Rebels

by Jill Williamson

  “I think Lawten Renzor is dead.”

  CHAPTER

  36

  On Monday, January 10, 2089, all the gates in the Safe Lands were opened. Levi, Jemma, and Jordan were in one of the first few vehicles to leave. Beshup and Mukwiv were in a truck behind them. The remnant from Glenrock and Jack’s Peak were going to keep living in the basements until Levi and Beshup could check the villages to see if they were habitable. It was the middle of winter, after all.

  Right after that first attack on Glenrock months ago, Levi had used up all the firewood he’d been able to find to create the funeral pyre. It would take time to cut more wood for heat and cooking. No doubt Jack’s Peak would face a similar problem. As much as they all wanted to leave, they needed to be smart about it.

  There were about two dozen vehicles leaving the Safe Lands that morning, way fewer than Levi would have expected. The people seemed to be afraid to leave. Maybe more would go out when summer came. Levi would have to encourage it somehow.

  He wondered at that thought. Why should he care about helping any Safe Landers? But he did care. He had skills that Safe Landers did not. And if people wanted to find another way of life, Levi would show them.

  The roads were not plowed so they were difficult to even see. Levi was thankful that Dayle had loaned him the bigger truck. He went slowly, though, having no desire to get stuck in the icy cold forest with his pregnant wife. The closer they got to Glenrock, the stranger Levi felt. It was like coming back to both life and death. Memories of his childhood mixed with what he’d experienced the last time he’d been in Glenrock. So many dead bodies. His father, his uncles, little Sophie. Papa Eli dying in his arms. Digging the graves. Moving the other bodies to the funeral pyre. Lighting it.

  “The forest always looks so pretty in winter,” Jemma said. “I’ve missed it.”

  His wife’s words cleared his mind of such solemn thoughts as he took in the beauty around him. They would just have to make new memories to replace the bad ones.

  “There’s a buck!” Jordan said. “Aww, man. I wish I had a rifle.”

  “He’ll be there later,” Levi said, glad to see a sign of wildlife. There was no reason to think there wouldn’t be any, but the buck affirmed his decision to come back to Glenrock.

  They could live here again. Life would get back to normal someday. He knew it. Though “normal” would be a little different from now on.

  He drove the truck into the village square. He could barely see the remains of the funeral pyre, jagged pieces of snow-covered wood in the middle of the roundabout. He was careful to steer clear of it, hoping he was staying on the actual road. He parked on the far side of the square, closest to his and Jordan’s homes.

  Jordan jumped out before Levi had completely stopped the truck. Levi shut off the truck and watched his friend bound through the snow to the Zachary tribe’s home.

  “The place looks okay,” Jemma said.

  “It’s only been six months,” Levi said. “As long as the doors and windows stayed shut, all the houses should be fine.” Should be. They were all well-built cabins, that much he knew.

  Levi got out, went around to help Jemma. Once he was convinced she was steady on her feet, he shut the door of the truck. Zane had loaned him gloves with a ghoulie tag so he could drive the vehicle. Levi wondered if he’d always need a ghoulie tag on hand.

  Jemma took a long breath and sighed, a smile claiming her face. “It smells so good out here. The pine and the fresh air.”

  Levi took her hand, and they followed Jordan’s footsteps so that Jemma could see her family’s home. They found Jordan in the living room, sweeping up a snowdrift on the floor under a window in the front room.

  “The place is in pretty good shape,” Jordan said. “All but this window. A bullet must have broken it during the raid.”

  “Good thing no squirrels thought to come inside,” Levi said.

  Jordan shrugged. “No trees outside that window, maybe?”

  Levi and Jemma inspected Jemma’s room, and she exclaimed joyfully over the presence of several childhood dolls that she showed to Levi. He faked happiness at the recovery of the dolls, but it wasn’t much of a fake, because he was truly glad to see her so joyful. When they finished at her house, they went to Papa Eli’s, the house Levi had grown up in. The original house of the Elias tribe.

