Eat the Ones You Love (The Thirteen Book 2)

by J. L. Murray

  “Did she do this to you?” said Robin. “The scientist. Your mother. She did this?”

  “Maybe she thought she was saving us,” said Jenny.

  “Bullshit,” said Robin. “Of all the children who died, I find it very convenient that her own children were the ones who survived. She didn’t care if anyone lived or died, no matter what you tell yourself to sleep at night. She killed hundreds of children. Maybe more. My son, my little boy, is gone. And you’re still here. And a sister? After all that’s happened, you have a sister?” Robin was manic, walking back and forth on the road, her words coming faster and faster. “No one has blood relatives anymore. But you, baby Anna Hawkins. You have a fucking sister, a mother, who knows what else? You’ll probably come out of this sparkly clean. You’re not even dead like the rest of your friends. I can see you breathing, I can feel the heat coming off you. I should kill you right here. Save you the trouble of finding your…your…”

  “Her bitch mother?” said Trix, suddenly stepping between Jenny and Robin. Robin stopped her pacing and narrowed her eyes at Trix.

  “What do you care?” Robin said. “You’re just as dead as my daughter was.”

  “Fuck you, you superior bitch,” Trix said, tight anger in her voice. “You have no fucking idea what we’ve been through to make it this far. We didn’t do this. Any of it. I’m real fucking sorry about your kids, but fuck you. Fuck you. You think Anna Hawkins spared her kids? You think they got the best of the experiments?”

  “Yeah,” said Robin. “I do.”

  “You’re wrong,” Trix spat. “Casey, he’s not around anymore,” Trix paused for only the slightest of moments, “but he was right in the pool with the rest of us. He went through everything we went through. This mother you think cared so much for her kids? She barely spoke to him. Barely looked at him. Her own son. I never once heard her even speak his name. And this bitch back here, Jenny? She’s a fucking walking mess. You don’t think she died, the same as the rest of us? Oh, she fucking died, you stupid bitch. She keeps on dying over and over. She can’t fucking stop dying. And you know what? It’s a good fucking thing because she’s the only one who gives a shit about this stupid goddamn world, this fucking cesspool of hate and ugliness and fucking chaos. Jenny is the only good thing left and she keeps trying to save all you stupid motherfucking bitches. And she will never stop. That’s what makes me so mad sometimes. She could just leave, just hole up somewhere. She’d be fucking fine. Me and Jenny? We could both go off together and never look back and you know what? Yeah, we’d come out clean. But we are fucking dead. We’re hungry all the time. I can see it in her eyes and I can smell the blood on her breath when she finally gives in to the hunger and exhaustion and rage. She could have ripped you apart but she didn’t. Maybe she’s stupid, but you’re a fucking idiot if you think that she’s the problem.”

  Robin had taken a step back from Trix and for a moment there was a glimmer of fear in her eyes. But then she took a step forward, her face tilted up, giving her the impression of a bird of prey.

  “I lost two children, rotter. I offered you safe passage. Don’t insult me.”

  “Don’t insult Jenny,” said Trix. “Ever. Do not even make a joke about insulting her. She was ripped open over and over again by her own family. Her mother. Her grandfather. Ripped. Open. No antibiotics, no drugs. Just cut. Cut. Cut. Cut. Cut. Cut. Over and over. When I met her she had scars all over her back. She got away before the rest of us, that’s true, but it didn’t matter. She’d already died so many fucking times that even she can’t remember what happened. Maybe she has a sister. But you can fucking bet her sister is even more fucked up than she is. That she’s been ripped open even more times than Jenny has. We’re going to save her. We’ve got to fucking try. Jenny has to try. Because there is so much fucking shit in the world that you have to kick it away sometimes. And if it wasn’t for Jenny I wouldn’t care. Not even a little fucking bit. She got bit before I met her, but she was trying to find her brother when it happened. And when she came back, her brother died because some asshole wanted to know what was inside of her. Inside of us. But especially her. And then, the asshole she’s in love with, the bastard the stupid bitch can’t fucking live without, he got infected too. I would have left him. But it was Jenny. Fucking Jenny. And she saved him. She literally cut part of herself away to save him. And no one does that anymore.”

