Undaunted

by Kat Falls

  “It’s only fair,” he said with a shrug. “It’s my fault he got infected. People from Heartland … They don’t leave the compound except in groups and armed. Then Aaron and his friends started daring one another to go farther. Alone. Morons. Gabe eats animals mostly. Mammals. Nothing humans will touch. So he’s not taking food from anyone. He’s just living his life. I’d never seen him go after a person.”

  “He’s feral.”

  “Yeah. But if people would just leave him alone —” He stopped himself and shook his head with disgust. “I’m the moron. Someone was going to cross his path sooner or later. If it had only been Boone or his hunters, I wouldn’t have cared. But Aaron’s just a kid. A stupid kid.”

  “You’ve killed ferals before,” I said. I shuddered inwardly, remembering the moment I’d come upon Rafe beating Chorda with a crowbar. “Why not Gabe?”

  Rafe stepped close enough that I could feel his body heat. “You sure you want to know?”

  I drew a slow breath, my stomach buzzing with nerves, and nodded.

  “It’s easier to just show you.” He signaled for me to follow him, and we slipped out of the infirmary.

  Rafe led me down a well-worn path along the lake, past several of the rustic camp cabins. A howl fractured the night as we approached a decrepit-looking barn. Inside, it was even darker, and the air stank of dust, horses, and rotting hay. Debris from the barn’s roof littered the floor, and moonlight shafted through the gaps, but it was the four large animal cages that had me stumbling.

  The square cages were about seven feet tall, six feet wide, and one was occupied. A man with long, matted hair paced the length of his cage and back, snarling and agitated. Probably infected with wolf or maybe husky. He wore only sweatpants and looked like he was in serious need of a bath. He sniffed loudly as we neared but otherwise ignored us.

  “He’s feral?” I asked Rafe in the barest whisper.

  “Yep,” Rafe replied, not bothering to lower his voice. “This is Scribe. He turned a year ago.”

  I inhaled sharply when Scribe swung his vicious gaze onto us and snarled, showing off sharp fangs. Anger twisted his features. His wide cheekbones jutted more than was normal for a human, and his nose was flatter; however, it was the sheen of saliva coating his mouth that sent a chill skipping down my spine.

  “Has he been in that cage since he turned?” I asked softly.

  “Longer,” Rafe said like it was no big deal. “He went in a couple of months before he went feral. He felt himself slipping and figured it’d be easier on everyone if he was already locked up.”

  “That’s … that’s —”

  “Practical,” Rafe suggested.

  “Sad,” I whispered.

  Scribe threw back his head and howled. The sound was terrifying and yet haunting too.

  “Can’t you at least leave a light in here?”

  Rafe shook his head. “Bright light makes him feel exposed. Makes him worse. The ones infected with predator like keeping to the shadows.”

  “Oh.” I waited for my hands to die on me, go numb, but it didn’t happen. Instead of my usual panic, I felt only sad and sorry for him.

  Suddenly Scribe leapt at us as if rebounding off a trampoline, only to slam into the cage bars. He shoved out an arm, fingers scrabbling to make up the distance between us. I wasn’t even close to being within grabbing range, and yet I backed up several steps.

  “Why’d you bring me here?” I asked Rafe. “What does he have to do with Gabe?”

  “Come on.” Rafe turned to go. “We’re riling him up.”

  We left the barn and walked the path along the lake. It was a cool, clear night. The lake lapped at the shore, and loons called across the moonlit water. We could hear the music and laughter from the bonfire.

  “My mom lived in that cage for two years,” Rafe said softly.

  My heart clenched. “Your mother was feral?”

  “Yeah. And living here. In that exact cage. And I had no idea. Eventually she stopped eating. A lot of them do. Deep down, under all the crazy, they know they’re never going to get out, so what’s the point?”

  Now I understood why he hadn’t told Hagen or anyone else about his parents.

  “I was born at the Heartland Compound,” he said.

  I nodded, and Rafe looked surprised. “Boone told me,” I said.

  “Gabe was my sister’s husband, my brother-in-law.”

