The smell of burning beans made me wrinkle my nose. Tabitha stepped into the firelight. She surveyed our pitiful group—Gabbi next to Kern, me and Ricker sitting on the ground. I saw Jimmy in the shadows and my heartbeat increased because I didn’t know if he was real or a ghost-memory.
“You’re lucky we were tracking them.” Tabitha was worn, gray, wrinkled, veined. A Feeb that was old to begin with. She had helped us, when we’d first been captured. She acted on our side, acted for the good of the camp, to search for a cure, to bring together infected and uninfected. But what she’d really wanted was more power and revenge on Sergeant Bennings.
“Why would you be tracking them?” Gabbi said.
“We have made it our job to know where and how many Feeb-haters there are,” Tabitha said. “You should have done the same.”
“Please spare me,” Gabbi said.
“What happened,” I said low enough for only Ricker to hear. I shook off the last of the feelings of the rocks and the water and the peace they had brought. “What happened to me?”
Gabbi argued with Kern and Tabitha in the background. Jimmy stayed real for the moment, glancing back and forth between me and Gabbi, his corkscrew hair swinging in time. Ricker’s hands felt warm on my shoulders even through my layers of clothes. I did not pull away.
“It’s what they said. You went Faint.” His smile disappeared into a worried frown. “You froze. Like they do. You went blank in the middle of everyone fighting and wouldn’t come out. What did it feel like?”
I tried to describe it to him. The water, the rocks, the immense peace in being still. He became more worried as I talked, so I stopped. “It’s nothing. It’s better now, right?”
“Right.” But his voice contained an odd note that told me he wasn’t sure about that.
“What are you going to do with these uninfected?” Gabbi said, drawing my attention back to the drama unfolding before me. I saw now that Tabitha’s people had our captors tied up and laid out on the ground like a row of sticks ready for the fire.
Jimmy came over to us and spoke so that only we could hear. “I didn’t know what else to do. They found me and I knew you guys were in trouble—”
“It’s fine, Jimmy,” Ricker said. “You did just right.”
So he was real. He had to be if Ricker could talk to him too.
“None of your concern,” Tabitha said, answering Gabbi’s question.
“We’re looking for the cured one,” Kern held up a hand. “Mother, you know Gabbi and them are too. The word is out. Don’t try to deny it, Gabbi, you aren’t a very good liar.”
“I have always been an excellent liar.” Gabbi stiffened and tilted her head as if daring him to say otherwise.
“Not with me,” he said.
I waited for Gabbi to say something back, but she kept silent. He had hit closer to the truth than she would ever admit—except in the memory-fevers. During those first two years, when we were rescuing Feebs and battling Vs, she’d go down in the fevers and reveal that she met up with Kern sometimes. We had never told her. We valued our lives too much to confess knowing something she clearly didn’t want us to know. It made me wonder what they had heard from me.
Better not to ask.
“We think these uninfected have him locked up,” Kern said. “Especially since—”
Perkins spit into the fire, making it hiss. “We have no such monster. There’s no cure for the likes of you except death.”
Tabitha flashed a knife, slicing her arm and Perkins’ cheek. He howled, slapping his hand over the wound. The Feeb holding Perkins’ stumbled, going down on one knee, his mask coming off. Dark eyebrows slashed his face into thick diagonals.
“Nindal?” I said.
Kern shouted for his mother to stop.
The uninfected woman, June, screamed and struggled against the knife at her neck. It dropped away and the Feeb stood and backed up. “That ain’t right, cutting him like that. Infecting him—that’s not what you said.”
It was Bernice, from the store. Bernice and Nindal were here with Tabitha and—
“It’s done,” said a voice behind Tabitha—Leon. He strode over to June and threw her back into a sitting position. “Hold it together or you’re next.”
Tears streamed down her face even as she did what he commanded.
Ricker and I just looked at each other.
“Do you see them too?” Ricker asked.
I nodded.
Ricker shook his head. “This is bad.”
“Has Leon always been working with Tabitha?” I said.
Ricker didn’t answer except to hold me closer to him.
Perkins rocked on the ground with his hands wrapped around his knees. Though it was a shallow cut, his cheek bled all over his clothes.
Kern stopped shouting and now he just seemed sick to his stomach like Bernice and Nindal. More people crowded at the edges of the firelight. Murmured conversations. Leon’s whole group was here—with Tabitha.
“You didn’t have to do that,” Leon said quietly.
Tabitha just looked at him. “You have no idea where this cured one is.” It wasn’t a question.
