“He likes it here,” Corrina said.
“We see how you look at the fences,” Ricker said. “You’re thinking about running away.”
“We’re being held prisoner!” I said. It should have been the most obvious thing in the world to them. “We aren’t supposed to be here. What about Dutch Flat? What about escaping?”
No one answered.
“Dylan said they didn’t even hurt him,” Ricker said. “They’re really looking for a cure this time.”
“You can’t believe that. You can’t. Not after everything. Not after what they did to Leaf.”
“Even Leaf said it was an accident,” Ricker said.
“Ano? Maibe? You can’t possibly think—”
“I will go with the group,” Ano said. “Stay here, go there. Die one way or die another.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. A few weeks of calm, of food, of the safety being a prisoner gave us, and they were ready to give up? It made my head spin, how quickly things had changed. I didn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe it. They weren’t stupid enough to think everything was going to be okay now, were they? “Maibe? What do you think?”
She looked uncomfortable with all the attention directed at her. She probably wasn’t used to having her opinion count for much, but it mattered to me what she thought. No matter how many times I might have dismissed her out loud, deep down, I knew she was smarter than me. I knew she was worth listening to.
“I think it’s been okay so far,” she said, but she must have seen the crushed look on my face. “But that doesn’t mean things will stay that way.”
“It’s not like you’re going to get a chance to escape anytime soon,” Dylan said. “They’re not letting anyone out unless they trust them. We’re not exactly high on their trust list.”
“It hasn’t been so bad yet,” Corrina said softly. “That doesn’t mean I’m okay with it, it’s just…I thought Tibby was giving us a line when she did her whole ‘race for the cure’ speech. But it seems like they really are trying.”
“We’re calling her Tibby now?” I said.
“Tabitha, then,” Corrina said. She looked at me like she was worried about me. Like there was something really wrong with me and she wished she could fix it. “We thought maybe if you could get on their V team or whatever they call it—”
“We? You’ve all been talking about me? The problem that is me?”
Their silence was answer enough. My appetite disappeared. They thought I was going to ruin it for them. “They treat us like criminals and you’re okay with that? You’re really okay with that?”
“They need us,” Ano said. “They need us to help find the cure. They need us to fight the Vs for them. It’s too dangerous for them otherwise.”
“It’s different here,” Dylan said. “When I was working with Sergeant Bennings, they treated anyone infected like they were rabid animals, like—”
“—we’ve turned into zombies that deserve to die,” Maibe said it like it was fact.
Jimmy returned with a token amount of gravy. He didn’t look at me.
Corrina pressed her lips together, ready to protest the word zombie like she’d done a million times in the past, but then tilted her head. “We do sort of look the part,” she said with a toothy grimace.
The tension broke. I surveyed our table. I’d gotten so used to how all of us looked. Wrinkled. Sickly transparent skin that, even on the darkest of us, veins and bruises snaked up and around and across. Bloodshot eyes, achy joints. Crippled memories.
“I vant to eat vour vraaaaaiiinns,” Ricker said suddenly. He lifted up his hands like two cat claws and swiped at Jimmy’s head.
“Zombies don’t talk like that, idiot,” Jimmy said. “That’s a vampire. And vampires don’t eat brains.”
“I vant to eat vour vraaaaaiiinns,” Ricker said louder, moaning it out and grabbing Jimmy’s head with both hands.
“Get off!” Jimmy said.
Maibe started giggling. Ricker turned to her in appreciation and did his little comic relief act for a third time while Jimmy fought him off.
“Not funny!” The look of horror on Jimmy’s face sent Ano into laughter.
“You know I hate vampires…zombies…whatever you’re supposed to be!” Jimmy said.
That sent the rest of us laughing, even me, until Jimmy swiped Ricker’s bowl and licked it clean.
“Hey!” Ricker said, dropping his arms and his zombie/vampire expression.
“Yum,” Jimmy said. “If this is what brains taste like, I could be down for this.”
“That was the last of it!” Ricker said.
“Sorry, not sorry,” Jimmy said.
“You will be.” Ricker pushed Jimmy onto the floor, but Jimmy grabbed Ricker’s shirt and took him down too, and then they wrestled. Ano laughed again and pushed Ricker in the back to unbalance him just as he was about to pin Jimmy.
I left them that way, laughing and fooling around and forgetting for a moment this new world we all lived in.
Tabitha walked by. I followed her outside to the pit toilets. I thought about Jimmy’s outburst. I thought about what Maibe said. I thought about how they looked—full of food, well-rested, and ready to stop running. “I want to join the team that goes outside. The ones that go after the Vs.”
She stopped in mid-stride and replaced her foot on the ground. She turned to me with the same care. She led us in the exercises every morning after all. Even though she was older, there was a power in the way she carried herself. She hid her strength, but you could see it when she moved in the mornings. She scared me a little bit.
I forced myself not to squirm under her gaze, but it was a close thing. She had those eyes that seemed to pierce into you, to probe for weakness or for faintness of heart or for some sort of darkness. A smile curled at her lips. She brushed away a loose strand of hair. “Why should they trust you?”
