“If it’s them,” Ricker said, “it’s not any of the ones we’ve run into so far.”
“You’re sure?” I said, my hope shrinking at his words.
He shook his head. “I’m not sure, Maibe. It was so fast. How can I trust what I may or may not have seen when anyone of the people here right now could be a ghost just as much as they could be real?”
There was silence for a long moment as the four of us looked over the people in camp. Most of the time you could tell which ones were ghosts by the faint silvery edge to their shapes. Sometimes you couldn’t.
“They might have been the ones to take Alden,” Gabbi said. “It could be them.”
When we crossed into the town, the streets were quiet and empty. The town had once boomed during the Gold Rush and then much later had reinvented itself as a tourist attraction. But that was before the infection spread.
Ivy had grown up along walls, creeping across the streets and covering windows. There was no wind. The heat felt more intense here, further down the mountain from Dutch Flat. Leaves lay thick and dry and crumbling on the ground. The place felt empty. It could have been empty—Faints and Vs long dead—except Alden had been captured here.
My palms sweat with the intensity of our silence. Stones scattered nearby and every time so far it had been an animal, but the entire group, four of us, several dozen other Feebs between Tabitha and Leon’s people, kept waiting for it to not be an animal.
Suddenly a shadow the size of a person slid around the corner of a building and into the street ahead of us.
“Do you see that?” I said.
Ricker shook his head. “Nothing.”
I sighed. A ghost-memory, then.
“What about the roof of that building on the left?” he asked, tilting his head that way.
I saw a faded red trim sagging over a stucco wall. “No.”
“Maybe we should take the herbs Corrina gave us,” he said.
I shook my head. “Not yet. It’s not bad enough yet.”
We reached the spot where the research center should have been. Leon and Kern went in first—except there wasn’t anything to go into. The place had burned down. A pile of black sticks, white ash, and melted glass that marked the former windows.
The blood drained from Gabbi’s face. Ricker wore a grim expression. Jimmy blinked really fast, like he was holding back tears. I wanted to throw up. We all knew what this meant. There was no medicine left for us. No medicine for Ano.
Kern, Leon, and a few others sifted through the ruins, but they found nothing. When Kern abandoned his search, he came and stood in front of Gabbi. His shoulders hung low and ash had streaked his cheeks and forehead with ghostly gray marks. Gabbi just stared at him, like this was somehow all of his fault. He lifted his hand to brush hair from her cheek but she turned away.
“There must be something,” Tabitha said.
Kern looked at his mother. Her face held an expression I had only seen once before—on the night Spencer had killed himself, when she’d told us she was sorry for our loss. We hadn’t known then the terrible things she was capable of then. This look on her face surprised me now. The pieces clicked into place.
“How many people?” I said.
Tabitha closed her eyes. “Ten of us. There are ten of us who are too sick now.”
“We needed this too,” Kern said. “Just as much as you.”
“No,” Tabitha said. “There’s still a chance.”
“It’s gone!” Gabbi said, her voice too loud in the stillness of our loss. “All of it’s burned. There is no chance left!”
“Gabbi, listen,” Kern said, his voice rising. “There’s still—”
“Kern!” Tabitha said sharply. “Move everyone out.”
Kern hesitated. Gabbi turned her back on him.
He walked off to call Leon and the others away.
I stepped forward, glancing at Ricker. He noticed it too—the way Tabitha had cut Kern off.
I stepped in Kern’s path. “What are you keeping from us?”
He opened his mouth, caught his mother watching us, shut his mouth again.
“Don’t pull that crap with us,” Ricker said from behind me.
I waited for Gabbi to join in. If anyone could get it out of Kern it would be her—but there was nothing. I looked over my shoulder. She had walked far down the block and stood at a street corner looking off into the distance. I almost called out.
Ricker placed a hand on my shoulder. “Something’s up.”
Me, Ricker, Kern, Tabitha, everyone—we caught up to Gabbi. She pointed to a flat, empty lot set in between two brick buildings. The lot backed up to a hillside that rose pretty much straight up into the sky. The top of the hill was lined with trees. In the middle of the hill, on level with us, was a metal door that stood ajar, as if opened to thin air, but on the other side it was dark except for a small light. I tried to understand what I was looking at.
