Z 2135

by Wright, David W.

  I’m a danger to Liam.

  Worse than the confusion, Ana couldn’t stop thinking about things that had nothing to do with her present situation, and would only get her into trouble for falling captive to their worry.

  Like Adam.

  She couldn’t stop thinking about her little brother, couldn’t stop worrying about what was happening to him at Chimney Rock. It was hard for Adam to connect with people. Kids like him didn’t belong in a place like the Rock. Without her protection, he must be at the mercy of miserable bullies wanting to ease their own pain by smearing some of it onto others.

  Ana fought back her tears so Liam wouldn’t ask what was wrong. The few times she had mentioned Adam during their journey, she had fallen apart. If she fell apart now, she might not be able to stand.

  She kept moving forward, while trying to sort out the past.

  She couldn’t believe how much life had changed in a year. Ana missed her mom and dad and Adam, but more than anything, she missed the life they shared. She missed her friends, missed Michael, missed her father’s stories. She missed Adam’s compassion and the miracles her mother made with their rations.

  I want to die before I kill Liam.

  Finally, after hours of walking mostly in silence, Ana said out loud what she’d been thinking since The Outback.

  “I think you should kill me tonight.”

  Liam laughed. “Maybe someday, sweetheart. When you’re foaming at the mouth and chomping for my face. Right now I think I like you better breathing.”

  “I’m serious, Liam.” And she was. Ana couldn’t stop thinking about Duncan turning, so sudden and unexpected. Duncan had loved Ana like a daughter in the short time they’d spent together. If he could have avoided biting her, he would have. If Duncan didn’t hesitate to bite her, that meant she probably wouldn’t be able to stop herself from biting Liam.

  “I’m not discussing this, Ana.”

  She countered, “You could make it to Hydrangea. It would be easier without me. Once there, you can tell my dad everything. Whatever Sutherland wants, I’m sure you can help him with it as well as I can. Probably better.”

  “No, Ana. Maybe the infection will subside if you’re resting somewhere. I mean Duncan must’ve been infected for quite a while, right? You don’t know how long you have, and I don’t think we need to do anything rash before we know what’s going to happen. You’re fine so far, and I’ll keep my eyes out. That has to be enough.”

  “OK,” she said, not particularly wanting to die, grateful for Liam giving her reason to believe she shouldn’t … for a little longer, anyway. If he believed there was hope, maybe there was a glimmer. She added, though, “But I need you to keep talking. Otherwise my mind starts circling the worst.”

  “Oh,” he said. “Sorry. I was quiet on purpose. I thought you wanted to be alone with your thoughts, and I was trying not to interrupt.”

  “You have no idea what it’s like, Liam. Alone with my thoughts. That’s the last place I want to be. I feel too much all the time, I think. Right now it’s torture; I’m feeling too much in all the wrong ways—my insides and outsides aren’t matching. Does that make sense?”

  Liam laughed. “No, not at all, but it doesn’t need to. You’ve been bitten, you’re sick. You were almost raped or killed. You want something to move your mind from the pain. That’s what I’m here for.” His face brightened with an idea.

  “Let’s play I Wish.”

  Ana looked at Liam. “What’s I Wish?”

  “You’ve never played I Wish?”

  “Nope,” she shook her head. “Not even once. What is it?”

  “A game we used to play at Chimney Rock.”

  “Who’s we?”

  “Everyone. You’re the first person, maybe in history, to ever ask what it is.” Liam laughed at her like he always did when she felt clueless. Ana punched him in the arm, softly, like she did when feeling exposed under his laughter.

  “Well, sorry for having an OK life before all the murder and The Darwins.”

  Liam laughed. “I Wish is what we would play when everything else seemed too awful to stand. All you do is make a wish: if you could change one thing, what would that one thing be? Then you think about that wish for the rest of the day, pretending it was true. It’s said a man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture each day, to never forget who he is and what makes him that way. I think a man should never go a day without wishing for what most think impossible, if only to trim the thorns off life’s bushes.”

