by Kat Falls
He was right. Dr. Solis couldn’t develop the vaccine overnight. I settled by the fire and tried to will my muscles to relax.
The bonfire burned hot and bright as the people from Heartland shared bread and jerky and dried fruit with the manimals from Camp Echo. I ate one of my last three protein bars, which was miraculously dry in its foil wrapper. Rafe went off in the dark to gather what belongings he had squirreled away in the caves, which included a sleeping bag and an extra shirt that he gave me to wear while my own shirts, jacket, and backpack dried next to the fire.
We slept on the sleeping bag, under the foil blanket, his arm resting protectively across my stomach. I fell asleep immediately, to the sound of Rafe’s breath like waves lapping near my ear. I dreamed that I was running from Gabe, crashing through bushes and leaping over logs, but it was so dark I couldn’t see more than a few feet ahead of me. Too late, I felt the gravel at the edge off the ravine, too late to stop, and I fell headlong toward the water, starting awake with a gasp.
Rafe’s hand gripped my rib cage. “Shh,” he murmured. “You’re safe.”
When I opened my eyes again, it was dawn, and Rafe was already awake, his aqua eyes gleaming in the weak light. Mist had formed in the woods overnight, and the trees around us gradually became visible as we lay there in the cocoon of our shared warmth, talking quietly about how soon we could get to Moline. It would take days of hard hiking. We planned to go back to Camp Echo with the others and wait for my ankle and Rafe’s ribs to heal. Everson had said that could take weeks, but I wasn’t going to wait that long. Not when I was already stocking up serious anxiety about what would happen to my dad and the rest of the community in Moline once the patrol was deployed in the Feral Zone. Everson would be going back to Arsenal soon. He would warn them. Using his influence with his mother, he might even be able to stop it from happening. For now, I had to believe that was possible. Otherwise my sense of helplessness would push me into hiking north on crutches.
And then there was the issue of Rafe and the cure and how, once Bearly dropped it off, I would find a way to persuade him to take it.
For me, the trek back to Camp Echo was painful and slow. I was silent much of the way, teeth clenched, while our traveling companions caught up excitedly and discussed ways to reunite the two communities.
For a few miles, Aaron and his mother, Carmen, walked with me and Rafe, Carmen with her arm slung over Aaron’s shoulders.
“Thank you,” was the first thing she said to us, “for returning my son to me.”
“You’re welcome,” I said. “But he was never really lost.”
“I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you,” Aaron told Rafe.
“Sure, you would. Lane wouldn’t have let anything happen to you,” Rafe assured him.
As we walked, Rafe asked them questions about life inside Heartland, wondering how it had changed since he’d lived there. Turned out it hadn’t changed much at all.
“You probably don’t remember me,” Carmen said. “You were little when you left, but I was friends with Sophie.”
Rafe shook his head. “Sorry, no.”
“Sophie and I were about the same age. We used to get into trouble together. My parents didn’t know how to handle teenage rebellion. At all. But your mom, she was great. I can’t tell you how many times she talked us out of some crazy scheme to get out of Heartland and somehow get past the Titan wall and see civilization for ourselves.”
“What else do you remember about my mom?” he asked, and Carmen told him how she appeared mild-mannered but had a wicked sense of humor.
I thought of Rafe having been needlessly separated from his mother for all those years, and my heart ached. He’d been only seven years old when he lost her, and I wondered if most of his memories of her had slipped away over time. I could still conjure up the way my own mom smelled, like honey. And that memory, more than the digital photos and film clips I had of her, was the most precious to me because I had no idea how long it would last.
We reached Camp Echo that afternoon, and a cry went up from inside the fence as we neared the archway. A moment later, our group was engulfed by jubilant manimals, and there was much screeching, yowling, and crying.
