“What happened to your back?” the boy asked, as he scanned the scars.
I held the memories of what my stepfather had done in the shed at bay. When he finished, I put on the prison uniform instead of answering him.
They marched me back to the main hall and pointed up a flight of stairs. As I walked up them, the boy with the gun stayed positioned at the foot. I wondered what I was about to walk into and, again, remembered the book Watership Down. When Bigwig infiltrates Efrafa, he makes himself valuable by being able to fight. But the rabbits never had automatic weapons or tanks—and I had a feeling that I had no bargaining power. I’d landed in a hole that I wasn’t going to be able to climb out of.
At the top of the stairs, I found a black-haired girl sitting at a long table and several boys, all armed, standing around it. On the table was a large satellite map of the area with several red circles drawn on it in marker. They’d circled Kady’s home and the two farms with the dead people Oliver and I had stumbled onto.
“Your colony is here,” Black-Haired Girl said, as she pointed to the map, right at my colony.
This is it, I thought, and prepared to die. I was just glad that Tom and Connor had gotten away. I hoped they had made it to Oliver, to help if there were an invasion.
“If you’re going to kill me, then kill me quick. Don’t bore me to death.” I watched her eyes.
She looked down for a second before meeting my gaze head on. “Lucky for you, Timothy sees value in keeping you alive.”
The way she emphasized Timothy made me assume she didn’t agree. Black-Haired Girl smiled in the same way Kyle and Zeke had just before my stepfather took me to the shed for re-education. A shudder hit my body, transforming me back to that helpless boy—but only for as long as the shudder lasted.
“You remind me of the grown-ups,” she said. “Cocky and so sure. Tell me, you think your friend won’t break as easy? Tom, I think his name is?”
She threw my journal onto the table to show that he really had been captured. I lunged forward, but the click of a rifle behind me stopped me just shy of punching her out.
“I’m sure I could take you.” Black-Haired Girl spat in my face. Then, to one of her lackeys, she said, “Take him to the dining area. Sit him at the guest table.”
The soldier saluted and grabbed me by the arm. As I was pulled away, I managed to scoop up my journal.
AT ONE TIME, HAT CREEK Ranch was this tourist trap where city people could feel like a ranch hand for a weekend. Panhandling for gold in a nearby stream, fishing for trout in an artificially stocked lake, and trail riding on horseback.
The army brats took me to an amphitheater in what was once the entryway to the ranch. A parking lot filled with army vehicles was to our left, and a picnic area scattered with tables behind us. The tables were arranged in an oval around the amphitheater so all spectators had a glimpse of what was going on inside. I wondered what kind of entertainment they had planned. And suspected it had something to do with me.
I sat on a bottom bench in the amphitheater, with the dark-haired girl’s “generals.” Kids took seats along the rest of the benches, some too young to sit still, and some old enough to know better than to act restless. I couldn’t help but wonder what had happened to the adults. Had they all died, or had there been a coup d’état? What had happened to the army that had taken this over as a base of operations?
The dark-haired girl was now in a box seat across from me, standing like a king overseeing a joust. Every person remained standing at attention, even long after she’d arrived. When she gave a nod, they all took their seats, clapping and hollering.
“We welcome a guest tonight, but before we break bread, we must attend to our business. It’s important that our guest witness our justice.”
Two guards bringing out a kid in chains with a burlap hood over his face quickly silenced the clapping and hollering. The kid staggered as he walked. He had open sores on his hands and arms. Blood stained his clothes, and dark purple bruises covered whatever skin showed. He shook—probably from both fear and cold.
The girl announced, “You are charged with high treason. You brought the infection into our colony, and you hid it from us. You endangered the entire group in an effort to save yourself. How do you plead?”
The boy started to cry. He dropped to his knees. He craned his neck toward jeers from a particular group of boys. They stared back, stone cold. From behind his hood, the boy faced the unwavering dark-haired girl.
