Undaunted

by Kat Falls

  “What happens when, uh … when someone turns?”

  Little One shrugged. “You mean, aside from the snarling and drooling? We keep a logbook in the office” — she pointed at a door to the right of the kitchen — “where we write down who joins us, what strain they’re infected with, and how they want us to handle it when they turn. Some people can’t bring themselves to plan ahead, and that’s fine. Others want to be locked up or shot, and we try to oblige … within reason.”

  Her matter-of-fact tone sent a chill over me, but I could understand why it was necessary. She couldn’t lose it every time a manimal turned feral in camp. How long had she been infected? I wondered, but it felt rude to ask.

  Little One twisted in her seat to watch the screen door, and a moment later it opened. Manimal senses were unnerving.

  Glenfiddich lumbered into the hall with Rafe one step behind.

  “All right already. I won’t listen to them,” Glenfiddich grouched as they approached our table. “No one here is looking for trouble.”

  Uh-oh. Rafe must have told him about Mahari. I was glad to have missed that exchange. Scratches on Glenfiddich’s arms oozed blood, which freaked me out beyond belief, even with the big round table between him and me.

  “What’re you talking about?” Rafe scoffed. “Everyone here is always looking for trouble. When they can’t find it, they start it. I’m telling you, the pride will be a match to your drum of oil. Kick ’em out now. And bandage up those scratches and quit bleeding all over the place, will you?” It was as if he’d read my anxiety level without even looking at me.

  The old porcupine-man, Cohiba, pushed himself to his feet. “The boy wants to see you,” he called to Rafe.

  Ignoring him, Rafe jogged up two steps onto a dais at the front of the room. “Hey!” he shouted, and the hall fell silent. “I need a rifle. If anyone has one they want to trade, talk to me. Also, Boone is dead,” he said like it was no big deal. The announcement was met with stunned silence.

  Rafe started for the edge of the dais, when Glenfiddich stopped him with a loud “How?”

  “Gabe ate him.”

  There were a few gasps but far more grunts of acceptance.

  “He was outside the compound,” Rafe went on. “Far from where he shoulda been. I don’t know what that means for you all.”

  “Squat,” Little One called out, and several others voiced their agreement. “Nothing’s going to change in Heartland. Zeke and Habib will carry on.”

  “Boone kept us safe,” a girl infected with bear protested.

  “Boone was a liar,” Glenfiddich countered.

  “What did he lie about?” I asked Little One in a low voice.

  Glenfiddich heard me. “Us,” he said roughly. “Do we look dead to you?”

  “Uh … no,” I murmured.

  “He wants to thank you,” Cohiba told Rafe as he stepped down from the dais.

  I pushed to my feet. “Do you mean Aaron?”

  “I mean the boy who was too fevered to walk but somehow managed to make his way here. Like all the others.” Cohiba smiled at Rafe, who scowled in return.

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about, old man.”

  Cohiba just beamed brighter. “Thanks to you.”

  With a hiss of disgust, Rafe spun on his heel and left the dining hall, letting the screen door slap closed behind him.

  I ran after Rafe, potato in hand. Though the sun had set, in the purple twilight I could see that he was heading for the infirmary. Halfway across the field, I heard someone call my name. It was Everson, rising from his seat beside a giant bonfire on the beach. He walked toward me quickly, his relief at seeing me blatant. We met on the periphery of the bonfire and exchanged a tight hug.

  “I’m glad you’re all right,” I said breathlessly.

  “I was going out of my mind,” he said. He scanned me from head to toe. “Are you okay? Boone — he didn’t — didn’t hurt you?” he said awkwardly.

  “No,” I told him. “I’m okay.”

  “We tried to find you,” Everson told me. “But the pride lost you at the stream. We leveraged a fallen tree across the ravine, but they couldn’t catch your scent on the other side. We were going to head out again in the morning to look for you.”

  “I found Rafe. He’s going to see Aaron now.”

  “So he’s not feral.” Everson lifted his chin toward Rafe, who had just pulled open the infirmary door.

