We hurried through the gap and ran for the uninfected side of the camp—Alden with his ridiculous mask and goggles, Maibe with a bat, me with the bolt cutter.
The light was fading. I’d lost the morning in the fevers and we’d lost more time getting back to Camp Pacific. My body vibrated with dread. There was no going back, not through that V mob. But what we would find inside—it might be worse.
As if the world wanted to emphasize just how awful a place it was now, a train whistle sounded close by. I thought that might mean there would be a battle soon between Tabitha’s people and the uninfected coming back with reinforcements. The whistle rang strong like a horn and made the Vs go into a frenzy. Some of them screamed, others were climbing up the chain-link. The fence swayed and wobbled. A few had found our gap and were already inside.
The light was fading. The chill sunk into my bones even though we were running.
“Gabbi!” Maibe yelled at me.
I pivoted and saw she was leading Alden into a building. I didn’t know what her plan was, but since I had none, I changed direction.
The building’s shadow swallowed them up. I followed into an old community hall. The kind of place that held dances and exhibits. It was empty. Our shoes made crazy-loud slaps that echoed off the walls. My heartbeat felt out of control, and our breathing—we sounded like Vs.
The train whistle rattled the glass windows. Maibe and Alden raced through a door on the other end. It bounced hard on the outside wall and came back. I held out my arms and slammed through it to the outside.
There was a row of trailers. Empty. I turned back, but the Vs had already cut off that retreat. A light flickered hundreds of yards away. In the jail. Fear clogged my throat. It was too far. We would never make it and even if we did, the Vs would lay siege to it.
“This way,” Maibe said. She had stopped next to one of the trailers and was motioning me over. I wanted to strangle her.
“You got us trapped!”
Maibe’s face went pale. “This is how we got out. We can get back into the jail this way.”
Vs burst from the building. Small, large, fast, slow. Their shadows were everywhere. Outlines of heads and arms and flashes of teeth. We were surrounded. Maibe dragged me behind the trailer. They grabbed at my clothes and hair. I wrenched myself away. I followed Maibe as if she were the only thing alive in the world at that moment.
We shimmied under the fence that sectioned off the toilets from the jail. Suddenly we were in that little gap and through the hole in the plywood near the toilet pit. It smelled overwhelmingly like diarrhea. I covered my nose with my sleeve.
Alden was there. Fear made the whites of his eyes huge, even behind the goggles. Maibe was bent over, hands on her knees, breathing hard.
We didn’t rest for more than a few seconds before we were racing into the jail. I was the last one in and I made sure to lock the doors behind us. I grabbed a metal bar and jammed it between the handles. It would hold for a little while, but even still, through the little windows I could see dark figures pressing up against the fence.
We entered the greenhouse, where we had eaten meals and done our exercises every morning. The moans grew louder. They were going to drive me insane. I clapped my hands over my ears. I was losing it. I had to get it together.
Each cell contained a messy pile of sheets. Not just sheets, I realized, but someone in the sheets, going through the fevers. Time seemed to stop as I saw the glass of water set next to each cot—on the ground, because there was no table in the cells. Some of them had IVs hung from the top of the bars and dripping into a vein. Others had a Feeb in their cell, keeping watch, sponging off foreheads, helping the sick sit up and sip water.
The uninfected men and women I had only seen from a distance were transforming before my very eyes. Their skin becoming thin and dry, their veins more pronounced. Some of them screamed in agony, others sobbed, and others babbled in replayed conversations. It was like the whole world had gone mad. We were in the center of it and the first ring was these new Feebs and the next ring was the Vs outside anxious to tear us into pieces.
We’d come too late and now there were too many pieces to pick up.
These people couldn’t be moved and there were hundreds, maybe thousands of Vs trying to get in here. Vs that we had led here.
Lanterns set up on the tables created little glowing circles of light that revealed Feebs scurrying around, carrying supplies up and down the stairs and into the cells. One of the lanterns revealed a familiar face.
Ricker.
He saw us too and dropped the blankets from his arms. He shouted over his shoulder and Jimmy and Ano appeared. Ricker came up, eyes glowing in the light. He moved as if to hug Maibe but then got shy and just smiled the biggest smile. Then his eyes flickered to Alden and narrowed slightly.
I met Ano’s solemn gaze and my heart sunk a little. “She did it. She infected them all, didn’t she?”
Ano nodded.
Jimmy hugged me around the waist and I patted him on the back. I felt it too—we were back together. It was better together, even if we WERE all about to die. “It’s bad,” Jimmy said.
“No kidding,” Ricker said.
“We have to leave as soon as possible,” Ano said.
I shook my head. “There’s Vs everywhere outside. They followed us. We’re probably surrounded.”
“Gabbi?” Kern said, incredulous, yearning, and angry all at once. “What are you doing here?” He came up behind Ano. The lantern light made shadows dance across his face.
“You knew Tabitha was going to do this, didn’t you? She infected them all!” I shouted. “She’s as bad as any of them!”
