“Okay, but everyone knows you can’t just walk into…into…it’s not this easy, it’s never this easy in the movies.”
The kid and her damn movies. I closed my eyes in frustration. She wasn’t wrong, but she wasn’t right either. And mostly, this was the only plan I had. “It’s not going to be easy. Use your eyes, look around, but don’t look like you’re looking around. Figure it out—are people talking to each other? Then look like you’re talking. Are they working alone, in pairs, in silence? Do that. Are you clean enough to blend in? Being too dirty is a surefire way to stand out. If everyone around you can smell you, then they know you’re not like one of them, that there’s something wrong about you and they’ll call the cops in.” I realized my mistake too late.
“Cops?”
“Soldiers, guards—whatever. Come on.” I began to walk away.
“Gabbi? Wait, okay. Just hold on.”
I stopped and gritted my teeth. I didn’t have any better ideas. This was it.
Maibe held the blankets under one arm, the fabric so big and bulky it spilled to the ground in haphazard waves. “You said we need to blend in, right? That’s what you said, you said we can’t be too dirty or talk too much or—”
“That’s what I said.”
“We’re too clean now and you have to leave behind your crossbow and backpack.”
I cocked my head, my frustration fading. I really looked at the people we were about to step among. There was plenty of noise. Different stations where some people cleaned gear, washed dishes, moved boxes of supplies. There was even a hint of yeast as if someone was baking fresh bread. She was right. Nobody wore a backpack like mine, and definitely not a weapon.
I went to the closest trash can, lifted off the top, and removed the plastic bag that contained a few candy bar wrappers and soda cups. I bundled our weapons and supplies in one of the blankets and set them at the bottom of the can. I replaced the plastic bag and covered the top.
“Where’d you learn to do that?”
“Storage space is expensive,” I said and shrugged my shoulders.
“So what about being dirty?”
I cringed at the next steps. It didn’t matter, but I couldn’t shake the secret feeling that it did. Using up our water bottles had been such a waste.
“Run your hands along the ground and wipe it on your face.”
Maibe also pulled out hair from her braid. I undid my ponytail and plunged my hands into the strands to tangle them. I hated being dirty because this was the way to get caught.
But it wasn’t, it wasn’t anymore.
“Done,” Maibe said.
I picked up the remaining stack of blankets and we walked through the alley. “You did good to notice that, Maibe. You probably saved us.”
“I know,” she said.
I glanced over and saw the kid was actually smiling. A small smile crept on my lips. “Don’t get cocky. You may have outrun those Vs at the van and helped us from getting caught just now, but you’re still just an oogle.”
“A what?” she said around the smile.
“New to street life,” I said. “But you’re catching on fast. Faster than I did. You might survive this after all.”
Her smile grew and I decided to make sure that she did survive this.
We entered the grim bustle of people who’d never expected to be here. Still, they were idiots for not taking the Feeb vaccine. They were the uninfected, those still considered human according to whoever was in charge. If they became infected by a Faint or a V—that’s what they would turn into. They’d be gone forever. Being a Feeb meant the bacteria kept the virus in check. Yes, there were side effects—the skin, the memory-rushes and fevers and ghosts, but the point was it still was YOU. Mostly.
I made us walk straight through the middle. There were people of all ages. Men, women, some kids. All bundled against the cold in grungy layers of clothing. If they looked too closely at our faces and hands we’d be discovered but no one did because they couldn’t believe a Feeb would just waltz through like it was nothing—and a V couldn’t hide itself for long.
Close to a hundred people moved around and not one stopped us until we reached the other side of the square. A man in fatigues held a rifle lazily against his shoulder and stood to the side of a metal door that went into the building.
A guard meant there was something worth guarding. Maybe prisoners. Maybe Spencer and the others.
