“What do you need?” the High Priestess asked again, drawing my focus back to what was happening now.
“First, we need you to have the biggest celebration you’ve ever had,” Jada said.
Piercing blue eyes focused on her, but she didn’t squirm under the gaze. I didn’t know how. The woman’s eyes made her look possessed. By what, I wasn’t sure, but something evil. It was also glaringly obvious that the High Priestess had no desire to deal with Jada. The younger woman was damaged goods in her eyes. Tainted. Soiled. Not only had she marked up her body, but she was also a zombie slayer, which was contrary to the teachings of The Church. In their eyes we should leave the zombies alone and wait faithfully for Angus James to wipe them out. Killing them only showed a lack of faith.
It was the biggest load of bullshit I’d ever heard.
“That will not be a problem.” The High Priestess turned her gaze back to Angus. “What else?”
“That’s it for now,” he said, nodding. His mouth scrunched up, making it seem like there was more to it, but he didn’t say anything else.
The High Priestess saw it too, I could tell, but she didn’t ask him about it. “This is something you did not need to call me here for,” she said instead. “This year will mark the twentieth anniversary of our Savior’s death.”
Angus only snorted in response to that.
“This is also to serve as a warning,” Jada piped in, once again drawing the disapproving eyes her way. “We are going to need your followers to be armed that night.”
Blue eyes narrowed on Jada, who couldn’t possibly know what she was asking. The Church was against violence. They were all about faith and letting destiny happen. Guns were forbidden inside the walls of New Atlanta, but most people carried knives everywhere they went just in case. Nothing was certain anymore, and it was better to be prepared. The Church, however, had been preaching against this practice almost from the beginning. They said that faith was the best weapon against the dead. There was a part of me that had always wanted to see a zombie back the High Priestess into a corner with nothing but faith to protect her. I doubted it would go the way she thought it would.
“Why do my followers need to be armed that night?” the priestess asked.
She tilted her head, her gaze focused on Angus as she waited for a response. I watched him too, but when he gave nothing away my gaze moved to Jada and then to Jim. The High Priestess wasn’t the only one who didn’t understand why they were requesting that the members of The Church be armed. I couldn’t imagine a scenario where it would be necessary. The walls of New Atlanta were secure, so a breach was unlikely, and going up against the guards of the CDC—who had automatic weapons—would be a useless venture. Knives wouldn’t get you very far against bullets.
“They need to be ready to defend themselves if necessary,” Jada replied.
The High Priestess didn’t nod, but instead asked, “What are your plans for that night? We will back Angus James, but only if we are not kept in the dark.”
Jim and Jada exchanged a look and I found myself leaning forward, my breath held as I waited for them to let us all in on what was going to happen.
“We’re goin’ into the CDC,” Angus said before anyone else could speak up. “But we need a distraction and the party you got planned ain’t gonna be ‘nough. We need somethin’ that will force all them guards Star has out into the streets. It’s the only way we’ll make it through without gettin’ ourselves caught. You and your people gotta be ready to defend yourselves when it happens.”
His explanation seemed to satisfy her, because the High Priestess nodded once. “It will be so. Is that all you wished to discuss with me today?” When Jada and Jim nodded, the priestess got to her feet, her eyes on Angus. “I require your company on the way out.”
I waited for my uncle to growl and tell her to go to hell, but instead he got up too. The expressions of surprise on the faces of everyone else in the room told me I wasn’t the only one shocked by this, but it was the scowl on Jada’s face that got most of my attention. She obviously had a good idea what my uncle wanted and she wasn’t the least bit happy about it.
She started to follow them, but Jim put his hand on her arm and shook his head. “Let him.”
Jada stayed where she was, but her frown deepened.
Glitter took a tiny step forward when her father headed for the door, but she was smart enough not to follow. Sabine walked only a few steps behind her mother, her head down like an obedient servant. I hadn’t known the girl very well in school, only who her mother was, but the few interactions I’d had with her had always left me with a bad taste in my mouth. She was worse than her mom because she followed without a second thought, had probably never had a thought of her own in her life, and would never consider that this whole thing might just be insane.
When they’d disappeared out the front door, Glitter let out a deep breath.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
My gaze went to the crooks of her arms and I realized I hadn’t given much thought to what she had been put through. It was understandable, the twenty years my uncle had spent locked up kind of overshadowed the years Glitter had been a prisoner, as well as the fact that my sister and dad were still in the CDC’s clutches, but the girl at my side had gone through more than I could ever imagine. She’d been created so the CDC could use her. That had been her only purpose. In there, she hadn’t even been a person. Test Subject 06, that’s what Angus had said they’d called her. It made my stomach twist. That’s how sick it was.
“I’m fine.” She wrapped her arms around her chest and stared at the door her father had just disappeared through before turning her gray eyes on me. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?” I asked, even though only a few hours earlier I’d been as angry at her as I was at Luke.
“I wanted to tell you about Jackson that first day we met, when you came to the bar with him. I wanted to warn you what he was really like, but I couldn’t. It would have put us all in danger.” Her gaze dropped to the ground. “I wanted to tell you.”
