by Katie French
I swivel and glare at the guard who spoke. “What’d you say?”
The guard—another bare-faced boy in dirty green military fatigues—shrinks under my gaze. His blue eyes find the dirt again. “I-I said the old man. Our hostage. He knows where the Free Colonies are.”
Lowering my gun, I release the kid and stand up. I squat beside the bound guard. His eyes are deep brown, almost black, and match his skin. There’s a freshly bandaged wound at the base of his skull that looks infected. Doc keeps reminding me these are boys, teenagers culled from the garbage heaps outside the Breeders’ hospital. They were promised square meals and a soft bed if they enlisted and moved out to Kirtland. What they found was a war they didn’t know existed with a madwoman at the helm.
We thought we’d face Nessa Vandewater at the base gates, but by the time we arrived, she was already gone. Kirtland Air Force Base was a shell of its former self—a thatch of buildings bombed and looted, protected by a handful of scared teenage boys with no leader and haunted eyes. Nessa trained these kids to fight, but not well enough, because the Free Colonies folks, whoever the hell they are, wiped the floor with these diaper babies. They blew up an airplane and had a working tank from the looks of it. The bombed-out buildings and dead bodies show the seriousness of their intent. They wanted to kill Nessa Vandewater. These seven are all that’s left.
“Tell me about the old man,” I say, crossing my arms in front of me so the kid can get a good look at my revolver. He’s thin. I bet if he took his shirt off, I could count his ribs. I wonder what they’ve been eating. “How in the hell did you manage a hostage, and where is he?”
The guard looks around at the other members of his unit, but none of them will meet his eyes. Not an ounce of spunk left in the bunch. “Bran is his name, some sort of leader of the Free Colonies. He’s in the brig. Basement. Last cell. We found him unconscious. But he’s…”
“He’s what?” I ask.
The guard’s brown eyes crinkle with fear. “He’s dangerous.”
“Is he locked up?”
“Yeah.”
I stand up. “Which way to the brig?”
The guard points down one of the base’s roads, past two piles of brick and ash that used to be buildings, to a squat-looking brick structure near the center of this sprawling place. Standing up, I tuck my gun into the waistband of my pants. I nod to Doc and Auntie. “Watch them.”
“Wait!” Doc calls, jogging to me. He lowers his voice and leans in close. “You shouldn’t go in there alone.”
I look Doc dead in his eyes. “With the way I’m feeling right now, yeah, I’m pretty sure I should.”
“Riley, what’s with you?” Doc tenderly grabs my shoulder. “You seem…”
“Crazy? I feel crazy,” I say, my voice trembling. “I thought they’d be here. I thought…” A lump forms in my throat, but I will not cry in front of the guards. I bite my cheek. “We need to find them. Now.”
Doc cocks his head, sympathy flooding his face. He cares about me. Too much, in fact. I wonder if I should’ve made him stay at Merek’s. Still, he’s a good friend. And smart.
He gently grips my arm. “You can’t just go commando and shoot everyone. Let’s take a few deep breaths.”
I laugh his comment away. “Right. Deep breaths. Good one.” When I turn toward the brig, he doesn’t follow.
As soon as he can’t see me anymore, I tuck around a wall, slump to the ground, and bury my head in my knees. The tears come hard and fast. How can they not be here? How? I pinned all my hopes on Kirtland. I beat Merek’s awful birthday games, losing Nada in the process. We killed Mister and overturned Lord Merek, all so I could be free to find Clay and Ethan. And when Merek told us they were here, I never questioned it. I took a truck and hightailed it, dragging Auntie and Doc with me.
My scorpion sting set us back two days. When we finally got on the road again, I was desperate. The whole drive here, all I could think about, all I lived, breathed, and dreamed was fighting my way past the bullets. The clouds of smoke would part, and there they’d stand—my boys. The two people in this world I would die for over and over.
But they’re not here.
I cry until my tears soak my knees. Cry until it hurts.
It should hurt. How could I have lost them? How?
The only thing worse is that there’s something I haven’t told anyone. And I can’t. I need to see in Clay’s eyes that he will still want me, that he won’t walk away like any sane person should when I tell him what I suspect. What I fear.
