by Kat Falls
The RV lurched to a stop just behind Everson. As he twisted around to see it, the side door hissed open and two black-clad line guards emerged, followed by the chairman herself, wrapped in a level-four protective suit. She peered out of the face shield on her helmet like a seasick sailor viewing the world through a porthole.
“And people call me a freak,” Rafe muttered.
“Everson,” she cried through the speaker in her helmet, which both amplified and hollowed out her voice. “Are you all right?” She pushed past her elite guards to get to him, her gloved hand outstretched. Only his cold stare stopped her from completing that caress. She rocked back a step and seemed to collect herself, then turned a glare on the guards behind him. “Free his hands.”
They hauled Everson to his feet and slashed the zip tie from his wrists, but he never took his eyes off his mother. His expression was one of contained emotion, his jaw tight with it. “Guess the vaccine works … if you’re here, mixing it up with the infected.”
“We can talk about it back at the base,” she said, her tone conciliatory. She waved an airy hand toward the van. “Vincent is waiting inside with a dose for you.”
“I’ll get in the van, Chairman,” Everson said, turning the word chairman into an insult, “after Lane and Rafe are inside the compound.” His tone was cool, but the scars on his cheeks stood out white against an angry flush.
She took in his resolve and then sent a strained smile my way. “You must be so pleased with yourself, Lane. You convinced my son to follow you again. Into the zone, into danger without a thought, like a lovesick puppy.”
Everson snorted while I shook my head and said, “It’s not like that.”
“I told her to choose him,” Rafe said, his tone dripping with commiseration. “Look at him. A total prince. But she wouldn’t listen.” He slid an arm around my waist and tugged me close.
The chairman’s lips thinned into a tight seam. “Of course. Any girl would choose you over my son. He’s the Titan heir and you’re … what? An infected thief.”
Rafe gave a blithe shrug. “I’ve got a few other skills too.”
“Lane and I are just friends, Mom.” Everson rubbed his wrists where the zip tie had cut into his flesh, and then a corner of his mouth lifted. “But there is someone I’d follow anywhere.”
She eyed him warily. “Who?”
“You know her actually, from the maze. You used to have chats with her.”
The chairman’s expression contorted with revulsion. “That — that lion creature?”
“She prefers ‘queen of the jungle,’ ” Everson said, sounding amused.
Not exactly a smart thing to say to his mother, but Everson’s fury had gotten the better of him. And now we could all hear the chairman heaving behind her face shield as she tried to keep her head from exploding. Rafe nudged me, and we edged toward the hovercopter, even though Bearly sat in the pilot seat, talking into a radio. Probably giving the base a full report of the goings-on.
“You’re lying,” the chairman croaked.
“I’m not,” Everson said. “Mahari is cured of Ferae. She’s not infectious, and that’s all that matters. I don’t care what her DNA looks like. And you better get over it too ’cause, who knows, maybe someday your grandchildren will have claws and tails.”
The chairman made a sputtering sound as if she was about to gurgle up blood. “Get him in the van,” she ordered her guards, her voice high and thin, and they half pushed, half carried Everson into the RV. The whole vehicle shook with the effort of shoving him through the door.
Now it was just Rafe and me and the chairman — and fourteen line guards with assault rifles. Maybe Chairman Prejean had come into the zone for just one reason — to retrieve Everson and get him vaccinated before he got infected. Maybe she didn’t care that I’d threatened national security with my video and that Rafe had caused the line patrol no end of trouble and expense. And if I could just remember to breathe, then maybe I could convince myself of these things.
The chairman stared at the van long after the side door banged shut, arms folded across her middle. A protective gesture on top of a protective suit. When she finally turned back to us, her expression, behind the porthole, was wiped of all emotion. “Now,” she said lightly. “What to do with you?”
“You don’t have to do anything with us.” I stepped hard on my fear so I could concentrate. “I’ll live in Moline and look after the orphans. And Rafe will go back to Camp Echo, far from here.”
