“And then I make enough noise to draw them away.”
“We should wait for Kern and Neil,” Julian said. “They’ll show up and distract them.”
One of the Vs punched the back windshield. Dozens of cracks streaked through the glass. Enos pushed himself down onto the floor.
“We can’t wait,” I said, feeling sick to my stomach and also exhilarated. This was what I was supposed to do—go outside, fight for my life, take chances, feel alive again.
Lilia looked from Enos to Julian and than to me. She threw up her hands. “It’s your life.”
They boosted me through the vent. I scrambled onto the metal top, parts of it sinking under my weight and then popping back out. I tried to tell the different between now and before. Maibe’s pink sweatshirt seemed to flit around, first near the van, then further down the street. I pinched myself. She wasn’t here, it was a ghost-memory, it wasn’t real.
I took a running leap off the roof and reached for the bat strapped to my back. I grabbed at air. There was no bat, I’d left it in the van. I tumbled into a somersault. The ground scraped up my bare arms. The moans and shrieks paused, shifted. The mass of them had turned. They had surrounded the van three or four deep. Some looked freshly infected—angry red wounds that wept yellowish fluid. Others looked near death, their skin drawn tight around their faces, but loose everywhere else. They came at me as a mob. I jumped to my feet and reached for the bat again and cursed at myself and Lilia and everyone else in the van for pushing me through that vent without a weapon.
The three of them peered at me through the front windshield. As soon as the Vs were clear Lilia gunned the van. The tires screeched and rocks flew from underneath as she drove away. Two Vs separated from the mob and shambled after the disappearing van.
They’d left me.
Part of me was actually surprised. I had hoped—
No time for that now. I ran from the Vs, across the parking lot. I veered back to the store we’d ransacked for supplies. The Vs veered with me, so sharp and precise. There should be a back door. I could lose some of them through the aisles, come out the back, maybe climb the roof or find another vehicle that worked—
I was grabbed around the ankles and I went down hard. My chin split open and the hot gush of pain flooded my brain for long seconds. I twisted around and beat at the V around the head. His fingers clawed into my legs and reopened my wound. His nails were long and yellowed. His teeth brown and disgusting. He bit into me and I howled and kicked away, still on my back.
Two other Vs caught up and circled me, blocking out the light. I screamed again and fought with my teeth and feet and hands. I got past them but a third caught me and slammed me to the ground again. I was so tired. So hot. I turned my head to the side. There outside the store was my father, sitting on a bench. Red-faced, jeans ripped at the knees. He was tapping his fingers on his thigh.
Tap-tap-tap. Tap-tap. Tap-tap-tap. Tap-tap.
Again and again.
He smiled like this was what he’d expected because he always knew I wasn’t strong enough to make it in the real world.
Fury gave me strength. I would not let him see me give up. He would not get that satisfaction.
I kicked out until I heard a crack and the V’s grip loosened. I scrambled up. I stopped.
The Vs were dead in piles around me. Blood seeped from bullet holes. My father’s ghost-memory vanished from the bench. Neil and Kern were there. Behind them the van waited, engine running, door open, cardboard boxes spilling medical supplies onto the ground.
Chapter 24
“What happened?”
Everything was dark and the voices spoke as if from a distance, as if muffled by something.
“We said you’d be coming back. We told her to wait.”
“She didn’t listen.”
“If she wanted to risk her life, what was that to us?”
“We got out of there because of her.”
Tires screeched. I tumbled around. My mind spun. I tried to open my eyes. They felt so heavy.
I woke up from the fevers inside one of the cells. It reminded me too much of a closet. I turned over and threw up from the side of the cot. Tabitha shifted on the chair next to me and wiped a damp cloth on my forehead. I raised my hands, but ropes stopped them. My feet were tied up too. Not so tight as to cut off circulation, just tight enough to keep me from hurting anyone during my fevers.
“Congratulations,” Tabitha said. “People are raving about the food you brought back.”
“Is everyone okay?”