Carmen approached us and handed me my dial, which I had completely forgotten about. The green light was on — meaning it was recording. She smiled at my surprise. “I was only ten when the plague hit, and back then smart phones were rectangular, but I never forgot how to work one.” She gestured to the manimals and humans hugging and crying and talking all around us. “I thought this was worth recording.”
“Definitely,” I said. “Thank you.” I slipped the chain around my neck and continued to record the happy chaos.
Tomorrow, Bearly would return in the hovercopter with the antigen. Once it was distributed, hopefully she’d fly me, Rafe, and Everson back up the river. Part of me couldn’t wait to get back to Arsenal to see my dad and the orphans. However, another part wanted time to freeze.
That night, between Rafe’s bruised ribs and my sprained ankle, we weren’t able to sleep together on the narrow bunk — not comfortably, anyway. So he stayed with me under the wool blanket until I was warm and drowsy and then he climbed up to the top bunk, and we talked softly until I fell asleep — a routine that I knew, and Rafe knew, wasn’t going to fly under my dad’s watch.
The next morning, I limped around Echo’s haphazard chicken enclosure, collecting eggs, when I heard a commotion near the archway. Some of the manimals were gathered there, and others were running in that direction from their cabins, from the playing field, from the river. I came out of the coop as Little One loped by.
“What’s going on?” I called.
“A hovercopter just landed outside the fence,” she said, shooting me a flash of her sharp smile.
I hobbled over to join the growing crowd, and after a few minutes, Everson came through the archway carrying a blue plastic medical crate. Mahari followed him with another. Everson set down the crate and held up his hands, and everyone fell silent.
“We have the antigen,” he said. “Enough for everyone here who wants it.”
The air exploded with ferocious cheering, and with a grin, Everson threw back his head and whooped right along with them.
All day my brain had been whirring constantly, searching for the right way to talk to Rafe about the cure. He’d been so subdued since we’d come back, and the truth was that I was afraid to ask what was on his mind.
Rafe appeared then, in the archway behind the crowd, a deer carcass slung across his shoulders. So much for taking care of his bruised ribs. He disappeared behind the dining hall, where there was a butchering area, and then he joined me among the manimals and their family members. A thrill went through me when he entwined his fingers with mine as if it was the most natural thing in the world.
“We got it,” I said. “The cure.”
He nodded.
It was now or never. I lifted his hand and drew his arm around my shoulders. I pressed myself to his side. “What would a certain girl have to say to convince a certain guy — using the term loosely — to take it?”
His eyes glinted. “She doesn’t have to say anything. She already convinced him without words.”
“I — I did?” I stammered. “When?”
“Quiet, everyone,” Everson called out, and the crowd fell silent. Every last person hung on his words until he was finished explaining exactly how to take the cure and how soon it would be effective.
“You need to understand that we’ve given this antigen to other manimals under test conditions and had success, but we still don’t know its long-term effects. If you take it, you take it at your own risk.”
A murmur rose up from the crowd. Then Glenfiddich climbed several rungs up the tree ladder and shouted, “What’s risk to us? We live with it every minute of every day, always asking, ‘Will I go feral tonight? Tomorrow?’ At least with this risk comes hope. I say that’s a risk worth taking.”
; The crowd erupted into cheers again.
“It should be fully effective sometime next week,” Everson said. “At that time, take a blood test to check your viral load. It should read zero. I’ll stay in camp for the rest of the day to make sure no one has a bad reaction to the drug. It hasn’t happened yet, but I’d rather stick around to be sure.”
Everson pried the top off the crate to reveal dozens upon dozens of yellow tubes. As Mahari began to pass them out, Everson glanced at me. “I forgot, Bearly said she needs to talk to you.”
I nodded but didn’t move. I wasn’t going anywhere until I saw Rafe take the antigen with my own eyes.
Everson offered Rafe a tube. When he took it and unscrewed the cap, my jaw fell open.
“You’re really going to take it?” I asked.
“I am.”
“Good,” Everson said, and clapped him on the back. “I didn’t want to have to come back to the zone to put you down.”
