Never Fade tdm-2

by Alexandra Bracken

  Someone—the National Guard by the look of the vehicles—had halfheartedly put up a chain-link fence around the perimeter of the runways and hangars, along with signs that read things like NO TRESSPASSING and HIGH VOLTAGE. Olivia threw a rock, which bounced back and hit the mud with the tiniest rattle. Jude twisted out of the grip I had on his shirt to belly crawl through the grass.

  “Hey!” I whispered. “Jude!”

  He tapped the fence with his finger, then again for good measure before he hustled back over to us. “That has about as much electricity as my shoe,” he whispered.

  This isn’t right, I thought. If there was something worth having here, there’d be people to protect it…right?

  I scanned the field in front of us again, Instructor March’s voice ringing in my ears: If it looks too good, too easy, it never is. And the simulation we’d run after—with Vida and I storming a warehouse—had proven that point. Sure, it had been all clear on the outside. The agents playing the roles of the National Guardsmen had been waiting for us inside.

  “Roo.” Jude groaned. “Come on.”

  There was no real cover between the trees and the hangars, but that didn’t stop Brett and some of the others from blowing past us to continue forward. Even Olivia looked over at me, exasperated, before she stood and jogged to catch up to them.

  “All right,” I told Jude, “stay close—”

  But he was already up and running, too, weaving through the vehicles and planes on the runway. I finally caught up with them when they stopped at the edge of the asphalt, crouching down behind the last line of vehicles.

  “I’ll take Brett and Jude with me,” I said, taking the flashlight from Olivia. “Two flashes for all clear, one for turn back. Got it?”

  “There’s no one here, Ruby.”

  “And that doesn’t strike you as odd?” I hissed back. There were tire tracks and footprints all around us; if they were old, they would have been washed out after days of rain.

  The nearby parking lots were mostly empty or filled with large shipping trucks. Now and then a light above them would flicker, but aside from that, the airport was dark.

  Every nerve in my body was tingling by the time I met up with Brett again after we’d lapped the buildings. I jerked my chin back in the direction where we’d left Jude waiting.

  “This is too easy,” Brett finally admitted, shifting his old rifle to his shoulder. “Where the hell is everyone?”

  Please not in the hangars, I thought. Please. This was my idea—I’d pushed them into this, and it would be on me to get us out if everything blew up in our faces.

  Cate wouldn’t have sent us here if she thought it was too dangerous, I told myself, not if there was a chance we could be caught.

  “Call the others over,” I told Jude, silencing the small voice before it could send me spiraling into true fear.

  I counted them again as they ran toward us. One, two, three, all the way up to twenty-one.

  The hunting party shrank into the shadow of Hangar 1, backs pressed to the wall, eyes scanning the dark field. The hangar door was locked with a series of imposing chains we had no way of slicing through, but there was a side-access door that, like I’d predicted, had some kind of electronic lock that looked like it had been beamed back from the distant future.

  “Step aside,” Jude said, shooing me away with his hands. “The master is here.”

  “Careful,” I warned. “Frying it completely will probably trigger it, too.”

  “Honestly,” he said, squinting at the display. It lit instinctively when he stepped in front of it, pulling up a digital number pad. “You’re acting like I’ve never done this before!”

  “You haven’t,” I reminded him. “Nico usually disables the alarm systems remotely.”

  “Details, details.” Jude waved me off with one hand and brought his other palm up against the screen. “Be silent so the master can do his work!”

  “Can the master hurry the hell up?” Brett hissed, hopping from foot to foot, arms crossed over his chest. I was starting to feel the winter bite, too. The sweat gliding down my face felt like it was two degrees away from freezing into solid crystals.

  “Count of three,” Jude breathed out, “push on the door handle. Ready?”

  I slipped around him, getting a good grip on the metal bar. “Go for it.”

  At three, the system’s screen flickered black, and I waited only long enough to hear the lock pop before shoving it open with my shoulder. When the system’s number pad flashed back up, it cast an eerie red halo on the drifting snowflakes.

