“Why are we here, anyway? Why was it so fucking important to find me?”
“I told you,” Casey said through gritted teeth, “you might be the link.” He wasn't meeting her eyes. Jenny saw the same anger rising in him that had risen in her.
“The link to what, Casey? To the most fucked-up family in the universe? To the past? Because I'll tell you right now, that we're never going to have the world the way it was. That life is gone. The world is never going to recover from this joyless clusterfuck of disease and evil and decay. So go ahead and tell me, little brother. Just what the hell do you think I'm a link to?”
Casey stood up explosively and so quickly that it seemed that one moment he was in his chair and the next he was a centimeter from Jenny's face. “To the cure, goddammit!” he spat. “You are the link to the fucking cure, Jenny. So stop being such a pretentious asshole and just listen for two seconds.”
Jenny stared at him. She realized her mouth was hanging open and she closed it with a snap. She sat down slowly, not knowing how to respond. “Okay,” she said after a while, her voice quiet. “Tell me.”
“We don't know how it works,” said Fisher, looking at her. “We don't even know if it's true.”
“What do you know?” Jenny said. Casey sat down next to her again, watching her.
“We figured,” said Grayson, “that to understand what we are, we should figure out what they are first. The rotters. So we've been doing research. Every time we go somewhere new, we seek out the museums, the universities, places that might still have books, research, equipment that wasn't ruined in the riots.”
“I thought the thumpers took all the scientific equipment,” Jenny said. “I heard they smashed them all before they went Underground. Microscopes, labs, everything. They blew shit to kingdom come.”
“Not everything,” said Casey, his voice low and tired. “They didn't get to everything before they went Underground. This place, for example. A lot of labs are in basements, and they didn't make it to a lot of those. And the rotters were so bad in Chicago in the beginning that they didn't have time to destroy everything they wanted to. They were afraid for their lives, just like everyone else.”
“So you guys have just been traveling around and reading?” Jenny said. The anger was becoming overwhelming. She wanted to eat. It was starting to hurt. She could feel her skin growing tight and a pain in her guts.
“There was a letter,” Casey said, ignoring her sarcasm. “Do you remember how Mom used to bring us to Chicago?”
“Yeah,” Jenny said slowly. “Every summer.”
“Well, she had a lab here,” said Casey. “It took me a while, but I found it a few years ago. Before I was even bitten. It was ransacked, but they left the books in a pile on the floor and I found a letter inside one of them. It was addressed to you, Jen.”
“Where is it?” Jenny said.
He shifted in his chair. “It's gone.”
“What do you mean it's gone?”
“I had it on me when they took me in the Underground,” Casey said. “But I read it. It was from her.”
“From Mom?” Jenny said. “What the hell did it say? Spit it out.”
“It said she was trying to help us. She told you to keep me safe, but most of all, to keep yourself safe.”
“Once again, our mother is a beacon of fucking hope,” Jenny said.
“I'm not finished,” said Casey. “She said the words, You are the cure. Survive.”
Casey looked at her, like she was supposed to react. “That's it?” she said.
“Yeah,” he said.
“So our batshit insane mother, who experimented on her own children, who tortured all of us, caused the death of dozens of others and possibly caused the rotter outbreak, jots down a note for me. A note with no details, no instructions, and no goddamn apologies for ruining the world. And I'm just supposed to be satisfied with that?”
“Calm down,” said Fisher. “You're letting the rage get to you. It's not real.”
“How the fuck do you know?” Jenny said. “I just met you. Maybe I'm always like this.”
“We thought that if we knew how the sickness worked that we could figure out how we work,” said Grayson, sounding irritated. “But none of us has any training, so it's been a struggle for everyone.”
“We're just like you,” said Trix. “Except we didn't run away.”
“Trix,” said Casey. “Shut up.”
“You shut up,” said Trix. “It's the truth. She left us.”
“I don't even know you,” Jenny said, her voice a growl.
“And that's our fault?” said Trix. “You ran away.”