Leon considered his next words and whether he should say them at all. He eyed Perkins and the sweat that had already broken out on his forehead, a signal that the memory-fevers would tumble over him soon. Uninfected blood reacted so quickly to the infections. He flicked his glance over me and Ricker. He shook his head. “Let’s get this over with.”
“Do you think we would tell you anything?” Zach sat cross-legged on the ground, his hands bound in front of him.
“You’re a bunch of dirty creepers who don’t deserve the quick death waiting for you at our hands.” This was Hugh who spoke up.
I waited for Tabitha to pull out her knife again but she looked bored, like she couldn’t be bothered.
“Are we dead or going to be dead?” Kern said. “You really need to make up your mind.”
“This is tiring,” Tabitha said. “We do not need all of them. Tie these four to the trees. We’ll take these two.” She pointed to Hugh and June. “We will allow you gloves if you would like, but one way or the other, you will take us where we want to go.”
Zach shouted insults and threatened revenge as the uninfected were tied to the trees.
The adrenaline of the fight had worn off. The deepening night made me shiver. My sweat felt ice cold. My feelings of unease, of how good it had been to be a stone, tempted me.
Gabbi stood unmoving against a tree. Jimmy was next to her, almost leaning into her. Ricker helped me over to them. Shadows surrounded us, talking in whispers. Gabbi had this funny look on her face, like she feared the shadows would turn into monsters, but more than that, like she feared if that happened she’d crawl into a ball and cry like a child. We were surrounded by people who could go V at any moment, but that had never scared Gabbi before. This was different, this was a memory.
Jimmy held out a hand against her arm and she flinched. He kept his hand there for comfort until she finally grabbed and squeezed it.
“Welcome back,” Jimmy said.
“That was a bad one.” Gabbi glanced at me. “The same one I relived at the fairgrounds when I climbed those stairs.”
I wanted to tell her she had always been the bravest person I knew. That I wished I could be as brave as her. That I had survived this long only because she’d tried to protect me all this time. I opened my mouth to do it—to tell her how much I cared, but then Kern shouted for everyone to move out.
Gabbi’s face hardened and the moment was gone.
The forest was full of this rhythmic breathing like some musicless soundtrack for a movie. The breathing got louder and more dangerous and that’s all you could hear—the zombie on the other side, barely held back, scraping its fingers into raw meat on its way out to you because it had all the time in the world and you didn’t. None of us had any time left.
“We should go with them.” I lowered my voice to keep this conversation private.
Ricker stared at Tabitha. The hair on the back of my neck raised. He looked so mean, so angry. But it must be a trick of the shadows. This was Ricker. He was kind, careful, gentle.
The darkness swallowed Gabbi up except for her flashing eyes. “We can do this without them.”
I wanted her words to be true. I wanted Tabitha’s craziness to disappear into the forest.
“Maybe we should go back home,” Jimmy said.
I ignored Jimmy’s plea and Ricker’s dangerous expression, focusing instead on Gabbi because I knew what made her tick. I knew what I needed to say to convince her. “But we’re looking for the same thing right now,” I whispered. “If we don’t go with them—if there really is someone who’s been cured—and they find him first, then what?”
I let her imagination answer the question. Tabitha would find the cured one, talk to him, take him, find the cure, control it, keep it for herself. I didn’t think the cure even existed, but they did, and Alden did, and it was too much of a coincidence. It felt like we all were headed down the same path. If we followed them, maybe Alden and the drugs we needed would be at the end of it—
“All right,” she said.
Kern flicked his eyes in our direction. Ricker waited until he looked away before speaking. “We go with them in order to watch them. Otherwise they’ll be watching us.”
“I said all right,” Gabbi said
“I know,” Ricker said.
The fire hissed and sent up plumes of white smoke as Kern smothered it with dirt. I coughed until my insides ached. I was hungry and sore. I wondered how much worse off Alden was and then tried not to think about it.
First went Tabitha. Leon fell in line behind her. Bernice and Nindal and most of the other Feebs came after that. Kern took up the rear with a few others. He’d given up on getting Gabbi to talk to him for the moment, but that didn’t mean he’d given up on her.
We fell in line. Me behind Gabbi, then Jimmy, then Ricker. We didn’t know where Tabitha was going. It didn’t seem to matter to Leon or anyone—or maybe they already knew. They followed her and we followed them. Bernice and Nindal wouldn’t look at me, like they were too ashamed. Zach and the others, including the newly infected Perkins, were left behind.
Our group wasn’t very quiet. Several torches made even more of a spectacle. We walked, our breathing and steps falling into a rhythm that never blended in with the night. We were intruders in this wild place of trees, of leaves that crackled underfoot, of the cool humidity that gathered as plants breathed out a sigh of relief from the heat.
