“I’m not your sister.”
“I don’t want to live without you,” Dylan said.
People gathered around the food tables on the opposite side of the water as Sergeant Bennings lectured everyone on the importance of the rules. The bread the woman at the hearing had wanted was laid out in trays. I could almost taste the fresh bread, the way it would tear apart in my hands, the way it would smell warm and yeasty and like home.
“You held me down for the guards,” I whispered, remembering the look of horror on his face when he’d seen I was infected.
“Corrina,” Shock washed away the feverish glow on his face. “I pushed Jane away. She was yelling. She had called the guards. They were coming and you were falling. You were falling and I caught you.”
I shook my head, feeling the rope scratch my skin. I remembered being held down. I remembered thinking Dylan was holding me down and I deserved it. My mother had left me. My father had died rather than live for me. My foster parents had asked me to leave to make room for someone else. Dylan and Jane—
“I was going to make you run, but you blacked out. I carried you. We made it all the way outside. You don’t remember? They caught us outside.”
I remembered waking up in the cage. I remembered feeling abandoned. I had believed for so long that no one could love me like I loved them. Had I wanted to believe in the lie so completely that I could see his act of courage as a betrayal?
My brain roared with these thoughts. I lost the feeling in my hands. The noose around his neck and the blood on his hands told me the answer was yes. He had infected himself and he was going to die—because of me. Because in spite of the mistakes we’d both made, he loved me too much to let me go.
Candlelight lit the tables across the moat and made the people around them look ghoulish. Sergeant held the microphone to Dylan. “Any last words before the New Year?”
“I love you,” Dylan stared at me not bothering to address Sergeant Bennings or the crowd. His words echoed across the darkness. Redness flushed his cheeks. Sweat gleamed on his forehead and trickled down his temples. The fever rising in him made him glow. He was beautiful. “You may have feared I stopped,” he said. “I was afraid of that too, but I realized…I don't want to be in this world without you. ” He turned to the crowd. “Fillipa was right.”
Sergeant Bennings gently pulled back the microphone with his gloved hand. He spoke through the medical mask. “As we usher in this New Year, remember that this fight isn't over. We will not give in to the darkness. We will not give up without a cure!”
Dylan stood tall on the box.
Sergeant Bennings turned the microphone in my direction. “Let no one say we cannot show mercy. Do you have any last words before we give you release from this terrible disease?”
I shook my head, no. There was nothing left to say, I was sorry for my own part in all of this. I hadn’t trusted my own worth. Now the person I loved most in the world would die because of me and—
A flash of pink at the edge of the crowd caught my eye. A small person in a pink sweatshirt had climbed onto a stairwell and was making a “keep rolling” motion like out of the movies.
Sergeant Bennings signaled to a guard.
“Wait,” I said. “I have something to say.”
***
January
***
***
“…I came here out of love, not violence. I came here to save someone I love. That’s what I tried to do. I tried my best, even though I knew my best might not be good enough, not even close. But you’ve got to know that deep down—”
Chapter 27
“—I am you. I am a real person. We are real people. We are not—”
Screams from across the moat interrupted my speech. The food table lay turned on its side on the ground. The soup, the fresh bread, the coffee, all of it was splattered onto the ground, a mix of colors mashing into a dull brown glop. Candles guttered and snuffed out. Trickles of soup streamed into the moat.
More people screamed and began running. The generator lights revved on, drowning everything in an eerie silver relief. It looked as if something red, almost black, had been added to the soup stream. Sergeant Bennings and the guards began shouting into their radios. Had the Vs gotten in?
“Corrina?”
I tore my focus away from the commotion and saw Dylan flushed, sweating, his eyes glazed.
His legs wobbled and his weight gave out.
“Dylan!” I lurched to him. The noose tightened around my neck. His body dangled from the rope, his feet limp, his knees bent and inches from the ground.
My hands were bound. The rope bit deeply into my skin and cut off my breath but it was not enough to close the distance.
