In the End

by Lunetta, Demitria

  “Too late.”

  “Why?”

  “He and Pete followed us out there. They’re both dead. I . . .”My voice catches. “I shot him. The Floraes must have gotten him.”

  “Good.” Jacks looks at me, taking in my guilt. “If anyone deserved to die, it was Tank. Do you know how many girls he’s probably tortured? Girls who couldn’t defend themselves like you could. Girls like my sister.”

  I stare at him, his stony face and dark hair. He holds on to so much pain about his sister’s death. My eyes trace the snake tattoo on his arm while I debate what to do. Would knowing Tank was at fault ease his pain? Would knowing be better than not knowing?

  “Jacks, there’s something I have to tell you.”

  He looks at me expectantly. I take a deep breath.

  “Your sister’s death . . . wasn’t your fault—”

  “I should have been watching her,” he cuts me off.

  “No. I . . . It was Tank.” I say, struggling to find the right words. “He was obsessed with her. He used that night, the night of the fire, to take her. He killed her, Jacks. No matter how carefully you watched her, he would have found a way.”

  Jacks stands up, approaches me with shaking hands. “He told you this, Amy?”

  “Yes . . . no, but, Jacks, Tank is dead.”

  Jacks grabs my shoulders, shakes me. “How do you know what happened?”

  “I read it, in Tank’s psyche-eval.” I realize I made the wrong decision, and fear flashes through me. Jacks collapses on to the floor. He puts his head in my lap and sobs softly. I stroke his hair. “I shouldn’t have said anything,” I whisper.

  “No.” He lifts his head and looks up at me. “I’d rather know everything that bastard did to her. She shouldn’t have to suffer alone.”

  “But she’s gone.”

  “Amy,” he puts his hand in mine. “I want to read it too. Whatever it is you read to find out the truth.”

  I shake my head. “It’s not a good idea, Jacks.” It’s too horrible, I can’t let him read it.

  “I need to.”

  Reluctantly, I pull out Ken’s journal, handing Jacks the loose pieces of paper. I watch him silently while he reads, his mouth slowly dropping. I expect him to rant, to break things, to hit the wall or kick a chair. Instead he sits motionless for a long while, rereading the words.

  “Oh God.” A tear escapes the corner of his eye. His pain is so great, that for the moment, it drowns his anger.

  “It’s not your fault,” I tell him softly. “You had no way of knowing what Tank was up to.”

  He rubs his face, wiping away any trace of tears. “I couldn’t protect her. I couldn’t protect either of you.”

  “I’m not exactly easy to protect. That’s why I have to take care of myself. And Tank’s gone now. He’s not coming back.”

  I reach out my hand to his and hold it gently.

  “I’ve got to tell Doc. I’ve got to tell my dad.”

  “Do you think that’s such a good idea?” I ask. “It might be better if he doesn’t know.”

  Jacks stands, clutching the paper. “He was still her father.”

  I know I can’t stop him, and he leaves without another word. I wait, wondering if knowing is better. Was my life better when I was ignorant of what the Floraes really were, and my mother’s part in their creation? Was it better to now know if Baby was safe or not? No. Knowing is always better.

  Jacks returns a while later, looking grim.

  “How’d he take it?” I jump up and ask.

  “He . . . He acted like he didn’t even hear me. He’s working on analyzing Brenna’s blood. He didn’t even stop to talk about what I was telling him. He . . . He may have been high. He just kept saying that I should go away and he’d come get me when he was done.”

  I make Jacks sit and get him some water. He drinks it slowly, staring at the wall. I stay next to him, trying to be a source of strength he can use.

  Jacks and I sit with Brenna in silence. Every minute that passes she looks more like herself, and I silently will her to get better. She may be the only hope that Baby has.

  Hours later, we’re deep in the darkest morning.

  I’m exhausted, but my mind is racing and I’m too wired to sleep. Too much is at stake; too many people I care about are in danger. Still, my body’s shutting down. My eyes are just beginning to close when Ken comes into the room.

  He looks from me to Brenna to Jacks.