Beside me, Rafe stiffened. He had to know that I was lying to her … right? I stole a glance at him, but his attention was on the line of guards — or maybe blocks past them, on the compound gate, which was still shut and locked. “Stall,” he said, so softly I wasn’t sure I’d heard him right.
“I’m afraid that’s not possible, Lane.” The chairman gestured to the leader of the strike team, her protective suit crinkling with every move. “You see, no one in the West can ever learn that an antigen exists. And, unfortunately, keeping secrets doesn’t seem to be your strong suit.”
A door slammed shut in my chest. Would she have the scientists stop making it? “Why can’t they know about the cure?”
“It’s not a cure,” she corrected. “These creatures, these infected humans” — she nodded toward Rafe, who seemed to accept the label in stride — “they’re polluted at a genetic level. Dr. Solis may have found a way to clear the virus, but he can’t repair their corrupted DNA.”
“But they can’t infect anyone,” I protested. “They’re not a threat to public health.”
“Wrong.” Her gaze narrowed on me. “If we say the manimals are cured and let them rejoin society, their potential for contagion becomes even greater.”
“How?” I demanded. Beside me, Rafe gave the barest nod. Encouraging me … to stall.
“It’s not the wall that keeps people away from abominations like him.” She eyed Rafe, her loathing on full display. “It’s the risk of infection. Eliminate the virus and you eliminate the need for a quarantine. Do you really want people carrying animal DNA mixing in with the healthy population? Integration will lead to marriages, children … Children who will inherit corrupted DNA. Can you even imagine what the human race would look like in three generations? Four? Unrecognizable, that’s what.” She inhaled deeply as if to calm herself and glanced toward the RV, clearly wishing she could escape into its sterile confines.
I felt as pinched and pale as she looked. There was so much in what she’d just said that I couldn’t easily pull it apart. Rafe shifted his weight from one foot to the other — an impatient bounce. Right. Stall.
“I get it,” I said just as the chairman was turning away. “I do. You’re already a villain in the history books … Mother of the plague and all.”
That got her attention. She swung back, eyes pinned to me. Only me.
I put on a sympathetic face. “I can see why you wouldn’t want to be the person who ends the human race as we know it.”
She jerked toward the line of guards. “Who’s in charge of this squad?”
As a burly, dark-eyed man strode forward, Rafe nudged me toward the hovercopter.
“Name?” the chairman demanded.
“Guardsman Bhatt.”
He cut his eyes to me, and I froze, certain he’d noticed our retreat, but then my stomach curdled. He was the guard who’d bullied Jia the night I’d come to Arsenal. And going by the ugly twist of his lips, he hadn’t forgotten that encounter either. Somehow I breathed out a smile, despite my apprehension, which made the tendons in his neck pop out. Straining to bite back words? Good.
“As soon as I’m on my way back to base,” the chairman told him, “take care of them.”
As in kill them?! She couldn’t mean it. She couldn’t. But then, the line guards killed people all the time — infected people and quarantine breakers. I was neither and Rafe was cured. That should matter. But already my vision was tunneling as the image of a fetch played on the multiplex in my mind —
a fetch at the foot of the wall, facing a firing squad.
Just as Bhatt parted his lips to respond, Rafe cut in sharply, “Hear that?”
Lines of cold fury bracketed Bhatt’s mouth at the interruption, but then he whipped toward the overgrown park. I heard it then as well — snapping twigs, the crack of a branch. I squinted, trying to make out what moved in the shadows between the scraggly pines.
“What is it?” the chairman demanded.
“Could be wildlife.” Bhatt spoke in a low voice. “Or … we’ve got company.”
The rustling grew louder, now coming from several places within the park. On a gesture from Bhatt, the guards fanned out, forming a line between us and whatever lurked on the far side of the clearing.
“Chairman,” he said abruptly, “you should wait in the van until we know what we’re dealing with.”
On a nod, the chairman edged back, a hand pressed to her throat, only to pause when the distant pine trees shivered and shook out their needles.
