“What happened?”
“They ordered us to stop, to drop our knives. I was behind the others, and they didn’t see I had a gun. Then Zonia refused, and the guards lifted their weapons, and I knew that they were about to shoot. And I had that damn thing in my hands. And I couldn’t just let them kill Connor, or the others?” He says it like a question, like a plea.
Quinn scrubs a hand across his face and says harshly, “So I pointed it at them and pulled the trigger. And in that moment, I knew exactly what I was doing. I made a decision to do what I’ve given you such hell for doing. I wasn’t aiming to kill — hell, I wasn’t even aiming, didn’t know how to — but the shots hit one guard in his chest. Just … punched bits out of him and he went down and I … I don’t know exactly what happened after that. Next thing we were in the van taking Connor to the safe house.”
“Oh, Quinn.”
“When you rocked up here, I didn’t know what to think or feel. Then you told me that the guard died, and it was definite — I’d shot and killed a man. Deliberately. And somehow it was just easier to blame you than deal with my own guilt — especially when I saw that filthy gun in the locker, in your hands.”
“It’s the same weapon? The semi-automatic?”
Quinn nods and then looks me in the eye. “I’m sorry, Jinxy. Sorry for judging you. Sorry for ever getting you into this. Can you forgive me?” His voice is raw with emotion, and his eyes glitter.
I think about it, putting together the pieces, trying to understand the whole bloody mess of it more fully now that I understand him better. This war makes traitors of us all. Traitors to our nation, to truth, to love and hope. To ourselves.
“Yes,” I say eventually. “I forgive you. But, Quinn?”
“Yeah?” His voice is a mixture of relief and trepidation.
“If you ever leave me again, we’re done.”
“I will never leave you again.” He takes the earring, which he has been gripping in his fist, and threads it through the lobe of my ear. “I vow it.”
Something, a hard mass of panicky uncertainty inside me, dissolves.
“I guess we’ve got some building up of trust to do, you and me,” I say and lie down again on my side. He turns onto his side behind me and curves his body up against mine. I can feel the warmth of his breath on my neck when he speaks.
“I trust you, Jinxy. Implicitly. You’re the best person here.”
“How can you say that after today?”
“You’re honest,” he says. “Your heart is good, and you’re the bravest person I know. You did what no one else could, or would.”
The tears start up again. “I killed a friend.”
“Death isn’t always the worst thing. Sometimes it’s the lesser of two evils. I had never seen the plague close up before, and it’s … beyond words. What you did for Nicky was a mercy. And what you did to the M&Ms, well, I still think it’s not right —”
“So do I!”
“— and they have no right to be executing infected people, let alone conning teenagers into doing it for them, but, Jinxy, it ended those poor people’s suffering, too.”
He hugs me close against him, and we lie together like that — his heart beating against my back, his lips pressed to my neck — in the dark forest, spooned together in our sadness and our love, while outside a soft rain begins to fall, dulling the sounds of creatures rustling in the dark forest.
Just before I fall asleep, I hear him murmur, “I love you. I got in first.”
Chapter 39
Recoil
For the next two weeks, Quinn and I spend every moment that we can together, talking, working side by side, and touching — exploring, kissing, or just holding each other — because we both have a sense that we’re in the precious calm before the storm, that danger and conflict are headed our way. We move my tent back to the end of the line of tents around the camp and spend the nights there together, but we take it slow because this thing between us feels new and fragile. We open and close every day with an, “I love you,” competing to see who can get in first in the morning and last at night.
He holds me tight when I cry over the loss of Nicky, and when I get nightmares and flashbacks — the images of her last days, of that last moment, are especially vivid and disturbing. He cheers me up by telling me funny stories about Kerry and his parents, who sound like a feisty pair not easily impressed by anything. It’s evident how much he loves his family. I’m surprised when Quinn informs me, as we prepare lunch alongside Evyan one Thursday, that I won over his father when I sent the note about Connor in the park that day.
“And your mother?”
“Ah, she’s less easy to please. Connor got his eyes from Dad, but his suspicious nature from Mom. Sure, and I miss him something fierce.”
“Your father?”
“No, Connor. I’m sure he’s due back soon, but Zonia won’t tell me.”
Yeah, I’ve noticed that she likes to keep her cards close to her chest. It’s part of her power game.
“And you? Are you missing Robin and your mother?”
“I do worry about my mother — that she’ll go dark again — but I miss Robin more. Although” — I tear open a packet of freeze-dried soy “meat” chunks and tip the contents into a bowl of boiling water — “I really do miss my mom’s cooking.” I watch with fascinated disgust as the shrunken chunks suck up the moisture and swell into gray, spongy blobs. This cannot be healthy. “And I worry about Robin, too — I don’t know what I’d do if anything bad happened to him.”
“Yeah,” says Quinn, and I look up at him sharply, realizing that something pretty bad happened to his brother. How well is he coping, I wonder?
We’ve spoken about Connor very little, but I’ve heard enough for me to realize that Quinn deeply admires and respects, maybe even idolizes, his brother. From some of the things he says, or rather the way he says them, I get the sense he grew up in Connor’s shadow, and that he feels he still needs to win his brother’s approval. It’s clear he loves Connor, and it must have gutted Quinn to see him in such a bad way after the interrogation.