  “What are you doing in here? I saw the light on, but this room is supposed to be empty.”

  “Doc didn’t send you?” I ask. “He said he was going to get you a long time ago.”

  “No, why would he?” He looks curiously at Brenna.

  I scramble up, overcome with gratitude for this stroke of luck despite Doc’s efforts to thwart us.

  “Brenna was bitten by a Florae and didn’t change,” I say hurriedly.

  Ken freezes for a second, his mouth open. Recovering, he rushes over to examine Brenna. “Are you certain?” He feels her head, looks in her eyes, and unwraps and studies her wound. He has the same wild look on his face that Doc had. Their single-minded obsession has ruled them, and now that the end is in sight, it’s as though a fever has taken over. “I have to see what’s going on in her blood.”

  “Doc’s already on it,” Jacks tells him.

  “He took Brenna’s blood,” I add.

  Ken looks up from Brenna for the first time since receiving the news she was bitten and didn’t change. “But I just saw Doc in the exercise yard. He had a line of people he was giving shots to. I wondered what he was up to so late at night, but I just assumed it was the newest vaccine.”

  “Giving shots?” I say. “He’s not even looking at Brenna’s blood?”

  Jacks leaps to his feet. “Where’s that clipboard Doc had me get?” He’s frantically searching the exam room. “The one with the names of the people who’ve already had the shot?”

  “I don’t know. Doc must have taken it,” I say.

  “What are you doing?” Ken asks as Jacks tears the room apart.

  “That list,” Jacks says, giving up and staring at Ken, eyes wide. “Doc took it. He’s lining those people up, he’s injecting—”

  “You’re not making sense,” Ken says. “Why would he be vaccinating people who’ve already received the vaccine?”

  “He said he was going to do some ‘life tests,’” I say. “What does that mean?”

  Ken looks at us, his excitement replaced in a flash by fear. “Life tests? Life test is the term we use for experimenting on human subjects.” He gives his head a shake. “No. He must just be inoculating them. Then he’ll test this subject’s blood.”

  In Doc’s mind, the vaccine is effective. Removing Brenna’s fingers stopped the spread of infection while the vaccine suppressed it in her blood. I think of all I know about the infection, and for some reason the Black Pox springs to mind. People can survive the infection and still spread the disease.Doc was already unhinged. Jacks said he thought he was drugged up. Could the possibility of a vaccine and the news of what really happened to Layla push him over the edge?

  I remember Doc’s look, his feral glee at the thought of having found an effective vaccine. I shake my head just as Ken did, trying to rattle that mad image out of it. No. Not even Doc is crazy enough to risk injecting Florae-infected blood into the veins of people he only thinks have been successfully vaccinated. If he’s wrong—

  Then the blood in my own veins turns cold, remembering Pete’s panicked whisper to Tank about the fate of another of Doc’s thugs.

  Made him into a damned Florae.

  I can barely say the words. “Doc is testing Brenna’s blood,” I say. “He’s testing it on those people in the Yard.”

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  “Show me where he is,” I
order Ken. “Now.”

  “Amy, calm down!” Jacks yells.

  “Don’t you understand what’s going on?” I scream. “We’ve got to stop this before it’s too late!”

  Ken nods but eyes Brenna. “She shouldn’t be left alone.”

  I turn to Jacks. “Can you stay with her?”

  “If you’re going out there, I want to go with—”

  “No,” I say. “I can fight a Florae if I need to. You need to protect Brenna.”

  “I need to protect you,” he says, grabbing my wrist. “You’re the one I—”

  He stops himself, hesitates, and then leans in. My heart leaps to my throat as I think he’s going to kiss me again.

  But then he just whispers, “Just . . . get back here alive.”

  He’s so close, a strange, tingling sensation pours through me, all the way to the ends of my toes.

  “I will,” I tell him. “I promise.”

  I follow Ken into the corridor and around a corner. There’s a surprising lack of guards around, but when we head out into the exercise yard, I see why.

