Now that Jackson had kicked me out of his house, waking up was more of a shock to my system than I would ever want to endure this early in the morning. The stink of death clung to everything in the bar, seeping from the holding room and making the stuffy atmosphere even more stifling. The sheets under me probably hadn’t been that clean to begin with, but now they were soaked through with my sweat and sticking to my body like a bucket of glue had been poured over me. As much as I hated the prick, I found myself wishing Jackson and Meg hadn’t gotten in a fight.
More coughs echoed through the air, this time coming from the opposite corner of the room. I pulled my arm away from my face as I twisted on the cot, the metal frame and springs groaning under me. The room was dark but not pitch black, and even with the shadows stretching across the small space, I could make out the other two beds. Both guards were curled up under blankets—just the sight of it made me sweat even more than I already was. The tremors moving through their bodies’ rocked the wobbly beds so hard that they looked like they were on the verge of falling apart.
The guard let out another cough that rattled through his chest in terrifying sickly way. A second later, he groaned. I pushed myself up into a half-sitting position, trying to get a good look at the guy. His face was visible, but just barely, poking out of the blanket that was draped over him. He reminded me of an infant who’d been swaddled by his mother. His cheeks were flushed and his forehead was moist with sweat.
“You sick?” I asked despite my better judgment.
These assholes had gone out of their way to show how little they gave a shit about me, so I tried to tell myself I was just asking because I didn’t want to get whatever this dude had. It wasn’t true, though. Despite how hard I’d tried to own the I-didn’t-give-a-damn-about-the-world attitude over the past year, it was all an act. My mom—God rest her soul—had raised me to care about people, and it was a habit I couldn’t seem to shake. Even if the people around me didn’t deserve it, I found myself unable to turn my back on them. Like when I’d stumbled upon Meg in the bathroom that night. Even if she hadn’t looked helpless, I would have run to her aide. I would have killed the guy in exactly the same way even if I’d stepped into that room and found Meg ready to slit his throat herself, because that’s what I’d been raised to do: look out for others.
On the other cot, the older guard pushed himself up, and his gaze moved across the room to the guard I was staring at. With the old guy up I was able to get a better look at him. He didn’t seem any healthier than the first one did. The older man’s skin was pale but his cheeks were pink. Sweat glistened on his face while tremors shook his body. He also had dark rings under his eyes that made it look like he’d dropped ten pounds over night.
“Shit. Everybody was—” He hacked for a few seconds before spitting a big wad of phlegm on the cement floor. “About every other person at that strip club was coughing like crazy last night. Looks like we caught what they all had.”
I found it impossible to respond when the conversation I’d heard in the Regulator’s house came back to me. Was this the flu he and his nasal friend had been talking about? I knew I couldn’t rule it out, even if I didn’t totally understand the point of it all. After what had gone down the night before, I believed with everything in me that the people in charge would do anything to meet their goal. What the goal was, I still didn’t know, but it was something big and something a hell of a lot different than finding a cure for this whole zombie crisis.
The guards continued to cough, but my brain was wide awake now and I knew I’d never be able to get it to turn off enough to go back to sleep. My nerves were shot and I needed to calm the hell down. It didn’t matter how early it was, I wanted a drink.
I threw myself out of bed and headed for the other room, my bare feet slapping against the cement floor as I went. Despite the humidity clinging to the air, the stone was cold against my skin. So chilly, in fact, that I hadn’t even made it out of the holding room when a shiver ran up my spine. It was like that old superstition about someone walking over your grave, and it wasn’t very far-fetched either. There was a hell of a good chance that I wouldn’t make it out of this settlement alive, and thinking that had me even more unsettled than anything else that had happened so far. Which was saying a lot.
The main room was dark except for a few lights that shone down on the rows of booze lined up behind the bar. The glass sparkled as I rounded the counter, heading straight for the bottles. One drink should do the trick.
My hand was trembling when I poured myself a glass of whiskey, so much so that liquid sloshed across the counter. I ignored the mess and threw the drink back, closing my eyes when it burned its way down my throat. I didn’t move, waiting for the alcohol to work its magic. When it didn’t work, I opened my eyes poured another glass, once again spilling it. I didn’t clean it up before tossing the second drink back, closing my eyes in a futile attempt to block out reality.
“You better wipe that up or Dragon will piss himself.” Helen’s gravelly voice echoed through the room, and I swear I almost pissed myself.
“Shit.”
I opened my eyes to find her headed my way, wearing scrubs and already smoking. Her blue eyes were only a shade lighter than the clothes, and her short hair was wet and slicked down against her scalp like she’d just gotten out of the shower. She sucked in a mouthful of chemicals, allowing them to set up home in her chest as she crossed the room.
When she stopped in front of me, she opened her mouth and let it all out in one puff of smoke. “Little early to be drinking.”
A cough echoed through the bar from the other room and Helen’s eyes darted toward it. The cigarette was halfway to her mouth when her lips turned down, her hand frozen inches from their target.
When she looked back at me, she didn’t blink. “Sick?”
“Coughing like crazy.” I put down the empty glass and tried to hide my shaking hand.
