“Smoke!” I shouted.
The orchard was dead. We were surrounded by a field of sticks and leaf litter that had been drying out for three years.
The wind shifted, grew in power. Out in the middle of the orchard, the smoke darkened and thickened like a tornado. Orange flames sprang to life and licked at the sky. Ash began to rain down like snowflakes.
Sergeant Bennings yelled for everyone to get on their feet.
The camp was just on the other side of the freeway, but the fire blocked us from the cars.
The orchard went up in flames like something out of a movie. My brain felt fogged, thick with fear and a headache. I couldn’t remember the name of the movie.
Tabitha shouted something about our ropes, but the uninfected had run off.
Ricker and I hobbled down the hill.
Suddenly Tabitha was next to me. She pushed me forward. “Run!”
I stumbled and landed chin first on the ground. I gulped air and got smoke instead. My wrists strained against the rope. Sweat coated my hands, making them slippery, but the ropes were still too tight. I scrambled back onto my feet. Gabbi was tearing at the ropes with her teeth.
I couldn’t find Ricker.
“Rick—” My throat felt like it broke apart on the smoke. Ash stung my eyes, making them tear. Nindal was on his knees next to a tree. His hair was like a smudge of charcoal against the trunk. I stumbled over to him, coughing and tripping on the ropes around my ankles.
“Get up!” I screamed this in Nindal’s ear. He turned to me. His eyes were bloodshot. They looked empty, so empty.
I blinked. His brown eyes were bloodshot from the smoke. Tears tracked dirt down his cheeks. Ash had gotten caught in his dark eyebrows, turning them white. I used my shoulder and elbow to lift him off the ground.
“Come on.” The orange light grew brighter around us. I didn’t know how we would make it out hobbled together, only that we had to try.
Hugh ran past. I shouted for help, but he didn’t pause. Then Sergeant Bennings appeared and slashed through our ropes. He pushed me forward and linked his shoulder under Nindal’s. This knocked his face shield sideways, revealing sharp blue eyes and a mouth locked in a grimace that showed his teeth.
“Run, you stupid girl.”
To my left, the flames danced along the tops of branches, like water pinging down a riverbed, but this was fire and wood. I ran through the trees. A figure came up behind me and for a moment it was Alden but then I blinked him away. Suddenly Ricker shouted at Tabitha. Gabbi was at his side.
“Where’s Maibe?”
Tabitha ignored him and limped along, as if having twisted an ankle. The uninfected were far ahead now, almost to the stretch of freeway that would serve as a fire break, if we were lucky. Except for Sergeant Bennings, the other uninfected had abandoned us to our ropes and the fire.
“I saw her,” Gabbi said. “I saw her ahead.”
“It was a ghost, Gabbi,” Ricker said. “She wasn’t there. I didn’t see her.”
I stumbled up to them. Tabitha’s hair was full of twigs. Ash coated everyone’s skin making them look more zombie-like than ever.
“I’m here.”
“I see her.” Ricker shook Gabbi by the shoulders. “Do you see her? Do you see her?”
Gabbi pushed him back. He fell onto the ground.
“I see her, idiot. Let’s go.”
Tabitha had kept walking. We caught up and passed her by. The freeway was a football field away. The fire was so hot and was no longer at our backs. It had swept ahead of us. It was curling through the trees as if it planned to cup us into its hands.
We could make it if we ran.
There was a shout behind me.
I looked over my shoulder. Tabitha had fallen.
Gabbi snatched at my arm. “Leave her!”
I shook her off and ran back. Ricker was close at my heels. We lifted Tabitha up between the two of us.
Gabbi appeared, chest heaving, hair wild and ashy, eyes dangerous. We took a step with Tabitha between us, but she moaned and went limp.
Gabbi cursed loud and long. She grabbed up Tabitha’s legs. The three of us carried her through the orchard. Sparks floated in the air—California’s version of the glow bug. One landed on my bare arm. It burned the hair, creating a stink that made me gag and a painful burning that left a dark mark on my skin. More orange sparks floated by, following different currents. They landed on our hair, our faces, our clothes, our skin.
