The Recoil Trilogy 3 Book Boxed Set: Including Recoil, Refuse and Rebel

by Joanne Macgregor

  “Don’t worry about it, just yank them,” I say.

  My relationship with pain has changed since it grabbed and smashed and battered me senseless that night in the interrogation center. Stings and cuts and headaches hardly bother me at all now. It’s like they’re so tiny compared to what real pain feels like that they barely register on my pain scale.

  “Some of them are bleeding a little.” Nicky fetches a wad of toilet paper and presses it against my scalp. “Here.”

  “Thanks, Nicky.”

  “Anytime.”

  We step out into the morning sunshine, me dabbing at my head, to find Quinn and Darius waiting. Quinn’s gaze flicks to my head, then away.

  “Hurry up,” Darius snaps. “Zonia already went ahead to set up, and she won’t like to be kept waiting.”

  Nicky and I trail along the path to the van behind him, exchanging glances and suppressing giggles like a pair of naughty school kids following a fuming school principal, and a reluctant-looking Quinn brings up the rear.

  When we get to the small clearing we used for shooting practice yesterday, Zonia has already retrieved and loaded the rifle and pinned paper targets at about chest height on several distant tree trunks. Paper targets with the silhouette of a human torso printed on them.

  I stop dead and stare at the concentric circles emanating from the two bull’s-eyes centered over the middle of the chest area and the forehead. My uneasy feelings from yesterday have coagulated into a heavy lump of suspicion in the pit of my stomach.

  “How will practicing with these” — I point to the targets — “help us shoot moving rats, Zonia?”

  “I think maybe we overestimated our abilities yesterday. After all, we’re rank beginners,” says Zonia, laughing lightly, but her cheerfulness seems forced. Her smile is such an unusual occurrence that it looks unnatural, and if I had a dollar for every time I’d ever heard her laugh, I’d have a dollar. “I think we ought to take a step backward and try to hit something easier, don’t you? The silhouettes just give us something big and stationary to aim at.”

  I’m not sure I believe her. Actually, I am sure I don’t believe her. This is more of her preparation for war. She wants me to turn her band of misfit rebels into soldiers. Or at least shooters.

  “Why don’t we practice with the shotgun instead? You guys will be much more likely to hit a rat with that, and it would be better at short distances, like in the camp,” I suggest.

  “Maybe we’ll do that tomorrow, but right now, let’s stick to one weapon and not confuse ourselves,” Zonia says.

  Which is a lame excuse, if ever I heard one.

  Zonia hands the rifle to Quinn. “You can go first today so I can see if you’re any good. Jinx, you can check his grip and whatnot.”

  Quinn takes the rifle with a sigh and moves a few steps closer to the nearest target, but I stand still, lost in my thoughts. How is it possible that I’ve run so hard and so far, only to wind up back where I started? Here I am again, doing something I don’t want to do and don’t believe in, for people I suspect of having questionable motives. I have never wanted to shoot people. Hell, I was never even enthusiastic about shooting the damn rats! And I certainly don’t want to teach others how to do it.

  “Come on, Jinx, we need your expert assistance.”

  Ah, so now I’m her expert assistant. Sarge called me his angel of death. The rebels and ASTA may consider themselves polar opposites, but they have a lot in common. Both are determined to turn me into an agent of destruction.

  Zonia places a hand in the small of my back and pushes me over to where Quinn is fiddling with the safety catch.

  I stand beside him, on a patch of weeds and grass located precisely halfway between the devil and the deep blue sea. I can’t help, and I can’t not help. If I train them to be better marksmen, then more police or government forces will be killed. If I don’t, and they go in unprepared, more of the rebels might get killed.

  Quinn might get killed.

  Unenthusiastically, I give Quinn some pointers, telling myself that even if I refused to help, Zonia wouldn’t alter her plans.

  After the shooting practice, in which no one but Nicky shows any improvement, Zonia surprises me by insisting that Quinn and I accompany her back to the van.

  “We’re running low on supplies and have a delivery waiting for us with our comrades at the usual spot. You can drive and load,” she tells Quinn, then turns to me, “and you will be our protection detail.”