  “He acted feral to keep the pride away.” I spotted the lionesses collecting wood on the other side of the bonfire. They were still covered in mud and didn’t seem to mind at all, going by their laughter. “He said they’ve been stirring up trouble, rounding up gangs of angry manimals and attacking human compounds — and maybe even Moline.”

  “I believe it. They make their own rules.” There was a note in his voice I hadn’t heard before when talking about them — grudging admiration. In fact, I was surprised that he was at the bonfire at all, surrounded by manimals. I wanted to ask him about it, but I wasn’t sure how to bring it up.

  Everson looked over his shoulder at the manimals gathered around the fire. “I have to say” — he cleared his throat as if it was difficult to get the words out — “that I was wrong about some things, and you were right.”

  I rocked back on my heels, floored by the tone of his voice. He actually sounded humble.

  “Uh-huh,” I said.

  “Being here with these … people … I’ve changed my mind about the way we’ve been conducting the research. I’m going to talk to Dr. Solis. I think he’ll listen. We need to change our protocols so that we’re working strictly with volunteers. They’ll stay at the lab as guests — as patients. Not as test subjects … in cages.” He winced on the last word.

  Wow. As harrowing as this trip had been, something good had come out of it. If Everson hadn’t come into the zone with me … hadn’t spent time with the manimals as equals, he would never have changed his mind about them.

  “Go ahead,” he said, his voice sounding raw. “Rub it in. I deserve it.”

  “Nah,” I said, feeling a swell of admiration for him. “It’s more effective if you do it yourself.”

  He snorted and then glanced toward the infirmary. “Did you get a blood sample from him?”

  And with that, the warmth in my chest snuffed out, leaving me feeling cold and hollow. “He wouldn’t let me. He broke the vial.”

  “What?” Everson demanded, and then paused, his wide shoulders shifting. “Why?”

  “He said it’ll be worse for the manimals, if the guards are vaccinated. There’ll be nothing to keep them from storming into the zone and killing everyone who isn’t one hundred percent human.”

  “The vaccine isn’t just for the guards,” Everson said angrily.

  “Yeah, but he has a point. The vaccine could be a nasty political tool in the wrong hands.” I didn’t say his mother’s hands, but going by Everson’s sigh, he’d gotten the message. “And here’s the weird part: Rafe won’t take the cure, and he won’t tell me why.”

  Everson thought about it. “Maybe he’ll tell me.”

  “Why would he tell you and not me?” I asked, genuinely perplexed. “Because you’re a guy?”

  “Because he doesn’t have to worry about me getting upset.”

  Who wouldn’t be? Rafe was choosing the disease over the cure. “How’s Aaron?” I asked, not caring that it was such a conspicuous change of subject.

  “He’s just getting over the fever,” Everson said. “When I left him, he was sleeping. Rafe brought him here and left him at the gate. Apparently he does that a lot but won’t admit it. He usually scares newly infected people into running in this direction. He’s got a heck of a reputation around here. And would you believe, it’s all good. He leaves them supplies, including freshly killed deer.”

  Everson might have been baffled by Rafe’s actions, but I wasn’t. Flashes of memory rose in my mind: Rafe telling Cosmo a bedtime story; holding Cosmo as he died; Rafe
charging Chorda to protect me, though he had to know he had no chance of winning that fight. I already knew his shallow and self-serving persona was a cover for the more compassionate parts of his personality.

  “But he doesn’t stick around long enough for anyone to thank him,” Everson went on. “And when anyone tries, he says it wasn’t him.”

  “Why?”

  Everson shrugged. “No idea. He never struck me as the modest type.”

  Rafe wasn’t. But for some reason, he didn’t want credit or thanks for helping the manimals. Maybe he didn’t feel like he deserved it after years of mocking them. There it was again, the idea that Rafe felt he didn’t deserve something.

  “Anyway, stay here,” Everson said. “I’ll try talking to him.” He strode off toward the infirmary.

