Guardian (23 page)

LIAM DROVE AT FULL
speed all night, lights blazing. Stealth didn’t matter now. There was no one after them. There was no one left to be after them. He settled the vehicle down in the early morning dark, just by the side of the grim barracks where they had left Marie’s parents. The engines sighed to silence and he sat in the driver’s seat, waiting.

The little boy was sound asleep beside him, sunburned, eyes twitching with a dream. What dreams a little monster like him dreamed, Liam didn’t know, but they couldn’t be so different from Liam’s. Violent lives are predictable. It’s when the violence stops that everything gets harder.

Everything was about to get harder.

Liam stood up quietly and moved to the back of the cabin. Marie and Syd both slept restlessly, groaning and scratching and turning on the narrow benches. Neither of them was bleeding, which was some relief, but their veins were still black against their skin. Marie’s had swollen to create a terrible topography across her body. They were both sweating torrents and the cabin smelled sour.

Liam hit the ramp button, opening it for fresh air. He hoped the noise would wake them. He didn’t dare jostle them awake. He’d learned the dangers of that from life as a soldier. Startle someone from sleep and they might attack before they know who you are, or the shock itself could kill them.

Syd sat up slowly. He hugged himself as the dim first light of morning shot like needles into his eyes. Marie winced herself to standing, and her facial expression suggested she was in just as much pain. Liam tried to keep his own face blank, but Syd was too observant. He could imagine what Liam saw. Their condition had gotten worse.

“Where—?” Syd’s voice cracked. His throat was dry. He couldn’t remember what he wanted to ask.

Liam got them both some water.

“Old Detroit,” Liam said. “The co-op where—”

Marie didn’t wait for him to finish before she stood and made her stumbling way down the ramp. Not even the agony and exhaustion in her body could stop her. She crossed the distance to the barracks and practically threw herself into the dark doorway.

Liam helped Syd move quickly to catch up.

When they got inside, they saw Marie in the center of the room, a slash of new sunlight across her chest, like a wound. She wept, body-shaking tears.

The barracks was empty.

“They’re gone,” she said, swaying in place. “Gone.”

Syd and Liam approached her, put their hands on her shoulders, tried to offer comfort. She was unsteady on her feet, so Liam took her weight on his arm and let Syd walk under his own power. They walked with Marie outside.

“That kid we left,” she said. She had trouble finding his name.

“Tom,” said Liam.

“Yeah.” Marie shook her head. “He better be . . . dead, because if not, I’m gonna . . .”

“You don’t know what happened here yet, Marie,” said Liam.

“He left his post,” she said. “All I need to know. I told him to stay. He left. My . . . p . . . parents.”

“You told him to look after the sick,” said Syd. “Maybe he did.”

“Yeah,” a voice called from behind them. “Maybe that’s
exactly
what I did.”

They turned to see the pock-faced boy, no hood on his head, standing on top of a dirt berm that marked the edge of a field on the other side. He only had the faintest traces of visible lines on his skin, a few ruddy patches from scratching.

“How—?” Syd tried to form the question.

Tom shrugged. “Didn’t get it so bad.”

He’d known Tom before. The kid had barely had any working biodata. Couldn’t afford it. That may have saved him. Syd tried to remember what he’d had himself, as if the memory would predict his fate. He looked at Marie. She’d had a lot more biodata than he did. She looked a lot worse off too.

“My . . . parents?” Marie demanded.

“You should come with me,” Tom said and turned around, vanishing down the other side of the high berm.

Marie let go of Liam and did her best to catch up with him, scrambling on hands and knees up the high dirt mound and sliding down the other side.

What she saw there took her breath away.

In the field in front of her, there were hundreds of people. Some stood in clusters around mounds dug in the dirt, others stood alone, watching the sunrise or quietly crying into their hands. Among the countless murmured conversations, Marie made out the unmistakable sounds of laughter.

“These are funerals?” she said.

Tom nodded. “Some of them, yeah,” he said. “But not all.”

He pointed at one large group of people, a mix of Purifiers and people in regular clothes, some covered in the telltale web of veins, others with perfectly clear skin. There were also nopes there, or whatever they were now. They would need a name. They stood together around a low fire where the people were talking and eating. The nopes, too, were eating. Feeding themselves. Living.

“What is going on?” Syd asked when he caught up to Tom and Marie.

“Two days ago, people started standing from the floor,” Tom explained. “They were getting better. They went outside. I tried to stop them, but I wasn’t feeling so good myself. They went outside and just, like, strolled around. More and more every hour. And then the nopes showed up. And they were, like, well, Guardians again. Strong and a little scary. Intense. But not cruel. They walked right into the barracks and started helping people. Helping people get air. Helping people bury the dead ones, the ones who bled out. I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t know what to do. I just started helping too. And all night we held funerals and we found food and had feasts. It was like, I dunno. Like what the Reconciliation wanted? Everyone together. Even the nopes. People getting better.”

“Everyone?” Marie scanned the field, searching for her parents.

“Well, no,” said Tom. “Not everyone.”

