Page 8 of Juniper Unraveling

I look around the forest bed, over the figs that’ve fallen, and gather them up. Pushing them one at a time through the hole, I offer him the fruit and slide back to watch him scramble for it.

Hard to tell if he’s infected like the others. I’ve been told humans can go days, seemingly normal, not even knowing they’re sick, while the disease takes root, and then all of a sudden, poof, they change. Just like that. The twitching sets in. The aggression follows. And then the violence.

The boy hardly looks violent to me, though.

He eats all of the figs, and I gather more for him, shoving them through the small hole, from where he scoops them up.

“Is that a factory behind you?”

Perhaps it’s only gratitude that makes him pause long enough to glance back toward the buildings in the distance and shake his head, before going back to his meal. He devours the food, nostrils flaring, while his jaw flexes with his chewing.

Mesmerizing, in a way.

The Ragers hardly take notice of him, as they pace back and forth inside their pen, never once trying to grab at him.

Which leads me to wonder why. How can he be so close and not be one of them? They fight their own kind, and tend to be territorial, evident in the battle scars and festering wounds, but they never consume each other.

And why are they there, anyway? In such close proximity to the wall and those buildings.

I can’t begin to imagine what kind of building would have a smoke stack, but another glance at his outfit, and I’m puzzling the possibilities. “Is it a hospital?”

Mid-bite, he lowers the fruit from his mouth and stares off. He nods.

“Are you a patient there?” My questions have begun to dip into invasive, perhaps even annoying, territory, but in the time I’ve been inside these walls—as long as I can remember—I’ve never met someone from the outside.

And I may never get the opportunity again.

He nods a second time, and I’m feeling a bit victorious at the information I’ve collected so far. Once again, the fruit I’ve gathered is gone, and I nab a few more from the ground. Across the bed of vegetation, I scamper toward a leafy shrub and collect some of its berries. Returning to the wall, I offer all of the fruit to him, in hopes he’ll answer more of my questions.

He sniffs the berries and takes a bite, as though studying the flavor. Seemingly satisfied, he pops two more of them in his mouth, chewing quickly.

I focus on a scar along his neck, which seems to be older in the way it’s already pink and healed. A silver metal band around his throat digs into his flesh there, and I try to determine its function. “You don’t talk?”

The shake of his head is a disappointment, quickly tamped down when he bites into another fig, and the corner of his lips kick up into a smile that stretches the scar at his eye. As if he’d never tire of the taste.

“Do you have any family?” The moment the words pass my lips, my chest fills with regret.

The fruit in his hands falls to the ground, and I can see that he’s trembling.

He slams the heel of his hand against his temple, and an agonized moan is the first sound he’s made.

“I … I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

Jolting up from his crouch, he paces, his bare feet kicking up dust clouds of sand, until he halts his steps. For a split second I think he’s going to sit back down, but instead, he dives between the wires of the fence and my breath catches.

“No! Wait! Don’t!”

He crawls on hands and knees, weaving between the mangled legs of the Ragers, until I can’t see him.

Oh, God. Oh, God.

Pushing to my feet, I will my heart not to gallop out of my chest as I reach out for the branch of the Sycamore. Bracing my foot, I push up and climb, pulling myself along the branches, higher and higher up the tree.

Finally reaching the top of the wall, I peer out into the pen of Ragers that seem rattled and twitching, pacing faster than before.

There’s no sign of the boy.

I scan the barren land at either side of the pen.