That was the question she asked, those were the words she spoke, but I knew what she was really asking was why SHE should trust me.
“You probably shouldn’t,” I said. “I’m a runaway. I don’t follow the rules. I mess simple things up. I get really angry and lose my temper a lot.”
She raised her eyebrows.
“But I don’t mind taking chances. When I care about something, I can be pretty loyal.” Even as I spoke the words to convince her, I knew how dumb they must sound, but I couldn’t force out any promises about dying for her cause or fighting to the death or standing up for what was right no matter what. They would be lies and she would know it.
“Why would I want a runaway on the team?”
And even as she said ‘the team’ I knew somehow she meant HER team and my curiosity soared into the atmosphere. “I probably know better than a lot of other people on the team about how to move around without being seen, how to hide, how to run, how to fight.”
She inclined her head in tacit agreement. “Yes, well, this might be true. For one reason or another, those of us infected and brought here have very little military background, if any. Father’s father, that sort of thing.”
“I don’t have any code of honor,” though even as I said the words, I realized I clearly did, it just wasn’t what many other people counted as honorable. “I’d be willing to take jobs no one else wanted as long as I knew why, as long as it made sense to me. I know what it’s like to live on barely any food and to sleep anywhere I can and to still take care of business.”
“How many Vs have you killed?”
“A dozen—at least,” I said. “With my own hands or a crossbow or bat. I don’t mind getting my hands dirty.”
She nodded.
“I would kill uninfect—”
“—Hush,” Tabitha said.
I stopped and pressed my lips together. I looked up at the guard towers. Surely they were too far away to hear any part of our conversation. But then I remembered the locked cells. How did they know everyone was inside if they didn’t have a way to monitor us? Tabitha�
�s face was like stone and my shoulders sagged. I had almost convinced her and then I misstepped and I would be stuck inside washing dishes and following the rules for the rest of my life.
A couple with their kid in tow passed us on the way to the bathrooms. They greeted us with warm hellos and she nodded pleasantly in their direction. Once they had disappeared behind the bathroom’s plywood walls, she stepped closer to me and I flinched.
“Kern is team leader,” she said in a low voice.
“Okay.”
“You will have to work with him. Follow his rules.”
A sour taste filled my mouth, like I’d just bit into a slice of lemon. It was hard not to look at him during dinners. It seemed like I kept catching his eye no matter where I was or what I was doing and I hated that I kept looking. I hated how an electric shock went through me every time he looked back. He was a traitor, he was a liar. He was a lot like me.
“This is nonnegotiable,” Tabitha said.
“Done,” I said and tried to say it like I meant it.
“If he says your actions put other team members in danger, if you jeopardize your missions, I’ll throw you off the team.”
“How is it that you are the one who gets to decide such things?”
She looked at me as if I were stupid.
Instead of getting angry I felt embarrassed. “Forget it,” I muttered. I paused, took a deep breath, and then locked eyes with Tabitha and said, “I will work with the team. I will follow directions.”
If Spencer or Leaf could hear me now, they would have been rolling on the floor, holding their bellies, laughing so hard. It was good Ano wasn’t around to hear me. Tabitha didn’t know how ridiculous the promises I just made were—for me. She might guess, but she didn’t know. Maybe it wouldn’t be that hard once we were outside the tomb that the jail had become.
Tabitha nodded and said, “I’ll see what I can do.”
I could do it. I could follow Kern’s directions.
I could probably do it.
Shit.
Chapter 22
In February here in Northern California, the weather lets you taste the sunshine of summer without its heat. It also never let a runaway forget the cost—February still dropped below freezing sometimes. We felt that in the cells. No heat except for our bodies tucked under a few wool blankets. But even though it was warm the way we slept—all in a pile of bodies—I always got up before the rest. I couldn’t stand to be in the cell closet for longer than I had to.
Today, I had decided to bring back the hot water.
I had seen the others collect various food waste containers to be dumped later. Some of them were transparent milk jugs, five-gallon buckets, even some tubing.
I needed something dark to collect heat, and then a second person to help me set up. That’s where Kern came in. I was going to prove to Tabitha that I deserved to be on the V team.
Kern sat at the table with a group of his teammates. Sometimes they went out in the mornings and didn’t come back for several days. When they returned from the outside, people would shake their hands and nod their heads in respect.
I wanted that respect. I wanted that specialness. I wanted to go outside.
I swallowed my pride and took my plate of food and walked past Maibe and Ano and the rest of our group—who all tried not to look like they were watching but weren’t very good at hiding it—and I sat at Kern’s table.
The conversations stopped for a moment. They glanced at me, at each other.
Kern paused, a piece of cheese halfway to his mouth.
I tried to smile but grimaced instead.
He set down the piece of cheese. “What can I do for you?” He enunciated each word.
“I need your help.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“It’s to help out everyone here.”
“And why would you want to do that?” he said in this maddeningly asinine tone. “You’ve made it pretty clear you’re disgusted—”
“I never said—”
“I’m pretty sure you did.”
“Let me finish!” I said in too loud of a voice, half rising off the bench.
Conversations stopped again. Someone snickered at the end of the table.
