He didn’t respond. He didn’t look at me; his gaze stayed firmly on the world beyond the gates as the hand holding mine clenched, squeezing hard. I squeezed back, following his gaze. Moments passed by in silence, leaving me wondering why we were up here. And then I saw it . . .
It was just a sliver at first, a spark of light and color beyond the tree line, and then all at once the sun burst free, lighting up the sky in an explosion of color.
“When I was little, my uncle used to wake me up before dawn,” he said. “He’d drag my lazy ass up to the roof to watch the sun come up. He always said a man should bear witness to every sunrise and sunset, that when everything else was fucked up and failing, you could always count on the sun. That the damn sun would never let you down.”
He glanced down at me and I looked up at him, both of us silently watching each other. Up until now, I’d never believed that feelings could be so real, so powerful, obliterating everything that you were and giving birth to something entirely new. Something so unbelievably real that I could barely breathe.
“Sometimes I wish it would all just burn away,” he said, his voice hoarse and so broken that tears sprang to my eyes.
“Me too,” I whispered, speaking the truth—almost wishing for it. Because if this was it, if this was all there was left, maybe it should just burn away. Maybe we all should.
One second we were staring at each other, and the next we were kissing. We kissed and kissed, and then I climbed up his body, wrapping around him, and his hands were on me, cupping my backside and fisting in my hair.
It was perfect, me and him and the explosion of life all around us. So perfect, in fact, that if the sun had chosen in that moment to take us all, to finally rid the world of its remaining stragglers, I wouldn’t have cared.
He pulled away first and I took a breath, and then another. I breathed in and out, feeling as if I were breathing for the first time in so long. I breathed long and hard, sucking the crisp morning air into my lungs, letting it wash everything else away, all the sorrow, the guilt, the hopelessness, and the longing.
Reaching up, I cupped his face, ready to tell him that everything was going to be fine, that we had each other now and we could survive this, that we could survive anything. But the thought gave me pause. All this time I’d been feeling weak inside these gates, thinking I needed him to survive this place and these people.
I’d been so wrong. I didn’t need him to help me survive. I didn’t need anyone.
But the truth was, I didn’t want to survive on my own anymore. I didn’t want to do any of this on my own.
And as I stared into his dark eyes, I could see that he didn’t want to either.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Eagle
After dropping Autumn off at the doctor’s office, I headed down the hall and took a seat in the stairwell. It smelled faintly of bleach, and looked cleaner and less dusty than it had yesterday.
Autumn didn’t realize it but every day during the last week, I hadn’t left her alone. While she worked, I waited, watching everyone that came inside the building, worried each day that it was the day Liv would make her move.
We had to leave, but I still hadn’t come up with a plan. The guards at the gates had been doubled, something I was positive was Liv’s doing. If I tried to leave, especially with Autumn, I had the sneaking suspicion I’d be accused of stealing something that Liv would proclaim belonged to Purgatory. Whatever Liv wanted, Liv got, and right now Liv wanted revenge.
I’d mulled over the idea of being up front with Jeffers about all of it, every single dirty detail of my relationship with Liv over the years, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. There had to be another way to get the fuck out of here safely, and with Jeffers’s last shred of sanity intact. If he didn’t have me shot on sight, the knowledge would—at the very least—break him. And he already blamed me for so much, I couldn’t be the one to take Liv from him too. He needed to figure out on his own that she was poison.
I could always kill her. Kill her and run. But then there was the question of where the hell we would go.
We couldn’t wander forever. My supplies would run out, and out there in the wild, supplies were finite, dwindling more each day. I was sure there were other places to be found, other colonies where people had congregated for safety, but I couldn’t imagine them being any better off than Purgatory was. Same shit, same type of people, different place.
It was an endless cycle of questions that I had no answers for. Nothing I came up with boosted my confidence but instead left me feeling something I wasn’t used to feeling, something I hadn’t felt in a damn long time. Helpless.