  What? It was my turn to be shocked. I was so shocked my legs stopped moving.

  “He was a good guy. Good to her. Good to me.”

  “Oh no.” It sounded so lame, so pointless, but I felt sick from the effort of saying it, of feeling it. I knew what had happened to Rafe’s sister: Her husband had gone feral and had killed her while Rafe hid under the bed. And now the perpetrator of that horrific crime, Gabe — someone Rafe had once loved and depended on — had become that lizard thing. I studied Rafe’s face. The moonlight exaggerated the hollows in his cheeks and the black outlines of his eyes, making him look profoundly sad, haunted even.

  I veered off the path to lean up against the siding of the nearest cabin.

  Rafe stood in front of me, just out of reach, with his hands in his pockets. “Until I was seven, I lived at Heartland with my parents and my sister, Sophie, who was a lot older than me, born before the plague. Our dad died when I was really young, of pneumonia — I barely remember him. One day our mom went outside the compound fence to collect herbs to use in medicines. She never came back. Sophie and I thought she was dead — ’cause that’s what Boone told us. He said she was attacked by a feral and died. We even sang her off. She got to hear her own kids sing a pretty song, telling her to get lost and never come back. Boone said the crying we heard outside the fence, that was her ghost. She didn’t stay long. Probably thought we’d be better off without an infected mother. But he shouldn’t have decided for her. For us. We didn’t even get to say good-bye.”

  “Rafe, no! I’m so sorry.” I didn’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t been able to say good-bye to my mom before she died, if I didn’t have the images and footage of her to remember her by. I took a step toward him. I wanted to hug him, but he held up his hands defensively.

  “Your mother’s name, you found it in the logbook here?” I asked.

  Rafe nodded. “She lived here for years before going feral. Years we could’ve been with her. Boone took that from me and Sophie … and my mom.” He waved back toward the bonfire. “He took it from all of them. A lot of them have families at Heartland who think they’re dead. So yeah, when I found out my mom had been living here for years and died alone in a cage, I started to watch for him — Boone. I was going to slice him open, but then —”

  “You couldn’t.”

  His laugh was ugly. “No, then I realized I’d be letting him off too easy. He needed to see what it was like to live apart from his family. To have them think he was dead. So I bit him.” He snarled the words. “’Cause I’m worse than a feral. People like Scribe” — he gestured toward the barn — “can’t help it. They’re driven to bite. But me, I chose to. And it changed nothing. I’m still furious that I lost those years with my mom.”

  A flash of how it felt to have my mom’s arms around me. How cold the world felt when she was gone from it. I knew that fury, that bitterness, that bottomless grief. Again I wanted to touch him, to comfort him — and in that moment I wanted his comfort too. But as if reading the impulse in my muscles, he took a step away from me. As if he didn’t deserve to be comforted.

  “And on top of it,” he went on, “now I know I’m worse than the monsters I used to hunt.”

  “You didn’t infect Boone. The virus wasn’t in your saliva yet.”

  “Doesn’t matter. I tried to. ’Cause that’s who I am.”

  “You can’t define yourself by one stupid, angry action. You saved Aaron’s life.” You saved my life. “You brought him here — and all those other infected people. And if you come to Arsenal with me and take the cure, yo
u’ll be able to keep on helping people. Because that’s who you are.”

  He shook his head. “I have to put Gabe down. If I’d done it years ago like I should’ve, Aaron would still be living at Heartland with his mom,” he said bitterly.

  “Why can’t someone else put him down?”

  “I owe it to him. He didn’t want to end up this way.” Rafe hesitated and looked away.

  “What?” I said.

  “She promised him — he made Sophie promise —”

  Promise me, Lane.

  “What? What did she promise him?” I asked hoarsely.

  “That she would put him down when he turned.”

  Just like Hagen and her daughter, Delilah. Rafe had told Everson and me that when Delilah got infected, Hagen knew she couldn’t put Delilah down herself, so she’d asked Rafe to do it. And Rafe, burning with fever, had forced me to make that same awful promise. How many times had this same scenario played out on this side of the wall — loved ones making heartbreaking promises they hoped they’d never have to keep?