“Neil Madsen,” Kern said and the guy shut up, “this is Gabbi. Gabbi, Neil.” Neil’s face was thin, gaunt at the cheeks as if he continually sucked them in. His nose was bulbous and red and his long neck stuck out of his shirt like a sickly giraffe.
Neil nodded at me, not in a good-natured way, more as a flinch from the elbow he got from the woman sitting next to him.
“Leave it, Lilia,” Kern said.
Lilia looked older than Neil, maybe middle-aged, but it was hard to tell because of the Feeb skin. Her thick, golden brown, curly hair hung on her head like a helmet and she didn’t even try to smile.
“Over there is Enos and Julian.” They were like caricature opposites of each other. Enos was thick and burly and muscled. Julian was so thin and he hunched his shoulders making his whole body look warped like a bow.
Enos rose up to shake my hand but stopped midway, his arm in the air. His eyes dilated. “You look so much like my—”
Julian punched Enos hard in the shoulder. “Snap out of it.”
Enos’s eyes refocused. “I got a fresh dose of the Lyssa virus while we were outside yesterday.” He showed me the ugly gash on the back of his neck. “Still shaking it off I guess. Sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I mumbled as I tried to keep the yearning out of my voice. They’d gone outside, away from this tomb.
“Go ahead, then,” Kern said.
I settled back and took a calming breath. I knew more than just this table watched. I knew Tabitha must be watching too.
“It seems to me that no matter how much we don’t like each other—”
“I never said I didn’t like you.” He smiled an impish grin.
I gritted my teeth even as I noticed that his smile set off his brown eyes and lightened the exhausted lines of his forehead.
“You’re not going to make this easy,” I said.
He crossed his arms across his chest. “I’m going to make this the opposite of easy.”
“So you know I want to be on the team. Did Tabitha tell you?”
“In fact, she did not. But why else would you be talking to me right now? I don’t see you as the kind of person happy washing dishes every day. I’m surprised you lasted this long.”
“I do have people here I care about. You’ve seen how good I am at protecting what I care about. I recall you were on the receiving end of my help not so long ago.”
Kern nodded. “Fair enough. So, how can I help you be on the receiving end of my help?” His face held a leer in it. Nothing too obvious, nothing I could exactly put my finger on, but I felt it all the same. I almost lost it. I clenched my fists. He was doing this on purpose just to see if he could get a rise out of me. I would not give him the satisfaction.
“I’m not going to talk about it here,” I said, realizing this was partly an act Kern was doing for the table. I headed to the bathrooms. A wolfish whistle and laughter followed me and Kern outside.
I pushed through the double doors and the cold hit me deep in the chest. The guards faced me. It was hard to believe they were protecting us when they did that. Footsteps shuffled next to me.
“All along the fence here.” I waved my hand to the right of us. “And here too,” I said, waving to the left. “And on the ground, and if we have any black cloth, like landscaper cloth, or black plastic, or—”
“What are you talking about?”
“Hot water,” I said. “Or at least lukewarm water—for bathing or cleaning.”
“Are you kidding me? We’ve already looked at the system. It’s broken. It can’t be fixed with what we have here. The propane they give us is barely enough to boil water for coffee in the morning.”
“I’m not talking about fixing the system. I’m talking about going around it. Ignori
ng it all together. Pretending it was never there in the first place. Plus, it won’t be hot water and it won’t be every day, just on the sunny ones at first but later—”
“People are going to shit themselves if they get their hands on some hot water.”
“Then they can clean themselves off with the water too.”
Kern laughed. “I told her you were worth bringing in.”
“What did you say?”
He winced.
“I thought it was your job to bring in any Feebs you found.”
“Yeah, well, we make a lot of ‘mistakes’. Most of the time. Feebs get away.”
“But not my group. Not me.”
He shrugged his shoulders. “Not you.”
I stalked to the furthest point of the fence, to our makeshift graveyard for Spencer. His wooden marker would crack and splinter in the heat this summer. Eventually it would disintegrate and all that would be left was the hump of dirt that marked where his body lay. Even that would eventually settle and then he would be forgotten.
I rubbed the scabs on my arm.
Not forgotten.
I walked up to Kern—within inches. Our breaths intermingled, not smelling all that bad, considering. His brown eyes widened at my closeness. I could feel the heat from his body coming off in waves. His breathing shortened. Hell, my breathing did too. There was no denying the spark between us.
“So, will you help me with the hot water?”
“Of course.” He swayed in my direction, as if to kiss me, but then caught himself.
I stepped back and socked him hard in the stomach. The air whooshed out of his body and he doubled over.
“What the hell is going on,” he said between gasps as the blood rushed to his face.
“That’s pretty much my question exactly,” I said simply and then walked back inside to sounds of laughter from the guard towers. I returned to dinner, this time in my normal spot.
Kern returned a few minutes later. His face still red, he walked in as if nothing had happened. Neil jostled him in the ribs while making some sort of joke. The others laughed, but then Kern said something short that silenced them. He glanced my way and I held his stare to reinforce the fact that he was an idiot for thinking that helping me with a little hot water was going to get him out of hot water with me.
Feast of Weeds (Books 1--4) Page 42