by Dan Wells
“Then we leave first thing in the morning,” said Haru. “Rest while you can, because we have a lot of ground to cover.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Kira’s map showed a prison. It was near the shores of Candlewood Lake, on a long southern finger of water called Danbury Bay. That, she determined, would be the most likely place for a group of rebel Partials to set up their headquarters: The same defenses that kept the prisoners in could be used to keep the enemy out, and the Ivies would be well set up to fight off Morgan’s forces. She left the trail she’d thought of as safe, winding through the residential streets instead of the forested strip between them, hoping to avoid any more of the terrifying warning markers—and the people who’d set them. She still didn’t know what to think of the Ivies, and when she finally met them she wanted it to be on her terms.
Even though she tried to avoid the forests, they were still so prevalent that she ended up tramping through a number of thickly wooded hills and gullies. Crossing a stream near Padanaram Road, she found another bright IV carved into a tree and gave it a wide berth. The land rose steadily from here, a gentle but continual slope, and a quarter mile later she passed a fallow farm, the fields completely overrun with ten-year-old trees. Across the field lay the prison, and she crept through the underbrush slowly, cautiously, practically crawling, and stopping every few seconds to listen for any sounds, either ahead of or behind her. She heard nothing, and when she dared to use the link, she felt nothing there either. The crossing seemed to take hours, and the sun was well past its peak when she drew near to the prison. The light’s behind me now, she thought, lying low in the weeds as she planned her approach. If I stand up I’ll be silhouetted for everyone to see, but if I stay low they’ll have the sun in their eyes, and I’ll be hidden in shadows. She crept forward silently, holding her breath.
The prison was as empty and decrepit as every other building she’d passed.
She watched it for another hour, just to be sure, forcing herself to be patient and avoid giving herself away. Only when the sun sank low behind the horizon did she dare move out from her hiding place at the edge of the trees, slipping across the buckling parking lot to the ragged prison fence. It was torn and warped, and the inside was lined with skeletons wrapped in faded orange jumpsuits—a thirteen-year-old prison break stopped in its tracks as the last dying prisoners tried to claw their way out before the plague claimed their lives. She wondered how many had escaped, only to collapse and die in the field behind her. The bodies behind the fence had been picked by crows, their clothing ripped and torn; where the fence had gaps, wild dogs had gotten in, and the bodies had been worried and dragged across the field. No living person, human or Partial, had set foot in the compound since the Break. Kira walked the full perimeter, just to be sure, but the story was the same on all sides. There was nowhere to look but the lake itself, and whatever homes around it the Ivies had chosen for their community.
She slept that night in the prison, not daring to light a fire, and ate her last apple. Her stomach growled, but she didn’t dare go looking for more food. The linked message from the bloody tree still haunted her.
DEATH.
BLOOD.
A narrow forest road wound out from the prison toward a dock on the bay, but when Kira crept out in the morning she cut through the trees, still trying to stay off the obvious paths. The bay was wide, perhaps five hundred feet at its narrowest point, and while the near side was nothing but trackless forest, the far shore was rimmed with houses, each with a private dock. The homes she could see were shrouded in foliage but appeared empty. She walked north along the western shore, keeping a few dozen yards back from the water to stay hidden, watching alertly for any sign of life or movement.
After a mile she hit a wide promontory, where the bay ended and the lake began, and at the end of it stood a small pier. She walked toward it cautiously, trying to get a better look across the water, and stopped in shock at the sight of the pier itself. Standing tall on the edge of the cracking wood was a thin log, perhaps an old signpost, but the sign was gone, and in its place was a hand—human or Partial—pinned to the post with a thick, feathered arrow.
Kira felt her eyes go wide, and covered her mouth with her fingers to stifle a cry. She crept forward a few steps, trying to get a better look at the hand without giving herself away. The hand was severed at the wrist, the palm pressed tightly to the log, the arrow plunging straight through the back of the hand. The wood below the wrist was dark and discolored, and Kira thought she could see a blade mark in the wood itself—someone had pinned the hand to the wood while it was still attached to a body, then chopped it off and let it bleed out. The skin was gray, but not decomposed. This had happened within the last few days.