  “With this?” I hold up the sniper’s rifle.

  “Take your pick,” she says, throwing back the lid of the weapons locker and encouraging me to explore the contents like a kid at a candy store.

  I shift aside the shotgun, the high-tech assault weapon, and at least half a dozen Glock pistols, then suppress a low whistle when I see what lies beneath. Anyone would recognize the distinctive shapes of the olive-green hand grenades, but unless I’d paid close attention in the Applied Explosives lecture in sniper training, I wouldn’t know what else I was looking at: coils of detonation cord, explosive caps, and several thick blocks of an off-white substance that I know is C-4 plastic explosive.

  Just what the hell are they preparing for?

  I can feel Quinn’s eyes on me, but when I sneak a glance at him, he’s looking away.

  “Well?”

  “Are we expecting the threat to come from close by or far away?” I ask.

  “I don’t know that we are expecting a threat, not a specific one, anyway. I just like to be prepared. Take whichever one will be the best for most eventualities.”

  I pick up the semi-automatic pistol. It’s about the length of a man’s forearm, with a slim grip and front and rear sites. It’s smaller and lighter than the sniper rifle and feels deadly cold in my hands. I grab two magazines, check they’re loaded, and clip one into place. I raise my eyebrows in question at Zonia, still not convinced that she’ll allow me a weapon.

  “I know,” she says. “But I’ll be keeping an eye on you.” She grabs one of the Glocks and shoves it into the back of her waistband.

  “Um, Zonia? You might want to put the safety on if you don’t fancy shooting off your butt.”

  “You’re just full of all the good ideas!” She clicks the safety on and stows the weapon as before.

  Once she’s clicked the padlock shut, she helps Quinn drag the weapons locker out of the van and conceal it under some thick brush nearby.

  Then we’re off — Quinn driving, Zonia riding shotgun, and me squashed uncomfortably between them, hyperaware of Quinn’s arm and leg occasionally brushing against mine. Some way down the track, the dirt road splits, and we take the left fork, which is even more rutted and overgrown. After about fifteen minutes of winding through the thick woods, the trees thin out, and then we’re driving through some unfarmed fields. Zonia immediately retrieves a phone from the glove box, plugs it in to charge and starts checking messages and email. With a swift look at me, she angles the phone away from my line of vision.

  I shake my head at this foolishness and instead fix my gaze on the bits of Quinn I can see. The old black-and-white sneakers working the brake and gas, the arc of his knee beneath his worn jeans, his long fingers on the wheel. There’s a constellation of freckles in the shape of a wave on the back of his right hand. I risk a look at his profile. He looks pissed off, or maybe just worried. A muscle pulses in his jaw, and his eyes are squinted against the sun. He must feel my eyes on him, but he gazes steadfastly ahead. If he ignores me any harder, I’m going to start doubting my own existence.

  Far away in the distance to the right of us, I can see the long, low bulk of a stationary freight train — a railway track must run parallel to this dirt road. Is there a highway beyond? I start counting the rail cars, but the train seems to go on forever, and I lose count somewhere after fifty. It ends, or begins I guess, with two locomotives up front, parked at a rail freight platform with a tilted green roof, a couple of small buildings and two parked long-haul trucks parked
nearby. Then we’re past the train and there’s nothing much to look at again until, about ten minutes later, we pull up at a gate in a chain-link fence. The gate is open, though a rusted warning sign dangles from a pole: Trespassers will be shot. And fed to the pigs. Not necessarily in that order.

  Chapter 31

  Spilling the beans

  Quinn eases the van down the rutted dirt driveway and pulls up at the back of a run-down farmhouse.

  An elderly couple wait on the back porch. She’s wearing an apron, and he’s wearing denim overalls and a straw hat. It’s like a Norman Rockwell painting — except for the high-tech, multi-sectioned stock pen nearby. It looks to be about the size of three basketball courts, and it’s enclosed on all sides, including the top, with a fence of the finest wire mesh. I know that the fence will reach a meter underground, too — it’s the only way to guarantee keeping the rats out — and a thigh-high, five-wire electric fence circles the outside of the enclosure like a modern-day moat. A bunch of enormous pigs mill and root about inside the sty.