I might be pregnant.
CHAPTER TWO
Ethan
Betsy is a goddamned liar.
Mama said not to swear, but Mama’s dead, Riley’s gone, and all I got is stupid, crazy-brains Betsy.
And Clay. Sad, broken Clay.
Miss Nessa, who everyone says is Clay’s mama but who doesn’t act a thing like one, operated on his head. She messed with his memories until he couldn’t tell up from down, and he sure as shootin’ couldn’t tell me from his dead brother Cole. Even now, he wakes up and can’t remember who I am. He can’t remember Betsy, Riley, or even himself sometimes.
I tiptoe up to the dark doorway, breathing through my nose so Betsy can’t hear me. We’ve been stuck in this garage for five days now. Betsy says we should stay until Clay’s fixed, but what little there was left of the coyote he killed went rotten. And we ate the last of the rabbit I trapped yesterday. Clay had to skin it when I couldn’t. They’re too soft and big-eyed.
I still ain’t no good at killing, but when I see Betsy kissing on Clay like she’s been doing, I wonder if I have enough shoved-down rage in my belly to smash her in the head with a stick.
Probably not.
She kisses him now, leaning her big body over his sleeping one. Her hands rub up under his shirt, and the gross slurping noises make me wanna puke. It’s been harder to wake Clay lately, and she’s sure takin’ advantage. I watch her brush the hair off his forehead and lick her tongue across his face like it’s a lollipop. She’s not right in the head, that Betsy. But it don’t make this okay.
Clay stirs, whimpering.
“It’s okay, little baby,” she murmurs. “Your girlfriend is here. Betsy’s gonna make it all better.”
Riley, my big sister, is his girlfriend. Betsy is just a dummy. But Clay don’t know that. He don’t know where he is most of the time.
And he cries.
When she leans down to kiss him again, I can’t take it. I stand up, shoving the door and letting it bang against the wall. Betsy jumps about a half a mile.
“What’re you doing?” she shrieks, putting her pudgy hand on her chest like I gave her a heart attack. I think of her making me sleep alone in the storage room with the rats and spiders. That feeling in my belly bubbles up.
“Sunset. Time to leave. You promised.” I glance up through the shattered windows, dirty shards of glass still dangling from the frames like fangs. To the west, the sun has sunk into the scrub and a swatch of deep red floats above the trees. We travel by dark or we don’t travel at all, Clay used to say.
Lying on a dirty tarp, Clay’s a mess. His sweaty hair is clumped to his forehead in wet curls. Cheeks flushed like he has a fever. The hand with the new scar keeps twitching in his sleep. Miss Nessa fixed up his hand so he could draw from the hip again when we were at the base. Clay was happy about that, but now it’s like it has a mind of its own.
Betsy doesn’t move, just sits on her big, fat butt and watches me with narrow eyes. “We can’t leave, Ethan. Clay isn’t up to it.” She gestures to him and makes a well-duh face.
I stalk to the back, find the cabinet we hid our stuff in, and start loading it into a canvas sack. “We can’t stay here. We got no water.”
Betsy carefully watches me. “Go look around.”
I stop stuffing a cast-iron fry pan into the bag and shoot her a look. “I did!”
“Try again!”
Clay stirs and moans.
She leans o
ver him, pushing curls back from his damp forehead. “Shh, it’s okay, baby.” To me, she says, “See what you’ve done?”
“What I’ve done? What I’ve done is trap a rabbit. What I’ve done is go into creepy buildings to look for water!” I throw the bag down with a clank. “What have you done, you dumb idiot?”
Her mouth drops, and she pulls her head back like a mad chicken. “You don’t talk to me like that, Ethan!”
“I’ll say whatever I want! We need to leave, or we’re gonna die. You’d know that if you weren’t so stupid.”
Betsy narrows her eyes. “You lying little twit.”
I shake my head. “You’ve never been out here. You don’t know how hard it is to find water.”
Betsy points a sausage-shaped finger in my face. “Shut up, Ethan. Just shut up! You don’t know anything about what m-my life was like.” Her bottom lip starts to wobble, and tears make her eyes shine in the dim light. If she thinks I’m gonna feel bad, she has another thing coming.