She took another step forward, looking for the body, but stopped herself and retreated farther into the forest, crouching down in the lee of a giant boulder and shaking her head compulsively. “This isn’t right,” she whispered. “It isn’t right.” She drew her handgun, just for the comfort of holding it, and peered out through the trees. A soft breeze stirred the fletching on the end of the arrow. “It’s just a warning,” she told herself. “A warning against Morgan’s forces, which are the only enemy they have in this part of the country. They might still be friendly to me—they might be friendly to the humans—”
She rolled her eyes. “Who am I kidding? I’m not this stupid.” She stood up. “There are other Partial factions I can talk to; I’m going to go find one that doesn’t dismember their enemies and use their body parts as decorations.”
Kira turned to leave, but from her new position she could see a foot down on the dock; a foot that seemed to still be attached to a body. She stopped. If she could get a glimpse of what the corpse was wearing, that might give her a clue as to who had killed him, and which side he was on. She looked again at the arrow and the graying hand. Morgan’s people don’t use arrows. But it might not be the Ivies either. She groaned. It doesn’t matter who the dead body is—I need to get out of here, now—
And then the foot moved.
Kira swore under her breath, gritting her teeth and staring at the grisly dock. If someone was alive, she had to try to help him . . . but the dock was beyond the tree line. Everyone on the lake would be able to see her. She still didn’t know which part of the lake the Ivies lived on, and which other groups might be here fighting them. She tried to turn and go, but she couldn’t do it. If this victim was alive, he needed her help. She checked her handgun, making sure she had a full magazine and a bullet in the chamber, and crept forward.
The lake glistened in the morning light, the sun to the east—putting her in the opposite position than she’d been in last night, fully exposed and blinded by the bright flashes on the water. She took another step forward, her eyes darting wildly. Had something moved in the trees? On the water? She held her gun with trembling hands, trying to reassure herself: This isn’t an ambush. They cut off the man’s hand and then left. It’s the only explanation that makes sense.
Right?
She reached the trail that passed in front of the dock; probably an old hiking trail kept clear by deer or foxes. She looked left and right, crouched on the edge of the narrow clearing, but the forest was thick, and the trail curved away in both directions, limiting her view. She looked back at the body on the dock, half-hidden by a stand of trees but coming slowly into view as she moved forward. The leg moved again, feebly, but she could swear it looked deliberate—not the random twitching of a dying nervous system, but a purposeful movement. The man was alive, and maybe even partly awake.
She stopped at the edge of the trees, standing silently behind a trunk. One more step and she’d be in the open, visible across the full width of the lake. “If I ever see Dr. Morgan again, I’m going to punch her in the mouth,” she said softly. “‘Opposed to medical experimentation’? That’s really all you could say about these people? Not maybe ‘psychopathic savages murdering people on a haunted lake’? That’s not worth
writing down?”
The leg moved again. She saw another movement in the corner of her eye and spun around, her training and adrenaline taking over, her pistol sight locking in on the motion. It was just a branch, swaying in the wind.
She stepped out onto the dock. She could see the whole man now, sprawled out, clutching his arm stump with his one good hand. He wore the standard gray uniform of the Partial army, just like all of Morgan’s soldiers. Crusted blood mixed with bright red smears of flesh. She stepped around the arrow, linking to the struggling man as she came closer: PAIN BLOOD HELP ME HELP. The wide lake stretched out before her, disturbingly idyllic next to the gruesome scene. She slid her handgun back into her pack and knelt down by the man, probing his neck for a pulse. He jerked when she touched him, but he was too weak to move away.
“Don’t . . . ,” he croaked.