  Trix wouldn’t look at Jenny, but kept her eyes firmly on Robin, who refused to look away even though she looked like she wanted to. Tears had begun to fall down her cheeks even as she sneered. Trix laughed then, a hollow sound, but Jenny could hear the emotion in it.

  “No one does that anymore,” Trix said again, but quieter. It didn’t even sound like her. She squared her shoulders toward Robin. “If you have a problem with Jenny, you have a problem with me. And I am not someone you want to have a problem with.” She turned toward the motorhome and angrily pulled the door open.

  “Trix,” Jenny said, reaching for her arm. Trix froze and Jenny fought the urge to recoil, to let her have her space.

  “What?” Trix said, finally looking at her. “Don’t give me the face, cheerleader. I didn’t say that shit for you.”

  “I know,” said Jenny. “But thank you.”

  “You’re like…a sister or some shit,” said Trix. “Just stop fucking dying, okay? It pisses me off. I don’t like it when people die.”

  “I’ll try.”

  Trix looked down at her own boots.

  “I know I said I didn’t care about you, Jenny. I know I said it was all Casey, and it was. But, you’re like him, you know. You and Casey, you’re fucking idiots, but you’re good. Just good.”

  “Okay,” said Jenny. “Thanks, I guess.”

  “Just don’t fuck this up, cheerleader.”

  “Okay.”

  “And don’t try to hug me.”

  EIGHTEEN

  Before they left, Trix, Benji and Declan quietly slipped into the bank building one last time, and when they came out they weren’t hungry anymore. Robin drove and everyone stayed quiet. Robin occasionally glanced into the rear-view mirror, stealing glances at Jenny and Trix. Jenny thought she read shame and embarrassment by the way she reacted. Jenny understood. Robin was grieving. Even if her daughter had been taken weeks ago, it didn’t change the fact that she officially lost her in that basement. And Jenny had killed her. Even though it was for the best, even though Robin asked her to, Jenny understood. Robin needed someone to blame.

  Trix was avoiding looking at Jenny and just focused on reading a Philip K. Dick paperback she found in the motor home. They had gathered food and water from the fifth floor, Robin explaining that she could trade what she didn’t use. Robin was elated to find a restaurant-size jug of cooking oil. There had been little else of use in the room. They left the drugs behind. Jenny had no doubt that many of the junkies would be dead soon of overdose or in fighting over the drugs. She felt queasy knowing the fate of a dwindling number of surviving human beings was to get high until they died.

  Jenny got up and walked the length of the vehicle to the cab. She ducked through the curtain and sat in the passenger seat next to Robin, who glanced at her, then kept her eyes ahead, on the road going through nothing.

  “You shouldn’t be up here,” said Robin.

  “Do you want me to leave?” said Jenny.

  “No.” She sighed. “I could use the company. Gets me away from my thoughts.”

  “I’m sorry for everything that happened to you,” said Jenny. “I’m not trying to hurt you.”

  Robin breathed out of her nose. “I know. I’m broken. I can’t keep my mind straight. Not since they took Amy.”

  “I know the feeling,” said Jenny.

  “I’m sorry about your brother,” said Robin. “And…everything, I guess.”

  Jenny understood. This was an apology.

  “You were right, though,” said Jenny. “She preferred us. Her own kids, I mean. She saved us for her best experiments
. She always said this is going to save the world. After a while it got you wondering if saving the world was worth all the pain.”

  Robin didn’t say anything, but paled slightly. Jenny could just see her eyes behind the aviator sunglasses. She looked haunted, as if she could see ghosts swimming around the atmosphere that no one else could see.

  “Look, I know how hard all of this must be for you. I want you to know that we really appreciate your help. Thank you.”

  She shrugged. “It doesn’t matter where I go. I was planning on heading east anyway. And if that evil mother of yours gets wiped off the face of the earth, so much the better. She cannot live, Jenny. She can’t be alive and living the good life when she put so many children in the ground.” Robin’s voice was cold. “She knew they were going to die. She knew her theories were shit. She knew that it wasn’t going to fix anything. Those kids died too soon. Maybe a day too soon, maybe a year, maybe ten. But she took that day from them, that decade.”

