In the morning, as the dark sky turned pale and the clouds went from gray to a soft pink, two of Tabitha’s people showed up. They said the uninfected camp was close by—somewhere in the same town we’d been headed to search for the memantine and for clues about Alden.
I turned over to find Ricker staring at me. So much pain filled his eyes. I reached out for his hand. He flinched when I touched him. I wanted to destroy whoever had done that to him.
“I’m so scared I’m going to hurt you,” he said.
“Ricker.” The lump in my throat made the words come out as a croak. Tears filled my eyes but I furiously blinked them away. I would not add to his pain and let him think he had made me cry. “You won’t hurt me.”
“You don’t know that.” Gabbi laid on a bed of pine needles, hands tucked behind her head. She looked up at the soft pink clouds that checkered the sky.
“You would never hurt me.” I spoke to both of them. I put all the confidence I still had left into those words.
Gabbi snorted.
“Jimmy,” I said.
He didn’t respond. All three of us looked at the same time. He lay there, on his own bed of pine needles, a smile locked on his face. His dark eyes were staring at the sky, unfocused. His breathing was shallow. He clasped his hands over his heart like it might burst from happiness.
Gabbi scrambled up. Pine needles flew into the air, releasing their astringent scent. She shook his shoulders until his head bobbed up and down on the ground.
“Stop it, you’ll hurt him,” I said.
He didn’t come out of it. Now the others discussing the camp noticed our commotion. Leon walked over like he didn’t have a care in the world. I swore I saw a sneer on his face, but then he became grave. He scratched at his beard and shook his head. “It’s a terrible thing. Someone’ll have to stay behind with him. Don’t look like he’s coming out of this for awhile.”
My anger made adrenaline rush into my veins. I jumped up, fuming. Nobody knew how to take care of a Faint. Nobody cared about them or took the time to try to understand them. They were locked in, sleepwalking maybe, but they weren’t unreachable. You could get them to respond if you knew what to do.
I spotted water in an old plastic milk gallon jug and grabbed it up. Bernice exclaimed and held out his hand as if to take it back. I marched over to Jimmy and dumped it on his face, careful not to get any up his nose. He spluttered and woke up and cursed me with words I didn’t even understand.
Gabbi helped him sit up and Ricker slapped him on the back a few times. I dropped the jug at Bernice’s feet and dared anyone to say something.
Leon bent over, picked up the jug, and set it back onto the log.
“I don’t think we’ve officially met.” Leon held out his hand.
I realized he wanted me to shake it. But I couldn’t. If I moved they would see me shake.
He lowered his arm and smiled to let me know he wasn’t offended. “You’re the girl who saved a bunch of us, aren’t you?”
My throat locked up. I wanted to run into the forest and never let anyone see me again.
“Yeah, she is,” Gabbi said from behind me.
“Lots of people owe you their thanks, and their lives,” Leon said.
It felt like the entire camp stopped and stared at me. Their eyes raked over my hair, my skin, my clothes. Some of them probably thought no way a girl had done all that. Others like Bernice and Nindal, they knew, and they maybe remembered how I’d rescued them.
But I remembered the Garcia family and how the girl’s braids had wrapped around her head like a crown and I couldn’t take it anymore or I might burst. I turned my back on Leon. A puzzle piece clicked into place and I turned all my thoughts onto it to help me ignore the stares. I knelt next to Jimmy, Ricker, and Gabbi.
I nodded toward Hugh and June. “Could these uninfected be the ones who have Alden?”
Gabbi looked up, surprised. Ricker’s face drew in on itself.
“Ricker.” I feared I had set him off just by saying Alden’s name.
“I’m fine,” he said. “I’m thinking about it, Maibe. It’s a good question. It can’t be coincidence that the uninfected camp is so close.”
Hope flickered inside me for the first time in an eternity. To see Alden again, to see him smile, to hear his laugh, to know he was alive and safe—
He nodded at Gabbi and Jimmy. “What do you think?”
Jimmy didn’t respond other than to look at Hugh and June really hard. Even that took effort. He was still half gone.
She shook her head. “It could be. I can’t be sure though.”
“If it’s them,” Ricker said, “it’s not any of the ones we’ve run into so far.”
“You’re sure?” I said, my hope shrinking at his words.
He shook his head. “I’m not sure, Maibe. It was so fast. How can I trust what I may or may not have seen when anyone of the people here right now could be a ghost just as much as they could be real?”
