• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

The Host

CHAPTER 27

Undecided

I felt my way back to my prison hole.

It had been weeks and weeks since I’d been down this particular corridor; I hadn’t been back since the morning after Jared had left and Jeb had set me free. It seemed to me that while I lived and Jared was in the caves, this must be where I belonged.

There was no dim light to greet me now. I was fairly sure I was in the last leg-the turns and twists were still vaguely familiar. I let my left hand drag against the wall as low as I could reach, feeling for the opening as I crept forward. I wasn’t decided on crawling back inside the cramped hole, but at least it would give me a reference point, letting me know that I was where I meant to be.

As it happened, I didn’t have the option of inhabiting my cell again.

In the same moment that my fingers brushed the rough edge at the top of the hole, my foot hit an obstacle and I stumbled, falling to my knees. I threw my hands out to catch myself, and they landed with a crunch and a crackle, breaking through something that wasn’t rock and didn’t belong here.

The sound startled me; the unexpected object frightened me. Perhaps I’d made a wrong turn and wasn’t anywhere near my hole. Perhaps I was in someone’s living space. I ran through the memory of my recent journey in my head, wondering how I could have gotten so turned about. Meanwhile, I listened for some reaction to my crashing fall, holding absolutely still in the darkness.

There was nothing-no reaction, no sound. It was only dark and stuffy and humid, as it always was, and so silent that I knew I must be alone.

Carefully, trying to make as little noise as possible, I took stock of my surroundings.

My hands were stuck in something. I pulled them free, tracing the contours of what felt like a cardboard box-a cardboard box with a sheet of thin, crackly plastic on top that my hands had fallen through. I felt around inside the box and found a layer of more crackly plastic-small rectangles that made a lot of noise when I handled them. I retreated quickly, afraid of drawing attention to myself.

I remembered that I’d thought I’d found the top of the hole. I searched to my left and found more stacks of cardboard squares on that side. I tried to find the top of the stack and had to stand in order to do so-it was as high as my head. I searched until I found the wall, and then the hole, exactly where I’d thought it was. I tried to climb in to ascertain if it really was the same place-one second on that bowed floor and I would know it for certain-but I could not get any farther than the opening. It, too, was crammed full of boxes.

Stymied, I explored with my hands, moving back out into the hall. I found I could go no deeper down the passageway; it was entirely filled with the mysterious cardboard squares.

As I hunted along the floor, trying to understand, I found something different from the crowd of boxes. It was rough fabric, like burlap, a sack full of something heavy that shifted with a quiet hissing sound when I nudged it. I kneaded the sack with my hands, less alarmed by the low hiss than by the plastic crackle-it seemed unlikely that this sound would alert anyone to my presence.

Suddenly, it all came clear. It was the smell that did it. As I played with the sand-like material inside the bag, I got an unexpected whiff of a familiar scent. It took me back to my bare kitchen in San Diego, to the low cupboard on the left side of the sink. In my head I could see so clearly the bag of uncooked rice, the plastic measuring cup I used to dole it out, the rows of canned food behind it…

Once I realized that I was touching a bag of rice, I understood. I was in the right place after all. Hadn’t Jeb said they used this place for storage? And hadn’t Jared just returned from a long raid? Now everything the raiders had stolen in the weeks they’d been gone was dumped in this out-of-the-way place until it could be used.

Many thoughts ran through my head at once.

First, I realized