Never Fade (34 page)

Only five of the eight kids in Michael’s hunting party followed him out, not saying a single damn word, not taking anything from the pile of supplies, not acknowledging the waves of hands that reached out in silent good-byes. And only one of them turned back to look at me.

I saw the plan unfold in his mind as if he had opened a book and was turning the pages for me. Coming back to camp in the night,
turn
, sneaking back into the warehouse,
turn
, unloading every round in their guns on the kids sleeping in small huddles of blankets,
turn
, the five of them carrying out all of the supplies we’d be bringing back.

My spine stiffened from bone to granite to steel. I shook my head and blasted the plan clear out of his skull.

“Anyone else?” Olivia asked, surveying the huddled masses in front of her. “No? All right. Let’s get to work, then.”

The former occupants of the White Tent had been laid out beside the supplies, kept in a circle of warmth by the ring of blazing trash cans around them. Chubs glanced up from where he was hunched over Vida’s shoulders as I squeezed through the ring, the smell of smoke dragging up one black memory after another. I took a deep breath, pressing a hand against my mouth until Mason’s face had cleared from behind my eyes, and stepped over the sleeping kids. He had set them up in two lines again, this time not piled on top of one another.

“You suck at this!” Vida snarled. “What, did you forget your rake in the car? Pour some water on it and leave it the hell alone!”

She was sitting cross-legged in front of Chubs, her elbows resting on her knees and her face pressed firmly into her hands. It was a shock every time I looked at her now, an ugly little reminder of the previous night. When we returned to the warehouse, it had been obvious to all of us that most of Vida’s long hair couldn’t be saved. She managed to put out the fire before it reached her scalp, thankfully, but the blue ends had been charred and left in uneven patches. With one single, fierce look, she had pulled the small knife Jude had smuggled from the storage room and cut it off herself. Her wavy hair now curled around her ears and chin.

“A rake
would
make this go faster,” Chubs muttered. “I’m assuming you enjoy the luxury of having skin on your back, though.”

He licked away the sweat from his upper lip. The painstaking process of removing the charred pieces of her shirt from the burn on her shoulders had begun more than an hour ago, and we were all in agony listening to him try to disinfect the area.

“Scoot back!” she hissed. “You smell like unwashed ass.”

“How’s it going?” I asked, crouching down beside him.

“Could be better,” he muttered, “could be worse.”

“I am going to straight up murder you,” Vida said, her voice trembling with the intensity of the pain, “right in the face.”

The tweezers in Chubs’s hand stilled, just for an instant. He cleared his throat, but when he spoke again, the heat had evaporated from his voice. “Please. If it means getting away from you for five minutes, I’d gladly let you do it.”

“Could be much worse,” I amended, looking around again. “I have the list of all the meds you gave to Jude, but was there anything else you wanted me to look for?”

He set the rag back in the water. “Sterile gauze for Vida’s burns, any kind of disinfectant like alcohol pads…any complete first-aid kits if they have them, really.”

“What about other medicine?” I pressed, forcing myself not to look at Liam’s still form. “Something else to treat their pneumonia?”

Chubs rubbed the back of his hand against his forehead, closing his eyes. “There’s really nothing else, and even then the medicine will only work if it’s bacterial pneumonia. If it’s viral and it’s already this bad, I’m not even sure IV fluid would help.”

“There’s nothing else…not even in your book?”

He’d insisted on trekking all the way back to the car to retrieve some kind of medical text his dad had given him to double-check the list of medicine.

Chubs shook his head.

I felt the scream burning at the base of my throat. NOT HIM. Not Liam. Please don’t take him, too. I wondered if this was what all of those parents had felt like once IAAN had gone public and they knew there was a 98 percent chance their kids wouldn’t make it through, no matter what they did to help them.

“When are you leaving?” Chubs asked. “Who’s going with you?”

“In a few hours,” I said. “It’ll be most of the hunting groups, but a few of the guys are staying behind. And Vida.”

The gunfire flashing through that boy’s mind had been enough for me to worry about any other plans they might have for retaking their old home tonight. If they were stupid enough to try something, they’d be guaranteed some serious pain and trauma for their effort.

“And that’s comforting, how?” he asked.

