There was a tap at the door. It shocked me back into the room. I set the bowl and spoon on the side table and picked up a knife. The town was safe—sentries, patrols, and people looked out for each other—but still.
“Who is it?”
“It’s Ricker. Come on, Maibe, open up.”
I set down the knife and flung the door open, beaming a smile at him. He smiled back. Even with his shoulders hunched I barely reached his chin. His dishwater blond hair swept across his forehead, too long. His skin was red, like he’d gotten too much sun. “Have you been wearing sunscreen?”
His smile faded and he looked sideways. “Uhhh…well, we’re almost out and I thought someone else might need it.”
“You are the whitest person in town,” I said. “No one needs it more than you!” He might have been several years older than me and streetwise on top of it, but he sure did act stupid sometimes.
“It’s not that big of a deal, Maibe.”
“It’s not that big of a deal—for me.” I held out my olive skin. To the annoyance of my aunt, I had always darkened fast. Of course, the skin was riddled with lines and wrinkles and a weird, almost ashy layer that no amount of lotion lessened, but that was normal for a Feeb. “For you—it really matters.”
Ricker squinted as if faced with the sudden brightness of the sun. “You know, you sound just like Gabbi.” Then he smiled. “Are you going to let me in or what?”
He wiggled his eyebrows ridiculously and I smiled. I couldn’t help it. Jimmy always made me feel protective, Ano always made me feel safe, but Ricker always made me laugh. I closed the door behind him and was about to make some witty remark of my own when I saw the angry, rooster red that was the wrinkled skin on his neck.
“Oh, Ricker.”
“Yes, my love?” He kept his back turned.
I walked up and poked him in the neck with my index finger. The skin turned a shocking white before it flushed again.
“Owww!” He jumped and whirled around, hand over his neck, though not daring to touch it. The look on his face, a mixture of surprise and shock, almost made me laugh out loud.
“Take it back.”
“Take what back?” he said, all innocence now written on his face—his eyes wide, his eyebrows high, his other hand extended palm out.
“You have a serious handicap at the moment.” I raised my finger and waved it at him in a threatening manner.
“Okay, okay.” He lowered his hands, but the half-grin stayed on his lips. “You’re not my love, only someone I love—”
I waved my finger close to his sunburned arm.
“Hey, okay…only someone I love and care about as I would for any true friend.”
“As only friends.”
He stood straight and snapped his feet together and saluted. “Yes, ma’am. Only friends.”
Freanz took that moment to shout about his garbage man, and how he kept tipping the can over, and couldn’t he use his damn truck pinchers to set it down right for once?
I sighed, grabbed one of the bowls, and shoved it into Ricker’s empty hands. “Get some food into him quick or he’ll go on about it for hours.”
“I thought Faints are only supposed to relive good memories,” Ricker said.
I shuddered. “Yeah, well, this is a good memory for Freanz. Can’t you tell he’s enjoying this?”
Ricker rolled his eyes and sat on the footstool. He arranged the bed pillows so that Freanz was upright. Halfway through a sentence about utility bills, the first spoonful hit Freanz’s mouth. He licked his lips involuntarily and took the food without further complaint.
I sat next to Molly and mirrored Ricker, then we both fed the twins. These two ladies, Sera and Lesa, were old and gray and wispy, and they were the fun ones who liked to relive some really wild times.
“You missed morning exercises again,” Ricker said.
That startled me. I remember having gone just yesterday. I thought it had been yesterday. I must have gone outside for supplies, or fresh air, or something, right? But I wasn’t sure. I hadn’t been sure for weeks now and mostly it didn’t matter to me anymore.
Ricker stared at me, waiting for answer. I didn’t want to admit I couldn’t remember. “So you didn’t come here just to visit?”
“Maibe, that’s not what I meant.”
“You can tell whoever sent you that I’m fine. I do exercises on my own. It’s not like I don’t know the deal.”
“No one sent me.”
