Feast of Weeds (Books 1--4)

by Jamie Thornton

  “She’s my mother.” But he looked ashamed as he said it.

  It took everything in me not to lash out and strike him. He’d brought the Vs that had killed Corrina and Dylan. But that thought only lasted for a moment. I’d brought these Vs with us—the ones even now pressing in from all sides, closing off any chance of escape, darkening every window.

  But I wanted to hurt him, because he’d made me want to believe him, he’d made me start trusting him and all of that was destroyed. “Just so you know, Mary’s long gone with Dr. Ferrad. She’s not going to let you get anywhere near a cure.”

  “Mary?” Ano said. His eyes gleamed. “What about Mary?”

  “What is this about Dr. Ferrad?” Tabitha appeared next to Kern. Her voice was cold. Neil and Lilia were with her and looked nervously between Kern and Tabitha.

  I tasted salt on my lip. Tabitha was staring at me, waiting for an answer. She would be waiting a long time.

  I flipped her off.

  “Come on,” I said to the only friends I had left in the world, “We’re getting out of here.”

  Tabitha’s eyes narrowed. She looked ready to strangle me.

  “You have bigger problems than me right now.” I waved around. “Can’t you hear that?”

  The moans from inside the jail quieted for a moment as if to make way for the moans outside the jail. Tabitha paled. Everyone felt it—the tomb the jail had just become.

  “Get everyone in the cells and lock the bars,” Tabitha said.

  Kern, Neil and Lilia flew into action.

  “What about us?” Jimmy said.

  Tabitha didn’t even pause. “You can die out here with the Vs.”

  I locked eyes with Ano and could almost read his thoughts. We would force our way into one of the cells, no matter what it took.

  Flood lights flipped on, bathing the room in an otherworldly silver glow. I froze, as if it were the first time I’d been caught in the act of stealing something—not knowing that acting so guilty was what had given me away. Gunfire sounded outside.

  The doors to the front of the jail flew open. People in uniforms, gas masks, and guns streamed inside. They fired shots behind them. Vs followed, grasping, crawling. Dark shadows that formed even darker pools of blood on the ground.

  Kern crumpled at the base of the stairs. A soldier had hit him over the head with the butt of his rifle.

  I ran to Kern. A lump caught in my throat. I checked his pulse, I checked to make sure he was still breathing. He was alive. His eyes were rolling around as if he couldn’t focus.

  I dragged him into a nearby cell. The shell-shocked face of a Feeb greeted me. His hand was on the arm of the Feeb in the fevers. “What’s happening?”

  “Stay inside!” I dumped Kern on the ground, but then was pulled out of the cell. I landed hard on my back, the air knocked out of me. I stared up at the three-story ceiling. It framed the face of a man with a bloody nose that had spread a horrible stain down the front of him.

  All around me people were fighting the Vs. Some of the cells had closed, protecting those inside. Other cells had not closed in time. Soldiers fired over the screams. Many of the Feebs fought hand to hand.

  This V’s hands were around my neck. His breath stank of rotten meat. I fought him with everything I had. I couldn’t afford to get bit. I couldn’t afford to die now, not when we were all together again. I dug my fingers into his eyes and closed my own so that I didn’t have to see the ooze after I felt the pop.

  He howled but his hands remained, pressing harder, tighter. Black dots appeared in my vision.

  Suddenly his hands disappeared and then the rest of him fell over. One side of his head was missing now. A soldier stood above me, covered in gore. The glare of lights obscured his face and then he turned and held out a hand to lift me up.

  Sergeant Bennings.

  He was alive. He’d just saved me.

  “Dad?” Alden seemed to part the stream of battles around him.

  Sergeant Bennings paused. Then he unlatched a cannister and threw it deep into the greenhouse. It began releasing yellow gas.

  I thought it must be tear gas, but then the Vs started dropping, and then the Feebs. He strode over to Alden and replaced the painter’s mask with another gas mask on his belt. And then he waited.

