“I do know Sergeant Bennings,” she said.
Alden didn’t know what to say. What to do. “What do you want?”
“The cure, of course.”
Chapter 3
The streets of this little mountain town were dusty and full of people. Pine trees scented the air and cast stark shadows across the buildings and street. I realized it was later than I thought, more like afternoon. It had become easy to lose track of time over the last few months. What would seem like the passing of a few minutes would turn out to be hours. But I didn’t mind so much because mostly that meant I wasn’t thinking of the bad times, but instead reliving puzzles with my uncle.
I stepped off the wooden porch. The way to Gabbi was uphill, a short block lined with Victorians, deer fences, rusted tin roofs, planked footbridges over the creek, a dish satellite no one had bothered to remove. People noticed me. Of course they looked—they knew who I was. They were people I had helped escape. They also knew I had stopped helping.
Gabbi shared a house with Ano, Jimmy, and Ricker on this street. Brown nets covered the porch and a set of double bunks because it was too hot to sleep inside at night. A cat curled on a wooden rocking chair as if it were just another day. We’d all stayed in a nicer place at first, but then when we’d begun freeing others and bringing more of them back, the mayor kept moving us. For the good of the other survivors. Corrina was furious, Ano said it was to be expected, and we all waited for Gabbi to explode, but she kept a lid on it and stayed outside of town more and more often.
The cat ignored me as I let the screen door slam. Gabbi was going to get a piece of my mind for keeping this raid from me.
Gabbi looked up from the kitchen island and the maps she was pouring over. Her hair was cut short, almost shaved. Corrina stood next to her, brown hair long and frizzy and falling around her shoulders in waves. My hair was flat in the heat and fell in a weird curve so I kept it in a ponytail, which made it easy for Freanz to yank.
Dylan stood next to Corrina, his hand resting lightly on her hip. It had been three years since the virus first stormed our neighborhood, killed my uncle, and threw all of us together. Even without a memory-rush, I remembered Jane’s blonde hair and the ugly words she spoke in the store before Corrina and I had been infected. But Dylan and Corrina were solid now.
“Well, well. The deserter returns,” Gabbi said.
“Gabbi,” Corrina said.
Gabbi snapped her head around and a wild look entered her eyes. Her shoulders locked up and her jaw clenched. She often lost her temper. That was the way she WAS, but this was different. I tensed. That spark of compassion she always carried in her eyes—no matter how much she tried to cover it up with anger and insults and attitude—it winked out for a second. She was going V right then and there.
Jimmy walked in from the back room. He was fourteen now. Still short—shorter than me. His dark hair hung in corkscrews, framing his face. He always had this earnest please-don’t-step-on-me look. Gabbi locked onto his movement. I swore her head swiveled on her neck like something out of Poltergeist.
“Gabbi!” I yelled.
Jimmy finally noticed what was happening. Papers fluttered out of his hands and onto the floor.
Corrina got into Gabbi’s face, only inches away, so that they were breathing the same air. Dylan reached out as if to stop her. Gabbi’s expression looked mean. Corrina’s expression was peaceful. She held Gabbi’s gaze even though you couldn’t be sure Gabbi even saw her.
“Gabriela,” Corrina whispered. “You are here with your friends. You would never hurt your friends. Gabriela, you are safe. You are safe.”
Long seconds of silence. Dylan rocked onto the balls of his feet. Ano moved into a sitting position on the couch, ready to jump in.
Gabbi blinked and the light came back into her eyes. “Don’t call me Gabriela.”
Corrina smiled, almost devilish. “It worked, didn’t it?”
This was the game the two of them played. They showed they cared by doing everything they could to annoy the other one.
Gabbi rolled her eyes and looked away. Sweat dripped down her neck. She mumbled some words that sounded like a mix between an apology and calling Corrina a dumb-ass.
Corrina laughed and grabbed a bunch of papers from the ground to fan herself with them. Dylan dropped his arms to his sides. Ano laid back down onto the flower-print couch and returned a wet towel to his forehead. He never did like the heat.