  “I know,” said Jenny. “All those kids. She read to us, you know. She knew she was killing us, and she smiled and stood up on this pedestal and read us Dr. Seuss. The kids laughed and laughed. My brother, Casey, too. She was reading the first time my grandfather pulled me away from the others. And she knew.”

  “That’s why you’re…the way you are? Because of what they did to you?”

  “That’s why,” said Jenny, and it was her voice that was cold this time.

  “At least you’re alive,” she said. “At least you survived.”

  “Yeah,” said Jenny. “Except I didn’t.”

  Jenny leaned back on the mattress and pulled out the Camus paperback she carried from Casey’s old room. She touched the cover. He had held this in his hands when he was still alive. Before he changed, her little brother read this book.

  “Jen?” Declan moved carefully and sat on the edge of the mattress.

  “Hey, how are the stitches holding?” she said. “You want me to redo them?”

  “No, no,” he said. He ran a hand through his hair. He seemed nervous. “They’re fine. I feel stronger since…well. You know.”

  “Since you ate someone?”

  Declan frowned down at his hands.

  “I’m sorry,” said Jenny. “I shouldn’t try to joke about that.”

  “Jenny, I know what Faron said to you.”

  “Trix told you?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said. He was avoiding eye contact. “I know what he said. About us not being the same. And I know that you might have believed him. Just a little at least.”

  “Declan…”

  “It’s okay,” he said. He glanced at her. “I don’t blame you for being unhappy. I’ve been…wrong.”

  “Wrong?”

  “I didn’t come back like you thought I would. I came back wrong. I’m more rotter than human.”

  “That’s not true,” she said.

  “Yes it is.” He looked up and finally met her eyes. She remembered when they first met and her knees had gone weak when he looked at her. She’d felt like they were the only people in the world. There was chaos, the world was crumbling, diseased. And she was in love. Jenny blinked and sat up. She grabbed his cool hand, holding it tight.

  “I was wrong,” she said. “Declan, I’m sorry. I’ve been asking too much. You waited for me. You were patient and you waited so long. Even after everyone thought I was dead. I’m an asshole.”

  “I’m not ever going to be the same,” he said in a hoarse whisper that sent shivers of memory up Jenny’s spine. She wanted to kiss him, but she was afraid he would reject her, just as she had rejected him after she first changed.

  “I don’t care,” she said. She got up onto her knees and took both of his hands. “I don’t care that you’re different, Declan. I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have listened to Faron.”

  “You told us not to trust him,” he said, smiling a little. “We didn’t listen.”

  “Do this for me,” said Jenny. “Don’t trust anyone, okay? It’s you and me in the world, remember? Remember that? We don’t know how to be without each other, Declan. We don’t fit without each other.”

  “What happens when we forget how to fit together?” he said. There was something heavy behind his voice. A sadness that dripped from his words.

  “I will never stop coming for you,” said Jenny. “Do you understand? It doesn’t matter if we’re having problems, or if you tell me to go. I am always going to be with you. It’s not a matter of what we become or where we go. You and me? We fit together. Sometimes our edges get broken. Sometimes we crack or even break. But that’s why we make sense. We put each other back together again. You’re always going to help me, and I’m always going to help you. That’s just the way it is.”

  “I still love you,” he said, his filmy white eyes just as intense as they had always been. “Nothing can change that.”

  Jenny felt like she had just been kicked in the chest.

  “I love you, too, Deck.”

  She didn’t care. She kissed him. And he kissed her back.

  “I’m going to save you, Declan,” she whispered. “Even if it kills me.”

  “Nothing can kill you,” he said. “Nothing ever will. And I won’t let anyone touch you.”

  But Jenny could feel the bandages wrapped around his middle, covering stitches that would never heal. And she could smell his wound. Slowly decaying.

  Weren’t they all?