Dylan’s face turned red and then a deep shade of purple.
I screamed, pulled close, inches away now, so close. The rope dug a sharp ditch of pain into my neck. Lights burst in front of my eyes.
I fell to the ground.
My chest bloomed with pain from hitting my cracked ribs, but the ache around my neck lessened. Somehow, the noose no longer held me back.
I scrambled over to Dylan, turned my back to him, fumbled with my bound hands until I caught his belt. I strained upward. My knee popped. I added the pain to the list of injuries to ignore, continued to lift, to try to ease the pressure of the rope, to get air back down his throat.
I draped his weight over my back, and then I was stuck. I had locked my injured knee and knew if I moved it, both of us would go down and the noose would tighten again.
“Dylan!”
He gasped for breath across my back. His weight brought me to the point of collapse.
I tilted my head, tried to breath, tried to think, tried to keep my legs locked even as I felt my knee begin to fail.
Then there was someone, Leaf, using a knife to saw through Dylan’s rope.
My knee gave out. I fell hard onto my stomach. My face slammed into wood. I breathed in dust and tensed, waiting for Dylan’s weight to hit me. Nothing.
He still hung from the noose.
I scrambled back up as Leaf cut through the last threads. I could not stop Dylan from falling, only help control it.
Leaf waved to me, a goofy grin on his face as if this was all one big game. His hair was tousled, his shirt bloody. He ran for the other side of the stage.
There was a crack of a rifle.
Leaf’s chest bloomed red. Shock overcame his grin. He fell on his face.
I screamed but before I could move, the soldier turned his gun from Leaf to me. I shielded Dylan's unconscious form with my body and waited for the inevitable.
The gun dropped from the soldier’s hand. An arrow sprouted from his chest. Blood spread from the hole. He fell to the ground like a domino.
Gabbi stood behind him, in the moat, the muck up to her thighs, crossbow in hand. “Get off the stage,” she yelled. “The goddamn guards let the Vs in.” Then she leapt out of the moat and disappeared into the chaos that included Vs tearing into those people not fast enough to escape or strong enough to fight back.
I knelt next to Leaf and checked for breathing, for a pulse, for anything.
There was nothing.
I smothered a cry and left him. There was nothing I could do.
I limped back to Dylan and rolled him onto his back. He lay still. His eyes were closed, his mouth hung slightly open, his hair was tangled, his clothes were askew, his face was still and an unhealthy red. I stroked his forehead and held my breath and leaned my cheek over his mouth.
Hot breath caressed my skin.
Dylan was breathing.
I smelled the coffee he must have had that morning. I smelled him, alive. I pressed my hand against his beating heart and bent my forehead so that it touched his chest for a moment.
He was alive.
I sat back up and made a more thorough examination of his body. The changes from the infection already showed. He was unconscious from the fever. A muscle in his cheek and neck b
egan to twitch.
I dragged him off the gallows and the stage, not very gently.
Sergeant Bennings leapt into the moat and climbed a light pole. He hung on it with one arm, directing soldiers and people, firing shots. His pants were wet to the waist, he’d lost one boot, but he did not stop his work until he caught my stare. He lifted his gun and aimed in our direction. One of the Vs jumped into the moat, catching his remaining boot and hanging from it, began to climb. Sergeant Bennings shot the V in the head dropping the body into the water.
I dragged Dylan out of sight before Sergeant Bennings could return his attention to us. Snot ran down my nose and I coughed around tears. It wasn't fair to leave Leaf there, alone, but I didn't see any other way. I searched for something, anything, to help me carry Dylan. I found a wheelbarrow of garden supplies, overturned it to make room, and maneuvered Dylan into it. For a moment, I swore an almost-dead blueberry plant rested in the wheelbarrow between Dylan's knees.