“Is anyone else seeing this?” Gabbi said.
The door was an opening in the hillside. It led into the hill, into a type of cave.
“I see it,” I said.
“The door, right?” Kern said.
“And the lights,” Gabbi said, coming up to stand next to me. “There’s lights.”
“It’s real,” I said.
Tabitha and Leon locked eyes on each other and a silent message passed between them.
I tried to understand. This must be the uninfected camp. Or at least Tabitha and Leon thought it could be. Maybe the uninfected had taken the medicine to keep us from getting it. Maybe they had even burned down the research center. Maybe they had Alden inside, even now. We needed to figure out what to do and when to do it. We needed to watch and plan. I thought next Tabitha would tell us to hide.
Hugh fell on his knees. He shouted and his voice boomed, destroying the silence. “Lock it down! The infected are here! Lock—”
Leon punched Hugh in the gut, cutting him off mid-sentence. Hugh fell onto his side, gasping for air, but it was too late. Above the cave entrance the bushes shook.
Tabitha shouted and motioned her people forward. They brandished sticks and clubs and knives and guns. They ran silent, swift, their afflicted skin harsh and ashy under the summer light, like young people dressing as old people for Halloween.
“They can’t be serious,” Gabbi said, her eyes wide, her voice almost a whisper.
Ricker fell to his knees next to June and Hugh and began working away at their bonds. They shouted, struggled, fell over onto their faces in the dirt.
I realized—they thought Ricker was going to kill them. A deep stillness settled over me. This world was full of pain and death and even the good you tried to do didn’t count for much now.
The ropes dropped to the dirt. “Get out of here,” Ricker said.
June and Hugh scrambled away from us and from the fighting.
Booms sounded. Jimmy shouted for us to take cover. Gunfire. Their side, our side—it didn’t matter. The guns would bring along any Vs still left alive. Some of Tabitha’s people fell to the ground. Most kept running for the cave’s opening. Kern and two others stopped to fire back.
A shooter tumbled from the trees above the cave, slammed onto the ground, and lay still.
The gunfire continued and I wanted to clap my hands over my ears like a three-year-old. Jimmy was right. We had to hide, but I couldn’t get my body to move. Part of me knew what was happening. Shame filled me because I was letting all of them down again.
I was pushed onto my side. June and Hugh reappeared, sprinting now for the cave. They waved their hands around and I swore they shouted something about Vs but then June was cut down by her own people. I watched it—the burst of light from the trees two stories above us, the way the bullet threw June back as if punched in the gut, the blood that sprayed, how Hugh kept running.
The first of Tabitha’s people were swallowed up by the cave’s dark entrance. Then a couple more. And then another blur sprinted away.
&nb
sp; Gabbi.
She ran to the battle.
No. She ran to Kern. He sat upright in the dirt, a block away, halfway between us and the cave entrance. He held a bloody hand to his arm. He wore a dazed look on his face—blank, in the grip of some memory that would make it impossible for him to think and move out of harm’s way.
“Gabbi!” I shouted this and I shouted at the peace that rose up inside me. I shouted for it to go away because I didn’t deserve it because my friends needed me because I would rather die than let them down again.
I pushed myself up from the dirt, but Jimmy grabbed me and held me back.
Ricker crept along a building and then another, moving closer to Kern and Gabbi but staying out of the gunfire.
I fought against Jimmy and slipped away. I followed Ricker and Jimmy followed me. The battle disappeared from view when I ran past the corner of a brick building. Fragments of brick flew off and hit my skin, like a burst of heat, as if someone had taken a cigarette to my cheek.
I sped along the wall to where Ricker crouched. He started up at my noise, fists ready to fight, then saw it was me. It felt like the whole ocean roared in my ears.
He crawled around the corner. I followed. Jimmy’s breath was hot on my neck. Kern still sat on the ground, but now instead of holding his arm, he raised his right hand. He fired off a shot into the bushes above the cave entrance. A man and rifle tumbled out, flipping once in midair.
