Even in the redness, I heard the voices that spoke over me.
“Wrap her hand tighter than that. The blood hasn’t stopped leaking.”
“I know how to tie a tourniquet.”
A pause. Lowered voices. “Why isn’t she in the fevers?”
I tried to open my eyes but my eyes felt like someone had tied weights to the lids.
“Are you kidding me? What does it look like she’s in? Are you an idiot?”
“She’s just unconscious from the pain.”
“I’m awake,” I croaked out. My head pounded. My throat felt so dry and scratchy. Water sounded like the most beautiful thing in the world right then. Something hard pressed against my lips. I closed my mouth.
“Drink,” Jane said, her voice anxious.
I opened my eyes and my mouth.
We were in a field, bone-dry, weeds yellowed and thorny.
Jane hovered over me. The pupils of her hazel eyes were pinpricks. My heartbeat sped up. What was she doing here? Where were Gabbi and Ricker? I’d been unconscious, maybe I’d even been trapped in the fevers. We never left each other alone. Never. Not when it came to the fevers. I tried to sit up. My head spun and the ash twirled like a tornado around my head.
“Hold still.” Short spiky hair wavered out of the corner of my eye.
Gabbi was there, sitting on her heels in the dust.
The world finally stopped spinning.
I breathed out and forced my heartbeat back to a normal rate. We never left each other alone in the fevers. I shouldn’t have doubted her.
I gulped down the water. It felt as good on my tongue as I had imagined. It was cool and somehow sweet. It tasted like heaven.
Jane took back the bottle. “That’s plenty for now. Take it easy zombie-girl.”
“Say it like that again and you’ll regret it,” Gabbi said.
Jane shaded her eyes in the sun and I swore she smirked just because she knew it would drive Gabbi crazy.
Gabbi stood up in the dirt.
We were in the shade of the truck. Tabitha leaned against one wheel, her leg straight out, her eyes closed like she was sleeping. Dark figures came toward us in two directions but they were still far away. The smoke was this terrible wall of brown and the ash fell from the sky like snow.
Whose bright idea had it been to leave Gabbi with Jane?
“Please,” I said. “Just tell me what happened.”
“We stopped for water,” Jane said finally. “And a map.”
“And food,” Gabbi said. “Who knows when we’ll get the next chance.”
Jane looked back at the wall of smoke and nodded at the dark specks moving in our direction. “They keep coming. Like they can smell us.”
“They can’t smell us,” Gabbi said, a sneer on her face. “They’re running from the fire.”
“So you say.” Jane moved into a cross-legged position. Her blonde hair was tied in a ponytail that dropped halfway down her back. Her knees had worn holes through the material of her jeans.
“Do you really not remember?” I said, needing to know. Maybe if I just asked, maybe she would actually tell the truth now that Sergeant Bennings wasn’t around.
“I didn’t know where the place was until I saw that paper,” Jane said. “I don’t know how I got so far away, or why, I was just…I don’t know.”
Gabbi snorted.
“I remember some stuff,” Jane said, as if offended. “I got infected after the fairgrounds…There’s a gap after that when I was in the fevers, but eventually Dr. Ferrad found me. I know I can get reinfected. I know Dr. Ferrad was the one who cured me—”
“Did you see Mary?” Gabbi interrupted.
“I don’t know who that is,” Jane said.
“A friend,” I said quietly. “She protected them until the infection.”
“You don’t know what it’s been like out there,” Jane said. “I was alone after the fairgrounds. It’s been so easy for you—”
“Are you insane?” Gabbi said.
“It hasn’t been easy,” I said.
“You’ve had each other. I went out on my own.” Jane’s eyes shined almost like she had tears in them. “I left the fairgrounds alone and I survived.”
In the direction of the smoke and the Vs, it was all open field, but on the other side of the truck was a lone gas station. Its sign must have been at least five stories tall. An orange and red rectangle against the sky as a beacon to truckers and families on long road trips.
Suddenly I remembered a different gas station. It had been along the train tracks and the RV had been full of people, including kids. The guy who had owned the RV had a name for it. Lana, Lena.
Luna.
Jane and the driver hadn’t wanted me on Luna, but Corrina and Dylan had. We’d stopped at the gas station and I’d run inside with Corrina because even then I felt as if she had a strength that the others didn’t. I had felt so alone and I’d known something terrible was going to happen.
