We were plunged into darkness. This did not quiet down the Vs.
“They’re going to find us,” Tabitha said, her voice floating in the darkness. “We have to hurry. Do you want out or not?”
A long pause. “I’m so close to a cure.”
“Yes or no?”
“You know it’s a yes. You know it. You’re loving this.”
Steps pounded a nearby aisle. Flashlights flared like lasers. “They’re coming,” I said.
“Gabbi, stay where you are. Dr. Ferrad, I’ve promised you—”
“Yes but what you’re asking for in return—”
“There’s no time for this,” Tabitha said, frustration rising in her voice. “I already got what you needed.”
I decided if they weren’t going to do anything I could still run. I worked my way around where I thought the wheelchair was.
A shuffle. A screech.
“Hold her!”
“I need her!”
Something wrenched at my hair. I reached up, felt hands formed into claws. I stumbled backward and fell onto the ground. My head burned and blood dripped warm down my cheek. Tabitha turned on a lantern and flooded our section with light. A V stood over me, my chunk of hair and scalp in her hands. She flung it aside and reached for me.
I felt my world crash apart. Mary’s black, straight hair was in mattes around her head. Her shirt was torn, her jeans practically non-existent. She had bruises everywhere and the IV snaked into her arm. She looked at me and didn’t see me.
Panic threatened to choke my throat. Was it her or another V and I only wanted it to be her? My friend, the one who looked after me and made me laugh when I felt my lowest. The one who dreamed about living out in the country surrounded by friends. The one I had promised never to let down. The one I had abandoned when she had told me to run.
I wanted to cry out. I wanted to kill them. I wanted to gather her up in my arms. I wanted to die.
The blue light of the lantern washed out her skin. Her hands came around my neck and squeezed. She cocked her head as if listening to a small animal scream.
So I tried screaming. “Mary, it’s Gabbi!”
I swore I heard my name from her lips. Her hands loosened. I sprang out from under her, pushed her off. She snarled, her face turned into a hateful grimace that made me shudder.
Dr. Ferrad lifted a needle into the air and shot Mary up with something that made her crumple.
“Leave her.”
“I’m not leaving without her! That was the deal,” Dr. Ferrad said.
Tabitha raised the lantern higher and their faces turned into skulls with holes for eyes and mouth. Tabitha stared at Dr. Ferrad. There was a mean set to her chin and a dangerous gleam to her eyes. I shivered. I had never seen Tabitha like this before.
Shouts from far away. “Over here. Go around. Cut her off.”
“I’ll bring her,” Tabitha said. “Kern is waiting. Go now or never.”
Dr. Ferrad opened her mouth to argue. The blue light disappeared into the black cave of her mouth. She turned and ran away into the dark.
Tabitha dragged me up by the arm. Mary was crumpled at our feet. I struggled but she dragged me down the aisle.
Boots stomped up, flashlights blinded me.
“Trust me,” Tabitha said in my ear. She pushed me so hard I fell forward onto my knees. “Here! Here she is!”
***
March
***
Chapter 26
The long slow drawl of a train whistle interrupted my meager breakfast. I wondered at the noise that would surely draw Vs to it. I sat cross-legged on the cold floor and knew I would need to stretch to limber up again and be ready for whatever came next.
The first time they opened the door, they asked me what I knew about Dr. Ferrad disappearing. I said I didn’t know anything. I asked about Mary, about the V. The guard said he didn’t know anything, mimicking me, and laughing.
They had delivered two breakfasts since then along with some water for me to wash off the gore dried into a hard crust on my clothes and skin.
I didn’t understand what had happened between Dr. Ferrad and Tabitha. What I did know was that Mary was alive and somehow they were all working together to get out of this prison. That was enough for me to take a chance that maybe Tabitha had a plan after all, that maybe she hadn’t just sacrificed me and Mary so Dr. Ferrad could escape.
Four breakfasts later, they told me they weren’t going to kill me. They were going to send me somewhere else, to be useful, they said.
