by Kat Falls
“It’s been a while since we picked you up. We’ll round down to eight,” Rafe offered.
No, I wanted to yell, but it would probably come out sounding fevered. And what if Rafe was right? What if Chorda had bitten me while I was unconscious? No, that would have defeated his purpose. He wanted to eat the most purely human heart he could sink his fangs into. I tried explaining that to Rafe and Everson, but neither trusted Chorda to follow his own insane logic.
I couldn’t spend the next eight hours worrying if I had Ferae. I’d go crazy. And even if I came out of it okay, we’d never get to Chicago and back by Thursday morning. I had to get out of this cell now. I had to prove to them that I hadn’t been bitten. I lifted my arms. My skin was scratched from running through the hedge, and it was hard to tell what was a scab and what was just caked-on dirt, but nothing came close to looking like a tiger bite. I checked my stomach. Nothing. To see more, I’d need to take off my tank and pants, which were half shredded into ribbon. I opened my mouth to ask the guys to leave, but what would be the point? I couldn’t see every inch of my body and even if I had a mirror, Rafe would still doubt whatever I said.
“I’ll take off my clothes,” I said before I could think about how that would play out. “And you guys check for a bite mark.”
Well, I’d sure shocked the two of them. If I weren’t so scared and desperate, I would have laughed at their twin expressions of wide-eyed surprise. Cosmo, on the other hand, screwed up his face and scampered from the cellblock. Guess the idea of me naked was just too gross to stick around for. I pulled up my tank.
“Don’t,” Everson said hoarsely and I froze. “It won’t be enough. Even without a bite mark, you could still be infected. Chorda’s blood or saliva could have gotten in one of your cuts. We’re going to have to wait it out.”
“He’s right.” Rafe cast a sidelong look at Everson. “But you could have mentioned it after she took off her shirt.”
“It crossed my mind,” Everson admitted. He moved to stand within inches of the bars. “I’m sorry, Lane.”
I swallowed against the ache in my throat and looked away. I’d just condemned my dad to a death sentence because I’d been stupid. I’d fallen for Chorda’s act and gotten myself quarantined.
Rafe hefted a thin mattress out of the next cell and dropped it on the floor. “We’ll split up the time, so that one of us is always with her. I’ll take the first shift.”
Everson watched me as if worried I’d start throwing myself against the bars. “Are you hungry?”
I shook my head. I wouldn’t be able to eat until I knew for sure that I wasn’t infected. I slid down the wall to sit on the floor.
He crouched by the bars. “You’re probably fine.”
I waved him away. “Go get something to eat so we can take off the minute eight hours is up.”
“We’re not hitting the road at midnight.” Rafe pulled out a knife and started cleaning his nails. “Too many things hunt at night.”
I leaned my head back against the wall. I might as well forget trying to do the fetch. I’d never get back to the tunnel in time.
“You’ve done this before,” I said to Rafe after Everson headed back to the infirmary to refill his med kit. “You’ve locked someone up and waited to see if they were infected.”
He shrugged and strode off. Guess he didn’t want to talk about it. He was back a few minutes later with a sponge, soap, and a bowl of water. He pushed it through the opening at the bottom of the barred door. “It’s not that goop you like, but it’s better than a bucket of dirt.”
I was too thrilled over the sight of soap and water to care if he teased me — too desperate to scrub away every trace of Chorda.
“The stiff would turn around now, wouldn’t he?” Rafe asked and then gave an exaggerated sigh. “Of course, he would. I’m going to get some blankets.” He set off down the row of cells, giving me his back in his own way. Despite everything, I smiled. Gallant might not come naturally for Rafe, but he was trying and I appreciated it.
I retreated to a corner of the cell where I washed my face and limbs thoroughly. By the time I finished, Rafe had returned with an armful of blankets. He dropped them in front of my cell.
“There are clean clothes in the metal trunk,” he told me, without glancing my way.
