The Recoil Trilogy 3 Book Boxed Set: Including Recoil, Refuse and Rebel

by Joanne Macgregor

  “What do you think?” Candace asks.

  I sigh. I am not going to be allowed to duck out of my promise.

  “I think it’s time,” I say.

  I go early to the drop-off spot and twist a piece of long grass into knots while I wait for Quinn, but this morning it’s Evyan who brings the supplies. I glance at Quinn’s hammock. It’s empty, though his backpack still leans up against the tree trunk.

  “Where’s Quinn?” I ask Evyan.

  “He’s on surveillance duty with Kate and Mark. He does have more important duties than keeping an eye on you, you know.”

  Perhaps it’s better that he’s not present. It’s going to be hard enough saying what needs to be said without looking Quinn in the eye as I say it.

  “Please tell Zonia that I would like everyone to come here for a meeting as soon as possible.”

  “Oh, you would, would you?”

  I don’t have the energy to get angry. “Yes I would. Tell her it’s about Nicky.”

  When everyone except Quinn, Kate and Mark are gathered together beyond the drop-off spot, I begin.

  “Nicky has started hemorrhaging blood from everywhere. She’s completely out of it and suffering badly. We’ve run out of pain meds. And it’s now dangerous to nurse her.”

  A line of grave faces stares back at me.

  “Before she— When she still knew what she was saying, Nicky begged me to help her when she reached this stage.”

  “Help her?” asks Evyan. “What exactly does that mean — help her?”

  I don’t know how to say this any way but straight out. “She asked me to end her life.”

  A few of the rebels exchange glances, but nobody says anything.

  “I would like to know what you all think.”

  After a long pause, Zonia asks, “How would you do it?”

  “I would have preferred to have given her an overdose of the pain meds and let her slip away.” Actually, I would have preferred to have nothing to do with it at all. “But that’s not possible now. She would have to be … shot.”

  Bree, Kirsty and Neil flinch. Zonia’s expression doesn’t change. Darius looks suspicious again. Does he honestly still believe I’m just looking for a chance to shoot someone?

  “If anyone else would like to volunteer to do the necessary, you’re most welcome,” I say, yanking the Glock out of my waistband and holding it out to them on the palm of my hand.

  There are no takers. Big surprise.

  “I would like to know that everyone agrees that this is what we should do. We can take a vote.” No response from anyone. “Zonia?”

  She just stares back at me, doesn’t even nod. This is all going to be on me.

  “Are there any objections, then?”

  Still nothing. They are such a bunch of cowards.

  “Right.”

  I spin on my heel and stalk back to the cabin, feeling all their eyes on my back. Candace comes with me but stops outside the cabin, saying, with a guilty grimace, “I’ll wait out here. I’m sorry to leave it to you, Jinx, but I just can’t.”

  I can’t either. That’s the point nobody else seems to get. Nothing in my life has prepared me for shooting a friend in the head. I can’t.

  But I must.

  I open the door tentatively, half-hoping that Nicky will attack me again. It would be so much easier if I could do this in self-defense. But when I open the door, the only thing that hits me is a fetid stench, as solid and breathtaking as a blow to the solar plexus.

  Nicky sits in a corner, hunched over a pool of blood and dark, lumpy fluid, crooning, “No green, no him, no green, no him,” over and over again. As she chants, she rocks back and forth, reminding me irresistibly of my father, when he was dying. Nothing about this is going to be easy.

  “Nicky?”

  She looks up at me. Her eyes are leaking tears of blood.

  “There’s no green, Nicky, it’s gone.”

  She looks at me raptly with eyes that seem fixed on a different reality.

  “And there’s no him. He’s gone. It’s all gone.”

  “All gone?”

  “Yes, all gone.” I try to make my voice gentle and soothing. “It’s time to sleep now, Nicky.”

  I risk getting close to her, placing my feet carefully to the side of the mess on the floor and crouching down. I reach out a hand and gently brush the blood-matted hair off her forehead.

  “Do you want to sleep now, Nicky, hmm? Do you just want to go to sleep?” I say softly.

  Something like a flicker of awareness lights her eyes. Or perhaps I’m just imagining it, desperately wanting her to have some part in this. Her chin jerks. Is it a nod, or an involuntary spasm?