“And us being together,” Jenny spat, “I suppose that just solves everything? All of you being there didn't stop all the tests in the middle of the night. It didn't stop my grandfather from cutting into the meat on my back without an anesthetic after all the drugs ran out. It didn't stop them from sticking things into my spine when all of you were sleeping. It didn't stop me from being restrained on a bed, screaming and in pain and separated from everyone else so my screams wouldn't scare you. And it didn't stop the nightmares even after I'd been away for years. I still wake up screaming.” Jenny stood up. “Being together doesn't solve anything.” She stepped out of the circle and started walking toward the hall where Trix had taken her to wash up.
“Where the hell are you going?” said Casey.
“I've got some thumpers to visit,” Jenny said over her shoulder. “I'd like to have a chat with them about what happened to me.”
Casey was beside her in an instant. “Jen, you can't do that. Whatever it is you're thinking of doing, please stop.”
“Who's going to stop me?” she said without looking at him.
“This isn't you,” he said.
“It is now.”
FOURTEEN
When Jenny finally found her car, Casey slid into the passenger seat.
“Fine,” he said. “If you won't listen to reason, I'm going with you.”
“Just stay out of my way,” she said.
The keys were in the ignition, and the car sputtered to life. It didn't sound good, but she didn't care. Jenny gunned it and sent the car careening forward, tires squealing and dashboard shaking. She found herself driving on eight empty lanes along the lake. Rusted cars sat on either side of the road, overrun with weeds and vines, the windows too dirty to see into any longer.
They passed a few modified dune buggies. They flipped Jenny off when she sailed past them, veiling them in dust and black smoke. The car was shaking like crazy. Casey was yelling something at her and making panicked gestures, but she could barely hear him. Her vision was going red around the edges. She was starting to see the world in two shades: the living and the dead. The only things that seemed to register with her were the hotblooded living things. She watched hungrily as a group of nomads in spiked leather walked in the direction of Expo. Jenny forced herself not to stop. But she wanted to. Badly.
Something dead and gray and still moving was nailed to a telephone post. She didn't slow down. She was so hungry. And there was only one person she could imagine ripping apart with her teeth. The person who had turned her into this thing. Cora. Jenny would save Joshua for dessert. Her insides ached in anticipation at the thought. It kept the red at bay. But only just.
Jenny parked right at the station door and felt nothing. Either Joshua's trick with the dead cadavers was more effective than she thought, or the Underground had left the subway.
“You're just going to walk right in the front door?” said Casey. “What about the tunnel?”
“How far did you get when you took the tunnel?” she said.
“Fuck you.”
Jenny got out of the car and approached the pole that still held her grandfather's corpse. She stopped in front of the gray, rotting thing that had been Frank Bierce.
“Do you recognize him?” she said, without looking at her brother.
“Looks like every rotter,” said Casey af
ter a moment. The head was badly decayed, the eyes shriveled and the skin putrid and sloughing off of the bone. Even the maggots wouldn't touch rotters once they finally died.
“Look closer,” she said. She could feel Casey's eyes on her.
“Who is he?” said Casey. “Tell me.”
“It was our grandfather,” said Jenny. “Before he turned rotter. By the time I saw him, he was just a dead guy who wouldn't shut up. I put a knife through his skull.”
“Why?”
“He was a rotter,” she said.
“That's not why,” he said. “Is it?” Jenny was quiet. “Jen, what did he do to you?”
Jenny looked at him. Casey had his fish-eyes locked on her, concern on his face. “You don't remember, do you?” she said.
Casey shrugged. “Not really. I was pretty young. Most of my childhood's pretty fuzzy, to tell the truth.”
Jenny nodded curtly. “Probably better that way.” She pushed down the anger that had risen up as soon as she took one look at that face, desiccated though it was. Dr. Franklin Bierce. She was silent for a time, just staring at that face. Casey shifted, impatient, and Jenny closed her eyes. “All the other kids were younger,” she said. “Around your age. He called them subjects. You were subject 17. I was subject 31. He didn't talk to any of the subjects. Made Mom do all that. She worked with the kids and made them feel safe. She was the one who did the tests during the day. Remember?”
