by Kate L. Mary
“We were in the parking lot when a van drove up. Men jumped out and took Hadley and me. They drove us to the Monte Carlo in Las Vegas where a group of men were living. There were women in the hotel too, but they weren’t there by choice. They were currency. The men living in the hotel would go out and gather supplies for the man in charge, and in exchange they were allowed to choose a woman for the night. Back then, everyone knew who Hadley Lucas the movie star was...” Mom’s voice dropped off at the last sentence and she had to swallow before going on. “There was nothing I could do to save her. I tried, but I was as powerless as she was.”
A sense of dread had pooled in my stomach, and I suddenly found myself wishing I hadn’t asked, because I could do math and I had a pretty good feeling I knew what was coming next.
Only, I was wrong.
Mom looked up and captured my gaze with hers. “Your father, Jon, was driving the van that took us.”
I shook my head. “No. You said my parents loved each other. You said—”
“They did.” Mom grabbed my hand when I started to stand. “They did. It’s a long story, so long that I doubt I could remember it all, but know that he only did those things to save his sister. Megan. She was only sixteen and she was in there, a prisoner, and he did what he thought he had to do to free her.
“After he took us to the hotel, he had me sent to his room and told me what was going on. He helped us get out, and even though he was the one who’d brought us there to begin with, once I saw what Megan had been through, I couldn’t blame him. And your mom didn’t either.”
“What happened to her?” I whispered. “What happened to Megan after you got out?”
Mom didn’t release my hand, but she did look away. “She was too damaged. She’d been through too much.”
“And my dad?” I had to force the words out. “Was he actually my dad?”
Her hand tightened on mine. “Yes. Jon Lewis was your father.”
“How do you know?” I thought of my mom, my biological mother, trapped in a hotel. I didn’t have a lot of understanding of celebrities, but I knew enough to know that she had been a big one. It was how I knew what she looked like, because over the years I’d been able to find dozens of magazines with her pictures in them. “I mean— She—” The words stuck on their way out.
“You look just like him,” Dad said, speaking up for the first time. “There ain’t a doubt in my mind.”
I remembered Jim saying the same thing, and I told myself that they weren’t lying, but it was a hard thing to wrap my brain around because I had no idea what my father had looked like. Dark hair, yes, but that could have come from anyone, and how many had there been? How many men had gotten the honor of having Hadley Lucas in their bed for the night? Did I want to know?
Mom reached out with her free hand and took Dad’s, and when he looked up the expression in his eyes nearly took my breath away. That’s when it hit me Mom had been there too, in that hotel, and that Dad hadn’t been able to do anything to help her. He must have been going out of his mind with worry, the way we had all these weeks with him missing.
“You were there too,” I said, the words coming out before I could stop them. “Did you, I mean… What happened?”
Mom squeezed my hand. “Nothing. I got lucky. Your dads—both of them—kept me safe.” She glanced toward the man who had raised me.
“No wonder she started going by Ginny,” I muttered.
“She didn’t want people to know who she was,” Mom said. “She cut her hair and when it started to grow out it was a different color. The world had changed, and somewhere along the way people began to forget about movie stars and sex symbols. She felt safer.”
“Did she want me?” I asked, the question impossible to keep inside. “She couldn’t have known for sure who my father was. Did that mean she didn’t want me?”
“She wanted you enough to travel across a zombie infested country to save you.” Mom squeezed my hand. “She loved you. So did your dad.”
“So do we,” Dad said.
Mom nodded, and I found myself sliding down off the arm of the couch so I was sitting in Dad’s lap. I hadn’t done that since I was a child and for a brief moment I felt silly, but then his arms were around me and I no longer cared. I needed his support right now. I needed to know that I was loved and wanted and that despite the awful story of how my parents had met, I had somehow managed to end up in a family that loved one another.
Twenty-Six
Meg
After those life-altering revelations, I knew I’d never be able to sleep, so I told Mom and Dad to get some rest while I stayed with Margot.
I knew that distracting myself from the horrible images of what my biological mother had gone through wouldn’t be easy, especially when I thought of my own close calls, but I had a feeling that focusing on my sister just might do the trick. So I sat with her head in my lap the way mom had before, stroking her dirty blonde hair out of her face and whispering to her as the rest of the house slept. I talked to her about games we’d played, about songs we’d sung, even about fights we’d had, hoping that something would bring her out of this stupor.
Then I started talking about what had happened in my life since she was taken from it, focusing on the good things. On the people I’d met, Colton who had been my first love, Dragon and Glitter and Helen. Donaghy. I talked to her about how it felt to realize I was an adult now, how amazing it was to fall in love.
I wept when I told her how much I’d missed her. How alone I’d felt growing up, how I’d wished I could have had her to whisper to at night the way I had before she’d been taken from me. The words seemed to flow out of me in endless streams, but instead of running out of steam, the more I talked the more I thought of that I wanted to share with her. I’d missed my sister more than I’d even realized, and now that she was alive, I was desperate to have her back in my life.
