by Tarah Benner
I’ve got Harper pinned against my side with her head resting over my heart. The gentle expansion of her rib cage against my body reassures me that she’s alive.
“What are we going to do?” she breathes.
I’m not sure if she’s talking about the immediate disaster going on within the compound or the omnipresent threat of drifters growing in strength a few miles away, but it doesn’t change my answer.
“I don’t know,” I murmur. “I guess we wait.”
“What if the virus doesn’t pass?” she asks. “What if the compound folds . . . just like 119?”
“We’ll have to leave,” I say with a shrug. “Go find ourselves another compound.”
“You make it sound so easy.”
I squeeze my arm around her waist and lower my head so it’s resting against her cheek. “Nothing is easy. But at least we’ll be together.”
Harper’s face moves under mine as if she’s smiling, and that lightens the heavy load weighing on my soul. Her breathing becomes gradually heavier, and I feel my own heart rate start to slow.
But then I hear footsteps outside the tent and a sharp psst!
Every muscle in my body tenses automatically. I know that sound. It’s the same psst! that woke me up a hundred times in the Institute when I was a teenager.
Harper’s body has gone limp beside me, so I carefully move her arm and edge off our pallet. Once I’ve extricated myself from our tangle of limbs, I pull on my mask and duck outside.
I creep around to the back of our tent, where Miles is standing in the shadows.
“What’s up?” I ask.
“You’ve got a visitor.”
“Who?”
“Not here,” he warns, jerking his head toward the fence. “Follow me.”
I have no idea what’s going on, but I follow him anyway. He leads me into the dark toward a spot far removed from the other guards, and I begin to get an uneasy feeling in my gut.
“What’s this about?”
“You’ll never believe me if I tell you,” he mutters. “You’re gonna have to see this for yourself.”
Puzzled, I follow Miles to one of the sandbag barriers we created this afternoon.
“Just tell me what’s going on.”
“Ask him,” Miles growls, nodding toward a shadowy figure looming behind the sandbags.
The person’s face is completely hidden in darkness, but when he speaks, it’s as though I’m hearing my own voice for the first time.
“Hey, brother.”
A flurry of panic rushes through me, and I whip my head around to make sure we weren’t followed.
“What — the — hell?”
I take a step forward and grab Owen by the jacket to make sure I’m not hallucinating. Sure enough, I see two sharp eyes glaring at me in the moonlight.
“Are you out of your goddamned mind?” I round on Miles. “What the fuck is he doing here?”
“I don’t know!”
“How did you get in here?” I growl at Owen, shoving him in the chest.
“He let me in.”
“He said he was your brother,” says Miles, raising his arms in surrender. “I almost shot him, but when I saw his face, I knew he was telling the truth. You two could be twins.”
I turn back to Owen. “Why are you here?”
“I came to warn you,” he says in a low, angry voice.
“It’s too late,” I snarl. “Your friend Malcolm already sent a welcome wagon to wipe us out. Fifteen people are dead because of him.”
“Well, it’s about to be a whole lot more than that,” says Owen, looking from me to Miles. “He’s gearing up for another strike.”
A shiver passes down my spine. I suspected we might face another attack, but Owen confirming my suspicions upgrades my alarm to full-blown panic.
“Thanks for the warning,” I scoff, trying to keep the fear out of my voice. “But we’re ready now.”
“No, you’re not,” he says in a frustrated tone. “You people are weak right now, and Malcolm’s never felt more invincible.”
“He’s not invincible.”
“Neither are you.”
I shake my head and drag a hand through my hair. “Goddamn, Owen. What do you want?”
He lets out an exasperated sigh, and I can tell whatever he came here to say is costing him a great deal.
“Come with me,” he says in a rush.
“What? No!”
“Why not?”
“Are you seriously asking me that question?” I snap. “I can’t trust you.”
“But you trust your leaders? The people who threw you out of the compound? That’s rich. Listen: It doesn’t matter if you trust me or not. Malcolm is planning another attack. And if you’re still here when he strikes, you and Harper are as good as dead.”
“I’m not leaving.”
At my refusal, Owen lets out an animalistic growl and shoves me in the chest. “What part of this don’t you understand, Eli? You’re an easy target here. Malcolm wants your people gone. He wants the compounds obliterated.”
“So what’s your plan?” I ask. “We run off with you, and then what? Malcolm just welcomes us into the gang?”
“No, but —”
“Where are we supposed to go?”
“Anywhere. Fuck, it doesn’t matter. Anywhere you aren’t being shot at is better than here.”
“That’s not a real plan.”
“Well it’s the only plan I’ve got!” he snarls.
Feeling utterly lost, I look at Miles. I can’t see his expression, but his silence is the only answer I need.
He thinks I’ve already made up my mind to cut and run. It wasn’t lost on him that Owen’s offer extended to me and Harper and no one else.
Regardless of what we do, he’s still going to be stuck out here when Malcolm attacks, and that doesn’t sit well with me.
I’m not Owen. I don’t run away from people I care about. The compound hasn’t done shit for me without asking for something in return, but the people here are my family.
