Nowen frowned. “Hallmark movie?” she asked, puzzled at the reference, but Suzannah was on a roll and ignored her.
“Jesus H. Christ, you’re all as nuts as that old man.Stay here with the zombie and be a happy family - I’m getting out of here!” The red-haired woman rose and reached for the door knob.
“Suzannah, no! Don’t go!” Sage cried, launching herself from the bed and racing over to the woman.
She’s bluffing. She’s scared, and doesn’t know what to do. “Suzannah. Please, listen to me.” Nowen said. Suzannah slowly turned around, one arm around the girl, one arm tucked behind her. The woman’s pale green eyes were blank and far away. “Lillian is old, and thin, and toothless. She’s chained up, behind a closed door. She’s no threat, really.”
Suzannah looked at Nowen, and for a second, no more, there was a well of deep and lasting loss in her eyes. Then the red-haired woman blinked and the brash, confrontational look was back. She pulled her other arm from behind her and wrapped it around Sage. “Look,” she sighed, “I’m not a coward. But neither am I dumb. I...lost some people last year, when the Flux spread and the CZs started walking.” Suzannah paused, looking down at Sage’s russet curls. She laid one hand gently on the girl’s head. “They’re dangerous, and I don’t want to spend any more time near one, no matter how “unthreatening” they may be. I’ll stick around a little more.” Now she raised her eyes and speared Nowen with her gaze. “But not much more.”
Nowen nodded slowly. “I agree. We need to move on; we’re too close to New Heaven. But I need some time to get back on my feet.” And wasn’t that surprisingly hard to admit. “I think we can trust Eli.”
“ ‘Think’ ?” Suzannah pounced on the word.
Nowen shrugged. “Yeah. ‘Think’. That’s the best I can do. I think - I believe this is the best option for us. I need to rest, and we need to plan our next step.”
Suzannah gave her a troubled glance but finally moved away from the door. This time she sat on the floor, pulling Sage down with her. “Ok,” she said, after a few moments’ silence, “what is our plan?”
Nowen leaned forward on the bed’s edge, planting her palms on the quilt to keep from sliding off. “First, I have to know something.”
Now it was Suzannah’s turn to look puzzled, and it was Sage that spoke. “You want to know what’s going on at New Heaven.”
Nowen nodded.
Sage pulled on a tangled russet curl and looked up at Suzannah. The red-haired woman shrugged. “Sure, why not. What do you want to know first?”
A thousand questions ran through Nowen’s mind. Some of them ran too close to things she didn’t want to couldn’t not now not yet think about. Too raw, like a fresh wound that couldn’t bear the touch of a bandage. But she needed information. Why? Why do you need information, Nowen? There was an idea germinating in the back of her mind where the wolf would normally be. The idea was fragile and she turned away from it for the time being. She latched on to a safe question and looked at Suzannah. “How big is New Heaven?”
“Big. And getting bigger - at least during the time we were there.”
“Are they organized?”
Suzannah gave a short laugh. “Oh yeah. The place is like a small city run by hyperactive ants. They have tons of supplies. I, uh...” and here a quick glance at Sage, “ ‘cozied up’ to a couple of the guards and got free rein of most of the place. They’re knocking down the woods at a fast clip. Lots of storage buildings, and not just for canned goods, shit like that. They got guns. They got tools. They got gas. They got seeds, and planters, and tractors - hell, it looks like they raided every Home Depot and Wal-Mart in the entire state.” Suzannah’s face grew puzzled. “In fact, they’ve got an awful lot of stuff. It’s almost, like...”
“They started collecting supplies long before the Flux.” Nowen said. Suzannah nodded thoughtfully.
“But did you notice what they didn’t have?” Sage said, and then answered her own question. “Houses. Or cabins, or tents. For people.”
Nowen looked at the girl; intensity burned in her dark eyes. “What do you mean? I saw some cabins when we first got to New Heaven.”
“Sure.” Sage nodded. “But it’s like a...fa-kade?”
“Facade?”
