Feast of Weeds (Books 1--4)

by Jamie Thornton

  “There’s no reason for you to do this,” I said. “It’s too dangerous. If they see you, see that you’re tagged, they’ll kill you.”

  “I’m not getting left behind,” Maibe said. She whipped her hair around and pulled her hood tight around her face.

  “But Maibe, the Vs.”

  “There’s no point in telling her she can’t do something,” Leaf said.

  “Unless you want to tie her up and make her a prisoner,” Gabbi said.

  “No, I—”

  “Vs will be out there,” Leaf said, “but most are locked in weird zombie states. If you don’t make any loud noises or fast movements, they’ll miss you.”

  “Or they won’t,” Spencer said. “Keep a weapon on you. Just not a gun. The noise attracts them, and they come fast, but they don’t have very good balance. Tip them over, slit their throat, but you gotta do it before they latch onto you cause their grip is like a vise. They’ll never let go.”

  “I still think—”

  He jerked his thumb at Maibe. “You can’t leave her behind or lock her up. She plans on sticking with you, get it? I’d hate to see another one of you mess up a kid because they decide they know what’s best. Hell, it wouldn’t be the first time. But you don’t know what’s best. No one does. No one ever did. It’s people like you—”

  “—Spencer,” Leaf interrupted.

  “I’m more like you than you think.”

  “Yeah,” Spencer said. “Whatever." But he lessened the edge in his voice. “Just don’t let them kill you and you’ll be fine.”

  “The zombies or the guards?” Maibe asked.

  He turned a critical eye on Maibe. She shrunk under his gaze. “Both, dumbass. Both.”

  Chapter 16

  Spencer, Maibe, and the pup-boys came out of Ike’s Bikes. We were a gang of bikers now. Pink bikes, blue bikes, green bikes, yellow bikes. Banged-up steel, scratched paint, disintegrating rubber grips, creaking chains, flat bars, drop bars. Gabbi’s bike displayed silver streamers, a skull and crossbones sticker on the head. A bat was strapped to her back with bungee cords. Someone had taken black paint to Leaf’s army green bike and striped it with an unsteady hand. Foot bars attached to his back wheel, like he was planning to do tricks, except the bars had been filed to sharp points.

  I fixed the seat of Mary’s bike to my correct height and ignored the ghosts crowding around me. Gabbi avoided looking at me or the bike, I wasn’t sure, but I didn’t blame her. It was hard not to look at Dylan or jump at his touch when he checked to make sure my brakes worked. But it wasn’t his hand, it was Spencer’s.

  I rode the bike around in circles, hoping to beat back the ghost-memories. It helped. I flipped through the gears, rechecked the brakes. The blue aluminum was flecked with dark red spots that looked more like dried blood than rust.

  Spencer came out with a contraption that looked like an oversized tricycle with a snowplow attached to the front end.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  He adjusted the seat and checked the attachments. “Old Bully. We’ll be traveling fast, right? What do you think will happen if you’re traveling at twenty miles per hour on a flimsy road bike—into a zombie hanging out on the trail?”

  I tried to picture the outcome of such a crash and then decided I didn’t want to. “Why didn’t we use the bikes before? Why did we walk?”

  Spencer fiddled with his brakes.

  Leaf finally answered, “We put them away after Mary. Mostly it’s safer to walk and hide. To stay invisible. These bikes are the opposite of invisible.”

  “We’ll be going about fifteen miles per hour in the dark. They’ll be invisible tonight. I’ll go first with this.” Spencer patted the handlebars. “We’ll push any bystanders out of the way. They might get scraped, but a crash would hurt them, and us, a lot more.”

  I didn’t know how to answer his matter-of-fact response, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to talk about bulldozing zombies off the trail.

  “Old Bully’s helped us escape some tight spots in the last few weeks,” Leaf said with affection.

  There was no wind, only a thick blanket of cold and silence. The oak trees were like statues, the street lights were dark, traffic noises were nonexistent, the grass did not rustle, no human voices spoke.

  I was anxious to move. “Are we ready yet?”

  Spencer adjusted his seat. “No,” he said.

