Feast of Weeds (Books 1--4)

by Jamie Thornton

  Jimmy’s squinting eyes shifted to me every few seconds, waiting for me to do something. With Leaf dead and Spencer absent, they expected me to take up the mantle, to be responsible for them, to tell them what would keep them safe and alive and relatively warm for another night. Except I had no idea what to do.

  “Gabbi, is there any food?” Jimmy whispered across the firelight.

  I grabbed a granola bar out of my pack and threw it across the fire into his lap.

  “Thanks.”

  “There’s water too,” I said. Whoever had taken the alcohol hadn’t cared about the shelf of bottled water or the pen and papers next to it. I stood up and passed out the bottles. “We should move on soon. Get as far away as possible from this whole mess.”

  “We should go back to the boxcar,” Jimmy said. “Go back to what we know.”

  Ano cocked his head, not quite disagreeing but not agreeing either. The boxcar had been our home after we’d been ‘cured’ and escaped Sergeant Bennings—before the rest of the city had fallen apart.

  “We should run,” I said. “You always run, Jimmy.” I looked to Ano for agreement.

  “But what about Mary? I thought you said she was coming back?” Jimmy said.

  Ano winced.

  I closed my eyes. All of me wanted to run, but I couldn’t just leave the message I’d scratched into the wall—Mary, we’ll back. She would wait for us and it would be my fault that we never came back for her.

  Ricker shouted out something about his brother.

  “We can’t do anything until Ricker is out of the fevers,” Ano said finally.

  A door squeaked open and feet shuffled along the ground. I tensed and looked at Ano across the fire. He held himself like a statue. At first whoever it was blended into the darkness, but then slowly took shape as it approached the fire. Spencer had returned. He went over to the water bottles. Ano relaxed.

  “It’ll be light in another couple of hours,” I said. “That’s when I think we should go back to the boxcar to leave a message for Mary.”

  “There’s no point,” Spencer said, his voice cracking.

  “What if Mary’s come back?” I said.

  “Mary isn’t coming back,” Spencer said, not looking at me.

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I do.”

  Something about how he said it felt off. “You know something,” I stood up. “What do you know?”

  “I saw her. During one of the experiments. She’s in their V cages.”

  “What did you say?” Ano shot up to stand next to me.

  “If it was her.” Spencer brushed a hand across his face. “I couldn’t get close enough to be sure, but if it was her, she’s all V now.”

  Fury rose up in me then, a small wave of it that grew bigger and threatened to crash into the sand and drag me under. “We should never have gone back for Corrina, what were you thinking, Spencer?”

  Jimmy scooted back. Maibe stayed frozen in her cross-legged position against the tub.

  Spencer took another drink of water, his presence looming over us. His seventeen years and experience on the street made him so much older than the rest of us. He was supposed to know what was best and tell us what to do and we’d just listen like we’d always done. Like we’d done with Mary, and going into the fairgrounds in the first place, and then going back for the other Feebs. All of that had turned out wrong.

  A sick feeling swelled in my chest. Spencer couldn’t be trusted anymore. I backed away from the warmth of the fire. Cold immediately slid down my spine. “Mary’s gone because you told us not to run.”

  Spencer flinched, but I kept going.

  “You all got captured, because you told us not to run.”

  Spencer didn’t move this time.

  I clenched my fists. “Leaf is dead. Because you told us. Not. To. Run.”

  Spencer’s mouth turned into a snarl, but not a sound came out.

  Jimmy was wide-eyed. Even Ano looked surprised. Maibe stared into the fire as if she couldn’t hear anything.

  “It’s time to run, Spencer. We aren’t heroes here. We’re nobodies. We’re the stray dogs people throw out onto the street when they no longer want to bother with them. We’re the weeds people spread poison over. But we don’t die, we stay alive. We stay alive because we run away. We. Run. Away.” I lifted my hands in supplication and then forced them down to my sides. I didn’t beg. I would never beg. To hell with him.

  He turned and his nose stood out in profile, his hair like a clown wig, casting cross-hatched shadows on the wall behind him.

