“Corrina, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” He said this softly, great pain in the words. His eyes remained closed. He moaned and thrashed about. He mumbled something and I feared what he would say. Feared it would be about Jane again.
“It’s okay. I’m here. It’s okay.”
His blue eyes blazed open and stared at me but did not see me at all.
I tried an apricot slice, the juice dripping into the hay around us. This he opened his mouth for. He always did favor sweet food. He chewed it mechanically, opened his eyes again and locked them with mine. This time I think he did see me.
“It matters to me that you know—I thought you were dead. That’s the only thing that made me stop looking. I thought—”
“Shh.” I caressed his face. “I know.” But it mattered that he said it. It helped erase Jane’s name a little.
Dylan slumped back, gone in the memory-fevers again and I wished him a good one, whatever that meant to him.
I ate more of the beans and apricots, then saved the rest for when Dylan woke again.
I used the next few hours to scout further out from the barn.
My loops lengthened, always bringing me back to check on Dylan, until I had almost returned to the stage, to the gallows. I found no one alive. Bodies lay out in a sort of grotesque display of blood and mayhem. A soldier here, with his uniform bloody and flesh missing. Better not to look too closely. A civilian there, propped against a trash can, dead from an obvious bullet hole to the head, but I didn't look closely enough to figure out whether it was a Feeb or an uninfected. My gag reflex worked on overdrive so I didn’t dare venture closer.
The metallic smell of blood was faint on top of a layer of garbage, but it wasn’t bad—yet. I tried to put my thoughts together. Stan and at least one other soldier were alive and organized enough to round up more Faints, but whoever had survived wasn't organized enough to clean up the dead bodies, yet.
Suddenly I pictured Dylan missing, someone having come and taken him from his stall. The feeling felt so real, I raced back to the barn. But there he was, sleeping on his side, face still flushed, mumbling softly.
I steadied myself against the wall and decided to be done for the night. I closed the door, it’s every squeak jarring my heart. I stumbled back to Dylan’s stall, felt for his sleeping form and curled myself around him and slept.
When I awoke next, Dylan’s arm draped across me. The hay and his fever made me warm. Light filtered in. Another day had passed. More prominent webbing showed up on Dylan's skin now. My fingers traced some of the lines along his cheek.
He opened his blue eyes. Our faces were inches apart. His eyes looked clear, coherent, calm.
“Hi,” he said.
“Hi,” I said.
His hand traced my cheek, echoing my touch.
He started talking. He started sharing his memory-fevers with me.
Chapter 29
“You need to eat while you're awake.”
He took the opened can I handed him and dug into the beans. When he had finished, I passed him a can of apricots. I opened up more cans of food and he ate those too. I didn't bother rationing the cans. Who knew when he'd feel well enough to eat again or how long the next memory-fever would last.
“They feel so real,” he said, once he polished off the second can of beans. “Did yours feel so real?”
“Yes,” I said.
“What did you relive?”
I told him, briefly, quickly, without emotion, about his parents.
His face became sad. “They should never have acted like that. They—”
“Are your parents,” I said.
“No. It’s not right.”
“It is what it is. But they weren’t all like that. Some of them were nice to relive.” And I told him about the first time we met.
“That was one of mine too,” he said quietly. “And then one of just watching you sleep. Just that calmness, that perfect peace. It was a bright morning and you slept in, and I’d woken and watched you breathe and it was perfect.”
I looked down, blushing, embarrassed.
“Except for the morning breath, that is.”
I sucked in air and looked up. Dylan smiled. “Joking.”
I smiled back, my face cracking. I couldn’t remember the last time I really smiled. “Funny.”
“You’re perfect. You never have morning breath.”
“Oh, now I know you’re lying.”
Dylan sobered. “No, really, it was perfect.”
We sat in silence for another moment. I knew I should go back out and stand guard, but I didn’t want to leave him, not while he was lucid, not when I had almost lost him for good.
