by Tarah Benner
He grinned sheepishly. “What do you want from me, Haven?” he asked, his voice so quiet that only I could hear.
“What?”
He smiled again, but his expression was caught between adoration and sadness. “What do you want . . . from me?”
I shook my head wordlessly, painfully aware that I had no idea how to answer him. There were too many people around.
He lowered my arm and brushed his thumb over my jaw where he’d struck it. It didn’t hurt at all anymore, so I knew he must have hit me very lightly — barely a graze.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “This fight was a bad idea. I didn’t want to hit you, but I thought if it was just the two of us again, doing what we did before —”
I jerked my head, confused but not regretting the fight. “They loved it.”
Then Amory dove in so fast I didn’t have time to react.
Instead of what I was hoping for — what I really needed right at that moment — he brushed his lips against my cheek, barely an inch from my mouth.
As he pulled away, he growled low in my ear, “You have to tell me what you want.”
I looked at him, a little shocked, but nodded numbly.
“That’s my girl!” squealed Logan from behind me, dragging me away from Amory and shattering the bubble of our private exchange.
Logan thrust my arm into the air again, throwing her hair back like a party girl and letting out a high-pitched “Whooo!” I’d never heard her make.
The Holts were slapping my back and grinning. They wanted to learn how to fight like us. It felt good.
Of course I couldn’t know how much Amory had held back to let me win, but it still felt like a victory in more ways than one.
Soon the Hoopers and the Holts wandered off to the guest house, and I followed Roman, Greyson, and Logan into the main house.
Godfrey hung back, and I could tell all the torches and sparring had been too much excitement for him. Perhaps when you’d seen as much fighting and death as Godfrey had, even a playful match lost its appeal.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Over the next two weeks, the farm changed so dramatically it was hardly recognizable. With the Holts’ help, the barn construction went quickly, and it was beginning to look even nicer than it had before.
Godfrey was almost always away from the farm, recruiting rebels and searching for supplies. Some of the things he returned with didn’t make sense to me, like when he’d raided a chemical manufacturing plant and carted the unlabeled jugs out to the shed. I didn’t question it. Godfrey had always been eccentric and paranoid.
The guest house overflowed with illegals from Columbia, Kansas City, and St. Louis, and we hauled sleeping bags and blankets out to the barn. None of the newcomers seemed to mind. Most of them had been on their own for months, scrounging for food and water. From the stories they brought with them, I knew that the deserted cities were much worse.
So many new recruits meant there were more people to take turns on carrier watch, but Roman never seemed to stop prowling the edges of the woods. None of us had seen a single carrier since the attack, but hordes of that scale rarely kept quiet for long.
To ease my troubled thoughts, I threw myself into farm operations and supplementing our food supply. I planted early crops of beets, broccoli, cabbage, and onions in the trampled vegetable patches and asked Matt and Bobby to look for livestock. One afternoon, they returned with two cows, three goats, and chickens in the Hoopers’ trailer.
Logan and Amory were busy training everyone twice a day in hand-to-hand combat. Although Marcus was deadly with a crossbow and Krystal, Jason, and all the Holts could shoot, none of them had any experience fighting carriers.
One night in the barn when I was feeding the cows, I caught myself staring at Amory. He was just doing a demonstration for the Holts, but I couldn’t help thinking of our fight — the way his body had moved, the way it had felt against mine.
I kept glancing over at him, marveling at the way he looked in his faded jeans, barefoot in the hay, with his snug gray T-shirt clinging to his tan arms.
They were laughing about something, and I glanced over the wooden partition to steal another look.
Amory laughed with his whole body, throwing his head back and arching his shoulders. Then his eyes crinkled closed in a way that sent a thrill through me.
Before I could look away, Amory caught my gaze.
“Haven! Come here!” he called.
There was a slight sparkle in his eyes, and I felt the flush spreading up my neck.
What an idiot. He’d caught me watching him.
“It’ll just take a second,” he coaxed. “I need to show them something, and you’ve done this before.”
The nerves tingled down my back all the way to my fingertips at his words “done this before,” but I forced myself to cross the barn to where the four of them stood.
The Holts grinned. They were hoping to see Amory and me fight again. Somehow, word had spread that Amory and I had both been subjects of World Corp’s brainwashing experiments and had fought our conditioning, so we had become objects of morbid fascination for the rebels. Most of them seemed to think we were killing machines.
Amory adjusted his posture, and I knew he would be playing the role of the attacker. My heart skipped a beat.
“I’m trying to show them how to ward off a carrier that gets ahold of them and pins their arms,” he said. “Especially if there’s more than one. You’re smaller, so this will show that it works no matter how big the carrier is.”
I nodded. My throat was dry.
“Ready?” he asked, arching an eyebrow as if he sensed my nervousness.
“Ready.” At least my voice didn’t give away how on-edge I felt.
Amory smiled briefly, and then he lunged at me. My whole body went rigid as I braced for impact, but I heard Logan’s voice in my head: Stay relaxed.
Amory hit me like a linebacker, and his strong arms wrapped around my torso, pinning my arms to my side and squeezing me like a boa constrictor.