Vida reached behind her, trying to punch whatever part of him she could reach.

“You’re done,” she announced, bolting. The strips of the shirt he had shredded to wrap her burns with fell out of his lap as he lunged after her. We watched her stumble through the ring of fire around us, Chubs’s eyes narrowing with every clumsy step she took. Slowly, after she’d disappeared into the kids milling around us, he turned to look at me.

“Yes,” I said. “You have to go after her.”

He raised his eyebrows in challenge.

“It’ll get infected,” I reminded him.

“She would drive a saint to murder. Like, ten-stab-wounds-to-the-torso murder.”

“Good thing you’re not a saint.”

He stood at that, thrusting a towel and bucket of warm water toward me, giving some kind of vague motion toward the spread of sick kids behind us. “I’ll be back in five minutes. Be useful and try to get them drinking water.”

I went down the lines of kids, waking them out of fever dreams, bringing a plastic cup of water to their lips. Short of forcing their mouths open and pouring it down their throats, there wasn’t much I could do to get them to swallow. I did the best I could cleaning off their faces with a rag, asking a series of questions that began with, “Are you in pain?” and ended with, “Do you feel worse than yesterday?”

Only one of the kids was able to answer.
Yes
, she had whispered,
yes
. To every question, an aching, soft
yes
.

A sharp cough drew my eyes across the way to where a familiar head of shaggy hair was struggling to escape from the baby blue blanket over him. He was attempting to get up onto his elbows, his chest heaving with the effort. It was his fluttering, shallow breaths that worried me—the way his arms shook supporting his weight.

“Stop,” I said, making my way over to him, “please—it’s all right, just lie back—”

Liam’s eyes were wide, rimmed with red and bruises still fading. His arms gave out under him, and without any thought to it, I caught him by the shoulders and carefully lowered him back down. His eyes never left my face; the blue was paler somehow, brighter and glassy with fever.

“Careful,” I murmured. After touching his burning skin, my hands felt as cold as they were empty when I pulled them away.

“What’s going on?” Liam whispered, struggling to swallow. “What’s…happening?”

“Chubs just went to get something,” I said softly. “He’ll be right back.”

Liam nodded slightly, closing his eyes with a soft sigh. I started to reach over to brush the curling ends of his hair off his forehead when he turned toward me and forced his lids open. “You’re…awfully pretty. What’s your…name?”

The words wheezed and whistled out of him in a heart-stopping way, but I was caught so off guard by how coherent he was, it took me several precious moments to respond.

“Ruby,” he repeated in the warm, caressing tones of his Southern lilt. “Like ‘Ruby Tuesday.’ That’s nice.”

Then Liam’s expression dissolved completely. His brows drew together in a look of intense concentration, his lips repeating that one word over and over again, soundlessly.

Ruby.

I knelt down next to him, sliding the bucket over. I braced one hand on the ground beside his upturned palm.

“Ruby,” he repeated, his light eyes cloudy. “You… Cole said… He told me we had never met, and I thought…I thought it was a dream.”

I brought the rag up to his face and began, with gentle strokes, to clean the dirt and soot away from it. It was okay like this, I reasoned. I wasn’t touching him directly. The stubble on his chin rasped as I brushed the rag against it. I focused on the small white scar at the corner of his lips. I focused on not pressing mine to that spot, no matter how much it felt like I was fading into him.

“A dream?” I pressed, hoping to keep him talking. “What kind of dream was it?”

It wasn’t… No, it wasn’t possible. I had seen people become confused after I’d messed with their memories, a bit muddled on the details, but I had gone through and picked every instance of me clean from Liam’s mind. I had replaced myself with thin air and shadows.

A faint smile formed on his lips. “A good one.”

“Lee…”

“I need… Are the keys…?” His voice was getting softer. “We’ll go get… I think Zu is—She’s in the aisle with—The one with—”

Aisle?

“I don’t want those guys to…to see her. They’re going to hurt them, both of them—”

I pulled back, but Liam’s hand somehow found mine on the ground, and his fingers latched onto it, pinning me there. “What guys? Zu’s safe; no one is going to hurt her.”

“The—Walmart…I told her, I told her to go with… She went with—No, where is she? Where’s Zu?”