Helen’s sharp gaze caught the movement and she frowned even more. “It’s going around.” Her eyes flitted back up to mine as she took another drag. She didn’t blink until after she’d let the smoke back out. “We were busy as hell at the CDC yesterday. So much so that I was dragged to the ER to work instead of doing my usual job.”
“I didn’t even know you worked there until Dragon told me last night.”
The older woman nodded once. “I’m a nurse. Twenty years ago when this shit started, I was working in the ER. Right here in Atlanta. I watched the beds fill up, watched people die slow, horrible deaths. Watched loved ones cry their eyes out before following the people they’d been mourning to the grave. The bodies piled up, in the halls first, then later in the rooms. Stacked one on top of the other as we ran out of places to put them. It got to the point where we couldn’t even take patients back to the beds. We just saw them in the waiting room. Not that it mattered. By then, most of the staff was just as sick and we knew there was nothing we could do.” She took another drag off her cigarette, her hand shaking slightly. When she spoke again, smoke came out with the words. “I kept on working until the very end, waiting for my turn.”
“But it never came.”
“Not yet, anyway.” She swallowed before pointing back toward the room my guards were still coughing away in. “You be sure to steer clear of them. Understand? This thing is contagious, and once you get it, you can kiss your ass goodbye. There’s no coming back from it.”
My stomach dropped. “People are dying?”
“Not yet, but they will. This comes through every few years and it’s always the same. I’ve been working at the CDC since day one, so I’ve watched it all happen.” She paused to take another drag, but her eyes were still glued to mine. “I’ve seen it all.”
The smoke that came out of her mouth was so thick that it blocked her lips from view, but the words were loud and clear. She knew something, just like Dragon did. I’d seen the way Helen looked at Meg when the girl wasn’t paying attention, and it was obvious that the older
woman knew something about Axl or the family. Maybe not where Meg’s dad was exactly, but something for sure.
“You’ve worked at the CDC for twenty years?” I asked, holding her gaze. “You must be pretty high up, then.”
Helen’s lips twitched like she was holding in a smile. “Sure am.”
“Seen a lot.”
“Sure have.”
I waited for her to say more, but she just watched me as she smoked. I knew she wasn’t going to give me any real information, but maybe if I could get her to allude to something it would help give us an idea where to go next. If she worked there, she must have seen something.
“Dragon said you knew Meg’s uncle.” I held my breath and waited. It was a big leap, but it could pay off.
“Joshua was a good man.” Helen barely blinked. “It’s a shame what happened to him.”
“That’s all?”
“Didn’t know him that well. He worked in the labs. See, I’ve been around since the beginning, and over time my duties have expanded to include some of the more restricted areas.” She put the cigarette between her lips, not looking away. Her mouth closed around the cancer stick, puckering as she sucked the chemicals in. After a second, she opened her mouth and let the smoke out. It floated into the air, making her face fuzzy.
“Aren’t you afraid of cancer?” I asked, nodding toward the cigarette.
The bootlegged cigarettes that had replaced the ones previously manufactured in factories, back before the days of zombies, didn’t have filters. There were also no real regulations when it came to making them, meaning who knew what the hell went into them. It wasn’t like the surgeon general was around anymore to stamp warnings on packages.
Helen shrugged as she took another drag. The cigarette had burned down to almost nothing now, and the thick smell of tobacco was pungent. “There are worse ways to die these days. Much, much worse ways.” She stood up straight. “I have to be going. See you tonight for the fight.”
Helen headed for the door, not looking back and still smoking.
She wasn’t wrong, especially if she and Dragon were involved in what I was starting to think they were involved in. A plan to overthrow Star or something very similar.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Meg
The second day on trash duty was even worse than the first. Partly because it was hotter than it had been the day before, but mostly because we found ourselves in shantytown shoveling up piles of trash.
Here life was harder. The people who inhabited these sorry excuses for homes rarely had enough of anything. Food was often scarce and electricity nonexistent. They cleaned themselves no more than once a week, if at all, utilizing the city bathhouses. They didn’t have enough credits to buy the necessities, let alone bags or cans to store their garbage in. Typically, the trash was tossed into the alleys that ran between the houses where it was left to bake in the sun, rotting slowly and filling the air with the stink of failure and wanting and disappointment.
I did my best to focus on the job at hand so I didn’t have to think about what I was shoveling, but the smell made it almost impossible. By the time trash day rolled around, the stench of shantytown was so foul that it was probably only matched by the stink of the zombies.
“Water break!” my crew leader called out, his voice ringing through the air and rising above the sound of shovels scraping against the ground.
I wiped the moisture from my forehead as I turned, using the sleeve of my jumpsuit even though I knew it was a bad idea. There was no way some of this filth hadn’t gotten on my clothes, and odds were it was now smeared across my face.
Only two shacks over, the other people on trash detail were busy sucking down lukewarm water. My own mouth felt like sandpaper, but I’d only taken one step when someone popped out of the alley right in front of me. The shovel was still in my hand when I reared back, and my heart was beating like mad, but the beady eyes that greeted me made me freeze before I’d had a chance to bash the guy’s face in.
