Feast of Weeds (Books 1--4)

by Jamie Thornton

  “Do you think it’s Dr. Ferrad?” Alden said, speaking to Mary, even though he knew she couldn’t answer. It was the wrong direction to be Maibe and Ricker.

  “Just be ready,” Gabbi said.

  She looked at him in that judgmental way of hers that said somehow her time on the streets still counted for more than these last three years of survival ever could. He didn’t understand how Maibe could stand her no matter how loyal she was.

  “I am,” he said. “More than you could know. You have no idea what I’ve been through these last few months.”

  “Yeah. You’re right. I don’t. I’ve never been captured or held prisoner…oh wait, yes I have—by your father.”

  “It’s not the same. They tortured me.”

  “By curing you?”

  “They killed people—” he gritted his teeth and told himself to quit it. The truck was coming, the truck needed to be stopped. Dr. Ferrad needed to be ended. All they had was a knife left in the dashboard. A stupid knife.

  It would have to be enough. He would make it be enough.

  “All right, Alden. I’m sorry. You’re right. Just breathe okay?”

  He let out an explosive breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding. He jumped up and balanced on the balls of his feet.

  “Wait, they might have guns,” Gabbi said.

  The truck slowed at the barricade they’d made out of their vehicle. He had feared exactly this would happen—that in the chaos Dr. Ferrad would escape and it would all start over again.

  In the back of the oncoming truck there was something big covered with a tarp and tied down with rope. He just knew Dr. Ferrad had gotten out the machine—that terrible, evil contraption that stole someone’s blood and transformed it into something that killed off both infections.

  Dr. Ferrad stepped out.

  He dashed around even as some part of him heard Gabbi tell him to stop.

  Dr. Ferrad saw him. He realized he wanted her to pull out a gun and shoot him. That would be the easiest way to solve everything that had happened.

  Fear filled her face and she held up her hands in surrender.

  He pulled the knife out from his belt and decided he wasn’t going to stop. He was going to keep running and bury the knife in her chest where her heart should have been, if she had ever had a heart.

  Something stopped him.

  He didn’t know how long he stood there, knife out, or how long Dr. Ferrad stayed frozen, her hands up and trying to protect herself.

  Sometimes his memory still didn’t work right.

  He heard his name. He heard Maibe’s voice.

  “Alden?”

  Dr. Ferrad’s eyes were bloodshot behind her orange-rimmed glasses. “I know what I’ve done is not enough. It is only one step closer. I will not stop. I have not stopped my search for a cure that could end this all humanely. Don’t think I don’t feel the cost.” She wiped her forehead with the back of her hand.

  Maibe stepped in between Dr. Ferrad and the knife in his hand. Alden’s fingers shook. He’d done all of this for her. He had searched for the cure because he’d wanted it for her.

  “Why don’t I get trapped in the fevers like the others?” Maibe asked. “Why me and not the others?”

  Dr. Ferrad squinted at Maibe. She dropped her hands to her side. “The virus and the bacteria are meant to balance each other out but reinfection overwhelms the balance.”

  “We know this,” Maibe said. “People who get attacked by Vs don’t come back now.”

  Dr. Ferrad nodded. “Blood acts as a sterilizing agent for the two infections over time. Saliva and sputum contain heavy enough loads—”

  “I don’t understand,” Maibe said. “Just tell me—”

  “This is what I mean,” Dr. Ferrad said. “You must let me continue my work. Come with me. Help me. I am so close to another breakthrough. I have discovered so much more about the airborne qualities of the bacteria—”

  “The bacteria is airborne?” Maibe said.

  Dr. Ferrad stepped forward.

  Alden raised his knife.

  “Please.” Dr. Ferrad winced and stepped back. “The bacteria evolved. Or maybe the mutation was always there and they didn’t see it. They engineered it, you know, to fight the Lyssa virus, but they didn’t realize such a simple mutation would take the Borrelia alucinari airborne. It prefers the lung and brain tissue and spreads like tuberculosis. Not through blood, not through saliva—”

  “That’s stupid,” Gabbi said. “We were all infected through blood—”

  “In the beginning, yes,” Dr. Ferrad said, “but no longer and never with the bacteria.”