  I waited for the shrill cry of an alarm, the blinding flash of floodlights spotlighting our small group. I waited to feel Jude shrink against the wall behind me in terror. I waited, waited, waited. But there was nothing to wait for.

  “Okay!” Jude called. “I tricked the system into thinking that the door is actually closed—we just have to keep it open, and then we won’t run into any problems.”

  “Nice job!” I whispered. The others streamed in past us, leaving a trail of mud and slush on the concrete ramp. We smelled like wet dogs that had rolled around in an ashtray.

  Jude grinned as he dashed in after them. Someone hit the overhead lights and flooded the room with pristine white. I covered my eyes with a hand, trying to adjust to the glare.

  There was a strange charge to the air now; I felt Jude’s mood shift from a sparkling excitement to the kind of shock that only ever comes like a brick to the face. The shift was so fast, and so sudden, that I was almost too afraid to see the hangar for myself.

  “Holy…shit.”

  There were rows of metal shelves lining the echoing room; they’d been set up almost like the stacks in a library but had to be a good two or three times the normal size. The soldiers had dragged them into tight, neat rows. The thick layer of faint peach paint someone had coated the cement with still had the gouges and scuff marks to prove it. Stacked on top of them were pallets and pyramids of boxes. Many were unlabeled, even more wrapped up tightly in a nest of clear plastic.

  “What language is that?” Olivia asked. She kicked at the nearest one, knocking the dust and clumps of dirt from it with the toe of her boot. It was buckled on one side, the thin wood cracking as if it had fallen from a great height and landed wrong side up in a field.

  “Chinese?” Jude guessed. “Japanese? Korean?”

  I didn’t recognize the words printed there, but the simple red cross that had been stamped over it—that I did recognize.

  The American Red Cross branches had, if you believed the news, run out of funds and supplies once all shipping to and from the United States was halted. People were afraid that IAAN was contagious and could jump ship, riding shotgun on a package or in a person to go plague another, healthier country. Once the economy was gone, the organization barely had funding to stay afloat for two more years.

  So what the hell was this stuff?

  “Liv—check it out!” one of the guys called. He and a few of the others had sliced through the plastic and were levitating boxes down to the ground from the upper shelves. One of them was already gutted, its fire-engine-red innards sliding across the floor. I picked up one of the red packages that had spilled out, surprised by its weight and rectangular shape. There was a sketch of a man lifting food to his mouth, and a flag, both printed under the words HUMANITARIAN DAILY RATION.

  “‘This bag contains one day’s complete food requirement for one person,’” Olivia read. There were more lines beneath it—in French and Spanish, maybe?

  “‘Food gift from the people of China,’” I finished, passing the package back to her.

  There were several sharp intakes of breath around us, but most of the others had been driven onto the next shelf, pulling down cardboard boxes printed with TEN 24-HOUR RATIONS GP NATO/OTAN APPROVED.

  “This stuff is from the UK, I think.” Jude had ripped into one of the boxes and was examining a pamphlet that had been left inside. “There’s…there’s so much
stuff. Matches, soup, chocolate—oh my God, there’s even tea!”

  “Take what we need,” I said, “but look for the medicine. Do you see any of it?”

  “This stuff is from Russia!” I heard Brett call from the next aisle over.

  “Here’s Germany, Canada, and I think Japan,” Olivia called back.

  “France and Italy, too,” came another voice. “They all say daily rations!”

  I slipped the thin piece of notebook paper Chubs had scribbled out his list on, holding it up to catch the light. His handwriting was as dark and smudged as ever; whatever pen he’d managed to dig up out of the supply pile had started sputtering ink when he hit penicillin. He branched out all of the different kinds beneath that word: Amoxicillin (Amoxil), Ampicillin (Rimacillin), Benzylpenicillin (Crystapen)…

  I jogged down the aisles, scanning the boxes and crates with wary eyes. More food, trash bags of what looked like wool blankets, all boxed up, all stamped with flags I didn’t recognize. There were red crosses everywhere, on everything. Dirt and clumps of dead grass clung to their edges. It had all been outside once, I realized. Dropped by planes passing overhead, maybe? Cate had mentioned rumors of foreign aid being left in parts of the country, but those same rumors had died out when no one turned up any evidence to prove it.

