The Defectors (Defectors Trilogy)

by Benner, Tarah

  “No!” I cried, although there was no one to hear me.

  On that side of the bed — my mother’s side — an enormous blackened bloodstain stood out on the wrinkled white linens.

  I wanted to vomit. Steadying myself on the nightstand, I tried to focus my attention elsewhere.

  That was my sick mother’s blood spilled on the sheets. Where had they taken her? I had known she was dying — we’d all known. But she was supposed to die surrounded by the people who loved her, carrier or not. We were supposed to have a beautiful memorial service with white lilies and —

  “Dad!” I yelled, now desperate. “Dad!”

  I backed out of the bedroom and tore my eyes from the gruesome scene. There was so much blood! Methodically repositioning my feet, I pointed them back down the hallway.

  “Dad, where are you?”

  I couldn’t stop. I could not think. I couldn’t allow myself to wonder why he did not answer.

  “Dad! Dad!”

  Maneuvering around shards of broken glass in the foyer, I hurried to the living room, dread seeping deeper into my gut with every step.

  My dad wasn’t in his favorite easy chair, but a half-eaten piece of chicken lay in a pool of congealed gravy on his favorite ugly china plate. A lamp from the side table was broken, and a photo of me holding a track and field ribbon lay on the floor in its cracked frame.

  Where was he? He couldn’t be gone, too.

  My heart sank as I saw a dark trail of what looked like blood leading out to the sunroom. The sliding glass door had been left open — something my dad never did. It let in drafts, he said.

  I felt the hot tears burning my throat. As I rounded the corner, I saw the dark stain near the back door.

  A sudden cry caught in my dry throat. There was no one there for me to cry to, but the narrative was clear: They had executed my mother in her bed. My dad had tried to escape but hadn’t made it. They had dragged him bleeding and struggling through his own house.

  I sank down to my knees, tears welling in my eyes as I stared at his pathetic reheated chicken dinner. It was probably a get-well dish brought by a lingering neighbor. They hadn’t known she was infected; they’d just thought she was sick.

  I looked around. Despite the broken lamp and the displaced photograph, I couldn’t get over how ordinary my house looked. Everything was exactly the same as I remembered it: the ugly, comfortable couch, the blown glass vase my mother had bought on vacation, the weird stain on the carpet from my fifth-grade art project.

  Through a bleary fog, I caught a look at a picture of the three of us on the mantel: my father, serious, stoic, and loving, and my mother, a warm-hearted, fiercely overbearing worrywart. It was our last family vacation together, before the Collapse, before my mother got sick, before everyone I loved was stolen from me.

  I had gotten my vaccine and CID in July, when I was staying in St. Louis with some friends. I’d been away for most of the summer since starting my internship, and I was optimistic about transferring to a school up north. A week after I received the vaccine, my dad called to tell me that he and my mother wouldn’t be moving north.

  I’d known my dad was resistant to the PMC takeover, and I had hated him for it. I had driven to my parents’ house in a rage — demanding to know why they wouldn’t get the stupid vaccine and why they would choose prison over a new life up north.

  I had seen it in my mom’s eyes the second I opened the door. She looked the same and smelled the same. She was my mom. Her cool papery skin felt the same as ever, but her eyes were bloodshot and feverish. Even only a few weeks along, that look was unmistakable: the virus had set in.

  That was the only day I could remember thinking my dad looked old. His blue eyes were not as vibrant as they once were, as if they had faded in the sun, and his hair for once seemed more gray than brown. There was less of it than I remembered, too.

  Lost. That was how he looked.

  I wouldn’t leave my dad. Not when he had to watch my mom turn into a monster under their own roof. I worried he was probably infected, too, but he hadn’t shown any symptoms. I had decided I would wait with Greyson at school until the end — until my mother died or had to be put down. Then, he and I and my dad were going west, where there were rumored to be entire cities untouched by carriers or the PMC. It was a child’s fantasy, but it was our only option.

