The Deadly Nightshade

by Justine Ashford

  “Connor, pick up your gun,” I command.

  He does as told, drawing his revolver shakily and pointing it in the general direction of the gang, as if not sure which member to target.

  Roman seems surprisingly unalarmed by this act of hostility. Instead, he appears fascinated by the weapon that hangs at Connor’s side. The smile on his face vanishes, replaced by an expression of deep contemplation. I don’t like this look.

  “That’s a beautiful machete ya got there,” he murmurs.

  Connor glances from the weapon to the leader. “Oh, uh, thanks.”

  “Very unique—black blade, hooked end, little silver engravin’ near the grip. That’s gotta be a pretty rare weapon. I doubt ya could find another around these parts.” He pauses to shift his gaze to Connor’s face, but when he looks up his black eyes are hardened. “My brother had one just like it.”

  Holy shit. That face! I knew I recognized that face! I’ve seen it before—not the same face, exactly—but without the long black hair and white scars. An image of The Leader from the gang who attacked me nearly three months ago flashes through my mind. His brother. So it hadn’t been a gang after all, only a faction of one, and these men and women here must be the rest of it. Dear God, no, this can’t be happening.

  I look at Connor and determine by his alarmed expression that he has come to the same realization I have. He shifts his weight uneasily and quickly drops his gaze, as if afraid even looking at Roman will give him away. But it’s too late. We’re already screwed.

  “Where’d ya get it?” asks Roman in a voice that is barely more than a whisper, his cold, unflinching stare remaining fixed on Connor.

  “I, uh, found it,” he gulps, his face reddening.

  Roman snorts. “I really, really doubt that, boy. Now I’m gonna ask you again. Where did ya get that machete?”

  Connor’s mouth opens and his lips move in a pattern that looks like words, but no sound comes out. He looks timidly at the gang leader, trying to voice a lie he cannot think of.

  “Where?” Roman bellows, his voice reverberating off the surrounding buildings.

  I am so focused on this enraged man that I almost do not notice the movement to my left. I turn my head in time to catch Missy quickly raise her rifle and point it at Connor. Without a second of hesitation, I pull the trigger of my left handgun and hit her right between the eyes. As her lifeless body falls to the ground, I become aware that I have just unleashed hell upon us.

  Taking advantage of my distraction, Roman grabs my right wrist and points my gun toward the sky. I turn the other one on him, but he uses his free hand to smack it away before I can shoot, sending it clattering to the ground. As we struggle, shots ring out all around us, but I can’t be sure who is firing, who has been hit, or who has been killed. Roman fights to get the gun out of my hand, twisting and bending my arm to loosen my grip. Knowing I’ll never make it out of this fight alive if I don’t break free of his hold soon, I act quickly, drawing one of the knives from my belt with my free hand and thrusting it into his forearm. He releases me with a cry and I take the opportunity to put two bullets in his chest before he can draw his own weapon. Groaning in agony, he collapses.

  With Roman down, I turn to look at the chaos that surrounds me. Connor is still standing, firing wildly in the direction of the remaining three gang members. Only the two men remain on their feet—the surviving woman lies on the ground, clutching her chest with one hand and shooting with the other. As one of the standing men changes his target from Connor to me, I discharge four bullets from my gun, killing him instantly.

  “Kill them!” shouts Roman, his hands pressed against his wounds as he tries to stop the bleeding.

  I could probably finish them, I really think I could, but what about Connor? What if he gets killed before I can put a bullet in each of their skulls? No, it isn’t worth it. We need to go.

  “Run, Connor!” I shout as I pick up my other gun from the ground. “Zigzag! They’ll miss!”

  We set off running, changing direction every now and then to make it harder for them to hit us. We are halfway down the street when Connor emits a cry and I watch a spurt of blood fly from his leg. He stumbles but does not fall, pushing through the pain to try to keep up with me. For the first time since I met him, Connor begins to lag behind—not by much, but enough for me to know the wound is severe—but he fights to keep moving because stopping means dying. At the first opportunity, we turn down a side street and out of the danger zone, but still we keep running. We run until we have left that miserable town far behind, and even then we do not stop.

  Chapter 24

  We’ve made it less than a mile when Connor emits a groan and falls, curling up into a ball and clutching his leg in agony. I stop and watch as he attempts to stand, but he cringes and retracts the wounded leg every time he tries to put any kind of weight on it. We aren’t far away enough to stop now.

  “Get up, Connor. We need to move. You have to get up.”

  He bites down hard on his lip and makes another attempt, but his leg gives out and he collapses with a cry. Looking up at me with sad eyes, he shakes his head ruefully. The adrenaline that allowed him to run with the injury in the first place is fading. He can’t go on like this.

  Maybe Connor can’t keep running, but I can. Staying here with him would be senseless; he has to know that. Even if I were to help him, what then? We would move at half the pace I could alone, and that might be the difference between life and death.

  But the look in his eyes. I know that look, that self-sacrificing look of martyrdom. As I stare into their sad depths I realize Connor wants me to go. He knows he’s done for with a wound like that, a wound that prevents him from even walking on his own, and he knows he can’t hold me back. He wants me to abandon him and save myself. But when have I ever been one to let Connor have what he wants?