The room was just beginning to fill with the glow of the early morning sun when Margot’s eyes opened and she looked up at me. It would have been like looking into Mom’s eyes if it weren’t for the total innocence that radiated in those brown depths. Instead, it was like once again seeing my sister at the age of nine even though years had passed and she was now a almost an adult.
“Megan?” she whispered.
“It’s me.” The words were almost drowned out by a sob, so I swallowed before speaking again. “I’m here.”
Margot looked around, blinking like she couldn’t make sense of what was going on. “Where am I?”
She started to sit up, and I reached out to help her, afraid that she was too weak. Her arm felt impossibly thin in my grasp, and it made everything in me squeeze into a tight ball, but I swallowed the pain, wanting to be strong for my sister now that she was finally waking up. She was going to have so much to adjust to, and she would need all of us to do it.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
Margot nodded, but then shook her head. “I don’t— I don’t know.” Her hand went to her forehead and she closed her eyes. “I have a headache and I don’t remember what’s happening.”
“You don’t remember anything?” I held my breath, praying that she wouldn’t. Losing years of your life would be a much better alternative to remembering the torture that had been inflicted on you.
“I remember…” Her face scrunched up. “I remember a white room. I remember machines that beeped. I remember…” Margot opened her eyes and looked down at her arms, at the crooks that were covered in scars just like Glitter’s and Angus’s were. “I remember needles.”
I wrapped my arms around her, afraid that if I looked her in the face I’d start to cry. “You’re okay now. We’re all together again.”
“Where are Mommy and Daddy?” she asked, her voice shaking and making her sound like a tiny child.
“They’re in bed.” I pulled away and quickly wiped at the tears on my cheeks before she could see them. “I can get them.”
I started to stand, but Margot
grabbed my arm and I froze. Her brown eyes swept over my face, getting wider with each passing second. “How old are you?”
“Twenty,” I whispered.
“How old am I?”
“Eighteen,” I said, even quieter.
Margot’s shoulders slumped. “It wasn’t a dream. It was real.”
“It was real,” I said, grabbing her and pulling her in for another hug. “But it’s over now. You’re safe, and I promise I’m going to make sure you are never hurt again.”
The floor creaked and I looked up to find Mom standing in the doorway, her face streaked with tears.
It was a good thing we’d already decided Mom and Dad weren’t going with us, because after Margot came to they were too distracted to join in on the planning. For me, the break from worrying about my sister and a past I couldn’t change was welcome, so when everyone else crowded into the dining room to plan, I went too.
“We can’t go back in through Dragon’s,” was the first thing Jada said.
All around the room people nodded in agreement. Jim was at her side with Luke next to him, but Kelly was out thanks to her injury. She wasn’t the only one either, and when I scanned the room I realized how much smaller our group was this time around. Al, Angus, Dragon, Donaghy, and I were all here, but we’d lost the other people from Senoia and Helen. Parv was present too, despite her injury and the fact that everyone was trying talk her into staying. I knew they wouldn’t succeed, just like no one would be able to convince me not to go, so I hadn’t even tried to join in that argument.
It wasn’t a lot of people, but thanks to Angus, we’d gained The Church as allies.
“What did you and the High Priestess talk about?” I asked, turning my gaze on Angus. “I’m assuming she’s still going to help.”
“She is, but I gotta reveal myself to her people first. She wants them to know what they’re fightin’ for.”
“Is that something you really want to do?” Parv asked.
“It’s somethin’ I gotta do. We need the numbers, and hell, I deserve it. They’ve used me for the past twenty years, I might as well get somethin’ outta it.”
“He has a point,” Al muttered. “If we don’t have them on our side, we might as well go to the gate with our arms up and turn ourselves into Star.”
“I think we’re all in agreement that that isn’t an option,” Jada said. “So let’s focus on the bigger issue. How do we get in?”
“The priestess said they got a way,” Angus replied. “I ain’t sure what it is, but it’s how they got out to come here.”
“We’re going to meet them then?” Jada asked.
“That’s the plan,” my uncle said.
“Good.” Jada nodded and scanned the group. “That brings us to the next problem. How we get to Star. We’re assuming he’s going to be inside the CDC, but he might not be. He could be in his house for all we know, which could make things complicated.”
“He’ll be at the CDC,” I said, drawing everyone’s attention my way. “I spent a lot of time with Jackson, and if I know anything about his father, it’s that he is a workaholic. Plus, the house isn’t fortified the way the CDC is. You don’t need a code to get in, just a key, and anyone could break the front door down.”
“Do we have a code still?” Jada looked toward Dragon.
“I have it.” He frowned. “Helen made sure I knew it in case something happened. She wanted to be prepared.”
“What about weapons?” Jim asked, speaking up for the first time. “With The Church we’ll have the numbers, but what about arming them? We all know their anti-violence stance.”
“They got it covered,” Angus said.
“The Church has weapons?” Al asked in disbelief.
Angus pressed his lips together and nodded. “I ain’t seen ‘em with my own eyes, but that’s what I was told. The priestess said she’s been stocking up.”
“For what?” I asked.