“She’s my mother.” But he looked ashamed as he said it.
It took everything in me not to lash out and strike him. He’d brought the Vs that had killed Corrina and Dylan. But that thought only lasted for a moment. I’d brought these Vs with us—the ones even now pressing in from all sides, closing off any chance of escape, darkening every window.
But I wanted to hurt him, because he’d made me want to believe him, he’d made me start trusting him and all of that was destroyed. “Just so you know, Mary’s long gone with Dr. Ferrad. She’s not going to let you get anywhere near a cure.”
“Mary?” Ano said. His eyes gleamed. “What about Mary?”
“What is this about Dr. Ferrad?” Tabitha appeared next to Kern. Her voice was cold. Neil and Lilia were with her and looked nervously between Kern and Tabitha.
I tasted salt on my lip. Tabitha was staring at me, waiting for an answer. She would be waiting a long time.
I flipped her off.
“Come on,” I said to the only friends I had left in the world, “We’re getting out of here.”
Tabitha’s eyes narrowed. She looked ready to strangle me.
“You have bigger problems than me right now.” I waved around. “Can’t you hear that?”
The moans from inside the jail quieted for a moment as if to make way for the moans outside the jail. Tabitha paled. Everyone felt it—the tomb the jail had just become.
“Get everyone in the cells and lock the bars,” Tabitha said.
Kern, Neil and Lilia flew into action.
“What about us?” Jimmy said.
Tabitha didn’t even pause. “You can die out here with the Vs.”
I locked eyes with Ano and could almost read his thoughts. We would force our way into one of the cells, no matter what it took.
Flood lights flipped on, bathing the room in an otherworldly silver glow. I froze, as if it were the first time I’d been caught in the act of stealing something—not knowing that acting so guilty was what had given me away. Gunfire sounded outside.
The doors to the front of the jail flew open. People in uniforms, gas masks, and guns streamed inside. They fired shots behind them. Vs followed, grasping, crawling. Dark shadows that formed even darker pools of blood on the ground.
Kern crumpled at the base of the stairs. A soldier had hit him over the head with the butt of his rifle.
I ran to Kern. A lump caught in my throat. I checked his pulse, I checked to make sure he was still breathing. He was alive. His eyes were rolling around as if he couldn’t focus.
I dragged him into a nearby cell. The shell-shocked face of a Feeb greeted me. His hand was on the arm of the Feeb in the fevers. “What’s happening?”
“Stay inside!” I dumped Kern on the ground, but then was pulled out of the cell. I landed hard on my back, the air knocked out of me. I stared up at the three-story ceiling. It framed the face of a man with a bloody nose that had spread a horrible stain down the front of him.
All around me people were fighting the Vs. Some of the cells had closed, protecting those inside. Other cells had not closed in time. Soldiers fired over the screams. Many of the Feebs fought hand to hand.
This V’s hands were around my neck. His breath stank of rotten meat. I fought him with everything I had. I couldn’t afford to get bit. I couldn’t afford to die now, not when we were all together again. I dug my fingers into his eyes and closed my own so that I didn’t have to see the ooze after I felt the pop.
He howled but his hands remained, pressing harder, tighter. Black dots appeared in my vision.
Suddenly his hands disappeared and then the rest of him fell over. One side of his head was missing now. A soldier stood above me, covered in gore. The glare of lights obscured his face and then he turned and held out a hand to lift me up.
Sergeant Bennings.
He was alive. He’d just saved me.
“Dad?” Alden seemed to part the stream of battles around him.
Sergeant Bennings paused. Then he unlatched a cannister and threw it deep into the greenhouse. It began releasing yellow gas.
I thought it must be tear gas, but then the Vs started dropping, and then the Feebs. He strode over to Alden and replaced the painter’s mask with another gas mask on his belt. And then he waited.
I ran to Jimmy and grabbed his shirt. “Put it over your mouth.” I did likewise and hoped it would help. I didn’t want to wake up with Sergeant Bennings in control again. I didn’t know who would be worse at this point, him or Tabitha. It didn’t matter. I didn’t want anyone else in control of me ever again.
Maibe motioned frantically. Ricker and Ano were on either side of her. They were close to the front door. It was like someone had dipped them all in a bucket of blood. Jimmy and I crept over to them along the wall.
Sergeant Bennings turned, surveying the room from its center, shouting orders to his soldiers. His hand was clamped so hard onto Alden’s shoulder. The screams, the gunfire, the shouting, it was all slowing down. Sergeant Bennings was winning.
Jimmy and I hurried, stepping over dead bodies, passing by cells of people who had managed to close the bars in time and cells that didn’t turn out so lucky.
“You,” Sergeant Bennings said through the mask. It warped his voice into a garble that barely made sense. I looked, ready to face his gun head on, but he pointed the gun at Maibe.
“No!” Alden tried to hit the gun out of his hand.
I jumped and pushed her out of the way. Sergeant Bennings fired. My shoulder became a white hot ball of pain.