Our feet touched the asphalt road. Seconds later, Sergeant Bennings and Nindal tumbled out next to us.
The sparks floated like a cloud of locusts in the sky. They drifted across the four-lane freeway, some tumbling to their death on the asphalt, but most—most caught air that brought them into the waist-high, yellowed grass on the other side.
The grass began to smoke.
Chapter 23
Ghost-memories whispered. The fire was at our backs and burning holes in our clothes. We passed the part of the fence I had dug underneath so long ago. Papers, plastic bags, empty bottles were caught in the fence links, forming an opaque wall along the bottom. Glass littered the guard box and crunched under our shoes as we hurried by. There was a body in a brown uniform. He slumped over a desk, desiccated in some parts, bloated in others, depending on what had fallen in the path of the sun and what had been protected by shade.
The camp was broken into two parts, surrounded by gravel and made out of cement. On this side of the freeway, there was no orchard, but the weeds would still give the fire plenty of fuel.
We needed to get inside.
Sergeant Bennings led us away from the refugee barracks that were little more than wooden shacks. They wouldn’t stand for much longer. Gravel paths led off in several directions, twisting through the dead grass like gray snakes before disappearing over a slight rise. We hurried along the gravel path that bent around the base of a small hill. The main building stood two stories tall with thick concrete walls. Rust stained the outside in a series of waterfall splashes. Lines of broken windows rimmed the top floor. The door to the main cement building was open, its black rectangle swallowing all light.
Glass, gravel, and broken concrete crunched under our feet, making everything unstable. Tabitha almost slipped out of my arms. My muscles trembled and would fail soon.
Sergeant Bennings dragged Nindal through the doorway. The darkness swallowed them up. The door gave out a long groan as the metal edge of it scratched the stone. I wondered for a moment if we would find Vs waiting inside for us, but then pushed that thought away.
There was nowhere else to go.
We crossed through and the cold, humid air hit me like a slap. I was tumbling down into the carpet, my aunt raising her hand for another strike. I held up my hands to block her and cried out.
“Maibe!”
My aunt disappeared. There was silence except for the crackling fire outside and the way the wind sent flurries of ash and sparks into the air. My eyes began to focus in the dark. I’d dropped Tabitha while in the memory-rush, but she was okay—awake now and rubbing her ankle. Crumbs of metal, glass, and concrete covered the ground. Sunlight streamed in through a series of arched floor-to-ceiling windows. The light revealed pools of water. Pipes ran across the two-story tall ceiling, and drips from them splashed into the pools in front of us. Green moss made zig-zagging paths along the edge of the pools.
A skittering noise brought a bunch of rifles to attention.
Sergeant Bennings’ people and the other Feebs were already here.
A small creature, larger than a rat, smaller than a cat, fled across the shadows and lights, disappearing through a far archway where more vines climbed the walls. A few of the uninfected turned back to the dripping water to clean themselves and filter it through their clothing for a drink. Others turned their guns on us Feebs once the animal noises stopped.
I shouted at them.
They had no decency. They had run and left us for dead, not even bothering to c
ut our ropes. Every step we took was watched, evaluated, scorned. I realized how it must have felt for Ricker and Gabbi to be runaways on the streets. They talked about it sometimes, when the mood hit them just right. The way people hated them, the way peoples’ faces changed when they figured out they were talking to a bunch of runaways. The way they’d gotten kicked out of restaurants, run out of parks, rounded up for police questioning just because of who they were.
This was what it must have been like. The eyes watching you. The way they assumed you were always up to no good.
It sat like a weight on my back.
I understood why Gabbi lashed out so much. If you didn’t fight back, then you let them think it was okay to treat you like you were less than human.
I understood Ricker’s desire to pretend it didn’t touch him. They couldn’t hurt you if you pretended you didn’t care.