“Try not to turn that into mush,” Evyan snaps at me, pointing to where my hands have been absently mashing the lumps of soya. “It’s not alive, so you don’t need to kill it.”
She’s been full of these sorts of digs at me since Nicky died. In my head, I know it’s because she’s jealous of the growing relationship between Quinn and me. But my heart clenches like a stabbed anemone every time she reminds me in some or other way of what I did.
The mood around camp has been somber since Nicky’s death. The rebels have been sincerely upset, but it irks me to no end that Zonia and her crew act like they have no responsibility whatsoever in their comrade’s death. There’s a convenient amnesia about the fact that I warned them about the rats and they chose to ignore me.
And they do not like me for being right. Although none of them would help Nicky in the only way that was possible there at the end, and although I acted so that they didn’t have to get blood on their hands, they still resent me for doing it. I killed her, so it’s like I’m responsible for her death. Me — not the plague, or their lax attitudes, or Zonia’s refusal to post armed guards. Which she now does, without fail, on a 24-hour basis.
I feel like the ancient mariner in that poem we studied in English last year — I killed the albatross, and they want me to wear my guilt like a dead bird around my neck, because I’m cursed. I’m the ominous reminder of a reality which includes bad luck and death, and they mutter and whisper about me when they think I can’t hear, and wish me gone. All except Zonia, who totally wants me to stay. Because she has a plan for me.
Zonia is not there to eat the spongy soya stew at lunch. She’s been out of camp all day.
“I hope she gets some fresh fruit and vegetables. I’d kill for an apple,” I say to Quinn as we dish up lunch to the moving line of rebels.
“And here I was thinking you’d kill for the sheer pleasure of
it,” says Evyan.
“Give it a rest, Evyan,” Quinn says.
Zonia arrives just before sunset, looking, as Quinn phrases it, “fair to bursting with news.”
There’s a lot of whispering between her and Darius and the rest of her red-bereted cronies, and they cast long, evaluative looks my way as I sit beside Quinn after supper. It’s unnerving. Quinn has been teaching me how to throw knives, and I’m not half bad, though he’s still better. I think of all the lethal things I’ve been trained to do and wonder if one day someone will teach me something completely benign. Knitting, perhaps, or flower-arranging.
“Time to relieve Mark,” I say, pressing a kiss against Quinn’s jaw. “See you later.”
But when I get to the “guard post” — a dead tree stump on the outer perimeter of the campground — and make to take the weapon from Mark, Zonia pops up beside me and says, “Not tonight, Jinx, I need to talk to you.”
“I’m on guard duty.”
“Evyan!” Zonia calls. “Come stand guard tonight instead of Jinxy.”
Great. Now Evyan has another reason to sneer and give me filthy looks.
Zonia clamps a hand over my elbow and steers me back towards the camp. Quinn looks up in surprise as we approach, but Zonia holds up a hand to indicate he should stay where he is, beckons Darius to join us, and keeps walking.
“You know why we’re here?” Zonia says, sweeping a hand to indicate the forest as we make our way down the path that leads to the old camp office and the van beyond.
“Yeah,” I say, uncertain as to where this conversation is headed. “To keep an eye on Hawke.”
“We have been keeping an eye on him. And together with our operatives in key points, we’ve collected a wealth of information on him and his retreat. We know, for example, that there are bunkers under that lodge. Bunkers stocked with weapons and explosives and equipped with a massive communications center using both analog and digital technology, as well as provisions and an extensive living compound.”
“Wow, who knew.”
“We did, Jinx. We make it our business to know.”
“If he needed to, Hawke could retreat belowground to protect his scared ass, and he could run his government securely from there. Indefinitely,” Darius chips in.
“And we can’t allow that. We are determined to prevent that,” says Zonia. “In fact, High Command has tasked us with the mission of destroying that possibility.”
“Yeah?” I say, not sure what they’re getting at.
We arrive in the small clearing around the charred remains of the old camp office. I keep my eyes off the heap of burned black logs and gray ashes, but images of Nicky flood through my mind anyway. Especially that last one.
“Jinx. Jinx.”
Zonia is speaking to me. I turn my back on the ruin and try to bring my mind back to the here and now. “Sorry, yeah?”
“You’ve seen the explosives in the weapons locker?”
I had wondered what they were for. Now I think I can guess. “You want to blow up the president’s retreat?”
“That was the plan,” says Darius.
“Originally,” says Zonia. “But we had no real idea of how to get past all the security and make it inside to get the job done. And we’re not demolitions experts. But then you came along, and I realized there might be another way. A much neater way.”
“What do you mean?” I’ve got that feeling again, the one that tells me something bad is coming.
“Tomorrow is Friday, the twentieth of September,” Zonia says.
I stare at her blankly. What does the date have to do with anything?
“It’s the Day of the Fallen.”
“Oh, right.”
