The Believers (The Breeders Series - Book 2) (25 page)

I hang my head in shame as my feet navigate over the rocky terrain. My gambit failed and now the mutants think we are worth something to the people upstairs. I tried to tell them Andrew wants us dead and doesn't care how. He'd be happy if we languished like them, eating bats and stinking of guano until we go crazy from contaminated water. But the group is not exactly logical. If their skin and hair has decayed this much, I can only imagine what their brains look like. Still, if I hadn't told them about Clay killing the Messiah, we might not be in this predicament. I kick a stone, feeling like dirt.

Mama lumbers in front of me, her steps slow and painful. Even from behind I can tell the baby is moving, invading her body. My chest constricts with the weight of our situation. How can I save Mama? How can I save anyone?

Ethan is walking somewhere behind us. I caught a glimpse of him before we headed out. Some wizened old hag with most of her nose missing dragged him out of a cave, a leather thong around his neck like a dog. These people may have been compassionate once, but all humanity has been leeched into the darkness.

We reach the base of the incline that winds its way up. A shove from behind sends me skidding into the rock wall.

The speaker inches along the incline and leans into my ear. “You go
firssst
,” she whispers, her dead breath pulsing on my neck. “Tell them the Forgotten are here…to make a deal.”

“What if they shoot me?” I whisper, looking into her eyes for some compassion.

The whites of her eyes are yellow like custard. “That
isss
none of our
concccern.
”

“Great,” I say, frowning. “And what if they don't give two rips that the Forgotten are here?”

She ponders this for a moment as if the thought never crossed her mind. She scratches a nail-less finger through her remaining strands of hair. “Tell them we have the one who killed the
Messssiah
.”

I stare up at the dim light filtering from the mall. “Yeah, well, they might not care about that either.”

She prods my back. I shuffle up the incline and cringe when my eyes crest over the tunnel's top. I stop and survey the mall floor. No one around. No sign of the guards who were supposed to be posted here. Son of a… We could've just climbed back up and walked out?!

I stride up the rest of the incline, listening, looking. The mall is quiet as death. I thought the people would still be wailing about the death of their Messiah. I'd pictured an all-night candlelight vigil. But nothing? The skin on my arms crawls. It doesn't feel right.

“Back I see.”

“Who's there?” I whirl around, my bound hands held out in front of me. They're weaponless, useless and all I have. “Who are you?” The voice sounds like—

“Lavan,” the voice says. One of Andrew's Brotherhood guard. He hiccups. Is he…drunk?

“Where are you?” I step toward the voice. In the entryway of an empty storefront, Lavan lies slumped over, his head lolling against the cracked concrete wall. In one hand is an empty drinking bowl. A liquor smell wafts from him. As I step closer I see a rifle gripped in his other hand.

“Whoa!” I say, shuffling back.

“Can't run,” he slurs. He makes no move to lift the rifle. Instead, he laughs darkly. “None of us can.”

That something-isn't-right-feeling steals over me again. “What d’you mean?”

He hiccups and chuckles. “Might
as well go out with liquor in my belly.” He pats his stomach and a dull, sloshy sound echoes from inside. “Might as well go out feelin' good.”

I step closer. “What do you mean 'go out'? Where are you going?”

He draws his bloodshot eyes up to my face with some effort. “Home.”

“Home?” I ask, my heart pounding harder.

“Yeah,” he says, smacking his hand on the concrete floor. He points toward the heavens. “Tonight we're all going home.”

I back away, my hands shaking. It's the end. With the death of the Messiah, they must've decided it was time to… I don’t want to think about the end to that sentence.

I run back to the hole, my heart tearing around my chest. I skid down the decline and almost bump into the speaker. “They don't want to barter,” I pant. “The end is here. They're going to kill everyone.” The words spill out of my mouth in one long, unpunctuated strand. Everyone stares at me. I bang my hands against my knee. “We have to get outta here!”

Slowly, the mutants come unstuck and start murmuring. The speaker skirts past me, hugging the wall as she slips back to discuss this with her people. Clay, Mama, and Rayburn scuttle up to me. I can't see Ethan.

“W-w-what's going on up there?” Rayburn nods up toward the mall. “Th-they dead?”