“Right! Like a mask. After they took you away, Anton went off with some of the New Heaven people, and I was put in a big house that had other kids who didn’t have parents.” Sage stared at Nowen. “I tried to go after you, but a white-haired woman held me back. And then, whenever I asked about you, whoever I talked to got mad and told me to shut up. I was with a bunch of other kids. There were three or four yellow-shirts with us most of the time, getting us to do chores or lessons-”
“Wait, what’s a yellow-shirt?” Nowen interjected, looking from Sage to Suzannah.
“Oh, yeah! I told you they were organized. Every New Heaven jackass wore colored shirts, depending on what they did around the compound. Like they were all on an episode of Star Trek or something.” Suzannah snorted and shook her head. “White-shirts are the people in charge. Black-shirts are the police - total bunch of hard-asses. If they told you to jump, you didn’t even ask ‘How high?’. You just jumped. Blue is doctors, nurses, vets. Green is labor, workers, farmers. So, yellow would be...?” She looked at Sage.
“Teachers and babysitters. And red-shirts took care of the bodies.”
Nowen and Suzannah stared at the girl. Finally, Suzannah spoke. “What red-shirts?”
Sage blinked. “You never saw them?” At the young woman’s slow head-shake Sage looked even more astonished. “Oh. I didn’t say anything to you ‘cause I thought you knew.”
“Sage, just tell us what you know.” Nowen said.
“Ok. A couple of the other kids, who had been there longer, showed me how to sneak out at night. The yellow-shirt who watched us most nights was Valerie and she always fell asleep on one of the cots by midnight. So, me and Terry and Jake and sometimes Kai would climb out one of the windows and go exploring. Kai was the youngest, like about seven, and the smallest, so he’d sneak into the storage buildings and get us stuff, like candy. I love chocolate, but all the stuff he brought us was old and tasted kinda bleh. Oh, and Terry and Jake were the biggest, and I think they were in love ‘cause sometimes I’d see them kissing-”
“Sage, sweetie, this is real interesting, but you gotta stick to the important stuff right now, ok?”
The girl smiled, embarrassed. “Sorry, Suzannah. So I explored a lot of New Heaven. And some of the things I noticed are this: New people keep coming into the camp every week, right? Either they come in themselves or come in like we did, picked up by black-shirts. But where are they? Further back in the woods are long buildings, like strip malls, but no windows and only a couple of doors. Black-shirts with big guns guard the doors. I never got real close, but sometimes I heard people screaming. And the houses where they put some of the new people never got real crowded. One night a guard chased us away from the storage warehouse and I got separated from Terry and Jake. I ran into the woods and got really lost. And then...” Sage looked up at Suzannah. “Did you ever see the fire?”
“Yeah.” The red-haired woman looked at Nowen. “Back off in the forest a ways there’s a big-ass fire pit that the green-shirts keep going all day and night. I saw it once, when I was given the official tour.” She turned to Sage. “It’s for burning garbage, branches, leaves - junk.”
“And bodies.” Sage’s words fell into the silent room like stones in a pond. “That’s what I saw that night. I saw the light from the fire, and when I got close I saw people in red-colored shirts throwing bodies into the fire. A lot of the bodies were old people. Some of the dead people looked all torn up, like Revs had gotten to them, but there aren’t any Revs that can get into New Heaven. And then, right before I ran away, I thought I saw someone I knew being put in the fire.” Sage paused, her eyes focused on something far away. “And the next day, Kai was gone. The yellow-shirts said that Kai’s mother had sho
wn up and taken him away. But that was a lie! Kai had told us that his parents had died a long time ago, and he was living with his grand-father when the Flux killed everyone.” She fell silent. Her chest hitched with silent sobs.
Nowen shared a glance with Suzannah. The red-haired woman ran a gentle hand over the girl’s head. “Honey, why would they kill a little boy? It doesn’t make sense.”
Sage shook her head. “I don’t know, but I know what I saw.”
A thought came to Nowen, the edge of something monstrous. “Sage, was there anything wrong with Kai? Was he sick, or did he have trouble walking or talking? Anything like that?”
The girl’s dark eyes glistened with unshed tears but she nodded quickly. “Yeah, just a couple of days before the blue-shirts had come and done their tests on us. They did a lot of tests on the new kids, and Kai had only been there a couple of days before me. One of the blue-shirts was talking to Valerie and I pretended to be playing nearby so I could listen. The blue-shirt said that Kai had a bad heart. I remember that Valerie looked really upset. I asked Kai later if he knew he had a bad heart. He said that he had a ‘murmur’ in his heart, but it never kept him from playing.”