  “That sounds great, Liam. I would very much like to engage in some wishing this fine afternoon.” She said the words like she was fancy, living in the high apartments.

  “What’s your wish?” he asked. “It can be for whatever you want.”

  “Oh, I don’t want to go first,” Ana said. “Let’s start with your wish.”

  “Ladies first.”

  “Nope,” she shook her head. “I’m the one who was bitten by our friend the zombie preacher; that means I decide. OK, done. You’re going first.”

  Liam laughed louder. “OK, I guess that’s fair. Let me think.” After a moment, he said, “I wish that West Village hadn’t been burned.”

  Ana said, “You’re not going to wish that your father didn’t kill himself, or that you got to live with your Uncle M after your father died, or that you’d never been thrown into The Games?”

  “Sure,” Liam said, “I wish all that stuff. But when you play I Wish you have to pick one wish and focus on only that wish. All the smaller ones revolve around it. There’s no limit to how many times you can play I Wish, or what you can wish when playing. The game’s point is to pick a spot in time, then think how your world would change on the back of that wish.”

  “So how would things have changed if West Village was never burned?”

  I like this game.

  “Well, we still would have had The Games, but The Games brought us closer, which I’m happy about. And The Games led you and Duncan to the truth about me and what I’d done in ratting out your father, which I would’ve been too scared to ever admit on my own. Once you were safe, the only other thing I wanted was outside The Walls. Maybe Chelle and I could’ve been happy in West Village. Maybe your dad would have found us. Maybe Duncan wouldn’t have turned. Maybe we could’ve all had our own little Happily Ever Afters.”

  Ana listened as Liam kept on with his maybes. When it was her turn she said, “I wish I’d given my dad the benefit of the doubt. I wish I’d had it inside me to believe him.”

  “That’s not your fault, Ana,” Liam stopped walking, turning to find her eyes. “You saw something awful, and your mind had no other way to process it. What you saw, and how your brain interpreted it, has nothing to do with the relationship you have with your father—wrong, right, or indifferent. You can’t beat yourself up about it.”

  “I’m not beating myself up, Liam. I’m making a wish, like you told me to. You never said there were rules to wishing. You said I could wish whatever I wanted.”

  “You can. I’m sorry. I’m not trying to tell you what to wish; I just don’t want you to feel bad about your dad, or flog yourself any more than you already have.”

  “Fine,” Ana said, cutting him off before he was finished. “I wish for a cure.”

  Liam sighed. “That’s a good wish.”

  “Do you think there will ever be one? A cure? I don’t mean for me; it’s too late for that, I just mean in the world. Do you think scientists are still working on it?”

  “Yeah,” Liam said, “of course. I think they’ll always be working on it, but I don’t know enough about science or medicine to guess that we’ll get one. So far every so-called breakthrough leads to nothing. The Reels report each one like it’s the one, but it never is. Still, I figure some sort of cure has to be possible since some people aren’t infected.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You didn’t know that?” Liam looked at Ana. “Infection isn’t gu
aranteed. Did you hear about the research assistant who killed himself about five years ago?”

  “No.”

  He was part of a State team researching a cure. The labs are high security, the highest, because they have to make sure the virus never leaves. But he was suicidal, and wanted to put it in his body. He did, but it didn’t take. The State found out and wanted to run experiments, see what was different about his blood or DNA from everyone else. He outsmarted The State, and killed himself while they waited.”

  “Do you think Duncan might have been temporarily cured or something? I can’t imagine how else he stayed alive so long. Unless, like you said before, maybe there are different strains, some that take longer.”

  “I don’t know,” Liam said. “Anything’s possible, I guess.” Liam stopped. “You sure you’re not hungry?” It was his fifth time asking in the past two hours or so.

  “I’m fine, I promise. Let’s keep going, OK?”

  Liam agreed like he had four times before, even though Ana could tell he didn’t want to.

  They walked through another hour of I Wish, and then a few other similar games, and finally made camp just inside a cave that seemed safely isolated from possible bandits or zombies.

