Meridian (22 page)

This lunchroom looks like the Common Hall, with one large area full of tables and chairs, only less clean and more chaotic. Nothing matches. Everything here’s been salvaged and tossed together. Honoria unstraps her bag and drops it on the nearest table; the rest of us do the same.

“Check the kitchens,” Col. Lutrell says. “With power and gas, they might have provisions. We might as well use the time until dawn for something productive.”

“We can’t just steal it,” I say. “If there are people here, they need it.”

“Unless someone wants to come forward and make themselves known, everything’s fair game,” Honoria says. “Settle in.”

Trey sits at the table with our bags near the wall.

“I’ll do an inventory. See what made it and what we need to replace,” he says.

“Good,” Col. Lutrell says. “We’ll start searches in teams of two—one of us and one of you.”

“That won’t work,” Tobin argues. “There’s four of us, three of you, and one of him.”

He jerks his thumb to a random spot in the room where he thinks Rue is standing, but Rue’s not there.

I don’t need Cherish to tell me that; he answers out loud from the space between me and Tobin: “I stay with mine.”

“You’re not supposed to talk.” Tobin tries for intimidating, but he’s unnerved from hearing Rue’s voice so close—something Rue doesn’t miss.

Tibby is scared again.

Fade aren’t much on facial expressions, but if I could see his face, I’d bet there’s a smug grin to go along with that statement.

“We can stay with the bags,” I say. “It’s safer if Rue doesn’t go exploring.”

I can imagine finding someone and having to explain a floating dust blob following us. Rue may be invisible, but the stuff that settles on him isn’t.

Tobin’s got a comeback ready, but as he starts to speak, new lights switch on overhead—white hot and bright enough to startle us all as they blare on and off rapidly.

“Strobes!” Col. Lutrell yells.

Rue and Cherish scream louder.

R
UEFUL
hisses from the sudden flash. The rest of us hit the floor. This isn’t the Common Hall, but it’s close enough to trigger our usual response to danger—hide under the tables. I pull Marina down beside me.

“Where’s Rue?” she asks.

“I don’t know,” Annie says. I shrug.

I couldn’t see Rueful before the lights came on; I can’t see him now.

The lights are disorienting. They’re faster than ours and starker, giving every movement a choppy, half-frozen appearance.

Reflective panels—no, people wearing reflective clothes—fill the doorway. Honoria doesn’t miss a beat; her pistol’s out of her waistband and in her hand, pointed at the closest target. If this happened at home, she would have dropped three of them by now.

Marina looks like she’s in pain.

“Close your eyes.” I squeeze her hand. With my other, I reach for Annie, who’s hanging on to Trey’s trouser leg to keep him close.

I hear Trey’s gun slide lock into place.

“Nobody shoot,” Annie shouts. “We’re friends.”

“There aren’t any friendlies left,” a man’s voice shouts back.

“We’ve got kids, here,” Mr. Pace says, quickly. Dad hurries to back him up.

“We came here looking for help.”

I hope he still has his shades on. Of the seven of us here, three have the light blue eyes that peg them as Fade-touched; his are silver. This is already going bad enough without having to explain that.

“Our weapons are for self-defense.”

Dad slips the rifle strap off his shoulder, using his thumbs to lift it without touching the gun. He drops it onto the nearest seat. Mr. Pace lowers his weapon to his side, then makes a motion behind his back like he’s patting something down. Trey places his on the floor.

Honoria doesn’t budge.

“Who are you?” the man’s voice demands. “Where’d you come from?’

“We’re happy to talk, but we’d rather do it face to face,” Dad says.

“I can see your faces just fine.”

“We’re human.” Mr. Pace steps to Dad’s shoulder. “We received information that there was a group hiding here.”

“What information?” The man separates from the group, entering the room. He’s small for an adult; Dad could take him easy. His clothes are ratty and dirty; his shoes don’t even match.

“Long story, but we’re willing to tell it.”

“Blood first, then words,” the man says.

Mr. Pace cuts a slash across his palm. The man examines the blood, then looks to Dad.

“What about you?”

Dad holds his hand out, and the man nicks his finger, watching the blood as it gathers.

“And those two?” The man points the knife at Trey, then down at Marina. “Where’d they come from?”

“He’s my son,” Mr. Pace says.

“And she’s with me,” I say, shifting my weight so Marina’s crouched behind my shoulder.