I shake my head. “Only one guard is up there, but he's a mess. Drunk. He told me all the Believers are going
home
. Rayburn, the barrel of poison we saw. They must be planning on using it tonight. We have to warn the people and get the hell out.”

In the dark, Clay's face wrinkles with concern. “We're still tied up and they got Ethan. We need to talk these freaks into freein' us.”

I nod. “The speaker's the one. She has more heart than any of the others.”

Clay nods. “I'll talk to her.”
I frown. “Maybe I should.”

Clay glowers. “You
always
think you should be the one. You never trust me. The only thing I ever did right was shoot and now I can't even do that.” Even in the dark, his blue eyes flash like jagged pieces of glass.

I drop my chin. “You help a lot.”

“Not one damn thing I done so far has helped!” He leans in, wrapping one of his bound hands around my wrist. “Let me do this. You gotta try trustin' me at least once to know it ain't a good idea.”

I shut my mouth. Nod once. He stands a little taller as he faces the speaker who's pushing through the mutants toward us. She does not look happy.

“We don't believe you,” the speaker says, forming her ruined hands into fists. “You're lying. If you lie again, one of you
goesss
over the
ssside
.” She points at the dark drop below.

“No,” I say, but Clay's hand on my arm silences me.

“She's not lyin'.” He stares hard at the speaker. “And you know it.”

“We do not kno—”

“No, not
we
,” Clay points at the speaker's chest. “
You
. You know this ain't right.” He holds up his bound hands. “We ain't cattle and y'all are not like these monsters up here.” Clay nods up toward the mall and where the Believers live. “If you was, you'd still be up there.”

The speaker pauses, mouth open, her swollen tongue showing. Some of the mutants grasp at her sack clothing, but she waves them away.

Clay continues. “You know you should let us go. That together,
we
,” he circles his bound arms around to indicate us and the mutants, “should take these bastards down.”

For once the crowd is silent. The speaker stares at Clay as if she's just seeing him for the first time. She rubs her hand through her remaining hair. “I...” she says the word slowly, testing it out. “
I
hear you. I agree,” she says more boldly. She faces the mob of questioning faces on the incline below.

“We will
ssset
thessse
people free,” she says, arms wide. There are murmurs of dissent, but some heads nod. “We will follow them up.” More murmurs. Many of the mutant's faces looked scared, but others look enraged. One woman with warts on her cheeks shakes her fist in the air.

The speaker licks her cracked lips. “We will go up and reclaim our
placcce
.” Now they are nodding, smiling. The speaker nods with them. “We will do it when they are
weakessst
. We will take over and we will kill those that have
sssentenccced usss
to death.”

“Wait, only the Brotherhood, right?” I ask her. When I get no response, I turn to Clay.

Clay calls after the mutants. “You don't want to hurt everyone.”

But it is too late. The throng of mutants surges forward, a wave of stinking flesh. They brush past us and I cringe as their bodies touch mine.
Zombies
, my brain thinks. They look undead.

The speaker slips out a rock dagger, grabs my wrists, and yanks them up. I pull back, but she's sawing at my bonds. When the rope splinters and my hands fall free, she thrusts the rock-knife and Clay’s gun in my hands. I hold them delicately, my jaw slack.

“Free the
othersss
,” she pants, her yellow eyes following her people. “Then join
usss
. We will avenge all who've fallen.”

“Wait,” I say, thinking of Mage. “You don't have to kill all of them. They aren’t all guilty!”

But she's gone, lurching up the steps with a vigor that sends shivers over me. Ethan, free of his leather leash, runs up and wraps his arms around my waist. I hug him. For a moment, the five of us stare at each other.

“What did we do?” I whisper to Clay. He doesn't answer, just looks up at the trickle of light.

Then the screaming begins.

My hands tighten around Ethan as cries of terror cascades down the hole. Who's screaming? Clay tugs on my arm. “Go,” he says, his eyes wide. “Run to the closest exit.” He looks at Rayburn. “We need a truck.”

“The garage,” I say, remembering. “They got trucks.”

Rayburn nods vigorously.

“What about Mage?” Ethan asks, pulling away from me. “We just can't leave her.”

I stare up at Clay, searching his face for answers. He nods slowly. “We'll look,” he says. His tone of voice says
we'll look for a minute and then we're outta here
.

