Feast of Weeds (Books 1--4)

by Jamie Thornton

  Suddenly I was lifted from the ground and thrown onto the back of one of the trucks. Mary was on the stretcher next to me, surrounded by boxes. Dr. Ferrad had wanted Mary. They’d come back for her, and for me. They were here to save us after all. Cardboard corners dug into my side and thigh and arm and cheek. It was going to be okay. They were going to get all of us out. Corrina and Dylan and the nephew and his Aunt Jewel.

  Gunfire erupted. Sustained bursts that made me want to clamp my hands over my ears. The engine rumbled and the truck’s movement threw me flat on my stomach. Acid burned in the back of my throat.

  Kern yelled above me. The truck lurched, then straightened out and gained speed. I pushed myself up and looked back and swallowed a scream.

  The Vs had pushed over the fence and broken through. They ran for the train, for the trucks, for the people on the ground. For Corrina and Dylan. The Feebs and uninfected fought back with hands and feet and teeth. The truck raced away. Corrina stood up, her hair wild, her face blank, her hands weaponless, Dylan useless at her feet.

  “Wait,” I screamed. “You can’t do this! You can’t just leave them. You can’t just—”

  The truck picked up speed. A V jumped and held onto the edge of the bed. No one could hear me over the shots Kern’s team fired at the Vs, but they hadn’t seen this one yet. The shots were so loud they called Vs from blocks away. More Vs overwhelmed the tracks, the train, the cars. Corrina and Dylan disappeared underneath that darkness. They were dying. They would die. Kern and his people couldn’t shoot fast enough.

  The world closed in around me until all I saw was a narrow, dark tunnel of Vs running me down, hands reaching out, wounds, physical and mental, on display for all to see, ready to crush me under the weight of their hate and violence and despair.

  The V held onto the side of the truck and pulled himself up. I held onto Mary’s stretcher. She’d wanted a garden and a place for her friends to live all together. Her face was twisted now into a grimace. Her eyes fluttered open and closed. Leaves and twigs were tangled in her hair. The camp was gone, Corrina and Dylan were gone. The Vs were not. They still ran for us, from behind, along the sides, in front of us.

  The V locked eyes with me like a predator does with its prey. He looked like a rather nice old man in cargo pants and a sweater that once might have been a coral color but now was caked in mud. I didn’t know why I couldn’t move. Corrina and Dylan were gone. Kern had let them die. I hadn’t saved them. I hadn’t saved Mary either. I wanted to die.

  I held out a hand and the V grabbed it and pulled himself up. Kern slammed into his shoulder and pushed me out of the way, on top of Mary and a box corner that dug into my thigh. Mary screamed out, a horrific screech, and her hands reached for anything to grab and pull and tear apart but there was only empty air.

  Kern flipped me over. I saw blue sky and the V tumbling off the side of the truck. Kern had unmasked his face. His hair was wild and his black vest ripped near the collar, showing bare skin underneath. In his eyes was a ferocious, bewildered light.

  “What wrong with you?”

  In reply, I bit his leg.

  He howled. “What the hell, Gabbi?”

  I didn’t let go until he knocked me unconscious.

  Chapter 27

  I could not remember the last time I’d brushed my teeth. This bothered me. I opened my eyes to see if Spencer had snagged toothpaste like he’d promised. I sat up and brushed off the comforter. This motion made me dizzy. No, it wasn’t the sitting up that made me dizzy. I was still moving. I was still on the bed of the truck. Cardboard boxes surrounded me, obscuring everything except for the blue sky and a pant leg at the edge of my vision.

  Kern sat on the wheel well, rifle resting on his thigh. A strip of cloth was wrapped around the leg I’d bitten. He looked at me but didn’t say anything. The driver took us fast enough down the street to outpace the Vs that followed and slow enough to avoid the wrecked telephone poles, crashed cars, dead bodies.

  I remembered the train and Kern. Corrina and Dylan gone. Maibe lost. Jimmy, Ricker, and Ano still imprisoned in the camp.

