“Stay right on me,” I said. “And whatever happens, get across the street to the gas station and find the others.”
She nodded. The vacant expression was gone, and I thought I saw that old gleam in her eyes that she always had just before the kill.
I moved into a crouched position, sneaking around the checkout station. “Now!”
Breaking into a run, we sprinted straight for the door. Several carriers turned their heads, shuffling toward us. One faster, newly infected one stepped into my path, and I whipped the baseball bat up at his jaw as hard as I could. It made a sickening thunk, and he staggered backward.
With a groan, another carrier turned on us. She was hunched over to one side, wearing a broken heel and a torn black dress. Her thinning hair hung in dirty cobwebs over her shoulder, not quite concealing a long gash across her forehead. I got into batting position and let it fly against the side of her head. She fell to the floor, blood gushing from her skull, and my shoulder burned from exertion.
I turned over my shoulder, and Logan was several paces back, cornered by two surly teenage carriers in baggy pants and beaters, their chests shrunken to ribs under their shirts. Logan didn’t have a weapon.
I brought the baseball bat down like a hammer on the first carrier and swung it left to connect with the other’s neck. They both stumbled out of the way but were still kicking. I grabbed Logan’s wrist, pulling her forward.
In the time it had taken to retrieve her, several more carriers had impeded the small amount of progress I’d made and were blocking the entrance. Shoulders aching and hands sweating, I swung out wildly. Barely watching where I was swinging, I connected with heads, chests, elbows — anything to get them out of the way. Occasionally I would hear a sick thud that told me I had made a major impact, and the carrier would fall to the ground at my feet, wailing in pain.
I slipped on something, reaching back for Logan to steady myself. I felt the vomit burn my throat as I realized it was blood and flesh from a carrier’s split skull.
Just feet away from the door, I swatted at one more carrier who had her leg stuck on the other side of the trashcan wedged in the door. I hit her over the head and used the bat to push her out of our way. She collapsed in a heap on the other side.
Pulling Logan by the wrist, we emerged into the strangely bright parking lot. A few straggling carriers were lumbering over by the cart carousel, but it was nothing we couldn’t manage.
I heard a hard, dry sob escape from Logan as I yanked her along through the snow. I didn’t look back. I was barely holding it together as it was, and seeing her face would only unravel me.
As we ran through the snow lifting our feet like deer, I didn’t feel the slush soaking into my pant leg. I didn’t feel my burning shoulders or the sweaty, feverish skin of Logan’s arm. My vision had narrowed, as though I were looking down a tunnel with a bright light at the end instead of running in broad daylight across the street. The gas station came into view, and I gasped in relief.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
We rounded the corner, and the three figures between the van and the truck turned in our direction. Their mouths fell open, and I realized I was still clutching the baseball bat, which was covered in a sticky residue of blood, human hair, and bits of flesh.
“We have to go,” I gasped. “Carriers. There’s a horde of them in the store. I don’t know where they’re coming from.”
Amory took three cautious steps toward me and coaxed the baseball bat out of my hand. His eyes didn’t leave mine as he tossed it into the snow and pulled me toward the truck.
“Jared, finish loading that shit,” he called, still not tearing his eyes away from me.
I realized I was shaking, sweaty, and clammy like Logan.
“Are you okay?” Amory asked. “You didn’t get bit?”
I shook my head, focusing on the van, unwilling to turn to see the look on Logan’s face. Jared was heaving the jugs of water into the cargo area, and Greyson was loading supplies from the grocery cart into the back seats, watching me with concern.
Amory guided me to the van, and I turned to find Logan. She seemed to have recovered. At least she didn’t have that glazed look on her face anymore. Silently, we all climbed into the van. I grabbed one of the water bottles rolling around the floor at my feet and handed it back to her. She looked as though she could use it. She gulped gratefully, and I gripped my knees to steady my shaking hands.