A flush began to creep up his neck. Sweat broke out on his forehead.
“I think it’s coming back,” I said.
He set the empty can down. It tipped and became lost in the hay.
Suddenly I needed to know. I couldn’t bare not knowing for another minute. “You said Jane’s name. You said it like a caress. Were you, were you—” I couldn’t finish. Tears sprang to my eyes, my stomach twisted. I shouldn’t have asked. This wasn’t fair, not like this.
Dylan’s eyes glazed, he struggled to stay upright. He shook his head as if to clear it but I knew it wouldn’t work.
“It doesn’t matter, Corrina. I chose you. That’s what it made clear. I will choose you, again and—”
He slumped over. I jumped up to lay him back out more comfortably. I kicked the hidden can, bouncing it out of the stall so that it skipped onto the cement floor. Its sound was shocking and intrusive.
Once I knew he was safe and comfortable, I left. To scout, I told myself. But now I was the liar. I couldn’t stand to be in there with him another moment, not when the first thing he had relived, not when—
I burst into silent sobs. Of course I wasn’t good enough, of course I had never been good enough.
But he’d gotten himself sick for me, he’d exiled himself from everyone normal now. For me. I let that fact plant itself in me, take root, blossom. I would not dismiss his sacrifice because I wanted to have a pity party. I could not forget what Jane had done, what Dylan and Jane had done, but he had infected himself to prove he loved me, that he couldn't live without me. Either I moved on or I let the past control me.
Two figures stumbled out from behind the truck, limping, dirty. A dozen thoughts tumbled through my brain. I should have been watching. I should have taken my chances with the wheelbarrow.
“Corrina?” A young voice called out across the distance between us.
“Maibe?” My heart pounded.
The two came closer. Maibe and Gabbi. Gabbi raised her crossbow at me and let lose an arrow. I screamed and raised my hands. When I lowered them, a V was dead in the dirt with an arrow buried in his back. Gabbi shot off another arrow, but this one only nicked his shoulder and almost embedded into my foot. I jumped, surprised.
“You idiots need to get inside,” Gabbi said.
I locked the door as best I could behind us.
Dylan moaned and thrashed around. Gabbi swung up her crossbow again and crouched, scanning the barn.
“It’s Dylan,” I said. I went over and pushed her crossbow to point at the ground. “He’s in the fevers.”
I had so many questions, they tied my tongue in knots. Where had they been? What had they done? Who was still alive? Why was Gabbi so angry at me?
“Thank you for coming back for us,” I said simply.
Maibe was eating from the last apricot can, but Gabbi stopped and jerked her finger at Maibe. “Don’t thank me. It’s this one who made it happen. She was ready to get herself killed for you. I couldn’t have cared less.”
I reached over and hugged Maibe. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” she said, smiling.
“But what kind of idiot intentionally gets himself infected and hung from the gallows and—”
Maibe stared at her.
“Sorry,” Gabbi said, not looking at me.
“That’s okay. I kind of thought the same thing when it happened. All that trouble I went to trying to find him and keep him alive, and—” I laughed and it wasn’t a fake laugh. Gabbi and Maibe were here now. Dylan was here.
“We can’t stay here,” Maibe said. “I think things are going to get much worse very soon.”
“But I can’t move him, not when he’s in the fevers,” I said.
“But they’re waking up,” Maibe said. “The Vs wake up first, and then the rest.”
“Those who survive the fevers anyway,” Gabbi said.
Dylan stood on unsteady feet, shirtless, the fevers too hot for him to keep it on. I went to get him some water.
“We should get out of the city. Go into the foothills,” he said, and crumpled. I was too far away to help, but Gabbi jumped in time. I ran over and helped bring him back to the stall.
He kept mumbling something about Dutch Flat—where his grandparents had owned a little house before they died. I told him it was going to be okay. Just rest. He pulled me into him for a kiss. When he let go, Maibe was by my side, holding out a cup of water.