I hadn’t known how awful it would all get. None of the movies I’d watched with my uncle had prepared me. We thought we would survive it together. He’d been the one to bring me out of my shell after I’d been given up for dead by my father and then my aunt.
It hadn’t been enough.
I’d tried to tell the truth, but they hadn’t listened at the gas station. Jane laughed me off as a little girl with a big imagination.
“You left me and Corrina,” I said, feeling an anger so quick and deep it surprised me. “You didn’t care what happened to us.”
Jane stood up. Her movement caused Tabitha to start as if waking from a doze.
“I did what I had to,” Jane said. “Do you know why there’s a cure at all? Because of me. Because when Dr. Ferrad needed to test it out on a human, I said she could do it to me. They didn’t know exactly what it would do. I could have died. I almost sacrificed my life—”
“Because you hated being a Feeb so much.” My voice raised even as my headache increased. “Don’t pretend you did it because it was the right thing to do. You did it because you would rather die than stay a Feeb.”
Jane’s mouth opened and closed like a fish.
“Didn’t you?” I wanted her to say it.
“I got myself infected and I got myself cured,” she said. “I don’t have to apologize to anyone for that.”
Tabitha pushed herself upright and flexed her injured ankle out in front of her. When she seemed satisfied that it would work after all, she stood up. “Everyone around you is lying. They’ve always been lying. Why would you ever believe they would start telling the truth?”
I didn’t know who the words were meant for. It was something I would have thought Gabbi would say. I wished I had never tried to talk to Jane. I didn’t know what to believe.
“What does that even mean?” I said.
“It means she’s a bitter old woman who couldn’t care less about what happens to other people. Especially her son,” Gabbi said.
But even I knew that wasn’t fair. Tabitha was here because her son was trapped in the fevers like Ano.
“You can try to bait me all you want,” Tabitha said. “I won’t bite.”
“Dr. Ferrad wasn’t lying,” Jane said. “She has a cure. She cured me.”
“Dr. Ferrad has always been lying.” Tabitha shook her head as if disappointed in a student that required her to repeat a lesson. “I tried to work with all of them. Sergeant Bennings, Dr. Ferrad, the council. They repaid me by imprisoning us, by experimenting on us, by creating this hell in the first place.”
Tabitha nodded in the direction of the fire and the Vs walking out in front of it. They weren’t dark blobs anymore but individual shapes. “Who’s to say how long we have until we’re all like that.”
Another group of dots on the gas station side formed into people—our people. Ricker and Sergeant Bennings and the others were returning.
“That will never happen to me,” Jane said.
“Time to go,” Gabbi said, helping me up. “I don’t want to listen to this crap anymore.”
She was careful of my injured wrist. I could look at it now all wrapped with a torn-up shirt from somewhere. I wiggled my fingers. It hurt, but they all moved.
Gabbi had believed me. Gabbi had always listened even when she pretended not to.
“Why am I not in the fevers?” I asked it desperately. I wanted her to explain everything and tell me it was all going to be okay.
“You should tell Dr. Ferrad when we find her,” Jane said. “She’ll figure it out.”
Gabbi squinted her eyes and set her lips in a grim line. “There’s probably something REALLY wrong with you.”
I couldn’t help it—I barked out a laugh. It was a long one that brought tears to my eyes. The salt and the ash stung me, but I didn’t care. I had wanted Gabbi to say something soothing. I had wanted her to lie to me. Instead she said exactly what I needed to hear.
“NOW you tell me,” I said between gasping breaths.
Gabbi smiled, and even though it didn’t reach her eyes, it was enough. “Ask a dumb-ass question, get a dumb-ass answer.”
The Vs followed the truck or moved out in front of the fire. It didn’t really matter the reason because the result was the same. We piled back in and drove off—and the Vs followed.
The world burned around us. Flowering bushes towered along the edges of the road, catching fire sometimes just after we passed. Scraggly oaks flared up as the fire jumped the grass and greedily consumed the trees like a favorite snack. Vs who were once Feebs who had once been uninfected streamed ahead of the fires.
Not all of them.
Many let themselves burn like Matilda and her family had done back in that cafe along the train tracks. Back when it had been just me and Corrina, newly infected. Back when the fairgrounds had been a place that was going to save us. Back before I’d known Gabbi or Ricker or Ano or Jimmy even existed.
We finally reached a stretch of road that allowed our pitiful group to gain some speed. The uninfected crowded against the truck cab, away from us Feebs. Tabitha could sit up now, which made room for Gabbi and Ricker. She rubbed her swollen ankle a lot and mumbled under her breath.
