Feast of Weeds (Books 1--4)

by Jamie Thornton

  I looked up at Alden in horror. Dr. Ferrad and the other white coats had murdered this poor woman.

  Alden’s face was open, expressionless. He knew what I was thinking. Someone else had died for him not to be a Feeb anymore.

  I wanted to die. I might as well be dead. We might as well all be dead.

  This was no cure.

  Ano and Jimmy would be trapped for an eternity in that church-turned-hospital.

  Gabbi and Ricker would go V and I would go Faint and none of us would ever come back.

  A hissing sound came from the other room.

  The uninfected woman was so still. The tubing still dripped blood in a pool on the floor. The machine was silent, sitting in judgment.

  Alden left the machine room. He just turned his back and walked out. I looked around at all this death. I had always been the bringer of death. When I was born my mother had died. My father had turned from me like Alden had just turned from me. My aunt had taken me in and died of throat cancer. My uncle had sent for me from America and died when I couldn’t protect him from the Vs. Those deaths had only been the beginning.

  I walked out of the machine room like I was in a funeral march. The vent on the ceiling spewed out steam like a hose. A whitish cloud swirled, expanded, and began to drift down.

  “Alden,” I said. “What is that?”

  “I…I don’t know. I though it was for heat. I thought it was broken. We have to get out of here!” He ran for the door, slamming into it with all his weight. I don’t remember us having closed it.

  The door did not budge.

  I didn’t move from my spot in the middle of the room. I let the white cloud flow over my head and shoulders. Alden coughed so hard it shook his chest. He banged on the door and screamed in between coughs.

  I drew in a deep breath and coughed until I thought it might tear my lungs out. I welcomed that thought. Maybe I could curl up here in a ball. I climbed onto the empty bed. The mattress pad was soft. The sheets were scratchy. If I died here then it could all be over. I wouldn’t have to face Ricker and Gabbi and tell them we had all believed in a lie. I wouldn’t have to watch the light vanish from their eyes when they realized the cure was murder. When they connected the dots and realized it meant Ano and Jimmy might as well be dead. When they realized we would soon follow in their footsteps.

  I pressed my cheek against the sheets and coughed and coughed and watched Alden turn red and collapse in a heap.

  Alden

  It was happening again. The lights, the blood, the fevers.

  He kept screaming even though he knew it wouldn’t make any difference. He threw himself into the door and felt his shoulder give. They were gassing him and Maibe like animals. That’s what the vent must have been used for all along—to put to sleep the chimps they would have hooked to the walls.

  He was on his knees.

  Maibe was on the bed and she was laying on the bed like it was time for a nap.

  His mind began to fuzz and black dots appeared across his vision.

  Maibe was still looking at him, at his pathetic body broken on the floor. She was thinking about all the ways he had failed. His lungs hurt so bad. He deserved so much worse. He couldn’t bear her looking at him. He couldn’t bear that other people had died in order to cure him. He hadn’t asked for that. He hadn’t known it was like that. He would have never—

  A door opened. He heard it but he could not see it. His head was turned away from the door and his cheek was pressed against the cold cement. He thought he was still looking toward the bed Maibe was on, toward the bed they had twice strapped him down to, but he wasn’t sure. He couldn’t see anything now because the black spots had taken over.

  Chapter 28

  I awoke in the middle of a cough. I moved as if on wheels. A deep groove of metal bit into my neck. Something warm pressed against me and it was so hard to breathe. My head pounded. The white cloud had tasted almost sweet, like cotton candy, and the taste was still on my tongue. I tried to sit up but was held in place. My skin scraped against the rough metal.

  “Hold it.” Ricker’s voice, above me. The container I was in tilted as he turned a corner down another dark hallway. The red lights were back on. Something moaned and moved at my feet.

  “Keep him quiet, Maibe,” Ricker said. “They’re not that far behind.”

  I realized I was in a wheelbarrow, one of those we’d seen beside the chimp cages. Alden was in the wheelbarrow with me, unconscious, moaning, his legs and arms thrown over the sides and his body pressed against mine.

  I was not dead. I might as well be dead.