Amory got into the driver’s seat, watching me carefully, but I didn’t look at him. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t want to talk about the slaughter at the store, and some of the shock was wearing off. Now, instead of pure emptiness, I felt anger and hatred lapping at my insides. How could Jared have left Logan there?
If I had not been there, she might have died, or she might have joined the horde of carriers. I wondered at what point an infected person began to view them as her own kind. Probably at the same point they started trying to kill their human loved ones, I thought grimly.
Amory turned the key in the ignition, and the van hummed to life. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see that the back rows were completely full of food and supplies, and Greyson was sitting near the back, watching Jared and Mariah closely.
“Where do we go?” Amory asked in a hoarse voice. “North?”
“Where is World Corp?” I asked, twisting in my seat to look at Mariah. As she regarded me with her lazy, bored expression, I felt my rage boil over. “Where is it?” I screamed again.
Nothing.
Taking in her greasy hair, those unremorseful eyes, and the way she sat with her hips thrust forward in defiance, I felt myself cross over a line again. My rage became white-hot, burning insanity. Then calmness washed over me like death, and I pointed across the street.
“Go back to the store,” I said to Amory.
“I thought it was overrun.”
“I just need to do something real quick.”
Looking at me with a bewildered expression, Amory turned the van and plowed across the street and over the median. In the rearview mirror, I could see Greyson’s confusion, but Logan was watching me warily.
Amory stopped in front of the store, eyeing the door with the slumped, dead carrier nervously. “You can’t go back in there. Haven —”
But I was already halfway out of the van. I grabbed his handgun from between us on the floor and stalked around the front of the vehicle. The five of them watched me silently, and I could still see a few carriers wandering around the cart carousels, sniffing the abandoned shopping baskets for lingering food residue.
I clicked the safety off Amory’s gun as I walked and checked the chamber. Without warning, I swung open Mariah’s door and grabbed her by the throat. Even tied up, I would never have gotten the jump on Logan. But Mariah was cocky, unafraid, and less skilled. Her arrogance was a liability.
Jared lurched toward me, but I pushed the gun into Mariah’s temple. He froze.
Digging my fingernails into her windpipe, I pulled her toward me until she was tripping out of the van.
Grabbing her by the hair, I nudged her toward the sliding door propped open by the trashcan. She let out a sound that was halfway between a whimper and a growl.
I could already hear the sounds of carriers thrashing around inside, upturning candy racks at the checkout and pushing each other out of the way to get their hands on any remaining food.
In one swift kick, I dislodged the trashcan holding the door open and shoved Mariah down to the ground half inside the store, planting my knee in the small of her back. The door slid back into place, sandwiching her there.
“Maybe I can’t shoot you,” I growled. “But I bet you’ll lead us to World Corp if you’re infected again.”
Carriers nearest the door had noticed Mariah lying half inside the store like bait.
“Here’s hoping we snag a stage five carrier on the first try.”
“No!” she whimpered.
“Haven!” Amory yelled. “What the hell
are you doing?”
I barely heard him. All I could feel was my burning rage against Mariah.
“I’m done playing games with you!” I yelled, watching the carriers amble toward us out of the corner of my eye. “This is her life! I won’t let her turn, but I don’t give a fuck about you!”
Back at the van, I heard the sounds of a struggle, as though Amory and Greyson were restraining Jared.
Mariah whimpered, tears filling her eyes, but she looked more resolute than ever. She tried to laugh her cold laugh, but it came out more like a gurgle. She was struggling now, watching in horror as the carriers inched in our direction. The slobber was dripping down the oozing sores on their chapped mouths, and their eyes were unfocused, delirious with hunger. I squeezed the door shut on her abdomen and she yelled, struggling to free herself.
“Just tell me!” I screamed. “What do you have to lose? Tell me!”
“Take 416 north to the Queensway! It’s the Infinity Building! You can’t miss it. Let me out!” she screamed through her tears. “Let me out!”
I snapped back to life.
