The Lair (22 page)

“Not a berserker rage, then?”

“No, Melly. But I believe you might be able to hear them, even through you’re not yet fully vampire. And it will be quite useful if you can, so be a good girl and concentrate, will you?”

I try again. And fail again. I pull away from Sebastian, but he pulls me back.

“Try again.”

I want to stomp my foot, to temper tantrum my way out of trying, but Sebastian’s not the type to tolerate that. So I try.

I close my eyes and breathe deep and reach.

Then it hits me: not a musky dog scent, but something else. The sound of them. Not the coyote yips and yaps they make out loud, but the sound of them that
I
hear.

It is a far cry from Sebastian’s tribal beat, farther still from Lily’s lilting melody.

A badly tuned piano playing in a distant room. Or two floors up. Or upside down and backward. Distinctly not right. Unforgettably wrong. Their music is as twisted as their genetics. As miserably out of tune as their bodies are. And, yet, together, they are a kind of rhythm.

I open my eyes. “Four.”

“Good girl.”

His praise rolls me to the balls of my feet. I am an eager beaver to win his shark approval and that’s not the water mammal I want to be.

“How far away are they?”

“Close enough.”

I can see from the gleam in his eyes that I’ve guessed right.

He eyes me and I know he’s sizing me up for another test. “Do you want to wait here or go after them?”

I know, either from spidey sense or simple logic, that they will be back, probably before dawn. Waiting is the easy choice. The safe, Mel-ish choice, but it’s not at all what I want.

“Let’s hunt,” I say and it’s not until he smiles that I realize I forgot to search for a nursery rhyme. The fact that I have to search for nursery rhymes now disturbs me as much as my newfound thirst for blood.

The nursery rhymes used to be how I thought. Part of who I was. I don’t know why I cling to them. Or maybe I do.

As I run through the woods, following the sounds of the Ticks’ discordant notes, I wonder, do I have so much trouble letting go of the girl I was because I don’t yet know the girl I’m going to be?

Is there anything left of that other Mel?

All my life I’ve been prey. Twitchy and nervous. Fearful and frightened. Only the music made it bearable.

People say kids can be cruel, but they aren’t. They are natural predators. They are as proud as lions but more cackle than pride. Like hyenas, they hunt and scavenge. They pick off the weak, the strange, the affected. The girl I was, was perfect prey for a cackle of hyenas. Only my steady drumbeat, only my sister-flower, kept me strong. She was the rest of the herd that circles the frail and keeps them safe.

Now I live in bone-crushing darkness and soul-stealing silence, with a hunger so vast it is my everything. I miss the music, the wild cacophony that was my life in the Before. In my Before. In that other life. But for now, I am only hunger. I only feed. I am not prey, but predator.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Lily

Ely didn’t mention the close call with the Ticks the next day. Lily didn’t, either. It seemed impossible that McKenna had slept through the attack, but if she had, who was Lily to tell her what a close call they’d had? Besides, the conversation with Ely had left her rattled. For all her tough talk, the idea of actually being exposed to the virus, of actually dying  . . . well, it freaked her out. There was a big difference between talking about worst-case scenarios and meeting the gaze of someone who was willing to kill you. The fact that she wanted him to do it if it came to that didn’t make the experience any less chilling.

So once morning came, she kept to herself as they searched the store and loaded up the car. They looked for food in the back and unfortunately found very little. Ely siphoned gas from the cars near the airport.

She tried not to look at the more recent signs of destruction. She kept her head and her mind focused. Which was probably why she hadn’t noticed that McKenna wasn’t feeling well until they were packing up the last of their stuff.

“How are you doing?” she whispered. She wanted to urge McKenna to move faster, but her every step seemed to be a struggle.

McKenna’s eyes were wide. Her skin pale and blotchy. The hollows of her cheeks even more pronounced than usual. Her steps faltered and Lily grabbed her elbow with her free hand, wedging her forearm under her friend’s to support her. “How bad is it?”

She opened her mouth then pinched her lips together again. Her whole face quivered as if it was all she could do not to cry. Finally she said, “I’m okay.”

“McKenna—”

“Just those Barton Hicks things.”

“What?”