  Ano coughed. “We should run.”

  “We should run,” Jimmy said.

  Ricker moaned in the fevers, but I knew he would have agreed with us.

  I looked at Maibe and her pink sweatshirt drying at her feet. Her hair stood out in all directions like Spencer’s. She opened her mouth and I waited to hear her vote.

  “All right,” Spencer said, almost in a whisper.

  Maibe closed her mouth and put her forehead to her knees, hiding her face.

  “All right, what?” I said.

  “We’ll run.”

  Chapter 9

  But we couldn’t run.

  The fever was a bad one. Ricker never talked about what happened before finding us, but I could guess. Sex for money, beatings, going hungry and being afraid to sleep because someone might jump you, and that was after whatever had been done to him to make him run away.

  When Ricker came out of the fevers, Maibe was still at watch by his side. He had screamed and strained against the ropes. She soothed him by crooning a lullaby.

  When the fever broke her face was all he saw, but then we all came around and cut the ropes and lifted him out and gave him water and food and space to put himself back together.

  But by the time Ricker had come out of the fevers, there was a lookout near the warehouse we were hiding inside.

  We limited our movements to using the bucket bathroom Ano and I had set up. The water ran out the third day of waiting. We weren’t built to stay in the same place like this. Jimmy kept picking at his wound, Spencer would stay in the back room alone for hours and come out with a tear-streaked face. Ano and I forced Maibe and Ricker to do silent exercises with us to keep back the memories. But the itch to run was getting to all of us—guards or not.

  On the fourth night, our breathing sounded like the beats of a familiar song run backwards. The cement was hard and cold underneath me. I licked my dry lips and drifted into the memory-rush that waited on the other side of sleep.

  “Staying at my place means my rules,” she said.

  She was my grandmother but I had never met her before and when the lady with the kind eyes dropped me off I grabbed her hand and pleaded and said, “Let me please stay with you. I will be good, I promise,” because grandmother’s eyes widened when she saw me and when they did that her eyelids disappeared into the folds of her eyebrows. The pale blue eye shadow seemed to encircle her lizard-like green eyes as if she were already dead.

  “We will pray in the morning and in the afternoon. No matter how long it takes God to hear you, he will cure you of your sins. In this I do believe with all my heart.” Her hand fluttered to her blouse, a collared, checkered thing she’d overlaid with a beige sweater. In her other hand was a big wooden spoon. Smells of spaghetti came from further in the house, but she held the spoon like a weapon and the nice lady had already left. My father had never spoken of his mother, not once that I could remember and I remember thinking that he must have just been born out of nothing, all adult and red-faced and angry.

  A screech interrupted grandmother’s drone.

  I opened my eyes to the twilight of early morning in the warehouse. My tongue felt thick and dry. A pinprick of light shined through the upper-story window. The lookout used a flashlight sometimes.

  I sat up and itched the angry red dots on my ankles to keep from thinking about how Grandmother liked to punish me for my sins. When I’d run away from h
er, CPS had caught me and decided to give it another try with my parents—but then there had been the storm and the blue house and Leaf curled on the floor next to me.

  The itch to run increased. The warehouse was too small. We were in a prison and we would die here if we didn’t get out soon.

  The screech sounded again. Soft yet piercing. Like a rat’s squeak. When I tried to find where the sound came from, I saw Maibe at the door, struggling to open it.

  “What are you doing?” I hissed. My voice echoed through the cavern. “Are you crazy?”

  “I can’t stand it inside anymore,” Maibe said. “I need to go back for Corrina. I can’t just leave her.”

  “She’s probably dead. I bet she is by now.”

  “Don’t say that,” Maibe said, raising her voice. “You don’t know.”

  A voice inside me told me I was too mean, there was no reason to hate Corrina so much that I would purposefully hurt Maibe. But then I remembered Leaf and anger washed away any hint of apology. “Quiet down,” I said. “You’ll wake them up.”

  “Already accomplished,” Spencer said.

  Jimmy was still asleep, but both Ricker and Ano sat up. Spencer was laying down as if he couldn’t be bothered.