It’s a new holiday — this will be only the second time it will have come around. It’s the day we’re meant to remember and commemorate all the civilians who have died in terror-attacks, especially the millions who have perished from the plague. Last year, Robin and I sat with Mom in front of the T.V., watching President Hawke as he made speeches and laid a massive wreath against the Fallen Memorial. His tribute to the dead reduced me to tears, and even Robin looked moved. Mom sat stony-faced through his address, but when one of the presidential guards lifted his bugle and started playing Taps, she pushed herself off the sofa and hurried to her room, staying there for the rest of the day.
“It’s a long weekend, and we’ve had word via our inner city contact that President Hawke will be coming to his retreat. We’ll have three full days,” says Darius from beside Zonia.
Huh? Three full days for what? “You want me to stand surveillance again?”
I’d be happy to stretch my legs and get out of camp for a while. In recent days, Zonia has tended to post me on guard duty pretty continuously — there haven’t even been any more shooting lessons.
“No. Not surveillance. I want you to use your specialist skills and do what you’ve been trained to do best,” Zonia says, looking at me intently.
“You want me to …?” Not again. Not. Again.
“Yes.”
“No!” I shout. Everything in me recoils at the very idea of what she is suggesting.
Chapter 40
Refuse
Zonia ignores me and continues speaking in her brisk, businesslike way. “Hawke will go fishing for sure, at that little pond, or skeet shooting on the range. And we know he only takes one or two of the guards with him when he does. He’ll be out in the open and completely vulnerable. It should be easy for you.”
“No, Zonia! I refuse to do it.”
I don’t want to shoot anyone ever again. And I especially don’t want to shoot the president. Apart from the minor fact that it would be murder and treason, I’m kind of fond of the guy. I know the rebels think he’s bad through and through, but I’ve always respected him, even liked him, and the thought of him dead upsets me. My feelings aren’t as positive as they used to be, now that I know more about what the government is up to, but I’m a long way off from wishing him dead, let alone wanting to be the one who assassinates him.
“I’d do it myself,” continues Zonia, “but I know I’m hopeless, and Darius’s no sniper either. Nicky was our best bet, really, but she’s out of the running now.”
“She’s dead!” I say, horrified at her callousness.
I shut my eyes tight for a second, as if that could repel the image that flashes across my mind — my gun against her head. My finger pulling the trigger. Her body slumping at my feet.
“Yes, yes, very sad. But the revolution must continue, even when it means individual rebels have to sacrifice their lives.”
“She didn’t sacrifice her life — she was bitten by a rat! I warned you that could happen.”
“What’s this all about?” asks Quinn. He strides up the path towards us, tucking a knife into the sheath he now wears on his belt.
“And Quinn doesn’t have the cojones to do it,” Zonia says.
“Do what, exactly?” asks Quinn.
“Just because Quinn thinks sniping is morally wrong doesn’t mean he’s a coward. There are all kinds of courage!” I snap.
“Can someone please explain what you guys are talking about?” says Quinn.
“We are one of two rebel teams who have been given the mission to take out President Hawke. And I plan on us being the team that succeeds.” She makes it sound like a fun game of capture-the-flag. “And our sniper specialist here is going to help us with that.”
“No I am not,” I insist. “I will not assassinate the president!”
“What?” says Quinn.
I spin to face him. “Did you know about this?” I demand. “Did you know this is what they had planned for me?”
“No!”
Zonia carries on talking calmly, as if I haven’t just point-blank refused. “You’re a gift, Jinx, a gift that just fell into our laps. This is a vital task for the revolution. If Hawke is removed from the equation, it’ll save many lives down the line. He’s a menace and a threat to our nation, and
more powerful and dangerous than any rat.”
“He’s like a mutant who needs to be euthanized so that others aren’t infected,” says Darius with a smirk.
“Listen to yourselves!” I can’t believe this is happening.
“Zonia,” says Quinn. “We need to discuss this.”
“And that’s what you were trained for, not so? To take out threats to humanity?” she says to me, ignoring Quinn. “You’re already skilled and primed.”
“Locked and loaded,” adds Darius.
“Zonia, this is wrong. You can’t —” Quinn begins.
“I can and I will,” she says, her eyes cold and her jaw set. “We are losing this war. Losing! We need to turn things around by removing high-value targets if we want a better future for this nation.”
“Not this way!”
“The end justifies the means.” She says it with a note of finality, like it’s the end of the discussion.
But I am far from finished.
“That’s exactly what they say! How do you even tell yourself apart from them anymore? Even your language is the same — take down, euthanize, remove high-value targets — you’re talking about assassination, the cold-blooded murder of the President!” I turn to Quinn again. His face is twisted into a grimace of concern and anger. “I thought this was a political movement to expose what the government and its agencies are doing, not an armed resistance. I never signed up for civil war against my fellow Americans.”
“Neither did I,” says Quinn.
“Besides, as soon as he’s shot, they’ll know what direction it came from, and this whole mountain will be swarming with special forces on the ground and in the air. Have you thought about that?” I ask Zonia, hoping to deter her from this course with practical considerations, since the ethical ones don’t seem to matter to her.
The Recoil Trilogy 3 Book Boxed Set: Including Recoil, Refuse and Rebel Page 42