“I’m here to help you,” she said, ripping a strip from his tattered clothes. She wrapped it tightly around his wrist as she spoke. “Do you know who did this to you?”
BETRAYAL, said the link. The man tried to speak, but his voice was cracked and raw. BLOOD.
“You have to tell me,” she said. “Was it the Ivies? Where are they? What are they doing?”
“It was the . . . Blood Man.”
“The Blood Man?” Kira tied off the bandage and started probing the rest of his body for wounds. There was too much blood to have come just from the wrist . . . and then she found it, a gaping hole in his gut where blood mixed with viscera. She reeled back at the stench. “This stab wound perforated your intestine,” she said, swallowing her disgust. “You need antibiotics.”
“The Blood Man,” he croaked. “They serve the Blood Man.”
“The Ivies?” asked Kira. She looked around wildly for something to stanch the bleeding in his abdomen, but she knew he wouldn’t make it. They were too far from anyone who could help, even if she could find a way to move him. She grunted in frustration and simply ripped her own shirt, several inches off the bottom hem, and shoved the wad into his wound.
“You have to run,” he said, his raw voice painful just to listen to. “They’ll want yours too.”
“My hand?”
“Your blood.”
She saw a flash of movement from the lake—not on the water, but under it, the dark black shadow of a massive fish.
“What’s going on here?”
DEATH
The water erupted in a geyser, a pale white figure bursting up by the edge of the dock and grabbing Kira’s arm. She screamed, backing away, fumbling for her gun, but the pale figure yanked her forward and she lost her balance, tumbling toward the water. The last thing she saw was his neck flaring open, wide fishlike gills flapping delicately in the open air, and then her face hit the water and the world went black.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Samm dreamed about Kira.
They were walking together through the ruins of old Illinois—not the flooded necropolis of Chicago, and not the toxic badlands west of the Mississippi River, but the rolling fields and wide, flat nothingness between them. They walked, hand in hand. Birds circled lazily in the sky above them, and herds of wild mustangs roamed from field to field, trampling the fences that separated the vast checkerboard of empty farms, running free in a world that didn’t remember the war, the Break, or anything but sun and wind and rain and stars. They drank from cool streams and lay on their backs staring up at the moon, finding shapes and faces in the craters. The world was still and ancient and new, and they were together.
The dreams never lasted. Samm woke up, bleary-eyed, and stared numbly at the faded walls of the old business office he used as an apartment.
“Today I’m going to leave it all and go find Kira,” he whispered. He said it every morning. He pulled on his shirt and shoes and trudged down the stairs and across the compound to the hospital. His body built up a measurable amount of Particle 223 every six days, and he was due for another extraction. Calix had started volunteering in the hospital, still too unsteady on her feet to go back out as a hunter, and she greeted him in the lab with a smile. Samm smiled back wearily, easing himself down onto the homespun blanket covering the cracked plastic surface of the examination bed.
“Good morning,” said Calix. She prepped a syringe of local anesthetic; the procedure involved a very long needle spending a very long time very deep in Samm’s nasal cavity, and while he didn’t like the drugs, he liked the needle even less. Samm lay on his back while Calix applied the first shot—a tiny sting, and a slow, spreading numbness. They waited for the shot to take effect, and Calix chatted idly. “Gorman was walking pretty well last night.”
That was good news; the soldier’s health seemed to have plateaued over the last few days. “How far?”
“Just to the bathroom and back,” said Calix. “He didn’t even call us for the first leg, just the return trip.”
“He doesn’t like being dependent,” said Samm.
“Nobody does.” Calix picked up the syringe again. “Time for number two.” Samm held still, and she slid the needle deep into his nostril. Another sting, much farther back, and Calix sat down with a mischievous smile. “Want to see the needle?”
“No,” said Samm, “but show it to me anyway.”
Calix laughed and held it up—the needle on the end of the syringe was about four inches long. “You always ask to see it.”
“That’s because I swear you’re shoving it halfway into my brain,” said Samm.