She hesitated. “Enos didn’t make it.”
“Oh.” I wished I could feel bad for him, but I hadn’t really known him.
She dipped the rag back into a bowl of water. “Everyone’s talking about how you went all Amazon warrior out there.”
“It’s Maibe’s fault,” I said, half-smiling.
“How is it Maibe’s fault?”
“I was just following in her footsteps.” I explained about the broken-down van.
“Interesting. Maybe I’ll talk to her next—”
“No,” I said, sitting up. The ropes twisted at my wrists. “She’s too young.”
Tabitha picked up the rag again and squeezed out the water. The drops pinged back into the bowl. “That’s all right, then. Not Maibe.” She looked over. “What about you?”
Ano sat at the end of the bed. He patted my foot under the sheet. He’d come to stay with me during the fevers. We never left each other alone.
He shook his head. I relaxed.
Tabitha set down the rag. She smiled but it felt fake. “I wanted to make sure you were going to be okay. Rest up now. We’ve cleaned the wound. You even got some ointment on it. Lucky you. Take your time.” She stood up and left the cell.
At the entrance, Kern rushed up and stopped her. He glanced at me and the ropes that bound my ankles and wrists. I wanted to apologize for Enos even though I couldn’t remember what happened.
Ano moved into the chair Tabitha had left. “I’m glad you came back alive.”
“The Vs are mobbing one of the gates,” Kern said calmly. “Two people have already died.”
“Which gate?” Tabitha asked.
“On the uninfected side.”
“All right.” Pause. “Is she ready?”
“She’ll have to be,” Kern said.
“Do it.”
Kern left and shouted out an alarm. Even from my cell I felt the panic from his words spread through the jail like lightning. Ano tapped the code for question mark on my ankle. I gave him a look that said: how the hell should I know?
“Who was killed? Was it my boy?” a woman shouted up.
“What about my mother? Is she still alive?”
Others began shouting out names and questions. Almost everyone had family on the uninfected side of the fence.
“Untie me,” I said. “I can help.”
Before Ano could move, Tabitha took a knife from her belt and slashed through the first rope.
It was afternoon. The sun was pale and a bank of clouds was dropping a light mist onto us. There were no guards to monitor our movements, no locks to keep us contained—as if our side of the fence had been abandoned altogether in the face of this greater threat, which was probably the truth of it.
The mist chilled my face into numbness. The thick metal doors of the jail closed behind me. I was in the middle of the group, near Ricker and Ano and Maibe. I couldn’t see much over the heads of those ahead of us. First a parking lot cracked and eaten up by weeds, fencing and barbed wire further off in the distance, several buildings.
We ran for the gate that separated the sides. Some of the Feebs sprinted, I guessed, to find their loved ones.
Instead of staying with the group, Kern went the opposite direction.
“Where’s he going?” I asked Tabitha.
She looked at me with a shrewd gaze and said, “He is following directions. Can you?”
I shut my mouth against an angry reto
rt and ran to catch up with the group.
I heard the gunfire long before I saw the battle. My adrenaline shot up and my focus narrowed. The gunfire became louder. All along the twenty-foot-tall fences people were shooting at the Vs. Parts of the fence seemed dangerously twisted and ready to break open from the mass of flesh building up against it.
Groans and grunts and screams drifted through the air. Ricker looked at Maibe with a raised eyebrow and said, “What do they think we can do here?”
A Feeb motioned us to an open shed. Suddenly Feebs were handed weapons. Bats, sticks, shovels. When it was my turn, I peered into the gloom of that dark shed and saw Alden decked in head gear and gloves, handing out weapons.
There, in the corner, a familiar shape leaned against the wall. A crossbow.
I brushed past him and even though he was suited up he jumped away from my touch as if I had burned him. I hefted the crossbow’s familiar weight onto my shoulder. Then I ran for the part of the fence that looked most in danger. Dozens of Vs pressed in, bowing it as if it were made of plastic. These Vs looked like zombies. Slashed clothing, deep wounds, hair full of mud and leaves. The Vs swarmed the fence. For every V that fell away, another replaced it.
