Uglies: Part III

Chickens and rabbits scampered underfoot, dust and ashes coiled in rampant whirlwinds.

Near the mess hall, about two dozen Smokies were making a stand, holding off a handful of Specials with axes and makeshift clubs.

If anyone tried to get past the cordon, they reacted swiftly, disarming and incapacitating whoever dared to run.

She scrambled toward it, but a staggering weight crashed down on her, driving her face-first into the ground.

One of the Specials was only a stone’s throw away, scanning the forest with slow back-and-forth sweeps of his head, his eyes searching the dense trees relentlessly.

A dozen or so Specials stood in a cordon around them, watching their captives with empty expressions.

By the entrance to the compound a few rabbits hopped aimlessly, too addled by their sudden freedom to make a break for it.

The familiar faces in the crowd were haggard, dirty, crumpled by shock and defeat, but Tally realized that she no longer thought of them as ugly.

Tally saw that one of the Specials had a bruise marring his pretty face.

Her whole body writhed like a snake in its death throes.

One stood back while the other stepped forward warily. “We don’t want to hurt you,” she announced. “But we will if we have to.”

“So pugnacious, you uglies. Well, you’ll be growing up soon.”

A fleeting expression crossed the Special’s impassive face—annoyance mixed with suspicion.

She walked gingerly up the slanted roof, exaggerating the difficulty of balancing without her hands.

She could hear the Special’s fingers and feet scrabbling for purchase. However strong he might be, there was nothing for him to hold on to.

Would he have his free filed down and replaced by a pretty mask, his brain turned into whatever mush the authorities decided would be acceptable for a former renegade raised in the wild?

She careened along above the water, and the hovercars stayed above tree height, patiently waiting for her to run out of cover.

Their second operation augments all their muscles and rewires their nervous system.

Eventually she would have to tell David what she had unwittingly done.

It seemed entirely deserted, but there might be a few Specials in hiding, waiting for stragglers to reappear.

Tally felt the heat still rising from the bed, the straw mattress and thick quilts fuel for the conflagration.

In a cave near the house, the opening so small that Tally had to crawl inside on her belly, David showed her the cache of gear his parents had tended for twenty years.

A few burned-out groundcars stood half-buried, their blackened frames stark against the white sand.

Then the driving rain became simply monotonous, and they spent a whole day talking to each other about anything and everything, but especially their childhoods, until Tally was sure that she understood David better than anyone she’d ever known.

Now she saw tricks for what they were: a way for uglies to blow off steam until they reached sixteen, nothing but a meaningless distraction until their mutinous natures were erased by adulthood, and the operation.

Still, Tally was happy to impress David with her burglary skills. In the last few weeks he’d taught her how to build a fire, scale a fish, pitch a tent and read a contour map. It was nice to be the competent one for a change.

Tally trudged ahead, exhaustion taking over now that they were safely out of the city, her confidence ebbing with every step.

And although Croy, Shay, Maddy, and Az were probably all prisoners in those horrible underground buildings, there was always the possibility that the Smokies had been taken somewhere else. And even if they hadn’t, Tally had no idea exactly where they’d be inside the warren of puke-brown hallways.

She had to come up with a diversion right away. A good one. Something that would intrigue the Specials enough to investigate.

A shimmering line cut its way across the black expanse of the pleasure garden, like a bright fissure opening in the earth. Then more lines appeared, one by one, tremulous arcs and circles sweeping through the darkness.

Below them, a large circular opening had appeared in the largest building’s roof, and three hovercars rose up through the gap in quick succession, screaming toward the city.

No matter how formidable cruel pretties were, surprise still had its advantages.

They ran inhumanly fast, covering the ground with long, loping strides.

Croy had found the food packets and purifier in her knapsack and was making food with water from the fall, apparently trying to placate Shay.

Bedraggled, in dirty party clothes, her hair stuck to her face, she was still stunning.

Her wiry fitness from hard work at the Smoke hadn’t faded in two weeks, and the operation actually firmed up a new pretty’s muscles, at least for a while.

Maddy had decided that the brain lesions couldn’t be kept a secret anymore; every ugly had the right to know what the operation really entailed.

Shay stayed with them, complaining about the food, the ruins, her hair and clothes, and having to look at all the ugly faces around her. But she never seemed bitter, only perpetually annoyed.

“Maybe for right now, Tally. But if we keep making inroads into the city, we might find a pretty who wants out.”

Shay giggled at Tally’s heartfelt words, but she wrote them down as directed. There was something earnest in the way she put stylus to paper, like a littlie learning how to read.