  I ran to Jimmy and grabbed his shirt. “Put it over your mouth.” I did likewise and hoped it would help. I didn’t want to wake up with Sergeant Bennings in control again. I didn’t know who would be worse at this point, him or Tabitha. It didn’t matter. I didn’t want anyone else in control of me ever again.

  Maibe motioned frantically. Ricker and Ano were on either side of her. They were close to the front door. It was like someone had dipped them all in a bucket of blood. Jimmy and I crept over to them along the wall.

  Sergeant Bennings turned, surveying the room from its center, shouting orders to his soldiers. His hand was clamped so hard onto Alden’s shoulder. The screams, the gunfire, the shouting, it was all slowing down. Sergeant Bennings was winning.

  Jimmy and I hurried, stepping over dead bodies, passing by cells of people who had managed to close the bars in time and cells that didn’t turn out so lucky.

  “You,” Sergeant Bennings said through the mask. It warped his voice into a garble that barely made sense. I looked, ready to face his gun head on, but he pointed the gun at Maibe.

  “No!” Alden tried to hit the gun out of his hand.

  I jumped and pushed her out of the way. Sergeant Bennings fired. My shoulder became a white hot ball of pain.

  Chapter 30

  “We should keep going,” Ano whispered and I wondered why he was whispering except that of course Officer Hanley might hear us and kick out our campfire for a second time that night and we didn’t have enough supplies to start a third one, especially since Ano was sick.

  “She’s still bleeding,” Maibe said, also in a whisper, but that wasn’t right because Maibe had never met Mary because Mary had pretty much already died but that wasn’t right either.

  “This place gives me the creeps,” Ricker said.

  “Yeah, but what choice do we have?” Jimmy said.

  “But we can’t stay for long,” Maibe said. “I need somebody’s shirt or something. I don’t know.”

  “Here, I’ll do it,” Ano said. Pain lanced through my shoulder as something wrapped and tightened around it. Stars burst on the insides of my lids.

  “Try not to kill me, Ano, okay?” I said in a raspy whisper that sounded strange even to my own ears.

  “She’s awake,” Jimmy said.

  “And she can hear you,” I said. “Help me sit up and somebody better tell me quick where we are and how we got here.”

  I struggled to open my eyes as someone pushed me up and put what felt like a pillow behind my back. Four faces stared at me, their skin cracked and bruised and papery and dirt-streaked. Their clothes dirty and torn and smelling like something awful. So awful it made me want to gag. Their faces were a rainbow of worries.

  I was laid out on a sort of table pushed up against the wall so I could lean back. We were in a mechanic’s office, judging by all the tools on the pegboard. It was a small workshop, but tidy nonetheless.

  “We made it about four miles before you fell off your bike,” Ano said, ever a good lieutenant.

  “I don’t remember falling.” Though I vaguely remembered getting out of the jail and through the path of dead Vs that Sergeant Bennings’ people had made.

  “You’ve been unconscious,” Maibe said.

  “How long?”

  “Not that long,” Jimmy said. “Ten minutes?”

  Ricker left, leaving a gap, but then returned holding a bottle of water. He uncapped it and I drank it greedily, then I pushed it away. “The rest of you should finish that.”

  “We need to clean your wound. The bullet went through, but it should be cleaned,” Ano said.

  I was about to protest but then he said, “There’s more. A whole case of water in the clo
set back there.”

  I sighed and leaned back. “What’s the situation outside?”

  “Bikes are hidden, but it’s not really cleared out here,” Ano said. “There’s a lot of Vs. They’re slow. They look starved, weak, but…” He shrugged. “And, of course, Faints.” He tilted his head to a corner of the room. The other three looked in the same direction.

  I winced. Of course.

  I craned my neck and followed their gaze. An old man with stooped shoulders fiddled with something on a workbench in the corner of the room. He wore a type of apron. Stains darkened his pants and I realized the gagging smells came from him because in his fog of infection he no longer remembered when, or maybe how, to use the bathroom.

  His arms were bare except for a tattoo of eagles and the American flag that had long ago stretched and sagged as his skin had aged. Eventually he would be too weak to work and he would lie down and die and there was nothing we could do about it except be grateful it hadn’t happened to us. I was surprised he had kept himself alive this long.