He pointed at her father, standing at the edge of the crowd, looking at the sky.

“Dad!” Marie gasped and ran to him, stumbling, tripping in the dirt, but still running.

Syd and Liam watched from a distance as she fell into her father’s arms. He held her up, lifted her. As her strength faded, his strength had returned. Her father hugged her deeply and said something to her. When he spoke, Marie’s legs gave out and she collapsed before he could hold her up. He bent down to hold her, shaking and sobbing on the ground.

“Her mother,” Tom told them. “Died yesterday.”

“Of the sickness?”

“Not everyone gets better,” he said.

“What’s the difference?” Liam asked. “Between the ones who get better and the ones who don’t?”

Tom shrugged. “Some people die. Some don’t. Just the way it is.” He started off across the field. “I gotta get some breakfast. Roasted soy patties. You want some?”

Syd shook his head. He wasn’t hungry. His hands shook.

“Yovel himself.” Tom frowned. “Sick as anyone. Who’d have thought?”

“Just Syd,” Syd corrected him, his voice quiet. “I’m just Syd.”

Tom looked around the field, at the jungle city beyond it. “Yeah,” he said. “You are.” Then he wandered off to get breakfast. Marie was still in her father’s arms, talking, crying, telling him everything that had happened to her.

And he told her how they were organizing, how they had set up a market for food, a place people could trade for what they needed. How he’d organized everyone into groups with jobs to do, even when they didn’t need to be told. How people took care of one another.

“There aren’t many of us,” he told her. “But I think we can build something here. If you’ll help me.”

“Not like before?” Marie asked.

Her father shook his head. “Nothing will be like before.”

She held him and she breathed his scent in deep. “Of course I’ll help you, Daddy,” she told him.

“First, you need to get better.” He led her to a comfortable spot to lie down, somewhere in the shade, somewhere she could see him as he worked and call to him if she needed anything.

She lay there, burning, but watching her father, knowing that whatever had passed between them, she was forgiven. And so was he.

Across the field, Syd shivered. His hand twitched as he wiped his face, terrified to see a trickle of blood run down from his nose. He stared at his wet finger. He shook it to get the blood off. He tried to wipe it from his pants. It wouldn’t wipe away.

“Blood,” he shouted. “Blood. Blood.” It was all he could think of. He couldn’t find other words. He would bleed out. He would not get better. He would die, right here, on the ground . . . He started to hyperventilate.

“Relax,” Liam told him, catching his hand, holding it still. “You’re okay. There’s no blood. Look. Look.”

He held Syd’s fingers up in front of him. There was no blood on them. He wasn’t bleeding. His blood boiled inside him. If only it would come out. Maybe he’d feel better if it would just come out. Syd looked at Liam. He tried to scratch again, tried to rip his arm open. Liam stopped him. Syd wanted to explain. If he could only bleed, the pain would stop . . .

“Let’s just sit a minute,” Liam suggested, helping Syd down to lean against the dirt mound.

“Who makes it?” Syd asked. “Who decides?”

Liam didn’t know. He didn’t answer. What good could words do?

Syd looked at Liam, those sad, eager eyes. He searched for the words. He had to explain something. He saw Knox standing in the sun, a hazy shape. He couldn’t make out his face.

It’ll get worse before it gets better,
Knox said.

“It’s going to get worse,” Syd said out loud.

“You won’t suffer alone,” Liam told him.

Syd frowned. He spoke slowly, fighting to find the words to say what he meant. “Everyone suffers alone.”

Liam took his hands, looked him in the eyes. Made Syd focus, made Syd listen.

“Not you,” Liam told him. “Not while I’m around.”

Syd looked at his dark-veined hands in Liam’s; the one good hand, warm and calloused, the metal hand, hard and hot as sunlight. He looked at Liam’s face, expectant, hopeful, wanting something Syd didn’t know if he had to give, if he had the time to give. He wanted to know if it would be okay.

Like I know,
said Knox.
It’s your future.

Syd looked up for his old friend, snapped his head around, but Knox was gone.

Only he and Liam remained. Only the two of them.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen,” said Syd.

“Me neither,” said Liam. “History only goes one way.”

Liam put his arm around him, and Syd didn’t flinch. He let Syd rest his head on his wide shoulder. The metal hand sat softly against Syd’s back. His left hand reached across and laced its fingers between Syd’s and Syd squeezed the fingers together.

It wasn’t that Liam decided to do it, or that Syd did either, just that their hands knew things they couldn’t.

Syd closed his eyes, felt sleep coming on, a pulse of fire in his skin, their fingers laced, all the feelings at the same time, the hurt, the help.

“Tell me your story,” Syd muttered.

“I’ll be here when you wake up,” Liam told him.

Syd shivered and let himself curl closer. “If I wake up,” he added.

“I’ll be here,” Liam repeated. “And I’ll tell you then.”

Syd might have replied had he been awake, but instead, he slept, and in his sleep, he dreamed and in his dream he dreamed he was awake.

And Liam was still there.