  Ana was exhausted and couldn’t have walked more, even if she had wanted to.

  Liam made her comfortable, gathered wood for a fire, secured the area, and then went out to catch, skin, and cook a hare.

  After dinner, Ana lay on her side and asked Liam to tell her a story to relax her mind.

  “Just, please, no more stories about Uncle M and his steaks.”

  Liam laughed, and she liked its music.

  As he started talking about the first time he realized how beautiful The Barrens actually were—once you got over their danger—Ana started to drift, trying not to think about how she might not wake human.

  And trying to convince herself that she would live long enough to see her father. She wasn’t sure what she’d say when she finally did.

  Sorry I testified? Sorry I didn’t believe you?

  She wasn’t sure when Liam had stopped telling his story, or if she’d been asleep and then woke. She could feel him lying beside her. She could hear the fire crackling. Feel its flames licking her skin.

  Despite everything, Ana felt, in that moment, safe.

  Safe, cozy, and warm.

  She felt warmer when Liam’s lips brushed her cheek.

  “Good-night, Ana.”

  CHAPTER 29 — ADAM LOVECRAFT

  Adam was back in the arcade, with Michael at Nips.

  The fried greens were still disgusting, and he was still angry with Michael. Adam had promised the Chief he would “meet with his friend” to see if there was “something worth seeing.”

  But it was hard to pretend he wasn’t mad. Hard to keep Michael’s betrayal a secret. Especially since Michael acted like he hadn’t been responsible for destroying what little life Adam had left after his mom died and his father was sent to The Games.

  “You should’ve seen it,” Michael said. “It was exactly what I’m talking about, the sort of stuff that worries me. Amos is a good guy, and wasn’t doing anything wrong. The Watchers nabbed him anyway. Who knows where he is, or how long it will be until he’s thrown to into The Darwins.”

  “They had to have some reason, right?”

  “No, Adam. That’s what’s I’m saying, that’s what’s wrong. It’s a book club; it meets every other week. City Watch says the meetings are congregations even though they’re not, the number’s small and they’re not public—like dinner with friends. But that didn’t stop City Watch.”

  “So what happened?”

  “They were outside the door of the book club, calling for Amos to come out, announcing to the rest of the floor that everything was fine, they were safe, and to stay aware. Know their neighbors, report what they see. They went in and turned the place inside out, but Amos wasn’t there because he’d already bolted.”

  Adam got a sudden horrible and uneasy feeling. Could Amos be the guy he saw running? The guy he ratted out?

  Oh no.

  “Why did he run if he didn’t do anything wrong?”

  “You’d learn to run too, Adam, if you were always being questioned by Watchers instead of eating with them.”

  Ignoring questions meant there was something to hide. His classes had taught him that.

  Adam ignored Michael’s insult. “How did he know the Watchers were coming?”

  “He didn’t. Amos was going to meet our friend Omar at the arcade, when he spotted a Watcher following him. He didn’t want to be seen with Omar, on the chance that Omar had gotten into some trouble, which he was prone to doing, so Amos took off. That’s last anyone knows. I saw on the Reels that an unnamed suspect was apprehended after running inside an abandoned storefront. That happened a block from the arcade, right around when Omar said Amos took off running.

  Adam felt like he wanted to puke, but couldn’t let Michael know he knew anything. He shoved more of the crappy fried greens into his mouth.

  He couldn’t tell Michael he had seen Amos running from City Watch, that he led the arresting Watchers to his hiding spot, or that it had felt amazing. He also couldn’t tell Michael he knew the truth—Chief Keller had told him everything about Amos Montgomery’s role in The Underground.

  As guilt swelled inside him, Adam reminded himself that Michael was a liar, and he couldn’t allow Michael’s lies to undermine his job as a Cadet.

  Michael kept talking, but now Adam watched his eyes, trying to see if he could sift truths from lies as they flowed fast from his mouth. He tried to consider both the Michael he knew—the one who was his friend, who nursed a crush on Ana forever—with the secret Michael he didn’t know very well at all.