  Deepnita saw me and gestured for me to join them by the bonfire. “Glad you found your way here,” she said as I took a seat on a log next to her. Neve came crashing up from the beach and hugged me hard around the neck from behind, almost pulling me off the log and making us both laugh. Mahari followed more slowly with an armload of wood she dropped next to the fire. She raised a hand toward me in greeting. Was I hallucinating in the flickering firelight, or did she actually smile at me?

  The warmth of the fire felt amazing, and as I looked around at the manimals gathered in pairs and small groups around the fire, I felt myself relaxing, maybe for the first time since my dad and I had come over the wall. A few bottles made their way around the circle. Cohiba was sitting on a stump, his hood pulled back to reveal the spines protruding from his scalp, telling a story that had Glenfiddich and a few others laughing. Happy strummed a guitar while a girl around my age sang a love song in a wavering voice. Lounging near the fire, Little One purred loudly as an older woman with a wolfish face unbraided and combed her hair. A young boy and girl with black claws and white streaks in their wiry black hair picked up twigs from the ground and ran to throw them into the roaring fire, screeching when it got too hot.

  “Not too close, now!” the older woman called to the kids. The little girl ran to her and hugged her, and I saw joy and sorrow battling in the woman’s expression.

  They were all just people. Friends and makeshift families living hard, playing hard, knowing that tomorrow might be the day their sanity — or that of a partner, a friend, a child — slipped away. I suddenly missed my dad and wished there was some way to get a message to him that I was okay.

  Cohiba offered me a bottle, and I passed it on to Deepnita before pulling out my dial and pushing record.

  A few minutes later, I headed to the infirmary to see how Aaron was doing.

  As I approached the building, I heard raised voices. I stopped in the shadows around the corner and spotted Everson and Rafe outside, a solar lantern on the ground between them.

  “What is your problem?” Everson demanded. “I can’t believe you would make the whole human race suffer.”

  So much for the magic of guy talk.

  Rafe said, “I’m wondering what happened to the version of you I saw in Chicago, the smart one who knew it was a bad idea to break me out of the zoo.”

  “You’re still pissed about that?”

  “No, I’m serious. You made the right call then. So why would you bring Lane here?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “She was safe in the West. Even safe on Arsenal. Why bring her here?”

  “You think I could’ve stopped her?” Everson scoffed.

  “You could’ve trumped up some charge and sent her back over the wall.”

  “She can’t go back.”

  “Why not?”

  Everson told him about the viral video, and Rafe blew out his breath loudly, shaking his head.

  “One of the things you and I actually agreed on was that keeping her human was the most important thing.”

  Everson looked shocked. “It’s not my place to stop her from doing what she thinks is right.”

  “Then you make it your place,” Rafe snapped. “You’re the guy she should be with.”

  “No, actually, I’m not. Yeah, I was into her when we first met, but — we’re too different.”

  We were. And after he’d lied to me and I’d seen him treat manimals like they didn’t deserve basic human rights, we were still repairing our friendship. Forget anything romantic.

  “Lane and I will only ever be friends,” Everson went on. “Even if you get your sorry self killed or choose insanity over the only cure we’ve got.”

  Rafe tensed. “What are you talking about?”

  “Figure it out. Maybe try using brainpower instead of testosterone.”

  “Huh.” The corners of Rafe’s mouth twitched up into a grin. “I’ll bet that works like a charm with girls. Tossing out big words like that. It’s giving me tingles.”

  Everson threw up his hands. “Screw this. I have to go. I need to figure out how to find another person infected with tiger who’s willing to give a blood sample. Should be a snap.” Turning on his heel, he stalked off.

  I flattened myself against the side of the building as he came around the corner, on his way back toward the bonfire. When I peered around the corner again, I saw that Rafe’s grin had fallen away, replaced by a look of steely determination as he picked up the lantern and opened the door to the infirmary. Rafe was so skilled at driving people away, I wondered if he could stop doing it even if he wanted to.

  Once Rafe had gone inside, I slipped in after him as quietly as I could and tucked myself into a corner in the shadowy entryway. The room contained three sturdy cots covered in crisp white sheets. The scuffed hardwood floor was swept clean, and a tray of steel instruments gleamed in the corner. I couldn’t believe how clean it was in here compared to the rest of the camp.

