The Vault (A Farm Novel) (25 page)

CARTER

We said good-bye to Ely and Marcus just outside of Huntsville—the town, this time, not the prison. There were plenty of cars around, so finding an extra ride wasn’t a problem. Classic Ely—he managed to hot-wire a well-stocked Mercedes sedan. We found enough gas to siphon from the abandoned cars that at least we wouldn’t have to worry about fuel for a long time.

When it came to good-byes, Ely and I both made it quick. Neither of us was good at them. It was different for Lily and Marcus. They stood together, off by the Mercedes for a long time, talking quietly. I couldn’t imagine what about. They’d known each other for only a few days. Their relationship could be counted in hours. Long, tortured, dark hours that I couldn’t imagine. But still, only hours.

Even though Marcus was just a kid—he was what? only fourteen or fifteen—he didn’t look like a kid anymore, and when Lily stepped close to hug him, I had to bury a jab of jealousy.

“What do you think they’re talking about?” I muttered aloud.

“Do you really want to know?” Ely asked.

“No.” I guess I didn’t. There would always be parts of Lily I didn’t know and didn’t understand. Parts I’d never lay claim to. Whatever Lily had done when she was a Tick—whatever she’d done to survive—that was hers. Those were her memories. Her secrets. Until and unless she wanted to share them with me, they weren’t mine to even question.

I’d thought she’d end it with the hug, but they kept talking. I didn’t want to rush her—because, hadn’t she been through enough in the past twenty-four hours? So I turned to Ely. “You sure you don’t want to come with us to San Angelo?”

He chuckled. “Yeah. That would go over great with Lily.”

“Good point.” After a minute, I admitted, “I thought she was going to kill you when she first saw you outside the cell.”

Ely scrubbed a hand across his jaw. “Yeah. I get that a lot.”

Thankfully, neither of us brought up the fact that I had nearly gotten him killed just a few days ago. “Where do you think you’re going to go?”

“Mexico probably.”

“Oh, that plan,” I said. Ely had first lured Lily to Texas with the possibility that there might still be some form of civilization in Mexico. “You really think Mexico is still standing? All because Homeland Security built that wall along the border?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. Don’t you think it’s worth checking out? Besides, I have a theory that Latinos are less susceptible to the virus.”

I gestured to Marcus. “All evidence to the contrary.”

Again, Ely laughed. “That’s the thing. Didn’t I ever tell you that my mom married a gringo after my dad died? Marcus is half white.”

“Huh. I did not know that.”

“Yeah. It’s not like I brag about it. Hurts my street cred.” After a minute, Ely asked, “What about you?”

“Nah. I never had street cred. Just rebellious rich kid crap.”

“No, I mean, you sure you’re going straight to San Angelo? You’re not even going to try to go to Genexome to find out more about the cure? I mean, come on, we
know
it works.”

“My first priority is to get Lily to safety. I’m not dragging her halfway across the state when we still have no way to get into Sebastian’s vault. I’m not putting her at risk like that.”

“If Mel talked Sebastian into coming back and opening up that vault, then you can get in.”

“That seems like a pretty big if to me.”

“We’re talking about saving humanity here. I can’t believe you’re not even going to try.”

And just like that, Ely turned his back on me and walked away, shaking his head in disgust.

Ely, the guy who had betrayed my friendship. The guy who’d tried to kidnap my girl. The guy who’d left a baby to die. And I disgusted
him
.

I stalked after him and caught him after maybe three steps. I grabbed his shoulder and whirled him around to face me.

“What the hell was that?”

“What?”

“How dare you act all high-and-mighty? Like I’m the asshole here? Haven’t I done enough?”

“I don’t know. Have you?”

“For close to a year now, I’ve held together this rebellion with little more than a roll of duct tape. I’ve fought for people. I’ve saved people. Hell, I’ve even killed people. I’ve buried the bodies of people I cared about. I’ve seen and done things I will never be able to forget. All with the hope that someday, somehow, we’ll be able to pull a miracle out of our collective asses and we’ll turn the tide in this war. But you know what? So far, in the miracle department, I ain’t seen jack. So excuse me if for once I’d like to take a break and just enjoy the fact that at least one person I care about is alive.”