I thanked her and helped him drink and he settled back into a troubled sleep.
Gabbi slammed the door behind her.
“What's wrong with her?” I asked Maibe.
“I don't know,” Maibe said.
“We have to leave. Right now,” Gabbi said, bursting back into the barn.
“What happened?” I said.
“Sergeant Bennings is alive. He's here. He's still here,” she said.
I didn't make her explain further. The panicked look on her face said enough.
Maibe helped me position Dylan in the wheelbarrow. He woke and helped us pack as many supplies as we could fit around him.
As we left the barn, a low train whistle sounded across the sky. After all this time, the noise seemed strange, almost creepy. It filled the empty sky with its howl. When the sound drifted back into silence, an aching loneliness filled my heart. The world had been ripped apart and emptied out and the people still living in this world weren’t safe.
“What do you think that was?” Maibe said.
“You heard it too?” Gabbi said. “I thought it was a ghost-memory.”
“I heard it,” I said quietly.
“I don’t think it means anything good,” Maibe said. “Stuff like that never means anything good in the movies.”
I wanted to contradict her but stopped myself. She’d been right too many times.
Gabbi paced around us, scanning the area for trouble. “We can’t worry about that right now. Spencer and the rest will be at the boxcar. We have to meet back up with them.”
I realized there were still some people in the world I could consider safe. Maybe not many but enough. Spencer and Gabbi and Leaf and the others had taken care of me and Maibe. I decided to do the same for them, if they gave me the chance.
“How do you know?” Dylan asked.
“That’s the place. It’s always been our meeting place,” Gabbi said.
“And after the boxcar?” Dylan asked.
Gabbi huffed and turned away.
“What’s her problem,” Dylan whispered to me.
“She doesn’t trust most people,” I said. “With good reason.”
Dylan nodded. “Until I get through this, this, whatever this is—”
“Memory-fever,” Maibe and I said at the same time.
“Until the fever passes, I’m in your hands. Tell me what you want to do.”
Gabbi turned back and examined him for a long moment. “How long have you had the fevers now?”
Dylan turned to me.
“Four days,” I said.
Gabbi looked out into the distance as if remembering. “Sometimes the fevers pass in as little as a week, sometimes as long as three weeks.”
“He’s already been awake for longer stretches than I remember when I went through it.” I shuddered, remembering the Army surplus store and how Christopher had died.
“So maybe you get lucky and have the fevers for only a week,” Maibe said.
“But that’s still three days of hauling around someone who could go comatose any minute,” Gabbi said.
“There are still Vs on the trail. More of them than before,” Maibe said.
“We’ll get through it,” I said, resting a hand on Dylan’s shoulder and looking Maibe and Gabbi in the eye. Dylan clasped his hand over mine. “We’ll figure it out together.”
We did figure it out, and it ended up being the beginning of something much bigger and darker than we could have imagined.
But all of that is a story for Gabbi and Maibe to tell.
Mine ends here: we made it to the boxcar, to Spencer and the pup-boys, and we headed for the foothills.
We are all of us together.
Dylan and I are caring for each other, and it is more than enough, and whether you believe we are human or not—we are surviving, and we are not going away.
Feast of Weeds Book 3
INFESTATION
STAY ALIVE. DON'T GET CAUGHT.
For sixteen-year-old Gabbi, life on the street isn’t much different after a virus sweeps away civilization: watch your back, do anything to survive, protect your friends.
But Gabbi's friends are imprisoned at a refugee camp and every move she makes puts them in even more danger. Gabbi will do everything to keep her friends alive, but what if everything isn't enough?
The stakes are bigger than Gabbi could imagine, pitting Feeb against Feeb, with uninfected and Vs against them all. If Gabbi doesn’t outsmart everyone, she’ll get her and her friends caught—again.
This time they won’t all make it out alive.