  Doc has tasked the guards with rounding up people and keeping them in line. He’s set up lights, utilizing the power from the wall. The standing lamps look out of place and cast an eerie glow across the yard. We watch as Doc administers a shot on a woman then pushes her to a guard to move her along. Ken and I approach. One man refuses the injection. Doc nods to a guard, who brings down the butt of his rifle in the man’s face. Doc injects him, and the patient is dragged to the side.

  Ken and I run past the guards. One tries to stop us, but Doc waves us though. “Ah, Ken,” he says, “you’ve come to participate in my case study? I can use the help.” Doc’s eyes have gone glassy, a sickening grin plastered to his face.

  Ken eyes the syringe in Doc’s hand. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “The vaccine. It’s effective. I’m injecting all these people with that bitten girl’s blood. A meaningless test, but protocol is protocol. The i’s need dotting, the t’s crossing. I know she’s immune. And if she’s immune, even though she’s a carrier, everyone else given the vaccine is also immune. I mean, I couldn’t go out and get a live Florae, could I? Much too dangerous. Believe me, I know.”

  “How does that make any sense?” Ken asks desperately. “The girl didn’t change, but that doesn’t mean the vaccine was effective. There could be any number of other factors in play. But one thing we do know is that she’s a carrier.”

  “Oh yes, she is, certainly,” Doc tells us happily. He takes a bottle out of his pocket, pops the top, and pours some pills into his mouth. He pauses and swallows with a shake of his head. He turns back to us. “I ran her blood. The same bacteria we find in the Floraes is in her, fully developed, and yet she remains unchanged.”

  I cringe as he gives another man a shot. “If the vaccine is ineffective,” I say, “doesn’t that mean that all these people are now infected?”

  The man who was knocked out with the rifle begins to shake where he lies, unconscious. I pull out my gun and take a step back from him. “Ken . . .?”

  “It’s started,” Ken whispers, unbelieving.

  I look around the Yard. How many has Doc infected? Some people change in minutes, other hours. How can it be contained? Another man drops to his knees, his hands to his ears. He screams, his skin turning from sunburned-brown to dark-yellow to yellow-green. When his hands fall away from his head, one ear tumbles to the ground, bouncing off the hard concrete. The other ear hangs loosely, attached by a thin piece of flesh. I stare, horrified. I’ve never seen anyone actually change before.

  Ken comes to his senses before I do. “We can’t contain this, not now. Our only hope is to leave.”

  “Leave? Where?” There’s nowhere left to run.

  “I’ll contact New Hope, tell them about Brenna. They’ll send a hover-copter for us.” He grabs my hand. “Come with me. Kay would want you safe.”

  “And Jacks,” I say, and he nods. We’ll get out and take Brenna to New Hope.

  Ken pulls me back toward the wall, but the panic has begun. Someone runs into us, knocking me onto my stomach. When I roll over, Ken has disappeared, and a man stands over me, salivating. He hasn’t changed completely yet, but he’s close—his ears and nose are gone, his skin a pale pea-green. His eyes are tinged with yellow, but they aren’t yet milky and useless. They burn with a fire I’ve seen before in Floraes who haven’t yet lost all their sight. Hunger.

  He is no longer a man. He is a monster. He’s one of Them.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  He lunges greedily for me, and I don’t allow myself to hesitate. I can’t consider the fact that this creature was a man just seconds ago. I grab my gun, take aim, and shoot. His head snaps back from the impact and he falls over. Another Florae rushes to his side and begins to feed on him.

  I scramble to my feet, pull up my hood, and prepare myself for a fight—knife in one hand, gun in the other. In the increasing frenzy, the lights that Doc had set up are knocked over and extinguished. I wish I had my Guardian glasses, but I left my pack with Jacks in the examination room. In the bottom of my belly I feel a familiar quivering.

  Fear.

  I’ll be fine, I tell myself sternly. I lived for years in the shadows. I’m not afraid of the dark. It will make it easier to avoid the Floraes and get back inside.