Ely just stared at me in silence and it took me a second to realize how complete that silence was. Lily and Marcus had stopped talking to stare at us. Lily looked a little drawn. And a lot nervous.

Not that anyone could blame her. She gave Marcus another hug and walked silently past Ely to reach me. I didn’t even look at her until she touched my arm.

“I think it’s time to leave,” she said softly.

I nodded, making myself look down at her. She was just as pretty as ever, but she looked worn. Tired. And older than her eighteen years. She looked like one of those women who’s lost too much weight too fast. And, sure, everyone who was still alive had lost too much weight too fast. That was a given. But I knew her face pretty well and she’d lost at least ten pounds. In the past three days alone.

And that was why, even though I was looking at her, I still couldn’t meet her eyes. Because who the hell was I to bitch about the sacrifices I’d made. Nothing compared to what Lily had been through.

“Yeah,” I said finally. “Let’s head out.”

Lily waited until I’d navigated through Huntsville and was out on the highway before she asked, “You want to talk about what happened with Ely?”

“No.”

“Hey, don’t get me wrong, if you were giving him hell for trying to turn me over to a bloodsucking monster, I’d be all for that, but this sounded different.”

“He’s pissed that we’re not going to Genexome.”

“Why wouldn’t we go there? That’s where the cure is, right?”

“No. We don’t know that.”

“But is that where the cure came from?”

For a split second, I thought about lying. Because I didn’t want to have this discussion now and because I could make her believe it if I wanted to. But the thing was, I didn’t want to.

“Yes. It is. I stole the cure from a vampire in New Mexico named Sabrina. She stole it from Sebastian. But that doesn’t mean there’s more of it at Genexome. Dawn and Darren had one sample left. They took it when they headed back to San Angelo.”

“So you had exactly three doses of the most important medicine in the history of the world and you wasted two of them on me and Marcus?” She frowned at me. “Are you kidding me?”

“What did you want me to do, Lily? I was out of options. I didn’t have a way to save you. I—” My hands were clenching the steering wheel, my foot heavy on the gas pedal as the Chevy crept toward ninety. “Look, I’m not going to argue with you about this. What’s done is done. And there’s still one sample left.”

She opened her mouth and then shut it again. She nodded and said, “Okay. What’s done is done. But that is all the more reason we need to get back to Genexome. If there’s any more of the cure, it’ll be there. If there’s information about how we can make more, it’ll be there. At the very least, there’s equipment.”

“Yeah. For all we know, it is there. But that doesn’t mean we can get to it. Mel and I went to Genexome. It was the first place we went after—” I broke off, because I realized there was so much she didn’t know. She’d been sick—really sick—when we’d been at El Corazon and she’d been in a coma part of the time. So I quickly filled her in on the highlights. The only thing I left out was the revelation that I was an
abductura
. “But whatever Sebastian has or doesn’t have, it’s locked up tight. There’s no way we’re getting in.”

“And you can’t just get him to let you in?”

“Not if he’s dead. And even if he isn’t, did you miss the part where he set your sister up to be the fall guy?”

“No. And I also didn’t miss the part where you let my sister go off to find him by herself. If Sebastian is really the evil bastard you claim he is, then why is Mel facing him alone?”

I didn’t bother to point out that when it came to Mel and Lily, it had never been an issue of letting them do anything. They were both smart and strong-willed and determined. Still I couldn’t help thinking I should have tried harder to convince her. I could have made her stay with me.

Guilt choked me and the silence in the car was so thick I had trouble talking past it. “Look, I know this is probably hard to hear, but Mel isn’t . . . she isn’t Mel anymore.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means she’s different.”

“Not-autistic different? Because we knew that might happen.”

“No. Just different. Tough. Predatory.” Even as I said it I struggled with the words. But they seemed too harsh and completely inaccurate at the same time. Mel was both more and less than she’d been.

“None of that means anything to me,” Lily said fiercely. “She’s still Mel. I don’t care how tough she is now. She’s still my sister. I’m not going to turn my back on her.”

“Hey, calm down,” I said soothingly. “It’ll be okay. I promise.” Ah, hell. I’d known all along Lily would never be the kind of person to just ride off into the sunset on the back of a motorcycle. It was one of the things I loved about her. “If you want to go to Genexome and find her, that’s what we’ll do.”

