Feast of Weeds (Books 1--4)

by Jamie Thornton

  “They like you. They like seeing you,” Maibe said. “You remind them of before.”

  Alden shook his head.

  “But if you don’t become a Feeb, you’re going to become something worse than that.”

  “I’ve been fine so far,” he said. “Two and half years later and all.”

  “You’ve gotten lucky.”

  “Maybe not.”

  “Maybe you can’t see it, but I do! I’ve had to take a V bite before to keep you from getting infected. How many times has one of us terrible, horrible, disgusting Feebs stepped in between you and a V so that you wouldn’t be turned?”

  “Stop it, Maibe.”

  “I will not stop,” Maibe said. “You’re being stupid. You’re being irresponsible. It’s the best protection you could have in this new world.”

  “Now you’re sounding like Tabitha.”

  Maibe froze, her hands above her head in a stretch.

  Tabitha and her son Kern had taken over an entire camp and tried to turn everyone into Feebs. Alden’s father had almost shot Maibe in that chaos, on purpose. He would never forgive his father for that.

  “Sorry,” Alden said, but Maibe turned away, and he realized that he didn’t much notice the lines in her face, that he’d rather there be a million veins and wrinkles to touch than to have her angry with him.

  “I think you should go back,” she said.

  “Maibe.” He’d come to see her and tell her there were rumors of a cure. Rumors strong enough that his own father believed they might be true this time. The camps were falling apart and his father was bugging out. Alden planned to tell Maibe he was going after the cure for his mother, but also, mainly, for her.

  “Your father must be wondering where his precious uninfected son is by now. You have to rebuild the human race and all, right? Make sure it stays pure and untainted, right?”

  “Maibe.”

  She looked over his shoulder and her eyes widened.

  “Alden, I mean it,” she said, her tone different, no longer angry. “You should leave right now.”

  He looked over and lost feeling in his hands. They were on the edge of town at their usual spot, and it was pretty safe, because most of the Vs had died off from starvation by now, but not absolutely safe, because nowhere was absolutely safe anymore. There was a V. One that was freshly turned, the fat not yet burned away to skin and bones because a V forgot to eat in the midst of all the rage.

  He stood up and the movement caught the V’s attention. He cursed. Maybe he could scale the gutter pipe onto the roof in time, but it looked slippery and likely to peel off the wall once he was halfway up. Maybe he could lock himself in a room somewhere, but the closest ones all had large windows.

  Maibe ran past him, a stick of some kind in her hands. Alden screamed for her to stop because she might get infected. But then he remembered she was already infected and this was what she meant, this was exactly what she meant. He was useless to her. But if he could cure her. If he could bring her over to his side—

  A curtain of darkness fell over his thoughts. Suddenly he felt like he was sitting again, but this felt like a chair, not a sidewalk. His arms were strapped down, his ankles were strapped down. Something around his forehead held his head down.

  He cracked open his eyes and blinked away the crust and shut them against the bright dome of light that seared into his brain. The memory of Maibe had been so real but he was in a room, he was in that room, with the speaker box and the shining glass eye and the gray vent—and the three voices on the other side. How could he be here now when he had been so completely there with Maibe a moment before?

  “Where’s Maibe?” he shouted. “What have you done with her? Where is she?”

  “Did we…Did he just come out of the fevers?” A woman’s voice from his left. She was in the room. A soft glow edged her white suit. “We brought him out of the fevers. This worked much faster than before. The blood must act as a sterilizing agent. This could be it, Dr. Stoven. Check the saliva levels. Check—”

  “Yes, but the cost…” A man’s voice. To his right. Soft, but excited. “We cannot rush the results.”

  “What results?” Alden said, the words getting stuck in his throat as if he hadn’t used it in a long time. Their voices were familiar, but was it because he’d heard them often enough now through the speaker box, or because he knew them from somewhere? His vision cleared a bit. Two white suits with plastic shields over their faces leaned over him.