I lifted the blankets higher and kept walking. He motioned for me to stop and I did, but not until I was in the shadow of the building. I felt Maibe’s weight press into the back of me, using my body to hide herself. I hugged the blankets to my chest. We were maybe a half dozen yards away. Close enough that he knew we meant to go his way, but hopefully not close enough for him to notice details about our skin. He hadn’t raised his rifle yet, so I took it as a sign that he couldn’t see our Feebness yet.
I opened my mouth to speak, not knowing what to say but hoping something would come to me. “He said to bring some extra blankets.”
“Who told you that?”
I rolled my eyes like it was the dumbest question in the world. “You know who.”
“Sergeant Major Bennings made this a restricted area.”
Ahh, Sergeant Bennings. He’d been the white suit who’d shot us up with the bacteria vaccine.
“Well, he’s the one who wants the blankets, so—” I shrugged my shoulders. “We can give them to you and you can take them, I guess. We’re supposed to help with food prep right now anyway and they’re going to get mad if we take too long.” I shifted my weight from one leg to the other.
“Is it chili?” He raised his eyebrows in a hopeful expression.
I knew what that felt like, the anticipation of eating your choice of comfort food instead of whatever weird leftovers people felt compelled to share. Not that I held it against them, food was food and I hadn’t been a picky eater in a long time, but still, being able to choose what to eat, when to eat it, and how much of it to eat—that would always feel like a luxury.
“Yeah, chili. They found a whole case of cans, and she’s in a good mood tonight, so there’s even going to be real beef I think. At least, that’s what she was talking about. Oh, my god, it smelled so good when I left to bring the blankets. And, okay, this is a secret, though it won’t be for long because everyone’s going to smell it, no way to keep the smell down—”
“What?”
“They’re making fresh bread. They’ve already tested a batch of it just to make sure the yeast was still alive and it works and oh, my god they let me have a slice and it was…warm.” I pointed my chin in the direction of the building. “I don’t really like going in there. If you take the blankets, I can try to come back with a slice.”
The blankets in Maibe’s hands tumbled to the ground.
I froze and stared at the guard to see what he would do. Maibe quickly bent over and picked the blankets back up. I recognized the look on his face. Spencer had played me many times just like this. The guard was too busy figuring out what the most responsible thing would be to do while still getting that slice of bread.
“I can’t leave my post.” He narrowed his eyes. “But get in and out fast and bring me a slice of that bread while it’s still warm.” He straightened and lifted the rifle to his side. “Move it.”
I lifted the blankets even higher and kept my head turned as we scurried through. “We’ll be right back.”
Once we made it to the end of the alleyway, it dumped us into another open square, but this one was empty of people except for a trio of soldiers that held a prisoner by a long pole and noose.
I walked us along the back wall until a planter, pole, and shadows hid us from the clump of people.
“Gabbi?”
“What,” I hissed. Should we go for the building they’d just left or for the building they were dragging the person to?
“Do you think they really have fresh bread here?”
I looked sideways at her
and shook my head. “Maybe, but we’re not getting any of it.”
“Oh.” Her face fell even though she did her best to hide her disappointment. A thirteen-year-old wasn’t supposed to care so much except that this was about food, and food could make or break a thirteen-year-old.
“I’ll make you a fresh loaf when this is all done, okay? It’s not that hard.”
Her eyes brightened and her mouth turned back into a smile.
A commotion across the square drew my attention back to the problem in front of us. A boy who looked near Maibe’s age came running up to the group. Uninfected.
“Dad! Dad!”
A soldier from the group stepped away and said in a voice loud enough for us to hear, “Alden, don’t come over here.” Sergeant Bennings’ voice. “I told you not to come over this way.”
“There’s trouble at one of the gates,” Alden said. “Some Vs got inside.”
“Why didn’t someone else come?” Sergeant Bennings said.
Maibe looked at me. “Do you think those are the Vs that came in after us?”
“Probably,” I said.
“I think I know him. The boy. We went to school together.”