  It wasn’t in as good shape as the Zachary home. The front door had been left open, and the place looked to have been ransacked by several hungry animals. There were jars all over the floor, but only a few were broken. Hungry as the animals might have been, it didn’t look like they’d found all that much to eat. No broken windows, at least.

  After that, he and Jemma started up the hill to the little cabin he’d built for them to live in once they were married.

  Jemma waddled beside him, looking like a brown bear on its hind legs the way she took tiny steps and how her layers of coats wrapped over her huge belly and made her look twice her size. She probably shouldn’t have come in her condition, but she had wanted to. And so long as Levi could help it, he had no intention of being apart from her ever again.

  He helped her up onto the porch. The mounds of snow on each step kept them from slipping. It came up to Levi’s knees. He kicked it away from the door as best he could.

  “I never got to see the inside,” Jemma said, bouncing on her toes beside the front door.

  “Of course you didn’t,” he said. “Only my wife is allowed in here.”

  “Then open the door,” she said. “Your wife wants to go in.”

  He grinned and knocked the snow off the latch. “Looks shut up tight. That’s a good sign.” He hit the latch with his fist until it slid out of the notch. The door popped open a few inches. Levi grabbed it with two hands and pulled it against the snow on the porch inches at a time until the door cleared an arch that they could walk past.

  Jemma stepped toward the entrance.

  “Wait!” Levi put his arm in front of her. “I’m supposed to carry you inside.”

  She grinned and sniffled, her cheeks rosy with cold. “Well, hurry up and carry me then. I want to see my house!”

  Levi swept her into his arms and walked sideways through the door. It was fairly dark inside as the windows — besides being covered with the curtains his mother had made — were covered in frost and snow. Levi set Jemma on her feet in the middle of the rug her mother had made for them. Shanna had given it to Levi for the living room floor, and he’d put it exactly where she’d told him to.

  It took a moment for his eyes to adjust. The place didn’t look any different from how he’d left it. Just cold. He walked to a window and tried to push the curtains aside, but they were frozen to the glass.

  “They’re stuck?” she asked.

  “Frost,” he said.

  “Levi, I love it.”

  He looked at her, standing where he’d left her in the middle of the rug. Her breath clouded in front of her. “Do you?”

  “Yes.” Their gazes met and held until she smiled. He always won their staring wars. She wandered toward the rooms on the back half of the house and peeked in the first one. “What’s this room?”

  He walked up behind her and set his chin on the top of her hat, then wrapped his arms around what passed for her waist these days. “Your mom was going to give you one of her sewing machines. I was going to put it in here. But maybe this should be the baby’s room.”

  “Naomi says Harvey is too little for his own room,” Jemma said.

  “Well, he won’t be forever.”

  “But for a while we’ll have to keep the baby with us.”

  “Okay.” He took hold of her shoulders and turned her around. “So maybe this will be our room for when the baby is sleeping.” He kissed her. Their noses were cold, and their breath made their faces moist.

  She broke away first and looked up at him, her brown eyes searching his. “Will we live happily ever after now?”

  He searched his memory for one of the sto
ries she loved. “If we promise to outlive each other,” he said, “which I promise this very moment.”

  She put her arms around his neck, grinned, then delivered her line. “Oh, my sweet Westley, so do I.”

  He tried to remember the alternate ending from the book and added his own twist. “But that was before Mason’s gunshot wound reopened, and Omar fell back to vaping, and Shaylinn’s children turned into owls and flew away, and Zane lost his other ear to frostbite. And the forest around us was filled with the sound of Lawten’s pursuit . . .”

  “Peace! I will stop your mouth.” And she kissed him again. He thought about telling her that she was mixing up her stories, but the kiss was more pleasant than teasing her would be.

  They didn’t stay long in Glenrock. Just long enough to look around and for Levi and Jordan to assess the amount of work it would take to get everyone in their homes again.

  Two or three weeks, tops, they figured.

  They piled into the DPT truck and started back. Levi really didn’t want to go back to the Safe Lands, but until he could get out here and cut some firewood, they’d have to spend their nights in the city.