  Ricker rubbed his face. “What’s going on?”

  “Maibe wants to go after Corrina,” I said.

  “Maybe we should,” Ano said quietly. His words somehow becoming solemn.

  A flame of anger lit up inside me. How could he be so stupid? “Close the door,” I said.

  “Corrina survived for as long as any of us,” Maibe said. “She saved my life a million times. She was alive last time we saw her—”

  “Hanging from the rope of a noose,” I interrupted.

  “She got out of that. She…Leaf got her down,” Maibe said.

  “You go outside and you’ll get us all caught,” Ricker said.

  “I won’t,” she said.

  Long minutes passed. I waited for Spencer to say something.

  She would leave no matter what we decided. She would go after Corrina on her own and Spencer wouldn’t do anything to stop it. If I went with her to find Corrina would it be betraying Leaf’s memory? Or did it even matter?

  A deep sadness took over. It felt worse than the anger. We were all going to die and Spencer wasn’t going to stop any of it anymore.

  Maibe pushed at the door again.

  “Wait.” I strapped the bat to my back and slung the crossbow over my shoulder. I went over to Maibe. A breeze passed through the crack of the door that made goosebumps rise on my skin. “I’ll go with you. Just let me help you with the door.”

  “But you just—”

  “You’ll get yourself killed without me.”

  I waited for someone to stop us. I rested my hand on the cold metal and peered into the twilight before sunrise. No one said anything. It was cold and empty and lonely out there. Almost as lonely as it was inside here.

  I shut my eyes, but saw Ano and Ricker and Jimmy and Spencer for what they were—empty shadows, bodiless breaths, ghost-memories waiting to happen.

  When I opened them, light flared out of the corner of my eye. The brief click on and off of a flashlight. I turned to Maibe. Her eyes were wide. She’d seen it too.

  And now I heard it. The shuffling of steps, the almost silent creak of gear, the hint of breathing.

  “Ano! Ano! Get them out. Get out of here!” I screamed this and threw open the door and dragged Maibe behind me.

  There was a ping and a thud into the wall. Another ping into the door. We ducked and ran away. I wanted them to go after us and give Ano time to get everyone else out. I crouched once and shot an arrow in the flashlight direction. The gravel at my feet kicked pebbles into the skin of my legs. I looked down. A dart had missed me by inches. They weren’t shooting bullets.

  Maibe yelled for me to come on. She was already yards away. I raced to catch up. I wanted to hear Ano and the rest escape. I wanted to know, but I couldn’t hear.

  Me and Maibe dodged a broken fountain. Light flared behind us. They weren’t trying to hide anymore. There were shouts, stomping feet, it sounded like an army. I looked over my shoulder to see how many there were, but the light blinded me and then the building blocked it all out.

  Chapter 10

  “Corrina?” Maibe’s voice floated through the air like mist.

  We had found Corrina like it was no big deal. Like she was just out on a walk, back from a shopping trip.

  Vs wandered the compound, most likely drawn by the noises. I was sick with worry. Sick with being separated again.

  Maibe hurried forward and Corrina cried out in joy or fear or shock or maybe all three.

  There.

  Swift and low like a wolf, a man in mud-streaked khaki pants ran toward Maibe and Corrina. I wondered if he was running from his own violent attacker, or if he was actually reliving running someone else down.

  Corrina and Maibe had not seen the V coming. I raised my crossbow, took aim, fired.

  The V went down, my arrow buried in his back. I sent another arrow flying, just to be sure. It nicked his shoulder and then skidded into the asphalt at Corrina’s feet. She jumped. The stack of cans in her hands crashed to the ground.

  Maibe spun around.

  “Get your idiot asses inside,” I said, knowing I might be calling other Vs to our spot but not able to stop myself. We had Sergeant Bennings people after us, Vs around us, and Spencer and Ano and Ricker and Jimmy gone again. I remembered when the list of names had been longer.