“That’s great, come on.” I moved us closer, skirting the edge of the square. “Don’t skulk,” I said. “We’re not trying to hide. If it looks like we’re hiding—”
“—then it looks like we don’t belong,” Maibe finished.
“Good,” I said without looking back.
All of the soldiers’ focus was on the father and son and the prisoner. The Vs chasing us through the gap in the fence had created the diversion we needed. We could probably sneak in unnoticed. Except who knew what waited on the other side of those glass doors? It could be empty or full of soldiers.
Maibe drew in a sharp breath. “That’s Corrina.”
“What?” The noose was tight around the prisoner’s neck, her clothes were well worn and could have been what she’d been wearing last, but I hadn’t paid much attention. It was jeans and a t-shirt and sneakers. The outfit of choice for millions. Her back was to us as well, but the hair did look familiar. But really, it was a miracle she’d survived as long as she had so I doubted it was her, but then she was enough of a do-gooder dumbass to get caught, so it could be her.
“It’s her, I know it’s her. Just look!” Maibe’s voice rose slightly at each word.
“Keep it down, stupid.”
“It’s her,” Maibe whispered.
The prisoner turned her profile to us for just a moment, but it was enough to confirm Maibe’s suspicion. Corrina’s hair and prominent nose and sharp chin were unmistakable, even at this distance.
“We’ve got to help her.” Maibe moved forward a step.
I dropped the blankets and caught her arm. The wool tumbled to the ground in a messy heap signaling something wrong to anyone who looked. “Not like this with a bunch of soldiers around. Are you crazy?”
She pulled against my arm. I badly wanted to pick up those blankets and bring back the semblance of safety they gave me, but Maibe looked likely to run and blow the whole thing. “Stop and think. They’re taking her exactly where we’re going to go. Maybe they’re taking her to Spencer and the others. We have to wait. We have to follow and wait for darkness or some sort of cover.”
Maibe finally relaxed. “Okay.”
I dropped her arm and fixed my stack of blankets. The stuffy, dog-like smell of the wool comforted me.
Sergeant Bennings returned to the group, said a few words, and then left with the boy.
The soldiers disappeared with Corrina through the glass doors of the building. Before the doors closed, they revealed a large warehouse with lots of spaces to hide.
Chapter 4
We slipped through the unguarded doors. Shadows inside the warehouse tricked my eyes at first into believing people hid within the aisles of machinery, furniture, sign boards, exhibit frames. Cement formed symmetrical columns that rose to impossibly high ceilings. Paint peeled off the columns in thick chips, and dusted the junk beneath. Dirt, rat droppings, grease, rust, who knew what else, covered the cement floor.
Maibe and I hid in one of the aisles. Above our heads ran a network of catwalks attached to a spiral staircase of metal. Even looking at them upset my stomach and turned my brain fuzzy and made the memories crowd close. Soldiers, and strangely, people in doctor uniforms, came and went through the door at the far end of the warehouse. Someone had put up an entire section of rooms with framing, plywood, maybe caging of some type, it was hard to tell.
My heart skipped a beat when I examined the catwalk again. The grating skirted just a few feet above the makeshift rooms like a metal skeleton. My feet lost feeling as I pictured climbing across. The grating was low enough for me to jump onto the ceilings of the rooms below it and high enough to freak me out. But no matter—I had found my way in and I would climb those stairs and that catwalk, memory-rush or not.
“I need you to stand guard while I go up high.”
“But it’s one of your triggers.” Maibe rose from the floor. “The memory-rush will take over and I won’t be able to get you down and—”
“I’ll be fine,” I said even though I didn’t really know that. My stomach grumbled and I thought about the supplies left behind in the garbage can. Things had been moving so fast, I hadn’t made us eat anything since yesterday. The sky outside had darkened considerably in the last hour which only increased the spookiness of the place—but my catwalk would be hidden as soon as I crossed the lip of the first room’s wall. I didn’t want to waste another minute, the itch of finally going into action begged to be scratched. Plus the sooner I climbed up, the sooner I could get back down.