The fog hung thick in the air. It sent tendrils across our path like fingers ready to pull us away into its depths. The sounds of fighting and screaming and dying mixed with ghost-memories of Sergeant Bennings' soldiers, Vs attacking, people appearing out of nowhere. The only way to tell they weren’t real was a faint translucence that took a moment for my brain to register. If any one of them had been real, I would not have acted in time.
I steered us away from the fighting groups, into the silence of the empty state fair buildings. The tire pressure was low, which made the wheelbarrow unstable. Dylan almost tumbled out twice. Not that he would have known it, unconscious, sweating, his skin developing this weird, aged, gray. The infection worked so fast.
The silence became thick like a blanket. My panicked escape settled into a steadier pace. We were far away from the moat, the gallows, the cages, the fighting. A part of me wanted to go back and help. Leaf was dead. What about Maibe and the others? But I couldn't leave Dylan. Not like this, not when he was so helpless. If anyone found him, V or uninfected, he'd be dead within seconds.
I focused on slowing down my breathing, on pushing us onward, on not looking at Dylan’s sick form. I could do nothing for him until we reached the safety of the only place I could think to take him: the barn.
Dylan’s weight shifted and caught me off guard. I lost my grip on the handles. The wheelbarrow screeched to a halt. I waited for someone to hear it and come running. No one came, no one other than the ghosts.
When I picked up his weight again, I pushed myself into a slow jog, ignoring the pain in my knee and ribs and chest. I used the momentum to steer us around another building’s corner. The barn came into sight, it's rectangular form appearing out of the fog like a dark brush of paint.
It took precious seconds to register that someone real stood between us and the building.
The wheelbarrow slowed to a stop. There was no way to know from this distance if it was a Feeb, V, Faint, or an uninfected. So many labels for people. I didn't like any of them.
I decided I had to leave Dylan and check out the situation. I hated to leave him. But Dylan’s unconscious body would only hinder my ability to deal with whoever was ahead. I kissed Dylan’s fevered forehead. He thrashed for a moment. Said something in a whisper. It was in the grip of the memory-fevers, I knew it was, but I thought I heard—
“Jane,” he said again in a long whisper, as if caressing the name.
I stumbled back. I feared—I could not stand the thought he was remembering being with Jane at that moment as if it were happening right then and there, as if he had traveled back in time and—
I closed my eyes. Stop. Stop it, stop it. I began to run. Anything to push back the bile that had risen in my throat and the hot tears that threatened to pour down my cheeks. It didn’t matter what was up ahead. If it was a V or someone ready to kill me, so be it.
The figure did not acknowledge me as I approached and I knew it must be one of the Faint. Her back was to me, but I recognized the clothes from somewhere. Blue jeans and a sweater set.
My old woman. The one who had met me in the barn, the one Dylan had saved, the one captured and in the cages. She might as well have had nine lives though she looked the worse for wear now. Dirt covered her previously pristine clothes. Holes dotted her jeans. Something dark and crusty smeared her face. Blood most likely. She stared out into the nothingness of space, at the river and bike trail, but really at nothing at all.
Some noise I couldn’t place whipped me around. It was off in the distance, as if a puff of breeze had moved the sound in just the right direction. Groans and screams and the pop-pop of gunfire.
I hurried back to Dylan. His eyes were closed, his body feverish, his neck bent at an awkward angle, resting on the edge of the wheelbarrow. The building was right there. I would settle him in a stall and then lead her in as well. I’d done it once before, I could do it again.
The stillness inside the barn was different than outside. More complete, more solid, as if entering a church. I dared not whisper for fear of offending something. The stalls were open, inviting, the sweet smelling hay still in piles. The open door let in enough light to see the hay, but not enough to see into the dark corners.
I left Dylan at the door. My steps dragged, my eyes drooped, Entering the building somehow signaled to my brain that we were safe now. But we weren’t. There was no way to know until I had checked. Exhaustion came quickly and heavily anyway. I did my best to scare myself awake by imagining Vs and soldiers hiding in corners, ready to tear me limb from limb.