  Anger sparked in me. His arrogant dismissal of everything I did was getting old. Wasn’t I the one who’d remembered the gap in the fence and told them the fog would be thick cover for our break-in?

  Then I realized that if anything went wrong, if it all wasn’t how I’d said, I would be at fault. This group had based their plan on me. I couldn’t remember the last time such trust had been given to me.

  Spencer stood up and brushed his hands on his jeans. “Load up,” he called out.

  Leaf jumped, as if coming back from the dead and I realized maybe he had. I thought he’d been standing guard, but now I realized he had been lost in a memory-rush.

  I walked my bike to where Maibe stood, also entranced, and gently shook her. “Maibe, time to move.”

  She shivered, shuddered, and scratched, and then focused her eyes on mine. “My uncle taught me how to ride a bike. It was the first thing we did together when he took me in.”

  Spencer positioned his behemoth of a tricycle at the head of our group and pedaled off. Gabbi took the rear position. I stayed behind Maibe. We shot down the trail and the wet fog banished the memories that had edged forward.

  Goosebumps raised on my arms. Instead of zipping up my jacket, I let the cold air wash over me. Every pedal increased my heart rate and sent the memory-ghosts back a step. Yet Dylan continued to pop in, riding his bike next to Maibe, as if we were on a date. I knew it wasn’t real. Yet. I unzipped my jacket further. I saw others did the same. We rode with our jackets open and hats off. Anything to keep the ghosts at bay.

  Spencer’s snowplow tricycle was difficult to make out in front. No working street lights meant we saw by the glow of the firelight reflecting against the fog. I wondered how long the fires and the fog might last, how difficult it might become to breathe. There was a reason so many of the city's high pollution days took place in winter. The fog trapped everything, as if it were a plastic bag wrapped around a person's head.

  I took out a scarf and folded it across my mouth. Better. I pedaled to catch up to Maibe, motioned for her attention, and then to my scarf. She took one hand off the handlebars to fix her scarf around her mouth.

  I dropped back behind her. I squinted to make out Spencer’s position. An impact sounded and an object flew off the trail. Maibe didn’t look to the side as she passed the object, but I did. Someone lay face down in the starthistle. It twitched as I rode by but did not get up. Then I was past it and put it out of my mind.

  Another hit sounded down the trail. My anxiety ratcheted higher. We’d covered several miles without seeing a soul and now Spencer had hit two bodies within a hundred yards of each other. How many more were there in the next five miles? How many more were hiding in the fog just off the trail, and how many would respond to the sounds of our pedaling, our wheels, our snowplow hits, and how many more would be drawn to us like a moth to flame, like iron to a magnet, like a tongue to a toothache?

  Maibe slammed on her brakes. I almost ran my bike into her back tire before I could stop. I also swore out loud and then caught myself. We were making so much noise.

  Spencer stopped a few yards up the trail, just before a blind curve. He left his tricycle and jogged back to our grouped bikes.

  “We have a pretty big tail forming,” Gabbi said. She took her beanie off and rubbed the side of her face as if trying to remove a stubborn piece of dirt. “They’re not that far back.”

  “How far?” Spencer asked.

  Gabbi rubbed her face harder and looked up at the surrounding fog bubble. I wasn’t alone in feeling suffocated.

  �
�Gabbi!” He said.

  “Less than five minutes if we just stand here.”

  Spencer glanced at each of us. “All right. There’s a group of about six Vs ahead. We’re going to sprint this next section, but,” he paused, “the plow won’t get all of them. So, you know, watch where you’re going.”

  Gabbi paled. Leaf swore quietly under his breath. The pup-boys traded looks. I caught Maibe’s eye. “Ride behind me,” I said. I gave her a confident smile I knew she couldn’t believe. “We’ll get through.”

  Spencer jogged away and then pedaled the tricycle around the corner, disappearing. I coughed once before suppressing the next.

  I bore down on my pedals and stood up to both increase my speed and give myself a chance to guide how I might fly off the bike if I hit something, but, god, it was dark and thick and the fog seemed determined to choke me. I twisted my handles away from what I thought was a hand reaching out but was only a thread of water vapor.