  “Just close your eyes, Nicky.” I brush my hand over her eyes, closing the lids. “And go to sleep.”

  She groans, but her blood-rimmed eyes stay closed.

  Then I lift the pistol and place it against her temple.

  And I fire.

  Chapter 37

  Pyre

  I sit in the late afternoon sun, slumped against the outside wall of the office, exhausted and empty. I can’t move except to tremble, and that I can’t stop. My hands shake continuously, and shudders ripple down the length of my body. I feel cold and nauseated.

  Is it rat fever?

  I can’t allow myself to think or feel, because that will crack me open down the middle, so I stare hard at a pokeweed plant growing nearby. Between its vivid green leaves, sprays of inky-purple berries droop down on magenta stems. They remind me of Roberta Roth’s hair. A flat brown millipede moves down to the end of one spray, then turns around and heads back up the stem.

  In a month, what berries the catbirds and thrushes haven’t eaten on their way south for the winter will begin to shrivel and dry. The leaves of these oaks and maples and sourwoods will flame amber and gold and crimson. Fall.

  Back home it will be Halloween, with T.V. specials about vampires and zombies. My friends will be all over the social media sites, virtual trick-or-treating, and sending drone deliveries of candy in the shapes of fangs and veined eyeballs and blood-filled jelly rats. I can’t think, now, why I ever thought any of that was amusing.

  “Jinxy?” It’s Quinn’s voice.

  I look up, not sure what his response to my actions here today will be.

  He’s carrying a battered red gas can, and he’s walked beyond the drop-off point.

  “Wait.” I scramble to my feet and hold out a hand to stop him. “Don’t come any closer.”

  He stops and says my name again, and his voice is full of compassion. He reaches out a hand as if to squeeze mine across the space between us. “I heard. I’m so sorry.”

  Tears overflow, and I want nothing more than to hide myself in his arms, but when he takes a step toward me, I make myself say, “Stop! I mean it, not another step.”

  He sighs, puts down the gas can, and places a box of matches on top of it. “It’s gas. For the cabin.”

  I nod. “Okay. Now back up.”

  He takes a few paces back, and I retrieve the gas and matches. Candace throws all the bags of contaminated dressings, cleaning materials and equipment into the cabin, while I splash the gas around the base and up over log sides and what I can reach of the roof. We both peel off our PPE suits, gloves, masks and booties, and toss them through the doorway. I feel oddly exposed in just my shorts and tank top, as if I’m standing naked in the growing shadows. The air is cool on my bare skin.

  I use the last of the gas to trail a thin line in the sand away from the cabin and hurl the gas can away. Then I pause, holding the matches. This is the only funeral Nicky will get; we should say something.

  I think of her kindness to me when everyone else was unfriendly, her trust when it came to sharing information about the rebels, her encouragement about Quinn.

  “Thank you, Nicky. Goodbye.” It’s about all I can choke out.

  Beside me, Candace recites the Lord’s Prayer.

  Then I strike a match a
nd toss it onto the gas trail. The fire races along the ground and then envelops the log cabin with a “whmphf”. Flames devour the wooden walls and roof. The front window bursts outward in a shatter of glass shards. We stand and watch the pyre, a blazing sunset against the dimming light of the shady forest.

  Above the roar of the fire, I hear a deep voice behind me. Quinn is singing Amazing Grace.

  That saved a wretch like me.

  Candace joins in, but my throat is too tight to let any sound escape.

  … bright shining as the sun …

  The front wall of the cabin collapses backward in the pyre of flames, the roof caves in and the structure falls in on itself. Still it burns ferociously, consuming Nicky, destroying the virus.

  … Was blind, but now I see.

  Chapter 38

  Regrets

  We let the fire burn right down to ashes, and then I shovel dirt over the remains. The mound gets higher and higher, but I can’t seem to stop digging and dropping, digging and dropping. A warm hand closes over mine, and I’m jolted from my daze.

  “Quinn! What …? You shouldn’t be here!”

  He tugs me gently away from the mound, and I notice that a two-man tent has been erected at the drop-off point.