After I checked, I dumped Dylan rather unceremoniously onto the hay, stretched him out, and then I went back for the woman. I would bring her in, then I would care for Dylan until he was well enough to walk. We would all go back to the bike shop. If the pup-boys and Maibe weren’t there, we’d go to the boxcar. I decided not to think about what would happen if they weren’t at one of those two places. I allowed myself a moment of grief for Leaf’s death. He had been the nicest one of them all. Without him, we would be hanging from the gallows.
I stepped out of the barn. Someone yelled.
I dropped to all fours, sleepiness gone. Was it Maibe? No, it had been a male’s voice. One of the pup-boys?
There was nothing in my field of view except for the truck I had spent so many hours under when I first broke into Cal Expo. I pressed my back against the exterior wall of the barn and crept to the corner. Slowly, like a snail, I edged around it.
Two men stood a few feet back from the woman in the sweater set. Sergeant Bennings' soldiers.
They seemed about to shoot her down. I held my breath and waited. Instead, one of the men, bloodied and stoop–shouldered from exhaustion, pulled out a dog noose. I turned away from the sight of her being led away, back to whatever experiments they did. I should not have left her.
My mind whirled with all the things I could have done to stop her from being taken. I returned to the dark barn. When I didn’t see Dylan my breath quickened and my heart pounded.
There.
The hay covered him almost completely.
I settled in to watch. It was in our best interests for me to stay awake and stand guard. The fatigue I had pushed back until now washed over me like an ocean wave. It pulled my eyelids down, forced me into a crouch, a sit, and I leaned back and tried to force open my eyes again. Failed.
I remembered the hydrophobia. Dylan needed water. I forced myself back up from the weight of sleep that wanted to keep me in place. I searched for the cup I'd used once before. I filled it with water and propped Dylan up to drink. His eyes were closed, but when the water touched his lips he grimaced in pain.
I kept the water at his lips and he finally took a little of it. He flashed open his eyes for a second. I wasn’t sure if he saw me or an illusion.
“I always wanted—” his voice cracked, “—to grow old with you.” He smiled to make his joke clear.
“I guess you’ll get your wish sooner than you thought.” A half-smile forming on my lips.
&nb
sp; His hand wrapped around my head and pulled me deep into a kiss. He smelled like home and my skin electrified at his touch.
“Corrina,” he breathed out when he released me.
“I’m here. I’m here, Dylan.”
I pressed myself against his side and felt his fever burn like a fire against my body.
Chapter 28
The wheelbarrow was made of metal. The paint the color of a banana peel, chipped and flaked.
I noticed this when I woke in the morning. The wheelbarrow was inches from the stall, right where I had abandoned it after dumping Dylan out of it.
I sat up, felt for Dylan. There. Still under the hay, still breathing.
He needed to drink and maybe eat if I could get food into his mouth. I had no idea how long I’d slept or how the situation outside the barn might have changed. I decided not to beat myself up for falling asleep. What was the point? I would have to sleep while Dylan went through the memory-fevers. If it was anything like mine, it would last for weeks. I didn’t think the wheelbarrow or my muscles were in a state to carry Dylan miles away to safety. At least not today.
I scouted the buildings near the barn. I kept low to the ground and came back as soon as I found a jackpot of canned food in the cabinet of a little kitchen off one of the buildings. Sergeant Bennings' men might come around at any moment, so I made my shirt into a bag and stuffed it full of canned beans and apricots. I grabbed a kitchen knife at the last second, remembering I needed a way to open the cans.
I returned to the barn, gave Dylan some more water, but he was in no state to eat. My stomach rumbled. I would not dare start a fire, so I ate the beans cold, the rough texture welcome in my mouth even though I had always thought cold beans were gross. The sweet apricot slices went down more easily.
In the dim light of the barn, I could not be sure, but I thought I saw the beginnings of web-like lines appear on Dylan's skin. He shouldn't have done it. He shouldn't have risked himself for me.
Feast of Weeds (Books 1--4) Page 27