  Where would I go? What would I do?

  I have no family, I thought suddenly. Where do people go when their family is dead? No one would care where I was. They were all gone.

  I’m not sure how long I sat there in my living room crying. Maybe he’s alive, I thought for a fleeting moment.

  But no. They did not make such a bloody mess for something as minor as undocumented status. If the PMC had come here to extract him, that meant someone had reported that my father was harboring an infected carrier or that he was a rebel. Because my father was outspoken against the PMC and resisted the mandate, in the view of the government, he was a threat to national security. When they came to arrest him, he struggled, and they killed him. To them, my dying mother was just another carrier to be put down.

  Squeezing my eyes shut, I willed myself to forget. If I had never come here, if I had just run east to rescue Greyson without looking back, I might have been able to convince myself that my mother had gotten better and that they had gone north — that they missed me but were happy and went to the farmer’s market and movies on the weekends.

  The silence resonated around me — the sound of death and loneliness. For the first time in my life, I was truly alone, and that terrified me.

  After some time — perhaps a minute, perhaps hours — I wiped my cheeks and stood up in my living room. The longer I wallowed, the longer Greyson would be held captive in some dark, cold prison. I wasn’t completely alone in the world. As far as I knew, he was still alive. As long as I had Greyson, I had someone to live for. Someone somewhere still cared about what became of me. I had to save him. I just didn’t know how.

  I had been counting on my dad to have a plan. He was so good at predicting where and when the PMC would set up checkpoint blockades that I had begun to wonder if he was psychic. He used to say he could feel it like an itch on the back of his neck when they were close, and he would drive us a block over from the main road. Sure enough, we would drive right past a line of cars being IDed and questioned by the PMC every time.

  Looking back, it seemed stupid that I never inquired why my father knew so much about the PMC. When I came home at the beginning of summer, the signs were there, but I never saw his knowledge of their operations as a clue that he was actively working against them. My dad sold insurance and coached my soccer team in grade school. He was as harmless and ordinary as dads got. But then again, nothing was the way I thought it was anymore. Maybe he had been a rebel.

  I knew I couldn’t stay there too much longer; a condemned house in a subdivision was a prime target for roving gangs of carriers, but it would be unwise to take off in the middle of the night like this. I resolved to spend the night and be on the move at the break of dawn.

  Not quite knowing what to do, I moved like a zombie into the living room. I cleared away my father’s last meal and picked up the broken lamp and the ruined picture frame. Out of habit, I threw the broken glass into the trash and washed the dirty dishes in the sink.

  I didn’t realize that I was cleaning a dead man’s house for people who would never return until I reached for the dish towel. It wasn’t hanging on the refrigerator handle where my mom used to leave it, which reminded me that the virus must have been too advanced toward the end for her to wash dishes. Now she was gone for good.

  I couldn’t do anything about the bloodstains, so I moved a rug from the garage over the largest spot on the carpet. Then I swept up the foyer and set the coat rack upright. It was silly, but I knew my parents would hate for me to come home to a house that looked like this.

  I couldn’t bring myself to go back upstairs, so I decided to sleep
on the couch. I needed a shower badly, too, but it wasn’t worth staring down that hallway to my parents’ bedroom with blood on the sheets.

  Before lying down for a few hours of rest, I checked the kitchen for any provisions to restock my supplies. Everything in the fridge had gone bad, but in the pantry I found some packets of jerky, cereal, instant rice, a chocolate bar, and a can of noodles.

  I inhaled the chocolate first. The sugar rushed through my veins, and I felt my muscles regain some strength.

  It should have been weird to cook noodles over the stove in the house where my parents had been murdered, but it wasn’t. I was numb all over, which was good. I knew if I paused to think about it or miss them, I wouldn’t be able to go on.

  While I waited for the noodles to heat, I flipped on the kitchen radio and turned the dial carefully to find a news station.

