Feast of Weeds (Books 1--4)

by Jamie Thornton

  I thought maybe it was early March, but there wasn’t any way to know for sure, not anymore. Still, there was that heaviness in the air, a humidity and a promise of more warmth to come, and the poke here and there of green amongst the ashes of burned-out fields and neighborhoods and strip malls. The weeds would grow first, and then other things would follow.

  I thought about the Feeb-haters and how strange the mechanic Faint had been and what all of that meant. I thought about Dr. Ferrad and Tabitha and Sergeant Bennings, and Kern sometimes too. None of it made any sense to me. The way they had all tried to control things and hurt people. We’d fallen under the spell of the empty safety they’d offered, but all of that was over now. I wouldn’t let us fall for it again.

  We made terrible time through the last few towns, stopping and scouting for supplies, working around Faints, outrunning Vs. There weren’t many but there were enough. Still, we made thirty-six miles that day according to the recumbent’s odometer.

  I was the slowest, even with the recumbent, but Ano made sure to stay behind me and called for a stop every now and then to have Ricker rebandage my shoulder.

  That night we bedded down in a barn that was empty except for a horse long dead from starvation, little more than skin and bones now. A few chickens scampered around the yard as if everything was normal. Jimmy hunted for their coop and came back with a shirt-load of eggs, more than we could possibly eat in a week, but we sorted through them just the same and started a fire and found a flat piece of metal we decided to use as a skillet.

  Some of the eggs had gone bad and we tossed those outside into the dirt, but most were just fine and we feasted on omelets filled with some green bits of weeds that Corrina had once shown us were okay to eat.

  This lapsed Maibe into a brooding silence, but there was nothing to be done for it. Corrina and Dylan were gone and Kern and Tabitha were probably captured. Sergeant Bennings and the camps were still alive and well and pretending like Feebs didn’t deserve what the uninfected deserved.

  I sighed at my morbid thoughts and stared at the hypnotizing flames of the fire. My belly was full and that satisfaction spread to the rest of my body, even dulling the pain in my shoulder.

  Maibe came back to the fire after switching watch with Ricker and crouched next to me.

  “What are we going to do at Dutch Flat?”

  “Anything we want,” I said because I didn’t really know.

  “We’ll find shelter first, and then food and supplies,” Ano said.

  “And then?” Maibe said.

  “And then stay out of trouble for a while,” I said, but my answer satisfied neither of us.

  The next day was clear and bright and promised spring around the corner. Yesterday’s rain had cleared away the smoke from the fires of the past few months and the sky was that crystal blue color that hurt the eyes sometimes because it was so bright.

  We had fewer miles today and my shoulder was feeling okay as far as that went, but we all knew the miles would be mostly uphill.

  We set out early in the morning, the dew not yet evaporated from the grass. The smells out here were cleaner and whenever we encountered something that didn’t smell right we went around it—there was no reason to look at gruesome things. When we rode by a gas station Maibe and Ano went inside for a map and snacks, though we had packed a great number of eggs in the satchels of my bike. When they came back out their shirts covered the lower half of their faces. Even though their arms were full of supplies, their expressions said it wasn’t worth whatever they had seen inside.

  I unfolded the map across my lap and traced our route. “Less than twenty miles to go,” I said in a whisper because we had been operating pretty much on silence the whole time and it seemed wrong to break it.

  Silence, except for the birds because they had been going all morning like yesterday, but it wasn’t an unhappy silence. More a respect for the new state of things, a way to let it sink in that the birds and other animals would take over more and more ground and fill the space humans left behind.

  As we climbed into the lower foothills, the few strip malls disappeared and all that was left were rolling fields and farm houses and oak trees and creeks and granite rocks and animals left out to pasture. The elevation change cooled the temperatures, but my pedaling easily kept me warm. I tried to save the battery by only using the electric assist on the steepest parts.

  We coasted down a hill to a creek bed with a small bridge crossing and a road sign that said “Dutch Flat 3 miles.”

  As if by telepathic message we halted at the sign and took in our surroundings. It was greener here than in the valley. Trees—pine, oak, elm, maple, birch—dotted the landscape, thick blackberry bushes, grasses, other plants I didn’t know the name for. It was a lush place and seemed well protected.

  “Umm, I think we might have a problem,” Ricker said. He pointed down the road that crossed the creek, climbed back up, and then turned around a hill or mountain—I didn’t know exactly when the foothills became mountains but I knew we were pretty close. Behind the hill a column of smoke rose lazily into the blue sky.

  “Does that mean the town burned down?” Jimmy said.

  “Looks more like something from a campfire or chimney,” Ano said.

  “So there’s people already there,” Maibe said.

  “Could be Faints,” I said.

  “But they’d have burned the whole town down by now if it were Faints,” Ano said.

  “Maybe,” I said. “Probably.” And Vs didn’t have enough sense left to start a fire except by accident.

  “I bet it’s either from Feebs or uninfected,” I said.

  “We have all the luck,” Ricker said.

  “We could go back,” Jimmy said. “Take our pick of a farm or town or whatever. We don’t have to keep going.”