  “One minute!”

  My heart jumped from my ribs to the back of my throat; the air whistling in between my teeth sounded loud to my ears. It was quieter back here under the towering plastic tubs that were stacked against the hangar’s back wall. I leaned down, brushing away the dust from its clear side. More of those strange red packages. I moved onto the next tub, half listening to the anxious whispers carrying over from the other side of the hangar.

  I didn’t stop searching, not until my eyes drifted over the familiar curved neck of Leda Corp’s golden swan. Chubs’s list fluttered to the ground as I stood on my toes, trying to see what was inside of this one. Leda Corp meant medicine; my experiences riding in the back of cargo planes had taught me that much. I got as good of a grip as I could on the plastic lid and began to yank it out. Jude was calling for me, his voice drifting above the others’.

  “Come on, come on,” I grumbled, my arms shaking with the effort.

  The tub exploded open as it hit the ground; I dug into the clear packets of vials and sterile needles until I recognized one of the penicillin names that Chubs had written down. I took as many as I could, scooping them into my bag. Another tub was labeled VACCINES, but the one below it had wound-up ribbons of gauze, cotton pads, and rubbing alcohol.

  “A little help over here!” I called. One of my bags was already full, and the second one was quickly going the same way. We needed more. Liam needed more.

  Footsteps fell fast and heavy on the cement. I felt someone rush behind me, muttering something under his breath that I didn’t quite catch—one glance over my shoulder told me that half of the group, struggling under the new weight of their packs, was doing one last loop through the different aisles.

  “Ruby!”

  It wasn’t the crack in Jude’s voice that sent me spinning back—it was the sudden, overwhelming stench of stale cigarette smoke.

  I wasn’t fast enough. I shifted, meaning to throw up an arm to block the blow, but the knife found me a moment before the punch to the back of the head did.

  I don’t know if I screamed. My jaw dropped with the burst of pain. I tried to catch myself as I pitched forward into the tubs, but a hand fisted around my ponytail and wrenched me back. I didn’t have a chance to regain my balance. The gun was ripped out from the back of my pants before I could think clearly enough to pull it.

  Michael was breathing ragged and uneven, more with fury, I thought, than the effort of the attack. The knife, or whatever he’d used, twisted in my lower back, and that time I knew I screamed. The arm across my chest slid up to press against my throat, my gun fisted tight in his hand. He pressed it up under my chin, forcing it as high as the bones in my neck would allow without snapping. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t swallow, couldn’t move.

  “Miss me?” he hissed.

  I tried throwing my head back, twisting, anything to get away. You’re okay, I told myself. Not your spine, not your kidney, just—

  “Thanks for finding this place,” he continued, slamming me forward against the tubs. Michael leaned down low, bringing his lips up to my ear. “You and the others can get your sweet fill until the PSFs get here, yeah?”

  The force of Jude ramming into us shoulder-first wasn’t enough to throw Michael off me completely, but it was powerful enough that I could turn and drive my knee up into his center. I heard the knife give way from my skin with a sucking sound and clatter against the floor. Jude’s mop of curling hair dove for it at the same time Michael did. My entire right side screamed in pain as my foot went flying toward his face.

  “Bitch!” he screamed, and then I was flying back, slamming into the shelves opposite us. Jude was sent flying in another direction, back toward Brett and Olivia, who were coming down the aisle to see what was happening. One shot fired—another one—and the lights changed from white to a flashing red, and everything after was swallowed by a pulsing screech.

  TWENTY

  I DON’T KNOW HOW I got from the back of the hangar to the front, only that when the black fuzz lifted from my brain and the nauseating brightness of the overhead lights warmed to an unbearable glow, Jude had me propped up at one shoulder, Olivia at the other, and we were watching as Michael and four others collected our guns and sacks of food rations.

