Eat the Ones You Love (The Thirteen Book 2)

by J. L. Murray

  “This thing, it changes you. Not just the hunger. I mean, this base nature just takes over. You become a wild thing and it’s easy to see yourself living like that. As just another wild animal in the wilderness, surviving on instinct, eating whenever and whatever. But when we have someone, and they see us like that, it’s…”

  “I told you to stay away,” Jenny said. “You can’t make me go now.”

  “That’s not what I’m asking,” said Declan. “I’m asking that if the time comes, you don’t try to sacrifice to save me. Don’t debase yourself. I’m just another wild thing. Just like those animals in the forest. Just like the rotters. I don’t expect to survive very much longer, Jen. And I need to know you’re going to be okay.”

  “Debase myself?” she said. “Were you debasing yourself when you came to find me in that Righteous camp? Were you debasing yourself when you kissed me and I was cold? When I was dead, Declan? Did you debase yourself then? Because you never stopped. You stalked me, you debated with me, you didn’t leave me even for one second.” Jenny was standing now and with some effort Declan stood, holding up his hands, trying to calm her.

  “It’s not the same, Jen. You know it isn’t.”

  “It’s exactly the fucking same! I’m alive and you’re dead. Sound familiar?”

  “He cut me in half,” he said. “I can’t heal like you. I can’t even defend myself properly. I have to stuff fabric inside of my goddamn guts so I don’t slosh around. I’m falling apart and you can’t save me. You can’t, Jenny. Not this time.”

  “I fucking can,” said Jenny, realizing how stubborn she sounded. “I’m never leaving you, Declan. And I won’t stop trying.”

  Declan put his hands on her arms and she shook him off. She was breathing hard, her heart pounding in her throat.

  “You don’t get to decide!” she screamed. “You don’t get to lay down and die, goddammit. You have to fight. You have to fight!”

  She suddenly was filled with so much anger that it startled her. She’d felt nothing for weeks. And now she could barely contain the rage. She shoved Declan in the chest and he fell back, unsteady on his feet, to sit hard on the ground. She stared at him for a long time, just sitting there. He was just a man, just a rotter, just some guy. Except he wasn’t. He was hers. She couldn’t let go of him, no matter what she told herself back at the bunker. She sat down next to him and turned to look at the fire so she didn’t have to see him, didn’t have to look at what she had turned him into.

  “Jenny, you’re crying.”

  She touched her face and saw that she was.

  “Dead girls don’t cry,” she said.

  “You’re not dead, baby. And you’re not a girl. No girl I ever met could shoulder the shit I’ve seen you take on. You’re not dead, and that’s a good thing. I’m so happy I got to see you become so strong.”

  She looked at him then.

  “It’s never that easy with me, is it?” she said. “I could never just die like everyone else.”

  “I didn’t sign up for easy.”

  “I’m not strong, Deck,” she said. “I never have been. I’m scared all the time.”

  “Everyone’s scared, Jen. It’s what you do with your fear that counts. Are you really going to kill her?”

  “My mom? I don’t know. I was.”

  “And now?”

  “Now I just want her to tell me how to save you,” she said. “That’s the truth. She can do it, I know she can. She can fix what Faron broke.”

  “She can’t fix me,” he said. “Not really. I’ll still be just another wild thing.”

  “I don’t care,” said Jenny. “We’ll be wild together.”

  “What about your sister?”

  Jenny looked into the fire again.

  “I don’t know anymore,” Jenny said. “I don’t even know how to find her.”

  “Your mother might know.”

  “Robin thinks I need to hold on to any family I can get my hands on,” she said. “She says they’re precious.”

  “What do you think?”

  Jenny didn’t answer for a long time.

  “I don’t know anymore.”

  Declan put an arm around her and she leaned against him.

  “I’m not letting you go,” she said.

  “I know.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  By the time they crossed into western Pennsylvania, the encampments ceased. The walled towns of the Midwest were gone. The human beings had completely deserted the area. The change sent a strange shudder of dread through them. Declan, Trix and Benji grew more and more twitchy and Jenny could sense them watching Robin closely, hungrily. Robin, for her part, kept her knife in her belt at all times.