  He made sense, but I balked at the thought. The way Dylan had described it, a little Gold Rush town in a valley, protected by hills and a creek, and maybe a dozen houses with gardens and well water and electricity already off the grid—it sounded like heaven. It sounded like exactly the kind of place Mary had wanted. And it seemed like a little bit of a betrayal of Corrina and Dylan if we came all this way to turn around at the last three miles.

  “Let’s take a look,” I said. “We don’t have to go into town if it seems dangerous. Ano, raise up a hand if there’s anything funny and we’ll stop and go back.”

  Ano looked like he didn’t think it was a good idea but he took the lead and we slowed almost to a walking pace. He held up his hand several times and we stopped and waited and listened, but each time he shook his head and we continued. It bothered me that he was in front. It should have been me up there.

  The trees grew taller and more stately, coming together over the narrow road in a sort of canopy that let in dappled sunlight. Our pace did nothing to keep my muscles warm and I began to shiver in the shadows of the road.

  Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.

  We pedaled over another creek crossing and then up the meandering road. When Ano reached the top of the rise, he stopped but didn’t hold up a hand. I biked until I was alongside him at the top and then put a foot down. The others did the same and we spread out across the rise, covering the street with our bikes, and we looked down the gentle slope onto Dutch Flat.

  The sun shone directly in our eyes, which meant we’d traveled east of the town and curved back around on the road to it. It was as Dylan had described it. Three or four intersecting blocks, an old clapboard hotel, some houses on one side, and on the other side, a small grocer, an antique shop, a post office that advertised a thrift shop inside, and a faded blue sign marking a small laundromat and coffee shop.

  The streets were easy to picture as the dirt roads they used to be. This must have been the main strip of town.

  Smoke curled into the air. It was obvious now that it came from a chimney from the tallest building, the three-story hotel.

  We were several hundred yards away. Other than the
smoke, the town looked peaceful, quiet, tucked away, eager for company.

  A person stepped off the wooden walkway on the post office side, arms filled with what looked a lot like laundry. She crossed over to the hotel. She had long hair that fell halfway to her back, untamed and wild.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said.

  “What?” Ricker said.

  Maibe looked at me.

  “Are you seeing this. Did you see her? It’s not some ghost-memory I’m having?”

  “I saw it,”Maibe whispered.

  A smile crept onto my lips. We coasted down the slope and stopped in front of the hotel. Two people stood on the porch now, both carrying rifles.

  “Maibe?” Corrina said. “Gabbi?”

  Dylan lowered his rifle and smiled in such a way that my heart dropped into my stomach and I remembered that for the longest time I couldn’t understand how Corrina had ended up with him. His eyes drank us all in and I thought he rested on me for a second longer than the others and hope flew like a balloon let loose into the sky.

  “Gabbi’s hurt,” Dylan said and my balloon popped. But that was just as well.

  Corrina handed Dylan her rifle and hurried down the steps. She took Maibe into a fierce hug, then stepped back and wiped tears away. Dylan clapped each of the boys on the shoulders and told them to get inside because there was food and water and even some soda cans left over from the little grocer across the street.

  Corrina came over to me and while I didn’t get a hug, she was nice enough to probe my shoulder wound until I exclaimed in pain, which was better than hugs and tears, because it would have been just a little too much coming from her and I might have had to vomit in my mouth a little bit.

  “Sorry,” she said at my exclamation. “Come inside, I’ve got some stuff we can put on this.”

  We all went inside, Corrina and Ano propping me up as I stumbled on the steps and realized how the only thing that had been keeping me going these last few miles was sheer will.

  They sat me down in a chair. Corrina left and came back with a box filled with bandages, cleaning supplies, and other basic first aid stuff.

  “Any painkillers in there?” I asked since the jostling that had gotten me into the hotel had renewed the throbbing.

  “No,” she said. “We’re not that lucky, but I have something else that might work. You came just in time for tea,” she said, smiling. She left again and the others settled themselves down near me. Dylan leaned the rifles next to the door and limped back to sit down with us. Maibe began peppering him with questions and he explained how they had escaped the V mob—by luck, but not without injury. He pointed to the bandages that wrapped his leg.

  Corrina came back with a pot of tea and crushed some weird-looking leaves into it. “Yarrow, willow bark, chamomile to soothe. I’ve got some comfrey to pack in with the bandages, but I need to clean the wound first.”

  Bandages covered her arms too, bites and scratches that would leave an array of scars behind sort of like the ones I’d carved into my arm.

  I sipped the tea she handed me while Dylan explained how they’d thought Maibe and me had been killed and how they’d escaped Dutch Flat. When he was done I explained what Tabitha had done to Camp Pacific and what I had learned from Kern about the Feeb-haters, and then I kept talking and told them about Dr. Ferrad and Mary, and Sergeant Bennings’ still being out there, and the weird Faint in the mechanic shop, and all the Feebs still imprisoned in the camps.

  Once I was done, I sat back, exhausted, relieved. The knowledge had been a burden I didn’t know I was carrying and now everyone in this room would help me share it.