Rafe snorted. “Like you could get within a mile of me.”
Everson just smiled and headed off to help those who needed it, leaving us alone.
I squinted at Rafe, trying to gauge his mood. “When did you decide to take it?”
He pulled me close and spoke against my hair. “Remember how I bragged about what a great hunter I’ve become since getting infected?”
I nodded, trying to concentrate on what he was saying. Being this close to him was messing with my brain’s ability to process information.
“I was thinking about something you said, about how Boone snuck up on me. And so did the patrol when I was looking for Gabe. See, I thought it was the animal in me, keeping me alive, but it’s not. It’s you. Yeah, you saved my life out there.” He lifted his chin toward the fence. “But you also give me a reason to stay alive. I didn’t think I deserved to, not after all the things I’ve done and the people I’ve hurt. But then you shoved me under that hovercopter … and I got it. This feeling that I’d do anything to keep you safe — you feel that about me. I don’t deserve it. I know that.”
I opened my mouth to object, but he laid a finger across my lips.
“But I’m going to try to, okay?” he said quietly. “I’m going to try.”
“Okay,” I whispered, and then watched him squeeze the tube of antigen under his upper lip. After a couple of minutes, I asked, “Do you feel anything?”
“Yeah. The need to kiss you without worrying that I’ll infect you,” he said, sounding completely serious. “I don’t want to be the one who turns you into an animal, silky.”
I grinned. “You sure about that?”
He fell back a step, surprise evident in every line of his body. “You don’t get to say things like that for at least a week.”
“Okay,” I said cheerfully.
“I mean it.”
“I know.” I backed off and turned. “I’m going to go see what Bearly wants,” I said over my shoulder.
I found Bearly outside the fence.
“Lane,” she said, nodding a curt greeting. She looked down at my leg but didn’t comment on my limp. “Thought you should know that Chairman Prejean kicked the orphans off Arsenal.”
“No!”
“She wasn’t happy that you took Ev with you into the zone.”
“He took himself.”
“She doesn’t see it that way. She said you put her kid at risk, so she was returning the favor,” Bearly said with faint disgust. “Don’t worry. I got the river patrol to take ’em to Moline. They’re with your dad.”
I felt light-headed with relief. My dad was used to living with all sorts of strays. He never cared how many I brought home as long as I took care of them. He wouldn’t mind having the orphans underfoot. Of course, Hagen was living with him now, but somehow I didn’t think she’d mind either.
“Thank you,” I told Bearly. “But if the chairman finds out you —”
“What was I gonna do, leave ’em alone out there?” she said with a shrug.
“Well, thanks,” I said again, and then I asked, “Has the executive order taken effect yet? The one that gives Chairman Prejean free rein?”
Bearly’s expression remained inscrutable. “Yeah, and Congress immediately tripled Titan’s budget. The hovercopters are stacked up over Arsenal waiting to drop new recruits in the river.” Her mouth softened when she saw my stricken expression. “But the order’s been frozen,” she said. “A veterans group is challenging it in federal court, so it’s frozen until the judge rules.”
“Listen, I know you’re coming back tonight to get Everson … Is there any way you could drop me and Rafe off in Moline?” I said his name quickly, hoping it would slide right past her.
“You and Rafe?” she said, her astonishment clear on her face. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” she huffed. “No self-respecting line guard would let that thief aboard a Titan hovercopter unless he was dead or on his way to a jail cell on Arsenal.”
“Are you one of those self-respecting line guards?” I asked.
She narrowed her dark eyes at me, but after a beat, she sighed heavily. “Fine. But we’re leaving as soon as Ev is done in camp.”
“Thank you!”