  I did not help Corrina and Maibe as they gathered up the cans. Someone needed to stand guard for us. Might as well be me. Since when she’d first showed up with Maibe at the boxcar, something about Corrina set me on edge. She was too earnest, too flighty, too judgmental. People like her thought they could tell me what to do because they believed they knew better than me. She wanted to save me from myself and she had no right to do that. She had helped get Leaf killed.

  Corrina led us to a barn-like building on the edge of the fairgrounds. I couldn’t believe she was still alive. The barn was dark and musty and smelled of spoiled hay. We entered the building, Corrina first, then Maibe, then me. My eyes adjusted to the darkness quickly—light streamed in from cracks in the walls and ceilings.

  Something rustled in one of the stalls and I raised my crossbow.

  “It’s Dylan,” Corrina said, pushing my crossbow to point at the ground. “He’s in the fevers.”

  Dylan was laid out on hay in one of the stalls. His low moans raised goosebumps on my arms. His right arm was thrown across his face. His legs disappeared into the hay. Sweat gleamed on skin that was beginning to show the wrinkles and tone of a Feeb. His facial hair was growing out in that rugged way I’d always preferred. Even unconscious and sick and changing, he looked muscled, healthy, attractive.

  I snorted to myself. Yeah.

  He’d infected himself with Feeb blood because of Corrina. He’d gotten himself strung up on a noose because of Corrina. Maibe and I were trapped in this barn now because of Corrina.

  I stalked back to Maibe and Corrina deep in conversation about this or that. Who the hell knows. Something about more and more Feebs and Vs waking up.

  “We can’t stay here,” Maibe said. “I think things are going to get much worse very soon.”

  I snorted. “Did you tell her how bad it already is?” I said.

  Maibe nodded.

  “But I can’t move him. Not when he’s in the fevers.” Corrina stacked the supplies in a corner along with a few other odds and ends: a bucket, a sliver of soap, some canned food, a water bottle half empty. “He’s lucid sometimes, but otherwise we’ll have to carry him. He can’t stay on his feet yet.”

  “How did you get him here?” I asked.

  “That wheelbarrow,” she said, pointing with wet hands to a dark geometrical shape in one of the corners.

  “So that’s what we use to take him out of here,” I said. “We have to find the others.”
/>   “He’s still too sick,” she responded.

  “But they’re waking up,” Maibe said. “The Vs get out of the fevers first.”

  I remembered when Mary turned. “It’s only hours for them, once they’re infected.”

  “But Feebs take longer,” Maibe said. “Days or even weeks.”

  “What about the Faints?” Corrina asked.

  Maibe looked confused. “I don’t know. Do you, Gabbi?”

  I thought about it and shook my head. “I’ve never seen someone turn into a Faint. I’ve only stumbled upon them afterwards. I don’t know what happens or even how they get sick with it in the first place.”

  “It’s the bacteria,” Corrina said quietly. “That’s what Dr. Ferrad told me.’

  “When?” I demanded. “When did she tell you?”

  “There was this room they took me into,” Corrina said. “A chair in the middle of this big room with lights and equipment.”

  My stomach felt sick. I knew exactly what she was talking about. The room with the dentist chair. The doctor in the white coat and with a clipboard had been Dr. Ferrad. I didn’t want to admit I’d seen her there in the chair. I didn’t want to admit I’d almost jumped and then stopped when I saw it was only her.

  “She said a person turns Faint when they only get infected with the Lyme disease they genetically engineered to fight the virus,” Corrina said. “A Faint happens when there’s no Lyssa virus to keep the bacteria in check.”

  “But how?” Maibe asked.

  Corrina shook her head. “Dr. Ferrad didn’t know. She said none of them know. That’s why they’re running a bunch of tests.”

  “They’re hurting people!” I said, stalking across the room because I couldn’t stand to be still one second longer. “They hurt Leaf!” My throat hiccuped on his name. Dark feelings rose up and I crunched them into a little ball inside me.

  “How many people will all this have killed by the time it’s burned out?” Corrina shook her head and closed her eyes. “It’s sickening to imagine how many people are in the fevers and there’s no one to help them through it, no one to give them sips of water or something to eat.”