Two guards came in full face masks and gear that covered them from head to toe to finger. They brought me out to the train platform—some plywood planks alongside the tracks. The uninfected wore face masks and covered their skin. There were other Feebs. Some I recognized from the jail, but others not at all.
And then I saw Corrina and Dylan. They stood ahead of me. Tabitha must have sent them. Somehow, they were here to help me escape. Then I saw how their hands were tied in front of them. Their clothing was dirty and torn. They were prisoners like me. My hopes deflated.
The air stunk of exhaust. The train was seven cars long with a yellow engine at either end. The engines had attachments almost like snowplows, like we’d put on Old Bully. Metal grates covered the windows of the cars and a sort of metal bumper ringed them as if to hold back a paparazzi crowd.
The next two cars were freight. There was one car left—it was also a passenger car. They marched all the Feebs inside this last one. A hazel-eyed guard zip tied the hands of any unbound Feebs as we entered. When it was my turn I held out clenched fists, palms facing down, and held my breath.
Leaf and I had researched once how to break free of different restraints after a bad run with bad people. When the guard wasn’t looking, I’d be able to squeeze out my hands and get free.
There was debris everywhere on the floor. Papers, broken glass, bits of metal. The car stank of unshowered bodies and a thick musty smell. In the back, some of the chairs and tables had been replaced with a cage.
“Gabbi?” Corrina said, shocked to see me. They let me sit next to her and Dylan.
“What happened?” I said.
“What happened to you? We thought…we didn’t know what to think. They wouldn’t tell us anything.” Corrina looked behind me, craning her neck. “Where’s Maibe?”
“What do mean where’s Maibe?”
“I thought…she disappeared when you did. I thought you must be together.”
“Maibe’s gone?” I slumped against the seat and tried not to listen to the voice deep inside that told me it was my fault.
“Sergeant Bennings’ son is gone too,” Corrina said. “Though we only know that by rumor. No one’s talking about it.”
I finally noticed something was wrong with Dylan. He moved in a rocking motion and sweat poured down his face.
“They’d locked down the jail since the V attack. Since you and Maibe disappeared. They slashed the containers you made to warm the water.” She shook from anger, exhaustion. “We were going to escape this morning, or try to anyway, but Dylan got reinfected and we had to go back. We’re lucky they’re sending us to another camp instead of shooting us….”
She was talking about Spencer. I shook my head. “Forget it.”
“We have to find a way to escape,” Corrina said, but even as she said it her eyes slid to Dylan. There was no wheelbarrow this time.
“And the boys?” I said.
Corrina didn’t speak for a long moment. “I don’t know. They were back at camp still.”
I flexed my hands against the plastic. Tabitha’s words rang in my head, trust me, she’d said. I didn’t know what her and Dr. Ferrad were planning, but they were both Feebs—that counted for something, right?
A soldier’s boots stomped on board. I locked eyes with Sergeant Bennings. He wore his military cap and his cold eyes scanned the passengers, then settled on me again before flicking over his shoulder. “Bring it into the cage.”
&
nbsp; Two people in white medical suits, clear face masks, and gloved hands carried Mary in by a stretcher. She was strapped down at the head, arms, chest, and legs. She was out cold. Sergeant Bennings took several steps back as they lifted her inside the car and then into the cage. The entire train car tensed as if someone had brought a bomb on board.
Without thinking I stood up. “Mary.” A blow to my stomach curled me over in pain. Black spots danced across my vision.
“Stop that!” Corrina yelled.
“Sit down,” Sergeant Bennings said.
“Breathe, Gabbi, just breathe.”
“I’m trying!” I said between gasps.
When my air came back I looked up. None of the other Feebs looked at me.
“I’m so sorry, Gabbi,” Corrina said.
Tears pooled in my eyes. Blood roared in my ears. It was so simple: stay alive, don’t get hurt, don’t get caught. It was impossible. Maibe missing, the three of us caught, who-knows-what happening to the boys. And Mary. I had failed them all.
The cage shut with a clang. The white suits positioned themselves outside of it. Sergeant Bennings moved to the opposite end of the car next to the hazel-eyed guard. He picked up a phone and spoke into it as the train began to move west—into the valley. The floor underneath me shook and trembled.