She pulled her arm from Lily’s hand and rubbed her palm down the side of her belly, taking a determined step toward the front of the store. “I read about them in my book. The one Justin found for me. They feel like contractions, but they’re really not.”

Lily fell into step beside her. She wedged the plant she was carrying into the crook of her elbow so her hands would be free to grab McKenna if needed. “And they’re common? These Hicks things?”

“Yeah.” Again she breathed out through her pursed lips. “Every woman has them.”

“Do they have this many?”

McKenna stopped, sucking in a sharp breath. At first, Lily thought something she’d said had freaked her out. Then McKenna hunched over, clutching her belly.

Lily dropped the plant and grabbed her arm. McKenna’s weight sagged against her. Panic seized Lily. “McKenna!”

Her fingers dug into Lily’s arm.

“Are you okay?” Lily asked. Which had to be the stupidest question in the world. Clearly she wasn’t okay. This couldn’t be right. Her head was ducked, her hair a curtain around her face, making it impossible to see her friend’s expression. Lily looked up, scanning the area, praying that Ely would come back. That he’d be able to do something. But he didn’t.

She was all alone, standing in the aisle of a looted Wal-Mart with a girl who was clearly, painfully in labor, and she was helpless.

Then, slowly, McKenna’s fingers loosened their grip on her arm. Her shoulders rose and fell as she sucked in a breath. Then another. Her legs must have felt weak, because she wobbled before straightening.

“I’m okay,” she gasped.

“No,” Lily argued. “You’re not okay. You’re in labor.”

She shook her head, despite being pale. Despite being weak and shaken. “I’m fine. It’s just those fake contractions. This is normal.”

“McKenna—”

“I’m fine!” Whatever strength her body lacked, she more than made up for with her conviction. “Even if I wasn’t, there’s nothing you can do now. We’ll be at the border soon. We can’t stop until we get there anyway. And I’m fine.”

Lily studied her friend’s expression. Her skin was still bloodless. The circles under her eyes as dark as bruises. She wasn’t fine, but she was right.

There was nothing they could do here.

“We could go back to Base Camp,” Lily said.

McKenna shook her head. “Base Camp is farther away. And there’s not even hope of a doctor there. We should stick with the plan.”

Lily bit her lip, thinking. Despite what McKenna had said, this clearly wasn’t one of those Hicks things, whatever they were. This was real labor.

“Okay, we’ll head for Mexico and we’ll drive fast. Ely will get us there.”

McKenna nodded and they started walking for the door. They ran into Ely outside by the SUV. He shot them an odd look, but Lily just shook her head so he’d know not to say anything in front of McKenna.

She got McKenna situated in the front seat of the car and headed over to the driver’s side to talk to Ely.

“What’s up?” he asked, the question obvious in his eyes.

“I think McKenna’s in labor.”

“You
think?
”

“She says it’s just a Barton Hicks thing but—”

“Braxton Hicks?”

“What?”

“Braxton Hicks. They’re early contractions. False labor.”

“Yeah. That must be what she meant. She said she thought that’s what it was, but it seemed really intense.”

Ely clenched and unclenched his jaw. “How far apart are they?”

“I don’t know.” Then she thought it through. “No, wait. When we went to the bathroom, she was in there a really long time. She could have had one then. Which means . . .” They’d come out of the bathroom, gathered up their stuff. Walked through most of the store. And McKenna had been walking slowly. “Maybe fifteen minutes?”

Ely nodded. “Okay. We won’t panic until they’re five minutes apart. Until then, we pack fast and we get the hell out of here.”

“How do you know so much about this stuff?”

He gave a humorless chuckle. “Hey, it’s a cliché, but I’m Latino. I’m the oldest of three and I’ve got a shitload of cousins.” His expression darkened. “
Had
a shitload of cousins. Guess I’ve just been around more pregnant women than you.”

He turned and walked away before she could say anything else. She watched him for only a second before heading back to the storeroom for the last of their stuff.

Ely seemed like such a loner. He could have stayed at Base Camp, or even infiltrated the Farms with the other retrieval teams. Instead, he spent all his time on his own, just searching.