“She’s safe,” I promised, trying to pull my hand back. His grip was persistent, like he was trying to force me to understand something, and the more he struggled, the harder it was for him to catch his breath. I took my free hand and pressed it to his cheek, leaning over his face. “Liam, look at me. Zu’s safe. You have to—you have to relax. Everything will be all right. She’s safe.”

“Safe.” The word sounded hollow. He closed his eyes on it. “Don’t go again,” he whispered. “Don’t go…where I can’t follow, please,
please
, not again…”

“I’ll stay right here,” I said, rubbing a thumb along his cheekbone.

You have to stop this. You have to leave. Right now.

“Don’t lie,” he mumbled, at the edge of sleep. “This is…a place we don’t have to…”

My vision blanked out with an array of spots and a pounding rush of blood as I shot up onto my feet. I pressed a hand to my mouth, waiting for my sight to clear, trying not to trip over the kids nearby. I knew what he had been trying to say. I had heard those words before, had said them myself, but there was—It wasn’t possible—

This is a place we don’t have to lie.

“Ruby?”

Vida and Chubs were standing in front of the fire barrels, watching me with twin expressions of concern. How long had they been standing there listening? Chubs took a step toward me, but I waved him off. “I’m okay, he just…”

I crouched down, putting my head in my hands, forcing in two deep, steadying breaths.

Not possible.

“Are you sure?” Chubs repeated, his voice sounding colder than before. “Are you finished playing this game?”

I nodded, keeping my eyes on the ground at his feet. My stomach rolled and heaved. I could hear Liam struggling with the blanket twisted between his legs, my mind suddenly stirring.

“You think it’s okay to be all sweet to him like this now and confuse him even more? The plan is still to take the flash drive and dump us for the League, right?” he demanded. “What’s going to happen when he wakes up?”

“She’s going to mope around and pretend like she’s never met him before in all the sad, pathetic years of her life,” Vida said, sitting down a short distance away. “Because this is a grab-and-go operation. Ruby
knows
that’s all this is, doesn’t she? She said she wouldn’t let her feelings get all mixed up and twisty about this, didn’t she?”

I swallowed hard. “I know. Can you… Will you tell him why we’re here?”

“The truth?” Chubs challenged, his voice sharp.

It started as a single cough, but I recognized the first sharp gasp behind me for what it was. Liam struggled against his blankets, trying to get his hands up to his throat as he fought for the next breath. He sucked at the air, trying to twist onto his side, but he couldn’t get himself over onto his shoulder. There was no way to tell which of us moved first. By the time I reached Liam’s side, Chubs was there, too, propping his friend up to keep him from choking.

“It’s okay,” Chubs said, leaning him forward so he could pat his back. He sounded calm, but a sheen of sweat had broken out on his forehead. “One breath at a time. You’re fine. You’re okay.”

He didn’t sound okay. He sounded like…

He’s going to die.
My hands twisted in my hair. After everything, he was going to die here, like this, fighting and failing and drifting away to a place I couldn’t reach him.

“Water?” Vida asked as she hobbled over with a plastic bottle in her hand. I hated the hard glint to her eyes. The judgment I saw her pass on Liam’s condition and the look of pity she sent my way.

“No,” Chubs said, “it might obstruct his airways. Ruby.
Ruby
—he’s going to be okay; I’m going to keep him awake and make sure he moves around. I need that medicine. I need fluids, heat packs, anything. Quickly.”

I nodded, fisting my hands in my hair, forcing in one damp breath after another.

“Roo!”
Jude’s voice floated over to us a moment before he appeared at the edge of the fires, holding up a familiar black jacket. “I found it, I found it, I found it!”

The three of us shushed him.

“Come here!” I waved him over, taking the jacket before he could accidentally light it on fire. I had only gotten a quick look at the coat in Cole’s memories, and even then, it had been half hidden by the shadows swirling there—but this looked close enough, even if it wasn’t black. The jacket was dark gray, waxed canvas with a flannel interior, and even after being separated from its current owner, it still smelled like him. Pine, fire smoke, and sweat. I felt both Vida’s and Chubs’s eyes on me as I ran my fingers along the seams, until they found the hard, rectangular lump that Cole had stitched into the dark lining.