  As soon as I get out of the van, the stench hits me. I gag and swallow, and a ball of nausea clogs my throat, threatening to escape if I as much as open my mouth. I keep my lips pinched together, but that means I have to breathe through my nose. The pair on the porch chuckle at me knowingly.

  “City girl, eh?”

  I nod, swallowing hard.

  “It’s just some fine-smelling hogs. Y’all get used to it in a few minutes. Come on in, comrades,” says the man, who has fished a red beret out of a pocket and stuck it at a jaunty angle on his head. Zonia salutes him as she heads for the house, but as I make to follow, she stops me.

  “No, you can’t be in on this. You’ll need to wait outside.”

  She makes me lock the semi-automatic in the van. When I protest that I can’t protect them without a weapon, she merely orders, “If you see anyone coming, yell. Loudly. And stay in sight,” then follows Quinn inside.

  It’s just me and the livestock and endless miles of nothing here in the back of nowhere. The hogs are massive, with mottled black and brown and pink skin covered in short, spiky hair. And they’re noisy — grunting and squealing as they shove each other aside at the feeding trough or writhe ecstatically in wide, wet puddles of mud. One sow with four piglets chasing her teats wanders over to sniff at me where I stand near the fence, then gives a dismissive snort and trots over to smell the butt of a one-eared boar housed in an adjacent pen.

  I’ve never seen pigs in the flesh before, and it’s kind of interesting, but I’d trade this experience for just twenty minutes on the internet, hanging out on BackChat with Robin and my friends from back home, catching up on the world out there.

  I glance at the fence. It reminds me of the night at ASTA when Quinn escaped, when I was detained and taken to the detention center. The night when the world turned on its axis and became a different place for me. Before I know it, my fingers are scratching at my arms again, and I am staring at the mud, seeing Mr. Smith’s face, my body rigid with the memory of blazing, white-hot pain.

  I startle back to the present when a particularly noisy hog drops a splattery stench of poop just a few feet away from me. Right now I am here, not there. I am safe. No one is hurting me. I decide to patrol around the farmhouse.

  I notice that the outside of the house is studded at regular intervals with small, diamond-shaped security laser transmitters. All the red eyes are glowing. The whole area surrounding the house must be covered with a lattice of crisscrossed laser beams. Did an alarm sound in the house when we passed through the beams?

  Around the front of the house, an old, blue Ford pickup sits rusting in the sun. I’m afraid it will trigger flashbacks of that other pickup, so I force my eyes to look beyond. The freight train is on the move again, like a brown Lego-chain low against the wide blue sky. It’s traveling — I check the position of the sun in the sky, note the time on my wristwatch — southwest. But southwest of where? If I were traveling on that train, would I be heading back to the Metropole, closer to Robin and Mom, or would I be heading away?

  “Jinx?”

  Quinn is calling.

  “Coming.”

  He’s on the back porch, standing beside piles of stacked boxes and bags. I’m relieved to see some of them contain fresh fruit and vegetables.

  “Help me load these up?”

  “Sure.”

  He opens the van and I retrieve the semi-automatic, do a quick 360° scan of the area, then rest it against the side of the van. Quinn looks at it with an expression of strong repulsion, which irks me. I wish he’d just build a bridge and get over it already.

  “Is Zonia still inside?” I ask, grabbing two mesh bags of potatoes and lugging them over to the van.

  “Yeah, she has some comms to send and receive, and she needs to get the latest orders from High Command.”

  “What’s that? Like a headquarters?”

  “Yeah.”

  I help him lift and carry a few long, flat and surprisingly heavy boxes over to the van. He hops up to shove them across the floor to right behind the seats up front, and I choose this moment when we’re out of Zonia’s sight to ask the question that’s been plaguing me all morning.

  “Quinn?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’d like to ask you something, and I’d like you to tell me the truth. Please.” My hands have found the scabs on my arms and are picking again. “Am I training you guys to shoot rats or to shoot people?”