  “You’re crazy!” Gabbi said. “My friends are dying, trapped in the fevers because they got bit by Vs one too many times.”

  “Exactly,” Dr. Ferrad said, sounding triumphant.

  “Help me save my friends,” Maibe said. “They’re trapped in the fevers. They were Feebs and got bit by Vs and now they’re trapped.”

  Dr. Ferrad adjusted her glasses. “I can do that.”

  Anger flared inside Alden. “She’s lying. Look at her. She’s lying to you. She doesn’t know.”

  “I know enough,” Dr. Ferrad said. “Give me time and I will figure it out.”

  Maibe looked at me with those dark eyes I’d always lost myself in.

  “She’ll come with us,” Maibe said.

  I could forget what she looked like when I was staring at those eyes. I could forget what the disease had done to her when she looked at me like I was all that mattered in the whole universe.

  “We’ll take her back,” Maibe said. “We’ll watch her and make sure—we’ll destroy the machine.”

  Dr. Ferrad’s eyes widened. “I cannot let you do that.”

  He snapped to attention. Time sped up. He realized something terrible about himself. He hadn’t wanted the cure to save Maibe—not just to save her. He’d wanted the cure because then if she had it, if she looked normal again, maybe they could be together. He couldn’t bear to be with her the way she was now. Feeb skin, Feeb memories. He thought maybe he could have loved her except for the disease. He knew this was a terrible flaw inside of him. He wanted to blame his father for this, for helping make him this way, but he knew deep down that maybe he was born this way. Maybe he’d always been a coward.

  His hand was still raised, ready to complete the arc. Just another few feet and Dr. Ferrad would be dead and she would deserve it.

  “Alden, stop.” Maibe’s voice pleaded with him.

  He flinched under that voice. “She’s lying. The information needs to die with her.”

  Dr. Ferrad moved. Her hand hovered at her waist. Was she reaching for a weapon?

  “Don’t do this to yourself, Alden. She’s not fighting back.”

  His hand wavered in the air and then steadied. “I’m okay with that.” He drove the knife forward. Rays of sunlight bounced into his eyes. This did not prevent him from seeing Dr. Ferrad’s eyes widen, how she waited for death, how she didn’t fight back, how there was no weapon at her waist.

  Gabbi yelled, “Stop!”

  There was a blur and suddenly Mary was there and she dove for Dr. Ferrad’s neck and he was driving the knife into her back before he could stop. Her muzzle was off, her gloves were off. The tape trailed from her wrists like a dozen broken leashes.

  Chapter 33

  I cried out and ran for Mary and Alden.

  Mary’s mouth buried into Dr. Ferrad’s neck. Blood spurted and Dr. Ferrad’s eyes rolled into the back of her head. Metallic smells filled the air. Dr. Ferrad went limp.

  The knife stuck out of Mary’s back. She dropped Dr. Ferrad and stumbled to her knees. Her hair was tangled like a huge bird’s nest.

  Gabbi rushed over. Mary fell onto her face.

  Long minutes passed and no one moved except for Gabbi. She rocked Mary like a small child while Mary bled out. We all knew it. Mary was going to be dead soon.

  When I couldn’t stand it anymore I forced myself onto
my feet and checked Dr. Ferrad for a pulse. I didn’t need to check—she was a mess and the smell of blood made me gag—but I did it because this was my fault and I had to be sure.

  Dr. Ferrad was dead.

  With her death had died any chance at bringing back Jimmy and Ano, or keeping Gabbi and Ricker from going V, or me from going Faint.

  Ricker helped us take the machine apart. Mostly he sat on the ground, his injured leg extended, as he told me and Alden what to do.

  I couldn’t look at Alden. When he reached for one of the tubes, I flinched. When we pried open a panel, the metal screeching and leaving indents on my skin, I made sure our fingers didn’t accidentally touch. Alden focused on the work, even as a tear dripped down his nose.

  I would have tried to comfort him before.

  He had killed Mary.

  He hadn’t killed Dr. Ferrad himself, Mary had done that, but if she hadn’t gotten in the way—the knife sticking out of Mary’s back said it all.