As we crest the floor surface, I see who's screaming. A few of the mob have fallen on Lavan. One of the mutants bites his arm. Another beats on him with a small hunk of concrete. She rears back and smashes the concrete into Lavan's knee. He screams.

“They'll kill him,” I whisper under my breath. Do I care? The Brotherhood have been awful to us, but he's drunk and the fight is totally unfair.

“Riley, we can't,” Clay's eyes are sad. “We gotta go.”

But if Lavan dies it'll be our fault. I can't take his screams. I run at the mutant who's about to smash the concrete into Lavan's head. “Get off him!”

Clay grabs the mutant's hand and stops the blow in mid-air. “Go find Andrew,” Clay shouts. “He's the one who put you out.” The mutants snarl, but back away, rotten teeth flashing.

We stare down at Lavan, moaning in a bloody mess on the floor. None of the cuts look life threatening. What's more life threatening is whatever the Believers have planned.

“We, uh, we should question him,” Rayburn says, pointing a shaking finger at Lavan.

Clay kneels down, grabs Lavan's shirt collar, and draws him into a sitting position. His head lolls back, a trickle of blood dribbling into his dark hair. “I know yer busted to hell,” Clay says, “but we need to know what you meant by it being the end? Is there poison? Are you gonna force people to drink it?”

Lavan's eyes roll back in his head and he murmurs something.

“Speak up!” Clay says, shaking him a little.

Lavan opens his mouth and vomits down his shirt. It falls with a wet splat onto the floor.

Clay let's go of Lavan and wipes his hand on the guard’s soiled shirt. “Well, he ain't gonna be much help.”

“You’re right,” I say. “We gotta find Mage.”

“Where do we look?” Mama asks. Her mouth tightens, a sure sign of the pain she's trying to hide.

“We start with the girl's hallway,” Clay says, heading that way with Ethan in tow. “At least some of the mutants went the other way.”

He's right. Shouts and smashing sounds come from the men's hallway. There's the pop of a single gunshot. We all jump. Clay waves us in the opposite direction.

We peel out into twilight streaming down from the food court ceiling. Some of the boards and canvas sheets they nailed up have fallen down. Sand still lurks in the corners and collects on the foam play fruit. My eyes trail over the giant oranges and apples and sadness sinks my heart. Will they try to kill everyone? The carousel is empty. The Messiah's body is gone, but his blood remains in dark puddles. I've watched him die at least a dozen times in my mind and seeing the blood brings those images flooding back. I focus on running through the food court without drawing attention. Everyone in this mall is our enemy now.

Running down the women's corridor, I see clumps of Believers huddled together. One woman sits alone in the middle of an empty shoe store staring out at us. Her clothes are torn and something black, ash maybe, covers her face. Her hollow eyes follow us as silent tears plow through the dark smudges.

They don't need to be warned the end is coming. They already know.

We slip silently past several more empty stores until we come across the Willow Room. Inside Prema, my cranky boss from my days as washerwoman, and Yusuf, the middle-aged Willow Room teacher, hover around half a dozen frightened children. A crown of golden hair appears behind the crowd.

“Mage!” I yell. A few of the children duck behind the adults as I barrel into the room. I hold my hands up apologetically. “We're here to help.”

Mage's eyes fall on us. “Help?” she says slowly.

“Lavan said…” I look down and see two pairs of little eyes staring at me from behind Yusuf's pant leg. I lean in close and whisper to Mage. “He said it was
the end
.”

There's a flicker on her face, almost imperceptible, then it's gone. “Lavan's drunk. He took my papa's death real hard.”

Didn't she take her dad's death real hard? I stare into her face, but it's stone. I put my hand on her arm. “The Forgotten are here. The people Andrew put out.” How long until they descend on this room? Would there be enough human being left inside them to keep them from harming these children? I think of Ethan wearing a dog leash around his neck. “We gotta get you out of here.”

Mage's face tightens and a frown creases the corners of her mouth. “That's gonna be a problem.”

She walks us out of the Willow Room and down the hall to the exit. It's the door leading out to the garage. There are two giant, armed Brotherhood guards at the door. They point the rifle barrels at us as we approach.

“Turn around!” The guard waves his rifle toward where we came from. “Go back to your rooms and stay there like you were instructed. Our new leader will tell you when it is safe to come out.”