Eat the Ones You Love (The Thirteen Book 2) (15 page)

“Jesus, Jenny. How old were you?”

“Sixteen,” she said. “She taught us how to fight.”

“You said that already.”

“Yeah,” said Jenny. “I had a friend there. She was younger than me. Really shy. Her name was Ari. She was so little. Much smaller than me. The other girls would pick on her. I got in trouble for getting into fights, defending her. I hurt one of the other girls pretty bad. Josie took away my food for a few days. She said since the other girl couldn’t work, I couldn’t eat. I don’t know where she sent them at night. Maybe to the Dregs, maybe to Expo. I never did find out.”

“She never sent you out?”
 

“Worse,” said Jenny. She was quiet for a moment, and when she spoke again her voice was husky. “She sent Ari out.”

“Oh God.” Robin crossed herself.

Jenny looked out the window. “She never came back.”

“That’s awful. I’m so sorry.”

“I met another girl who reminded me of her,” said Jenny. “When I was looking for my brother. Her name was Lily. She was killed, too.”

Robin shook her head, agitated and upset.
 

Jenny watched as a murder of crows descended on a corpse in the tall grass.
 

“There didn’t used to be so many crows,” said Jenny. “Remember? There were just the living and the dead. And the rotters. It was simple. Everyone knew where they stood. At least that’s what we told ourselves.”

“What happened?” said Robin.
 

“With Josie?” said Jenny. She shook her head. “She taught us how to fight.”

“You killed her.”

Jenny closed her eyes at the memory. The boarded-up Victorian house, paint peeling and smelling of mold. The girls, afraid like birds and picking at each other when they were scared. And Josie, walking around like a queen. She remembered Ari’s face, just a child, with barely budded breasts. She didn’t even have hair under her arms yet.

“I went into Josie's room when she took a girl out the next night. I sat there until she came back. I’d hidden a knife from the kitchen in my pocket. It was a tiny thing. I could slide it up my sleeve and you couldn’t even see it. I waited for her to get back.”

“And then?” said Robin.

Jenny swallowed. “She taught us how to fight. So I fought. And then I stabbed her in the face until she stopped moving.”

“Oh.”

“I didn’t know what to do,” said Jenny. “I knew how rotters came back, but I didn’t know you had to be bitten. It took me hours to cut her head off with that little knife. And when I came out of the room, I was covered in Josie’s blood and I had this tiny little knife in my hand. And Josie was a corpse with no eyes. The girls all saw me. They started crying. That fucking bitch had made them into sex slaves and they were crying over her. Afraid where their next meal was coming from, maybe. Maybe just scared to be alone.”

“What did you do?” she said.

Jenny looked at Robin. “What I always do. I survived. I met Declan about a year later. I was starving to death, just hiding in empty houses, scavenging for what seemed like an eternity. I didn’t talk to anyone, but I was so hungry. I felt like I was on the edge of blacking out. And he had these crackers.” Jenny smiled. “He said, ‘Let me take care of you, Jenny.’” She felt her eyes tear up even as she was smiling at the memory. “I didn’t want to trust him. No one ever really does what they say they will.”

“But he was different,” said Robin.

“Yeah,” said Jenny. “He was.”

“I had a man once,” said Robin. “He died very soon after the Collapse.”

“I’m sorry,” said Jenny. “Would you do anything to get him back? To have him here with you?”

“That’s a terrible question,” said Robin, “of course I would.”

Jenny looked out the window again. “I know you think Declan is just a rotter. That Trix and Benji are just rotters. I know you don’t like it, and they make you nervous. And they should. But Declan died. He was fully dead for ten minutes. Ten minutes that felt like my soul was being ripped out through my chest. I made him this way. That’s why I need to help him. Because he saved me all those years ago. Not just physically.”

“I understand.”

“I might have a sister,” said Jenny. “But you have to understand, I’m going to save Declan. I want to find my friend Zeke if he’s still alive, and I want to find my sister if she’s out there, but if she doesn’t want me, I already have a family. I have Declan.”

“What if you can’t save him?” said Robin.
 

“Then there’s no point to any of this,” said Jenny.
 

“Why are you telling me all this?” said Robin.

“I don't know,” said Jenny. “I trust you, I guess. And I want you to trust me. Because I need all the help I can get.”