  “That’s for Candace. I’ve moved yours a bit further away into the trees, so we can have some privacy.”

  “We? Quinn, I might not be safe. You aren’t even wearing a mask. You need to stay away.”

  “No, I need to stay with you.”

  I‘m too tired to argue. Too lonely to insist.

  Our tent is glowing golden in the darkness — Quinn has lit a lantern and hung it from an inside hook. I crawl through the opening and lie down on one of the sleeping bags, wishing I could just sink into a dreamless sleep myself. Quinn stretches out beside me and props his face up on one hand, studying me.

  “I had to,” I whisper. “Do you see? I had to do it.” Please let him understand.

  “Shhh, there, sweet Jinxy. Of course you had to.” He strokes my cheek with the backs of his fingers. “I’m so sorry it fell to you. I know how you cared about her. Here, don’t cry.” He moves closer to kiss the tears at my temples.

  “Sorry,” I say, wiping away the tears that won’t stop coming. “You must think I’m so weak.”

  “Hush. You’re not crying because you’re weak. You’re crying because you’ve been strong for too long.”

  His kindness completely undoes me. Where all the accusations and fights and insults have toughened me up and sewn me shut tight, Quinn’s gentleness and understanding unstitches me, and I unravel.

  He lies on his back and pulls my head onto his shoulder, and I begin talking. His warm hands rub my arms and hold me tight against him. Our closeness in the tent seems to invite confidences. I can’t see his face, and I’m glad — it’s easier to talk this way. And once I begin, I can’t stop. Between sobs and hiccups, I tell him everything. I tell him how I felt about him, what I knew and didn’t know, the details of what happened on that last mission — why I darted his brother and then him.

  He strokes my bare arm and I feel many things in his touch — tenderness and gentleness and compassion. His fingers pause when they reach the lumpy scab on my upper arm.

  “What is this?” he asks.

  “It’s a scab. It’s not getting better because I keep picking at it.”

  “A scab? From what?”

  “Never mind,” I say, but he’s pushed himself back up onto an elbow and is studying the burn.

  A deep frown crinkles the skin between his slanted brows as his thumbs move up to gently circle the ugly scab and puckered skin on my upper arm. He checks my other arm and finds the more inflamed sore.

  He raises his gaze to mine, and there is puzzlement and something like anger in the depths of his gray eyes.

  “How did you get these, Jinxy?”

  “Do you really want to know?”

  He tilts his head, gives me an are-you-kidding-me look, and says, “Of course.”

  I expel the breath I’ve been holding since his fingers touched the sores. Where to even begin? With the facts, I guess.

  “They’re burns.”

  “Perfectly circular burns, on the exact same spot on both arms?”

  “They’re burns from the electrodes. From where they shocked me.”

  He still looks confused.

  “In the interrogation, Quinn. When they tortured me?” I try to say it lightly, but even I can hear the tense bitterness which sours my voice.

  “Sweet Jesus.” His voice is a whisper.

  He sits up, grabs the lantern and holds it over me, then leans over and inspects every inch of my arms, tracing the faint scar lines with his fingers and running the pads of his thumbs over the fading marks which encircle my wrists.

  “What did they do to you, Jinxy?”

  He peels up my tank top to inspect me and lays his hand, soft as a blessing, over the yellow bruise which still stains my ribs. That’s a souvenir of the combat training, not the interrogation, but before I can set the record straight, he’s examining the scar on my head. I feel a touch, light as a butterfly’s rest, on my scalp, and I realize he’s just kissed the scar.

  “I’m so sorry for this,” he says.

  His lips move down, and then he’s kissing my face where a thin, pale line marks the spot where the shattered glass of his room’s window back at ASTA cut my cheek. “And this,” he murmurs.

  His lips brush my shoulder, then move to kiss my burn sore. I try to pull away, it’s too ugly, but he bows his head so that his lips touch the scab. His forehead rests against my shoulder and he whispers, “So, so sorry. This should never have happened to you. Never.” His lips move down my arms to my wrists, anointing me with kisses and contrition.

  “Ah, Jinxy,” he says when he eventually lifts his head. “Why didn’t you tell me everything as soon as you arrived?”