  I told Ricker everything. I told him just to stop and give up.

  He gritted his teeth and forced the wheelbarrow through a door. The crash almost tossed Alden and me out. The door burst open. An alarm went off and its screeches made me clap my hands over my ears. The brightness blinded me. The smoky smell swamped my lungs and I coughed again. When my eyes finally could see, I wished for the darkness again. We were still inside the perimeter of the facility. There were dead bodies and blood everywhere. More Vs streamed in and the uninfected cut them down with bursts of gunfire from positions on the tops of buildings and from high windows. Anyone on the ground was either dead or a V.

  Except for us. We were on the ground and we weren’t dead. Yet.

  Gabbi appeared. She pushed a second wheelbarrow. Mary was in it, unconscious. Her mittened hands and masked face were out of something like the movie Chucky. Her legs hung over the rim like doll legs. Her skin was scratched, bruised, so childlike.

  Tabitha followed close behind Gabbi. “Do you have it?” Tabitha shouted. “Where’s the cure? Do you have it?”

  Tabitha must have helped us escape. Dr. Ferrad and Dr. Stoven had tried to gas us and somehow Gabbi, Ricker, and Tabitha had gotten us out.

  I couldn’t bear to explain about the cure again, not right then, not when any hesitation might get us killed.

  “I have it!” I shouted, lying.

  Tabitha smiled. She let go of my shirt.

  I collapsed back into the wheelbarrow. Ricker grunted from the shift in movement.

  Gabbi plunged into a shallow ditch. The wheelbarrow jerked and almost tossed Mary to the ground. Tabitha pulled it upright. Gabbi pushed on, heading for the downed section of fence, but this took us straight to the Vs and into the uninfected line of fire.

  I gripped the sides of the wheelbarrow. “Not that way!”

  Gabbi looked over her shoulder at me. The closest group of Vs looked too.

  The Vs ran for us. I wanted to shout. I wanted to jump out and run. I wanted to just let them take me.

  Gunfire erupted. One V was shot in the head. The blood arced into the air and the V fell to the ground. Tabitha yelled for Gabbi to go left—away from the Vs. Ricker swerved to follow. I snatched at Alden’s shirt before he tumbled out.

  We raced through the grounds, dodging bodies that lay so still, swerving around other bodies that twitched. The buildings crowded close together. Smoke from the fire made it feel like we ran in the dark.

  Large booms sounded. They shook me from the inside out. We crouched as if waiting for something to drop on our heads. My cheek pressed against the metal. My nose filled with its metallic smell. Ricker looked wild-eyed, the whites of his eyes showing. The redness of his last sunburn deepened almost to a purple. His Feeb skin was like an ashy, wrinkled layer that looked like it could be peeled away. The booms continued—far away, but huge, like bombs exploding.

  Between the booms, long silences made my ears ring. Gabbi picked up the wheelbarrow again and moved slowly through the smoke and around the buildings. The fighting noises faded.

  “It must be Sergeant Bennings,” Tabitha said. “The sounds are drawing the Vs away from here.”

  I knew it was true as soon as she said it. “It’s what he did with our town,” I said.

  All of us were breathing hard. There was a rattle in Gabbi’s chest. Dark circles ringed Ricker and Gabbi’s eyes, but th
ere was a manic light in them too, like maybe they were channeling the angry energy the virus sometimes gave to push themselves beyond normal limits.

  The fence stopped us. The fence was taller than all of us put together. Alden was still unconscious. Mary was awake now. She sat cross-legged in the bowl of the wheelbarrow and watched us with big eyes behind that terrible mask.

  On the other side of the fence was a thick row of dead-looking trees that extended in either direction. Through the trees, a hillside of dirt showed. It must lead up to the road. On the other side of the road would be the water from a river the road held back. The fence was chain-link with barbed wire on top. It was too much like the fence at the last camp. I held my breath and waited for the memory-rush to come because it always came.

  “How do we get through?” There was such terror in Gabbi’s eyes. Tears from the smoke tracked dark lines down her cheeks.

  Tabitha loomed over me. “Give me the cure.”