Footsteps on the stairs had me sitting up straighter. Craning my neck, I watched as Marcus appeared at the bottom.
“Been lookin’ for you, boss,” he said. Sending a hand through his greasy hair, he glanced over his shoulder.
“Found me,” I muttered.
“Something’s happening,” he continued. “They’re all gathered up in Jeffers’s building. Something big is going down, and everyone’s talking. Figured you might know what the fuck is up.”
It could be anything. A horde might have been spotted. Or maybe someone had been found stealing, or even murdered. Jeffers gathered guards on a regular basis, and most times it was just to dole out their earnings.
“It’s probably nothing,” I said, but even as I said it, my stomach took a dive to my feet. Maybe this was it; maybe Liv was making her move. Accusing me of something and gathering the guards to take me down and lock me up would be a great way to get to Autumn. There’d be no one to protect her without me around, and no one would stand up to Liv in her defense.
Marcus looked skeptical. “If you say so.” He shrugged his shoulders. “But I’m laying low just in case. If they’re gonna be cracking down on the small-business man, then I’d best make myself invisible.”
I snorted. “You think you’re the only one who skims? Half the people here aren’t being up front and got shit going down on the side. Lying, cheating, and stealing is the only way anyone gets ahead. Look at Grannie. She’s doing better than all of us.”
“Yeah.” Marcus glanced over his shoulder again, and my gaze dropped to the crossbow he had slung over his shoulder, and the guns hanging off his belt.
Jumping up, I gestured to his guns. “Gimme those,” I demanded.
Marcus glanced down. “What? Fuck you.”
“No, fuck you. Gimme your guns. I only have one on me and no extra clips.”
Marcus’s eyes narrowed. “You’ve got more at home.”
I gritted my teeth. “I can’t leave. I would if I could, but I fucking can’t. Now give me your guns and get the hell out of here.”
“Man . . .” Shaking his head, he groaned, then pulled free one of his pistols and sent it flying up the stairs.
I caught it easily and tucked it into the back of my jeans. “The other one,” I said, gesturing.
Cursing under his breath, he did as I asked and sent the second weapon barreling toward me. This one I caught and didn’t tuck away. If they were coming for me, I was going to be ready. And even if they did take me down, I’d take a handful out with me.
“You owe me,” he muttered.
“Join the fucking club,” I shot back. Since Autumn arrived, I found myself owing everyone, when it had always been the other way around.
Still cursing, Marcus turned to leave and disappeared out the door. Blowing out a breath, I jogged down the stairs and peered out one of the few windows in Purgatory that wasn’t cracked or broken.
Everything appeared as it usually did. People were milling about, headed to and from wherever the fuck it was they went to and from. From here I could just barely see the main gates. Marcus was right; the guards had gathered and only a handful were still lined up outside.
“What the fuck are you doing, Liv?” I muttered.
A few feet away, the front door swung open and as I turned, a young guard I recognized walked insid
e. He stopped when he saw me, eyeing me cautiously.
“John,” I said.
“It’s Josh,” he said, glancing warily at the gun in my hand.
My fingers twitched, my grip on the handle tightening. “Josh, what the fuck do you want?”
He glanced around me and up the stairwell. Something was up, something was wrong, but I didn’t know what. Liv wouldn’t have sent one lone man for me.
Then the shouting began. It echoed through the halls and down the stairs, followed by a crash and a distinctly feminine scream. Josh pulled his weapon at the same moment I raised mine. But I didn’t hesitate; I pulled the trigger twice, hitting him in the chest both times. As he folded to the floor, I went running up the stairs.
The hallway above was packed full of men, and my stomach sank as a couple of dozen guns aimed at my head. Movement behind me had me turning just in time to see a flash of pink, and then the business end of a shovel headed straight for my face.
Then everything went black.
• • •
I came to sometime later, blinking back the pain radiating through my skull. It was several moments before I could manage to see something other than a colorful blur. When I could finally make out my surroundings, the vibrant colors of the familiar mismatched couches and prized artwork sent me into a panic.