Maibe set up at the base of the spiral stairs, behind a damp and molding cardboard box of marketing materials for a waterless cookware set. I grabbed a nearby screwdriver, thinking it would make an excellent weapon and maybe a way to dig the others out through the drywall.
I prided myself on climbing the stairs like a ninja cat, whatever that was, using yoga skills learned at the gym that had served me well on the streets when it came to dodging undesirable people, animals, vehicles. It felt as if I were climbing two stories even though it was probably not much more than one story. Sweat made the screwdriver slippery in my hand. I wiped my palms on my clothes and smelled that distinctive metallic odor that always happened when skin touched cheap metal. I jammed the screwdriver into my waistband and cursed and told myself to get it together. My head felt woozy and full of space, as if there wasn’t enough oxygen this high up.
Maibe’s waiting form disappeared over the lower horizon of the ceiling panels as I crawled. Now, other than the pale light that filtered in, everything was dark and I was safer than ever, like I was pressed between a sandwich made of ceiling and roof. I crouched to rest for a moment, to still my heart rate, to concentrate on my breathing, to feel something solid even if it was just the grate under my fingers. But it was a mistake to stop moving. The memories crowded in and my mind went dark and then lit up blue, everything was pale blue and I watched it all transform into a house and I knew the house.
The pale blue house stood alone and lightning lit it up in flashes because there were no street lights that worked on the bad side. The rain soaked through my layers of clothing and newspaper and the wind drove the rain into all of me and everything smelled like the rot in take-out boxes left in the dumpster too long.
Father carried the last bit of food—a box of crackers. He was drunk. That kind of red-faced drunk that made him walk around like a sailor on board a ship in a storm. The rain and the wind and the darkness soaked the streets and turned them into streams that would soon roar into rivers if we didn’t take shelter soon and I waited for Father to notice the blue house because if I said it first he would never let us go inside. I was eleven and I wanted to go inside but I was afraid of Father’s red-rimmed sloshy eyes that meant he would hit me soon and maybe my mother too.
My mother held my hand eve
n though water slipped between our palms and she pinched hard to keep hold. She stumbled behind Father and the lightning showed how tired she felt and how she wouldn’t stand up for me tonight if I made Father angry.
Father’s feet stopped moving but his body swayed back and forth. “There,” he said, swallowing the word like a gulping goldfish, but he said it.
People-shapes moved behind the windows and I clamped down on my mother’s hand until she said, “Gabriela!” and yanked her hand away and I fell into the street river, the water splashing onto my face, cold, gritty, smelling of oil and those outside bathroom places we used sometimes. But my knees burned because I wore shorts but the water would wash away the blood and it would be okay once we got inside. Except there were people inside, or maybe demons inside, and then we would have to keep looking but then the river would drown us.
Father stumbled up the path and my mother followed and I ran after them. The water dragged my feet down like weights and the cold made my legs move slowly. He pushed on the front door and fell over inside because it hadn’t been latched. It was open as if waiting for us to find it and use it but demons always liked to invite you inside, like you were meant to be there, before they revealed their true nature. Alli had taught me that at the last shelter Mother and Father had taken us. She said those were the places you had to watch for the most. The unlocked places.
But Father and Mother did not know about Alli’s stories. They kept going and I followed because they would not care if I stayed all night outside and that would be worse.
There were people inside, but it was so dark and only the lightning sometimes showed them. There might have been demons walking around, hiding in the shadows, and there was lightning and one of the shadows stayed a shadow. I ran to my mother and grabbed her hand even though she might slap me for surprising her. But she didn’t notice.
“Just give me the box, Dennis. I’ll keep it for us.”
Father laughed and I was not sorry for the dark because then I didn’t have to see the look on his face and then there was a ripping sound, the kind cardboard and plastic make, the kind food wrappers make.
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