  I didn’t know what that made him now, or maybe what that had always made him. Or maybe I did know and didn’t want to admit it. I couldn’t stop seeing a replay of every time he had shrunk from my infected skin, every time I’d caught a look of disgust on his face, every time he flinched at the ugliness he saw in me.

  Each piece of the machine we destroyed became like an unraveling. People had died to make Alden uninfected. Their blood had passed through this thing and transformed into something else that stole away their souls even as Alden regained everything he had lost.

  Except that was a lie.

  He’d lost his soul in exchange for their lives. He was more like his father than I had ever wanted to admit.

  A part of me knew I was being unfair. A part of me knew my anger and my despair at everything we now faced—at going home empty-handed while watching Gabbi and Ricker disappear into the V virus—was unfairly pinning all of this on him.

  I didn’t care.

  We tore apart that machine and we tore apart our friendship along with it.

  We finished the work in silence because I had no words left for him.

  We tossed everything into the water that filled the bowl of land behind us.

  The buildings were destroyed. The uninfected would have been driven out by the flood.

  It was finished.

  When the machine sunk out of sight, I went and sat next to Ricker. I grabbed his hands and pressed both of them to my cheeks. He smelled like mud and sweat and home. He held me that way for a long time and he didn’t say anything even though tears tracked down his cheeks.

  Our victories were hollow. We would go home to Ano and Jimmy and Corrina and Dylan with no more than what we had started with.

  No, that wasn’t true.

  We would go home without any hope left.

  All this time I’d fooled myself into believing we were dead. It didn’t matter if I gave up trying because we were already dead, our bodies just hadn’t caught up yet. I’d told myself this lie because I couldn’t face all the loss and my own part in it.

  Deep down, I had always known the truth but I could only admit it to myself now that we headed toward what felt like a final death.

  Alden stood up. He looked at how Ricker touched me and how I needed that comfort from him.

  “I’m going to find my father,” Alden said.

  I did not argue. He had turned into someone I didn’t recognize.

  “He’s probably dead,” Ricker said. “I saw him go into the water.”

  Alden reached out and touched my shoulder as if in farewell.

  I flinched.

  He smiled a sardonic smile. “I understand.”

  Alden walked into the sun and disappeared in its light.

  I wanted to sit on the road and cry until there was nothing left inside of me. Instead, I helped Ricker over to Mary and Gabbi. Even those steps left him weak. He rested a hand on Gabbi’s shoulder. She shook it off.

  “Gabbi,” he said.

  Mary was like a statue.

  “We need to go home,” Ricker said.

  “That’s all she wanted, you know.” Gabbi wiped her nose on her arm. The arm with the red scratches and the white scars. “She wanted a home for all of us.”

  I knelt down. “Let’s go home then. Let’s go home, Gabbi. She’d want us to all be together again.”

  Gabbi sniffed. Nodded. The light in her eyes hardened.

  We spent the next few hours digging. We hiked down the slope on the dry side and dug Dr. Ferrad’s grave at the base of the levee road. The ground was soft from the water that flooded the other side. This road wouldn’t last much longer, but it would be long enough.

  We buried Dr. Ferrad.

  There was room for Mary, but I stopped them.

  “We should take her with us. I think she would have liked Corrina’s garden. We should bury her there.”

  Ricker gently set Mary’s body back on the ground. Gabbi rubbed angry tears from her eyes.

  I put a comforting hand on Gabbi’s shoulder. She didn’t shrug it off. “We’ll find a safe place for tonight and then I want you to carve Mary’s name into my arm.”

  Chapter 34

  Gabbi drove because I wasn’t very good at it and Ricker couldn’t use his leg.

  We stayed the night in a little gas station and filled up the truck’s tank. Mary remained in the truck bed, wrapped in layers of bedsheets scavenged from a nearby house.

  Gabbi used a bottle of alcohol on a knife before cutting Mary’s name into my skin. We howled at the moon for Mary and dared any Vs to attack. None came.