The disgust at what I’d done came first, followed by the urgency to free Mariah. I pushed the door aside and pulled her to her feet. She yanked herself out of my grip and stumbled to the van. I pushed her inside, slammed the door, and climbed into the front seat.
Amory floored it, and we spun out in the snow toward the road.
“You catch that?” I asked Amory from the passenger seat.
He didn’t answer, which led me to think he had heard everything that had happened out in front of the store, not just Mariah’s directions to World Corp International. Nobody else said a word.
I knew I should have felt ashamed by what I had done, but overwhelmingly I felt the immense relief that we now had directions to the place where Logan could be cured. What scared me the most was the slight shaky feeling that told me I had gone over the edge. All the killing and fighting and running — it had affected me. I was a much different person than I had been on the farm. Maybe when you had so little left to lose, you clung desperately to preserving the only things that mattered.
I sneaked a look in the mirror at the four in the back. Logan was checked out, her feverish, sweaty face pressed against the window as she fell in and out of sleep. Mariah’s face was blank, her cuffed hands folded demurely in her lap. Jared was white with rage, kept at bay only by the gun Greyson had pointed surreptitiously at his back. Greyson was the only one who looked normal, a subtle look of approval in the arch of his brow as I made eye contact in the mirror. He had known me long enough to doubt I would have ever let Mariah get bitten.
I tore my eyes away. The person whose silence bothered me most was Amory’s. I couldn’t even bring myself to look at him.
I tried to dismiss my concern. He was the one who had uncontrollable fits of rage where he would kill anything in his path. Of course, he had been brainwashed by the PMC, and he was successfully working against his impulses. What excuse did I have?
I told myself I’d only done what I did to save Logan, but really, there was a small part of me that was desperate to exert some control over our lives. I’d been in reaction mode since I’d left Columbia, and I was tired of it.
I was sick of running — sick of barely surviving.
Merging onto the highway, I redirected my thoughts to how we would manage to cross the northern border. Even if we managed to steal some dummy CIDs, mandatory migration was over. If the PMC accepted our fake identities, we would likely be imprisoned for failing to comply with the law.
“We have to cross as PMC,” I said to the silent car. “We can’t go as civilians. They’ll be suspicious.”
“We don’t have CIDs,” said Logan. “Or uniforms.”
“We have two uniforms,” I said, gesturing at Mariah and Jared. I didn’t know whether Jared had packed the uniform he used to go on runs for Rulon, but I suspected he had. When you were a rebel, you carried everything you owned in the world with you.
“That helps us how?”
“They can pose as officers, and we can be their prisoners.”
“That’s brilliant.”
“One problem,” said Amory, startling me when he spoke. “We still don’t have any CIDs. Unless you want to find two officers to kill.”
His words stung, and my cheeks burned with shame. It was no use telling him I hadn’t planned on letting the carriers get Mariah. I had no idea what I would have done.
The silence festered in the van for the next several hours, and I began checking behind us every few minutes for any sign that we were being followed by the PMC. We were making slow progress. Whenever we saw a rover up ahead at an overpass, we had to take the nearest exit or drive around it. Sometimes we ended up backtracking or had to drive several miles off course. If we were being followed, it would be obvious what we were doing.
As the darkness settled, I started to notice the gnawing hunger in my belly. I heard a growl escape from Greyson’s stomach behind me, too, but I knew no one wanted to suggest that we stop to make camp for the night.
Finally, without a word, Amory took an exit. I wasn’t sure where he was going. The only signs were for an RV campground off the highway. He followed the signs, and we turned onto a smaller road that wound into the trees.
The camp was deserted, and the snow-covered trees and picnic tables gave me a strange sense of security. I’d gone on lots of trips with my family to campgrounds just like it. As a kid, I’d hated it. There was no TV, and I was bored sitting around in the woods for days with just my family. Now I would give anything to go on one of those trips again.
Nobody spoke as we parked in a secluded pocket of trees. Greyson jumped out and began hunting for firewood. Amory started rooting around in the back for our dinner, which was difficult in the darkness. We hadn’t taken inventory of our supplies, and nobody really knew what we had yet.