  I hold my hand out to him, but he swats it away.

  “No, Nightshade,” he protests. “I’ll only slow you down. Just go, I know you want to. Just go.”

  “Connor, we don’t have time for this. Do you want to live or not?”

  He turns his head to look back at the town, knowing what awaits him if he stays. After a moment’s hesitation, he takes my hand. I help him off the ground, wrapping his arm around my neck so he is able to use me like a crutch and hobble forward on one foot. I was right—we can only move at about half the pace we were moving before, but even slow progress is progress. Besides, all but one of Roman’s people are wounded, and I can handle one lone man if he catches up to us. As long as we keep moving, we should be fine.

  “Why didn’t you just go?” he asks after we have put about another half a mile between us and the town. “You could get twice as far without having to drag me around. Why didn’t you just leave me?”

  “Why did you save me back there?” I ask in response.

  I feel his shoulder shrug against mine. “They were going to ambush you. I couldn’t just sit back and watch that happen. I had to warn you. I had to help.”

  “Well don’t ever do it again. I don’t need anyone to save me.”

  Connor laughs. “You’re not as invincible as you think you are, Nightshade.”

  “Connor, you could have died.”

  He shrugs again.

  We maintain our pace, something faster than a walk but slower than a jog, for the next few miles, but I can tell Connor is getting tired by the added weight he is placing on me, and I am too. We have barely eaten or drank anything all day; my mouth is dry and cottony from thirst and my stomach churns emptily. But stopping could mean giving what is left of Roman’s wounded gang time to catch up. No, it’s better to struggle onward until nightfall.

  Connor groans every now and then and asks to slow the pace or stop to catch his breath, but I keep pushing him. It occurs to me I’ll have to figure out what to do with him soon—with an injury like that, he won’t be able to keep moving like this after today. He needs rest and time to heal, not to mention medical su
pplies to clean the wound and remove the bullet before it gets infected. The little medical kit in my rucksack doesn’t have those kind of supplies, and it would be impossible to bring him into another town with me to go search for some, which would mean I would have to leave him alone somewhere while I went by myself to find them. If someone were to come across him there, wounded and unable to walk on his own . . . Maybe I should have just left him behind. All I’ve done is bought him some time and doomed myself to have to care for him. While his movement is restricted, so is mine, and movement is the key to survival. Helping Connor and doing the right thing isn’t worth dying for. It was his own stupidity that got him hurt in the first place, not mine—although he was trying to save me, but then again who asked him to? It was his own choice, his own mistake, so why should I pay for it? I made a promise to my father to survive, and if that means leaving Connor then that is what I must do.

  But how can I just drop him on the ground and say, “Sorry, pal, it’s been fun, but I’ve changed my mind and I think I’m gonna go ahead and save my own ass” after I’ve made all this effort to carry him this far? How can I just leave him here, as defenseless and vulnerable as he is, knowing death readily awaits him? I might as well pull out my sword and drive it through his stomach myself; it would save a hell of a lot of time. To leave him behind would be to kill him, not directly, but in some secondhand way. It would feel like killing him all the same.

  “Nightshade, do you see that?” Connor’s voice shakes me from my thoughts, and suddenly I realize I haven’t been paying attention to the road. In the distance, I make out four figures moving in our direction. It is clear they have seen us too, because they approach with their weapons drawn. I place my free hand on my gun, but there’s no point. We’re outnumbered, Connor is injured, and these people will shoot me before I have a chance to draw.

  “What do we do?” Connor asks.

  “Wait here, see what they want, and hope they don’t kill us.”

  “I’m sorry,” he whispers. “This is my fault. If you had just left me behind—”

  “Don’t apologize, Connor. It’s not like we can do anything about it now.”

  The group stops a few feet away and considers us with suspicion. One of them, a man in his early twenties, addresses me.

  “You, take your hand off the weapon. Draw and you die.”

  I grudgingly do as told and drop my hand to my side.

  “What are you two doing here? Where did you come from?”

  I am about to ask him what the hell he wants from us when Connor speaks.

  “Please, help us,” he entreats. “We were attacked by a gang a few miles back. I’m shot, I can barely walk. We’re starving and cold and exhausted and we need help. Please.”

  I look from Connor to the young man, who exchanges a glance with the others in his party. After a moment, he whispers into the ear of a young blonde maybe a few years older than him. She nods, and with a sigh of resolution he turns back to us.

  “I want you to slowly remove all your weapons and hand them to us. And I mean everything. We will search you, so don’t even think of trying to hide anything.”

  Chapter 25

  I am forced to hand over my knife belt and handguns to the young man—who I assume is in command—while Connor relinquishes Angelica’s knife, his revolver, his rifle, and the black machete that got us into this mess to a middle-aged man with greasy brown hair and a ragged, graying beard. When he has tossed my belt over his shoulder and placed my guns on his hips, the group’s leader gestures toward my swords, beckoning me to give them up.

  “When I said all your weapons, I meant all your weapons,” he says.

  “You don’t want to touch these,” I warn him. “People who do tend not to live very long.”