There was silence for a long moment as the four of us looked over the people in camp. Most of the time you could tell which ones were ghosts by the faint silvery edge to their shapes. Sometimes you couldn’t.
“They might have been the ones to take Alden,” Gabbi said. “It could be them.”
When we crossed into the town, the streets were quiet and empty. The town had once boomed during the Gold Rush and then much later had reinvented itself as a tourist attraction. But that was before the infection spread.
Ivy had grown up along walls, creeping across the streets and covering windows. There was no wind. The heat felt more intense here, further down the mountain from Dutch Flat. Leaves lay thick and dry and crumbling on the ground. The place felt empty. It could have been empty—Faints and Vs long dead—except Alden had been captured here.
My palms sweat with the intensity of our silence. Stones scattered nearby and every time so far it had been an animal, but the entire group, four of us, several dozen other Feebs between Tabitha and Leon’s people, kept waiting for it to not be an animal.
Suddenly a shadow the size of a person slid around the corner of a building and into the street ahead of us.
“Do you see that?” I said.
Ricker shook his head. “Nothing.”
I sighed. A ghost-memory, then.
“What about the roof of that building on the left?” he asked, tilting his head that way.
I saw a faded red trim sagging over a stucco wall. “No.”
“Maybe we should take the herbs Corrina gave us,” he said.
I shook my head. “Not yet. It’s not bad enough yet.”
We reached the spot where the research center should have been. Leon and Kern went in first—except there wasn’t anything to go into. The place had burned down. A pile of black sticks, white ash, and melted glass that marked the former windows.
The blood drained from Gabbi’s face. Ricker wore a grim expression. Jimmy blinked really fast, like he was holding back tears. I wanted to throw up. We all knew what this meant. There was no medicine left for us. No medicine for Ano.
Kern, Leon, and a few others sifted through the ruins, but they found nothing. When Kern abandoned his search, he came and stood in front of Gabbi. His shoulders hung low and ash had streaked his cheeks and forehead with ghostly gray marks. Gabbi just stared at him, like this was somehow all of his fault. He lifted his hand to brush hair from her cheek but she turned away.
“There must be something,” Tabitha said.
Kern looked at his mother. Her face held an expression I had only seen once before—on the night Spencer had killed himself, when she’d told us she was sorry for our loss. We hadn’t known then the terrible things she was capable of then. This look on her face surprised me now. The pieces clicked into place.
“How many people?” I said.
Tabitha closed her eyes. “Ten of us. There are ten of us who are too sick now.”
“We needed this too,” Kern said. “Just as much as you.”
“No,” Tabitha said. “There’s still a chance.”
“It’s gone!” Gabbi said, her voice too loud in the stillness of our loss. “All of it’s burned. There is no chance left!”
“Gabbi, listen,” Kern said, his voice rising. “There’s still—”
“Kern!” Tabitha said sharply. “Move everyone out.”
Kern hesitated. Gabbi turned her back on him.
He walked off to call Leon and the others away.
I stepped forward, glancing at Ricker. He noticed it too—the way Tabitha had cut Kern off.
I stepped in Kern’s path. “What are you keeping from us?”
He opened his mouth, caught his mother watching us, shut his mouth again.
“Don’t pull that crap with us,” Ricker said from behind me.
I waited for Gabbi to join in. If anyone could get it out of Kern it would be her—but there was nothing. I looked over my shoulder. She had walked far down the block and stood at a street corner looking off into the distance. I almost called out.
Ricker placed a hand on my shoulder. “Something’s up.”
Me, Ricker, Kern, Tabitha, everyone—we caught up to Gabbi. She pointed to a flat, empty lot set in between two brick buildings. The lot backed up to a hillside that rose pretty much straight up into the sky. The top of the hill was lined with trees. In the middle of the hill, on level with us, was a metal door that stood ajar, as if opened to thin air, but on the other side it was dark except for a small light. I tried to understand what I was looking at.
“Is anyone else seeing this?” Gabbi said.
The door was an opening in the hillside. It led into the hill, into a type of cave.
“I see it,” I said.
“The door, right?” Kern said.
“And the lights,” Gabbi said, coming up to stand next to me. “There’s lights.”
“It’s real,” I said.
Tabitha and Leon locked eyes on each other and a silent message passed between them.
I tried to understand. This must be the uninfected camp. Or at least Tabitha and Leon thought it could be. Maybe the uninfected had taken the medicine to keep us from getting it. Maybe they had even burned down the research center. Maybe they had Alden inside, even now. We needed to figure out what to do and when to do it. We needed to watch and plan. I thought next Tabitha would tell us to hide.