There was an impact against the train. A thump, as if a body had slammed against the outside. A Feeb, an older woman, her clothing a tattered mess of layers and a long scratch running angry red down her cheek cried out. “They’re coming,” she said.
The guard peered out the window. His cap was jammed low over his forehead and I wondered why he had no problem being so close to the Feeb. He laid a gloved hand on her shoulder. She grabbed the hand with her own and he squeezed it.
“The bumper will take care of it until we reach the ledge.”
“The ledge?” she said.
The train thumped its rhythm on the tracks alongside the counterpoint beat of Vs throwing themselves at us.
“Think of it more like a pit. Whatever crazies are nearby will run along with us and fall into a trap at the ledge. There’s one at every stop. That’s why they use the whistle.”
“Oh,” she said, on the verge of tears.
“Aunt Jewel, it’s going to be okay,” he said.
“Step away from her, soldier,” Sergeant Bennings said, his voice deadly. He’d hung up the phone and his hand rested on a gun holstered to his belt.
The soldier left Aunt Jewel’s side and returned to the end of the car, not meeting Sergeant Bennings’ eyes. As if on cue, the train whistle sounded. There were more impacts against the train, but the car didn’t flinch, even if the rest of us did. Then the impacts stopped.
I guessed we had passed the pit and imagined all those Vs trapped like sardines in a can, like how they had been inside the high school gym.
Hours later the train whistled again, and the unnerving thumps returned. Minutes after that, the train stopped. My legs had gone numb and my mind had gone blank. Tabitha had not rescued me. I cursed myself for believing that she would.
Feebs got on and off. The same hazel-eyed guard marked it against a clipboard. Two uninfected huddled at the other end for a few minutes, discussing something with the white suits in hushed tones.
Mary moaned and tossed around on her stretcher. The white suits opened up the cage and injected her. She settled down again. Saliva dribbled from the corner of her mouth. I felt sick to my stomach.
Fences glinted in the distance. So much noise. Voices, shoes, the train engine, shouts of recognition.
“What camp is this?” Corrina asked.
“Camp Potomac, I think,” said Aunt Jewel. “They’re supposed to be taking me to my youngest nephew. Said they found him hiding in the attic of a house they were clearing. My sister is… my sister turned V, but he’s safe and they’re bringing me to him and his brother.”
I began to work my wrists against the plastic. I got my thumbs out, and then got the rest of my hands out.
Corrina hissed at me.
“What are you doing?” Sergeant Bennings voice. His eyebrows drew together and his skin wrinkled into deep grooves. The plastic of his mask glinted. He hadn’t shaved in days.
“Hold out your hands,” he said.
I held them out like I had before.
“No,” he said. “One wrist on top of the other. Hands flat.”
My stomach sank. I did as he told me. His gloved hands tightened the plastic around my wrists. He used a second one to tie my wrists to the metal rail on the seat in front of me.
“Do you know where they are? Alden and Maibe?” Sergeant Bennings said. His gloved hand pinched mine.
“Even if I did I wouldn’t tell you.”
Corrina drew in a sharp breath. She didn’t have to say anything for me to get that she thought I was acting like an idiot.
Sergeant Bennings drew out a knife. Corrina yelled. He slashed down, cutting the plastic he’d just used. He dragged me into the aisle by my hair. My scalp exploded into a thousand needles of pain as the wound Mary had made opened up again. People were screaming. Corrina stood up. He released my hair long enough to punch her in the gut. She fell over, gasping for breath.
He used his knees to hold me down, my back to the ground. I didn’t understand why he hadn’t shot me yet. One hand held my zip tied arms over my head and pinned to the floor. The other held a knife to my throat. The hazel-eyed guard hovered in the background.
“Tell me where Alden is.” Sergeant Bennings said each word carefully as if he thought I wouldn’t understand him.
“I. Don’t. Know.” I spit on his mask.
He used his knife hand to wipe off the saliva and then wiped it onto my shirt. The knife was back at my throat. “You know something.” He pressed harder.