“Yeah,” said Casey. “She even read bedtime stories to us at night. All of us. I forgot about that.”
Jenny nodded. “The difference was that you all got to go to sleep at night.”
“You didn't?” said Casey.
“After you were asleep, it got really bad,” she said. She opened her eyes and looked at Casey. “At night, Frank would come and get me. Stuck me with wires and sent electric current through my body. Injected me with stuff that would make me sick for weeks at a time. He used to strap me down and cut me and put devices inside of me.”
“Devices?” Casey said.
“He would blindfold me,” she said. “I couldn't see what he was doing. But sometimes I could feel something moving under my skin.”
“Fuck, Jen,” said Casey. “I didn't know.”
“After all the anesthesia was rationed off to the hospitals, he stopped using it. His last project, he didn't use any at all.”
Casey looked at his shoes. “What did he do?” he said, as if he were afraid to know the answer.
“He sliced into my back,” Jenny said. “I felt him cutting the bone. I felt everything. He kept pumping blood into me so I wouldn't bleed out. I was strapped face-down on a gurney. I couldn't even move my head. I don't know what he did, but I couldn't move for months. I couldn't talk for days, not even to scream. He kept me in this dark room. I guess it was soundproof. He didn't want anyone to hear me. When I healed up, he let Mom take me back to be with everyone else. And when I got my chance, I ran.”
“I'm sorry,” he said.
“No one knew,” she said. “Mom might have suspected something. But there was nothing anyone could do. She did everything that old man told her to do. She was his lapdog. If I'd told her, she would either have called me a liar, or just told me to stop complaining.”
“This is going to save the world,” Casey intoned. “That was all she ever said.”
“What happened to her?” Jenny said.
“Your guess is as good as mine,” he said. “We were living in this bunker out in the middle of nowhere. She was sort of...going.”
“Going?”
“Yeah. She started talking to herself all the time, you know? Like mumbling nonstop. And she would cry for no reason. She was going nuts. After a while, she started drawing weird shit all over the walls. Like, chemical formulas or something, only there was this other doctor there who said they didn't make any sense. Then one morning, she was gone. Wandered off, I guess. To tell the truth, I was sort of relieved. I felt like a bad person for feeling that way. But knowing what I know now, all that pain they put you through...”
Jenny nodded. “The worst part wasn't the pain.”
“What was it?”
“The silence,” Jenny said. “All these experiments, all the fear, was nothing.” She shook her head. “He didn't talk to me. Not ever. He made Mom ask me questions when it was all over. I was like a lab rat to him. When I was alone after he did all that stuff to my back, I was strapped down. I was alone except when he came in and fed me food through a straw. And he wouldn't say a word. The entire time I was in there, I didn't talk to anyone. I wasn't a person. I was just another experiment. That's what was terrifying to me.” Jenny shrugged. “That's why I had to leave you.”
“I told you I wasn't mad about that,” he said.
“You should be,” she said. “You fucking should be mad, Casey. I abandoned you. Why aren't you mad?”
“Yeah, I was mad at you when I was a kid. Yeah, I felt like you abandoned me,” he said. “But when I got older, I knew you must have had your reasons. And you did. You had some big fucking reasons to get out of there. I've felt the rage that the disease brings, and I don't like it. It's not real. What is real is that I have my sister back. She's not dead...at least not really dead. I just have to believe that there's a reason for all this. That there's a reason for us.”
Jenny snorted. “What are you, Zombie Buddha?”
Casey almost smiled. “I know you're pissed, Jen. I know you're new to this and you can't help but be full of anger. But don't use me to justify it.”
“You are the reason for it,” Jenny said, the anger rising. She knew she couldn't be mad at Casey. She knew what he was saying was completely and totally true. But she couldn't control her emotions. They were out of control. One minute she was so hungry she wanted to rip someone apart, the next she was angry because her long-lost brother wouldn't be mad at her. She was a mess.