Hugh fell on his knees. He shouted and his voice boomed, destroying the silence. “Lock it down! The infected are here! Lock—”
Leon punched Hugh in the gut, cutting him off mid-sentence. Hugh fell onto his side, gasping for air, but it was too late. Above the cave entrance the bushes shook.
Tabitha shouted and motioned her people forward. They brandished sticks and clubs and knives and guns. They ran silent, swift, their afflicted skin harsh and ashy under the summer light, like young people dressing as old people for Halloween.
“They can’t be serious,” Gabbi said, her eyes wide, her voice almost a whisper.
Ricker fell to his knees next to June and Hugh and began working away at their bonds. They shouted, struggled, fell over onto their faces in the dirt.
I realized—they thought Ricker was going to kill them. A deep stillness settled over me. This world was full of pain and death and even the good you tried to do didn’t count for much now.
The ropes dropped to the dirt. “Get out of here,” Ricker said.
June and Hugh scrambled away from us and from the fighting.
Booms sounded. Jimmy shouted for us to take cover. Gunfire. Their side, our side—it didn’t matter. The guns would bring along any Vs still left alive. Some of Tabitha’s people fell to the ground. Most kept running for the cave’s opening. Kern and two others stopped to fire back.
A shooter tumbled from the trees above the cave, slammed onto the ground, and lay still.
The gunfire continued and I wanted to clap my hands over my ears like a three-year-old. Jimmy was right. We had to hide, but I couldn’t get my body to move. Part of me knew what was happening. Shame filled me because I was letting all of them down again.
I was pushed onto my side. June and Hugh reappeared, sprinting now for the cave. They waved their hands around and I swore they shouted something about Vs but then June was cut down by her own people. I watched it—the burst of light from the trees two stories above us, the way the bullet threw June back as if punched in the gut, the blood that sprayed, how Hugh kept running.
The first of Tabitha’s people were swallowed up by the cave’s dark entrance. Then a couple more. And then another blur sprinted away.
Gabbi.
She ran to the battle.
No. She ran to Kern. He sat upright in the dirt, a block away, halfway between us and the cave entrance. He held a bloody hand to his arm. He wore a dazed look on his face—blank, in the grip of some memory that would make it impossible for him to think and move out of harm’s way.
“Gabbi!” I shouted this and I shouted at the peace that rose up inside me. I shouted for it to go away because I didn’t deserve it because my friends needed me because I would rather die than let them down again.
I pushed myself up from the dirt, but Jimmy grabbed me and held me back.
Ricker crept along a building and then another, moving closer to Kern and Gabbi but staying out of the gunfire.
I fought against Jimmy and slipped away. I followed Ricker and Jimmy followed me. The battle disappeared from view when I ran past the corner of a brick building. Fragments of brick flew off and hit my skin, like a burst of heat, as if someone had taken a cigarette to my cheek.
I sped along the wall to where Ricker crouched. He started up at my noise, fists ready to fight, then saw it was me. It felt like the whole ocean roared in my ears.
He crawled around the corner. I followed. Jimmy’s breath was hot on my neck. Kern still sat on the ground, but now instead of holding his arm, he raised his right hand. He fired off a shot into the bushes above the cave entrance. A man and rifle tumbled out, flipping once in midair.
Gabbi yelled and dragged Kern back, hooking him under the shoulders. He let himself be dragged. The three of us scrambled out to help, each taking a leg or shoulder. We ran with him around the building’s corner, behind the safety of a brick wall.
Kern took gulping breaths, his face white as a sheet, his Feeb skin shiny in the harsh sunlight. A vein in his neck pulsed.
“What were you thinking?” I said, rounding on Gabbi.
“I wasn’t.” Gabbi’s face was pale and she wouldn’t look at me. “Otherwise I would have left him for dead.”
That shut me up, but Kern didn’t look like it mattered to him. Maybe it was normal for them. I couldn’t understand how she could, how they could…I wanted to punch Kern in the face. Instead I yelled at him. “Do you know how many people have just died because of you?”
“You have no idea what’s really going on here,” Kern closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the brick building. “The memantine was a backup plan. Dr. Ferrad’s done it. The cure is real and they don’t want us to have it. Now is someone going to help me tie off this wound, or are you all going to watch me bleed to death?”