“I wouldn’t have listened,” I said, and I found my hand resting on her arm. “People tried to warn me about him before, my family had always hated him, but I didn’t want to hear it. He had me fooled.” I was a fool, I’d wanted to say, but I bit the words back.
Glitter tore her gaze from the floor. “I still feel bad.”
“Don’t,” I said. “Some secrets need to be kept…”
My gaze moved across the room to Luke when I realized that didn’t just go for Glitter. My cousin had lied to me, yes, but he’d had a reason, one that wasn’t much different from the one the girl at my side had.
Chapter Nine
Meg
Mom was on Angus the second he was back from talking to the High Priestess. “What did she want?”
I was a little surprised she hadn’t noticed that my uncle had indicated to the priestess that he’d wanted to talk, but it seemed like she assumed the conversation had been all this crazy woman’s idea.
“Nothin’ to worry ‘bout, Blondie,” my uncle replied. “Just chattin’.”
“About what?” Jada asked, her voice so loud that everyone in the room turned to look at her.
Angus held her gaze, his lips pressed together like he was trying to decide what to say. “‘Bout The Church. ‘Bout what they believe and what they want from me now that I’m here.”
Parv leveled her gaze on my uncle. “You’re not seriously considering helping them?”
“Never said that.” He pushed past everyone so he could cross the room to Glitter. Once he was back at her side, she looked more relaxed. “Was just curious is all.”
He was lying. I barely knew my uncle, but even I could tell he wasn’t being honest with us. Even crazier was the fact that he wasn’t even trying to hide it. It was like he wanted everyone to know that there was more to the story that he wasn’t willing to share just yet. It had something to do with The Church and his supposedly
divine state, I was sure of it, only I couldn’t figure out why Angus would want to align himself with them.
“Are we sure this is something we want to get ourselves involved in?” Al said, pulling everyone’s attention away from my uncle.
“What do you mean?” Mom asked.
“I mean,” Al replied, speaking slowly as if he was trying to figure out how to spell it all out, “Have we considered how this could turn out? I mean, most of the people in New Atlanta already believe that crazy woman is preaching the truth. If we involve The Church in our plans, if it gets out that Angus is actually alive, what do you think will happen?”
Mom and Lila exchanged a look, one that said they got where my uncle was coming from. I did too, and he was right. I hadn’t considered it until now, but this whole thing could turn out very badly.
“He’s right,” Parv said. “This is insane.”
“We shouldn’t have brought them into this,” Mom agreed.
“Can we still get out of it?” Lila looked around the room. “Separate ourselves from them somehow?”
Angus stiffened. “We ain’t backin’ out. It’s the only way.”
“Why?” I asked, speaking up for the first time. “Why is it the only way?”
“We need them,” Jada said. “We need the numbers and the distraction.”
“We could have had that without calling them here,” Al argued. “I mean, I know I’m not in your little club at the moment and I have no clue what you’ve been cooking up over the last few weeks, but you knew the festival was happening and that the city was already going to be distracted, so why bother even talking to that crazy woman?”
“Because we needed her to be ready,” Jada said calmly.
She and Jim stared at Al with unwavering, unblinking eyes.
“Ready for what?” Parv asked.
Jada let out a sigh and turned toward the door. “Follow me.”
We did as we were told, following her into what had once been a dining room but now looked more like a planning area. The chairs had been pulled away from the table and were lined up against the wall in case they were needed, and several different maps and diagrams were stuck to the walls with pushpins. A rough drawing of the wall surrounding New Atlanta, complete with notes and circled areas and even a few red X’s in certain places. A map of Georgia, one of all of Atlanta, old and new, and another drawing that had to be the layout of the back halls of the CDC, as well as others like it that I was sure were other floors and areas inside the building. They had it all.
Jada pulled the diagram of the wall surrounding New Atlanta down and spread it out on the table, motioning for all of us to gather around. I leaned forward, trying to get a look so I could identify the areas that had been circled. One was the gate, and next to it some notes had been written about the guard shifts as well as where the spotlights were. Another circled area had to be the wall right outside Dragon’s Lair, but the third was a place that I knew as well. A place I knew better than anyone else in this room. It was the section of the wall that I used to climb so I could look out over old Atlanta.
“We plan to go in during the festival,” Jada began once we’d all gathered around the map. “We’ll go back in the way we came, through the tunnel leading to Dragon’s. We’ll be able to wait in the basement until it’s time to make our move. ”
“How will we know when it’s time to make our move?” Parv asked, and I could tell by the way she had her eyes narrowed on the younger woman that she already had a good idea what was coming.
For my part, I was stumped. The only thing I could think was that they were going to cause some kind of scene—an altercation or something—at the festival. Maybe a riot. That might motivate Star to pull his guards out of the CDC, although even that was doubtful. There was really only one thing I could think of that would be big enough to need more gun power, and that was a breach.
