrand climb. From the tower she can’t actually see much. They have the section all around the fence cleared, a naked buffer circling the entire park, but beyond that it’s only trees, with the occasional landmark rising in the distance. The Ferris wheel. The peak of a roller coaster’s spine. The swing ride. The other guard towers are hidden by the trees and the landscape, none of them tall enough to be viewed from this one. If the guards wanted to actually see what was happening in the park, or to see the maze and what it leads to, they’d need much higher towers.