“Just because—”
“Why do you lock yourself in here?” Ricker interrupted while feeding Sera another round.
“I’m not locking myself up.” I rushed on when I saw he was about to protest. “Faints need taking care of too and I like it up here. It’s peaceful.” Lesa took my spoonful of food as if it were the daintiest of tea party sandwiches and then took an imaginary napkin from her lap to pat the corners of her mouth. “I can’t abandon them and I can’t handle watching Gabbi pick a fight with everyone in town. Especially the mayor.”
“She’s not the mayor.”
“We all voted. There was a meeting and everything.”
“I didn’t vote for her.”
“You didn’t vote at all.”
“Because power corrupts and just the fact that she wanted the job says she shouldn’t have it!” He ran a hand through his hair. “I’m not saying don’t take care of them. I’m saying take a break sometimes. I’m saying get back out there. Corrina and Dylan have a whole setup going for the Faints to give them care around the clock. People take shifts, you don’t have to do it all yourself.”
I stirred the gruel around the bottom of the bowl. “I can’t do that,” I said softly.
“Why not?”
I couldn’t be trusted outside, not when peoples’ lives were at stake, not when I’d gotten people killed, not when I froze and practically went unconscious every time I had tried to go back to rustling. “You know why.”
Ricker didn’t speak for a long moment. “Then it’s still happening.” It wasn’t a question.
Ricker had been there when I’d gone back out again—to help another Feeb escape the camps a few weeks after I’d lost the Garcia family. He watched me fall to pieces even before I could step out of the van. I had ruined that whole mission and four more after it and then I had stopped trying. My Faints needed me. I could be of use with them at least. I could hide away and lose myself in their dreams and needs and the hours of the day that passed by like seconds now.
“We need you.”
I shook my head and set the bowl down. Lesa also set her napkin down as if she knew breakfast was over, though I couldn’t see how. “You know I can’t and if you came up here just to try to talk me down—”
“I came up here because you’re my friend and I wanted to spend some time with you, and Maibe…everything keeps changing. You don’t know what it’s like now. You’re never there. People are going nuts. You’re not there to talk any sense and it’s not like Gabbi listens to anyone else.”
A piece of oatmeal dotted Freanz’s lips, but Ricker made no move to fix it. I got up and wiped Freanz’s mouth. I brushed Ricker’s shirt and he turned and wrapped his arms around my waist and buried his head in my hip.
He felt warm and I wanted to wrap my arms around him. Instead, I pushed down on his shoulder but he didn’t let go. “Ricker.”
“They’re going to get themselves killed this time. It’s just getting worse and worse. Gabbi’s going V and Ano isn’t far behind.” His words were hot and muffled by my clothing.
I froze, the napkin still in my hand. “What?”
Ricker looked up. His face was blotchy and his eyes darkened. “The double infection isn’t working the same anymore. Haven’t you felt it?”
I remembered the smell of that chemical pool, the hazel eyes of the girl, the way her braid had crowned her head. The bacteria was supposed to keep the virus in check. If anything, my memory-rushes had been happening less, even though it was always the same
awful one. Days of peace and stillness filled my life now as long as I stayed inside with my Faints.
He turned away and picked up the bowl again. The loss of his arms left a cold ache.
“They’re planning a raid,” he said.
“Gabbi and Ano can’t just go out on a raid like they’re the Terminator and everything’s going to turn out all right just because they say so—”
“They’re desperate for some different drugs the healer thinks will help.”
“The healer?”
“The guy who brought the galantamine with him.”
“He calls himself a healer now?”
“Gabbi and Ano think maybe he knows what he’s talking about. It doesn’t even matter if he’s right. They’re going crazy and they have to do something.”
Panic closed up my throat. “I’m right here. I thought they would—I don’t know, come see me or something before—”
Molly mewled and swung her legs off the bed and onto the ground. She stood up and then tumbled onto her knees as if she had forgotten how to use her muscles.