  “I don’t know. You were so cold and so mad at me. I was scared you wouldn’t believe me. And I wanted you to believe me, Quinn. Me.” I press a hand to my chest. “Not the evidence of burns and bruises. I felt like you shouldn’t need proof. Like my word should be good enough.”

  He nods. “It was. When you gave me hell, when you told me what happened to you, it woke me up. You made me listen and think. And I believed you. But to actually see …”

  I’m overwhelmed with emotions I can’t even name. I can’t speak, so I lift his hand — still wrapped around my own — to my mouth and press a kiss on his knuckles. His eyes, when he meets my gaze, are full of regret. His black lashes are wet.

  “I’m so sorry for what they did to you. It’s my fault for getting you into this mess in the first place. If I hadn’t told you about the rebels, if I hadn’t shown you that footage, they’d have left you alone. You’d still be safe and sound at ASTA.”

  “Yeah, if you hadn’t opened my eyes, if you hadn’t taught me to question what I’m told, I’d still be at ASTA — killing people without even knowing it. I’ve done so much wrong, Quinn, and I don’t know how to make it right.”

  “You’re not the worst person on the planet, Jinxy. We’ve all done things that are wrong. We all have to live with ourselves. You’re not the only one with regrets.”

  I tilt my face up to look at him. What is he saying?

  “Keep talking, Jinxy, get it all out,” he urges, kissing me on the tip of my nose.

  I tell him about the horror of discovering I’d been killing plague victims, my fury at Roth and Sarge’s deceit, my determination to try to help, and my confusion over how the hell I should go about doing that.

  His hand cups my shoulder then slips inside my shirt, where his fingers play with the silver earring on my bra-strap, turning it around and around as I explain how ambivalent I feel about the rebels.

  “I don’t trust Zonia,” I say.

  “Me either.”

  “I think she wants a war — a real one with battles and stuff — and she wants me as one of her soldiers. She
thinks I’m a killer, but I’m not, Quinn. I don’t want to kill, I never wanted to kill.” I sigh, heavy with the weight of what I know, what I’ve done. “It does something to you, it changes something inside when you kill someone.”

  “I know,” he says, so softly I barely catch the words.

  “You don’t. You can’t know what it’s like.”

  “I do.”

  I pull myself up and look down at him. He opens the clasp of the earring and removes it.

  “You’re probably not going to want to wear this anymore.”

  “Why?” I ask, suddenly wary.

  “Jinxy, when I said I was sorry — it wasn’t just for what happened to you. I’m also sorry for how I’ve treated you since.”

  “You were so angry.”

  “Yeah, but mostly at myself.”

  He was angry at himself? Why?

  “I’ve been an asshole, Jinx. Mean and angry and judgmental.”

  “Well, yes,” I say, with a smile. But from what I can see of Quinn’s face in the dim moonlight, he isn’t smiling. He looks grim.

  “And hypocritical. I think I felt so guilty that it made me crazy, and I projected that guilt, that anger, onto you.”

  “Guilty? For what?”

  “Ah, God, Jinxy.” He takes a deep breath and blows it out in a gust. “That night, when we hit the detention center to rescue Connor, it was chaos. Zonia and Darius took the guards at the front security desk hostage, and we made our way to where you said Connor was being held. But there was a guard outside his cell, armed with this huge gun. Zonia threatened to kill her hostage unless the guard opened the door. And she would have done it, too — she had a knife to his throat, and she pressed it in hard enough to draw blood. I wanted to stop her, but Connor was behind that door.”

  I sit up, pulling my knees to my chest. Quinn speaks to the roof of the tent.

  “The guard laid his gun down on the floor and unlocked the cell door. Ross pushed him inside the cell and pulled out Connor — or what was left of him. He was half-dead, Jinxy, covered in blood and bruises and hardly able to stand. And his one eye!” Quinn cups a hand over his right eye, as if holding a swollen bulge. “When I saw him, when I saw what they’d done to him, I was furious! I wanted to kill them with my own bare hands. Darius and Ross were carrying Connor between them. I tried to help, but Zonia ordered me to lock the guards in the cell, get the weapon and bring up the rear. So I did. And we almost made it. We were out the doors and halfway to the van when we ran into a patrol.”