  Everyone on the trucks were dressed in black. Jeans, shirts, vests, shoes, all black. As if there’d been a clearance sale at the local Goth store. Some wore professional gear: a bulletproof vest, a utility belt, military-style boots with the pants tucked in. They had their masks off now and I recognized them. Neil and Lilia and others. They were Tabitha’s team.

  “I’m sorry I hit you. You wouldn’t let go.” Kern maneuvered around the boxes and stood next to me, one hand holding the truck railing to keep himself steady. Yet another Kern stood over the woman and her nephew, and another Kern took off his mask and stood over me while I let the V grab me.

  “Are you okay?” Kern asked.

  I raised my fist to punch him. He grabbed it halfway in the air and held it. We rocked in the same direction when the truck took a sharp turn around a crushed mailbox. Every few seconds a shot rang out when a V got too close.

  “You killed them. Corrina and Dylan and the others. You killed them,” I said, but there was no energy in my voice. I felt dead inside. I didn’t know if I was accusing him or me.

  “I’m sorry, Gabbi.” He did look sorry. His eyes were sunken and his jaw was tense, as if he were gritting his teeth to keep from crying. “We were going to save them but the Vs were too many. It was get out or die.” He let go of my hand. “Hit me if you want. I deserve that and more.”

  I dropped my arm back to my side. The ache in his eyes told me he meant what he said. I told myself there were others who still needed saving, but I wanted to cry anyway. Corrina had been a good person. Dylan too. I wished I’d told them that. “You said you were going to kill all of us. Make us pay.”

  “We were acting, Gabbi. Pretending to be them.”

  “Pretending to be who?” I said, confused.

  “The Feeb-haters. Laurel and I have run into them a few times. A nasty group of uninfected. Survivalists, I think. Some of them were in the camps at first and left. They want to exterminate every type of infected person and anyone who works with them.”

  “But why did you pretend—”

  He looked at me like I was stupid. “The uninfected can’t know it was us. They’d turn on Tabitha and the rest of us.”

  I pressed my fingers into the inside of both eye sockets, to relieve my headache, but also to clear away the Kerns that still overlapped in my brain. I wanted to sweep everything off a cluttered table to make room for the puzzle parts to fit together: trains, impostors, Tabitha’s power, Kern’s followers, Dr. Ferrad’s mission.

  “Here.”

  I felt a small box pressed into my arm. Kern held out some juice. A cranberry something that tasted tart and energizing. The liquid sugar spread from my stomach to the rest of my body and my brain cleared a bit.

  “You have to understand. We had to do it, Gabbi. Dr. Ferrad is close to a cure, but they wouldn’t let her work on it. We had to get her out.”

  “What do you mean? That’s what they wanted. This whole thing is supposed to be for a cure.”

  “I don’t know. But Tabitha—”

  “Your mom.”

  Kern paused. “Yeah. My mom says it’s true and she wouldn’t believe Dr. Ferrad if it wasn’t true. They hate each other.”

  I still couldn’t put the puzzle pieces together. “What are you talking about?”

  “My mom was a director type person where Dr. Ferrad worked. I don’t know. They have a history. My mom wouldn’t just believe her—”

  “Stop. You know what? It doesn’t matter. I have to get back to Camp Pacific. I have to get back to Ano and Ricker and Jimmy.”

  “If you go back Sergeant Bennings will kill you.”

  “No. He’s dead now. He was in the train car. With Corrina and Dylan.”

  Kern paused. “It doesn’t matter if it’s him or someone else. They sent you away. If you go back, they’ll kill you.”

  “If I don’t go back, he’ll punish my fr
iends.”

  I finished the juice. Kern watched me without a word.

  Finally, I said, “What?”

  “Why did you let that V grab you?”

  My hold on all of this felt so tenuous, like a string ready to break. He looked at me as if he really cared. As if it had hurt him that I’d tried to hurt myself. “A memory-rush, I guess. I saw this, well, I saw a man who’d hurt me once years ago and I had to get away.” I lied because I couldn’t bear to admit out loud that for one brief second I’d decided to give up.

  After a long moment he relaxed his shoulders.

  There was a shout from inside the cab. I tensed. Kern didn’t look worried. “We’re here.”