  I sank flat onto the table. “We stay the night here. I’ll be ready to move tomorrow.” I said this with more conviction than I felt. “And somebody needs to give him some water. And if there’s any food, that would help a hell of a lot too.”

  I drifted into darkness.

  In the morning, I woke up from the pain in my shoulder. I had tried to move, to shift onto my bad side and had paid dearly for that movement. My tongue tasted stale and my mouth was dry like cardboard. I slowly moved different muscles, starting from my toes up to my legs, then all the way to my neck, being careful of the wounds there and on my scalp that still burned. I’d failed pretty miserably at not getting hurt, but at least I was still alive. I bit on my lip when it came time to move my shoulders, but I forced a stretch anyway and decided now was better than never.

  I swung my feet off the table and waited for my head to stop its wobbling. When I steadied, I stood and grabbed up the water bottle and guzzled almost all of it, and then splashed the last of it on my face.

  Maibe and the boys slept in a heap together on the floor for warmth, safety, comfort. I looked on them in wonder. They were all still alive. We were no longer caught. I continued preparing for the rest of the day, for a full day of bike handlebars. I looked around for the old man. Faint or no, he could still harm us if the right memory caught him.

  There he was, in his corner, but no longer working at the bench. He sat on a stool, his hands resting on his knees, his eyes focused on me as if he actually saw me.

  Insect bites had raised angry red welts around his bare ankles. “Who are you?” His voice was low and it crackled from disuse.

  “I’m just passing through,” I said softly.

  “Young lady, that was not my question.”

  “Gabbi. My name is Gabbi and I mean you no harm.”

  “I can see that just fine, what with you bleeding on my gear over there. I bet you couldn’t hurt a fly right now with that shoulder.”

  I smiled. “Maybe,” I said. “But don’t try me.”

  He laughed a low, soft guffaw. “Sounded just like my wife right then. Did you see her? She went shopping but shoulda been back by now.”

  “No, I haven’t, but I’ll keep an eye out for her.”

  “Thank you, I’d appreciate that.” He turned and rummaged around in a drawer on the workbench. He pulled out something rectangular and shiny. He looked about to toss it then thought better of it and walked it over to me. He held it out, his hands grimy from the kind of grease that came from working on cars, but were otherwise clean, though the sewer smell grew stronger with his nearness.

  In his hand he held a granola bar.

  “Here, looks like you need this more than me,” he said.

  “No,” I said quickly, looking at the way his skin hung off his bones, how thin his wrist was, how gaunt his cheeks were this close up. “You eat it.”

  “I’m not hungry. Haven’t been for days,” he said. The look in his eye spoke of some deep awareness—as if while he was trapped by the Faint infection he also sort of knew he was trapped.

  I didn’t know how that could be possible. “I can’t,” I said, a strangled note in my voice. The horror of his self-awareness flooded into me and I didn’t know how to respond except that I couldn’t take the last bit of food this man had.

  He opened the package, the plastic wrap crinkling loud in the silence of the room. Daylight filtered in through the window and I saw, at least on this side, that the way was clear of Vs.

  He pulled off a small piece of granola, smaller than a dime, then crumbled it into dust between his fingers and let the crumbs drop to the floor. My stomach cramped. My nose picked up faint hints of sugar, chocolate, nuts.

  “If you don’t eat this, I’m sorry to say it’s all going to go to waste,” he said, frowning at me.

  I held out my hand and it shook a bit from hunger. He placed the granola bar in it.

  “Thank you.”

  He smiled a big smile. A few teeth were missing and other teeth were crooked but all that had happened and healed long ago. “That’s better.”

  I pinched off a section of the piece he had touched and let that tumble to the ground. No need to invite more germs if I could help it. I gobbled up the rest of the bar and when I finished he appeared with a bottle of water. I thanked him again and drank my fill.

  By this time the others had woken up and were stretching and drinking water and otherwise trying not to look as if they were watching me and the Faint.