“Stop here,” Tabitha said. We huddled together, surrounding Hugh and June. In the torch light, their faces were pale beneath the masks she’d let them wear. They shivered from it, from the repulsion they felt, from the fear. It was real in them—this fear of us, of what we might do to them, of what we could turn them into.
“This will take a while,” Tabitha said. “You may want to sit.” She motioned Gabbi to the ground. Of course Gabbi didn’t move.
“What are you going to do them?” Gabbi said.
Tabitha wanted these two uninfected to lead us to the cured one, maybe Alden too. How did Tabitha plan to get the information out of them?
“I won’t let her torture them,” I said to Ricker. “I won’t stand by and become part of whatever she’s going to do to them. I won’t, Ricker. I won’t.” My voice became louder after each word until people began to look at me.
“Maibe,” Ricker said.
“Whatever you plan to do,” I said, talking directly to Tabitha. “I’m not going to let you hurt anyone else. Get that straight right now.”
“You’re Maibe, right?” Tabitha said.
“You know her name, bitch,” Gabbi said.
“Gabbi!” Kern said.
“Do you really think you could stop me?” Tabitha said, arching an eyebrow that threw her eye into inky blackness.
I watched Bernice and Nindal instead of responding. They knew what she was capable of doing. We hadn’t made it to the prison in time to stop her three years ago. She’d infected everyone there, turning them into Feebs. Bernice and Nindal had been there. She’d infected them.
Nindal’s eyebrows formed a V on his face and Bernice flushed red and tapped his fingers against his stomach. They knew what I was remembering. She’d betrayed them, but here they were, following her like it didn’t matter what she’d done before.
Ricker placed a hand on my arm. I looked up. His kind eyes suddenly held so much anger. He was remembering the prison too. How Spencer had gotten himself killed, how I’d escaped with Alden, how Sergeant Bennings had almost shot me. His fingers dug deeper into my skin until it became painful. I tried to pull his hand off. He let go, sending me tumbling to the ground. He stepped forward, the machete appearing. Metal scraped against leather and belts. Tabitha’s people had unsheathed their weapons. Two more held sticks. Bernice stumbled into the shadows but Nindal froze with his mouth gaped open.
“Stop,” Tabitha said.
Her people froze.
“We are not planning to hurt them,” Tabitha said. “We will not touch them.”
“Now why don’t I believe you?” Gabbi moved to stand in front of Ricker’s machete. She turned to face him for a long second, looking hard in his eyes. Then she whirled around, showing him her back.
The shock of realization poured over me like a bucket of cold water.
Gabbi was trying to protect him.
Ricker was going V.
I held my breath and counted the seconds. After a long minute, he lowered the weapon.
“You don’t have to believe us,” Kern said. “It’s still the truth.” He sat on a log. Tabitha and the others followed suit.
We were missing something.
“Are you going to tell us what’s going on?” I said.
“Are we going after the cure or not?” Ricker said.
“It really is so easy to make you angry. You should see to that,” Tabitha said.
I placed a hand on his shoulder for comfort, or, I don’t know, maybe to hold him back if I needed to. He shook it off.
Gabbi opened her mouth and I waited for the curse word that was about to drop.
“Stop it, mother,” Kern said. “Tell them.”
Tabitha held up her hand. “My apologies. All right. We are waiting here—possibly all night—at least for the next few hours, while the rest of my people track down wherever the uninfected have holed themselves up this time.”
“We’ll never tell you anything,” Hugh said.
“Shut up, Hugh,” June said. “Just don’t talk at all. Not to these filthy animals.”
“You should listen to her, Hugh. She’s right,” Tabitha said.
June’s face was almost comical. Her face scrunched up like she just bit into a lemon.
The torchlight flickered, changing the shadows on Tabitha’s face to make her look normal one moment and infected the next. “It happens that we don’t need your help,” Tabitha said. “We didn’t need it to begin with. Or, it might be more accurate to say that you have already helped us get what we needed.”
“What are you talking about?” Hugh said.
June whirled on him. “Hugh. Shut. Up.”
“You two were just a diversion.” Tabitha paused, then turned her attention to Gabbi. “We’ve been following them for awhile. It happens I think this little episode with you will send the others from their group scurrying back to camp much faster now.”
“There is no cure for animals like you,” June said, spitting the words out from between her clenched teeth.
Tabitha let a small smile play on her lips.
“We want the same thing as you,” Leon said, almost apologetic. Bernice and Nindal sat on either side of him, their faces long and exhausted. “Nothing more. We don’t want to be sick anymore. I’m sure you can understand that.”