  “And after Sophie died,” Rafe said, “I knew I had to keep that promise for her. But every time I have him in my sights … I can’t do it. Even now.” He held out his hands and examined them in the moonlight, as if looking for signs that his mutation was progressing.

  I finally understood why my promise had seemed so important to him. I wondered if, after surviving the first stage of infection in Chicago, he’d come back to Heartland in part to finally fulfill Sophie’s promise to Gabe.

  “When I first started hunting ferals, I could still see the human in them, and it was hard. Killing them made me hard. But not when it came to Gabe. Even after what he did to my sister, I couldn’t pull the trigger. It’s stupid. I know that thing’s not him — not the guy who loved Sophie and looked out for me.” He looked up at me again. His mouth tightened. “But he’s the only family I have left.”

  “You have us — me and my dad. He’s like a father to you.”

  “A mentor, not a father.”

  “I saw that mural you painted in the prison. My dad and two kids — you and me.”

  “I don’t think of Mack as a dad, and I don’t think of you as a sister.”

  The look he gave me made my skin warm. If I was being honest with myself, I didn’t think of him as a brother either.

  Rafe looked away. “I used to think: Maybe those Titan docs will come up with a cure. Why should I kill him when he still might have a shot at coming back? But that was just a story I was telling myself. Gabe’s been too far gone for too long. I’ve just got to do it.”

  He looked heartbroken but determined.

  “Okay,” I said. “When do we leave?”

  “Thanks. But Gabe’s not your problem.”

  “Yes, he is.” At Rafe’s skeptical look, the words burst out of me. “I feel like …” Like you’re mine. “Like I’m part of your story, and you’re part of mine.” When Rafe shrugged like that was a given, I felt bold enough to add, “You’ve always been my favorite character.”

  “Yeah,” he said, again unsurprised. “I’m me. And Mack tells good stories,” he allowed.

  “I’m trying to say that I care what happens to you.”

  “Don’t. You don’t have to feel bad about anything.”

  “That’s not why —”

  “You want to know what’s going to happen to me?” He pointed toward the barn — toward Scribe. “You just saw it.”

  I sighed in frustration. Why did he keep insisting that he was doomed to die insane and alone? “Come back to the base with me and you can take the cure.”

  “Sure. Go back with the stiff, and I’ll catch up with you.”

  I could tell by the flat look in his eyes that Rafe had no intention of coming to the base.

  “Don’t tell me what to do,” I said. “Besides, killing Gabe won’t be enough. Those hunters are going to blame you for Boone’s death. They’ll come after you unless we can prove the Komodo-man is real. We need to bring them his body, and then maybe they’ll leave you alone. I promised I’d come back and find you, to give you the cure or to” — I could barely choke out the words — “put you down if you’d gone feral. And I was so happy to find out that you hadn’t gone feral —”

  “I thought you’d send a hunter, not come yourself,” he said with disgust. “I never should have asked for that promise. Forget it, okay? We’re good. We’re clear. Enough people around here hate me. One of them will put me down sooner or later. You don’t have to keep that promise. I release you.”

  He started to turn away from me, but I lunged forward and caught him by the shirt.

  “I don’t want to be released,” I said. “I want you to stop lying to me about what’s really going on with you.”

  Rafe’s expression darkened, and with a growl in his throat, he stepped toward me until he had me backed up against the cabin. He put his hands on either side of my head and leaned in close, his eyes glinting in the dim light. I wanted to be a lioness, but my heart was beating like a rabbit’s.

  “You want to know the truth, Lane? Every day I think about what I did. What I didn’t do. I cut you. Left you alone in a chimpa warren. I shouldn’t have even let you step outside that house by yourself —”

  I’d gone outside alone to pee. I cleared my tightening throat. “You couldn’t have stopped that one.”

  “Wrong. You want to hear the ways we could have done that different? Because I swear I’ve thought of them all.”