  “Of course. We will repeat the procedure and confirm. Reset the machine.”

  “Excellent.”

  Silence. The two shifted away, the whirring sound of their respirators muffled their talk. Alden’s heart fluttered.

  “This is good work,” Dr. Stoven said. “No one looked at the different load levels of blood and saliva. The Lyssa virus must cause the fevers and the bacteria subdue it.”

  “No, Dr. Stoven, they battle for balance in the brain. I believe it’s their interactions that cause the fevers.”

  “But surely the rage episodes—”

  “This is promising,” the woman doctor interrupted, “but we must refine it. Bring out the next batch of Lyssa virus.”

  Alden strained against the bonds. They were going to give him V blood? His skin crawled at the thought of someone else’s blood mixing with his own and infecting him with the terrible rage. He arched his back, pushing off the bed. “Let me out of here!”

  One of the white suits came back. “Alden Bennings, please rest now.” The woman doctor.

  “How do you know my name?” And then all of a sudden he recognized the woman. “Dr. Ferrad?”

  Dr. Stoven returned to his bedside with a needle full of blood—except it wasn’t blood. It couldn’t be blood because the liquid was almost clear, like cloudy water.

  Dr. Stoven plunged the needle into a sort of drip-line and connected it to Alden’s arm. Next he uncoiled a thin tube. The liquid inside this tube WAS red. He held up the tube and twisted at something near the end. “Time for connection?”

  Dr. Ferrad glanced at her wrist. “We must give the viral load adequate time to complete two cycles of binary fission. Ten minutes should suffice.”

  “How much is required?” Dr. Stoven said.

  “All of it,” Dr. Ferrad whispered.

  “What are you doing? Tell me what you’re doing!” Alden wrenched himself against the straps again. The edges dug into his flesh, cutting off the feeling, turning him black and blue and red, making his veins stick out like a Feeb.

  Veins like a Feeb.

  He froze, back arched in the air, and then slowly lowered himself flat onto the bed. His insides grew cold. His stomach flipped. He blinked once, and then again. He stared at his hands, and arms, not understanding why they looked, why did they look…

  He began to scream.

  Chapter 7

  The next day, I paced the old hotel room for hours. Freanz, Molly, and the twins seemed to sense the tension. They reacted to my every movement with involuntary twitching. There were no new broken windows, just the gaping hole as a reminder, but every time they settled down enough for me to leave and check on Jen, one would start up again.

  By the end of the day, the walls felt like they were closing in on me. The wallpaper was faded and dirty, the floor covered in scratches, food was ground into the cracks. Why hadn’t I noticed any of that before?

  I filled a bucket with water, took a rag, and spent the afternoon scrubbing every surface until all of it shined, but my mind strayed to Jen again and again.

  When I finished feeding everyone dinner and settled them down for the evening, I sat by the broken window. A slight breeze gave some relief to the stifling heat. I drummed my fingers on the sill, watched the sunset change colors.

  Just as I decided to chance leaving there was a scratch at the door. Molly mumbled and her foot slipped out from under the covers. I repositioned the sheet on my way to answer the knock.

  Corrina stood there, smiling,
but the smile did not reach her eyes. She was taller than me and her wild hair was long and dark and framed her face almost like a lion’s mane.

  “Is it Jen?” Fear struck me like lightning.

  “She’s okay,” Corrina said quickly. “Not any worse, at least. I thought you might want to see her.”

  I closed my eyes and breathed out the knot that had formed in my chest.

  “Also—”

  “What?” I said.

  “I thought you would want to know. Ano and Gabbi are gone.”

  “Gone where?” But even as I asked, I knew the answer. Ano and Gabbi had gone for the new drugs without me. I was a coward for not going with them.

  “These new drugs might be exactly what we need,” she said.

  “But we still have plenty of the old drugs.”

  “We have enough for the next few months, if we’re careful,” Corrina said. “But they’re not working the same as before.”

  “But they’re still working.”