“What about before she was with you?”

“Another long and complicated story,” Honoria says. To my complete surprise, she replaces the hammer on her pistol and puts the gun away at her back before holding a hand out to the stranger. “Shall we tell it?”

He’s hesitant. Shaking her hand means taking one off his rifle, but he’s wavering. We’re human, and he’s probably never seen strangers.

“Cut the lights!” He swipes his fingers in front of his throat, and the flashing stops.

One by one, the people in the doorway creep inside, only to clump together in the lunchroom’s main space.

“They’re kids,” Trey whispers.

Aside from the speaking man and three others, most of them are our age, and behind them, there’s a group whose ages have to still be in single digits. They look awful.

This can’t be everyone. How would they have the wild ones nervous?

“Annie,” Mr. Pace calls. “Show yourself. Tobin, Marina—you, too. Show them we’re not an invasion force.”

Annie crawls out the end of the table. Marina and I come over the seats.

“He’s here,” she whispers, and I know she means Rueful. “He’s okay.”

She squeezes my hand and I squeeze hers back. Let her think I’m happy for her—at least if he’s guarding her back, he’s got mine by default.

“See?” Mr. Pace continues. Honoria finally puts her hand down without shaking the man’s. “They’re kids.
Our kids
. We’re trying to keep our kids safe.”

“Where’d you get your supplies?” the man asks.

“We brought them from home.”

“No one comes through Death. It’s impossible.”

“Not easy,” Honoria corrects. “Not advisable, but possible. Unfortunately, we lost our transport on the way in. I don’t suppose you have any working vehicles here?”

I don’t think they have much of anything.

“Hey!”

Everyone’s attention turns to Trey when he shouts, then to the girl who skirts his grasp to slip under the table and out of reach.

“Get back here, you little thief.”

But she scrunches up, guarding something.

Annie snaps back to herself and slaps Trey in the head. “That’s not going to work, idiot.”

She kneels down on one side of the table, waving Marina to the other in case the kid tries to make a break for it.

“Hi there,” she says.

The girl’s tiny and mostly hair. It falls long and wild, hiding her face and body except for the hands holding whatever she took, and her feet.

“Can I see what you’ve got?” Annie asks. “There’s some sharp stuff in my brother’s bag. I don’t want you to cut yourself.”

The girl sweeps her hair behind her ear on one side, peeking out with deep-set, dark eyes. She’s shy, moving so timidly that I’m afraid one of her people might intervene if we don’t hurry up and coax her out.

“Come on, baby, let me see what you took.”

The girl looks down in her lap before hoisting her treasure into view. Annie grins, crawling backward until she’s clear of the table’s edge. She gives the room a thumbs-up.

“No worries,” she says. “She snagged a jar of peanut butter.”

“
My
peanut butter,” Trey complains.

“Your stomach will get over it,” Mr. Pace says.

The man says something I don’t understand, repeating himself louder when he gets no response. The girl scrambles out, bringing the jar with her. Reluctantly, she hands it to him and slouches back to the others.

Annie acts like the guy’s a student and she’s in class. She walks right up to him and twists the top off.

“It’s peanut butter,” she says. She holds the lid close to his nose, then sticks her finger inside the jar and scoops up a taste for herself. “It’s good.”

“It’s food?”

“It’s high protein, easy to carry, and doesn’t need cold. Good for survival rations,” Honoria offers.

“They brought food?” a boy’s voice asks from the crowd.

“It’s yours if you want it,” Honoria says.

The man sets his rifle aside, so he can pull the hood off his face. Like the girl, his hair is dark, long and tangled. His eyes are hard and brown, and he’s not smiling. But he lifts the jar to his nose and takes another sniff. He dips his finger in for a taste.

It’s like someone flips a switch inside him.

“You have more of this?” he asks hopefully.

“We can make more. We grow the nuts and crush them.”

“You have crops?”

“We’ve had to get creative with the space we have, but we’ve done all right,” Dad says. He signals for Trey to hand him his bag, which he passes to the man. “Everything in here’s edible. Take it.”

The kids from the doorway are closer now, some stepping up on tables for a look over the others. They make a pitiful security force.

The man takes Dad’s bag as he hands off the jar for them to pass around and taste.

“Can we talk?” Honoria asks.

“I think we’d better,” he says, sinking into the nearest seat.

She holds her hand out again. “Honoria Whit.”