I wanted to meet Mary to tell her I knew why she had dreamed of a garden in the country for all her friends to just live away from all of this fear and hate.
I finished my shouting. I couldn’t remember ever feeling so exhausted.
Leon and Bernice took Nindal from Sergeant Bennings and leaned him against one of the walls.
Sergeant Bennings said something sharp.
The uninfected lowered their guns. Everyone except for Hugh.
Another word from Sergeant Bennings. Hugh lowered his rifle, but not before spitting into one of the pools.
Gabbi and Ricker just stared at me.
“Where should we go?” Sergeant Bennings said, breaking the silence with his hoarse voice. He was asking me for directions as if I had some secret power that would find Alden.
“I have no idea,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper.
Sergeant Bennings looked as if about to call me a liar.
“I need to keep walking. It’ll help me think.” And avoid the stares of everyone who thought my shouting meant I’d gone crazy. Who knows—maybe I had gone crazy.
At the other end of the large room was a winding concrete staircase. It looked strange, the smooth sweep of its curve against the massive bulkiness of the concrete. Up above were the experiment rooms. I had never seen them, only heard about them from others who had escaped.
Sergeant Bennings stepped through the puddles, his boots sending rippled waves into the moss that lined it. “Turning into a Faint now, are you?” He said this too quietly for anyone to hear except for me.
I followed after him, going around the pools, trying not to disturb any life that had managed to take over where humans had failed. I almost wanted to take his comment as him wanting to start a fight, but there was an edge of worry to his voice. For all he knew, I was the only link to finding his son.
“Exercise helps,” I said finally.
“But not like it used to.”
“How do you know?”
He didn’t answer right away. “It didn’t help my wife.” There was sorrow in his voice.
Jane walked over. “We should try to find whatever’s left of the research. Maybe I’ll recognize something.”
Sergeant Bennings cocked his head and nodded. “There won’t be much left, but whatever there is, it’ll be upstairs.”
We took the stairs one person at a time in case the concrete decided to give out. On the second floor, everything tightened into a long hallway. One side was lined with broken windows that let the smoke drift in. Glass was scattered everywhere. On the other side was a series of doors. An old fire sprinkler pipe cut the ceiling down the middle like a seam. Piles of dust and leaves gathered in the cracks where the walls met the ground, rounding the edges and narrowing it into a tunnel.
We opened each door in order. Chairs, beds, sinks. A caved roof inside one room. In other rooms the green mold took over in the shade, sucking moisture from the concrete. There were filthy tables with straps, rusting grates over the windows, trays of hypodermic needles, cabinets of tools I dared not open. A decayed body in one of the rooms was splayed out and so old it was impossible to tell the kind of infection the victim had suffered from.
Ricker touched a set of straps with dents that seemed too much like human teeth marks for comfort. We both stared at reddish stains on the walls and floors and wondered what was rust and what was blood.
A growing sense of dread settled into my stomach. This hallway of horrors was where all rules had been set aside for any experiment they could imagine. Everything was given the green light in order to find a cure.
“Sergeant!”
The voice, like a shot, brought Ricker and me into the hallway.
A door led into a large room filled from floor to ceiling with monitors, computer banks, and other laboratory-looking equipment. Sergeant Bennings stood at the far end of the room, rifling through papers yellowed with water damage and spread across a metal table. A broken fluorescent light fixture dangled over him. I imagined it shattering on his head, then banished the thought. If he hadn’t cut our ropes and helped Nindal we’d be dead now.
Jane pulled out papers and notebooks from several cabinets.
Sergeant Bennings stood a few feet away. “Do you recognize any of this?”
Jane shook her head. She tore through the pages and let them flutter to the ground. “I…I don’t know.”
Sergeant Bennings bent down and carefully picked up the papers. Other uninfected picked through the cabinets, drawers, and desks.
When they weren’t paying attention I slipped out of the room and back down the stairs. Soft steps gave away that both Ricker and Gabbi followed. I sidestepped puddles and received an adrenaline shock when I startled an animal into sprinting away.