  “It’s weird that so few tried to leave today,” Jordan said.

  “Not really,” Jemma said. “Where would they go? To someone who’s never left the walls, the land would look like a frozen wasteland. I don’t blame them for staying where it’s warm.”

  “I guess,” Jordan said. “I’d just think they’d want to get out, you know? Now that they know they’ve been prisoners.”

  “I think they will in the spring,” Levi said. “It will have to happen gradually. It’s the price of paradise. People who live in such a place go soft. They have no reason to learn to survive on their own. And a little bit of work completely overwhelms them.”

  “They’re lazy,” Jordan said.

  “They’ve never had to be anything else,” Jemma said.

  “Now they’ll have the opportunity,” Levi said. “It will be interesting to see how much things change.”

  And as much as Levi didn’t want to care how things in the Safe Lands would change, he did care. And he’d go back and help the people who wanted to leave. And he’d also go back to visit his brothers, who, he knew, were not planning to move back to Glenrock.

  CHAPTER

  37

  Watch the steps. The middle one has a crack. I’ll have to fix that.” Omar grabbed Shaylinn’s elbow as she climbed the steps to the cabin, Cerise in her arms.

  “I’m fine, Omar,” Shaylinn said, casting him an exasperated smile.

  Shanna followed, holding Nicolas. Omar ran ahead of them all and opened the door. The cabin still smelled musty inside, despite his having aired the place out all week. Ruston had told Omar that he could have it, and so he’d offered it to Shaylinn since it felt similar to home but was still in the Safe Lands.

  He’d already brought over two cribs that Zane had helped him get from the nursery in the MC. He’d put them in the room that used to be Naomi and Jordan’s and set up Shanna in the room that used to be Shay’s.

  Omar walked inside first, straight back to the bedrooms, and opened the door to Shay’s new room. “The cribs are already here,” he said. “And I got fresh bedding for your bed too.”

  Shaylinn stepped inside and gasped. “Omar! It’s lovely.”

  Shaylinn’s bed had lavender blankets. Cerise’s crib was pink. And Nicolas’s was green. Omar had also painted the room’s walls yellow and covered them in his own paintings, save one. The Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh was hanging on the wall opposite Shaylinn’s bed so she could see it when she drifted off to sleep and when she woke each day.

  She stopped to look at it now. “Omar, wasn’t this painting hanging in Champion House?”

  “You saw it?” He was surprised she’d remember such a thing. “It’s a present from Luella Flynn. I asked her if I could have it. She said she thought it looked like a kid painted it.” He laughed at that. “I didn’t bother to tell her that it was priceless.”

  “I think it’s beautiful.”

  “Thank you,” Omar said, as if it was his own painting.

  Shaylinn walked to the pink crib and laid Cerise inside. “Are you staying for lunch?”

  “I’m staying all day, if you don’t mind,” Omar said.

  “Really? I thought you’d be at the Yellow House.”

  “I changed the name to Hope House. And it’s being painted today,” Omar said.

  “Painted yellow?” she asked.

  “The inside is being painted. White, actually.”

  “I like Hope House better than the Yellow House, but shouldn’t you call it a church? Or at least put a cross on it?”

  “No.” Omar said. “The word ‘church’ is obsolete. As is the cross symbol, for now anyway. But the open door logo speaks to people. They’re free to come and go from the Safe Lands now. And Hope House will always have an open door.”

  “That sounds lovely, Omar. And you don’t have to pay to use the building?”

  “Luella said it’s mine. For as long as she’s task director, anyway.”

  Shaylinn shot him a wide-eyed smirk. “Luella Flynn, the Task Director General. I still think that sounds a little scary.”

  “The rest of the Guild will keep her in line. And she might find that politics isn’t for her.”

  “I’m glad Lonn got elected. And Ruston.”

  He walked over to her until they were standing side by side, looking down on Cerise. “I’m glad you decided to stay here with me.”

  “Not with you exactly,” she reminded him. Again.

  “Not yet, anyway.”