“I barely put it in that far,” said Calix, placing her gloved finger about halfway along the slim metal line. “Wait for the third shot when we hit the back wall, that’s the doozy.”
Samm closed his eyes. “Always my favorite.”
“Any good dreams last night?”
“Dreamed about Illinois.”
“Odd choice,” said Calix. “What’s in Illinois?”
Samm thought about Kira, and the horses and the moon. “Nothing.”
Calix chattered a bit about the hospital, and the other Partials, and her soccer team’s standing in the current tournament—she couldn’t play since she had gotten shot, but she cheered harder on the sidelines than any other fan. Samm smiled and nodded, genuinely happy for her, but he was too . . . busy? Too busy to care? That’s not the right word, he thought. Weary? Lonely?
Lost, he decided. I feel lost.
Calix gave him the third shot of anesthetic, and after a few minutes called in a more experienced nurse to help with the long process of finding the right gland and extracting the pheromonal cure for RM. Samm couldn’t talk during the extraction and spent the next forty minutes cataloguing his day, planning out the jobs he had to do and the order in which he could do them most efficiently. Phan called him a walking day planner, but it never struck Samm as an odd behavior: He had a lot to do, and a limited amount of time to do it. What was wrong with a little planning? His first order of business would be the maternity ward, saying hello to the new mothers and hearing a report on the children. He had no specific responsibility there, but he liked to do it anyway. He liked to see what these sessions in the lab had wrought.
When the nurses finished the extraction, the older one took the vial to be processed, and Calix helped Samm sit up. The anesthetic always made him a little woozy, and he munched on a piece of flatbread while he waited for his head to realign. Calix watched him, more pensive than usual, and after a moment asked a question.
“Do you like it here, Samm?”
“It’s wonderful,” said Samm automatically. “You have food and water, you have electricity, and people aren’t killing each other. It’s great.”
“And yet you’re not happy.”
Samm chewed slowly, thinking. “I’m helping people,” he said at last. “The pheromone we just extracted saves lives, and we’re helping the other Partials get back on their feet. I’m happy to be a part of that.”
“You’re proud of it,” said Calix, “but you’re not happy.”
“The total amount of
happiness in the Preserve is greater with me in it than out,” said Samm.
“That’s the saddest definition of happiness I’ve ever heard.”
“What other choice do I have?” asked Samm. “It’s not like I can leave.”
“It’s exactly like you can leave,” said Calix, “and nobody could stop you. We might try, but let’s be realistic. Especially if Heron’s helping you—that chick makes the monster under my bed have nightmares.”
Samm smiled. “She feels bad about shooting you.”
“She’d do it again in a heartbeat.”
“She would,” said Samm, nodding. “I was just trying to make you feel better.”
Calix laughed and swatted his arm. “Now let me be clear about this: We are incredibly grateful that you’ve stayed. You’re giving us a future. But you don’t have to . . .” She trailed off, and Samm looked up, finishing her sentence for her.
“I don’t have to stay here?” he asked. “Of course I do. I gave my word, and that’s a stronger bond than any chains you could use to lock me down, or any walls you could put up to keep me in.”
Calix bit her lip, thinking, and finally nodded. “I realize that, and I thank you. We all do. But . . . I asked if you were happy here, and you talked about leaving. You told me how wonderful it is here, and then talked about leaving. How do you think it makes us feel that your only conception of happiness involves leaving? You could be happy here, Samm, I know you could. We would do anything we can to make you happy here.”
She stopped talking abruptly, wiping her cheek with her hand so quickly that Samm couldn’t tell if there’d really been a tear on it or not. He instantly felt bad, thinking about how insulting his attitude must be to the humans of the Preserve. They needed him for the pheromones, but they treated him like a person. They’d accepted him as one of their own, just like Samm had shown Gorman. And yet for all their efforts to include him, Samm wasn’t working to include himself. He didn’t know if he could.