I gasped for air, and my senses were assaulted by his fresh, woodsy smell, the warmth of his body, and the adrenaline from the attack. His breathing was ragged in my ear.
Without giving myself time to think, I smacked him in the thigh and brought my knee up, careful just to feign striking his groin.
Amory faked doubling over, and I used his new posture to wiggle out and yank his arm away from his body, pushing the blade of my forearm into the side of his neck. I held his head down and faked an elbow strike before aiming a kick just above his knee.
The kick wasn’t fake, and he stumbled.
It was amusing to see him so graceless for once. I laughed, and he threw me a sideways look with those bright gray eyes that made my stomach squirm with pleasure.
“That’s how it’s done,” he panted, breaking into a grin.
The Holts wolf-whistled, and my face burned when I realized my eyes were lingering on Amory’s chest and shoulders. I couldn’t help it.
What was wrong with me?
I forced my feet to start moving, but Amory’s hand found my wrist and pulled me back into his orbit. I didn’t fight it, and he didn’t let go.
“Can you stay a little longer? Help me with some more demonstrations?”
I smiled before I could stop myself and nodded. My brain felt fuzzy. I couldn’t think about anything except the warmth of his fingers pressed into the tender skin inside my wrist. Amory cocked an eyebrow, and he looked me up and down, eyes lingering longer than they should have.
Did he know?
“A little longer” turned out to be another hour — another hour of being put into headlocks, bear hugged, and knocked down so I could show the Holts how to ward off an attack.
For an hour, I breathed in Amory and deflected his advances, trying to ignore the feel of his abdominals through his shirt or the way his strong arms softened around me.
When I finally left the barn, sore and light-headed, I realized I
would have sparred with Amory for another three hours just to be near him, and he knew it. My feelings were strong and unreasonable — intensified somehow by the months he and I had spent apart.
I felt the uncontrollable, girly smile tugging at the corners of my mouth all the way across the yard, and I realized I was in deep trouble.
Now that we had a sizable army at our disposal and spring was upon us, we needed a real plan. Greyson, who had studied military strategy briefly in school, had been pouring over maps of the area for days.
He called a meeting, and Amory, Logan, Roman, Greyson, and I crowded around the kitchen table to strategize. Godfrey had been gone for several days, and I was starting to get nervous.
We all looked at Greyson and the county map spread out in front of him. He cleared his throat nervously and circled his finger around a plot of land.
“This is us,” he said. “These are the two roads the workers could come from when they return for construction. I think we should have someone stationed here . . . and here . . . with walkie-talkies to give us a warning when they’re on their way.”
“When do you think they’ll show?” asked Amory.
Greyson shrugged. “The moonshiners said spring. I say we play it safe and operate under the assumption that they’ll be here sooner rather than later.”
“So what do we do when they arrive?” asked Amory.
“I think we should ambush them before they even get to the farm. There’s a blind curve here.” He pointed on the map. “We’ll have plenty of time to head them off. We should be able to take them out with ten or twelve people.”
“These are the workers,” Amory reminded him. “Civilians. You want to kill them?”
“Who cares if they’re civilians!” growled Roman. “They’re working for World Corp.”
I glared at Roman. His callousness was so hypocritical, considering he’d elected to join up with the PMC after the riots in Sector X.
“We don’t need to kill them,” said Greyson. “In fact, it’s better if we don’t. They’re not the target — just the messenger. Keep the troop small . . . just enough people to drive them off, but not enough to show our hand to the PMC. With any luck, they’ll underestimate our numbers when they send out reinforcements. If we can kill the troops they send, then the PMC will know we mean business.”
“Then what?” broke in Logan.
Greyson shrugged. “Then we’ll have to pull out everything we’ve got to defend the farm. I wouldn’t count on them coming by the road a second time. They could try to ambush us from the woods.”
“If we want to defend the place against the PMC twice, we’ll need a lot more people than we have now,” said Logan.
“How many of us are there?”
“Only forty.”
“We can fit another ten in the barn, maybe,” said Amory. “But after that, we’ll need to start moving people into the main house. It’s going to get really crowded.”
“We’re going to need more than that,” said Logan. “At least a hundred if we want any real chance.”
“A hundred people?” said Greyson incredulously. “How do you expect to keep a hundred people on this farm? We’ll be lucky if we can feed the people who are here now! We don’t even know if we’ll be able to keep running water once the PMC gets wind of us.”
“We managed it in Rulon’s camp. And we didn’t have running water there.”
Greyson waved a dismissive hand. “That was when we were five miles from Sector X and could steal PMC supplies. We need to be able to sustain these people for at least two years.”
“Two years?”
“How long do you think it’s going to take to rally people up north?”
“You want all these people to hang out here for two years?”
“Probably longer,” said Greyson, his voice almost a growl. “Jesus, Logan. These things take time!”
“Well it’s going to take a lot longer if we’re trying to fight the PMC with forty people. All it takes is one bad carrier attack or one fight against the PMC, and it’ll be down to us and five other people.”
“How can you say that?” asked Greyson. He had raised his voice, fighting a tremor that told me he was getting angry — truly angry. “We’ve been training them, and they’re learning.”