“Please—please, Brianna. I was gonna tell you. I was gonna. I promise I was gonna . . .”
“Enough!” Brianna shouted. “You admit to your crimes, and now must suffer the consequences. We deal harshly with those who endanger our lives.”
I had no doubt that last part was a jab at me. I wondered if Brianna expected me to attempt to save the boy, or to plead on his behalf for them to let him live. But who was he to me? Who but some stranger?
And then I felt as if Oliver’s hand was in mine, squeezing it so tightly it hurt a little. She would have wanted me to do something about this. I couldn’t help but want to make her happy.
“Take his life,” Brianna said flatly.
A boy with a machete walked to the prisoner. Cheering rose from every table.
I had no weapons, but stones littered the ground at my feet. I grabbed one and threw it, directly hitting the guard in the hand. He cursed and dropped his machete. And I was over the table. Three guys were on me, but I knocked two away with a kick and punch. The third, I grabbed in an arm-bar, bringing him to the ground.
Then everything stopped as Brianna yelled, “ENOUGH!”
She smiled. The guy in chains was laughing. The guy who took the rock rubbed his fist. A wash of foolishness overtook me as I recognized the laughter. How was I the only one who hadn’t seen this was all a test? I let the guy in the arm-bar free. When he stood, he shoved me.
They unchained the “prisoner.” Before taking the empty seat next to Brianna, he removed his hood. The sores on his arms were make-up, which he wiped away with the burlap hood. The two guys I had knocked down also took seats, leaving me alone in the center.
“Stay where you are,” the kid who played prisoner commanded me. “I knew I’d find you sooner or later. You remember me, yeah? Timothy. This group here is mine.”
I stood in the center of the—and it had just hit me what it was—arena. Had they planned on torturing me publicly to show the people here they could make even me talk? At the end of the day, these kids wanted a show. The dried blood in the sod told me that Timothy hadn’t been using fear to keep his subjects in line; he’d been using entertainment. I didn’t even want to think about what he’d been doing to entertain his people—who he’d been killing. I considered saying something, but what was the point? I had no way out.
“Your stepfather has been a thorn in my side.” As Timothy spoke, he walked toward me. “He says if I don’t leave you alone, he’ll kill me. Says if I don’t leave you alone, he may not have to—because you’ll kill me, yeah?”
He put his face right up to mine. When next he spoke, he spat. “Do you think you can kill me now?”
I considered head-butting him and breaking his nose. Instead I ignored him as he and everyone around me laughed.
“I could use you for bargaining peace from him. A gesture of good faith, yeah?” Timothy said this loudly to the crowd, and the kids went silent. Probably wondering what he was up to. Obviously, he was just saying this so that his next statement would make him sound stronger.
“I’ll deliver you to him as a corpse. Throw your body on his doorstop so he never forgets who rules! The thing is, I just can’t decide how I want to kill you.”
Five of his goons brought out a stocky boy with bruised cheeks and one black eye. His hands tied behind his back. The crowd was going wild, banging cutlery on tables and jeering. It was Tom. They threw him to his knees. When they cut his hands free, he rubbed his wrists. He had bruises on his knuckles. I could tell by th
e glare that he gave Timothy that he still hadn’t broken. He obviously didn’t know that the army brats had figured out where our colony was and had probably sent a convoy to take Kady and Oliver out.
“In this corner,” Timothy shouted, pointing at me as he stepped between Tom and me, “weighing in at 90 pounds soaking wet . . .” He gave me this look as though he hoped for me to say my name or to react to his childish insult. When I didn’t say anything, he shouted, “Dead Man Walking!”
The kids laughed and banged cutlery on their tables. Then Timothy pointed at Tom and said, “In this corner weighing in at 200 pounds—”
“Get bent.” Tom spat blood at him.
“Sack of Rubbish!” Timothy returned to his table, sat, and yelled, “You two will decide if I deliver Dead Man Walking to his father alive or as a corpse. But know this—one of you will be a corpse.”