“What are you asking?”

“I need you to help me with Declan.”

“How?”

“I don’t know yet,” said Jenny. “There’s something in me, something that could help him. Wires and metal and all kinds of weird shit.”

“Like the Terminator?”

“Yes, if the Terminator made really bad decisions,” said Jenny. “I think my mother might know how to save him. He’s hurt bad. He can’t go on like this. I need her to fix him. Make him like me. And then I’ll kill her. I need you to understand that I need her to do this before I can kill her.”

“She killed my son.”

“She killed a lot of people. So have we all.”

“What if she doesn’t do it?”

“She will,” said Jenny.

“How do you know?”

“Because she’ll have no choice. If she doesn’t do it, her long-lost daughter will kill her.”

“So you’re going to force your mother to fix your boyfriend and then you’re going to kill her?”

“Pretty much,” said Jenny. “She’s also going to tell me what happened to my sister.”

“You might be just as much of a monster as she is,” said Robin.

Jenny didn’t say anything else. But when Robin reached over and held her hand, Jenny let her.

“I’ve never told anyone before,” Jenny said, staring out the window. “I’d appreciate it if you kept it to yourself.”

“Whatever you say, Jenny.”

TWENTY

Robin parked the camper at a distance from the encampment, and they waited as she walked out of sight. She was gone for a long time. Declan began shaking from being so close to the Living. He'd been able to handle just Robin, but anymore than that and he had trouble. He closed his eyes and clenched his teeth and his fists. Trix watched him, concerned. Jenny watched outside through the drawn blinds.
 

The encampment once had a wooden wall around it, but it had been pulled down. Jenny could see a woman pushing a baby on a swing, and watched her for almost an hour, pushing the child with the same movements, as though she couldn’t do anything else. The baby never moved, its head slumped over at an odd angle. Jenny watched as someone approached the woman and said something to her. Robin, Jenny realized. The woman didn’t stop pushing the swing, didn’t turn to reply to Robin, just kept pushing the swing, as if she stopped, she would collapse. After a few minutes, Robin turned and continued walking toward the RV, carrying two heavy containers, one in each hand. As she got closer, Jenny could see she was pale and her eyes were red from crying.

“What’s happening?” Jenny said, joining Robin in the front after she’d loaded up the jugs wordlessly. “What’s going on out there?”

“Ugliness,” said Robin.

“That woman,” Jenny said, nodding the woman pushing the swing. “Her baby…”

“She’s been out there for two days,” said Robin. “No one can get her to stop. No one can talk to her. Her baby’s starting to smell. No one can bury it because she starts screaming whenever they try to go near the swing.”

“Jesus,” said Jenny.
 

Robin was quiet for a time. Just sitting in the driver’s seat, the keys in her hand, staring at the woman.

“Someone took their children.”

“What?”

“Their kids. Last year. Some men came in, black jumpsuits. They had guns and killed a lot of people. And when the smoke cleared, the kids were gone. They had a helicopter.”

“Oh my God,” Jenny said.

“You know them?” said Robin.

“Yeah,” said Jenny, remembering the knife ripping into her chest over and over.

“Who are they?”

“The same people who fucked up my friends. The ones who took Zeke and broke Declan. They're with Faron.”

“Faron?” said Robin. “No, that’s not right.”

“What?”

“Faron is the name of the man who came a few months ago. My friend, he asked her a lot of questions. Gave them medicine. He said he was going to get the kids back.”

Jenny shook her head. “No. Not Faron. He must have been fucking with them.”

“I don’t think so,” said Robin. “My friend, she’s very suspicious. She believed him. He made them all well with the medicine he brought them.”

“Not the baby, though.”

“There was no saving that baby,” said Robin. “It was diseased ever since it was born. Any baby born into this. It's getting worse, along with everything else. But this man, Faron. He made things better. Even if only for a little while.”

“There must be a mistake,” said Jenny. “Yellow hair?”

“Yes, that’s him,” said Robin.

Jenny stared at her.

“Why?” said Robin. “Who is he?”

Jenny watched the woman out the window, gently pushing the swing, over and over again.

“I don’t think I really know,” said Jenny.
 