“I’m telling you, half of these people aren’t going to make it, so it’s best not to get too attached.”
“Is that really how you think?”
Logan whipped her hair over her shoulder, leaning over the table to yell at him. “It’s how you have to think if you’re in charge of our defense strategy, Greyson. You have to be realistic. People are going to die. We need more bodies to throw at the problem because we’re unprepared to face a PMC attack right now.”
“They’ll do fine,” Greyson snarled. “Not all of us are PMC trained, but we manage.” His voice was rough.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means maybe you should think a little less like them and a little more like us.” I could feel the anger rolling off him in waves. “People. Aren’t. Disposable.”
Logan looked as though he’d reached across the table and smacked her. Before I could prepare myself for her torrent of fury, she lurched forward and upended the table. Greyson’s maps fluttered to the floor, and Amory and Roman leaned back in their seats.
Logan’s fists were clenched at her sides, and I waited for her to yell or hit him. She took a step forward, and Greyson looked scared.
“This is a fucking joke,” she said in a low voice, punctuating each word. “You don’t know what you’re doing, and you’re going to get us all killed.”
She stormed out of the room and up the stairs. The rest of us just sat there, staring at Greyson. I didn’t know what to say. I knew Logan would expect me to go comfort her, but I wasn’t sure who needed me more.
Logan would never be able to outrun her PMC past, and as soon as those words left Greyson’s mouth, I knew this argument would resurrect itself whenever they fought. It wasn’t as though Greyson held Logan’s time with the PMC against her, but she thought he did, and that was enough. To Logan, Greyson’s hatred of the PMC somehow extended to her.
“What the hell happened in here?” Godfrey growled from the back door. “Christ. I leave you all for four days, and everything goes to shit.”
Amory cleared his throat and quietly righted the table. Greyson was still standing frozen, his face contorted in anger.
I wished for a moment that the others weren’t there. I just wanted to give him a hug and tell him he wasn’t incompetent or stupid. If he hadn’t hit Logan in the only place that could truly hurt her, she never would have said those things.
Then again, I suspected they were both doubly hurt by what had been said simply because of who had said it. Logan’s opinion mattered to Greyson — probably more than anyone else’s.
“Where’s the kid?” asked Godfrey absently, shrugging off his wet coat.
“She’s . . . in her room,” I said.
Godfrey didn’t comment.
“Where’ve you been?” asked Amory.
“Up north. Didn’t think I was going to make it back, to be honest.”
“Why?”
“It’s an absolute circus up there, that’s why. Two of the communes near the border have fallen, and Rulon’s old gang shut down three of the PMC’s major supply lines.”
I was glad to hear that Ida’s efforts at the communes had been successful, but if Rulon’s crew was still interfering, it wasn’t good news for either side.
“Supply lines?” repeated Amory. “How?”
Godfrey raised a grim eyebrow and flopped down in Logan’s abandoned chair. “IEDs.”
“Shit,” said Roman.
“Yeah,” said Godfrey, rubbing his head. “Those fuckers mean business, but they’re getting reckless. Rulon’s forces took a hit in the carrier breach, but he created a bunch of monsters in that camp of his. Now that he’s dead, there’s nothing to stop his thu
gs from running amuck. They’ve split off from the revolution — vigilantes, I guess you could say — made a fucking mess for Ida and the rest of us.”
Godfrey removed his knit cap and ran a hand through his wiry hair. “It’s costing a lot of lives on both sides.”
“That’s just the price you pay, though, isn’t it?” said Roman.
“It’s a war,” murmured Amory.
I looked at him, sure he didn’t mean to sound so uncaring.
“Where will the people from the communes go?” I asked.
Godfrey shrugged. “I supposed they’ll stay up north, and Ida will set up a camp. They probably won’t see any combat. After the last raid we had, well . . . they aren’t cut out for battle.”
“So what will happen to them?”
“Best case scenario, we win. They head south and go home. Worst case, we lose, and they’ll get the same as you or me. I don’t imagine the PMC would have a hard time rounding up a bunch of scared city people roughing it in the woods. But they’ll sit tight for now.”
It didn’t feel right that the people from the communes should be caught in the middle of the revolution when they’d taken no part in the upheaval. But then again, I hadn’t wanted to be part of the revolution, either. I’d just been swept up along with it.
As I watched Godfrey limp up the stairs, I couldn’t help thinking he looked years older than he had a few days ago.
All of us looked older now — tougher. We had been hardened by all the fighting, all the death, and I doubted any of us would ever be the same.
I’d watched people die. I’d killed. World Corp had stolen my identity.
Everything about who I was before had been peeled away, broken, and reset like a bone. I was functional, but I’d always be able to feel the cracks and scar tissue. There was no going back.
Two days later, I awoke to the sound of frantic knocking on my bedroom door. I peeled my eyes open lethargically, still in a haze of sleep and reeling from my latest nightmare.
In my dream, I was drowning at the bottom of a shallow pool of freezing water. Aryus was hovered over me, barely visible through the ripples. Water was rushing into my lungs, and I was quickly losing consciousness. I was going to die.