  But if there were fewer humans, the rotters made up for them now. The closer they got to New York the more rotters Jenny saw, wandering aimlessly, raising their heads as they drove by. Jenny felt the RV shudder and thud occasionally as Robin hit one lingering in her lane. By the time they crossed into New York state, the sheer numbers of rotters on the roads made it difficult for them to travel. They traveled in packs of hundreds and Jenny watched with trepidation as they sensed the Living, turning to slowly follow them as the motor home roared past.

  “What the fuck is going on?” Jenny said. “Where did they all come from? There aren’t even any Living here.”

  “It’s Indian Point,” said Benji, as though that should explain everything.

  “What’s Indian Point?” Declan said, his voice slow and weak. He needed to eat soon. His skin had started drying and peeling away. The smell of decay was almost too much to take.

  “You didn’t hear about what happened to New York?” said Benji. ”They shut down the whole city. People left. The military was there for a while, but even the military evacuated after a while. The sickness, the rotters, it spread fast. And then when the power went out, Indian Point imploded. Nuclear power plant. Just fucking ate itself and poisoned everything. Everyone who was left either died or wished it was dead. No one goes to New York. That’s why.”

  “Doesn’t explain all the rotters,” said Trix.

  “The radiation did…something to them,” said Benji. “Rayanne tried to explain the science to me. I didn’t understand most of it. But the rotters went funny. They don’t leave like the others, and they don’t rot away. Nothing rots away. But nothing grows here either - there are no new plants or trees. It’s a literal dead zone.”

  “Why are we stopping?” said Trix.

  Up front, Robin was cursing as a thump shook the camper. Jenny heard a sound like tree branches scratching up against the outside, and then the RV started to sway back and forth. Jenny looked out the window and saw rotters as far as she could see. Endless dead faces, moaning and yipping and pushing and shuffling. And all moving towards their RV. Those in front were starting to climb up on top, their fingernails scratching against the metal on the outside. The door shifted as a rotter pushed against it.

  Robin stumbled back from the cab, her face as pale as the dead outside.

  “This is the end,” she said.

  “No, it’s not,” said Jenny.

  “You might as well let your friends eat me now, because it’s better than these rotters.”

  “She’s got a point,” said Trix.

  “Shut up, Trix,” said Jenny. “No one’s going to kill you, Robin.”

  “Jen,” said Declan, looking toward the window. “How do we know they won’t eat you? You’re alive.”

  “What the fuck are we going to do?” Trix said. “It’s only a matter of time before they get in here. Benji and I could go find help.”

  “Where are you going to find an army?” said Robin. “You look outside? There’s thousands of them.”

  It was true. Jenny couldn’t even see the ground anymore. They were streaming towards them from the direction of the city. Like ants, they were surrounding them, crawling all over them, trying to get in.

  Jenny looked at Declan. She looked at Robin, staring without hope
through the window. She looked at Trix who nodded at her. Trix knew what she was going to do. Trix always did.

  Jenny went to the door and leaned against it with her shoulder. She closed her eyes.

  “Jenny. What are you doing?” she heard Declan say. Full of worry, full of fear. She took out her knife.

  “I have to know,” she said. “We’re dead anyway.”

  “No. No, Jen.” She heard him struggling. “Untie me! Now!”

  “I love you, Deck.”

  She opened the door.

  The smell hit her first. It wasn’t the hot-humid-days slimy decomp smell that she was accustomed to. The kind that sticks in your nostrils and throat for days afterwards. This was different. It was the smell of death, but a different kind of death. A slow death. And then, the faces. Thousands of faces, some more emaciated than others, most even still had meat on their bones. After all these years in a place with no people. Jenny slammed the door behind her and, instead of the frenzy she was expecting, instead of waves upon waves of rotters descending on her, trying to get at Robin in the metal box behind her, something strange happened.

  They stopped.