  Jimmy’s face was pale. Maibe had a resolute set to her features, while Ano and Ricker whispered to each other. Corrina looked at me with wide-eyed thoughtfulness. Dylan stared at the wood floor stained with thousands of footsteps as if by sheer force of will he could change the state of things.

  I waited for someone to say it.

  The words built up in my chest until I couldn’t contain them anymore. “We can’t keep running away,” I said. “We have to do something. We have to help.”

  ***

  May

  ***

  Chapter 32

  Everyone had probably thought I’d have gone with it—join the resistance, the revolution, the insurgency, the underground. Do whatever Tabitha told me because it was for our own good in the end. Kill the Vs, turn all the uninfected into Feebs.

  It would have made a great story. The classic kind of story—underdog turns around and wins it. David defeats Goliath.

  If you can’t join them, fight them.

  If you can’t beat them, be them—or something.

  It’s like no one understands that when you start taking power that it makes you just as bad as the ones you want to take it from.

  It’s not like we’re going to win or anything. That’s so far beyond the point of all this, if you think that’s even the goal here, well, then, you just wasted a whole bunch of your time reading what happened to me for pretty much nothing.

  It’s not about winning, it’s about fighting back and making sure that we don’t become like what we’re fighting. That’s really hard to do, almost impossible. Just pick up any history book from any library, you’ll see.

  Well, any library that made it through the fires. But that’s so obvious it should go without saying.

  The point is—

  “Gabbi, I think it’s time,” Maibe said.

  I set down my pen and closed the notebook. It was dark in the van. We’d covered the windows with blackout curtains and the only light was a little battery-powered pen light I’d picked up during our last supply run. It wouldn’t last much longer.

  “How come you always write in there?” Maibe asked. “It’s always before we do something big—you have to write it down.”

  I turned off the light and stretched my legs and then rolled my arms to warm up the muscles. My shoulder and neck were a mass of scars now mostly healed, except for a general weakness that hadn’t gone away even with weeks of careful training on a weight set Dylan had found.

  “I don’t want them to be the only ones telling the story. They tell it wrong. They make themselves out to be the heroes when they’re just as bad as the other side.”

  “Which side?”

  “Both sides, dumbass. Both sides.” But I grinned to take the sting out of my words.

  Maibe smiled, letting me know she got the joke at her expense. She handed over the binoculars.

  I peeked out between the curtain and the window frame. One uninfected with a gun watched over several Feebs who worked at digging something out of the dirt. They were in the middle of a field rimmed with trees that obscured our van from their sight.

  Alden had gotten us a message about two cousins who were about to be shipped off.

  “So what’s the plan?” Maibe said. She’d changed out her pink sweatshirt long ago for something a bit more stealthy—a dark sweater and leggings, though the weather would soon turn too hot for much more than shorts and a t-shirt. We’d all have to go clothes hunting soon if we didn’t want to melt during the summer.

  “Gabbi?”

  “Yeah,” I said, and coughed. “About the plan…” I trailed off because even though we’d staked the place for several hours already, I hadn’t thought of anything yet. Corrina, Dylan, and Jimmy were back at Dutch Flat taking care of the last group of Feebs we’d brought them. I cursed myself for letting Ano and Ricker go out on their own this time to search for Mary and Dr. Ferrad. I should have made them stay and finish this job with us first.

  “They’re leaving,” Maibe said.

  “All right, all right,” I said. “We’ll rush them and in the confusion—”

  Maibe’s look silenced me. Yeah, it was a pretty stupid idea.

  “Okay. Something will come to me in a minute. Trust me.” I grinned, showing her all my teeth.

  She rolled her eyes. “Yeah. Okay, so I think we should…” a
nd she explained her plan and I listened and I nodded my head because it was a solid plan and I could trust her with my life and know she’d do her best to take care of it.

  Feast of Weeds Book 4

  ERADICATION

  SHE'S ALREADY DEAD. WHAT'S THE POINT OF LIVING?

  Three years later, sixteen-year-old Maibe hides from the world, from her mistakes, from her friends. But the double infection that keeps them from becoming V isn’t working like it did before.

  Maibe and her friends are turning.

  Then rumors surface of a new cure. A cure that would erase the infections that destroyed the world.

  It becomes a deadly race between Feeb and uninfected. Whoever finds the cure will control it—and everyone who needs it.

  But Maibe and her friends are running out of time. If she doesn’t get the new cure soon, there will be nothing left of her friends to save.

  To the readers who try to do the right thing though it brings the sky crashing down

  ***

  July - Two Years After Infection

  ***

  Chapter 1

  “We will run and we’ll lose them in the orchards.” I looked both parents in the eyes as I said it.

  We stood outside the shadow of a long, unused warehouse. Me and the Garcia family. I had helped the four of them escape this far—to the part of the landfill so hazardous the guards rarely spent time here.

  The guards would pursue. We needed only to keep our head start.

  The winter sun felt warm on my afflicted skin. Smells of rot and astringent chemicals floated on the breeze. My stomach grumbled for more food because breakfast had been the refugee special: weak coffee and bread that had cut my tongue.