  We passed through a narrow opening in the street. On either side was a barricade of cars and debris. When the two trucks passed through, metal gates closed behind us. The Vs hit the gate soon after. The metal creaked and bulged.

  “That won’t hold for long.”

  “Long enough,” Kern said.

  The trucks slowed and stopped. A small RV and three trucks drove up and formed a circle. Kern jumped down and helped two other Feebs lift Mary’s stretcher off the boxes.

  “Hey! Where are you taking her?”

  “Come and see,” Kern said without pausing.

  I jumped off the truck and followed them into the RV. Inside were Dr. Ferrad and Tabitha, arguing.

  They stopped when they saw Mary.

  “Put her over here,” Dr. Ferrad said. Mary moaned when they set her on the bed. Dr. Ferrad checked her pulse, opened up a metal case, then pulled out a needle. She checked the fluid level and reached for Mary’s arm.

  I grabbed Dr. Ferrad’s wrist. “What are you doing?”

  Dr. Ferrad froze, and for a moment I knew she didn’t see me. Her eyes cleared and she shook her head. “It’s to sedate her. I don’t want her to hurt herself against the straps.”

  Kern pulled me away. “Gabbi.”

  I shook him off. “What’s going on?”

  Tabitha looked at Kern. He nodded. “I told her.”

  “Then you already know this is all for a cure,” Tabitha said.

  The RV’s engine rattled to life. Tabitha glanced out the window. “Vs are in.” She said it like she was pointing out someone had knocked at the front door.

  Kern jumped down the RV steps. “Come on, Gabbi.”

  “I’m staying with Mary.”

  Kern looked to Tabitha as if she could force me to change my mind. Instead she said, “Where are the rest of them?”

  Kern didn’t look at her. “Vs overran us before we could get anyone else out.”

  Tabitha sucked in a breath. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It matters!” he said.

  “Get moving, son. We still have a lot to do.”

  He looked as if ready to argue, but then left. Tabitha turned to follow.

  “Where are my people?” Dr. Ferrad said. “My assistants?”

  Tabitha paused at the door. “There is one truck of your people going with you now. The rest of us will meet up with you at the designated spot. Don’t be late.”

  “You don’t have to do this.”

  Tabitha stared at Dr. Ferrad. “Yes, we do.”

  The door shut and I scooted to Mary’s side. The engine rumbled and I lurched backward. She looked so small like this. Dr. Ferrad reminded me of the college woman who had tried to study us for her PhD. Mary had made me laugh so hard telling a joke about it the day she’d gotten infected.

  “You said she was different?”

  Dr. Ferrad sighed and looked up from a map she’d spread across a table. “I gave her a megadose of the bacteria, but it was outside the window. It shouldn’t have worked. It didn’t work, not completely, but she’s aware more than other Vs are. I need to find out why.”

  “That will help you find a cure?”

  “I remember you and your friends. Mary helped save you from the Lyssa virus.”

  I flinched.

  “Where are the rest of your friends now?”

  My face must have crumpled because she took a step forward and held out her hand. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

  “I don’t know where they are. Some of them are dead. The rest of them are missing.”

  Dr. Ferrad looked out the window. It was just the RV and the truck. The other vehicles had separated, drawing the Vs away from us.

  “Do you know what I traded Mary and my freedom for?” She stared at me, her eyes an abyss. “Tabitha wants power. The cure will give her power.”

  “What—?”

  “I aerosolized the double infection. She’s going to use it to infect everyone at Camp Pacific.”

  Chapter 28

  “I made a delivery device that allows you to catch it in the air, but only if you breathe in the spray. You can’t pass it like a cold or flu. Theoretically.”

  “What do you mean theoretically? Is it in the air or not?”

  “I haven’t done all the necessary tests! It’s not like I can work under standard experimentation guidelines.” She looked over to the driver. “Anton. Turn left here.”

  “The meetup point is further on,” he said.

  “I know,” Dr. Ferrad said. “Just turn.”

  His hands stayed on the steering wheel for a moment, then made the turn.

  We swayed as he maneuvered around a burned-out car that had exploded glass in every direction.