  Thousands of dead, blank faces stared at Jenny, so still that she shivered. Every pair of eyes, every blackened set of teeth, every dead bastard in New York City, nuclear wasted New York City, was turned to Jenny. Frozen. Unmoving, not speaking, just staring. Right. At. Her.

  The door behind her was flung open. She knew Declan was standing behind her, weak and weaving on his feet.

  “What the fuck is this?” he said.

  “I have no idea,” said Jenny. “Something new.”

  “Jen, everything okay?” said Trix.

  “Go back inside,” said Jenny. “Keep Robin safe.”

  “Goddammit, Jen, I—” Declan started.

  “Just do it,” Jenny snapped, without looking behind her. “Please, Declan. Just trust me.”

  “The last time you said that, you ended up eaten up by rotters in a train car.”

  “That’s not what this is,” said Jenny. And she knew she was right. “They won’t hurt me.”

  She felt his hesitation, but after a moment, the door closed and latched behind her.

  Jenny stepped down from the RV and the rotters moved to let her through. She took a step to the right. Every face followed her. The same when she stepped to the left. Finally, she moved forward. A path cleared in front of her as the infinite number of rotters, of dead men and women and children, moved to let her pass. They kept their eyes glued to her.

  In a moment of hope, Jenny said, “Can you understand me?” But the rotters stayed silent. She could see the emptiness in their eyes.

  “Jenny?” she heard Robin call, her voice muffled inside the camper.

  “Robin, get in the driver’s seat,” Jenny said. “I have an idea.”

  “What are you doing?” Benji said.

  “Stay with Robin,” Jenny said. “I think they don’t notice her as much if you stay with her.”

  “What if we accidentally eat her?” called Trix.

  “Goddammit, Trix.”

  “Declan?” Jenny said. “Will you be okay?”

  There was a pause. Another hesitation. “Yeah,” he said finally.

  “Just follow me when you can, Robin,” said Jenny.

  “How do you know where to go?” said Benji. “How do you know where your mom will be?”

  “I have no idea,” said Jenny.

  She started walking through the rotters, through the stares, toward the city.

  And they all began to follow.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Cross the bridge. All she had to do was get herself across the Brooklyn Bridge and everything would come together. But as Jenny stood on the other side of the East River and looked at the city sprawled out before her, she realized she had nothing. No idea of where to go.

  “Why did you stop?” Trix yelled out the window.

  “I don’t…” Jenny started, trying to find the words. “I don’t know where to go.”

  “Just start walking. We’ll be able to find them if they’re Living.”

  “What if after all this they’re not here?” Jenny said.

  “Woman up, cheerleader,” Trix said, not unkindly. “We can do this just like we’ve done everything else. Start walking and we’ll find your bitch mother. You want to fix Declan, don’t you?”

  “Fine!” Jenny called. She started to walk.

  There were no plants but a scattering of mean-looking weeds. Manhattan wasn’t overgrown like all the other cities. No flooding or trees growing up through the streets or vines obscuring skyscrapers. Nature did not overtake civilization here, and it seemed even sadder for it. The city was simply dead. New York City was its own kind of rotter.

  Jenny led the rotters and the RV over the bridge, around City Hall, and past decrepit business buildings standing like sentries. Past broken windows and busted doors, and dirt and rust and corrosion. Jenny had the odd sensation that this had happened before, but with different people. A different person. She tasted grape soda for a split second and stopped, touching her mouth. Her feet hurt and she realized that felt familiar too. Now she wondered whether she had known where she was going all along. She stepped off the street into a small churchyard cemetery and towards the cool stones of its recessed windows and doorways. She had a powerful memory of that feeling: Warm sun shining on her smooth hair, braided, and ducking into the cool and dark of an arched window. The smell of garbage and the murmur of people. Passersby unaware that two children were hiding there. The hot dusty smell of summer and melting asphalt and sweat.

  Who was she with? Casey? No, it was a girl. A girl her age. A girl who looked just like her. A girl her mother would later convince her was imaginary. And then Jenny remembered her name. Her sister’s name.