“Where are you going?” Ricker said.
I continued outside.
“Any clues Alden might have left, they wouldn’t be inside here.” The sun shocked my eyes into blindness. The dark coolness inside had made me forget. For as far as the eye could see, the sky was a sick brown now. The smoke had blotted out the sun. Orange flames burned the weed-covered hillsides around the camp. We were in the eye of the firestorm.
Sergeant Bennings ran outside, a rifle crooked in his arm. He stopped when he saw me.
I wanted to tell him I wasn’t going to run away. I kept myself from wasting the breath and said instead, “You won’t find anything in there.”
I knew this with a surety I hadn’t felt in a long time. I walked up a slope and over a rise that brought me to the top of the ridge. The rolling hills spread out before me. Behind me, the hills ended abruptly at the freeway and gave way to flat, endless miles of valley, now no longer irrigated, now mostly dead, now all burning—and haunted by the memories of that poor family unlucky enough to have gotten me as their rescuer.
I hiked out, crossing another depression and the top of a hill. The fire licked close here. I hurried through a gap in the chain-link fence made by a truck crashing through it. The driver’s face was still mashed into the steering wheel, his body positioned like he was praying.
An invisible compass drove me forward.
Behind me I heard the cough and start of an engine. Sergeant Bennings was at the truck’s steering wheel. The dead driver was laid out on the ground.
“Everything out here is burning. There’s nothing. It’s weeds,” Sergeant Bennings said.
“We’re going to get cut off,” Ricker said.
“Let her be,” Gabbi said. “She knows what she’s doing.”
There was only one place Alden would have left me clues. The next hill dumped me onto a ledge that overlooked the camp.
I sat on the ledge, dangling my feet over it, trying this time to trigger a memory-rush and figure out where or what the clue would be.
“This is where Alden and I would meet to map out escape plans.” It’s also where I had tried to kiss him and he had rejected me so completely.
Sergeant Bennings looked at me strangely. “It wasn’t just information? He was…”
“He was helping people you had imprisoned.” I forced myself not to think about
the Garcia family. “He was helping get them out.”
“I knew someone was helping,” Sergeant Bennings said, “but I always figured it was someone with infected relatives. I never thought…”
Alden’s ghost fuzzed in and out next to me. His feet dangled over the ledge like mine now did. He had commented on how blue the sky looked now that there were no more fires to muck it up. I had talked about logistics, the layout of the camp, where the family was being kept. He had talked about his worry for his mother, how his father shouldn’t be blamed for the virus, how he was searching for Dr. Ferrad and the cure and he was getting closer.
His brown hair had dropped into his eyes. I had reached out to brush it away—
“Stop,” I told myself.
“What?” Ricker said.
The wind whispered through my hair. Ash fluttered into my lap. There was no sunlight but everything was hot and sweat poured off of me. I turned and saw Ricker had his bandanna high over his nose and he looked so worried and the orange fire on the hillside glowed so bright.
“Go back, Ricker.”
He laughed and sat next to me. His movement nudged aside a rock. A paper fluttered from underneath and caught in a prickly stalk of dead grass. Gabbi snatched at it. Sergeant Bennings held out his hand for it. She handed me the paper instead.
I flattened the paper against my knee. It was crisp, yellowed, like it had been enduring the summer heat for awhile. It was a form. A receipt for a shipment of primates. The letterhead said it was from a university research facility just outside of Sacramento.
Sergeant Bennings loomed over my shoulder. “Show Jane the paper.”
He made us drive the truck back. It was faster and we needed the vehicle. The dead guy wouldn’t mind.
The concrete building gave welcome relief from the heat and smoke though it took a long minute for my eyes to adjust to the darkness.
Jane sat next to one of the pools. She used her finger to stroke waves in the water.
“Do you know anything about this place?” I pushed it into her hands.
We all held our breath as she brought the paper into the rectangle of light.
Feast of Weeds (Books 1--4) Page 66