“So they killed him over that?! What the fuck - my mama had a heart murmur and she had six kids! Never even slowed her down.” Suzannah said. Anger and confusions fought for space in the gaze she turned on Nowen.
“No, it makes sense. A horrid kind of sense. New Heaven wants only the young and healthy people, and even then I bet they lose more than they get.” Nowen said softly, more to herself than the others. The enormity of Vuk’s plan was unfolding before her. Some of the things he had said, why he had kept the wolf alive (even if just barely), what New Heaven’s purpose actually was - like a bolt from the blue all the pieces fit together. She gasped and sat up straight. “I know what he’s doing.”
“Who?” Suzannah asked.
“Vuk. I know what he’s doing. Or, trying to do.”
“Well, what is it, damn it?!”
Nowen looked at the girl and the red-haired woman. “He’s making more vukodlak.”
Chapter Eighteen
Nowen lay awake in the dark room and listened to the wind beat at the windows. She and the other two had spent most of the afternoon and night talking, and now she just wanted to be still and enjoy the quiet. She thought back over their long and twisting discussions.
Suzannah was of the mind that, having escaped once, it was “pure damn craziness” to go back. She just wanted to get as far away as possible. Sage had been all for charging back into New Heaven and saving the people there, and she had grown indignant when both Nowen and Suzannah had shot down that idea.
Nowen didn’t see the point. Those people at New Heaven were strangers to her, and in the world as it was now the chances were that something bad was happening to someone somewhere. She tried to explain this to Sage but the girl seemed to grow more horrified at every word and even Suzannah was staring at her bemusedly; eventually she trailed off. How to explain that this wasn’t a movie, where a handful of people could overthrow the bad guy even though they were outmanned and outgunned? How to tell a child that nature abhors a vacuum, and while one person or group could be removed more would just rush in to fill the empty space?
Eli’s call to dinner had broken the uneasy silence between them. They ate a meal of canned chili with some kind of flat bread that Eli had cooked over the camp stove. After the meal he went upstairs to check on his wife, and Nowen followed Suzannah and Sage back to their bedroom. By the illumination of a flashlight they played cards and talked about their next step. Two hours of rambling discussions led Nowen to the fact that none of them knew what to do next.
Now Nowen turned to her side, carefully, trying not to disturb the other two. The night had grown chilly, and just after Sage turned off the flashlight and climbed into the bed to lie between Nowen and Suzannah, Nowen had asked if they knew what month it was. “November. And not too far from Thanksgiving, I think.” Suzannah had answered on a yawn. “Viktor was crazy about knowing what time and day it was. He had, like, five different calendars in his bedroom.”
Nowen counted back in her mind once again. It had been July, I think, when Anton found me. July - that sounds right. So. Four months. Four months at New Heaven, trapped inside while the wolf was being...tortured. Sage’s determined face rose before her eyes as she remembered the urgency of the girl’s plea. I’m sorry. Those other people, they really don’t matter to me.
She looked up and out the window next to her. The sky was dark, no stars shining, but the impression of movement came to her. Clouds were passing ponderously across the sky, and she wondered for a moment if there would be snow soon. The thought of snow released a cascade of memories of her mountains in Wyoming. The urge to go home swept through her like a wildfire. Soon. Soon. I hope. If it’s safe.
On this thought her eyes drifted closed. Nowen hovered in that strange space between awake and asleep where everything seems like a dream, pulling her memories of home over her and sinking ever downward into sleep. She was walking not running? as the wolf? through a snow-drenched stand of trees when a low growling filled her ears. She whirled, snow flying around her like a shawl. The sound grew louder though still distant. Bear? Cougar? The trees around her began to tremble, white clouds lifting from the branches and into the air. The growling rumbling that’s a rumbling a mechanical noise was closer now and she braced herself to face whatever not an animal get up get up was coming through the trees get up GET UP!