  She looked up at him with only her eyes, so it looked like she’d rolled them and they’d gotten stuck. “Omar . . .”

  He grinned and bumped his side against hers. “I know. But I swore I’d win you, and I’m not giving up until I do. Where is Nash, anyway?”

  “I haven’t seen him since the day Levi moved everyone else back to Glenrock.”

  “Good. Maybe he moved out there with them.”

  “Omar!”

  “I just like to know where my competition is, that’s all.”

  She took hold of his hand and squeezed. “You don’t have any competition, and you know it. We’re your family.”

  He smiled at her. “Then I’m a lucky man.”

  CHAPTER

  38

  How is he?” Ciddah asked.

  Mason sat in the chair in front of Ciddah’s desk in her office in the SC. He studied the results on the CompuChart. “Better. His red blood cell counts are up. The white too.”

  “But it’s not a cure.”

  “No.” Mason had shared some ideas with Lonn, Medic Cadell, and the biochemists in the compounding lab. Taking the stimulants from the meds could only be done if a suitable replacement could be found. Because the stimulants had been what was keeping metabolic rates somewhat normal. They’d been doing other damage, of course, which was why they weren’t an ingredient in the new meds.

  Mason’s knowledge consisted primarily of natural remedies. Lemon oil stimulated white and red blood cell formation. And grapefruit oil was said to increase metabolism. And there were herbs that could help promote blood cell production too: echinacea, dandelion extract, licorice root, and even deer antlers. And certain herbs to increase metabolism as well.

  Mason clicked off Omar’s page on his CompuChart and set it down on a stack of folders on her desk. He made sure the stack was steady before he let go.

  Ciddah leaned on her elbows on her desk. “What’s wrong?”

  He shrugged. “I enjoy being a part of the team that’s researching a cure, but sometimes I feel totally inadequate.”

  “You’re not inadequate.”

  “Maybe. But it pains me to remember how arrogant I was when I first came here. Thinking I could find a cure for this plague that’s been here almost since the Great Pandemic. Me, not even a fully trained doctor. And even now, what do I know?”

&
nbsp; “Mason, you know lots of things our doctors and scientists don’t know. You’re invaluable. Plus you believe in the possibility of success. And you care about people. The others had no concern for the individual patients. They were focused on trying to cover up their mistakes. But you’re honest and eager and willing to try anything. We will succeed because your faith and enthusiasm is contagious.”

  Mason swallowed, slightly embarrassed by her high praise. “I still think it has to do with the water,” he said. “The water in this mountain was never tainted with the original strain. If they could find the progression, then they’d be able to reverse it.”

  “I agree that the water is an excellent place to start, and they’re working on it. But it’s going to take time.”

  Time. Mason sighed deeply and studied Ciddah’s face. He’d moved back to his apartment in the Westwall. Ciddah had moved back to her apartment in the Westwall too. And they’d both come back to task in the SC, working hard to make sure their patients were getting safe meds, and helping the Cure Committee in their spare time. But there was still no cure, though Lonn and Cadell were confident that one would be found now that they were free to search without restraint.

  Mason was being impatient. That was the problem. Time wasn’t passing by that quickly. He just hadn’t decided what to do about Ciddah yet. He wanted to marry her, but he thought it would be wise to wait until a cure was found.

  “You never said whether you were going to come to dinner,” Mason said.

  She straightened her posture and started looking through papers on her desk. “No, I didn’t.”

  “Well?”

  She pierced him with a steady gaze. “I still haven’t forgiven you for shooting me.”

  He laughed at that. “Ciddah, you were shooting a gun on an airplane. We all could have died. I was trying to save us.”

  She rolled her eyes. “You’re always right, aren’t you?”

  “You shot out a window! The plane had a hole in it.” He didn’t add that her actions had killed Lawten Renzor. She had to appear before the Safe Lands Guild in a week to answer for it. And Mason had his own hearing. Luella Flynn assured them that the fact that Lawten’s having kidnapped Ciddah would help her case, but Mason was still worried.