At night Jenny built a fire. Not because anyone needed it, but because it reminded her of warmth and comfort. She liked the way it smelled. And it masked the swampy smells coming in off the Mississippi. Robin had pulled over at Davenport when she couldn’t keep her eyes open any longer. Everyone agreed to wait outside while Robin slept in the bed, with the door locked. Jenny offered to drive while she slept, but she understood Robin’s firm
no.
They were wild animals, and with one intense craving, just as Declan had done to the Heathens, she could be dead. It was brave enough of her to take them across the country, but to trust them while she was sleeping was too much to ask.
 

“It’s getting worse,” said Declan, grimacing. “I think I need you to tie me up.”

“Is this a conversation the rest of us need to hear?” said Trix.
 

“Shut up, Trix,” said Declan. “It’s not funny.”

“Why do you want to be tied up?” said Benji.

Jenny knew. “Okay, Declan,” she nodded. “We can tie you up in the morning if you think it’s necessary.”

“Jesus, you’re serious,” said Trix.
 

“Damn right I am,” said Declan, shifting himself on the log he was sitting on and grimacing and holding his sides with his hands. “I killed that kid back in Colorado. He didn’t deserve it. Robin’s good people. I don’t want to hurt her.”

“It’s not getting better,” Jenny said. It was a statement. Everyone fell silent for a moment.

“How long has it been?” said Benji after a long while.

“Months,” said Trix. “His hunger should have gotten easier by now.”

“It hasn’t,” said Declan testily. “It hasn’t gotten better and I still get angry and nothing is changing. I was cut in two back there by that little shit Faron and I didn’t do anything about it. I’m rotten. I can smell myself all the time and it fucking pisses me off. And I’m hungry. I’m always hungry. Every time we pass a Living, I can smell it and taste it and I have to stuff something in my mouth to stay sane.”

“It takes time,” said Jenny.

“How long did it take you?” said Declan.

“That’s not the same thing,” said Jenny.

“Shut the fuck up, all of you,” said Trix. “Declan has a point. It should have gotten easier, like it did for the rest of us, but he’s not one of us. Jenny fucking made him this way and we have no idea what that does to someone. Munro here is just a little experiment in progress.”

“Don’t say that,” said Jenny, her voice like ice.
 

“Why?” said Trix. “It’s true.”

“I am not my mother.”

“Fuck, Jenny, we fucking know that,” said Trix. “Jesus, don’t get so offended. I just mean we don’t know what’s going to happen to him. Settle down.”

Jenny sat down. “Sorry,” she said.
 

Telling Robin about her past had set Jenny on edge. Afterwards, she crammed herself into the darkest corner of the RV she could find and opened Casey’s book, tracing over the underlined passages. There was one line of writing in Casey's handwriting, written into the margins of the page. Jenny read it over and over until it burned into her brain, touching the cramped cursive writing that her brother had put there.

There is no love of life without despair of life.

Now she repeated those simple words, considering them again. The longer she weighed the words, the deeper she went into trying to decipher the thought, the more intense the ache in her chest grew. At that moment, looking at Declan over the small fire, with the big river rushing nearby, she felt overwhelmed by the despair of life. It encased her completely in a solid core, like the metal that wrapped around her spine.
 

She could see the toll that her efforts had taken on Declan, and he had just begun his descent. The stitches were still holding, but she knew they wouldn’t hold much longer. He would never heal. He would become just like the others, whose bites had turned black and rotten even after they came back. If she couldn’t save him, he would just keep getting worse. And the wound just seemed to make him hungrier. Jenny remembered the unfathomable hunger she had felt at first. It had seemed to get easier for her, after a time, though even now she still felt it. Like a tickle at the back of her throat, the nagging hunger for hot flesh and blood.

Now Declan was asking her to tie him up so he couldn’t hurt anyone. Begging her to save him from himself. She didn’t know how many times she could before she would lose herself. They were the animals, it was true. They knew they were monsters. Declan was still fighting it, but Jenny wondered what would happen if they stopped fighting. What if they embraced it?

Then she remembered the Heathen boy, and the expression on Declan's face when he saw what he had done. They remembered what it was like to be human. They remembered shame and regret and guilt. They remembered grief. But especially joy. They would always remember. Embracing their new nature would eventually come back to haunt them in time, when they remembered again. They were haunted, Jenny decided. Haunted by what they used to be. By who they used to be. And it was killing them.