“What’s going on?” I said. The tension in the room was fading but I felt frantic. The puzzle pieces weren’t fitting together. What was happening? Why hadn’t they told me about this?
“The symptoms are getting worse,” Ano said, not taking the towel off his face. “The longer someone’s been a Feeb, the more episodes they’re having.”
“If you’d been around, you would have known,” Gabbi said in a harsh voice.
“It’s good to see you, Maibe,” Jimmy said. His smile dimpled his cheek and light shined in his eyes. He came up and grabbed my hands. I squeezed and smiled back. I could always count on Jimmy to make me feel better.
“It IS good to see you,” Corrina said. “How are your people?”
I looked down at the carpet dingy with dirt. Just that motion was enough to smell a hint of smoke still buried deep in the fabrics from who knew how many cigarettes the previous owner had once smoked inside these walls. Corrina cared about the Faints as much as I did. She was the one who had gotten us started on taking care of them.
“Good, I guess. Except Molly broke a window today.”
“Is she all right?” Dylan asked.
“A few cuts, but she’ll be okay. Ricker’s with them right now. He said he’d watch them for me.”
“Let me know if you need any help,” Corrina said. “We can bring them into the main part of the church and take shifts—”
“No, thank you, I’m fine.” A little upwelling of panic choked my throat. If I didn’t have Molly, Freanz, Sera, and Lesa to take care of I didn’t know what I would do.
“Can we get back to work now? We’re leaving in the morning,” Gabbi said.
“To where?”
Gabbi still wouldn’t look me in the eyes as I approached the kitchen island. Well, I could deal with her anger. I wasn’t a thirteen-year-old kid in awe of her anymore. Well, I was still a little bit in awe of her, but I knew how to hide it better.
She pointed to a spot on the map where several swirly black lines merged. “There’s a clinic here, near one of the abandoned camps. The healer says it might have more powerful drugs than the ones we’ve got.”
I placed my hands on the cold tile next to the map. “Since when did we start shopping for him?” I arched an eyebrow in disbelief.
“Since Gabbi went into V-mode last week and almost killed a newcomer,” Ano said.
“He was teasing one of the Faints!” Gabbi said, but even she looked a little pale at the memory.
Ano set his lips in a grim line. “I’ve come close a few times too.”
“I just go Faint,” Jimmy offered. “It keeps happening more and more. Just this morning, I lost it and almost walked in front of a horse. I thought I was eating an ice cream cone on the beach.” His face looked wistful. “It wasn’t so bad really. I didn’t mind it.”
The pieces clicked into place. My stomach hollowed out at this new realization—something I had known for awhile, something I hadn’t wanted to admit.
I was turning Faint.
I opened my mouth to speak but stopped when I surveyed their faces. They knew I had been going Faint. Of course they knew it. That’s why Gabbi was being so harsh with me. That’s why Corrina handled me like fragile glass and why Ricker kept visiting. That’s why Jimmy was looking at me now with that shining, earnest face.
“It’s not only for the healer,” Corrina said quietly. “The galantamine doesn’t work on the memory-fevers anymore. We need to try something else.”
“But…I don’t understand,” I said. I felt the sw
eat pooling in my armpits. The entire house smelled musty with the hot air, with our sweating bodies, with the way the infection was still surprising us with new horrors. “Is it happening to the whole town?”
Ano shook his head. “We were some of the earliest. Me and Gabbi, Jimmy, and Ricker.”
“And Mary and Leaf and Spencer,” Gabbi said, low but fierce.
Jimmy rubbed the scars on his arm.
I touched my own skin. I only had Leaf and Spencer carved there. Gabbi and Ano had many more names. “But what about me? Why is it already so bad for me? I wasn’t one of the first.”
Gabbi looked away. I waited for someone to speak but the silence stretched out. Finally Corrina said, “There were other factors in your case.”
She didn’t have to say the Garcia name out loud for all of us to hear it anyway. I couldn’t bear that she looked at me like I was already broken. If she kept looking at me like that I really would break into a million pieces. I pushed the hair out of my eyes and wiped the sweat off my forehead.