I lifted the lid and found an assortment of prison-guard uniforms and bright orange jumpsuits. I opted for a uniform. Boring brown, but not too bad a fit. “You can turn around,” I told him. “Thank you,” I added, once he was facing me. “For everything. Well, except for locking me up.”
“You should stay here tomorrow and let me and Ev do the fetch.” Before I could protest, he went on. “If Chorda thinks your heart is the only one that’ll cure him, he’s not going to stop hunting you. And when a feral knows your scent, you’re easy prey.”
I wasn’t going to fight with him about this now, especially since I might be so fevered tomorrow that I wouldn’t be going anywhere. “The weird thing is,” I said, “Chorda’s not really feral. Not the way you’ve described it.”
Rafe shrugged. “Some manimals go from sane to feral in a heartbeat. Others turn little by little. Sounds like cat-chow is halfway there.”
I rubbed my forehead where Chorda had punched me. “So next time,” I said, trying for a light tone, “I should skip the science lecture about why eating human hearts won’t cure his disease.”
“If you’re going to try and talk a freak out of killing you, you gotta at least speak his language.”
“I don’t know tiger.”
“How about crazy?”
I smiled faintly. “My school didn’t offer that elective.”
Just then, Cosmo loped into the cellblock, carrying an armful of picture books. He had Curious George stuffed down the front of his overalls with only the head peeking out. Guess the dish towel had been officially replaced. Cosmo set the stack on the floor by my cell and plopped down. I crouched by the bars. “Where’d you get those?”
“The room with the kids,” he said while sorting through the books like a little pirate counting his gold.
“Kids?”
“On the wall.”
The prison library, maybe? I leaned over to see a book he’d set aside. The title — Where the Wild Things Are — made me smile.
“That book makes no sense,” Rafe said, getting to his feet. “Wouldn’t you want to go where the wild things aren’t?”
“Why would a prison library have kids books?” I asked him.
“Maybe the inmates couldn’t read. How should I know?” He joined us and pointed to the stuffed monkey tucked into the front of Cosmo’s overalls. “George.”
Cosmo’s bottom lip curled. “Jasper.”
Rafe dropped to one knee and plucked a book off the top of the pile. Curious George Visits the Zoo. He tapped the cover. “George.” He flipped to the first page and turned it toward Cosmo.
The little manimal shrieked and fell back against the cell’s bars, clutching his toy monkey. I leaned over to see the illustration. Happy animals in a sweet little zoo. Rafe and I met eyes. “Forget this one,” he said and sent the book sailing across the cell block. “You know what, buddy, none of these are as good as the stories this one guy used to tell me.”
Cosmo perked up. “Stories?”
“Yeah, he made them up and they were great.”
“My dad told you stories?” I asked in a low voice.
Ignoring me, Rafe settled on the mattress. “They were about this fierce girl who lives on the other side of the wall.”
Cosmo crept onto the mattress beside him. “What wall?”
“The biggest wall you ever saw. As tall as the sky. And this girl, she lives over there in a glass tower.”
“All glass?” Cosmo asked.
Rafe nodded. “Even the stairs. Pretty cool, right?”
Cosmo nodded, eyes wide.
“The stairs are not made of glass,” I corrected. “The balconies are all caged in and it’s far from cool. It’s borin
g.”
They both frowned at me. “I’m trying to tell a story here,” Rafe scolded. “Why don’t you go to bed?” I started to protest but he angled a finger at me. “I’m not taking you into Chicago tomorrow unless you’re one hundred percent fine. That includes rested.” He got up and pointed at the mattress. “Grab that end,” he told Cosmo.
Together they dragged the mattress down the aisle and dropped it by the wall, facing the cells, where Rafe could keep an eye on me, but his voice was no more than a murmur to my ears.
Going by Cosmo’s rapt expression, Rafe was a heck of a storyteller. Not surprising. He even seemed to be enjoying himself. Suddenly I was sorry that they’d moved out of earshot.