I couldn’t swallow for fear the knife would bite into my skin.
I laughed even though I knew it would send him over the edge.
The gleam in his eye went all crazy bright.
There was a commotion near the front of the car. It distracted him enough that I tore my hands from his grip and punched him hard in the throat. He made a choking noise and the knife clattered to the floor. Corrina’s bound fists flew through the air. They thumped Sergeant Bennings hard on the side of the head and he went down. I jumped up just as the hazel-eyed guard and the white suits jumped off the train car. Feebs crowded the windows.
I began tearing at the plastic with my teeth. Corrina grabbed Sergeant Bennings knife and slashed through the zip tie. I searched Sergeant Bennings pockets for the key to Mary’s cage. Nothing.
“Find me two thin pieces of metal,” I told Corrina.
She scrambled onto the floor, searching through the trash for what I needed. She brought back five pieces. I took two of the long ones and bent one in several places. I’d learned how to pick my first lock years ago. I would rake the lock on Mary’s cage until it opened. Between Corrina and me, we would carry Mary and Dylan out of here.
I stopped. There was no way the two of us could carry out two people, especially two people who acted half dead and crazy.
Aunt Jewel shot up from her seat at the window. Her eyes were glazed and she began slapping at her shirt and pants and arms. “Oh, my God. Oh, my God,” she screamed. The car of Feebs turned away from the spectacle outside the windows. She was in the grip of a memory-rush, anyone could see that. Before we could stop her, she ran out of the car, flapping her arms as if she were on fire.
In her mind, she probably was.
Then gunfire sounded in a quick burst.
The train window was smeared with skin oil and fingernail scratches and it blurred the shapes outside. People in masks and dark clothing held weapons—AR-15s, hunting rifles, handguns. They aimed the weapons at a group of uninfected soldiers. One long rifle pointed at two people kneeling on the ground.
Aunt Jewel. The other, the hazel-eyed guard, kneeling between her and the gun. The gunmen, clothed all in black and wearing a cloth
mask, hit the butt of the rifle against the side of the hazel-eyed guard’s head. He crumpled to the ground. His aunt threw herself on top of him, crying.
People cried and whispered around me. Something about killing us all. Corrina was dragging at Dylan’s arms, trying to get him off the chair, but he was still in a memory-fever. Mary was in her coma, strapped to a stretcher, sedated, almost peaceful. I bit my lip and a metallic taste filled my mouth.
I helped Corrina drag Dylan to the entrance, but a person in all black clothes blocked our way. I looked up into the masked face of one of the gunmen and felt a jolt. There was something almost familiar about the eyes.
“All infected off!” he yelled.
They forced us off the car, single file. Two of them dragged Mary out of the cage on her stretcher and she disappeared before I even realized they had moved her. We huddled in front of a freight car until they shouted orders for us to form a line. They cut the ties from our wrists and forced us to transfer supplies from the train to two pick up trucks.
We had filled the truck halfway when a siren sounded and the masked gunmen yelled for us to stop. Mr. AR-15 jumped on top of the truck roof and shot his weapon into the air, then whooped and shouted, “All infected, and those working with the infected, will pay for bringing this curse upon us!” The other gunmen jumped onto the trucks, firing off their own shots and yells.
I crouched, bracing myself for the moment when they would turn the guns onto us. As if my wish had made it happen, the AR-15 lowered and pointed at me.
“You are coming with us.” He jumped off the truck and slammed his boots onto the boarding planks. My muscles seized with fear. I would explode into his face and gouge out his brown eyes and break the teeth in his smirking mouth.
“Gabbi, get up,” Kern said quietly out of the lips of the guy with the AR-15. And I thought I might as well die there as anywhere else if Kern was going to start haunting me.
“Gabbi,” he said in a whisper only I could hear.
I waited for Kern’s ghost-memory to superimpose over the masked man’s face. And it was there, in the brown eyes, the lines of his mouth, but his face stayed masked, and that wasn’t how a ghost-memory was supposed to work.
Feast of Weeds (Books 1--4) Page 45