  “Sarah,” she said.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” Trix said.

  “Jenny, are you okay?” came Declan’s voice. Weak but concerned. Weak from hunger. Jenny remembered being hungry that day, too.

  “It wasn’t grape soda,” she said. “It was snow cones. It turned our lips and tongues purple.”

  “What?” said Trix.

  “Just give me a minute,” Jenny called.

  “Whatever,” said Trix. “Losing it.”

  Jenny crouched down and looked closely at the large stones of the window. Sarah had brought her the snow cone from a sidewalk vendor. She remembered crying because her blisters hurt and one was starting to bleed, and Sarah had stroked her hair. She let Jenny touch the scars that she hid under her hair.

  “Sometimes Mommy sends me away,” Sarah said.

  “Why?” said Jenny.

  “Because sometimes Mommy is good, and sometimes she’s bad. But even when she’s really good, she won’t ever love us.”

  “She loves Casey, I think,” Jenny said, licking the ice in the cone.

  “That’s different. Casey’s a baby. And he’s a boy,” said Sarah, her eyes reminding Jenny of grown-up eyes. “When he gets older, maybe she’ll send him away too. It’s better when she sends me away. No one hurts me.”

  “Why doesn’t she send me away?” said Jenny.

  “Because,” Sarah said, pulling her hair down over the scars again. “She hasn’t broken you yet.”

  Jenny started as if waking from a dream. She could still feel Sarah’s warm skin on her fingers, the hard, puffy feeling of the scar. She could smell the garbage and the sweat and the scent of fresh baked bread coming from somewhere. She stared at the churchyard, at the bell, the leaning headstones. Why hadn’t she remembered Sarah before?

  “Jesus Christ,” Jenny said. She looked around at the rotters. They were watching her, like they were waiting for her to tell them what to do.

  “If they catch us,” Sarah said, “you have to run. Okay? Just remember to run. Don’t let them hurt you.”

  “They won’t catch us,” Jenny had said. “We’re hidden.”

  “They’ll catch us,” s
aid Sarah. “But you have to run away before they hurt you.”

  “I’ll run with you,” said Jenny. “Because we’re sisters.”

  Sarah hadn’t said anything. Just looked at her sadly while they ate their snow cones.

  Jenny stood up. Where had they come from? Where had they run from? She remembered a white building. She thought it was so pretty, like a mansion from the old black and white movies that her father watched. The Academy, her mother called it. So many books. So many important -looking people in sweater vests and glasses. She remembered the sound of voices droning as she and Sarah ran through the halls.

  “The Academy,” Jenny said.

  “What are you even talking about?” said Trix.

  “That’s where she is,” said Jenny. “If she’s alive, she’ll be at the Academy.”

  “So, you know where it is?” said Trix.

  “No,” said Jenny. “But I think it’s close.”

  “How do you know?” said Trix.

  “Because,” Jenny said. “I remember now.”

  She was amazed by the memory, an entire chapter of a forgotten life. How could she forget a sister? How could anyone possibly forget that?

  Because, she reasoned, because of who her mother was. And who her grandfather was. They didn't want her to remember. They worked to make her forget. Jenny wanted to punch something, to make someone bleed. She clenched her fists and strode to the corner. She looked out over the desolate street and looked at the street-level shops. She remembered the once brightly-colored bodega, faded now. They had looked in the windows at the bakery with a cupcake on its sign.

  Jenny walked with a purpose. She knew Trix was yelling at her, but she blocked it out and concentrated on the memories of her sister.

  She hasn’t broken you yet.

  The manila folder with Sarah’s file had said rupture, and compromised, and failed to regenerate, and immune response insignificant. If Sarah were dead, Anna Hawkins had done that to her, just as she had done things to Jenny, to hundreds, maybe thousands of other children.

  Jenny could barely see for all the white light behind her eyes. She could barely breathe for the lump of anger in her chest. But she stopped in front of a rusted gate. And as her vision cleared, she saw that the lichen-covered stone was etched with the words, The New York Academy of Sciences.