Rafe was right though. If I was going to be ready to head out at dawn, I needed to sleep. I was beyond weary. I just wished there was some way to keep corpses and insane tiger-men out of my dreams.
I jolted upright, confused and sweat soaked. In the gray predawn light, I couldn’t make sense of the bunk above me or the wall of bars. Where was I? Then the last two days crashed down on me in an icy wave and memories filled my mouth and nose until I was gasping for air. I hauled myself off the thin mattress.
A section of bars had been rolled aside — an open door. I tried to remember what Everson had said when he woke me during the night. He’d covered me with a blanket and told me that the eight hours were up. I’d been too exhausted to even register that he’d pronounced me Ferae-free.
I found Rafe asleep in the next cell and nudged his leg, He rolled over fast, pulling a knife from under his pillow. When he saw me — too stunned to move — he tucked the blade back under his pillow like it was nothing. “A precaution,” he said.
I brought in a slow breath. “Have you ever cut yourself while you’re asleep?”
“Did you wake me up to ask that?”
“No, I want to get on the road.”
He groaned but threw his legs over the side of the cot. “Tell me you woke me up last.”
“First,” I admitted and he shot me a groggy glare.
I went looking for Cosmo next and got lucky on my first guess — the library. Shelves of dusty books lined three of the walls. A mural covered the last wall with vibrant colors and animals that stared out with knowing eyes. Three figures floated in the center, a man standing behind two children. What a weird picture to find inside a maximum-security prison.
Two little gray feet were propped up on the wall.
I circled the couch and found Cosmo on the floor, lying on his back with his Curious George clutched under one arm, looking at another picture book. The floating children in the mural were holding hands and Cosmo had his feet pressed on top of their entwined fingers. I didn’t think it was a coincidence.
“Think that’s Hansel and Gretel?” I asked Cosmo. “Maybe when they’re being led into the woods by their father.”
Cosmo tilted the book up and glanced at the mural. “They’re my friends.”
Okay, that was enough to break my heart. I sat on the floor beside him and noticed a series of grade-school textbooks on a bottom shelf. I hefted one up, thumbed through the pages, and found pictures of piled corpses and the evacuation. My fingers tingled as I paused at a photo of a city on fire.
This book had been published after the exodus.
I found Rafe in what was once the “Property Room,” according to the sign outside the door. He had weapons stored in small cubicle shelves, like the stockroom of a shoe store.
I held up the textbook. “My dad gave you this, didn’t he?”
Rafe gave me a sidelong look, clearly gauging my reaction. “He didn’t want me to be illiterate.”
“You don’t just live here now, you grew up here,” I said. Rafe shrugged, but my horror mounted. “You’re the little boy who lives by himself in a castle! But it’s not a castle. My dad left you all alone in an abandoned penitentiary.”
“Why not? I had food, weapons, a library, a game room. I’d hook up the generator and watch old movies. It was a good time.”
“You were ten.”
“First you’re mad that Mack spent time with me and now you’re mad that he left me alone. Make up your mind.”
I thought back to the hatch marks on the wall of his cell. That was how Rafe had kept track of the time until my dad returned from the West. Crossing days off the calendar had been one of my own painful routines. If I’d had the occasional pang, wondering if my father was ever coming back, that doubt must have consumed Rafe when he was younger.
“The mural in the library,” I said. “You painted that.”
“So what? It’s my wall.”
“It’s you, me, and my dad, isn’t it?”
“I was a bored little kid. I don’t remember what it was supposed to be. Now, pick a weapon.” He pointed to the assortment he’d laid out on the counter.
“He’s like a father to you,” I pressed.
Rafe sighed as though I was wasting precious time. “Mack would swing by for me on his way to Chicago so I could be his lookout. Afterward, he’d drop me off. Sometimes he’d stay for a while and sometimes he had to get home. That’s all there was to it.”
“You must have hated me,” I said softly. “For taking him away from you.”
“Look, I love the guy. I do. But like a mentor, not a dad,” Rafe said firmly. “I didn’t hate you.”