All at once, shouts and snarls erupted across the park as shadowy figures burst through the trees, dozens of them. They raced headlong into the tall prairie grass, thrashing paths from every direction, their mutated features twisted with hate. Ferals? Manimals? Impossible to tell from this distance. Virus driven or not, they bared jagged teeth and sharp claws, roaring as they raced across the park.
Racing for us.
“Wait for my order,” Bhatt yelled to the guards, who stood between us and the oncoming horde.
The snarls, punctuated by roars, hiked in volume as the infected people thrashed paths through the prairie grass. They converged halfway across the park to form one long line — one pounding wave — heading for us. And yet, my fingers didn’t prickle, my head didn’t ache, and I wasn’t paralyzed with fear. Yes, every pulse point in my body beat loud and fast but on high alert. If these people were feral, I wouldn’t freeze up.
“Wait …” Bhatt repeated softly, fist raised. The guards held their positions, eyes to their gun scopes.
I glanced at Rafe. Did he know the attackers? Beyond him, between the broken asphalt and crumbling buildings, the tall grass shimmied in a dozen places. I held my breath and touched Rafe’s hand, prompting him to follow my gaze. The guards, however, remained focused on the attackers in front of us.
“Come on,” Bhatt coaxed. “Don’t chicken out now.”
Hearing his frustration, I turned to see that the attacking manimals had stopped halfway across the park. When they dropped into the prairie grass, Bhatt snorted. “You’re not getting away that easy.”
An elbow knocked my arm as someone nudged between me and Rafe and kept going. More followed until a stream of silent people rushed between us like the incoming tide past pilings. They emerged from the undergrowth at the edges of the old road, humans and manimals, moving swiftly en masse toward the line of guards. A second later, I lost Rafe as the crowd swept me along with them — only they were armed and I wasn’t. They carried everything from knives and guns to pitchforks. A string of chaotic thoughts raced through my mind as I recognized several of them from my one visit to Moline. Was my dad here?
Chairman Prejean backed away with a muted cry and then broke for the van, but something large sailed out from nowhere — a rusty car door — and crashed a foot in front of her. It would’ve hit her dead on if she hadn’t tripped at the last second and fallen flat on her helmet-face.
Bhatt glanced back then, but it was too late. Sid, the Moline gatekeeper who was infected with boar, was already in position behind him, shotgun muzzle pressed to the chink between Bhatt’s helmet and flak jacket. Bhatt stiffened at the cold kiss of metal. And then the tidal wave of Moline residents crashed over the line of guards, roaring and pounding as mercilessly as any tsunami.
When shots rang out, my desperation reached fever pitch. My dad had to be somewhere in the melee with his bad leg. He wouldn’t have — there! Helping the chairman to her feet with a firm grip on her elbow. Then I lost sight of them in the crowd.
“Lane!” Rafe reached for me between the surge of bodies and snagged my hand.
We wove through the mob, breaking for the hovercopter, when Everson threw open the van’s side door. We veered for him as he stepped down.
“My mother?” he asked.
“With my dad,” I said, looking around for them.
The fight seemed to have ended before it even got started. The residents of Moline, human and manimal, had the guards down on their knees in an awkward row, their weapons confiscated. More shocking than that, Chairman Prejean’s helmet had been wrenched from her protective suit and she stood near the hovercopter, bald-headed and blinking as if blinded by sunlight, though the evening was well upon us.
“Over there.” I pointed her out.
Everson followed my gesture, and his jaw went slack. “She’s out in the open without a mask,” he murmured. “She never … ever —”
“I don’t think the mayor gave her a choice,” Rafe observed.
I swung my attention to the woman guarding Chairman Prejean. It was dad’s girlfriend, Hagen! Her dark curls danced in the wind as she propped a hiking boot on the hood of a dilapidated car and rested her crossbow on her thigh. I smiled despite the undercurrent of tension surrounding us.
When a guard groaned over his dislocated arm and another begged for a bandage, Everson tore his eyes from his mother and scanned the crowd. “I don’t see any serious injuries.”
“There was no fight,” I pointed out. “The guards were outnumbered twenty to one.”