Gabbi yelled and dragged Kern back, hooking him under the shoulders. He let himself be dragged. The three of us scrambled out to help, each taking a leg or shoulder. We ran with him around the building’s corner, behind the safety of a brick wall.
Kern took gulping breaths, his face white as a sheet, his Feeb skin shiny in the harsh sunlight. A vein in his neck pulsed.
“What were you thinking?” I said, rounding on Gabbi.
“I wasn’t.” Gabbi’s face was pale and she wouldn’t look at me. “Otherwise I would have left him for dead.”
That shut me up, but Kern didn’t look like it mattered to him. Maybe it was normal for them. I couldn’t understand how she could, how they could…I wanted to punch Kern in the face. Instead I yelled at him. “Do you know how many people have just died because of you?”
“You have no idea what’s really going on here,” Kern closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the brick building. “The memantine was a backup plan. Dr. Ferrad’s done it. The cure is real and they don’t want us to have it. Now is someone going to help me tie off this wound, or are you all going to watch me bleed to death?”
Chapter 14
We worked fast. Kern was propped against a brick wall. Ricker ripped part of his own shirt into strips and I tied up Kern’s wounded arm. The bullet had passed through muscle and gone out the other side. As long as the wound didn’t get infected, he would survive it. I told myself I could think about what his words meant later—a cure! It was real!—but unless we hurried, we might not survive the Vs surely headed our way.
It was silent except for the birds. The birds were always around now, singing their songs in the cool early mornings or the warm evenings. There were no cars or planes or electricity to interfere. Technically some of it still worked. Sometimes over the past couple of years I could hear an engine’s grinding gears if the wind blew just right.
Jimmy and Gabbi stood on lookout at either corner of the huge warehouse that hid us in its shadow. They were barely still in sight of me and Ricker as we worked on Kern. We were on the side of the building opposite the battle that had turned silent. The fighting was over, but we had no idea who won.
Jimmy scraped his foot in the dirt. I focused on Kern’s blood seeping through the makeshift bandage. Bright red like flashing rubies. He smelled like forest, like dirt, like fear. Ricker rested a hand on my shoulder and squeezed. I looked.
Jimmy held up both hands. One formed a ‘V’ shape, the other flashed all five fingers—three times. I looked over to Gabbi. She watched a different street. She flashed the same signs Jimmy did—five times.
Now I heard them. It was a sort of growling that rose up that you didn’t notice at first. Background noise that grew and transformed into something vicious. We hadn’t seen more than two or three Vs together in at least a year and now there were forty all in one place? The question was on my lips—where did they all come from? But there wasn’t any time.
Kern’s injury was beginning to clot, but blood still dripped down his arm and into the dirt. He looked pale and unsteady. Ricker and I helped him onto his feet, but he slipped back down to the ground. His eyelids fluttered and his eyes rolled showing us the whites.
Gabbi sprinted back to us. She was slick with sweat and mud streaks and Kern’s blood. “We have to get into the cave right now.”
“It’s too quiet in there,” Ricker said, but there was no heat in his voice. We couldn’t fight off forty Vs at once, no matter how slow or weak they might be at this point.
“We don’t have a choice.” Gabbi propped Kern up, using her shoulder to brace him under his arm. Ricker took the other side as I helped. We dragged Kern to the end of the warehouse and paused at the corner to see if our path was clear.
Ricker glanced over his shoulder and froze. “Jimmy!”
I looked behind us. The noises had grown now, unmistakably. Growls and screeches and the snap of teeth. Jimmy stood still at his lookout at the far corner of the building. He leaned against the brick and showed us his side profile. Too still. Too dreamy. A half-smile on his lips.
Acid burned my throat and my hands became slick with sweat. He was going Faint again.
Ricker moved to drop Kern.
“No!” I said. Gabbi and I couldn’t move Kern alone. Ricker knew it. “I’ll get him.”
Before Ricker could protest I ran off after Jimmy. Gabbi shouted at Ricker to move his ass.