  Unamused and growing impatient, he demands I hand him the swords, and, having no other choice, I reluctantly allow him to take them. When they are in his custody, he grabs one by the hilt and pulls it halfway out of its sheath to examine it, prompting me to almost lose my shit, but he places it right back and hands them to the other man, who slings them both over his shoulder. I glower at both of them, hoping whatever curse is on those katanas comes to bite them in the ass.

  After Connor and I are stripped of our weapons and our bags have been searched, we are patted down twice, warned again not to try anything we’ll regret, and herded away like cattle. Though they do not tell us where we are going, I can only assume they are taking us back to their camp. None of them offer to help carry my injured companion. In fact, they seem almost afraid to get too close to us—we are made to walk inside of the circle they have formed around us and kept at a rifle’s length away.

  We walk about a quarter of a mile in absolute silence. The only things keeping me from fighting for my life right now are the knowledge that I probably won’t win coupled with the fact that they haven’t tried to kill us yet, which means that might not be their intention, though it is still too early to know for sure. If they are taking us back to their camp, there is no telling what will become of us there.

  Finally, I see it, a large black gate standing firmly between looming walls of gray brick. Thick leaves of ivy—which either conveniently grow upon the walls or have been placed there intentionally to conceal them—shield most of it from view, but the part that remains unhidden appears well-maintained and virtually unaffected by the War. As we get closer, I am able to read the large golden letters on the gate: Sweetbriar Housing Community. I have to admit, I’m impressed. This is the most strategically located, well-camouflaged camp I have ever seen belonging to a gang—not that I’ve seen many.

  When we reach the gate, the man leading the group shouts to someone on the other side to open it. For a minute, the other person seems hesitant—he has probably spotted Connor and I and is wondering what we’re doing here—but with further insistence from the authoritative young man, the gate is finally opened. A man and a woman, both armed, stand guard at the entrance. They eye us with suspicion as we are led into the camp by our new friends and shut the gate behind us, sealing us into this unknown place with these unknown people. We are prisoners now, and there is absolutely nothing we can do about it.

  “Where are we going?” I ask, tired of not knowing what is to become of us.

  “To see Reina,” answers the young man. “She’ll decide what we’re going to do with you.”

  What we’re going to do with you. His words make it sound like we are pigs going to slaughter. Maybe we are. Maybe I should have taken my chances in a fight, but I can’t see us being in a better place if I had.

  The inside of the camp proves to be larger than I had imagined. Within the ivy-strewn stone walls, dozens of matching, gray two-story houses with black roofs and shutters and white doors and window panes sit in even lines, spaced about twenty feet apart from one another. The uniformity is astounding; it would be impossible to tell one residence from another if it were not for the small hand-painted signs that hang from some of the doors reading, “Clinic” or “Bakery” or “School.” Small trees with bare branches grow in the grassy space between the sidewalk and the cobblestone road, and the last of autumn’s dead leaves sit in neat piles on the edge of each lawn. Most astonishing of all are the people, who walk about with their gloved hands tucked into the pockets of their coats and scarves wrapped around their necks, without even so much as a knife or a gun on their hip. It is as if I am looking at a picture of the past, of the way the world was before the War, and if it were not for the guns at my back I would think I had been sucked backwards in time.

  As we walk, passersby on the street gawk at us as if we are some new species of animal they have never seen before. Soon, a dozen or more people have poured out of their homes to see what their friends have captured. They point and murmur and scowl as we are paraded through the commotion toward a distinctive white house much, much larger than all the others. Upon reaching the mansion, we are shepherded inside.

  Our escorts usher us into a lavishly d
ecorated room the likes of which I have never seen before and probably will never see again. As I step across the threshold, my dirt- and blood-bestrewn boots sink into the plush red carpet that lines the floor, lending an unfamiliar sensation that is nothing like the feeling of earth underfoot that I am so accustomed to. Red silk drapes the same dark hue as the carpet adorn the windows, standing in stark contrast to the vibrant shade of gold upon the walls, which are decorated here and there with framed artwork of varying abstractness. Several pieces of dark mahogany furniture and a few ivory-colored chaises fill the room with depth, and an elaborate crystal chandelier dangles from the vaulted ceiling. On the opposite side of the room from where we stand, a fire roars inside a white brick fireplace, lending warmth and the delicious scent of burning wood, and a white marble staircase spirals up to the second floor.

  “Give me a moment,” the young man says to his companions. “I’m going to let her know what we’ve brought. Watch them.”

  With that, he hurries up the winding staircase and disappears. One of our three guards, the blonde, asks us to sit down in a tone that doesn’t sound like a request, so I place Connor in one of the mahogany chairs and take a seat on the ivory sofa nearest him. The five of us watch the staircase unflinchingly for several minutes, waiting for this Reina woman, who I assume to be the leader of this community—I say community instead of gang because I’m not completely sure what they are; I have never seen anything like this group in my life—but nobody comes down.

  “What do you think is gonna happen to us?” Connor asks me in a whisper.

  “I don’t know. Let’s just hope for the best.”

  “I think if they were gonna kill us they would’ve done it by now, don’t you?”