“And looking the wrong way,” Rafe added with a chuckle. “I can’t believe they fell for that.”
I turned to him. “Did you know they’d come out for us?”
He snapped to attention, eyes on Sid. “All I know is that pork chop over there still has my gun.” He stalked after the group of manimals headed back into the compound.
Everson pushed open the RV’s side door. Even with all its slick, washable surfaces, the van’s interior resembled an elegant living room. Dr. Solis seemed out of place, sitting at the chairman’s desk, bent over a microscope. “This is remarkable, Ev,” he said without looking up.
“Yeah,” Everson agreed. “But you’re going to have to study it later. There are a couple of banged-up guards out here who could use some attention.”
Dr. Solis lifted his eye from the microscope with obvious reluctance. “Of course,” he said, and then rose, looking more alert than I’d ever seen him.
He grabbed a medical kit off the top of a sturdy blue crate — a crate like the one Bearly had delivered to Camp Echo. Was that crate also filled with tubes of the antigen? Only one way to find out.
Dr. Solis stepped out of the RV. “Are you in one piece?” he asked me.
I nodded and then caught Everson’s arm before he could head off with the doctor. “You said your mom’s RV has Web access.”
“It does.”
“Can I post something?” I lifted my dial out from under my shirt and watched his features tense. “She doesn’t want anyone to know about the antigen. Your mother. She’s trying to —”
“Yes,” Everson interrupted with a wave toward the open door.
I hesitated. “You’re in the footage …”
“Great. More fan mail,” he said with a resigned huff. “Fine. But this time I’m keeping the care packages.” His expression turned serious then. “Look, I don’t know what’s happening here …” He swept a hand toward his mother and the kneeling guards. “I don’t know if this is the beginning of the end or if it’s nothing. But, Lane, if it is just a glitch in the status quo and you post another video, you’ll top the Biohaz most wanted list.”
He was right. Absolutely right. But I couldn’t think past the emotions burning in my gut. “People need to know there’s a cure. If they could stop being so afraid of the world beyond the wall — even if just for a minute — they’d see there’s nothing to be afraid of. Not anymore.”
“Okay,” he said roughly. “I foll
owed you into the zone … Twice. I’ve got your back on this too. Go.”
I hurried into the RV and locked the door behind me. I crouched by the blue crate and cracked the lid. Sure enough, it was filled to the brim with tubes of the antigen. Not enough for all the manimals in Moline, but then, maybe some of them wouldn’t want to take an untested drug. A problem to solve later. Right now, I had my own risk to take, because this time, I wasn’t going to post my video anonymously in a hit-and-run job. This time, I was going on record.
I settled on top of the crate and scrolled through my footage from the last couple of days: the basement maze with its desolate and crazed occupants; Mahari’s rescue and Everson’s kiss, which woke her from her Lulled slumber; Rafe giving Aaron his dose of the cure in the Camp Echo infirmary; and the reunion, which went from the waterfall back to Camp Echo. I deleted Everson’s hostage message because that had been staged, and I wanted to be able to stand by every second of my account — even under oath.
I wasn’t a fighter like Rafe. Or a rebel leader like Mahari. I couldn’t create a cure like Dr. Solis and Everson. But I could bear witness to what was happening around me, and that wasn’t nothing.
I held the dial at arm’s length in front of my face, pushed record, and spoke directly to the small round screen.
“My name is Delaney Park McEvoy and this is my second video about the world beyond the wall. I swear that everything you’re about to see really happened and that all the people are real — the infected and the uninfected. You might not believe it, but that’s because the West is the ultimate gated community. We stay comfortable and safe while ignoring the people who are suffering on the other side of the gate. Or, in our case, wall. Those people might look strange to you — inhuman — and, if you only go by DNA, some of them are technically inhuman. But that doesn’t mean they lack humanity.” I paused just long enough to catch my breath. “But don’t believe me. Watch the video. Judge for yourself. I live here now, on the wild side of the wall, because I’ve fallen in love with the Feral Zone. I hope you will too.”