Nowen jolted awake into a room lit by moonlight. The clouds had passed on while she slept. The growling sound had followed her from her dream. It was low and muted and close. She glanced at her companions. Sage was curled up next to Suzannah and the red-haired woman had an arm thrown across the girl’s small body. They were still asleep. Nowen slipped from the bed and wedged herself in the crowded sliver of space between the edge of the mattress and the window. She looked out.
The bedroom was on the back of the house. There was a small and overgrown yard with only a tumble-down fence separating it from an alley. The backs of the houses on the next street behind them faced the alley, and she ran an eye over their abandoned yards and toys and cars. The rumbling sound grew closer. Some instinct drove her to crouch down in the small space as best she could. She raised her head just enough to see over the sill.
A large truck drove slowly down the alley. The growling/rumbling was the engine. The headlights were off but the bright glare of a spotlight shone intermittently from the interior of the vehicle. The light flashed over the houses across the alley, disappeared, and then suddenly blinked on again, right in her window. Nowen didn’t dare move. Unconsciously she held her breath as the harsh light poured into the bedroom. It stayed there, a moment that lasted an eternity, and then it was gone and the truck crawled on. In the moonlight she could just make out the flames scrawled along the body of the truck.
The next morning Nowen drew Suzannah aside as they headed into the kitchen for breakfast. Sage was helping Eli; the old man and the girl were hitting it off and if he sometimes called her ‘Amanda’ she didn’t seem to care. From the sound of a hand-cranked can opener breakfast was either more chili or chicken soup.
Nowen and Suzannah stood among the towering stacks of old newspapers and magazines while Nowen told the woman what she had seen the night before. By the time she had finished visible despair could be seen on Suzannah’s face.
“Well, shit. Do you think they found us?”
Nowen shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t know enough of how they act to know if they’re aware of where we are and are waiting us out, or they don’t know where we are but have an idea. Either way, I think we need to leave.”
Suzannah sighed and crossed her arms across her chest, leaning back against a pile of newspapers. Nowen could see the headline of the paper on top, huge black letters that screamed ‘FLUX SPREADING! MILLIONS DEAD!’. “Yeah, you’re right. This is a nice place to rest and regrou
p, though. I was kinda hoping we could stay here a while longer.”
Nowen smiled. “Even with the Rev upstairs?”
Suzannah made a shooing motion with her hand. “Hell, Eli ain’t that bad, and it’s kinda touching, in a weird-ass way, that he cares for his wife that much. If she is chained up like you said, she ain’t a problem to me. I kinda over-reacted, I know. But the Flux...it wiped out my entire family, in one way or another. Either straight up killed ‘em or turned them into CZs.” She wiped at her eyes. “Enough of that shit. Long time ago. Big question now is: are you up to traveling?”
“Yeah.”
“Bullshit.” Nowen blinked at the sudden, harsh word. Suzannah continued. “Honey, you look like hell. I can count your ribs through that flannel nightie, and if your cheeks sink in anymore they’ll meet inside your mouth.”
Nowen raised a hand to her face. Her cheekbones did feel prominent, but hadn’t they always? “Do I really look that bad?”
Suzannah laughed. “Oh, is that vanity I hear in your voice?”
“No. Concern. Showing weakness can get you killed.”
Suzannah stopped laughing and fixed Nowen with a disgruntled look. “You are so weird. But nah, you don’t look all that bad. You could stand a lot more food and rest, is what I’m thinking.”
“I don’t think we have that much time.”
“Me neither. So, again: Are you up to traveling?”
Nowen nodded, keeping her gaze on Suzannah. “I don’t know how much stamina I have. I don’t feel weak, just tired. I guess the road will tell.”
The red-haired woman studied her face. “Ok. Let’s get Sage and tell her what’s going on.”
Over breakfast (canned chili and dry pancakes) Nowen told Sage and Eli about seeing the Screamin’ Devil drive past. The discussion grew tempestuous after that, with Eli promising to hide them forever from ‘them cult bastards’ and Sage and Suzannah ready to leave that moment. After twenty minutes of this Nowen slammed her fist down on the table and got everyone’s attention. “We’ll stay one more night, and leave in the morning. Eli, would it be an imposition on you if we were to take some of those clothes you have stored in the bedroom?”
Wolf Hiding (A Wolf in the Land of the Dead Book 2) Page 13
