The Last Uprising (Defectors Trilogy) (15 page)

“We should hit the road soon if we keep heading due south,” said Roman. “But they’re bound to have a roadblock set up now that they know someone’s breached the fence.”

Godfrey let out a low noise like a growl.

Roman continued. “But if we head west, we can pick up a smaller road. It’s not as direct, but I don’t think we’ll run into the PMC’s patrol units.”

Godfrey turned the wheel to change our course, nearly colliding with an enormous tree.

We drove for an hour before the woods started to thin. Then, without warning, the vehicle pitched forward sharply as we drove over a ditch. I threw out a hand to steady myself against the driver’s seat, and the tires connected with smooth pavement.
 

We were on a county road flanked by tall trees. Even though we were more exposed on the open road, I no longer had the uncomfortable feeling that the PMC was going to materialize out of the darkness or step out from behind a tree.

There was a quiet
tick
as Godfrey switched off the headlights, and everything was thrust into darkness.
 

It was strange to feel the movement beneath us when I couldn’t see the road. I gripped the seat, my stomach clenched for our imminent collision with another vehicle, but then I remembered no one drove on this road anymore. We were south of the border now, so the only people we could encounter were the PMC or other illegals.
 

After several minutes, my eyes adjusted to the darkness. The night took on a velvety blue hue, and I drank in the gorgeous scenery. Something about being back in the states and away from World Corp International made me feel less confined. The trees looked fresh and welcoming covered in pure white snow. I knew if I stuck my head out the window, the air would be cold and crisp and wonderful.

We had escaped. I was a name without an identity. I could start over.

I could feel Amory’s eyes on me and knew he was thinking the same thing I was. Something had changed. We were no longer mired in despair. I was no longer their prisoner.
 

I kept replaying the memories of Amory over and over in my mind. Now I knew I could trust him — that I
should have
trusted him all along. We had been united once. I’d never been a mole for World Corp.

I realized it didn’t matter what I had been taught in the facility. Most of what Aryus had told me was probably a lie.

I was a rebel now in every way that mattered. When the PMC came to camp, I had fled. I had chosen Amory, Greyson, Logan, and Godfrey. Now I was a fugitive once again, yet I felt hopeful.

In the back row, Logan was slumped against Greyson’s side, fast asleep. He looked exhausted, too, but the happiness in his eyes was unmistakable.

“Is she okay?” I wondered aloud.

Greyson shrugged. “She’s been really tired ever since . . .”

“The cure?”

Roman scoffed. “That poison Aryus gave her nearly killed her. She wouldn’t eat . . . couldn’t keep anything down. She slept for weeks trying to burn off her fever.”

“But she’s better now.”

Greyson cocked his head. “She’s not infected anymore, if that’s what you mean.” His voice was soft, and I could tell he didn’t want to rouse Logan. “But Shriver thinks it gave her permanent nerve damage.”

I remembered Logan’s shaky hands during the carrier attack and felt a pang of sadness. Fighting and shooting was what Logan was good at. It was all she’d known for the last several years.

A memory flickered in the back of my mind: Amory, pulling me behind a stolen cruiser in the parking garage, begging me not to go into the Infinity Building.
 

“None of us could have known the cure would do that,” said Amory. There was a note of defensiveness in his voice that warmed my heart.
 

Breaking into World Corp hadn’t been his idea; it had been mine, and Amory had fought me on it.

“Yeah,” said Greyson in a tired voice. “At least she’s alive.”

“So we’re supposed to be
grateful
World Corp just maimed her after they infected her?” snarled Roman.

We all fell silent. Somehow I knew Roman’s anger had nothing to do with me. If he blamed me for taking Logan to get the cure, it was only because he was trying to find a target for his pent-up hostility against World Corp. In a way, the angrier he became, the sorrier I felt for him. I knew how heavy that resentment was to carry.

No one spoke for several hours. The scenery changed to fields, and the exposure gave me an uncomfortable prickle on the back of my neck. We were the only car on the road — no signs of life anywhere.
 