  Suddenly the exercise yard is filled with a burst of brightness. The spotlights in the guard towers have been turned toward the yard. I silently curse the light. The guards are at least trying to destroy the Floraes though. The sound of gunshots fills the air, making it hard to hear anything, to remain alert.

  I sidestep a man on his knees, holding his ears, his face contorted in pain. Auditory sensitivity, one of the first signs he’s been infected. I level my gun, but I can’t bring myself to shoot him. He’s still a person. A man rushes toward me on my right, and I prepare for his assault, taking the fighter’s stance Kay taught me, but the man is only trying to escape. He dashes past me and starts banging on the door behind me to get inside the walls. I throw my back against the wall a few yards away from him, every muscle tingling, ready to fight any Florae that attacks.

  One moment the man is pounding on the door, screaming in panicked desperation, and the next another volley of gunfire assaults my ears and the man drops to the ground. I sprint down the wall away from the door—the guards are taking down every threat to their quarantine. I can only hope Ken made it inside before the guards decided to shoot anyone trying to escape past the wall.

  I need to reach my cellblock and figure out what to do from there. Jacks and Brenna should be safe inside.

  Keeping my back to the wall, I circle the exercise yard, which has deteriorated into utter chaos. Only a few of the bitten have turned into full Floraes; most are in varying degrees of change and writhe on the ground in pain. One man I pass stares at his green arms, unbelieving. Another holds his nose in place as he pulls clumps of hair from his head.

  I hurry along the wall, my progress interrupted by other infected who have not yet begun to change, pleading for help. I ignore them, though each appeal cuts through me like a knife, leaving a sharp pain in my chest. It is too late for them, though. They’re doomed.

  I reach the chain-link fence that separates the Arena from the exercise yard. Half of it has been torn down. A determined Florae now feasts within the crumpled fence, surrounded by bodies.

  I continue on past the damaged area of the fence before the creature can focus on me, but another Florae has honed in on the smell of his blood. It might have passed me in the dark, but a spotlight sweeping the yard highlights me for a fraction of a second, just long enough for this new Florae to focus its weak eyes on me. It speeds toward me, and I manage to shoot it in the neck—only enough to slow it down. It plows into me, driving me ag
ainst the half-erect fence. Weakened by its wound, though, it merely pinches at my synth-suit as it tries to bite my shoulder. I work my knife into the hole my bullet opened in its neck until the blade finds the spinal column, and then I pull it out for one final thrust. The knife severs its spine with a sickening snap, and the creature falls to the ground, twitching.

  Freed, I move past Cellblock A, pushing through a crowd of people fighting to get inside. Cellblock B is no better. There’s a man at the door with a rifle. I survey the twenty or so people between us, unable to tell if they’re infected or not. I don’t see any bites or gashes, but I understand the man not wanting to take any chances.

  “Get lost or get shot,” he tells a man pressing close to him.

  “My cell is in there,” the man shouts. “My wife is waiting for me.”

  “Too bad,” the armed man says, knocking the man back with the butt of the rifle, then sweeping its barrel back and forth before the crowd. He’s trying to contain the infection to the exercise yard. Understandable, but I have to get inside. That’s where Jacks would look for me. I step up, putting away my weapons and pulling up my hood so he can see my face.

  “I just want to go to my cell and lock myself in,” I say, looking at him over the end of the rifle barrel now trained on me. “I haven’t been bitten, and if I had, I wouldn’t do much damage from inside my cell.”

  The people around me murmur their agreement and, pushing in around me, move me to within inches of the rifle barrel’s cold black eye.

  Lowering my voice, I say, “You’re not going to be able to hold all these people for much longer, not if they decide to rush you.” I can see the fear in the man’s eyes, but he holds his ground. “It’s admirable, what you’re trying to do,” I tell him, “but don’t you think you’d be better off going to your own cell and locking yourself in?”

  He considers this, nodding just perceptibly, then takes a step back into the cellblock. “All right. Ya’ll got thirty seconds to get to your cells and lock the doors. If I catch anyone out, I’ll shoot. I ain’t getting bit by no damned Florae.”