Blood Rights (Freedom/Hate Series, Book 2)

by Kyle Andrews

  She hesitated. She was worn out and would rather go back to sleep. She wondered if it even mattered what time it was. She had nowhere to be. She had no schedule. Time meant nothing to her inside the walls of the Garden, but she still needed to know.

  As she stood, her head spun and she realized that she hadn't eaten in far too long. She felt weak, but that feeling was nowhere near the top of her list of priorities.

  When she stepped into the hallway, the overhead lights hurt her eyes. They were brighter than the night before, and brighter than the lights in her mother's room. It must have been daytime.

  More people were walking up and down the halls of the ER. Nurses were checking on patients. Doctors were reading charts. People were visiting friends and family, making conversation and smiling politely at her as they went along. She tried to smile back, but the smile felt unnatural to her.

  It never looked like this in a normal hospital. Despite what they showed on news reports, commercials and TV shows, hospitals were gloomy, miserable places. They were dirty and smelly. But this place was different. Probably, she concluded, because it wasn't a real hospital. It didn't have the entire city to worry about, just the few people who belonged to Freedom.

  How many people was that? How big was this cause? Libby had spent a month living amongst those people and she still had no idea how big or powerful they were. She'd never seen soldiers, but did that mean that they didn't exist? Was there an army somewhere, waiting to take action? Or was the entire movement made up of people hiding from the law and growing illegal produce?

  She approached the empty nurse's station, and she waited for the nurse to return so that she could ask questions about her mother. Surely they must have looked at the test results by that point. Why hadn't they woken her?

  The clock at the nurse's station told her that it was 7:36 in the morning. She'd been asleep for hours. No wonder Justin decided to leave, rather than stand there and watch her drool all over her own shoulder. The idea alone was embarrassing. She hoped there wasn't any drooling.

  She glanced down at her shoulder, just to assure herself that it wasn't wet. When she looked up, Libby was once again struck by how similar that hallway was to the one where she had last seen Uly. The nurse's station reminded her of their last conversation, which she could hear in her head as clearly as if it had happened only moments earlier.

  'I'll come back when you're gone.'

  Those were the last words that she ever said to Uly. They were words that were meant to cut deeply, but they were never intended to be the last words that she ever spoke to him.

  She'd been back to that same hospital since Uly died, but for some reason, being there hadn't made her feel as horrible about that last conversation as she felt in that moment, standing by the nurse's station in the Garden's ER.

  His ghost haunted that place. Not that Libby believed in ghosts. She didn't know what she believed and didn't believe anymore. She didn't even know the real Uly, and never would. But she wanted to.

  “Can I help you?” someone asked from behind Libby.

  Libby turned and found a nurse standing there. She wasn't wearing scrubs, or anything that Libby would have imagined a nurse wearing, but she had a clipboard in her hand and her hair pulled back. Somehow, just looking at her, Libby knew that she was one of the daytime nurses.

  “I'm Libby Jacobs. I'm supposed to get my mother's test results.”

  The nurse walked behind the station and started to flip through papers and files. The desk was a mess of paperwork and seeing it made Libby wonder where all that paper came from. Supposedly, there was a shortage. How could they use paper so freely? There was a computer buried beneath it all, but it looked as though most of their work was kept off of databases and servers, which made sense. If the Garden was ever raided, the last thing they needed was for an easily downloadable record of every Freedom member ever treated there.

  “This will just take a sec. Sorry,” the nurse told her. “We haven't had time to register the patients with their barcode bracelets yet. Not that we ever really get around to that. It's awesome in theory though.”

  “Don't worry about it,” Libby told her. “I'm not in a hurry.”

  “This flu is killing me,” the nurse said, before stopping herself and looking up at Libby. “It's not killing me. I didn't mean to say it like that. It's just making a mess of things.”

  “I've seen the reports. A lot of people are dying.”

  “Fortunately, I can say that we haven't had any deaths yet. Unfortunately, we can't treat a fraction of the people in this city who need help.”

  “Medication is scarce?”

  “Not if you're worthy in the eyes of the ones who make those decisions,” the nurse replied glibly. She then found the file that she was looking for and opened it. “Your results are back. The doctor should have been in to see you by now.”

  “He's probably busy too.”

  “Yup,” the nurse agreed. “Now ordinarily, I would have to wait for the doctor to talk with you, because I'm just a nurse and we don't do that. But this isn't exactly a federally approved institution, and if it were, we ordinarily wouldn't be treating any of the evil constitutional extremists that we treat here anyway, so who the hell cares about rules, right?”

  “Umm...” was all Libby could think of in response.

  As the nurse read over the file, she asked, “She hasn't woken up yet?”

  “No.”

  “I think she will,” the nurse said, with a comforting smile which somehow made Libby feel worse.

  “There's bad news,” Libby said.

  “There is.”

  “Her cancer. She was supposed to be scheduled for treatment.”

  “That was never going to happen. By the time they even got around to looking at her case, it would be too late. And once she wasn't able to work anymore, I doubt she could get an aspirin out of those people,” the nurse said. Libby could tell that she was disgusted by the whole system.