  What would I do if the plow didn’t push them out of the way? I sat back down on the seat and pictured kicking out my leg against an impending shadow, and then pictured the shadow bowling me over, falling on top of me, biting me. I stood back up, ready to launch myself off a V, even if that meant losing the chance to speed away on my bike. I sat back down as I imagined myself stuck on the trail as more and more of them caught up with us.

  I heard a hit and then another hit, but I couldn’t see worth a damn what Spencer was hitting or if he had gotten them all. All I could see was Leaf’s tire in front of me, and then I saw Leaf stand up on his pedals and kick out at something to his right side. Leaf quivered, wobbled and jerked, and managed to keep pedaling. The something fell backward, half of it across the trail. I tightened my thighs around the seat, stood on the pedals and lifted my front tire over the body. “Go to the left!” I yelled over my shoulder, hoping Maibe would hear it in time to steer around the fallen body.

  Then a shadow came lurching across the trail. I had a split second to think I couldn’t let the bike take that hit, not if I wanted to ride it out of here. I twisted the bike away and launched myself into the collision and hoped that the bike would coast and fall gently to the ground, and then I tucked my head and hit the V sideways, as if my back were a clothesline. I flew through the air and closed my eyes and protected my head and told myself not to lose consciousness. My legs whipped around painfully. I felt the impact of stopping, felt the cloth and smell of a person I didn’t know, felt my organs slam against my skeleton, felt myself almost go dark. I couldn’t afford it. I needed to spring up from the ground, bounce back, run off. My legs were like jelly, and I wasn’t quite sure where they were.

  “Get up! Get up!”

  Maibe’s voice, or my own. I couldn’t tell. I told my arms and legs to move. I told them again. After the third time a part of me moved. Someone gripped my shoulder, lifted me up. I fought the touch, I punched out.

  “Open your eyes!”

  I opened them and saw Maibe’s pink hoodie and held back another punch. I splayed my hands on the ground and tried to still the dizziness, peer down the trail, and look for my bike all at once. I collapsed on the ground as Gabbi and the pup-boys whizzed by on their bikes. They did not stop, though Gabbi frantically waved for me to get up.

  Shadows stumbled out of the fog. The others had caught up with us.

  “Maibe,” I croaked. “Get on your bike.”

  “Get up!” She whispered frantically.

  “I’m right behind you.” I stumbled to my feet. “Go!”

  She rode to where mine had fallen about twenty feet ahead. She stopped. She reached down, picked up my bike and looked back at me. “Come on—”

  The V loomed up from the trail, halfway between me and Maibe. He, she, it, made small wrenching noises, like it was sobbing, like it was hurting, and then lurched to Maibe with its arms outstretched.

  I learned to walk and then run again in the space of twenty feet. As I came alongside, I kicked out at the Vs lifted foot, pushing it into the other leg, tripping her. Her, I decided. It was a her. I tripped her and sent her tumbling to the asphalt. I grabbed the bike from Maibe. She pedaled off and I followed. My leg felt as if someone had taken a cheese grater to my skin. My head throbbed. My hands felt skinned. The bike creaked in places it shouldn’t. I looked over my shoulder and saw a mob less than a hundred feet back. I passed three more shadows on the trail, swerved, narrowly missed the first one, rode over the second one who had fallen, and then kicked the third one over while keeping balanced on the bike.

  This was a bad plan. This was a very, very bad plan. They would know we were coming. There would be no way to sneak in, no way to hide out, no way to get inside. The trail funneled the mob directly to our destination. Our noises were drawing them from their homes, their hovels, their hideouts. We would not lose them all before reaching Cal Expo. And how many were still ahead?

  This was a bad plan.

  I caught up with Maibe and the others. Spencer’s tricycle took an uphill side trail and the others followed. The trail flattened out to a staging area and Spencer and the others stopped.

  I braked and set my foot down, and then pain lanced through my knee. I set my other foot down. We were screwed.

  “All right,” Spencer said. “Couldn’t have planned it better.”

  Chapter 17

  “What are you talking about,” I blurted. “We can’t see. A mob of Vs are following us. They’re going to know we’re coming. There’s no way to sneak—”

  “Who said we were sneaking in?” Spencer arched an eyebrow.