“It showed up with us first,” Ano said. “But it’s affecting the whole town now.”
“It’s not just any old memory like before,” Gabbi said. “It’s either the worst ones or the best ones.” She hunched her shoulders. “We need the memantine. ”
“We could use you on this, Maibe,” Ano said underneath his towel, not having moved yet in spite of the tension in the air. He was always like that—too cool, except for him it wasn’t an act. “You haven’t been as sick as long,” Ano continued. “You’re still one of the best.”
The ghost-memory of the girl with the crown of braids appeared at his words. She looked at me with such awe, with such faith. She stood now next to Ano, smiling, adoring. Her pigtails draped over her shoulders. “No, I can’t.” The words choked my throat and I held up my hands on instinct to stop him from talking even though he couldn’t see me.
“She doesn’t have to go,” Corrina said. “You can’t force her.”
“Then who else can go with us? The hospital needs you here,” Gabbi said. “I’m like a cripple. Ano and Ricker aren’t much better off. Sorry Jimmy, but you need more practice before I let you out there—”
“Hey!” Jimmy said, an embarrassed look flushing his cheeks.
“If we don’t get those drugs—”
“What about Kern and Tabitha…” My voice faded into silence at the look on Gabbi’s face. Tabitha was Kern’s mother. Gabbi and Kern had a thing between them, or could have, if Tabitha hadn’t been crazy. Tabitha was a Feeb and she’d suckered us all into believing she cared about what happened to us when we were trapped in the camps. Then she’d betrayed that when she’d turned all the uninfected at the camp into Feebs against their will. Kern hadn’t wanted to go along with his mother, but he’d stayed with her.
“We don’t know where they are,” Ricker said.
“We don’t care where they are,” Gabbi said, too quickly. There was a pause in the room as everyone acknowledged silently that she clearly did still care about Kern. Of course no one dared say this out loud.
“Okay,” I said, “What about Alden? He’s helped us plenty of times. Didn’t he just get us those antibiotics?”
“That was two months ago,” Gabbi said. “After the last of the camps fell. We don’t even know where Alden is. He’s not going to help. Feebs disgust him after all, notwithstanding his crush on you, of course.”
I clenched my teeth. She might be trying to get me back for bringing up Kern, but it still felt like a low blow. Whatever Alden felt for me, it wasn’t a crush. He cringed every time I got within a foot of him. “That’s not fair. Alden’s helped us a million times over.” Gabbi’s words finally registered. “What do you mean the camps fell? What do you mean you don’t know where Alden is?”
Corrina and Gabbi exchanged a look.
“I told you we should have told her,” Gabbi said.
“She hasn’t been herself.” Corrina turned to me, not quite looking at me. “You hardly come out of that hotel room now. I thought if you—I thought you needed more time.”
My frustration rose even as a sick feeling entered my stomach. “Just tell me.”
“Last time we checked,” Gabbi said. “The camps are gone.”
“Gone where?”
“Just gone,” Gabbi said. “They’ve been overrun or abandoned. Some of the people must have escaped because the supplies were missing. All the Feebs are gone too, thanks for asking after them.”
I cringed but plowed forward. “Why didn’t you tell me? You should have told me. I would have—”
“—finally stopped acting like a coward?” Gabbi yelled.
“I’m not a coward!” I yelled back. “I’m protecting all of you. I’m useless. I might get you killed, I might—”
“I didn’t say you were a coward, dumb-ass,” Gabbi said.
I opened my mouth to protest. She held up her hand and the dangerous look in her eyes shut me up.
“I said you were ACTING like a coward. We’ve all gotten people killed. That’s how this works. Even Jimmy’s still walking around, Faint or not. What I want to know is—” Gabbi locked her brown eyes on me “—are you coming or what?”
I opened my throat and told myself to say, yes, I’ll come. You need me, I’ll come.
I whirled around and slammed through the screen door. The cat jumped out of the rocking chair as if struck by lightning. I fell down the steps and ran.