“I'm not the reason for anything,” said Casey, his voice cold. “You chose to come looking for me. No one asked you to.”
Jenny ground her jaw. “You came looking for me first,” she said through clenched teeth.
“Yeah,” he said. “I did. You know why? Because we are fucking family. I'm not some puppy to be rescued, Jen. If you're in trouble, I'm in trouble. And now that I know you survived, I'm not going to let anything happen to you if I can help it. Maybe you've forgotten what it means to have family that cares about you, I don't know what you've been through over the last ten years. But we are blood, Jen. And undead or not, we found each other again. You can't expect me to let you get yourself killed every five seconds.”
“Fine,” said Jenny. “But you can't expect me to be able to walk away when you're in trouble either. It works both ways.” Casey laughed and Jenny glared at him. “Why are you laughing?”
“Because this is a stupid argument,” he said, smiling. “We're arguing over who has the right to rescue the other. We're idiots.”
“Must run in the family,” said Jenny. “Come on. Let's go in. They must have gone. No living. If there were I'd be able to tell. I don't know what it is. Smell or something.”
Casey grabbed her arm. “They're not gone,” he said. “I've been dead longer than you. My sense of smell is better.”
“They're still there?” said Jenny.
“Yeah, don't you smell the blood?” he said.
He looked at her. “Jen, I don't think they left. I think they're all dead.”
She could smell it when they came down the broken escalator, heading down into the subway. Casey was right. It was blood. The smell of it was so thick that if Jenny needed to breathe it would have choked her.
The first body she saw was a fat, middle-aged woman she thought was called Ruth. Her chest had been blown apart. Jenny entered the living area where Ruth was sprawled on the floor, between two cots. Jenny crouched down and looked at the wound.
“Real bullets,” she said.
“What?” said Casey from the doorway.
“Hard to find
real bullets any more,” Jenny said. “Declan's crew hoards them, but they've been collecting them for years. Odd to see someone using guns for a bunch of religious people.”
Jenny walked out of the living quarters and headed toward the common area. Several people had gone the way of Ruth, blasted with bullets. A man had his face blown off. Jenny thought it was the same man who moved Joshua along on that last night: Enough is enough, Joshua. Jenny had respected him for that. He must have come back here to hide, though. These people had been many things, but brave was not one of them. Most had just wanted to survive and live the way they thought was right.
Jenny couldn't make herself feel much for the dead, even though she knew she should. She couldn't feel anger or outrage, or even pity. Just a black sense of apathy. That scared her a little. It wasn't like her. Not the old Jenny. The old Jenny would have cried. Then she would have hunted down whoever did this. All the new Jenny could do was to look around at it all.
The violence should have been shocking. Jenny stepped over a petite woman whose name had been Marta. She was lying in a puddle of her own blood, black and dried on the cement. The closer she got to the open area of the compound, the thicker the smell of dead blood was. As Jenny passed the last living cubicle, she surveyed the carnage. It looked like everyone who had lived here had been brutally killed. Without mercy. Maggots squirmed in bullet holes and eye sockets.
“Jen?” Casey said. Jenny looked behind her. Casey was staring at something. When Jenny turned to see what it was, she stared, too. She had been zoned in on the bodies, but there was something else to look at. Something on the walls. Jenny walked across the room, sidestepping bodies.
Across the cement, seemingly scrawled with blood was one word. It was everywhere, repeated over and over all across the subway, on every surface she could see. It looked like someone had dipped their hand in the blood and scrawled it in a hurry. Jenny counted thirty before she gave up. The word was Jenny.
“What the fuck is this?” she said. Her eyes took in the room. It was everywhere. Jenny. Jenny. Jenny. Like a schizo dream.
“I think you probably know the answer to that,” Casey said.
Jenny Undead (The Thirteen: Book One) Page 9