“It’s not an option,” I say finally. “I appreciate you coming to warn us, but I’ll take my chances here.”
The silence that stretches between me and Owen is deafening. Suddenly, I’m grateful for the dark because I don’t think I’d be able to stand his disappointed expression.
In the distance, I hear somebody bellow “Shift change!” and lights flip on inside several tents.
“Fuck,” Miles mutters. “I’m sorry, man. I can’t get you back out of the fence right now.”
“What?”
“New people are coming on duty. We need to move.”
Owen lets out a frustrated growl. “Screw it. I’ll short out the fence myself.”
“Don’t,” I say, grabbing his jacket. “You’re gonna get yourself shot or captured.”
But Owen yanks his arm out of my grip and throws my own words right back in my face: “I’ll take my chances.”
“Don’t be stupid,” I sigh. “You can lay low in my tent until tomorrow night. Then Miles can turn off the fence and give you a chance to slip out.”
For a second, I think I’m going to have to tackle Owen and tie him up to keep him from making some suicidal dash for the perimeter, but he just lets out an angry huff and follows me back to camp.
Part of me suspects that he believes I’ll change my mind once I talk to Harper, but she’s angrier with Owen than I am.
I clap Miles on the shoulder and lead Owen around to the rear of our tent.
“Give me a second,” I murmur, opening the flap and ducking inside.
Harper is sitting on the edge of our pallet, loading her gun for patrol.
“Hey!” I whisper, coming over to kneel beside her. “Don’t freak out, but —”
“Behind you!” she gasps, raising her gun.
Glancing behind me, I see Owen’s face peering through the gap in the canvas.
“Hey!” I hiss, redirecting her gun before she can blow his head of
f. “No, no, no! It’s okay. It’s Owen.”
“What?”
He crowds into the tent behind me, and Harper turns up our little solar-charged lantern so she can see him more clearly. In the shadow from the lamp, Owen’s harsh expression renders me momentarily speechless. He’s hurt and insulted that I won’t go with him, but he wears his pain under a mask of anger and aggression.
“What the hell?” Harper gasps, putting a hand over her heart.
Her gaze bounces frantically from me to Owen, and I struggle to find words to explain his presence.
Harper knows as well as I do that another attack is a strong possibility, but I don’t want to add to her fears after everything she’s been through.
“I’ll explain when you get back from patrol,” I murmur, squeezing her arm and kissing her on the temple. “Be careful.”
For a moment, she just stares at me and Owen with suspicious eyes, but then she nods and slips out to report for patrol.
My heart is still pounding, but I can’t tell if my anxiety stems from Harper almost blowing Owen’s head off or the prospect of settling into an actual conversation with my brother.
A cloud of awkwardness has descended over the tent. I clear my throat and kick the top pallet off our little pile and shove it across the tent toward Owen.
“You’ll be safe here,” I say. “Get some sleep, and we’ll talk about this in the morning.”
“If you’d just listen —”
“I have.”
“No, you haven’t, Eli. You haven’t stopped once to ask me what I’ve been through lately. I know Malcolm has put your people through hell, but just look around for one goddamned second. You have friends . . . You have Harper.”
“What’s your point?”
“You’ve done everything you can to replace me and Mom and Dad, but they aren’t your real family.”
“They’re as real as any family!” I snap.
“Well, where does that leave me?” he growls. “What am I supposed to do for family, huh? You have everything, and I have nothing because my only brother wants nothing to do with me.”
“Whose fault is that?” I demand, my temper getting the better of me. “You know why I built a replacement family? Because the only family I had left me behind. And when I found you again, it was clear to me that you were lost. You don’t have friends because you push people away, and you don’t have a life because you’re too busy being Malcolm’s fucking lapdog to build one.”
“You don’t know anything about my life,” he snarls. “While you’ve been in there getting your meals served to you on a silver platter and going to sleep every night in your cozy little bed, I’ve been out in the real world.”
“So have I.”
“Bullshit,” he says, his mouth twisting in disgust. “You get shot at once a month. I get shot at every other day. There’s not a night that goes by that I don’t fear for my life. You don’t know anything about what I’ve had to do to survive. And all I really want is for the last shred of family I have left to act like he gives a shit.”
Owen’s outburst triggers an avalanche of feelings I didn’t know I’d been holding on to. All the anger and betrayal and grief I felt the day I learned about Owen’s involvement with 119 come rushing back, accompanied by a heady cocktail of guilt and resentment.
“I do give a shit,” I say in a hoarse voice. “But I don’t know who you are anymore.”
Owen looks taken aback. “That’s a lie.”
“It’s not,” I mutter. “There’s a lot of gray areas these days. But some things are still black and white. What you did . . . killing all those people . . . That’s something I can’t just forget.”
In that moment, Owen’s blank stare seems to ripple as my words hit him. He swallows, eyes shining with unshed tears.
“I’d give anything . . . anything to take back what I did,” he says, sniffing loudly and glaring at the corner of the tent. “But I can’t. I just need . . . I just need you to let that go.”
“Let it go?” I repeat in disbelief. “Do you even hear yourself?” I shake my head, lost for words.