  Aaron sat propped up on pillows in one of the cots, his face smooth — unmarked. How did that square with what I saw last night … Rafe rearing up and slashing Aaron? I now knew that Rafe didn’t have claws, so he must have been holding a knife — using it to cut the gag off Aaron. And I’d nearly put a bullet in him …

  Rafe dropped onto the cot next to Aaron’s. Neither gave any sign that they’d heard me come in, though Rafe probably knew from my scent. I checked that my dial was still recording.

  “Did you squeeze out all of it under your lip?” he asked Aaron. The flattened yellow tube lay on the small table next to the bed.

  When Aaron nodded and ran his tongue under his upper lip, I felt something within me tear and then break. Hope. Rafe had just given it away — his dose, his second chance. For months, I’d worried about him, and I came so far and risked so much to find him … to save him. But Rafe didn’t want to be saved. He wanted to self-destruct and smile and joke while doing it. Someday, I’d admire him for giving Aaron his dose of the cure. But today, now, I wanted to kick him in the gut and yell and cry and hold him — all at once. Like that was something new. “Why’d I have to take it?” Aaron asked. “I don’t feel sick anymore.”

  “It’ll keep the fever from coming back,” Rafe told him.

  “But I’m infected now,” Aaron pointed out.

  Rafe shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. We’ll get one of those test strips and find out.”

  Aaron’s face lost all its color. “I told you, that … that thing bit me.”

  “You arguing with me?”

  “No!” Aaron swung his legs over the bed and stared out the window at the bonfire blazing in the distance. “I thought they were all dead,” he whispered.

  Just as everyone at Heartland now thought he was dead.

  “Yeah, Boone lied to you,” Rafe said. “Far as I know, only Habib and Zeke know the truth.”

  A few things clicked into place in my mind, among them: Rafe was really good at knowing who was full of crap. Boone had been as full of it as anyone I’d ever met.

  “Why don’t they go back to Heartland?” Aaron asked.

  “Because the whole compound sang ’em off. Told them they’re dead — that it’s time to
move on. They’re not welcome anymore.”

  “We sing to keep the ghosts away.”

  “Yeah. Them.” He hooked a thumb at the window and the camp beyond. “Get it? The infected are the ghosts. And everyone at Heartland buys into it. The infected think they’re being noble, not going back. They tell themselves it’s better for their families this way. Less worry, less heartache, if they’re plain old dead and gone.”

  “My mom wouldn’t feel that way,” Aaron said with the utmost conviction. “Did Boone lie to her?”

  “Yep,” Rafe said. “They even burned your body at dawn.”

  Aaron jammed his feet into his beat-up sneakers. “I have to tell her I’m alive.”

  My heart hurt for Aaron and for his mom. I thought of my own mother, who I still missed every day. I thought of my dad. I hoped he was all right. Maybe Moline had settled down since the lionesses had been out of circulation. I sent a mental message through the woods and ravines and up the river: I’m okay, Dad! I’m okay.

  “You can’t,” Rafe said firmly. “If you get anywhere near Heartland, a sniper will pick you off before you reach the gate. Boone’s dead, but things aren’t going to change.”

  Aaron’s head shot up, eyes wide. I remembered Boone’s dying screams now with a more detached sense of horror. Because maybe there had been some justice in what had happened to him.

  “Zeke and Habib will keep up the lie,” Rafe went on. “Saying it’s for the good of the compound. You live here now, in Echo, so you might as well make the best of it.”

  Aaron turned toward the door but then paused.

  “Go on,” Rafe urged. “You might even remember a few of them.”

  Still Aaron hesitated. “Are they different? I mean, the way they act.”

  “Only one way to find out.” Rafe sent me a sidelong glance, proving he’d known I was there all along. “Go on.”

  When the door closed behind Aaron, I moved into the center of the room. “You gave him your dose.” The words slipped out of me. Clumsy, broken sounds.