My eyes snapped to Jada, who was staring at Parv calmly as if this whole thing were no big deal. When I looked at Jim though, the expression on his face was slightly more torn. There was pain in his eyes, but determination too.
Jada looked away from my aunt and tapped the place on the map that I’d already recognized. “This is where we will blow the wall. For some reason, this small section wasn’t cemented up like the rest of it was, so it will be easier to create a hole in it.”
“I think it was because of me,” I found myself saying as I stared at the map, thinking about all the hours I’d sat in that very place. “Jackson and I used to sit up there. I loved looking out over the old city, imagining what the world had been like. When they started sealing up the wall I was upset that I wouldn’t be able to climb it anymore. Jackson never confirmed that he had anything to do with it, but when that section got missed, he didn’t seem too surprised.”
“Well, it will help us,” Jada said, her gaze still on the map.
The realization of what was coming had my stomach in knots, and had me wishing that Jackson hadn’t done that for me. That this section hadn’t been missed. That it had been cemented up at the same time that rest of the wall had.
“We couldn’t get our hands on a lot of explosives,” Jada continued, “but since this section isn’t packed with cement, what we have should be strong enough to blow a hole in it.”
“Then what?” Mom asked, looking back and forth between Jada and Jim. It was obvious by the expression on her face that she had come to the same conclusion I had, but that she was hoping she was wrong.
“Zombies,” Jim said simply.
Silence stretched out across the room.
There had only ever been one breach in the history of New Atlanta, and it was the same one that had claimed Margot, as well as a dozen or so other people. Of course, we now knew that my sister hadn’t died after all, but that didn’t make the devastation of that day any less intense. We’d mourned for her, cried, we’d had a funeral even though we’d never recovered her body. If we let zombies into the city other people would go through the same thing. People would die. People would lose their children, their parents, their loved ones.
“We can’t.” Lila was the first to break the silence. “People will die.”
“Maybe,” Jim said, “but it’s for the greater good.”
“Greater good?” Mom shook her head and the expression on her face said that she thought he might have gone insane. “No. You can’t really think that.”
Jim’s blue eyes captured hers. “I do.”
“And if Amira were still here? If you’d had the family you wanted and they were in the streets when the zombies broke through, would you feel the same way?”
Jim’s entire body stiffened as he glared at Mom across the table. “She isn’t here, so there’s no use talking about it.”
“You know just as well as I do what the devastation of losing someone you love is like,” Mom said through clenched teeth. “How can you, of all people, be okay with this?”
“Because I know who took her from me and I will do whatever it takes to make sure they get what they deserve,” Jim said, his voice quivering with barely restrained fury. “If we don’t do this, who the hell knows how many more people will die.”
They stared at each other for a moment before Jim shoved away from the table and stomped out of the room.
Jada watched him go, the look on her face a mixture of jealousy and concern.
She didn’t let it distract her for long, though. Only a couple seconds later she had turned back to the map and was once again focused on the plan. “We’ll already have the zombies rounded up by that point. Max is going to lead a group into Atlanta to gather them. When the wall is blown open he’ll release them, and then one of our men will take off through the hole so we’re sure the dead head into the city. The blast will of course lead more zombies to the wall, but we want to make sure a big group gets in there as soon as possible.”
The tension grew as Jada went over the plan in more detail, but no one argued. Mom was right, but so was Jim. Peopl
e were going to die, but we needed to distract the CDC so we could get in. It was the only way to get the failsafe Jane had told Angus about all those years ago, and getting it had to be our priority.
“You’re leading this thing?” Al asked Max, who was present in the room but still standing off to the side like he was only a spectator.
Max nodded. “Sure am.”
Al’s gaze moved to Max’s prosthetic legs. “What if things get out of control? Will you be able to run?”
“I’ll be about as effective as anyone else would be I suspect,” Max replied, his expression staying the same as if he was neither offended nor surprised by my uncle’s concerns. “Truth be told, I’ve had these things for so long that I barely remember what it was like to have real legs. Know what I mean?”
When Max stared pointedly at Al’s missing limb, my uncle frowned, but then let out a low laugh. “Yeah, I guess that’s true. Sometimes I wonder if I’d be as effective at my job if I still had both arms. I mean, putting my sword prosthetic on has to make me look pretty intimidating.”
Charlie rolled her eyes at her father. “Yeah, Dad, everyone is just terrified of an enforcer who can’t stop smiling and joking around.”
A little laugh moved through the room that seemed to lessen the tension. It wasn’t a lot, but it was enough that when Jada cleared her throat and continued, she didn’t get any glares.
“Once the zombies are inside there will be panic. Every available enforcer will be sent to take care of them, which will give us the opening we need.” She pushed the map aside and turned so she could grab another one off the wall, this one of the CDC. “Helen’s contact will meet us at this door—” Jada tapped her finger on the map. “—at ten o’clock on the dot. We can’t be late. Can’t miss him. This will be our only chance to get in. There are cameras everywhere, and after this Star will know that he has a spy working amongst his most trusted guards.”
Twisted World Series Box Set | Books 1-3 & Novella Page 78