  “I thought—”

  “Yeah. You thought. You thought and thought and still came up with crap for a plan.”

  “Hey,” I raised my hands. “I’m trying to understand—”

  “There was never a way to sneak in. We’re going to storm the castle and give Officer Hanley a nice little surprise.”

  Gabbi snickered into her glove.

  “What are you going to do?” I asked.

  “Bite him,” Gabbi said.

  “What?”

  Silence reined. I hadn’t meant to lace my response with judgment, but there it was.

  In that silence, the cold seeped through my layers. My shoulder still ached from the bite, my exposed skin felt damp and clammy. Some sort of water dripped nearby, pinging on metal. I flexed my fingers on the handlebars and focused on the ridged pattern of the rubber grips. The fog covered what would otherwise be an overwhelming smell of body odor from our adrenaline-laced ride, our boxcar living, our shower-free days. Yet still, the fog contained a hint of rotting organic matter, a swampy smell I hoped was the river and not us, or others. At least my knee felt better.

  Finally Spencer sighed. “We’re going to bite him to save his life. We're going to inoculate good old Officer Hanley.”

  “Yeah, but if he has a heart attack while we save his life, we’re okay with that, too,” Gabbi said.

  “I still—” I spoke with care, keeping my tone and words neutral, “—don’t understand.”

  Leaf shifted the bike back and forth between his hands. “We’re Officer Hanley’s stray dogs. When he felt sorry for us, he’d help out with food, a blanket. When he didn’t, we got a nice beating for trespassing. He saved Gabbi and Mary once, but then he got Ike killed, so—”

  “Enough,” Spencer said. “She won’t get it.” He turned to me. “We’re bringing the mob to them. The fog will cover us so that we’re all just blobs in the whiteness. You use the chance to get inside. We’ll use the chance for some payback.”

  I shivered and pictured the scene. I saw lots of ways for things to go wrong and few ways for things to go right. Spencer’s plan involved bringing together a mob of Vs on one side, people with guns on the other, and us in the middle with the fog for protection and a fence in the way.

  Yet. Dylan waited on the other side.

  And he was right. I didn’t have a better plan.

  “Where’s Maibe going to be in all this?” I asked.<
br />
  “I’m going through too,” she said.

  Gabbi opened her mouth, her brow furrowed. Spencer held up his hand.

  “Maibe,” Spencer said.

  “I should go through. I can do it. I can help.”

  “Maibe, we talked about this,” Spencer said. “I need you to help with the most dangerous job of all. We’re depending on you to help us get back alive.”

  “I need someone to watch my back as I watch out for the others,” Gabbi said. “I need you outside with me. I need you to help me once they’ve all gone through, to get them back out.”

  “I—” Maibe looked at me.

  “You don’t have to do it,” Spencer said. “If you’re too scared, you can go through with us. But we were counting on you.”

  “I—”

  I held my breath and hoped Maibe would agree. No way would I risk putting her in the middle of a bunch of Vs and guns and chaos.

  “Okay,” Maibe said.

  Gabbi nodded. “Thanks.”

  Spencer looked behind us, down the main trail. “There.”

  Dark shapes curled out from the fog, as if they were walking through water. I focused on breathing through my mouth to avoid taking in the swamp smell.

  “The field is around the corner,” Spencer said. “The perimeter lights will trip and then the Vs will be drawn that way. We’ll use the Vs as cover. That means you don’t want to be first to the fence line. The fog will do the rest. The guards won’t be able to see. That’s how we’ll get across.”

  I used the back of my hand to wipe away the moisture beading on the tips of my nose and eyelashes. It felt as if I scratched myself with sandpaper. I licked my upper lip and tasted salt, water, dirt. Even though we could see the mob, we couldn’t hear them, which made the whole scene more disturbing.

  “Gabbi and Maibe, this is your spot until the Vs clear out. After that, do what makes sense.”

  Maibe nodded with solemn attention. Gabbi put an arm around her shoulder.

  I lifted my leg to swing it over the bike.

  “Leave the bikes,” he said. “We’ve got to look like them.”