Chapter 4
The street was empty. The temperature was only in the upper eighties but the sun beat into you if you dared stand in it.
Laughter filtered from Betty’s, the convenience store across the street—it acted as an informal hangout and supply center. I rarely went there. Too many Feebs who thought they knew me and wanted to thank me for rescuing them.
Freanz and Molly and the twins were waiting for me. I pictured climbing the wooden stairs, my weight making the planks creak. The door hinge would squeak while opening. I would smell egg and oatmeal because Ricker wouldn’t have remembered to clean up.
Ricker.
He would ask how the meeting went. He would wait and listen and not say anything to make me feel bad, but it would be all over his face. He would try to swallow the disappointment. He would try to smile. But it would be in his eyes because he never could hide anything from me, especially when he was really trying to hide it.
My shoes went past the hotel without stopping.
Not quite yet. I could not face him quite yet. Even the stares I might get in Betty’s would be better.
The front of Betty’s was a mix of different cement structures from different decades. Slanted stairs on one side, a cracked handicap access ramp on the other. The rail painted with flaked red and green and silver. The windows were single pane and unbroken except for one that Betty had boarded over. I stepped across the threshold—just a piece of wood wide enough to hold the door in place. Signs proclaimed the store's historical significance as a trading hole and post office in centuries past. Inside, the place smelled sour, like overripe fruit.
Those first few months in town, when we’d all gotten back together and were pretty much the only ones around except for the few Faints in town, this place had smelled like a freezer gone really bad, which was exactly what had happened. The electricity was off and half the store was fouled. The smell still lingered, even though Betty had given the place a strong dose of bleach and elbow grease when she moved in.
Betty stood behind the old counter, a waist-level thing of peeling Formica. It wrapped around her in a blocky U. Alcohol and cigarettes lined the shelves behind her, like convenience stores of old—but she only took barter.
Five Feebs sat at a little card table pushed near the back wall. They had mugs of coffee and a deck of cards out. One was lost in a memory-rush and the others waited patiently, chatting, lounging, looking around. I recognized most of them, seeing as I’d had a hand in each of their rescues. I couldn’t remember their names except for two of them, Be
rnice and Nindal—rescued at the same time from under Sergeant Bennings’ nose, with Alden’s help. I wondered where he was now, if he was safe, if he was infected. My heart ached. Alden had been missing for months and I hadn’t even known.
A woman and small child wandered the two meager aisles of supplies Betty got through salvage or trade. The woman nudged her daughter. The child then turned to me with wide eyes and stuck a finger in her mouth. The woman grabbed her hand and toddled her over to me. I waited, knowing what was coming.
“Thank you,” the woman said. “You rescued us from Camp Eagle.”
I pressed my lips together and forced a smile.
She waited as if hoping I would say something and I would have said more, except if I started talking I wouldn’t stop until I told her that she shouldn’t be thanking me because I got people killed, and then I would launch into the story and describe the family of four and it would bring them back and it was too much to deal with. I looked at something just past her shoulder.
She frowned slightly. The little girl rocked on her heels, little green socks covering her feet, and then pulled on her mother’s arm. They wandered over to Betty’s counter and the woman whispered something to Betty, but Betty only shook her head. The pair left and Betty turned her hazel eyes onto me. She wore a royal blue shirt, buttoned, spotless. Black shorts. Her hair domed her head like a gray helmet. She smiled, as if I were just another Feeb. A little part of me relaxed. Betty knew all about my stories. She knew all of our stories. She ran the alcohol headquarters after all.
I sat on one of the bright green bar stools.
“What can I get for ya’, darling?” Betty asked.
“I don’t have anything to trade,” I said. “I just need to sit for a minute if that’s okay.”
She nodded and turned away. I scratched at the counter with my fingernails and stopped when I starting flaking up bits of the laminate. The next part would be hard—facing Ricker—but once he was gone I could pour everything out to my Faints and they would be the best listeners and then we could pretend that nothing had changed.
Feast of Weeds (Books 1--4) Page 52