“Ticker?” I said, reaching to pull my mask away from my mouth and nose, then thinking better of it. I looked around to make sure no one was watching, then grabbed his arm and pulled him behind a shack where we would be hidden from the rest of the workers. “What the hell are you doing here?”
Ticker’s right shoulder jerked. “Hiding. Matt and Jimmy, they went missing. Gone. Just like Stevie. Ticker’s not going to let them get him, though. Not again.” His eyes darted back and forth, for once not stopping on my chest. Not that he would be able to see anything with the jumpsuit I was wearing, but the fact that he wasn’t even trying said something about his state of mind.
He looked terrified, his eyes even beadier than usual as they bounced around, not focusing on anything for more than two seconds before moving on to look at something else. And the spasm in his shoulder was constant. Up, down. Twitch, twitch. He looked like he was on the verge of a dance or having some kind of fit. Like seizures that never went away but were only mildly annoying. Ticker had never owned his name as much as he did right now.
“Calm down, Ticker. Tell me what happened,” I said, trying to get him to focus on my face. “Did it have something to do with what you guys told me at Dragon’s?” If it did, it might not be a good idea to talk there after all. Maybe there was nowhere safe from the prying ears and eyes of this new government.
Big Brother is watching…
A shiver ran through me when I remembered the party slogan from that old novel I’d read in school. One of the few books that had stuck with me even after all these years, and only partly because it had chilled me to the bone. It had felt familiar. The decrepit state of the world those characters had lived in, crumbling buildings and broken lives. The first time I’d read it, I’d felt like the author had looked into the future and seen how things would turn out. Walls that, although sturdy, appeared hastily thrown together, their parts growing more and more rusted with each passing season. The flickering of lights in the hall that led to my apartment and the elevator that groaned in protest when it worked at all. That book had felt like the most prophetic thing I’d ever come across, and I’d found myself thinking that if the people in this city were smart, they’d study and worship it rather than bothering to pray to a man that had been nothing more than a loud-mouth asshole who’d just happened to be immune to all this shit.
Ticker’s shoulder jerked, but he didn’t answer my question.
“Are Matt and Jimmy dead?” I asked as calmly as I could, even though under my dirt covered and sweat-soaked jumpsuit, a shiver had run up my spine.
The kid shook his head twice, then nodded. “Don’t know. No. I don’t think so. After we met up with you, we went to another bar. Saw some guys there. Some guys we knew from work. They asked about you. Asked what happened outside the walls. How you lived. It was real weird.” Ticker bounced up and down on the balls of his feet. “Matt didn’t like the questions. Then Jimmy, he isn’t that bright, he told them that we’d just seen you. That we talked. The guys at the bar had a lot more questions after that, but we got out of there. Jimmy isn’t that bright.”
People were asking about me. I wasn’t sure who’d sent them, but I knew they were checking up on me and it very well could have put my crew’s lives in danger.
“I’m sorry, Ticker,” I said reaching out to him before I remembered that my gloves were covered in garbage. I dropped my arm to my side, clenching my hand into a fist like I was ready to punch someone.
“Watch your back. You hear?” Ticker’s shoulder jerked again, and this time, his whole head bobbed. “They’ll kill us all if they think we know something.”
“I will, Ticker. Thank you.”
His head bobbed a few times as he backed away, his eyes darting around like crazy. Then, without saying another word or even looking back at me, he spun on his heel and took off, disappearing around a corner only a few houses away.
When he was gone, I let out a deep breath. This was getting out of hand. Ticker, Matt, a
nd Jimmy hadn’t really told me anything concrete. They’d only repeated rumors. They hadn’t hurt anyone or told me anything that I couldn’t have found out on my own. Sure it had added to my suspicions, but they’d had no way of knowing that was going to happen.
“James!” someone called, making me jump.
“Coming.” I took a deep breath, barely noticing the stench that surrounded me, before heading back around the corner.
My crew leader greeted me with narrowed eyes as he held a cup of water out. “When we take a water break, you drink. If you don’t, you’ll die of heat exhaustion out here.”
He shoved the cup in my hand, then yelled for everyone to get back to work. I didn’t even taste the water when I downed it, and for the rest of the day, I was so preoccupied that I barely smelled the trash I was shoveling.
I didn’t have a lot of time after my shift, which meant I found myself running through the streets toward my apartment. My clothes were stuck to my body and the stench of chemicals from the decontamination shower stung my nostrils, but I didn’t slow. I needed to get showered and changed—and hopefully cool off in the process—and check on Mom. She’d been out cold last night when I got home from talking to Parvarti, and even though I wanted to know if she was as lucid as she’d been the night before, I couldn’t help being relieved. I wanted her back, but right now I didn’t know what to tell her about Dad or Parv, or the mysterious gray man who’d popped into my life twice now.
The apartment was so quiet when I stepped into the living room that at first, I was sure she wasn’t going to be home. Before I’d even had a chance to shut the front door, hope had bubbled up inside me. Maybe she’d gone to work today. Maybe she was back to her normal self and we’d be able to catch up soon, and then I could quit this stinking job.
Twisted World Series Box Set | Books 1-3 & Novella Page 23