  His shoulders tense, and a muscle pulses in his jaw.

  “Does it even matter to you?” he says.

  At that, something inside me snaps. I am so sick and tired of being needled and judged and loathed. I can’t take it, not for one more moment.

  “Of course not,” I say. “Rats, people, children — what’s the difference for a stone-cold killer like me? I don’t care either way, not so?”

  “Look, I never said —” he begins, but I hold up a hand to forestall him.

  “No, no, you’re right. Again.” I turn to fetch another box.

  “About what?”

  “About this. About anything. Everything!” I fling the box inside the van to where Quinn crouches. “You’re right and I’m wrong. You’re good and innocent and noble, and I’m bad and evil and a bloodthirsty murderer. And I’ve always been this way. I played The Game just so I could learn how to shoot. So I could leave home, see the world, meet people, and kill them! I love killing animals too, but hey, it’s the murder of humans that really excites and satisfies me.”

  I march between the patio and the van, snatching up boxes and hurling them inside, ignoring Quinn when he leaps out and tries to help me with the heavier packages.

  “Of course I knew what we were really doing all along, and so did everyone in my unit. Man, I loved sending bullets into sick people, especially that time with the little kid. Wow, I wish I had a trophy to remember that kill!”

  “Jinx, I didn’t mean —”

  I don’t let him speak. I won’t let him explain. I’m beyond angry — I’m incandescent with rage. Everything that I’ve been pushing down and holding back now surges up and out of me like a molten lava flow of sarcastic rage.

  “And darting suspected terrs and dissidents, knowing they would be tortured? Man, it doesn’t get better than that. I always wanted to take down Connor. I knew him so well for so long that it was personal, you know? I couldn’t wait for him to get his. I volunteered for that mission — because, you know, we were always free to do what we wanted — and what I wanted to do was to dart him. And then you. You both pissed me off. I liked you better once you were tranquilized and … and I could get brownie points with my commander for the takedown. I’m only sorry I couldn’t get you both detained.”

  I fling a bag onto the floor of the van, and it bursts, sending pinto beans rolling into every corner. I notice my thumb is bleeding — I must have ripped it on a staple or something — but there’s no stopping me now.

  “Jinxy!”


  “I only helped you escape so I could — what was it again? — oh, yeah, so they could follow you right back to your hot little base of innocent rebels here. Only somehow I couldn’t because I got hit. No wait, you don’t need to say it — I know what you’re thinking, and you’re right — I hit myself in the head with a rifle butt and got myself taken to the detention center. Where I tortured myself.”

  “Tortured?”

  “Yes, Quinn, tortured. Oh, did you think they saved the special treatment for your brother alone?”

  He’s staring at me, gray eyes wide with shock.

  “No, rest assured I got my fair share. But I guess I didn’t tell them anything because it just turns me on to be hurt and I wanted it to go on and on and on all night!”

  I slump in the open doorway of the van. My throat is tight, and my traitor eyes are burning again.

  “You … you didn’t tell them anything?” Quinn says.

  “No, I didn’t! Not about you or the rebels or their plans, or what you know about the plague. Not even about the note-passing with your little sister.”

  Quinn blanches at the mention of Kerry. Good. Let him chew on the thought of the damage I could have done.

  “Or wait, I don’t know — did I? I don’t know anymore. I mean, I know what I think I did, who I think I am, what I think I believe, but clearly you know me better than I do myself, so tell me — did I just spill it all at the first blow? Or the second burn? Or the twentieth shock?”

  He’s looking stunned and appalled. Maybe even ashamed. He swallows hard and rubs a hand roughly over the back of his neck, but all he says is, “It doesn’t matter anyway. We assumed that either you were cooperating with them or that you’d crack, but that either way you’d tell them what they wanted to know. So we scuppered all those plans for Independence Day and such.”

  “Well, that’s just dandy. How awesome to know that I went through all of that for absolutely bloody nothing.”

  Tears are streaming down my face now. I can’t stand how weak they make me feel. I need my anger back.