We passed several farms, but the land had a fallow, neglected look to it. There were no animals out in the pastures, and the houses we passed were derelict, the windows boarded.
 

The snow thinned to patches the farther south we drove. When we pulled off at an exit to salvage some gas from an abandoned filling station, the air felt almost warm. Spring was on its way.

As the hot afternoon sun filtered in through the window, I drifted off to sleep with the door handle cutting into my side. I dreamt of Amory and icy waters.
 

Despite my slumped position, I slept soundly for the first time in weeks, knowing that when I awoke, we would be closer to home.

As we drove past an exit for Columbia, I felt a shiver of recognition. Part of me wanted to go back to see if more memories would resurface, but part of me did not want to drag out old ghosts. This was where Greyson had been captured — where he had lived in fear like a rat for months while the PMC prowled the city.

Finally Godfrey turned off the highway onto a smaller road. We slowed considerably, and I studied the shabby, abandoned houses tucked back in the wasteland of untended cornfields.
 

Most of the snow had melted here. With the setting sun illuminating the fields, it should have been beautiful, but I only saw people whose lives had been taken from them by the PMC. They had been forced from their farms and relocated to a sterile, crowded commune or taken prisoner.

As we drew closer to the farm, I couldn’t sit still. My nerves were tingling, and I could only release some of my pent-up energy by jiggling my leg against the car door.

“You better prepare yourselves,” murmured Godfrey. “We don’t know what we’ll find here.”

Logan reached into the crate and began passing out rifles.

Roman took his and began loading it with relish. “Let’s go hunting.”

“Now, hang on,” said Godfrey. “We’ve got to be smart about this. If it
is
PMC occupied, there’s bound to be more of them than there are of us.”

“We should park down the road and ambush them,” said Amory.

Godfrey nodded grimly. “That’s exactly what we’re going to do.”

“Ida said they wanted her farm for food production,” Logan said. “So won’t they be gone until spring?”

Godfrey shook his head almost imperceptibly, his eyes scanning the road. “They didn’t want it for that.”

“What then?” said Amory. “Why did they take her farm in the first place?”

“I don’t know.”

As we drove, the cornfields turned into pastures, and the pastures turned into woods. We turned off onto a narrow gravel road, and the trees became even denser.
 

Godfrey pulled off the side of the road and killed the engine. We all spilled out of the 4Runner, and I checked my pockets for extra ammunition. My heart was thudding hard in my chest. It was one thing to take out a bunch of carriers; it was another thing to fight a troop of PMC officers. They were properly trained — lethal. I would die trying to escape rather than be taken prisoner again.

Nobody spoke as we picked our way through the trees along the gravel drive that led to the farmhouse. It seemed years since I had first stumbled bleeding and starving through the woods to the cornfield on the other side of Ida’s property. The relief and hope I had felt that day grew stronger with every step. It no longer felt like watching a film of someone else’s life. The farm was rescuing me all over again.

Suddenly, I heard the dull
thunk
of metal, and Roman let out a fluent stream of profanity. “What the fucking hell?”

I squinted through the dim light and could just make out something hanging from the tree in front of him at eye level. Dangling from a piece of string was an empty Spam can. I watched it sway there for a moment like some bleak Christmas ornament, mocking us and making me a little hungry.

“That’s weird,” he said, tugging down the can and tossing it into the underbrush.
 

It was. Nobody threw away food like that . . . unless they were trying to attract a bigger animal.

We started walking again, and Logan swallowed down a shriek. She’d smacked into another strange tree ornament, but this wasn’t a can of Spam — it was a dead opossum strung up by the neck.

I backed away from the accusing stare of its beady crossed eyes and swallowed down the bile burning in my throat.
 

Who had hung these things here?
Ida was certainly eccentric, but I didn’t remember her ever doing anything like this. It would have drawn —

The realization came too late.
 

That was when I heard it: the low rattle of dying breaths, the rip of metal, and the drunken cadence of uneven footsteps.