“Molly, wait!”
She crawled across the floor, faster than I would have ever given her credit. Straight for the window, not caring that glass was in her way, not even seeing it, not really. She punched at the glass as if she expected it to be soft like a pillow.
The single pane shattered and rang like a million tiny bells as the shards flowed onto her and the floor, but she didn’t stop. Blood streaked her arms and face. She gripped the window ledge and pulled herself upright and then Ricker was there, holding onto her elbow. She struggled, but he picked her up so she wouldn’t walk barefoot on the floor and moved her past the massacre of glass.
We made her stand still while we picked the glass out of her hair and clothes and skin. She kept that crazy Faint smile on her face the entire time. I used a clean bucket of water to rinse her wounds and then swabbed the cuts with ointment Corrina had made from her garden.
We laid her back out in bed and Ricker swept up the glass.
I didn’t look at him.
I couldn’t even take care of my Faints right.
“Maibe,” he said, bent over the dustpan. “We need you.”
“You need somebody you can count on.” Which wasn’t me, not by a long shot. I’d proven that months ago and I couldn’t risk failing them again. But if I wanted to be really honest with Ricker, I would tell him I was scared to leave this room and the little bits of peace I could sometimes cobble together while inside of it.
“They’re going on a raid and I can’t stop them, but maybe you can.”
“Gabbi used to listen to me, but not for a long time,” I said. “Not for months.”
He set a knee down and turned to me, dustpan full of glass. “Not for the six months you’ve been hiding in here, turning yourself into one of your Faints.”
I had lost the girl who had trusted and worshiped me almost a year ago. I had tried for almost half a year to get over it, but I couldn’t, my infection wouldn’t let me. He knew that. He knew I had spent the last six months spending more and more time in this room because it was the only way left to me that I could help. I was still helping, wasn’t I? I was doing the best I could.
I stepped over to his kneeling form. I wanted to tell him his words weren’t fair, I wanted him to undo the shame he had triggered, I wanted his words to not be true.
I didn’t say anything.
“Jimmy’s been talking about a cure again,” he said.
The shame deepened and flushed my skin. I should have been there to stop Jimmy that first time he’d found a supposed cure two months ago, but I’d already gone into hiding with my Faints. He’d turned comatose for three days. When he’d woken up I told him he was an idiot for taking the drugs on the word of someone who fancied himself a potion maker. Then I had hugged him and cried, but I had retreated to this room again.
“You know this cure isn’t real,” I said finally. “How many times have we tried to find it? Dr. Ferrad was the only one who knew anything about it and we never found her. It’ll turn out to be nothing. Except Jimmy’s going to get himself hurt again.”
He set down the dustpan, stood up, and brushed the knuckles of his hand across his mouth. “I know.”
My lips tingled. I held his gaze and lost myself for a moment and became all mixed up. I could hardly handle being friends and he wasn’t looking at me like a friend. I breathed out and stepped back. Suddenly I couldn’t be in the room anymore, not with him here.
“I’ll go,” I said. “But promise to watch my Faints for me, okay?”
Alden
He was strapped to the hospital bed. It must be a hospital bed because his back was upright, but his legs were fully extended and his hands were tied to the rails.
Something smelled bad, like body odor, and he figured it must be him.
He’d been so stupid, but Maibe needed the cure. He couldn’t pass up the chance the cure really existed this time. He couldn’t stand picturing her as a Feeb. Mottled, wrinkled, ashy, aged. Just looking at her made him swear he could see the virus particles infecting every cell of her body. His skin crawled when she got that blank look in her eyes.
“Why are you here?” a voice said.
Alden turned his head, searching for the body attached to such a voice. A voice that spoke in such a neutral tone he couldn’t tell if it was a man, woman, or child.
He was in a room. Faint light came from somewhere above and behind him, barely lighting the space around his bed. He looked gray, Feeb-gray. Adrenaline shot through his veins and his heartbeat raced.