It was a strange day, for sure, even for a place that could have appeared in the dictionary as an illustration of the word. The manimals celebrated the cure for most of it until around dinnertime, when some of them snapped awake into the reality that they had been living in squalor. Living as if it was their last day on earth had had its advantages: no rules, no schedules, no thoughts of the future. But now that they felt they’d gotten their humanity back, some of them looked around the garbage-strewn common areas as if seeing them for the first time and put together a clean-up crew. Others thought security was the most important issue, especially with relatives visiting from Heartland, and began working on a gate for the archway. They didn’t want to chance any ferals breaking into camp and endangering their loved ones.
No one had a bad reaction to the antigen, so Rafe and I packed our stuff before sunset and met Everson inside the archway. Deep breathing wasn’t helping my strung-out nerves, so I welcomed the distraction when the lionesses hugged me good-bye in turn. As worried as I was about what would happen once the line guards were vaccinated against Ferae, I knew the pride would survive any fight that came their way.
“Take care, little sister,” Deepnita said, amusement in her amber eyes.
“You’re my favorite girl human,” Neve told me in all seriousness. And then she hugged me hard, purring against my hair. After a long, tight minute, I tried to wiggle loose politely, but in the end, Deepnita had to help me extricate myself from Neve’s loving embrace.
“You missed your chance to join us.” Mahari said with a slow, indulgent curve of her lips. “And now it’s too late.”
“I don’t need the virus to be a lioness,” I said, returning her smile.
“And you.” Mahari lifted her chin at Rafe. “There may be no love between us, but there is respect.”
Rafe raised a mocking fist. “Go, felines.”
Everson reached for Mahari’s hand, but she was quick to snatch it away.
“I’ll meet you at Arsenal in a few days,” he told her, and then looked past her to the other two lionesses. “Be safe.”
“You’re going to Arsenal?” I asked them.
“On foot,” Deepnita said firmly.
“No more boats,” Neve added with a shudder. “And nothing that goes up in the sky.”
“They’re going to work with me to distribute the antigen throughout the zone,” Everson explained.
Mahari bared her fangs at him. “So he says. More likely he’ll get back to his human world and forget we ever existed. We’ll be like a dream to him.”
“Best he’s ever had,” Rafe murmured.
“Not going to happen,” Everson assured her. He stood inches from Mahari, looking deeply into her eyes as she glared back at him, and then she shivered. The movement was so slight I blinked, thinking I’d strained my eyes.
“We should keep you as a hostage,” she hissed, though she’d dialed back the scary. “Then they’d have to bring us more of the cure.”
Everson cupped her face with one hand. “I will get you all the antigen you want, cat-girl.” His thumb stroked her bottom lip. “I promise.”
“I’d be a fool to trust you.” She pressed an accusing finger into his chest. “Human.”
He dropped his mouth to her ear and spoke two soft words that made her snort, though her lips curved into a faint smile. The hand she’d jabbed him with now curled into the fabric of his shirt, and she drew him closer.
“Smooth,” Rafe murmured.
Neve clapped when they kissed, while Deepnita merely yawned.
“What did he say?” I whispered to Rafe. Yes, I was being nosy, but I was the only one here besides Everson with pathetic human ears.
Rafe slid an arm around my waist and pulled me back against the warmth of his body. “He said he’s her human.”
My smile was as wide as Neve’s; I was even tempted to clap too.
When Everson released Mahari, she was breathless. “Sure you don’t want to come with us in the ’copter?” he asked. “There’s plenty of room.”
“Nooo!” Neve backed off fast, followed closely by Deepnita, shaking her head.
“I’d pass if I could,” Rafe admitted.
“We’ll be there in three days,” Mahari said, putting a hand to Everson’s scarred cheek. “And you better be waiting.”
The hum of a hovercopter dropped precisely through the trees on the other side of the fence. We waited a moment, making sure that it was the only one, and then we went out through the archway to meet it. As Bearly turned off the blades and shed her headset, I pulled Everson aside.
“I probably won’t get the chance later,” I said, “so I’ll say it now. Thank you for coming with me. Thank you for everything.”
A fleeting smile crossed his lips. “Good things are going to happen because of you.”