  The truck took us home. My arm stung from the fresh scars. My wrist and ankle were inflamed, swollen—infected. Ricker’s leg looked an even uglier red. We dumped a bunch of alcohol on our wounds and scrubbed everything out with toothbrushes, but if it helped we couldn’t tell.

  I sat in the middle of the truck bench. The air conditioning was long broken. The windows were down. All three of us sat in puddles of sweat. The wind helped with the smell, but mostly it gave us an excuse not to talk. Mary’s body in the truck bed was a silent accusation.

  The Feeb infection had never really changed who we were, not where it mattered most. But I hadn’t believed that even though I could see it so clearly now.

  Now that we had failed our friends.

  Now that we returned with nothing.

  Gabbi dealt with constant headaches. She kept rubbing at her eyes even though we’d slept like the dead. The smoke still hung in the air but began to thin. There were wrecked cars, trees that had toppled, buildings that had burned and spread destruction when they’d fallen. We stopped a lot to use the map we’d taken from the gas station. We found ways around all of it.

  By late afternoon on the third day, we had made it into the mountains. We watched now for Vs or uninfected or other Feebs, not wanting to draw them along with us.

  Gabbi stopped the truck at the obstacle course entrance. The birds sang us a chorus. The trees were green and tall. The weeds grew thick underneath where the sunshine touched them. The air here was fresh and for the first time in days there was blue sky instead of smoke.

  These sights and sounds should have filled our hearts with happiness. Instead we walked around the obstacles like it was a funeral march. Gabbi and I slowed our pace to match Ricker’s limp. We were careful of the sharp edges and the spiderwebs and the dead ends. We expected to be seen at any moment.

  What we didn’t expect was silence.

  We walked into the center of town. The old Gold Rush-era buildings welcomed us home. The paint was peeling, the sun was hot, the hotel was the tallest building around. Everything was how we’d left it except for the tire tracks. They cut deep grooves into the soil where Sergeant Bennings and his people had been.

  The three of us headed for the church-turned-hospital. We didn’t need to discuss it.

  My wrist throbbed, my arm burned, my ankle ached, but they were nothing next to the pain my heart felt. None of this felt right.

 
; Corrina and Dylan should have been out to see us already. She would have hugged me up into her arms like I was a thirteen year old kid again. She would have gasped at my wrist and sat me down to take care of it. Dylan would have touched the small of her back as she worked and she would have smiled up at him.

  We stepped into the church. The floorboards creaked under our steps. The beds were full. Every bed contained a Faint. Corrina’s table was cluttered to overflowing with glass containers, piles of books, bundles of herbs, orange pill bottles.

  I saw Corrina in one of the beds. Her hair pillowed her head and her hand trailed off the side. An IV hooked into her wrist and a dreamy smile spread across her face.

  “No, no, no.” The words came out in a cry and I rushed to her bedside. She was breathing, but she was gone, like Jimmy. She’d turned Faint.

  A person shuffled out from the back. I looked up, feeling stunned and numb.

  His beard was dark and scruffy, almost making him unrecognizable. His eyes were bloodshot. His arms carried bags filled with clear liquid. It was Dylan.

  “Maibe?” He dropped the bags and rubbed at his eyes. He bent over like an old man and began picking up the bags. “Stop it, Dylan. You can’t lose it now. Get yourself together.”

  “Dylan?” I stepped toward him. “It’s me. It’s really me.”

  He stood up slowly. Most of the bags were still on the floor. He squinted at me and then his eyes hit on something behind me. I turned and saw Ricker and Gabbi at Jimmy’s bedside. Alden’s mother was in a bed next to Jimmy, a smile plastered to her face too.

  “Where’s Ano?” Gabbi said. “Where’s Kern?”

  Dylan blinked. “Is it really you? You’re really back? Do you have the cure? Did you find it?” Each question rose in volume and somehow increased the light that shined in his eyes.

  I shook my head. The movement drew his attention back to me. “We didn’t find it. There isn’t one.”

  My words punched the breath out of him. He bent over again and picked up the remaining bags of fluid. He went to Corrina’s bedside. His clothes were wrinkled and he smelled like he hadn’t washed in days. I knew I must not smell much better.