She looked up at me, hope battling the exhaustion in her eyes. “Okay.”

I blew out a breath, and kept my gaze on the road. “Next time we stop, I’ll set up the sat phone. We’ll try to call her. If we don’t reach her, we’ll keep heading for Genexome. We know that’s where she’s going.”

Lily just nodded, looking out the window until she fell asleep. Me? I just kept driving, heading toward all the things I didn’t want to face. All the things I hadn’t told her yet.

Once we met back up with Mel and Sebastian, Lily would find out I was an
abductura
. Maybe it was no big deal. Maybe she wouldn’t care at all.

Or maybe it would freak her out knowing that I had the ability to control her emotions. To make her feel anything I wanted her to feel. And maybe she’d never want to see me again after that.

And maybe that was the least of my worries, because I was starting to wonder exactly what had happened to Mel. I had been trying to call her on the satellite phone for days now and still hadn’t reached her. And I was starting to run out of excuses. Maybe she didn’t know how to use the phone. Maybe Sebastian hadn’t taught her. Maybe she hadn’t even realized the phone was in the car with her. Except I didn’t really believe that was true. Which left me with the only other maybe.

Maybe something else had happened. Yes, she was a vampire. Yes, she was tough, but that didn’t mean she was impossible to kill. If something had happened to Mel, Lily would never forgive me. And I would never forgive myself.

CARTER

We stopped the car a couple of hours west of Huntsville, just outside the tiny town of Junction. It had seemed like as good a place as any to search for more gas and food. I loaded up the gas cans while Lily searched the house for food. When the cans were full and she was still loading up supplies, I set up the sat phone and called the Farm in San Angelo.

“So the cure works?” Joe asked, when I explained why I’d called. Then I heard him repeating the news to other people in the background. A cheer went up. A few more long seconds passed before I could hear him again.

“The cure works?” he asked again, sounding dumbfounded.

“Yeah. It does.” My mind raced just thinking about it. A cure. I’d seen it work with my own eyes and even I almost didn’t believe it.

“How much of this stuff did you say you found?” Joe asked.

“Three vials.”

“And you used two of them already?” Joe muttered a curse on the other end of the phone. “Which means we can cure one more person. That’s just great.”

Surprised by his attitude, I said, “It is great. We can use that sample to—”

“To what? We can’t magically replicate more,” he pointed out. “We have no idea how this stuff was made. And even if we did, we don’t have the facilities to do it.”

“So we’ll figure it out. We’ve got a ton of smart people here. We can do this. Just give us a minute to celebrate, jeez.”

But even as I said it, in the back of my head, all I could think about was Sabrina’s to-do list that she’d rattled off. All the things that needed to happen before that cure made it into the hands and the bloodstreams of the people that needed it most. And worst of all, I thought of the haunted look in Lily’s eyes.

She’d only been a Tick for a few days. I didn’t know what happened in those days. I didn’t want to know. I’d seen Ticks. I’d seen the way they ate and killed. I’d seen what they were capable of. Would I want to live with those memories?

It killed me seeing her look so fragile and broken, but there was nothing I could do but be here for her. And be waiting on the other side.

As if he could read my mind, Joe said, “Having the cure and curing people are two very different things.”

“I get it. We’ve been fighting a long time. And you’re tired. And you just want this to be done. But you’ve got to let us have a moment here.” Who was I trying to convince: him or me? “For the first time in almost a year, we have something to hope for. Your daughter might grow up in a world where the Tick virus is just part of our history. A horrible, bloody part. But part of our
history
. Think about that for a moment. We need this. I need this.”

“You’re right,” he said after a minute. “Okay, where do we go from here?”

Right now we had the cure. We had something that could change the course of human history. Something that would ensure there was a human history. A single glass vial of magic.

And if we messed this up by pretending we had everything under control when we really didn’t, if humanity crashed and burned because of our mistake, then it was all on us.