He paused and smiled at his audience before shouting, “DING! DING! DING!” as if he was the bell signaling us to battle. A rustle rippled through the kids, who were passing around what looked like candy bars.
“We’re not fighting!” Tom shouted, as he walked up to me. He gave me a look that said Right?
But this wasn’t some novel where a voice from above was going to make us a team and protect us from having to kill each other. Deus ex machina wasn’t going to save us today. We had to put on a show, or Timothy was going to kill us both.
“Sorry, Tom,” I said as I hopped back, crouched, and spun so I kicked him just behind his kneecaps. He went down, and the kids around us whistled and cheered.
Tom’s eyes opened wide and he shook his head. I put up my fists, and his cheeks turned white. I knew what he was thinking—he was pleading that this wasn’t happening. This wasn’t the schoolyard where he could pummel me without consequences. He knew I could win—and that my victory in this would mean his death.
He was a football guy, so I readied myself for his tackle. Tom crouched low and hit me full-force with his shoulder harder than I’d expected. He landed on my chest, choking the wind from me. He hauled off to punch, but paused long enough that I could wrap my legs around his waist and butt my head into his skull. He shouted and brought his hands to his forehead. His next punch crossed my cheek. Before he could land a second one, I kicked my feet up around his neck. He flailed his fists at my stomach, but I grabbed his wrists and held him securely. As his face turned blue, I said to him, “I wish it hadn’t come to this.” And I actually meant it.
When Tom’s body fell lifeless onto mine, I stood. Several of the army guys ran to drag Tom away, and Timothy applauded along with the other kids. Again, candy bars exchanged hands.
“Not even a competition, yeah?” Timothy again spoke to the other kids and not to me. “I can’t believe how quickly you turned on—”
“Wait!” one of the brats dragging Tom away shouted. “This guy ain’t dead.”
Timothy turned red, even though he stayed composed. “What?”
“This guy ain’t dead. I think he’s just sleeping.”
Timothy slammed his fist on the table. He growled at Brianna. “Take the quarterback and Dead Man Walking to the jail!”
Brianna stood and saluted, and then nodded at the brats nearest me. They came up behind me, and I let them tie my hands behind my back. My smile met Timothy’s angry gaze head on, letting him know he hadn’t broken me. He couldn’t break me. And now that he’d seen what I could do, he’d think twice about trying to kill me himself.
“Make no mistake, you are going to die. Tomorrow we’ll send you and the quarterback to the Pits, and you’ll scream for mercy in front of everyone. We’ll videotape it; send it to your stepfather to watch.”
“The Pits?”
Timothy smiled. “Brianna, show our guest what fate awaits him tomorrow.”
Chapter Twenty
Brianna marched me across the compound with six heavily armed guards surrounding me. We headed toward a building that looked new—kind of like a big barn that had been erected quickly with steel paneling. A staircase led up to the only entrance I could see. When we were at the bottom of the stairwell, Brianna pointed to four of the guards and told them to leave. They glanced at each other. “NOW!” Brianna commanded.
They left, and I wondered what her end game was. Why leave herself more vulnerable with fewer guards in an area where I could probably escape without anyone seeing?
“Before we take you inside the Pits, I’m telling you this. Tonight, I’m taking you out of here with these boys and we’re bringing you to your dad.”
“What? Why . . .?” Even as I spoke, I had a feeling what was coming next.
Brianna grabbed my arms and shoved me toward the metal staircase. “In the land of the blind . . .”
As she said this, her minions followed with, “The One-Eyed Man is King!”
She started up the stairs and I followed her. I tried to piece together what was happening. I remembered my stepfather telling Timothy that one day his colony would hand itself over to him. It was actually happening. Brianna and these boys were converts. He must have promised them something that made siding with him more appealing than living here with Timothy. Whatever he had promised, she would never see it. Brianna betraying her colony made her a threat, not an ally, to my stepfather—knowing that she would switch for her own gain. And my stepfather did not take well to traitors. Even useful ones.