  To the right of them, shaking like the last leaf on an autumn tree, was a blank-stared Knox.

  So that was where Michael and the others had gone—to find their old pack leader. A lot of good it seemed like it was doing for them now, though. Knox muttered to himself, rocking back and forth on his heels, the same word forming on his lips: Leave, leave, leave.

  “—your choice,” Michael shouted. The noise had cut out, but not the flashing lights. “You chose strangers over Knox! Over me! You wanna take everything from us and kick us out? We found that damn warehouse! We set everything up!”

  Jude was shaking—not from fear or the cold but from blistering anger. “So if you can’t have it, no one can—is that it?” he said, his hand tightening around my waist. “You hate your life, so you have to make everyone else just as miserable and hungry and pathetic as you are?”

  “I am not pathetic—none of us are! If she hadn’t messed him up, Knox would be telling you this! Look at him—look! You want her to do this to you? You want another performance of her freak show?”

  “Believe me…” I shook my head in a weak attempt to clear the spots from my vision. “If you don’t drop those bags and get the hell out of my sight in two seconds, you’ll be next.”

  He raised his gun, but Olivia and Brett both stepped directly in front of me.

  There was a quick movement to my left. I looked over just in time to see one of Michael’s team yank the door to open it again. One of them must have shut it, I realized. That’s why the alarms had gone off in the first place.

  “Time to go,” the boy shouted. “They’re pulling up!”

  My core settled to stone. If they were here, it was already too late.

  “Don’t—!” Brett warned, but Michael grabbed Knox and followed the others out into the night anyway. There were two beats of silence. I closed my eyes and turned away from the shouting, the whining of cars, and guns and uniforms. One shot was fired. A hundred answered.

  “Down!” I commanded, tackling Jude. For the most part, the bullets pinged off the large hangar door, just to the right of the smaller side access door we’d come through, but some passed through the thin metal and buried themselves in the same shelves of supplies we had just ransacked.

  My mind was fraying at the edges, a pounding headache echoing every throb of pain in my lower back. I swiped at the sweat beading on my upper lip. I didn’t need to get up with Brett, or find a way to look outsi
de. I knew what I’d see—four dumb, dead kids and a swarm of black and camo setting up a line of defense.

  “I count thirty of them,” one of the Blues said. I don’t even know your name, I thought numbly, and you followed us here anyway. I am going to get you killed.

  I felt the overpowering urge to throw up as I stood. We are dead. I killed us.

  “This’ll be cake, right?” Brett said, clearing his throat. He turned back to the others. “They got guns, but we got brains. I like those odds.”

  “One big push should do it,” Olivia agreed. “I can take half back over the river the way we came, but someone else should try to take the other half the long way.”

  Brett rubbed a hand through his dark hair with a light laugh. “By someone, you mean me? That eager to get rid of me?”

  The Blues were dividing themselves up, falling in place behind Olivia and Brett, and the absurdity of what we were about to do—shove them like playground bullies, then try to outrun the bullets that followed—made me want to scream.

  I stood at the edge of the noise and movement, feeling strangely disconnected from what was going on around me. But Jude—he cut right through the panic, shoving his way through the bodies to reach the fuse box on the wall.

  “Everyone line up at the door,” he said, smashing the small lock on the electrical box with a nearby fire extinguisher. He tossed the broken metal behind him and pulled the gray cover open. Jude bit the tip of his right glove and pulled it back off, placing his bare hand against the assortment of switches. The dials at the top began to spin at a crazy speed, their tiny red arms blurring.

  “You guys throw them back, and I’ll follow up with a punch.” He sounded calm—way too calm for him.

  “What are you doing?” I asked. The air felt warmer, tickling my face. The mop of chestnut hair in front of me started to rise and crackle with static. I took a step back, but it wasn’t until the lights snapped off and the alarm went dead that I could see the blue lines of sparks racing along his hands and arms.