Gritting my teeth, I attempted to push myself upright but only succeeded in causing the burning, throbbing pain in my head to intensify. My stomach heaved in protest, so I decided to simply roll onto my side, and came face-to-face with a pair of boots. I looked up and into Jeffers’s face.
“Careful,” Jeffers said, frowning down at me. “She fucked you up pretty good.”
“Autumn?” I croaked, touching my forehead.
“Alive. For now. She’s in holding, lined up for the cages.”
My body tensed, and I winced as the throbbing grew worse. “She didn’t do anything,” I insisted, my voice raspy. “Whatever Liv’s saying, Autumn didn’t do it.”
“She’s not the one accusing her.”
“She didn’t do anything!” I shouted and instantly regretted it. The shouting caused a horrible pressure in my head that had me swallowing back a mouthful of rising bile.
Pain aside, no fucking way was I going to keep lying here like a little bitch at Jeffers’s feet. Grabbing the side of the couch, I held my breath and pulled myself into a sitting position. The first thing I noticed, other than Jeffers’s same tired expression he always had when speaking to me, was that I felt unusually light. It took me half a second to realize I’d been stripped of my weapons.
Above me, Jeffers sighed. “We’ve got rules, you know we have rules for a reason. I let you break them, but just because I let you do whatever the fuck you want doesn’t mean everyone else can.”
I glared up at him, wishing I were at full strength. “I’m fucking her, Jeff,” I spat out. “I’ve been fucking that crazy bitch of yours for years. Now I’m not and she’s pissed off. That’s what this is. That’s all this is.”
I didn’t get the reaction I was expecting. Jeffers’s jaw didn’t go slack, his eyes didn’t widen, nothing about him seemed surprised or shocked by my revelation. He just continued to sit there with the same tired look on his face.
“Did you hear me?” I asked. “Did you hear what the fuck I said?”
He nodded. “Loud and clear,” he said quietly.
I stared at him, wondering what the fuck the punch line was. Did he not believe me?
“I’m not stupid,” he eventually said. “You think I didn’t know?”
I sat there for a moment simply absorbing his words. Jeffers knew. He fucking knew and had done nothing. What the fuck?
“You’re wondering why I didn’t kill you?” Snorting softly, he shook his head. “You’re all I got left, Adler. The only goddamn family I have left, and she’s . . . she was the only person who made me feeling anything after . . .” He stopped and looked away. “She’s a fucking basket case. I knew that from the beginning, but it was part of her appeal. Always talking, so much energy, always wanting something from me. I could hardly think straight around her, and I needed that, needed not to be thinking.”
I didn’t know what the fuck to say to that. On one hand, I felt guilty as all hell. He knew, he fucking knew this whole time and never said a word. But on the other hand I felt like punching his teeth out. What the fuck was wrong with him? So I changed the subject.
“What’s the charge against Autumn?”
Jeffers’s brow raised. “Turns out Joe’s been running his own businesses on the side, women and drugs, all profits going directly in his pocket. Took him down this morning.”
My fists clenched. “What the fuck does Autumn have to do with Joe?”
“Funny thing,” Jeffers said. “Didn’t take much coercing to have him give up the names of everyone involved. He named you and her.”
I knew there was no way Joe would have even known her name. This was Liv’s doing; I was sure of it. Still, I cursed myself for ever bringing her to his place. Just the fact that she’d been there while I’d handed over the ingredients I’d known were going to be used to make Joe’s own brand of post-apocalyptic meth was enough to implicate her
“Then why aren’t I locked up and waiting to be tossed to the dogs?”
Jeffers continued to stare at me, his expression stoic. “You know I’d never let anything happen to you. And it’s pointless to put you in the pits or the cage. You’d enjoy it too much.”
“Jeff,” I growled, and then paused, realizing I suddenly wasn’t above begging. Not if it meant Autumn wouldn’t be tossed into the cage. “Just give her to me. We’ll leave, and we won’t come back.”