“Look, here’s what we need to do,” I said. “We need to go back to Genexome. See if there’s any more of this stuff in that vault. More importantly, we need to find the research notes. But here’s the thing—” I paused. “If Lily and I don’t make it, then you’ve got to protect that one sample like it’s the Holy Grail, okay? You’ve got to do anything you can to keep it safe. To find someone, somewhere, who can use it to make more. I wouldn’t trust the vampires if I was you. I wouldn’t trust any of them. Maybe if you can get back to Base Camp, you can find someone in Utah who can tell you what to do.” I thought again of that dead body in the hall outside of Genexome. I thought of Sebastian and Mel and whether or not we could trust them. Frankly, right now it all seemed completely undoable. “If you don’t hear back from us, then you move heaven and earth to get that sample into the right hands.”

“Okay,” Joe said seriously. “I’ll do it. Just get me the sample and I’ll do whatever needs doing.”

It was like every cell in my body came to a screeching halt. Like I just stopped living for a second.

“I don’t have the sample,” I said slowly.

“What? You said we had one sample.”

“Yeah. The one sample Dawn and Darren had. The one they brought you from New Mexico.”

Suddenly my heart was pounding and my blood racing. Like someone had slammed a shot of adrenaline right into every single one of my dying cells. And I knew what he was going to say before he said it.

“Dawn and Darren never made it back from New Mexico. I thought they were with you.”

I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t even breathe.

Two good people were lost. Just gone. I knew—somehow, inexplicably—I just knew that they were gone. They were gone because they’d come with me to New Mexico. I knew they’d been inexperienced and I’d still asked them to come. And now they were missing, most likely dead. And with them was the last vial of the cure.

The phone slipped out of my hand and tumbled to the ground. I slammed my empty fist on the trunk of the car. Again and again, until pain pulsed through my hand and up into my arm, but it still wasn’t enough. It could never be enough to blot out the anguish.

And then I saw Lily, staring at me, aghast, standing maybe ten feet away, a box of canned food in her arms.

I tried. I tried so damn hard to swallow all the rage inside of me. All the anger and doubt and grief, but the emotions won. Over and over again they won out. I wasn’t just battered by my grief for Dawn and Darren. It was all of it. My rage at Sebastian. My guilt because Sabrina had tempted me. My long-suppressed terror that I would lose Lily forever. My emotions crushed me. I bent over at the waist, bracing my elbows on the hood of the car and pressing my forehead into my palms as I tried to get my emotions back under my control.

I sucked in breath after breath of icy air but I couldn’t get ahead of it. What was the point? What was the fucking point of even trying to beat this thing when time after time it won?

From my peripheral vision I saw Lily set down the box and walk over to me. She didn’t even ask what was wrong. She just picked up the phone. I think she talked to Joe for a bit. A moment later, I felt her beside me, wrapping her arm across my shoulder.

Only then did I force myself to stand. Instantly, she was in my arms, just holding me, and still I couldn’t get it under control. Because now I was crying. For Dawn and Darren. For the family that I had taken them away from. I thought of their brothers and sisters. Their father. The man who had fought so damn hard to keep his family alive when the world was collapsing around them. And somehow he had done it. Until I came along and lured two of his kids away with the promise they’d make a difference in the battle against the Ticks. And now they were gone.

And along with them, the last best hope for humanity.

“You don’t know that they’re dead,” Lily said softly.

“Come on, Lily. You know what it’s like out there. You know how hard it is. You barely made it—hell, you didn’t make it. And you had way more experience than they did.”

“That doesn’t mean—”

“We both know that if someone goes missing, they are probably gone forever.”

“Joe wasn’t.”

“Joe was a frickin’ miracle.”

She didn’t bother to argue with me because she knew I was right.

“Here’s what we do,” she said, her voice calm and confident. The voice that I loved. “First off, we don’t panic. Not yet. They had a sat phone, right?”

I nodded and she must have felt it against her shoulder.

“Okay, so we call that phone and we keep calling it as long as we can. And we call their dad back in Utah. They might have gone there.”

“That wasn’t the plan.”

“No. But we all know that plans don’t always work out. There’s a chance they just needed to go home.”

Logically, I knew she was right. And logically, I also knew that there was a good chance—far too good a chance—that we would simply never know what had happened to them. There were more than five hundred miles between San Angelo and where I’d parted ways with them. There were five hundred ways to die out there. None of them peaceful. Most of them horrible.

And I would live the rest of my life wondering what had happened to them and what I might have done to stop it.