“For this,” Angus said.
“Then I guess that’s it. We can’t really make any other plans until we get to the temple and find out what the High Priestess has in mind.” Jada shook her head. “I just hope whatever she’s thinking helps us, because if we have to fight The Church too we’re screwed.”
Sabine met us on the side of the road on the outskirts of old Atlanta. There was a truck parked behind her that—like all vehicles still driving around—had seen better days, and she was flanked by the same large men who had stood at her mother’s side in Senoia, all three of them decked out in the same red robes they’d worn before. The plunging neckline of Sabine’s revealed a simple black shirt and the bronze pendant she and all the other senior members of The Church wore. It was an eye with a red stone in where the pupil should have been, and it gave me the creeps.
“Priestess,” Jada said when we had all climbed out of the truck.
Sabine dipped her head, but as usual her gaze was focused on my uncle. “Angus James.”
He grunted in response.
“We’ve been told you have a way into the city,” Jada said.
Sabine tore her gaze from Angus and looked the other woman over, her gaze lingering on the tattoos peaking out of her shirt and moving up her neck.
“Why do you choose to degrade your body in this way?” she asked.
“I don’t see it like that.” To Jada’s credit, she managed to keep her expression even. “And that’s not why I’m here.”
Sabine frowned, but nodded in agreement a second later. “We have a way in. You may follow us.” She waved to the truck at her back. “We will park two streets over and walk from there. It is not a difficult journey.”
We climbed back into our own truck and did as we were told. The drive only took four minutes at the most, and then the one carrying the members of The Church pulled into an overgrown driveway much like the one we’d parked in when we’d come into the city before. We were silent as we all climbed out and started walking, following Sabine and her guards, and for once my thoughts weren’t on Donaghy and if we’d find Star, but I instead found myself wondering what these people would do if they ran into trouble. The Church claimed they didn’t kill the dead, but out here it was either kill or be killed. I doubted any of these three would stand by and allow the zombies to bite them.
It was still light out, and I couldn’t help being more than a little nervous when the wall came into view. I had no clue what Star had told the enforcers, but there was no doubt in my mind that whoever was working the wall was on the lookout for us. If we were spotted, all our careful planning would be for nothing.
“Do not worry,” Sabine said, almost as if she could read my thoughts. “The guard towers are sparse back here, and men are rarely assigned to them.” She waved to the only tower visible and when I squinted up at it, I realized that it was empty. “The wall here is not easy to climb and they keep most of their men at the front.”
“She’s right,” Parv said from behind me. “We’ve always focused on the gate.”
“There is reason for this,” Sabine said as she approached the wall, her gaze moving to my aunt. “We have people everywhere.”
Parv’s back stiffened. “I’m the Judicial Officer. No one told me to make that decision, I just did it.”
Sabine lifted her eyebrows in a perfect imitation of her mother. “Didn’t they?”
My aunt’s steely gaze faltered and she looked away.
Sabine only smiled.
She came to a halt about five feet from an old junker of a car that was right up against the wall, but her guards didn’t stop. The weeds around it had grown so tall that you couldn’t get a very good view of the car, but the thing didn’t look like much more than a rusted heap. That didn’t stop the guards from opening the door though, and when they did the hinges didn’t even creak.
“This way,” Sabine said.
She moved toward the open door, lifting the skirt of her robe as she ducked down. I moved after her, curious, and watched as she climbed into the car. The s
eats were gone, as was the other door, and what looked to be a tunnel laid beyond that. Sabine was through the car in seconds, and even when she had stepped out she had to stay low, but she kept moving.
I climbed into the car after her, and I was still making my way through when light flooded the darkness. I squinted, trying to get a glimpse of my surroundings through the sudden brightness, and that’s when I realized that she’d pushed a door open.
She was all the way through now, standing on the other side and waiting for the rest of us, so I scurried forward, out of the car and through the tunnel that had somehow been burrowed into the wall. When I was through I found myself in an alley that was blocked off on both ends, by what I didn’t know, but in front of us stood a building with a door that had been painted a deep shade of red.
We’d reached the Temple.
When everyone was through Sabine opened the door, confirming that I had been right. We followed her in, all of us in a silent line. I’d never set foot inside the Temple before and I wasn’t sure what I’d expected, but this wasn’t it. It was too simple, too plain for a group of people who were this eccentric.
“This way,” Sabine said as she led us through the room.
It was empty for the most part. Large and dimly lit, the starkly white walls and floors contrasted with the doom and gloom this group had always made me feel when they were around. There were no chairs, no tables, and no other objects to speak of except at the very front of the room where a shrine of Angus James sat in the place of honor. It was twice as large as the one in the city square; and four times as big as the one down the street from the apartment I’d grown up in. There were candles around it, their lights flickering in the darkness of the room, and dozens of pieces of paper. I knew what they were without looking, people had done the same thing to the statue on my street for as long as I could remember. Credits, gifts to the messiah, and prayer notes. Desperate pleas from desperate people who were looking for a miracle from the only god anyone bothered to pray to these days: Angus James.