He’d gotten a lot of people out of Farms. Carter had said his retrieval rate was higher than almost any other Elite’s. All those people he’d gotten out and none of them had been the family he’d been so desperate to save. How must that have fucked with his head? She’d been so desperate to save just Mel. She’d failed and it had nearly killed her. Wouldn’t it be worse, so much worse, if it wasn’t just Mel, but a whole shitload—to use his word—of family members?

She grabbed the last few things from the walk-in and made her way out of the store toward the waiting car. Only when she looked up at the ceiling, at the signs hanging from the rafters, did this look like a Wal-Mart rather than a battlefield. Somehow, the signs were intact. Big, cheerfully colored signs with pictures of smiling kids and busy moms. Over what must have been the child-care section hung a five-foot-by-five-foot close-up of a gurgling infant.

She nearly stopped cold. That baby. That was what McKenna had in her belly right now. Not that exact baby, obviously, but a real, living person. She’d avoided thinking about her bump that way until now.

It seemed stupid not to look. Just in case. She crept through the store toward the child-care section. It wasn’t a part of the store that she’d ever paid much attention to in the past. In the Before, she’d had zero contact with babies. She stared at the rows and rows of looted products. Most everything had been picked clean. The empty shelves alone were enough to scare the crap out of her. How was it possible that babies needed this much stuff? How on earth was McKenna going to do this? How would she even keep this baby alive once it was born?

Just thinking about it made her heart pound.

So she stopped thinking and just dug through the piles on the floor. There was more stuff in the debris than it looked like at first. No food or formula. Those kinds of thing would have been the first to go, but she did find some clothes, a few blankets. A couple of packages of diapers that looked way too big—but hey, she wasn’t going to be picky—and a pacifier.

It wasn’t enough. Lily couldn’t help feeling like nothing she did would be enough. But it was better than nothing.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Carter

There’s a lot of shit I’ve had to get used to since the Tick-pocalypse. The burn of gasoline in my mouth and sinuses when I suck too hard when siphoning gas. The constant, low-grade hunger and the way it makes you think about food all the time. The relentless cold of living in a cave that’s sixty-five degrees year-round. The muddy taste of boiled, bleached water. The nostalgia for fresh fruits and vegetables. I’ve learned to live with all kinds of crap.

But there’s one thing I don’t think I’ll ever get used to: the sight of a rotting body staked up by a chain outside the fence of a Farm.

Every Farm had them. The Dean of Lily’s Farm had made it sound like some kind of precautionary measure. He’d claimed the decomposing bodies kept the Ticks away as strongly as the scent of fresh blood lured them closer. I didn’t know if the sight and smell repelled the Ticks, all I knew was that they sure as hell repulsed me.

I would never get used to it. I didn’t want to.

It had taken us just about twenty-four hours to get from Utah to San Angelo. I only hoped we’d gotten here soon enough.

As stupid as it seemed to be hanging out a hundred yards from a Farm during the day, I knew from experience that the middle of the afternoon was the best time to sneak up on a Farm. The shadows were starting to lengthen, but it wasn’t dark yet. At dusk, the Collabs started to scramble. By full night, they were alert and trigger happy. This time of day, most of them were still asleep.

I stood, back pressed against a brick wall about fifty yards from the fence—about forty-five yards from the dead bodies. Zeke was a few feet in front of me, crouched behind a shrub as he set up the sat phone antenna. I suppose this must have been the main drag, back when the Farm was still a college. It was a solid block of fast food restaurants, bookstores, and shops. I was in the alley beside a Subway, serving as lookout while Zeke set up the antenna that would allow us to use the sat phone from anywhere within a one-mile radius.

He’d been fumbling with the thing for several minutes. Sure, it would have taken me a lot less than that, but I never liked to be on a mission where I was the only one who knew how stuff worked. That was just asking for trouble. If shit went bad—and it almost always did—you needed as many people as possible who could get you out of it.

Across the street was an expansive student parking lot and then, right up next to the buildings, the double row of electrified, razor wire–topped fences. And outside those fences were the remains of Greens, which Collabs had left chained there to die. I didn’t ask myself if Zeke had been the one to chain any of them up. But I did make myself look at them. I relished the surge of anger, the raw scrape of it against my nerves. I needed it. I’d need it for when Zeke and I broke into the Farm. I’d need it for what I had to do later. Because later, there was a damn good chance humans were going to get hurt. And that I’d be the one doing the hurting.