Was he a Feeb now?
He leaned over and examined his skin.
Clear, smooth, unwrinkled, untainted.
A new thought came to mind. Did the Feeb-haters have him?
“You are not sick,” the voice said again. This time it sounded like a male voice.
Alden swiveled his neck, but that was a mistake because his head began to pound. One spot on the back of his head throbbed like a volcano about to erupt.
There, in the corner. A little rectangular speaker mounted near the ceiling. Metal rings were attached into the cement on the floor and low on the walls in regular intervals.
“Why am I tied up?” he croaked.
“We don’t have any sort of cages in this section. Not for people, at least.” This time the voice sounded female.
“But why—”
“This is a secret facility. How did you find us?”
A man’s voice, he decided. It had just a hint of depth. He imagined a skinny guy, basically hairless, thoughtless, full of nerdiness.
“I’m searching for the cure,” Alden said. “I’m searching for the Feeb cure. Do you have it?”
“But you don’t need it.” Whoever spoke now was someone different. More childlike. Almost plaintive. It made his head hurt. Was he talking to one person or three people? Was one of them a child?
“I…It’s for a friend,” Alden said.
“I’m sorry to tell you this, friend,” the male voice said, “but there is no cure. Not yet at least.”
Alden flexed his hands into fists and tested the straps until they bit so deep that his skin began to turn purple.
“Stop that! Make him stop that!” The childlike voice. There was a murmured conversation, like the male voice was shushing the child. He couldn’t understand what they were saying, but he could tell their were three voices. Three different people.
He looked again at the speaker but couldn’t see a camera.
“Stop hurting yourself and I’ll tell you how we can see you.” The child’s voice again.
He relaxed, mostly because his wrists hurt and the straps hadn’t budged. He wasn’t strong enough for this. He was never strong enough.
“Above you,” the child said.
He looked up and there it was, a tiny black circle attached to the ceiling, a glint of light on the lens. Next to it there was a type of vent, like for heat, but it was so cold
in there he thought it must be broken.“If I’m your friend, why am I tied up?”
“We were trying to be nice,” the child said. “He didn’t really mean it.”
“Who are you? How did I get here?” Alden said, thinking now maybe he had been talking to a child the whole time because why would the adults let a child talk at all? He tried to remember—he had been scouting a research facility in the old manufacturing district of a small town. There had been rumors of a cure. Or at least, rumors of drugs that could help. He remembered a cave of sorts. Dogs and coyotes and fresh Vs had him on high alert. There had been people. Uninfected like him. He’d run into Gabbi, Ricker and the others out on some raid. They were after some drugs to help with the Feeb symptoms, but he’d been after a bigger prize. A full cure. The next thing he knew he’d woken up here.
Silence on the speaker’s end.
“Do you know Sergeant Bennings?” Alden said, desperate to hear the voice, any voice again. He hadn’t wanted to use his father’s name. He hadn’t wanted anything to do with his father for a long time. No matter how many times he tried to tell Maibe that, she never quite believed him. Watching how his father had controlled the camps and treated the Feebs, he knew it had been wrong, all of it was so wrong. His mother would have thought so too, but she was a Faint. She had been Faint since almost the beginning.
He had helped Maibe get out as many Feebs as they could until Maibe had gotten too sick to do it anymore. That had almost broken him—watching her disappear into herself. And here he was, throwing his father’s name around in the hope that it might save him now.
Maibe had been right all along. He wasn’t built right to survive in this new world, but he couldn’t bear the thought of being alone in that room with the speaker box, camera lens, and vent as his only cold company. “Are you working with Sergeant Bennings and the council? I’m his son. I came from his camp. If you just get in contact with him—”
“I do not work with the council anymore,” the female voice said finally, and this time he sort of recognized it. He knew he should be able to place her. It made his head spin, trying to keep track of the voices without seeing their faces.
Feast of Weeds (Books 1--4) Page 51