  His voice had gotten hoarse. I watched his lips to make sure I was hearing his words right — words that felt like a warm wave washing through me, taking away my fear.

  His hand drifted to my face to cup my cheek. “But you don’t have to worry about that ever again. When I’m with you, I’ll keep you safe. You can count on it.”

  He dropped his hand and stepped back, never breaking eye contact. His promise, his intensity, sent a shudder through me. But it wasn’t from fear. It was from something much, much hotter. I stepped closer and put my hands on his chest, wanting his kiss more than anything, but his eyes widened and he froze.

  “No, Lane.”

  “You haven’t been infected that long. It doesn’t get into the saliva until close to the end.”

  “You think I’m going to chance that with you?”

  His eyes were glowing in the darkness, but now they were beautiful to me, like precious gems.

  “Okay,” I said heavily. “Then let’s go kill the dragon.”

  “Think again, silky. You’re staying right here, even if I have to tie you up and leave you in this cabin,” he said, eyes narrowed as if he was actually considering it.

  “Try it,” I dared. “I’d love to wrestle with you. You’ll have to get really close to get a rope on me, and I’m sure I can get a kiss in somehow.”

  He hauled back several paces. “That’s not funny.”

  Actually his horrified expression was kind of funny. But then his look became pained.

  “Lane —”

  “Oh, give up,” I said, cutting him off. “I can either go with you, or I can follow you. Isn’t it just easier to take me along?” I gave him my most winning smile. He scowled in return.

  Rafe and I joined the crowd at the bonfire long enough for Rafe to get a rifle from Cohiba and to find out from Little One which cabins were empty. I told Everson that Rafe and I would be leaving at dawn to find Gabe and put him down.

  “Well, that’s the worst idea I’ve heard in a while,” he said, running his hand over his buzz cut. “And I’ve heard some bad ideas lately.” No doubt he had, spending so much time with the lionesses.

  “We’ll meet you back here,” I said, “and we’ll all go to Arsenal together to get the cure.”

  “Why don’t we all go find Gabe together as well?” Everson said. “I think we’ll all be safer if we stick together.”

  His logic seemed airtight, and I was too tired to argue. He said he’d talk to the lionesses, and we agreed to meet at the gatew
ay at dawn. I didn’t say anything to Rafe. If Everson had learned to get along with the lionesses, maybe Rafe could too.

  As Rafe and I walked together toward our cabin, I worked up the nerve to slip my hand into his and smiled inwardly when he didn’t shake me off.

  “Why do people call you Wraith?” I asked.

  “You like it?”

  “It was your idea?”

  “Cool, right?” His eyes danced with amusement. “I almost went with Wrath, but who has the energy to live up to that?”

  I went light-headed at the sound of his laughter, the feeling of laughing with him. And yet, there was so much more I wanted to know. “What happened after you left me in the zoo?”

  “I don’t remember much,” he admitted with a shrug. “The fever came on fast. Then Dromo found me. He and some of the other waiters tackled me and then tied me to a bed until my fever broke.”

  “Dromo was a butler,” I corrected. I hadn’t liked the ginger-haired man infected with ram, who’d been the queen’s toady — not at first. Later, I realized Dromo played the part of officious servant in order to survive the chaos that was Chorda’s court. I wasn’t surprised now to hear that he’d helped Rafe.

  “Were the manimals able to overthrow the handlers?” I asked.

  Rafe nodded. “I stayed for a while. They’ve got a good setup going. But I didn’t drag you out here, to the last empty cabin in camp, to talk about Chicago.”

  “What?”

  Suddenly, my brain and body were fully awake, and not just because the night had turned chilly. I stole a sidelong look at him as we walked along the path. He caught it, of course, and pulled me in close to his side. We paused at the door to the cabin, and when he turned to me, the electricity between us seemed almost visible, like tiny sparks in the darkness.

  “Come on, silky. Let’s turn in,” he coaxed, mockingly seductive.

  I laughed nervously. Could he tell with his supersenses that I was blushing? I hurried ahead of him up the rotting steps of cabin 21.