At the top of the staircase, Brianna looked away from me toward her colony busy at work. They’d all left the dinner, and were feeding horses, tending fields, or playing games of soccer or rugby. A wind I hadn’t noticed till then carried the laughter and whispers that told me those kids were happy. With the right leadership, this colony could have been great.
She opened the door. We walked inside and along a mezzanine that surrounded the perimeter of the building. Every twenty feet an older teen in a lab coat sat on a chair scribbling on a clipboard. A guard was posted in each room on the corner of the building, and I smelled that rancid odor that could only be one thing—deaders. On the ground level deaders, maybe a hundred of them, walked aimlessly, snapping at the air. Women, men, and children.
“What the hell is this place?” I asked.
“Mostly our parents who caught the infection,” Brianna said, “and many others we’ve captured.”
The last part, she said with a red face. I wanted to believe her confession was embarrassment.
“Truth is, we have meds that can heal someone of a bite—but nothing that can cure someone of the infection itself. As long as you don’t die, you don’t turn. Timothy was bitten a month back, but no one but me knows.”
“He told you this?” I asked, having a hard time believing her.
“No,” she smiled, “He was bitten on purpose. We wanted to learn if he could become like the deaders, without being a deader.”
“He thought he could become Spider-Man by being bit by a radioactive spider,” I said.
“We kept Timothy alive by treating the bite. If he were to die now, he’d turn into one of the zombies.”
That word. The one my colony didn’t want to ever say out loud. When I heard it, even though it was exactly what they were, something just didn’t feel real. Even though we’d been dealing with zombies for weeks, they still didn’t seem possible. Calling them deaders made them feel less true.
“Did it work? Can he control them?” I asked.
Brianna watched where the guards stood. She kept an eye on them as they marched the mezzanine. One came close, and she grabbed me by the back of the neck and forced me to look down.
“See that? See it? That’s our power!” she shouted into my ear. I didn’t struggle, as her eyes darted from me to the guard telling me this was just for show. “He hasn’t tested it for himself—yet. Timothy is turning more and more crazy, and now some of us want to escape,” Brianna whispered to me. “Your stepfather has given us a place to go.”
I opened my mouth to say something, but I noticed a girl sitting on the sod with her face
in her palms. She was weeping, or at least appeared to be, as her back was doing that up, down, shudder-like movement that weeping people do. The deaders shuffled around her, sometimes sniffing her, but no more than they did each other. Every now and then the girl peered through her fingers at them, obviously aware of where she was.
“Oh my god, you put a kid down there who isn’t infected.”
Every fiber of my being wanted to fight my way down there and help that kid. But I’d be down there soon enough—the next day—and maybe, if they were still leaving the kid alone, I could figure out a way to save her. I found myself wishing Oliver were here, grabbing my hand and intertwining our fingers. Just imagining it made my heart stop racing. She gave me hope that everything would turn out okay.
“She’s infected,” Brianna told me. I looked again, expecting to see boils and rot on her flawless skin. She looked as scared as one would be who was in control of their every faculty. As if sensing my doubt, Brianna said, “She was our test subject. During early stages of the infection we treated the wound before gangrene or the flesh-eating bacteria killed her. We gave her some strong penicillin.”
“And they won’t eat her?”
“Are you getting it now? The infected don’t eat, they spread. The virus only attacks those who could potentially spread it. Now you see Timothy’s power. He could unleash all these infected and walk among them unharmed. He can lead them anywhere. Timothy—unstable, nothing-left-to-lose Timothy—could unleash all these on you. It’s his weapon.”
And my fate was to become a part of the weapon.
“You want to escape because you don’t agree with him?”
She shoved me back toward the door and nodded for me to walk. Stepping out the door I squinted at the bright sunlight, and I paused before walking the metal staircase down. It wasn’t easy with my hands tied behind my back, so I took each step slowly.
“My stepfather isn’t going to help you.”
Children of Ruin Page 16