He didn’t even stop to think about it. Shaking his head, his expression turned grim. “Rules, Adler, there are rules. If we don’t enforce them, all hell breaks loose. You think I like this shit? I fucking hate it. But fear is the only thing keeping these assholes in line anymore. You know this.”
Somehow I managed to stand. Dizzy and nauseated, I grabbed the arm of the couch and bent down over Jeffers, bringing us eye to eye.
“There is no proof she had anything to do with it,” I bit out. “You’re just accepting Joe’s word over mine.”
Jeffers took hold of my face, one hand on each side of my head. “I may love you like a brother,” he said, “but I damn well don’t trust you.”
Ripping free of his grip, I staggered backward and fell heavily onto a sofa. Several minutes ticked by, neither of us speaking until I gritted out, “Now what?”
Jeffers shrugged, a gesture that from someone else would tell me he couldn’t care less about what happened to Autumn, but Jeffers had never been cold. And I could plainly see the devastation in his eyes as he stared back at me.
Jeffers gestured toward the door. “Now we go down to the pits and you pray she survives.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Autumn
The smell, oh God . . . the smell.
Death and blood and biters. It was everywhere, clinging to me, seeping through my skin and filling me with dread. My knee bobbed up and down relentlessly, and my legs tingled. My jaw was stiff and sore from grinding my teeth, and my fingernails dug into my palms.
“Death,” I mumbled. “Death.”
They had come and taken me, all those men. They’d grabbed me with sweaty hands and meaty fists that hurt when they hit me. Then they’d dragged me kicking and screaming away from Alice and Jonah, and I’d screamed and clawed, desperate to get free. I’d screamed for Eagle, frantically searching every face we passed, but I never found him and he hadn’t come.
“He can’t protect you now, darlin’. Now you’re all mine.” Liv had been there too, giving me her sadistic smile as they’d hauled me past her.
And now I was locked in a dark and tiny room with four walls, one door, no windows, and the air thick and pungent with the stench of death. I trembled, my body convulsing from head to toe as I whimpered. I wanted to be brave, wa
nted to be strong and sturdy, but I couldn’t. I was beyond frightened.
I finally fell limp, my body succumbing to my misery as I slumped against a damp wall. I moaned, my tears dripping down my cheeks.
Autumn, I told you to stay away from people.
“Daddy,” I whimpered.
I warned you what would happen.
“I’m sorry.”
Sorry isn’t going to keep you alive.
“Help me,” I whispered, bowing my head. “Please, help me.”
There is no helping you. You’re already dead.
“No, no, no!” Grabbing fistfuls of my hair, I violently shook my head.
Footsteps, loud and heavy, thundered outside my door. I glanced up sharply, feeling light-headed, dizzy, and nauseated with fear. Keys jangled, a throat was cleared, and the sound of laughter echoed around me. They were laughing, probably at me and at my expense. The thought was somewhat sobering. I should have never come back here; I should have stayed where I knew I was safe.
The door swung open and I dropped my gaze, refusing to look at them. Large hands grabbed at me, thick fingers and jagged nails biting into the skin on my arms as they pulled me to my feet. I stumbled along, refusing to look up, not wanting to see anything or anyone, wanting to just disappear.
I’d thought I could do this, to be back with people. I thought I could be human again. But I was wrong, so wrong, and my father had been right all along. People were bad. I should have stayed on my own, should have stayed in my cave.
Outside now, the sun shone down on me, hot and heavy on my back and neck. They continued dragging me along as the noise around me grew, giving way to a veritable roar of voices. Above it all, I heard the lone voice of a man, the announcer, louder than the others, talking and talking, talking so fast I could barely make out what exactly it was that he was saying.
Only one word stood out above all the others. Autumn. My name. He was talking about me.
A renewed surge of terror barreled through me and I pulled on the arms that were holding me, scrambling as I dug my heels into the ground. I knew that voice. I’d heard it once before.
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