  Is he good or bad?

  Michael finished chewing and looked up at Adam. “Sorry,” he said. “I know I shouldn’t be going on about all of this, and I know City Watch is a sore subject between us. I’m sorry about that, really. I’m not sure what to do, other than to keep talking until we get more comfortable with one another. This is hard, what we’re doing, living in memory and keeping on.”

  Then Michael said the words Adam couldn’t believe he had the nerve to say: “Loyalty is important.”

  He wanted to climb across the table and punch Michael in the face. He wanted to do to Michael what Carson had done to the pimp.

  “I’m sorry for offending you the other day,” Michael was saying. “I know I did, and that it wasn’t right. I’m proud of you, Adam. For everything you’ve done since losing your mom and dad and sister. It’s not easy, but you’ve kept your head above water and stayed out of trouble. More than that, you’ve actually grown into quite the young man. Like you’ve said over and over, you could have ended up in The Dark Quarters and didn’t. I’m proud of you, and Ana would’ve been proud of you too.”

  When Keller praised him, it was all he could ever want. But with Michael saying similar things, all Adam could feel was madder and madder. Michael had done an awful thing to Ana, the worst. He didn’t have any right to talk about her, or talk for her. Michael couldn’t say that Ana would’ve been proud of Adam, because Michael was the one responsible for making sure she could never be proud of anything, ever again.

  Adam remembered what Keller had said, about how sometimes you had to be around bad people if you wanted to do something good. The key wasn’t to be bad, he told Adam, because bad people never saw themselves as bad—at least not the kind of bad City Watch was most concerned with catching. The key was to be the version of good (warped as it was) that the bad guys saw in themselves.

  “It’s OK,” Adam lied. “I understand. I didn’t at first, but now I do. A lot of what you’re saying about City Watch and The State makes sense. I’ve even started to wonder about some of the things you said about Jack Geralt.”

  “Really?” Michael raised his eyebrows. A smile teased his mouth.

  “Yeah,” Adam nodded. “Things have been a little
weird lately. It’s hard to look at City Watch the same way.”

  Adam fell silent, a tactic he’d learned in the Academy as a way to get guilty people to talk with confidence.

  Shame doesn’t like silence.

  Michael spoke, “It’s OK if you don’t want to tell me, but I’d love to hear. Maybe there’s a way I can help, even if that only means listening.”

  “I went on a ride-along with two Watchers—”

  “A ride-along? What’s that?”

  “It’s when you go on a Watcher shift, in their car. You don’t get to do anything, you’re still a Cadet, but you see everything. I rode in their van when we went to The Dark Quarters.”

  “The Dark Quarters?” Michael seemed both surprised and bothered. “That doesn’t seem like a smart place to take a boy,” already forgetting he had just called Adam a young man.

  “I’m a Cadet, Michael. And almost fifteen. I won’t be a boy forever. If I’m City Watch, I’ll probably be in The Quarters all the time. At first, anyway.”

  “If you’re City Watch?” Michael repeated.

  Adam said if on purpose, and was happy Michael had noticed. He shrugged.

  “Yes, if. I’m not sure if I want to be a Watcher after what I saw in The Quarters.”

  “And what was that?” Michael seemed more interested in what Adam was about to say than in anything to come from his mouth since he once told Michael, “I think my sister likes you.”

  “We went into The Quarters, which are just as scary as they’ve always been in my dreams. It’s really dark, even in the daytime. There are bad people doing bad stuff everywhere. We met this guy who gave the two Watchers I was with—an old guy who is really mean and a young guy who is nice, even though he has a temper—a tip about another bad guy, then we went to go meet that bad guy and, well,” Adam swallowed, “when that guy wouldn’t confess to what the Watchers knew he had done, they beat him. And kept on beating him. It was awful, Michael. They pounded and pounded until the bad guy—he was a pimp—was bleeding and crying and willing to say whatever the Watchers wanted.”