  “. . . more gangs of carriers were located in St. Louis today. They have been apprehended and are now in custody. In his White House address this afternoon, President Fairchild said he is optimistic about relocation efforts across the northern border. The PMC reports ninety-eight percent of U.S. citizens have relocated, and peace talks with Canadian officials in the New Northern Territory —”

  I switched off the radio in disgust. Ninety-eight percent? Maybe if they weren’t counting the twenty percent who were too poor to relocate, the conscientious objectors, or people who were too old or sick to make the journey. Why had I bothered? Did their lies make me feel any less disconnected?

  I ate the noodles without really tasting them and drank two whole bottles of water. I stopped myself after the second one, feeling my stomach protest from the sudden ingestion of so much food and liquids. At least on a bellyful of warm food, sleep seemed more manageable. I sprawled out on the couch I’d napped on so many rainy afternoons, trying not to think about how it would be the last time.

  Lying there staring up at a crack from water damage my father had meant to repair, I tried to remember the last time I spoke to both of them. It had been almost two months ago, right after I found out she was turning.

  It had been my birthday, and my mom said she couldn’t wait to see me. I was supposed to make a trip to see them again soon, before she became too dangerous. Her voice wasn’t the same — she was weak from the virus — but it still sounded excited, hopeful even. She didn’t sound as if the virus had infected her brain yet; she sounded like my mom. Every so often, I’d hear my dad interject in the background in a low voice, and she’d hold her hand over the mouthpiece to relay what I said in a whisper she thought I couldn’t hear.

  “Yes, she already bought her books . . . I don’t know, honey. I’ll ask her about Greyson’s family . . .”

  None of us thought the government would be too quick to round up those who remained undocumented. But two weeks after the deadline for mandatory identification passed, they began apprehending people via rover data from the highway. Then my parents had to deactivate their smartlenses, and it became impossible to reach them by call or video chat. They used to have a landline phone that would work, but paying the bills was difficult without a CID. I suspected my parents were only able to keep the electricity on because my dad had friends who worked for the city.

  It made me sad to think that the last promise I had made to my mother had fallen through. I only hoped my last words to her had been “I love you.”

  Draping an arm over my eyes to wipe the fresh tears, I realized how heavy and sore my entire body felt. I let myself sink into that ugly, comfy couch and fell into a heavy, dreamless sleep.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I awoke the next morning before sunrise with a strange terror of not knowing where I was. The last time I slept all night on this couch, I was ten years old with a very high fever.

  I was home, but at first I didn’t remember that my parents were dead. The memory of a kitchen that smelled like fresh coffee in the morning was so strong it hurt, and I half expected to see my dad frying bacon on the stove. My eyes filled with tears when the memory of the previous day came rushing back. To wake up there after everything that had happened was too much.

  Looking around the house where I grew up without my parents in it made me feel like a stranger in another person’s home. I needed to leave.

  The PMC had confiscated my parents’ car, and any friends or neighbors I would trust enough to ask for transportation probably evacuated and migrated north months ago. I would have to go on foot.

  My pack was sitting ready by the front door as it had in my own apartment for the last several weeks, and I hefted it in my hands to determine if I should lighten the load. The main disadvantage to running the trails was that it severely limited the amount of food I could carry. I fished out the can of fruit and a pack of noodles I had scrounged from the pantry and set them on the coffee table. I couldn’t afford to take anything that wasn’t essential.

  I sat down at the kitchen table and ate the fruit with some stale crackers for breakfast, savoring the sweet syrup coating every piece. I knew I would not taste anything like this again for months.

  While I ate, I pulled out the map Greyson and I had made and smoothed it out on the table. The distance from there to Sector X was staggering. I estimated it would take me more than a month to get there on foot, even if I made good time. That was assuming all the trails were serviceable and I didn’t run into any carrier trouble along the way.

  My best bet was to locate an illegal who had access to a car. It was a long shot — any illegals who were smart would be heading west, not east — but maybe I would get lucky.