Part of me worried she was plotting something. Another part of me thought she must be worrying over her son.
Hours later the truck sputtered to a halt. Hugh jumped out. He lifted the front hood and a huge, white column of steam billowed out. Sergeant Bennings left the truck bed and the two of them banged around under the hood, cursing, until finally the hissing stopped.
Sergeant Bennings unfolded the gas station map on the ground. Moisture beaded on his face. He’d lost his mask back at the compound. The other uninfected hovered around him. Leon, Bernice, and Nindal helped Tabitha off the truck. She took a few careful steps and nodded like she was proud of her body doing what she told it.
“We’re close.” Sergeant Bennings folded the map and stuffed it into a pocket. “We can walk the rest of the way.”
“The Vs will catch up.” Leon’s voice was low and full of gravel, like it had been years instead of hours since he’d last spoken anything out loud.
“Not if we get moving,” Sergeant Bennings responded.
A spark lit up in Leon’s eyes like he wanted to start a fight. His beard was peppered black and white. His hands were too big even as he tried to stuff them in his jeans pocket. He was at least as old as Sergeant Bennings, probably older.
Sergeant Bennings told him to go for a walk.
Hugh got twitchy on his rifle. It was several long seconds before Leon listened.
My little miracle bite didn’t change anything about what was around us—people on the verge of going V for no reason, a hidden research facility, Dr. Ferrad and the cure.
We left the truck. The hours and miles of being crammed together meant sore muscles—we moved like a bunch of Vs. At a four-way intersection in the middle of nowhere, just a bunch of dead fields in every direction, Sergeant Bennings led us to the right. We passed over a small levee road and down the other side. Off into the distance, something like black metal glinted for just a moment and then the smoke covered it. All of us Feebs had used shirts or whatever cloth we had to put over our mouths as a poor man’s filter. All of us still coughed. Even the uninfected behind their plastic masks.
This gravel driveway appeared out of the smoke. Next came the black metal fencing and then—
Green.
A watered lawn—so bright a color while the world burned around us I thought it must be my imagination.
“Do you see this?” I said. “Ricker, do you see this, this…lawn?”
“I see it,” he said, almost in awe.
The grass was almost a foot tall. In the middle of it a brown sign had ‘California Primate Research Facility’ carved into it.
Sergeant Bennings motioned for us to crouch under the shade of a bush. Broken glass and multicolored headlight plastic littered the asphalt from some long ago car accident.
“This is the place.” Sergeant Bennings’ gaze rested on Jane for a long moment, drawing everyone’s attention to her pale face, the ghostly tint to her skin that hinted at what she had been, at least for a short time—infected.
“You recognize this place, don’t you?” Sergeant said carefully.
She shook her head.
He tilted his head. “Hear that?”
We all held our breath. A high moan echoed across the landscape, like machinery going bad but still managing to do its job. A hundred yards behind us, pulling out from the gravel driveway, a white van appeared. It drove back the way we’d come.
“Uninfected,” Hugh said. “I saw them.”
Sergeant Bennings motioned to Hugh and two of his people. “Go introduce yourselves. Don’t tell them who I am.”
“Why not?” Hugh demanded.
“A certain doctor might not think so fondly of me.”
Hugh looked about to ask more.
Sergeant Bennings held up a hand. “Enough.” He looked over us Feebs. “Tie them up.”
“Hey!” Ricker said. “We’ve done nothing but follow your orders. Every instruction.”
“You’re still infected.”
“Like your wife and probably your son,” Ricker said.
Sergeant Bennings held himself so still it was as if he’d turned into a statue.
We waited for what seemed an eternity.
He blinked and motioned for the rope. “Tie them up and out of the way.”
They took us seven Feebs further down the road, onto the cool, green grass and under a tree. We were now lower than the road by several feet. I sat next to Ricker and kept myself calm as they tied us up. I hoped Gabbi, I hoped all of us Feebs could keep it together for just a little longer. The cure must be so close now.
“Why did you say that,” I whispered to Ricker. “You knew it wouldn’t do any good. You knew it would make him want to hurt you.”
Sergeant Bennings waited at the top of the road. Watching. The rest of the group came over to wait near the tree. From our position there was no way to see through the smoke or what was happening to Hugh and the other two uninfected.
Minutes passed.
There was only silence except for the groan of machinery.
There was time to wonder how far back the V mob was.
Shouts.
A scream. Shots.
More screams.
Silence.