I helped Greyson start the fire and began cooking a few cans of chili in the Dutch oven Jared had found at the store. Amory was still rummaging around in the back rows, busying himself to avoid me. Logan was huddled up by the fire, wrapped in a blanket. Her face was pale, and her hair was hanging in stringy, sweaty waves around her face.
Finally, there was nothing left for anyone to distract themselves with. We were all hungry, so we slumped around the fire on the picnic table benches and ate the chili. It was too salty and a little gamey, but I began to feel slightly better as it warmed my belly and filled me up. As everyone ate, the tension began to dissipate slightly. Jared was still sulky but seemed satisfied when I handed him the keys to uncuff Mariah. There was no point keeping her tied up now; we had what we needed, and there was nowhere for her to go.
“Where are we going to get the CIDs?” Greyson asked.
“I don’t know.”
Jared sighed. “I have some extras. They actually trick the rovers. The rover you pass under reads the CID, but it bounces the location data from another rover at random, so they never know where you are.”
“That’s perfect.”
“How far do you think we are from the border?” asked Greyson.
Jared shrugged. “Only a few miles.”
I nodded. Tomorrow was the day. Judging by the look of Logan, I knew we were running out of time. Somehow I doubted that the PMC’s miracle cure would work on someone once they had fully turned.
We passed around water bottles and cooked some more of the food Amory had been able to find in the dark. Once everyone had eaten their fill, they piled back in the van to get out of the wind.
I still felt nervous about sleeping only feet away from Jared and Mariah, so I stayed out by the fire. I didn’t feel tired. I was wide-awake, thinking about what might happen the next day.
Amory got up to join the others in the van but stopped. Hearing his slow shuffles behind me, I turned to look at him.
He was staring at me with such intensity that I didn’t know whether I would yell at him or kiss him. I settled for hostility.
>
“You have to trust me,” I growled. “I don’t need you fighting against me, too. I don’t always make the right decisions, but I’m trying to. And I can’t believe you wouldn’t have done the same thing.” I lowered my voice so it was barely more than a whisper. “You can’t tell me that if it was one of us or Mariah, you would let her live. Don’t blame me for making a choice. Someone had to do something.”
Amory didn’t say anything. He just collapsed next to me and sighed, our shoulders touching. It was hard to discern his expression in the dancing firelight.
“You’re right. It’s exactly what I would have done if it were you. And god knows you watched me do pretty horrible things. But I . . .” He trailed off for a moment, staring into the fire. “I never wanted all this to change you. I didn’t want it to change me, either.”
“But it has.”
“I know. But one day, this is all going to be over. Maybe not soon, but someday. And if we’re still alive, we’re going to have to live with all the things we’ve done.”
He looked at me, and I could see the love and concern reflected in his eyes. “I never want you to hate yourself the way I hate myself when I think of what the PMC made me do. I was their pawn, and they turned me into a monster.”
“You’re not a monster.”
“Not anymore,” he corrected. “I’m trying really hard not to be.”
I sighed and leaned into him, savoring his warmth and allowing the peace from the day’s victory to overtake my guilt. Just that connection — the feel of Amory’s strong shoulder pressing into mine — made me feel more in control.
Amory seemed surprised at my closeness, as though he expected me to be angry at him for the way he looked after I had threatened Mariah or for the way his temper had been boiling since escaping Isador. I wasn’t. I was tired of being angry. He softened against me.
“I’m still on your side,” he whispered. “I’m always on your side.”
I wanted to reach up and kiss him, but it wasn’t the right time. I knew he was still struggling with his anger — a residual effect from the conditioning — and we were still struggling to restore what we’d had on the farm. That easy trust that had existed between us was gone. It was possible Amory would always have to fight against his violent impulses, and I was different, too. But I was determined to stick with him because he was the bravest person I knew, and he’d fought for me when no one else had.
Enemy Inside (Defectors Trilogy) Page 25