  “How bad is it?”

  “In simplest terms, it's bad. Your mother's cancer has spread. Her immune system is weak. Her body is trying to function, but it's getting harder and harder. Now, we can start treatment. There are some medications that we can get, but realistically, I don't think that your mother has more than four to six weeks, best case scenario. That's assuming that we can get her past this flu that she's fighting off right now, which is not a guarantee. She's still running a fever, and there's the pneumonia to consider. She's been malnourished. Dehydrated. I'm not going to lie, there's a lot that can go wrong right now. Nobody would blame you for making her comfortable and letting her slip away. Treating her will be an uphill battle that we will ultimately lose. The question is, is that battle worth it? Nobody can decide that for you.”

  The news wasn't surprising to Libby at all. She expected it—from a doctor and not a nurse, but she still expected it. She believed it. She knew what the situation was. She knew that Amanda was dying. But that didn't stop her from hurting when the nurse spoke those words out loud. When that happened, the facts didn't matter. It was all about the emotion. There were no sugar-coated promises that help was on the way. There was only the cold truth, that even the best help wasn't going to help for long.

  “So?” the nurse asked, and Libby genuinely had no idea what the question was. Seeing her confusion, the nurse asked, “Should we treat her?”

  Libby froze. She had no idea if they should treat her. How was she supposed to know? She wasn't a doctor. She didn't know how these things worked. That's why there were normally people who made those decisions.

  Even as she thought it, she felt stupid. Yes, they made those decisions. But those people promised hope where no hope belonged. They lied. They decided who lived and who died. What went into a person's body and what came out.

  Libby never expected to be faced with a decision like that. Should she give her mother the extra time, or would it be kinder to simply let her die?

  It was a horrible choice. T
here was no happy ending. So, Libby did the first thing that came to mind. Perhaps the most selfish thing, or perhaps the most caring thing. She really didn't know. Maybe she would have chosen a different path in the past, but things had changed. She had changed, and Amanda deserved the chance to change. It couldn't end like this.

  “We fight,” she told the nurse. “Do it.”

  31

  When Justin approached the school, he noticed two students standing out front, talking in hushed voices. He didn't know who they were. From the look of them, he would have guessed that they were in computer-based classes, or chemistry. Which is to say, they were small, thin, and pale.

  As he walked up the front steps, one of those students looked over at him and quickly shut her mouth. Neither of those students said another word for as long as Justin was nearby.

  Inside the school, he heard more whispers from more students. He saw one of the guys on his football team shove another kid into a locker and say, “If you don't shut up, I'll shut you up.”

  The other kid shut up.

  Some of the students were completely normal. Either they hadn't seen what was written on the sidewalks all over town, or they didn't care. If the school was any indication of what was happening around the city, people were talking. For the first time in his life, Justin was witnessing questions being asked openly.

  He walked toward his first class—history—as though he hadn't even seen what was going on. He pretended not to care, because the Justin that the people of that school knew wasn't a rebel. Aside from a few carefully considered outbursts, he was a shy, quiet kid who didn't draw any attention to himself.

  Up ahead, he saw Sim. The boy was just standing in the hall, looking around at the other students. Watching. Listening. Taking it all in.

  When Sim saw Justin, he started to walk toward him. Justin's first instinct was to pretend that he didn't notice Sim, but Sim would have undoubtedly noticed Justin looking his way. If he tried to ignore him, Sim might assume that Justin had something to hide.

  Justin walked to Sim and asked, “Do you see this?”

  “I see it. I'm not sure I believe it,” Sim replied.

  Up close, Sim looked tired. His hair was a mess. His eyes were red. He looked almost as tired and worn as Justin felt. The question was, why? Was he still looking for Libby, or was this something else?

  “What do you make of it?” Justin asked, without adding any tone that might hint at his own opinions.

  “I think it's insane. People see a little bit of graffiti and they go nuts.”

  “Nothing we haven't seen before,” Justin nodded.

  Sim almost said something, but stopped himself. He ran his hand through his hair and shook his head, silently debating with himself. Justin recognized the feeling of wanting to ask a question or make a statement, but not knowing how to do it without potentially giving something away.

  “You look like crap,” Justin said. “Flu?”

  Sim shook his head and said, “I got the shot weeks ago.”

  “Yeah. I guess I got sick before they started giving those.”

  Sim nodded, but he wasn't really paying attention to Justin. He was watching all the other students, talking about the words on the sidewalk. Freedom was spreading right before their eyes, but Justin still couldn't tell which way Sim was leaning.

  “You might want to see the nurse though,” Justin said. “You do look pretty bad.”

  Sim smiled. It wasn't that normal superstar smile that all the cheerleaders swooned over. It was a nervous, uncomfortable smile that looked like he was either going to start laughing or crying at any moment.

  “I just keep wondering...” he told Justin.

  “Wondering what?”

  “Why was she at the hospital? Why was she with those people? I didn't see any ropes or gags. She didn't look like a prisoner.”