  “For now.” Corrina’s face was drawn as if she hadn’t been sleeping much. The orange light from the sunset cast a weird, sickly glow on the lines and wrinkles of her infected skin. “I’ll watch your Faints for you if you want to see Jen.”

  I tumbled out of that cave of a room, down the stairs, and onto the wooden sidewalk before realizing I hadn’t thanked Corrina. But it was too late to go back and I thought maybe even if I tried my body wouldn’t let me. The air felt cool and clear outside. The openness shocked me awake and I couldn’t return to that dark room. Not yet.

  I hurried down the block. The sunset cast the sky and buildings in an orange glow. Ghost-memories crowded the streets. It was like a silent movie, except this movie ran in color. Jen stood in front of me, her face contorted in rage, both eyes staring at me. Leon and his crowd milled around, opening their mouths as if shouting, but no sound came out. I hurried past all of it. I couldn’t bear returning to the hotel room, but I feared becoming frozen in the street, my brain betraying me, freezing me in one spot until someone else put me away with the other Faints.

  I took deep breaths and broke into a run, hoping the exercise would beat back the symptoms. And it did a little bit. The ghost-memories became just a little more transparent.

  I pushed myself into a sprint and hoped that somehow I would find Jen in her bed, awake and feeling better, her eye suddenly healed and all of this a bad dream.

  When I got to the church, I skidded to a stop and took in gulping breaths. Even though the air was cooling off, my run made me sweat. Stone blocks propped open the church doors. The sunset changed everything to pink now with hints of gray. With the remaining light, I could see Dylan and a few others inside, moving from bed to bed.

  I stopped before my shoe hit the first step. Suddenly I couldn’t go in there. My brain dipped into the Garcia family memory-rush. My muscles trembled and I felt that familiar cry on my lips. I was able to step back, and then take another step and another. I was down the walkway and back onto the street before I could force myself to stop. I silently cursed. If I ran away now what would that tell Jen? She’d think I didn’t care. She’d think maybe I did this to her on purpose.

  Dylan and the other Feebs still hadn’t seen me outside yet—too busy with their patients. The outhouse was around back. I decided to give myself a few minutes to make sure the memory-rush was gone.

  The dry, yellowed weeds crackled under my footsteps until I reached the path worn to bare dirt behind the church. The outhouse was next to this shed where we stored a lot of the medical supplies. The shed was a dark green. The outhouse was painted white like the church. I hurried to the outhouse door and grabbed the shovel and bucket of sand and wood shavings.

  Suddenly Leon and Nindal appeared. It felt like the double infection was laughing at me. I had run just a few blocks, but even so the memories felt overwhelming. My skin crawled as I told myself this wasn’t real. They weren’t real.

  The green shed doors were open, the lock dangling, broken from one handle. Leon passed a box into Nindal’s waiting arms. Nindal shifted from foot to foot as if dancing to an imaginary song and passed the box onto someone in the shadows. The beard that had grown in on Leon’s face made him look rougher, meaner, like maybe he wouldn’t think twice about hurting you if you got in his way.

  I told myself to move. I told myself to ignore the tricks my brain was trying to play on me. Another part of me whispered this really didn’t feel like a trick. Except that’s what the infection fooled you into thinking—that what you saw was real.

  Leon passed another box to Nindal and left the shed with a third box in his arms. He shut the doors and the two of them walked away, disappearing into the twilight like they really were ghost-memories. Because that’s what they had been. That’s what I told myself, even if part of me didn’t believe it.

  I set the bucket and shovel down. I hurried into the church to check on Jen. I didn’t say a word to anyone except to repeat in a whispered voice, “I’m sorry.” But Jen didn’t hear me. She slept with that bandage around her head and I couldn’t bear to wake her.

  For the next three days, I stayed holed up with my Faints.

  I went through the motions of the meals. I pointed them in the direction of the bathroom and let their memories do the rest. I chatted about nothing that mattered. I put them to bed and tried to read a book in the last of the light, but kept not understanding what I read. I tried to decide if what I had seen at the shed had been real.