I took up a position on the line, and too late realized I was next to Sergeant Bennings. I swallowed the riotous anger that filled my throat and threatened to take me over like a V. My first arrow sunk deep into the forehead of a woman in her forties with a torn shirt that exposed a dirty bra underneath. She crumpled sideways to the ground.
I notched another arrow but before I released it, I noticed that Sergeant Bennings stared at me through his mask.
I let the arrow fly and it buried into the neck of a screaming V.
Sergeant Bennings used a sword to skewer a V through the links. The stench of entrails gagged me.
I used up all my arrows and then grabbed the bloody shovel of a Feeb who had been torn to pieces after getting too close to the fence. All I could do was use the stick side to push them back. A futile gesture except it gave Sergeant Bennings and the others with real weapons extra time.
What felt like hours later, but was probably minutes, the Vs finally stopped replacing themselves. And then it was over.
I was covered in blood and gore. A few flies buzzed around in spite of the cold. I found Ano, Ricker, and Jimmy further down the fenceline, also covered in gore. “Have you seen Maibe?” I asked.
Ano and Jimmy shook their heads. Ricker slumped down.
“What happened?” I said sharply.
“Got infected again,” Ricker said.
“The V grabbed his stick and pulled him too close to the fence,” Jimmy said. “We jumped in and beat it off, but it had already taken a chunk out of his arm.”
“Get him back before the fevers kick in,” I said. “You know how this works.”
They led Ricker off to the jail to endure another round of fevers. I was lucky I’d been bandaged up so well otherwise the blood on me would have gotten inside and renewed my fevers too.
Further on, a crowd of Feebs kneeled and gathered at one end of the field. Most, Feeb or not, seemed to be wandering around in a daze, but this group was different, intent on some sort of task.
I hurried over and saw Dylan flat on the ground, his leg a grizzly line of bites. Corrina tended to it. His flesh was even paler than normal. Sweat ran off his forehead. He whispered and his eyes fluttered open and closed. Memory-fevers always hit hard and fast.
Two Feebs jogged over and spread out a sheet. They moved Dylan onto it and carried him back to the jail.
An uninfected woman yelled out. She sat on the ground and cradled a bloody hand in her lap. Her face mask was streaked with blood on the ground next to her.
One of the Feebs said, “It’s the only way, Helena. You know how this goes.”
She blubbered something about not wanting to die, not wanting to turn, not understanding why this was happening to her.
“It’s not so bad,” the other Feeb said. “We’ll get you through it.”
She sobbed softly. Even I could see the alarming flush of her cheeks and the twitch of her injured arm. Finally she mopped her tear-streaked face with her good hand and lifted her head to stare at the two Feebs. “Do it, then.”
One of the Feebs took out a cleaning kit and painstakingly disinfected Helena’s wound, then did the same to the other Feeb’s uninjured thumb. Then he took out a knife and made an incision on the thumb, collected the blood into a syringe and injected it into Helena’s arm, just above her wound.
When he was done and had packed up the kit, he moved onto the next uninfected, now infected, who would join us on the Feeb side of the fence.
Helena’s blood donor sat next to her on the dirt, holding her around the shoulders.
“It’s not so bad, especially when the memories are good ones. And there’s ways to control the bad ones, ways to help manage the nightmares. At least now the family won’t be so split apart.”
“Dear brother,” Helena said. “We will still fight like cats and dogs, there just won’t be a fence to separate us now.”
He hugged her a little tighter. “There are good people on the Feeb side.”
“There are good people on this side too,” Helena said.
“I know,” he said quietly. “Come on, let’s get you to a cell before the fevers hit.”
He steadied her on her feet, but after only a dozen steps she collapsed and he carried her through the gate that separated the two sides.