  The sugar spiked my endorphins and even though I wasn’t looking forward to the bike ride today, I knew it was time to get started.

  “Thank you, but we need to get going now. We have a long bike ride ahead of us and it’s going to be slow—for obvious reasons,” I said, motioning to my shoulder.

  “Well, I was thinking about that all last night. It’s really a mechanical problem you’re facing…” His words disappeared into a series of mumbles and he went still. I got the sense that we’d lost him.

  Ricker looked like a parrot stretching his head out as he massaged his neck. “He was mumbling and working on something all night.”

  I decided that it would be best if we snuck out while he was still lost. Then it would be as if we’d never been there. We gathered our stuff and grabbed a few extra bottles of water, but left plenty for the mechanic in case he came out long enough to drink any of it.

  I was the last one to leave the shop. I felt a hand on my good shoulder. “You’ll want to take this along with you.”

  I turned. The old mechanic let his hand drop and stood back to showcase what he had brought out.

  An electric recumbent.

  At least I think that’s what it was. It had two wheels and pedals and handlebars, but its seat was low and upright and you would need to extend your legs forward, not down, in order to pedal. There were extra contraptions mounted on the back wheel and on either side of the seat for supplies and batteries.

  I swallowed around a lump that had risen in my throat at this unexpected kindness. The whole world was full of monsters now but this Faint might have just saved me. The seat position, the electric pedaling, I could go a lot more miles on this than on a regular bike.

  “Here now, this is for you as I’ve got no need for it.” He wheeled the heavy thing through the door. Ricker exclaimed but Maibe cut him short, reminding him of the Vs close by.

  The old man held the bike steady until I lowered myself onto it.

  “All right, you all get gone. I’ve got plenty of work ahead of me today and can’t waste time in conversation.” With that, he went inside and closed the door to his shop with a soft click.

  Wonder filled their faces. A hint of jealousy too.

  “What can I say?” I said, smiling around the pain in my shoulder and neck and head. “I’ve always been quite the people charmer.”

  Ano laughed, silent laughs so deep that tears sprung to his eyes and streamed down his cheeks. Jimmy gig
gled. Ricker socked both of them in the shoulders.

  “So where are we going?” Maibe asked.

  The boys quieted down and waited for me to answer because somehow they had decided that I was the decider. But they would bring me up short if they had problems with my decision, and I would listen to them.

  “I don’t know of any better plan except to just, I don’t know, follow the plan we’d originally set out to follow before it all got taken sideways.”

  Ricker scratched his head, “Uh, what was the—”

  “Dutch Flat,” Jimmy said, unable to hide the eagerness in his voice.

  “It’s up in the hills, out of the way,” I said. “I still remember the route Dylan said we should take. We could make it in a couple of days depending on whether we get killed along the way, or captured again—you know, our normal day-to-day problems.”

  Maibe contemplated some dark thoughts I could not read, but the boys had already accepted the decision as having been made. Still, that wasn’t my style. “Unless anyone’s got a better idea?” I asked.

  Ano began pedaling and the other two followed.

  Maibe held back for a moment.

  “Do you have a better idea? Maibe?” I snapped my fingers in her face and instantly regretted it. Even though it was my good arm it still managed to trigger a flash of pain in my shoulder. I gritted my teeth until the pain subsided to a dull throb.

  Maibe’s eyes refocused and she brushed at her head as if swiping at a cobweb. “Dutch Flat. Sounds good to me.”

  Chapter 31

  The electric recumbent made the journey easier, but that didn’t mean it was easy. We had more than sixty miles ahead of us, but on the other hand, each mile took us further away from the population centers. We decided to split the remaining miles into two days. If I’d been well, I could have done more each day, but I wasn’t.

  In the morning, after leaving the mechanic behind, the skies became overcast and drizzled a light rain. We took shelter under an overpass, like old times. When the rain cleared a few hours later, we trudged on. The sun shined clear but pale, enough to send the birds into an uproar. It sounded like a zoo, dozens of different calls filled up the silence and covered the little bit of noise our bikes made, though it also made it difficult to hear anything coming our way.