  The last time we spoke, my dad told me there were small settlements of illegals springing up in rural parts of the Midwest. Maybe there was someone else out there who had lost a friend to the PMC and would take me to the prisons in Sector X.

  I drank my fill of water and tucked an extra bottle in my pack. I felt the weight of it, but it would soon be gone. Luckily, I knew of a creek that ran along the trail in the direction I was headed, so I was unlikely to run into trouble for a few days.

  I took one last look around the house and left out the back door. I couldn’t bear for the spray-painted “XX” to be the last image I took with me of my parents’ house.

  There was no point in doubling back to the trailhead; I was headed in the opposite direction. It was easy enough to hop the railroad tracks and step through the trees to get to where the trail ran behind my house. A layer of dead leaves crunched underfoot, and I hoped there were no carriers nearby. I couldn’t run quietly if I tried.

  There was a slight fog hanging in the trees as the sun peeked between the fiery leaves, which only added to the scariness of being completely and utterly alone. As my body heated up, I could appreciate the damp chill in the air. It was good running weather, even if it pricked the hairs on the back of my neck.

  By midmorning, I was in unfamiliar territory long past the stretch of trail that I knew. The towns I passed through seemed just as deserted as mine, so I was glad to have a pack full of enough provisions to last me for a few days.

  After three hours, I began to feel lightheaded, so I slowed to a walk and looked for a spot out of sight to eat some lunch. I chose a cluster of trees at a good vantage point to see the trail and sat back on my heels, anxiously watching for movement in the trees. I nibbled on some jerky and stale cereal from the pantry and drank the bottle of water.

  Although I was reluctant to lose more time, I walked for the next hour to allow the food to settle. My legs still felt all right, but my back and shoulders ached from running with the heavy pack. How would I do this all day, every day for weeks and weeks?

  I pushed the thought out of my mind as soon as it came. I couldn’t afford to think about next week or next month — I might not be alive by then if I didn’t focus.

  Move your feet, find food, avoid carriers, I thought to myself. Reinvigorated by my rest, I quickened my pace until I was jogging again.

  The sun was starting to fall in the sky. I still needed to fi
nd a good place to make camp, build a fire, cook something to eat, and set up a shelter. It was going to be a cold night.

  The trail curved slightly, and it took me several minutes to register that the quiet, rushing sound I heard was the whisper of a small creek running parallel to the trail. That was good. If I had reached the creek on the map already, that meant I was slightly ahead of schedule.

  After the persistent thirst I’d experienced the last few days on the run, camping near water seemed like a good idea. I could purify enough to drink and cook a meal and fill up my canteen for the next day.

  The network of trails Greyson and I ran was built along an old railroad route. In many places, the trail banked steeply on one side where the land had been carved out, leaving a deep ravine. On the other side, there was a sloped bank that flattened out at the top that was still protected by the canopy of old trees. This would be the ideal spot to make camp.

  The creek was situated down in the ravine. I half walked, half slid over tree roots and soft dirt downhill until I reached the water. It was shallow and muddy, but if I followed it a hundred yards down, it was deep enough to dip my water bottle in and bail out some water. I filled my kettle and water bottle, clipped them to the carabiners dangling from my pack, and began to crawl back up the bank.

  Using saplings as handholds, I climbed up until I could walk normally. Crossing over the trail and climbing the opposite upward bank, I counted one hundred steps into the shelter of the trees to find a place out of sight, gathering dry grass and twigs for kindling as I went.

  I chose a relatively flat spot protected by a triangle of trees. It wasn’t hard to find some dried-up logs from fallen trees nearby, so I sat down my pack and began building a fire. The temperature was falling, and since I hadn’t seen carriers since that first night, I decided hypothermia was a bigger threat.

  It took me several tries to light the fire, but I was getting much better with the flint striker. A twig caught spark with a satisfying whisper. As my pile of tinder engulfed in flames, I put the kettle on to boil and spread my tarp over the ground. Once the water was hot, I rationed out some rice and beans to cook.