  I suddenly went cold with fear. Alden was warm against my legs, unconscious, unable to explain. Tabitha looked ready to rip me apart in search for a cure that might as well not exist.

  “There’s nothing to get.” I told them everything I had seen. My voice sounded emotionless even to my own ears. Tabitha cocked her head as if trying to make sense of an insane person’s ramblings. I watched as the little bit of hope in Gabbi’s eyes extinguished itself. Red covered her hands and dripped onto the dirt.

  “Your hands.” I said.

  Gabbi hid her hands behind her back. “It’s nothing.”

  “Blisters from the wheelbarrow,” Tabitha said.

  Gabbi turned a burning stare on her.

  “Don’t hide them,” Tabitha said quietly. “Take care of it or they’ll get infected.”

  I tore a strip of cloth from the bottom of my shirt and then tore it again. Another boom sounded. The fence rattled and the metal links shimmered like a snake slithering through the air. There were darker spots of dirt along the fence as if water had seeped through. Gabbi wrapped her hands as best she could.

  “Instead of telling me what to do,” Gabbi said to Tabitha, “how about sharing some ideas on how to get out of here?”

  I waited for someone to react to my news. I waited for the questions, the accusations, the denial, but there was nothing. It was like I hadn’t just destroyed all of our hopes of saving Ano or Jimmy or ourselves. It was like I hadn’t said anything at all.

  “We could search for a gap,” Ricker said. “Maybe there’s a break in the fence somewhere.”

  I forced myself to think about the problem in front of us. We had no way to cut the links and no way to climb over it. “We go under,” I said because that always seemed to be the answer now. It had been the way into the fairgrounds long ago with Gabbi. It had been the way in and out of the camp when I had lost the Garcia family.

  “The dirt’s like stone,” Tabitha said.

  One of the oak trees had fallen and pulled its roots from the ground. One of those roots had grown all the way to the other side of the fence like it had been trying to escape from this place and got the directions wrong. The dirt it had pulled up created a shallow gap. The dirt was darker there too, like the tree had created a safe place for the water to collect.

  I shook my head but that only made my headache return. “That root has started the job for us.”

  I picked up a stick and went to the fence. I struck the dirt. The stick broke into a dozen pieces.

  Tabitha let out a breath. “That’s exactly—”

  “We just need something tougher.” I searched the ground until I found a broken piece of cement about the size of my fist.

  “What if we’re attacked before you’re finished?” Tabitha said.

  Gabbi picked up another rock. “Help us and we’ll make it.” She struck the ground and dirt scattered in chunks.

  I got on my knees and used the rough cement like a scraper. The dirt crumbled layer by layer. I pushed it out of my way. Dust coated my exposed skin, got into my eyes, my lungs. Gabbi hit away chunks of dirt on one side. I worked on the other. Ricker squeezed between us. Our strikes became the rhythm of a song. I didn’t know the words to this song, only that it was a song we all knew, a song we had almost forgotten.

  After the top layer had been removed it became easier. The dirt softened and turned to mud. Water seeped up in little pools but it didn’t matter, we were clearing the space we needed and making good time.

  The exercise sang through my blood. My thoughts seemed to focus, allowing me to ignore my injured wrist and ankle. The smoke was thick around us, suffocating us. The booms that drew the Vs away from the chimps and the buildings and the cure sounded at regular intervals. I had given up and had been living as a stone for a very long time. Long before I’d begun turning Faint. But none of that mattered. None of it touched me as deeply as this—the three of us here, working together in the dirt, scraping and tearing and punching at what stood in our way.

  We would keep each other safe at least for the little bit of time we had left. We would find a way.

  Alden groaned from his wheelbarrow. Tabitha was nowhere to be found. Every few seconds Gabbi looked over her shoulder to check on Mary. It seemed like tears flowed down Gabbi’s cheeks in an endless stream. I thought it wasn’t because of the smoke anymore.

  Mary was awake and hadn’t moved, as if she were afraid of what she might do. The oven mitts hung over the wheelbarrow edge and we could only see the upper half of her face. She was trying to watch us while keeping herself hidden.