  When the sun woke me on the fourth day, I couldn’t stand it anymore. Corrina needed to know about what I had seen, even if it turned out to be a ghost-memory.

  Once the rope had linked us all together, waist-to-waist in a train, I led my Faints down the three flights of stairs and left them in the care of the church-turned-hospital. I was the only one in town who took care of Faints full time. Everyone else willing to help rotated through the hospital on shifts.

  The morning was crisp and cool. There was a wet smell of dew in the air. The pale blue sky was cloudless. Birds chirped in several trees that shook with their movement. I saw the community hall from down the block. It was over two stories tall, though it only had one level.

  I entered that cavernous space and yet it somehow still felt claustrophobic. The hall was used mainly for morning exercises. Today it seemed as if less than half the town was there—maybe fifty people. Many had yoga mats and spaced themselves out in rows. Gabbi stood on a little stage that had probably once held piano recitals and school plays. She often led the exercises because of all the classes she’d taken at the fitness centers during her time as a runaway.

  My heartbeat increased as I took a position in the back row.

  So they were back and no one had bothered to tell me. Not even Ricker.

  Gabbi kept everyone moving, even while we focused on breathing and thinking, but thinking in such a way as to put obstacles around memories and to flex mental muscles that could push back anything that crept forward. Every moment flowed into the next without stopping. We worked from our head to our toes. My breathing deepened and moved like a waterfall up and down my spine. She changed the elevation a number of times. Bends, planks, lunges. The muscles in my arms and legs woke up, my head cleared. Our breathing filled the empty space above our heads, all of us silent and working together toward a common goal. To control the zombie in us.

  Sometimes we lost someone anyway. The person would go still, but eventually returned, and resumed. No one spoke, and yet we were together. My body opened up and so did my heart. I had not felt such belonging in a long time.

  Mayor Helen took the stage after Gabbi finished. She had been middle-aged when she turned and her plumpness made her very grandmotherly. The town had elected her during a group vote last year. Gabbi didn’t like her and Mayor Helen didn’t have much use for how Gabbi went about things either. Corrina always played interference between the two of them.

  Ricker, Gabbi, and Jimmy stood together in a huddle off to the side. Only Ano was
missing this morning, but I didn’t think much about it. Everyone skipped morning exercises at some point. I hadn’t attended them for months.

  “I have an announcement,” Mayor Helen said. “People have been leaving and I know some of you are considering it.”

  Conversations erupted.

  “There’s a cure!” someone shouted.

  “There might be.” She held up her hands for silence. “There’s rumors of it, yes. But that’s all it is right now. Rumors. Notwithstanding the few people taking care of the Faints this morning, or those in the fevers right now, who you see around you—that’s our town now.”

  People gasped, including me. Several dozen people had left, just like that, over some rumor, after we’d done everything we could to rescue them and give them a safe place to live.

  “The first group left three days ago.”

  This comment unsettled me. Three days ago was when I had left the hotel to visit Jen. Three days ago was when I had seen Leon and Nindal’s ghost-memories at the green shed.

  “More left the day after, and a third group just last night. They’ve taken supplies, stuff we had been holding in trust for the entire town. Food, medicine.” Mayor Helen looked like she saw something so broken she couldn’t see any way to put the pieces back together.

  “But if they find the cure—it’ll be worth it,” Betty said from the middle of the crowd.

  “We should have given them more,” said an older man I didn’t recognize.

  Others joined in, their talk crowding the air.

  “They just took it,” Mayor Helen said in a loud voice, chastising everyone into silence. “We would have supplied them. We would have—but fairly. But they didn’t ask, they didn’t care, they just took it and didn’t think about what it would mean for the rest of us still here, still trying to keep all this together.”

  “What she’s saying to you,” Gabbi said, separating herself from Jimmy and Ricker, “is they took all the drugs. They left nothing for the Faints or for us if we go into the fevers.”