  NINETEEN

  As they neared Omaha, Jenny started noticing the encampments. At first she thought they were Expos, but then she realized they were small makeshift villages of walls built around small houses. And where there were people, there were rotters. The flatter the land and the closer to cities, the more rotters. She realized that the mountains were a post-apocalyptic mecca compared to the populated Plains. She thought of her mother’s old bunker in the Rockies and looked at Declan. He was playing cards with Benji. He looked back at her and smiled. Would he live long enough to go back there with her? Could she live in a place where evil had been? Where Casey had lived for a time? On the plus side, running water and power were a big deal. Yes, she could live there. But even if Declan got patched up, even if he could get past his anger and his hunger, Jenny doubted he would ever want to settle down. She had her doubts that she could do it herself. They would be like soldiers back from war, broken and full of nightmares.

  She sat next to Robin again.

  “I need to make a stop in Omaha,” Robin said. “I think it might be best if you all waited here.”

  “You think we’re going to cause trouble?” Jenny said.

  Robin chuckled. “I think you might try to eat trouble,” she said. “I have a reputation to protect. If word ever gets out that I’m traveling with rotters, it could get bad for me.”

  “Even The Thirteen?” said Jenny.

  “The people I work with don’t want to save the world,” Robin said. “They like it just the way it is.”

  “Why do you do business with these Dregs?” asked Jenny. “Child molesters and rapers and drug addicts. You don’t seem the type.”

  Robin sighed. “I told you, Heathens aren’t much better.”

  “That’s what you said,” said Jenny. “But I was there. I saw what the Dregs were like.”

  “It wasn’t always like that,” said Robin. “They’re getting worse.”

  “So why keep doing this? Why not join some of these people? People are organizing, building towns. You’ve seen that, right? It’s not just Heathens and Righteous anymore. You could have a life.”

  “And settle down?” said Robin. “Pretend the world is a happy shiny place?”

  Jenny shrugged.

  “I thought about it,” she said. “With my daughter, I wanted to keep her safe. This RV was our home. Just like any other. We could move it around wherever we wanted. If we got a bad feeling about a place, we could leave. If there were Rotters, we could go into lockdown until they went away.. And it just got to be a life af
ter a while, you know? Me and Amy, we had each other. We were enough for each other. It wasn’t a good life, exactly, but it was a life. And we had fun together. She was so funny, my Amy.”

  Robin grew silent for a time. The smile faded from her face as she remembered. Jenny let her have the silence, looked out the window. Cars caked in dirt lined the side of the road, pushed there by travelers needing to move on through, clearing the roads out of necessity. She watched as tiny figures hopped down from a tall fence in the distance and took down a group of rotters clawing at the gates.

  “This sister,” said Robin. “I know I was an asshole about it before. But if this sister of yours is really alive, you have to find her. Find her and hold onto her as tight as you can.” Robin sniffed. “Never let her go, even if she hates you. Even if she tells you to go. You can never let her go, no matter what.”

  “Yeah,” said Jenny.

  “I mean it,” said Robin. “You don’t get family in this world. Maybe you’ve had a rough go of it, but who hasn’t? There’s no love or family or friends in this world, Jenny. But from what I can see, you have all three.”

  “This from the woman who’s taking me to kill my mother,” said Jenny.

  “That’s different,” said Robin, her voice low. “Your mother’s not family to anyone. She’s just a killer. She’s no better than the fuckers who took my daughter. She’s worse,” said Robin. “Because she thinks she was doing good. She thinks she was saving the world killing all those kids. She thinks she’s the good guy, but really she’s—“

  “The devil,” said Jenny. “I know that.”

  “I know you do, sweetie,” said Robin. “I know.”

  For a moment, Jenny wondered what would have happened if Robin found her all those years ago. Would she have rescued her and raised her as her own daughter?

  “When I escaped,” said Jenny, “a woman named Josie took me in.” Jenny spoke in a low monotone. She didn’t know why she wanted to share this with Robin. Maybe it was because Jenny saw her as a mother who could have made her better, had she found Jenny in time. Jenny could imagine Robin wrapping her stringy arms around her and telling her everything would be okay if they stuck together. Jenny blinked back to reality and continued. “Josie took a lot of girls in. She taught us how to live, how to fight, how to…”