  “Her cousin was one of them.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Maybe it's...” Justin stopped for a moment, realizing what he was about to say and wondering whether or not he wanted to go there. Finally, he just said it, “Maybe hate's in their blood.”

  Sim's eyes met Justin's. He knew what Uly's last words were. Everyone knew a version of those words. Of course, anyone with common sense knew that the media was lying about what Uly said. But Sim couldn't see that truth.

  “How could you have known him your entire life without knowing what he was?” Sim asked.

  “He hid it well.”

  “How do you hide something like that? How do you walk these halls and look these people in the eyes every single day without anyone suspecting?”

  “You have to be a good liar,” Justin replied, talking more about himself than Uly. “You can't allow anyone to really know you. You can't let anyone really care about you.”

  “Can you care about them?”

  Justin hesitated. For a moment, the conversation had gotten a little too close to home. Now he needed to remind himself that he was supposed to be the victim of those lies, not the liar himself. He was supposed to be bitter. He was supposed to hate Uly.

  Looking down at his hands, Justin said, “I have to think that you can't. To pretend to be someone's friend, but to lie to them every second of every day. It means everything was a lie. He lied to me. He lied to Marti. He held her and kissed her, and he pretended to love her for years. But when it was all said and done, she didn't even know him. Her boyfriend was a figment of Uly's imagination.”

  It was always considered bad etiquette to speak ill of the dead. Lying about them to cover your own tracks must have been a mark against his soul, but Justin didn't know what else to do. Each lie about Uly, tarnishing the memory of someone who was truly honorable, and truly one of the best people that Justin had ever known, disgusted him. He hated it, but he had to do it if he wanted to keep himself safe.

  But he wasn't just dishonoring Uly. He was doing it to Libby too. He was allowing Sim to hate her, all for the cause—or for his own well-being. He didn't know anymore.

  In that moment, he wondered if it was worth it. Were all the lies really as vital to the cause as he liked to believe, or was he just putting on this act because he was scared of what the world would do to him if they ever really knew who he was? He'd spent years believing that the world didn't have room for the boy who believed in freedom. The one who believed in God, when even members of his own cause sometimes looked at him as though he were about to hunt for witches or condemn a girl to Hell if she dared to show her ankles.

  Though, even as he remained hidden, those words were getting out. They were spreading, and people were talking about them in the open. Enough people were asking questions now to make Justin wonder if there was a purpose in staying hidden and playing along with the norm. What did that accomplish?

  “Do you think it was all an act with Libby?” Sim asked Justin, as though his opinion really mattered for some reason.

  Justin looked at Sim and considered telling another lie, tarnishing the name of another friend. Then he said, “Before Uly died, Libby didn't speak to him. I barely saw them exchange two words to each other for a long time.”

  “Why?”

  Justin shrugged and said, “Uly didn't like the guy she was dating. She wouldn't listen.”

  The bell rang. Justin was going to be late for history class.

  He walked away from Sim without saying anything else. He'd given Sim enough to hold onto, and he'd avoided telling another lie. There was no point in making people miserable when they didn't have to be. And if Sim could believe that Libby still loved him, maybe he would consider the words on the sidewalk a little bit more.

  Still, as he walked away, Justin asked himself if the lie would have been better. He could have ended things between Sim and Libby right then and there.

  32

  There was a small TV in Amanda's room. It must have been two decades old, at least. Its case was cracked and it looked like someone had spilled coffee on the screen at some point, but at lea
st it worked.

  As she sat in the chair next to her mother, Libby flipped through the channels and eventually settled on a daytime soap opera, watching the residents of a small town fall in love with each other for what must have been the hundredth time in the show's sixteen year run.

  Libby had never actually been to a small town. She didn't know what one would look like in person. For all she knew, there were no real small towns left in the world. Everything she had ever experienced in life had happened within a twenty mile radius.

  When she was younger, she used to watch different shows about small towns, where people worked in fields and watched the sunset across the rippling water of a small pond. Of course, the shows made the location seem ideal. They didn't linger on what those people did for work, or what they ate. The funny shows focused on the quirky interactions between those residents. They made jokes about the mundane things in life, and the wacky misunderstandings that could occur. The dramatic shows usually focused on crime or the tension between families or love interests.

  She wondered what life was really like out there. Was there any part of those depictions on the screen that was true? Or were those settings glamorized for TV, while real people suffered and starved?

  The sunsets had to be real. The beautiful reds and oranges splashed across the never-ending sky was something that she had dreamed of seeing in person, for as long as she could remember. Those dreams were more vivid now than they had been when she was taking the supplements. The dreams grew more real every day, and new dreams were forming inside of her as well.

  Then again, when she really thought about it, she knew that the sunset could have been computer generated. Maybe there was no beauty left in the world. Maybe all that was left was sickness, misery and oppression.

  She looked over at Amanda. Her mother looked a little bit better. Maybe. Her breathing was somewhat less strained. Her skin was looking less like tissue paper. Now it seemed like she was in a deep sleep, rather than on the verge of death.