Five other uninfected were laid out on the ground in various states of injury and all were receiving some form of the ‘kit.’ I moved on and finally found Maibe at the shed, talking to Alden as quietly as was possible when someone stood several feet away from you. Blood streaked her clothing and her face. Her hands were crusted with mud and more blood. “Where were you?” I said.
“Fighting,” she said almost quizzically in reply.
A cold shadow fell over me. Sergeant Bennings. The sword was at his waist. He was covered in blood from head to toe, but his gear was intact. Two men also in medical gear stood behind him with rifles and a pole with a loop at the end.
“Set aside the crossbow and come with us,” Sergeant Bennings said.
My hands tightened around the crossbow, not that it mattered anymore. It was out of arrows. “What are you going to do?” I set down the weapon.
One of the soldiers wearing heavy rubber gloves yanked my arms in front of me. A plastic zip tie cuffed my hands.
Maibe moved, a protest on her lips, but froze when the sergeant’s pistol leveled at her.
“Dad,” Alden said, stepping between the two of them.
“Step away from my son. Do it slowly. Do it now.”
Maibe trembled like a leaf about to fly off a tree. She took a step away, and then another. Alden’s mouth froze in a wide ‘O.’
Sergeant Bennings grabbed Alden. “Are you scratched or bitten or hurt?” There was real concern in his eyes.
“I’m fine.”
“You are not supposed to be here. You were supposed to stay safe in your room—”
“I’m not going to do that while everyone else is fighting. I’m no coward,” Alden said, even though his medical gear was pristine. He might have handed out weapons but he didn’t do any fighting.
“I know you’re not. I know it. But since your mother…You’re all I have left.”
“I have to help. I can’t just sit by and let everyone else do the work for me!”
Sergeant Bennings brushed a hand through his no-longer-military-length haircut. “You’re right, but not her.” He jerked a thumb at me. “This one killed one of my guards.”
Those last few words brought back the man on stage under the lights, the water as it streamed off me, the way his chest had bloomed with blood, the moment I’d realized Leaf was dead. I swayed on my feet and darkness began to close in.
“I wasn’t helping her. I was helping Mai—”
“Throw her in solitary. Lock do
wn the jail.”
They tried to drop the rope around my neck. I went crazy like a dog, like a V, to throw it off. I wondered if this was what Mary had felt.
I ran.
Chapter 25
I ran through the groups still receiving the Feeb kit and dodged into a nearby building. It wouldn’t be long before they caught up. I skirted around a secretary’s welcome desk and entered the back. Where there should have been offices, there were rows and rows of cages. My skin was numb from the cold. My fingers tingled. Were the cages really there?
I stepped forward. It was dark, but these cages were all metal, these were not camouflaged with drywall. It wasn’t a ghost-memory. These cages were real and they looked—occupied.
A screech like from a hawk pierced the air. I veered toward it as if drawn by a siren. I didn’t know where I was going but I had to keep going.
Another screech. Everything was in shadow. One of the shadows raced for me and threw itself against the bars. His face materialized into a man. Someone who was no longer anything but his rage, his fear, his hatred.
I stepped back, my skin prickling, my stomach cramping. This was a room full of caged Vs.
Shouts behind me. I raced down the aisles and tried to lose myself in them, but my movements stirred the Vs into a frenzy. It became a riot of noise. Shrieks, screams, bodies thrown against the bars, hungry arms reaching out to me. I swore my heart stopped beating, but then I realized the noise was good. The noise would cover any sounds I made.
“You have to leave now or not at all. Now is the time.”
“I’m not ready. There’s too much to prepare still. You gave me no warning!”
I crossed an aisle and stumbled into lantern light. Two people held lanterns over their heads. They hovered over a wheelchair. Both saw me at the same moment. Tabitha and Dr. Ferrad.
“What are you doing here?” Tabitha said, the light hollowing out her cheeks. “You can’t be here.”
“They’re after me,” I said. “They’re going to lock me up. Help me.”
“Turn off the lights,” Dr Ferrad said. “They’ll act like a beacon.”
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