When she sees I don’t give a damn about her tears, she rips off her blonde wig. Her scalp is horrible—crisscrossed scars, some old and pink, some red and puckered. It’s like the picture I saw in a book about Frankenstein’s monster. Only, Betsy’s scars aren’t pieces of other people. Her scars are all her, carved and gutted like those Halloween pumpkins people used to chop up.
When I drop my eyes, she grabs my chin and yanks my head up.
“Look at these, Ethan,” she says through clenched teeth. “Look at w-what she did to me.”
I flick my eyes up and count—five, six, seven scars. Seven operations on Betsy’s brain. Just as I’m starting to feel bad for dumb Betsy, she jerks my chin to the side, aiming my face toward the open door and the dusty street outside. Across the street, abandoned buildings look haunted in the twilight.
“Go out there and find us some water, Ethan. Do it, or I swear to God, I’ll tell Clay this is our home and we’re never going to leave. He’ll listen to me too. He loves me.” She rolls the word “loves” over in her mouth, and I want to slap her puffy cheeks.
She must be able to see the anger in my face because she grips my chin even tighter. “Try me, little boy. See if I don’t let us all die right here.”
She pushes me away. I stumble forward, sloshing through trash and skidding to a stop with my hand against a bare wire shelf. When I turn around to glare at her idiot face, she’s already waddling back to Clay.
“Be home in time for supper,” she calls like a concerned mom.
I kick the shelf hard. It vibrates, and pain shoots up my foot. “Goddamn it,” I mutter. Then, louder. “Goddamn it!”
For the hundredth time, I wish Riley were here. I wish Clay could remember. I wish Betsy would get carried off by coyotes in her sleep. I wish I were a man instead of a nine-year-old kid.
If Auntie were here, she’d say, “If wishes were horses, you could ride your ass out of here, but they ain’t.”
No, they ain’t.
I find the empty water jugs by the doorway, pull the top off one, and tip it to my mouth. Just the thought of water makes my throat tighten like a fist. Two, three drops of warm water dribble onto my tongue. It’s nothing. Three drops of water will get me nowhere. And no matter how much I hate Betsy, I’d hate myself even more if I didn’t at least try to save Clay.
I sling the rope tied to the empty jugs over my shoulder, grab the ratty baseball cap, and pat my pocket to make sure I have my screwdriver. It ain’t much, but Betsy’s got the knife, and Clay hid the gun somewhere. No matter how we try, we can’t get him to tell us where.
When I step through the busted doorframe, fear shivers under my skin. It’s getting dark fast. I’ll just make a loop around the strip one more time to make sure there ain’t no water, and then I’ll have to get it through Betsy’s thick skull.
The parking lot of the auto parts store and garage we’ve been calling home for the last few days is empty. We did find a few vehicles in the attached garage, but they’d been stripped long ago. One had a family of rats living in it. The ones we caught, we ate. The ones we didn’t skitter through the trash while we sleep.
My eyes scan the empty two-lane road in front of me. This town was a little smudge even when it was alive with eight or so shops and some houses. Most of the houses have fallen down. Only the brick buildings still stand, but even those have holes in their roofs. Bits of trash and debris skitter in the small puffs of wind that sweep up from the west. The sun’s big and bright in her glory, smearing into reds and oranges on the horizon.
My hand touches the bite scar on my arm. Coyotes are the Betsys of the animal world, dumb but dangerous. We’ve heard them howling at night.
Across the street is a clothes-washing place I’ve already picked over. I’ve tried all the washers and sinks, poked around back, even gone down into a dank basement in search of a well. The building next door must have caught fire. All that’s left are four charred walls, with blackened beams leaning into each other for support. I’ve been over the lady’s fashion place, the tooth doctor’s office, and the hairstyling place with the long-dead body buried under the fallen ceiling. I went through all the places on this side of the street, too. There’s only one place left within walking distance, and my heart starts to pound just thinking about it. I turn right and force my feet in that direction.
I’ll do it for Clay.