“Don’t look at me like that . . .” he growls.
“Like what?”
“Like you’re so much better than me.”
“I’m not,” I say. “I’m not better than you. I’ve killed so many people, and I’ll carry those deaths around with me for the rest of my life. But I killed those men to protect the people I’m responsible for . . . and I’m not going to abandon them.”
twenty-five
Harper
By the time my shift ends, the dark-blue sky is starting to lighten around the horizon. It changes from navy to plum to a light gray that makes the miles of emptiness look even starker than usual.
I ended my patrol on the opposite side of camp, so I have to cut through a cluster of ExCon tents to return to ours.
Most of the fires have burned down to glowing embers, but fine plumes of smoke are still wafting up through the air. It’s very early, but in a few hours the ExCon workers will have to get up and resume their usual maintenance tasks.
“Hey!” calls a voice.
When I turn around, I almost miss the unkempt, leathery man leaning against his tent pole. He’s got his orange jumpsuit pulled down to his waist. His hair is long enough to skim the collar of his white T-shirt, and he’s got a wiry brown beard in desperate need of a trim smashed under his mask.
“Hey . . . did you just finish your lookout shift?”
“Yeah,” I say, glancing around to see if anyone else is up and about yet.
“So no . . . no survivors out there?”
“Not right now.”
The man straightens up and takes a few lazy steps toward me.
“You know how to use that?” he asks, gesturing to my gun.
“Yeah,” I say, fighting the urge to back up.
“I don’t mean to offend you,” he says quickly, taking another step forward. “I’ve just never seen a woman like you handle a weapon like that.”
I don’t respond, but I do put a few steps between us. I’m getting bad vibes from this guy, and there’s no one else around.
“Well, congratulations,” I say, trying to keep my voice from shaking. “You just expanded your horizons.”
“True enough. Say . . . I’d sure like for you to, uh, come inside and tell me all about it.”
Something is definitely not right here.
“That’s not going to happen.”
The man tilts his head to the side and chuckles. Then he takes another step forward, and I nearly lose my shit.
“That’s close enough!” I snap, raising my rifle and pointing it at his chest.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, little lady,” he says, putting up his hands in mock surrender. “Is that thing loaded?”
I swallow once and nod, gathering the courage to pull back the safety. I have no intention of shooting this guy. I just want him to back the fuck off.
But before I have a chance to retreat, a hand shoves my mask aside and clamps down on my mouth. My attacker pushes the gun off the guy in front of me and snakes his arm around my waist.
I throw an elbow back automatically. My attacker grunts in pain but doesn’t release me.
Heart racing, I swing around on the other side and strike him with the butt of my rifle.
There’s a painful-sounding crack! as the weapon connects with his skull, but he’s too big for me to handle. He manages to yank the gun out of my grip and drag me sideways into the tent.
Panic flashes through me as the other man follows, and suddenly everything becomes very clear: My instincts were spot-on. These men want to hurt me.
I can’t see anything in the dark tent, but I swing around with another elbow and bite down on my attacker’s fingers. I taste blood, and he finally releases his grip on my face.
“Whoa now!” says a familiar voice. “Let’s all just relax.”
Somebody illuminates one of the solar-powered lamps, and details
of the tent come into view.
My eyes land on a pair of black ostrich-skin boots covered in orange dust. I follow them up to a pair of freshly pressed slacks, a black shirt, and a long hideous mullet.
Shane.
Confusion crowds out some of my initial fear, and my momentary lapse gives my attacker the chance to knock my mask off and clamp his hand back over my mouth.
“Now,” says Shane. “Can we all just calm down long enough to have an adult conversation?”
I glare up at him, still struggling against my attacker and keeping the creepy guy with the long hair in my line of sight.
“I see you met two of my associates.” Shane follows my gaze around the tent. “I apologize for the somewhat jarring introduction, but I’m trying to keep a low profile out here.
“Now, on the count of three, Marvin there is going to remove his hand, and you’re not going to scream or do anything foolish. Agreed?”
I strain against Marvin’s hold — glaring up at Shane — but he still seems confident that I’ll obey his orders.
He locks eyes with my attacker and counts it out. “One . . . two . . . three.”
Marvin releases one hand, but I still can’t break his grip on my midsection. I should scream and yell for help, but my curiosity gets the better of me.
“What the hell are you doing here?” I growl at Shane.
“You know . . . it’s funny you should ask. I was wondering the exact same thing.”
I glance from Shane to the creepy guy who first accosted me.
“Apparently some folks were not at all pleased that I assisted in your boyfriend’s release.”
“Constance?”
“That was my best guess. They wanted to make an example of me . . . cripple me by removing me from my business.”
“So they threw you out here?”
“It’s just as well,” he sighs. “A plague is bad for business. Neverland is completely shut down, and half my regulars are stuck in the upper tunnels. At least out here I have a new pool of lowlifes to turn into loyal customers.”
I scowl in disgust. Leave it to Shane to care more about how the virus is hurting his bottom line than all the people who are going to die. He thinks he’s just going to set up shop out here as if nothing has changed.