I remembered the mural and realized it was true: He hadn’t hated me. He’d painted the children holding hands as if they were friends or … family?
“Actually, I kinda liked hearing about you,” he admitted.
“Why didn’t my dad bring you back with him so you could live in the West?”
“I wouldn’t go. From what I hear, you don’t live in the West.”
I didn’t think dealing with ferals was better, but he did have a point.
Before leaving the prison, the four of us gathered in the kitchen and spread out a map of Chicago on the table. Director Spurling’s letter was long gone — lost with the messenger bag and my father’s machete — but I remembered the address. We found her street and the Lincoln Park Zoo on the map. Before he ran away, Cosmo had worked in the farmyard at the zoo. He had friends there who could get a message to his mother in the castle. Best-case scenario, we would get out of Chicago with Cosmo’s mother and the photo of Spurling’s daughter. All of the possible worst-case scenarios, I shoved out of my mind.
Everson drove on the median strip between the rusted cars that lined the highway. Rafe slept in the front seat while Cosmo sat in back with me and told me stories about Chicago. Stories I probably could have done without hearing. Fog was a fragile web hanging in all directions, but eerier still was the silence, which was broken only by the occasional birdcall.
After over an hour, the landscape became more urban. Well, urban in the sense that there were more buildings; however, there were also herds of deer munching lazily on the grass that now blanketed what had once been road. We wove through neighborhoods of three-flats and bungalows that had withstood eighteen years of neglect pretty well. The houses, stores, schools, and churches were still standing, though covered in creepers and ivy.
As we drew closer to downtown, Cosmo got quieter until he was saying nothing at all. We followed the Chicago River north and there it was: an obstacle even more intimidating than Moline’s crushed-car wall. It had begun to rain, but even without sunlight, the fence around the Chicago Loop glinted like a heap of giant, deadly Slinkys — countless lethal coils of razor wire went on for what seemed like miles along the riverbank, cordoning off the skyscrapers. But the stretched coils weren’t the horrifying part. That distinction belonged to the sharp wooden pikes lined along the west bank of the river. Each pole impaled a severed manimal head. Cosmo covered his face with his arms, and I pulled him closer.
“So this king of yours” — Rafe twisted in his seat to look back at us — “he sure has a thing about ferals, huh?”
“The king hates anyone who shows animal,” Cosmo mumbled.
Rafe steered me across the weed-choked street. “It’s easier if you don’t think of them as human.” A wince flashed over his face, and he glanced at Cosmo. “No offense.”
I supposed that was progress. At least now he felt bad about hurting a manimal’s feelings.
Now that it was time for us to split up, I felt a wild surge of fear. The fur on the back of Cosmo’s neck and across his shoulders stood up, like a dog with its hackles raised. I wanted to assure him that everything would be fine, but how could I? This was where he grew up. He knew better than any of us what dangers lay ahead.
I hoisted Cosmo into my arms and hugged him tightly. When I put him down, he went to Everson and took his hand. My eyes moved from Cosmo’s winter-blue gaze to Everson, who was scanning the abandoned buildings on this side of the street. What if I never saw either one of them again? Suddenly I wanted to put my arms around Everson too, and would have, even knowing that Rafe would smirk, but Everson seemed distant. His muscles were taut under his gray shirt and his expression impassive as he surveyed our surroundings. He was back in line-guard mode, fatigues and all, which was probably for the best given our circumstances. Still … He glanced over then and caught my worry.
“It’s okay, Lane. You’ll be safe with him.” He tipped his head toward Rafe. “I’ll see you later,” he added, and I nodded. In his voice there was a certainty I clung to.
“That’s it?” Rafe said. “I would’ve gone for the kiss.”
Everson shot him an exasperated look. “Ever consider not talking?”
“Why?” Rafe scoffed. “Hey, Cosmo, try and keep the stiff out of trouble,” he said, which got a big smile from Cosmo. “Ready?” he asked me.