At the end of this street, before the buildings turn into desert, one place stands alone. The steeple jabs at the sky like a needle. It’s a church, and churches are supposed to be holy. I didn’t mind the church we stayed in when Mama came back to us, but this church ain’t a nice place. Above a partially broken colored-glass window, a cut-off head dangles from a rope, old and shriveled. Similar dark shapes swing in the breeze on both sides of the church.
Heads. Cut-off heads.
I’ve heard stories of people eating each other when times get tough. Even heard that some do it for fun. But as I walk closer, my boots clicking on the pavement far too loud, I feel like something inside that church wants to eat me.
My heart is going like jackrabbit legs. There’s no way I can go in there, ‘specially with the light almost gone. And alone? If Clay were here, sure, I’d go. Or if I had a gun. But all I got is a rusty screwdriver with a wobbly handle. That ain’t enough to fend off a big rat, let alone someone who eats people.
But if there’s someone living in the church, we’d’ve seen them coming and going, and there hasn’t been a peep. The sand drifts got no tracks in ‘em. We never hear nothing at night.
I sigh and stare at the chipped white siding, at the bits of colored glass clinging to the frame above the door. I’m being a baby. I still got light enough to see if I get in and out fast. If I find water in there, I don’t have to tell Betsy where it is. I don’t have to give her a single drop until she agrees to leave Clay alone and let me call the shots.
I dig around for my screwdriver, clutch it tight, and yank back on one of the door’s handles. It slides open with a squawk.
Standing on the porch, my heart blasting into my ribs, I peer in. The smell is awful— dust, decay, and something worse.
Something dead.
Inside, the long benches are chopped to bits and piled around a singed spot in the center. A few more benches are stacked in a messy pile along one wall. At the end of the room, steps lead up to a stagelike area where a high table sits covered with rotten concoctions.
I don’t look at anything too long. I need water. I need to keep my head.
When I step inside, the air is stale and scratches at my throat. Something skitters away under the pews. A hand on my chest, I tell myself it’s a rat and keep walking. My boots make dusty tracks on the floor, which is a good sign. Clay would say that means no one’s been here in a long time. Then he might say, “Well, at least that’s what they’d want you to think.”
When I get to the ring of soot and a charred metal dish in the center of the room, I see bones poking out from inside the a
sh pile. The stage is empty except for scary writing and brown liquidy goop that has dried to crusty rings around some glass vials.
Leaving the creepy stage, I skirt around the sides of the room. I find a heavy wooden door I’m scared to open, but I think about Clay. Thinking about water sliding down my throat, fresh and clear, I yank it open. It’s a bathroom wing—signs show stick-figure people. I push the boy’s door open a crack. If there’s any water, it’ll be in there, but I don’t want to fumble around in the dark. I stand in the hallway, letting the fading rainbow light from the colored-glass window shine on my face. I’ll have to go into the dark. It’s my only choice.
I stand at the door, clench my hands, and try to make myself do what needs to be done.
What a man would do.
I’m scared as hell, but I can’t go back with nothing. We’ll die.
Taking a deep breath, I push in.
It smells awful, like animal death and waste. I press my sleeve to my face so I can breathe through it. Fumbling forward, feet sloshing through trash, I keep one hand outstretched. I find a wall, then a sink, and turn the knobs. Nothing comes out. As I’m about to draw my hand away and leave this piss-pot, something shifts inside the stall next to me.
Something moved.
Is someone… in here? With me?
I can’t move. Slowly, I turn my head toward the noise. I can’t see anything, but—
Something shifts again.
Something is moving inside the stall.
Oh God. I don’t breathe. Where’s the damn door? I can’t see my hand in front of my face—let alone the door.
Think. I took five steps in, so it’s five steps away. Trembling, I take a step back. Then another. Just a few more feet.
The stall door blasts open, smashing against the wall with a thwack. Something large barrels out at me.
I scream.
A solid mass of fur plows into me, sending me sprawling. Dog, coyote, or something worse. Sitting up, I jab out with my screwdriver, but it sails through empty air.
A low growl comes from my left. I turn toward the sound, screwdriver out as it smashes into me.