  Ricker bent into his work as if determined to break the dirt or his hands and whichever broke first didn’t much matter to him.

  I stood up. “Try going through.”

  The peace I’d felt before vanished. My hands trembled, not from the work, but from fear. It was happening all over again—the fence, the gap, the escape.

  The sound of engines appeared. I ignored them. They were a memory-rush. A side effect. The engines could not be real. They could not so perfectly match what had happened on that hot summer day with the Garcia family and the girl with the crown of braids.

  Ricker’s eyes locked onto mine. He cocked his head as if he heard something that shouldn’t be there.

  “No,” I whispered.

  “Gabbi,” Ricker said. “Do you hear that?”

  The noise grew until it drowned out the smoke, the heat, the dirt.

  I turned around.

  At first my eyes saw a truck barreling at us along the edge of the fence line and crossing the open, yellowed field at high speed. People hung off the sides and they had guns. My breathing stopped. I blinked.

  The truck vanished.

  In its place was a group of people on foot, running at us, weaving in and out of the trees. They could have been uninfected, Vs, or Feebs like us. They were too far away to tell.

  “There.” Gabbi pointed to where I saw the people, to where the truck had been before my memory had tricked me—unless this now was a trick.

  “What do you see?” I said.

  “A group of people running,” Ricker said.

  “Is there a truck?” I couldn’t keep out the pleading note in my voice. I swore it took them an eternity to answer.

  Finally Gabbi said, “I don’t see a truck. But I hear them. Do you hear them? It has to be Vs. They’re growling like Vs.”

  I listened again. The groans overlapped and rose and then fell in volume. If you didn’t listen too close, a person might think it was the noise an engine makes.

  Tabitha burst through the trees at a fast limp. “Vs are coming.” Sweat dripped off her face. Her clothes were torn, like the trees had snagged them. Her eyes were wide and she locked onto the hole we’d carved out from underneath the fence. “I was looking for an opening. They saw me. We have to hurry.”

  Gabbi and Ricker were already at the wheelbarrows. Mary fought them at first, but then Gabbi crooned something in her ear. This settled her enough to get her to the fence. I crawled through the ot
her side to help pull everyone through. Cold mud seeped into my clothing and it was a welcome relief from the heat and smoke even as it weighed down my clothes and sucked at my skin. Next came Alden’s unconscious form. His blond hair was crusted with dirt. His cheek twitched as I hooked my arms under his shoulders. Our faces were inches away when he opened his blue eyes.

  A confused expression came over his face. “Maibe?”

  He kicked out, hitting Ricker in the jaw with his foot. Ricker moaned and fell back in the dirt. He put his hands to his mouth. When he took them away his teeth were bloody.

  “Alden, Alden. It’s okay. It’s me. We’re making you safe—”

  The Vs burst through the trees. Gabbi let go and stood up—on the other side of the fence from me. Ricker pushed himself up next to Gabbi.

  I shouted but they didn’t hear me. Alden was still in the gap. He was blocking the way to my friends.

  Chapter 29

  I used strength I didn’t know I had to pull Alden the rest of the way.

  I shouted again and scrambled back under the fence, flinging mud everywhere.

  I would not let my friends stand against the Vs without me.

  I would throw myself in the way to keep Ricker and Gabbi from getting trapped forever in the fevers.

  We would die together.

  The three of us stood side by side, holding our digging stones. The first V’s hair was long and stringy. His beard made him look more animal than human. He hunched his shoulders so far over it was like he walked on all fours. His eyes were empty, like he wasn’t really seeing us, but something else he had once hunted. He sniffed the air.

  I shuddered and forced myself to step forward.

  “Maibe!” Gabbi hissed.

  “I can get bit,” I said. “I won’t go into the fevers.”

  “They can still kill you,” Gabbi said.

  “I know,” I said.

  The V closed in.

  I almost closed my eyes because I didn’t want to see it happen. Ricker and Gabbi shouted. The V’s eyes widened and locked onto me. I held up my bandaged arm like an offering. If there was any chance of surviving this, I’d force him to damage that one again. He leaned in and sniffed.