My feet pounded the dirt, kicking up puffs of dust that formed haze in the air. My heartbeat pounded so loud in my ears it drowned out the growls. One V came into view and another tripped into the dirt close behind him. Jimmy felt a mile away. I pushed myself harder. Even from this distance, the Vs moved like I did. They looked normal. They looked fresh.
I shouted at myself to go faster. I felt like my heart might explode. Jimmy stood there, with his curly hair like a halo around his head, his lanky body thin and covered in scratches, his face dreamy, his muscles relaxed and lazy because he couldn’t see what was closing in on him.
There was shouting behind me. Time slowed down. There were five Vs now, strung out yards apart from each other. One of the Vs was still facedown in the dirt from falling. Sweat poured off me and I swore I saw drops of it fly into the air and scatter into a million tiny rainbows. The drops fell into the dirt and it was the most beautiful sound and I pushed all of it back and thought about the most terrible things instead—Ano trapped in the fevers for an eternity, the girl and her family dying in the summer sun on that hillside, Jimmy about to die in front of me.
I slammed into the first V as he reached out to grab Jimmy by the hair. We went tumbling into the dirt and I tasted a dry, grittiness on my tongue that crunched between my teeth. I punched and kicked and everything was a blur of clothes and teeth and dust that stung my eyes.
There was a sharp pinch on my leg, like it had just been caught in an animal trap, the metal teeth clamping down, tearing, ripping.
I hooked the Vs nose with my fingers and yanked. His eyes flew open—brown, bloodshot, empty except for the anger that haunted them. The trap released its hold. I scrambled away. Rocks scraped my skin raw. Two more Vs ran at us. Their clothes were mostly clean, their sprint was smooth and fast.
The roar in my ears grew so loud I thought my head would burst. The first V came at me again. He shaped his hands into claws. His blond hair was long and beginning to form mats. He had that wild, hungry look in his eyes. Without thinking, I jumped up, grabbed a fist-sized rock and smashed it into the side of his head. He held a hand up as if surprised, then crumpled.
Jimmy still stood, hands at his sides, that half-smile on his lips. I ignored the burning pain in my leg and ran to him. Back by the cave, Ricker sprinted for us, his machete waving in the air, even as Gabbi picked up a rifle and shot at the Vs that came out from the other direction.
The next two Vs locked on me and Jimmy. Ricker was too far away. He’d never make it in time and my little rock wasn’t going to do anything to two of them.
I yanked Jimmy’s arm but he didn’t move. I screamed at him but he didn’t even blink.
My body burned with a heat that made me see things so clearly. I whispered in his ear a list of wonderful, beautiful things. I described chocolate ice cream and parks with green grass and a squirmy puppy with soft, silky fur and how they were all there in the cave, all waiting for him, just for him, and shouldn’t we run to it? Wouldn’t that be a fun game to see who got there first to play with the puppy?
His leg twitched. The two Vs were within several feet now. Ricker was still too far away.
Jimmy laughed a clear bell sound and before I could blink he ran off. His hair bounced with each step. Ricker stopped in his tracks and his mouth fell open. I sprinted after Jimmy and I couldn’t hold back the thrill that bubbled up. It worked! He was going to be okay.
Jimmy ran past Ricker.
My heart dropped into my stomach.
Jimmy was headed straight for the other battle. He wouldn’t see them. He wouldn’t turn. He wouldn’t fight.
Something snatched at my shirt. I screamed, pivoted, saw a V had caught me. Her stinking breath blocked out all other sensations. It smelled like something had died in there. I fell backward. My shirt ripped and suddenly I was free and running as fast as I could in spite of my burning ankle.
Ricker caught up to Jimmy and herded him to the entrance. The darkness of the cave swallowed the two of them. The fighting near Gabbi had stopped because some of the Feeb’s had come out to help. When they looked in my direction, they shouted and fled back into the cave too. I dared not look behind me but pushed myself to go faster.
I crossed the threshold. The door slammed closed behind me with a screech that echoed. I tripped over something soft on the ground, flipping and landing on my back so hard it knocked the breath out of me.
Feast of Weeds (Books 1--4) Page 60