I whipped the beam of my flashlight toward the source of the noise and saw the shadowed figure of an emaciated carrier pawing at a suspended tuna can. Her skin took on a sickly grayish hue in the artificial light as her sunken eyes drifted lazily toward me.

Amory was the closest. He raised his rifle and shot the carrier cleanly in the head. She looked surprised. Then she teetered for a second before collapsing into a tangle of bushes.

I heard another one shuffling around somewhere behind me. I raised my rifle, but I couldn’t see it. Darkness was descending quickly, and I was just as likely to shoot Logan or Roman as I was to hit the carrier that was ripping into the rotting flesh of the nearest dead animal.

Godfrey dispatched him before he got too close. The carrier pitched forward and fell at my feet, and I realized he had been eating the opossum. I was simultaneously disgusted and a little sad. This carrier had been a person once, and now he was so desperate he would eat the rancid carcass of a dead animal.

“Let’s keep moving,” Godfrey growled in his scratchy voice.

My pulse was still throbbing too fast, but I picked my way around the hanging bait.
Who would do such a thing?
 

We didn’t encounter any more carriers, but my ears were ringing in their desperation to pick up the slightest rustle of dead leaves or the clang of the perverse wind chimes.

Finally, the gap between the trees widened, and the farm came into view. I wasn’t prepared for what I saw.
 

This was not the farm from my memories. The once meticulous vegetable patches had been trampled by PMC boots. There were no animals grazing on the hill. The old red barn was gone. Wood debris and trash lay everywhere, as though it had been demolished with dynamite. The cheery green farmhouse was still standing, but it had warped two-by-fours nailed over its doors and windows. It looked condemned.

The tall trees that had stood between the house and the field were gone, and the fields looked as though the dirt had been churned by heavy machinery. It was drenched in the last slivers of light from the blood-red sun, which threw shadows from the lone, angry backhoe parked in the middle of the field. Orange construction tape draped over an area in the middle, where a concrete foundation had been poured, taking up nearly half of one field.

Logan clapped a hand over her mouth, her eyes swimming with tears.
 

Ida’s farm had been destroyed.

Godfrey, Roman, and Amory fanned out to my sides, and I stepped out of the trees with my rifle raised.
 

I didn’t see a single living soul. It looked as though the PMC construction crew had stopped in the middle of what they were doing. Perhaps a winter storm had taken them by surprise, or maybe they had simply abandoned the project.
Had they set the bait for the carriers, or had the carriers run them off?

It only took us a few moments to prowl the perimeter of the field and boarded-up house for World Corp personnel. Greyson took out a third carrier that had dragged a dead squirrel out of the tree line to feast in the backyard, but other than that, we were alone.

Logan was already standing on the edge of the field, squinting at a sign I had missed. It was an illustrated mockup that showed a nuclear power plant in the middle of the field. The picture showed a building where the barn had once stood and a smaller outbuilding where the farmhouse was now.

“They destroyed her farm for this,” whispered Logan.

I nodded.

“What a waste.”

“It makes sense. World Corp needs power.”

I regretted my words as soon as I’d spoken. Logan turned to me, anger burning in her teary eyes.
 

“How can you be so cold about this? Do you really not remember anything about this place? Don’t you care about Ida?”

“I remember,” I said. “I remember how much I loved it here.”

Logan’s eyes widened. “You do?”

I nodded. I wasn’t sure how or why, but running with Greyson and Amory had opened the floodgates to my memories: Greyson being hauled away by the PMC, Amory kissing me outside Sector X, Greyson by my side at Rulon’s camp, Amory writhing in pain, our bodies tangled together in a darkened room . . .
 

“What else do you remember?”
 

“Things are coming back,” I said, feeling a smile playing on my lips. “And it’s not just the memories . . . I’m beginning to feel like myself.”

Logan broke into a huge, watery smile, and before I could say or do anything, she threw her arms around me and crushed me against her.
 

“That’s wonderful, Haven. I’m so happy!” She pulled back. Her eyes were swimming again. “I couldn’t lose you, too. I’m not strong enough to lose anyone else.”