Because sometimes staying alive isn’t enough
***
December
***
Chapter 1
Since before I can remember, my goal in life has been simple: stay alive, don’t get hurt, don’t get caught.
If you’re one of those people who count three goals in that sentence and love to point out those kinds of things you can just go to hell right now. You’re probably one of those people who make fun of those other people who post internet comments with spelling and punctuation errors too.
Just so you know, it doesn’t make you smarter or righter than them.
What it does make you is a dick.
It’s the kind of thing Corrina would do—I’d bet you $20 on it, if I had that kind of money, but I don’t because I’m a runaway teenager who used to be a runaway kid.
I’ll wait while you catalog your snobby thoughts and acerbic zingers.
Here’s your chance.
Probably something about how there’s no way in hell someone like me could mess up grammar but use a word like acerbic correctly, right?
Well then this story isn’t for you so put it down right now. Preferably in the library so someone actually worth something might find it and read it for free and get something out of it and not tell me how to count or where to put my commas or what words I’m allowed to use and how I’m allowed to use them.
Now that we all understand each other and only the right people are still reading, I can get started.
It’s winter time and with that comes fog. I like the fog. It’s moody and hides things easier. It’s causing Maibe and me some trouble though. We’ve lost the rest of our group and something bad went down. How could it not with Vs running loose and soldiers fingering their triggers like a woman’s—well, Maibe might read this and she’s only thirteen and even though when I was thirteen I knew all about that sort of thing I don’t think she does. I like thinking I could help keep it that way for her. At least for a little longer.
As I was saying, Maibe and me stayed behind to guard their backs, but now it looks like we’ll need to save their asses and no matter what I think, I know Maibe won’t let us leave without finding Corrina so—
“Gabbi, do you think they’re okay?”
I stopped writing
in the journal and looked up from where I sat on the van’s bench. A dim flashlight, domed with an old, cloudy Tupperware container sat in the middle of the floor between us. Maibe was on the opposite bench, a wool blanket around her shoulders, scratching an insect bite on her neck. Curtains that Mary had made, before we’d lost her to the V virus, were attached with magnets to the back windows. The vent on top of the van let in the only fresh, freezing air. Yeah, it was cold, but the air needed to circulate. Spencer had learned that the hard way and I had learned from him.
We hadn’t slept much in days and not at all since Leaf and Ano and the rest had been captured. We should have been sleeping.
I put down my pen. “No, I don’t.”
Her eyes widened and the circles around them darkened.
She hadn’t expected honesty, I guess.
“But we’re going back for them,” I said, forcing myself to sound more sure than I felt. “We’ll get them back and then they’ll be okay.”
She smiled, then her smile disappeared as if it had never existed. I knew how that sort of thing happened. I expected more of it to come both our ways before it got better, if it ever got better. But that’s why I made myself simple life goals: stay alive, don’t get hurt, don’t get caught.
“How come we can’t stay in a house?” Maibe asked. “It would be so much warmer and we could’ve locked the doors and maybe found some extra food and slept in real beds.”
She pulled her dingy pink sweatshirt lower on her forehead. It had been days and she had yet to take that thing off. This bothered me a great deal because surviving on the street meant a kid needed to blend in—that meant look clean and put together—if she didn’t want the police or social workers to pick her up. But then I remembered that sort of thing didn’t matter anymore. Those people probably looked as homeless as us now, if they were still alive. Maybe they even looked worse since they wouldn’t know all the tricks to keep yourself clean and warm without luxuries like running water.
“Gabbi?”
I realized I hadn’t answered her yet, but I didn’t see why I should. I got up and checked the curtained back windows for the millionth time. Our bicycles were on the ground a few feet away. A V was across the parking lot, punching the back of a bus bench and throwing trash around. I dropped the curtain back into place. Vs locked onto you like a wolf going after a rabbit. It hadn’t noticed us yet and I wanted to keep it that way.
Feast of Weeds (Books 1--4) Page 28