  Dr. Ferrad drummed her fingers on the seat. I suddenly felt a desperate thirst. “Do you have some water?”

  Dr. Ferrad refocused on me and flicked her head at the cabinets. “Check in one of those.”

  I searched until I found a fresh bottle and downed half the liquid in one breath. The water felt clean. It washed the cobwebs out of my mind. “You’re not going to meet up with Tabitha and the others.”

  “Would you?” She said. She faced me, her brown eyes perfectly matching the brown in her hair. The Feeb wrinkles and webbing somehow made her look solemn. She still waited for my answer. She honestly wanted to know.

  “I don’t know,” I answered lamely.

  She turned away, as if disappointed. “Well, once Tabitha gets the cure, a real cure, a permanent cure—”

  “If you find one,” I interrupted.

  She stared at me, burning holes in my head. “I will find it. And when I do, Tabitha doesn’t get to be the one to control it. Do you think she’d give it out to whoever needs it?”

  “I—”

  “She won’t. I know her better than you. She won’t.”

  Mary moaned on the bed again. She tossed her hair around, but her eyes remained closed. Dr. Ferrad went to her side and checked her pulse. “They have a remarkable ability to metabolize chemicals. It’s quite spectacular.”

  “Is she going to be okay?”

  Dr. Ferrad shook her head. “I don’t know. The Lyssa virus is it’s own special kind of monster.” She stood up, lost in thought. “And the bacterial infection—I don’t understand the vector. Why are there so many? It’s not airborne, it’s not through ticks like regular Lyme disease…” She shook her head, remembering where she was. “You can come with us, you know.”

  “What?” I stood. “What do you mean?” Where are you going?”

  “I can’t tell you where we’re going, but I’ll need people to help protect my experiments. I’ll need people like you to help while I find the cure. I’m sure Mary would want you with her.”

  “But my friends—”

  “They’ve already got the double infection. Tabitha won’t hurt them.” But she looked away when she said that, as if she didn’t completely believe what she was saying.

  I went to Mary’s side. She was here. She was here and alive and sick. I could help her somehow. I could stay and she’d remember me and I’d help her get better. I could not worry so much about running for my life. I’d be safe and contained—like in the prison. My mouth soured. Ano and Jimmy’s faces appeared. They looked gaunt, exhausted, worried. We were around the bathtub w
hile we held vigil for Ricker’s fevers.

  They were still at camp. They didn’t have Dr. Ferrad’s protection. They needed me more than Mary did. Especially now, especially when I had messed up by trusting Tabitha and Kern and thinking even for a second that getting caught at the prison wasn’t a bad thing. I had known better, but I had begun to believe the lies Tabitha told me. I had wanted to believe so badly.

  I stepped away from Mary even as my heart broke just looking at her. She would have killed me if she found out I’d even thought about leaving the others. “I can’t stay.”

  Dr. Ferrad examined me from head to toe. I shivered under that gaze. She had been there, going through her own fevers the same time as us—after we’d lost Mary. We’d escaped before she’d recovered. I thought Tabitha had a piercing look but it didn’t hold a candle to Dr. Ferrad.

  “You’re making the wrong decision.”

  Anger flared inside of me. “What do you know about any of that? You don’t know me.”

  “You stay out there, you’re going to die. Come with me and you get a chance to be a part of something big. You get a real chance of surviving long enough to get the cure.”

  “If you actually find it—”

  She opened her mouth but I cut her off.

  “I’m not staying.”

  “The crazies are tailing us,” Anton said quietly. He glanced at me through the rearview mirror. “If you step out there, they’ll be all over you.”

  “Your cars are making the most noise. I’ll run fast and quiet. They’re more likely to follow you than me.” I told myself Dr. Ferrad would take care of Mary because she was wrapped up in Dr. Ferrad’s research for the cure. I needed to take care of the others.

  “Why take the risk?” Dr. Ferrad said. She moved to block the RV’s side door. “If you don’t go with us now, you might never see your friend again. You’ll probably die out there. I need you. The cure needs you.”

  Something wasn’t right about this. “What exactly do you need me for?”

  “I told you. Protection. Caring for your friend.” This time she managed not to look away while she lied to me.