“Hector Ramirez,” the man says, taking her hand. “Call me Rami.”

“W
E
don’t live here, not normally,” Rami says. “This is an emergency fallback position. We can’t hold it much longer.”

He’s spread the things from Col. Lutrell’s pack out on the table in front of him, picking at a cracker packet while he talks. Another adult, a woman, touches the end of her finger into a can of protein powder, then brings it to her tongue. The others sniff at containers of dried fruit and shake vitamin bottles.

“It’s never been easy, but we were doing okay. Then a little over a month ago, there was a surge. No reason. No warning. Those things came boiling out of Death like someone poured hot water on an anthill.”

The Arc went down less than two months ago. Did we cause the surge?

“Where are the rest of your people?” Col. Lutrell asks.

“Scattered. It was my job to get the kids out. I got them here safely and went back. I’ve picked up a few stragglers, but the Homestead’s obliterated. We were preparing to relocate to our secondary site when our lookouts reported the fire. I hoped you were some of ours, but—” He stops and shakes his head; exhaustion whittles his face into something drawn and haggard. “We don’t set fires much anymore. They always make things worse in the end.”

That doesn’t bode well, considering the blaze we set.

“Where will you go?” Col. Lutrell asks.

“Why?” another of the adults asks suspiciously.

“You’ve got nothing we want,” Honoria says. “Relax.”

Rami scoffs.

“A group of armed strangers walks through Death with supplies I thought were myths my grandfather made up, food, clothes that look new—” He bites back something he refuses to say. “We’re a step above stone soup. You came here looking for something, lady, and if there are more where you came from, you could destroy us as easy as the Killers to get at it. This is as close to relaxed as we can afford.”

“This isn’t going well,” Trey mutters.

He, Anne-Marie, Tobin, and I have been banished to the kiddie corner, sitting at the end of one long table. Rue’s beside me, his hand on my shoulder. Rami’s kids are at another table, staring at us and talking among themselves.

I’m the only blonde here. No one besides our group have blue eyes—even the ones with light and reddish hair have brown or dark green. Trey and I are getting a lot of curious glances. I don’t know what they’ll do if the colonel loses his glasses.

I wish I could mimic my surroundings to change my hair and eyes the way the Fade change their clothes.

“They can’t keep us here,” Tobin says.

“We’d be suspicious, too,” I tell him.

“No, I mean they aren’t capable.”

“He’s right,” Trey says, leaning in. “I’m surprised they’ve survived at all if this is the extent of their facility.”

I don’t know. Those strobes seemed pretty effective to me.

“Maybe they’ve got their own secret base underground like we do.”

“A secret base without food or working showers?” Tobin asks, tossing a disdainful look at the others as they try to scrape more peanut butter from the empty jar.

He doesn’t like being treated like an outsider. He’s not used to it, and for Tobin, the unknown is met with derision. I should know—it’s how he treated me in my first days inside the Arclight.

When I was isolated and untouchable, Anne-Marie risked sharing a meal with me. It could have cost her friends, even her safety for all she knew, but she did it. Maybe the same tactic will work here.

“What are you doing?” Tobin asks when I stand. He clamps down on my hand.

“Trying to convince them we know how to smile.”

He gives me a mock-laugh, but doesn’t let go of my hand until I make him.

“You’re not going over there alone,” he says.

“No, I’m not.”

Rue’s with me, and Cherish
.

“Stay here, Tobin,” I tell him. “They can’t see Rue. You’ve been glaring daggers at them since they appeared. Which one do you think makes for a better impression?”

“Fine, but be careful,” he says.

Rami’s kids tense up as I approach. The bigger ones stand up, flanking the smaller without saying a word, but I don’t bother with them. The one I’m interested in is the little girl with the long, dark hair, who’s made a fist inside the peanut butter jar. She’s banging it on the table because the way it rattles on her hand makes her laugh.

She’s kicking her feet off the edge of her seat, missing one shoe identical to the one I found in the entry. I take its mate from my pocket and hold it out. She stops kicking, but one of the older boys shakes his head, and she slumps. I set the shoe on a seat, turn, and walk back to my own table, watching over my shoulder. Once the girl decides I’ve gone far enough, she snatches her shoe and runs.

“Was there a point to that?” Tobin asks.

“I gave her back what was hers. Besides, she reminds me of Blanca.”

“Only because she’s short.”

“This is why you should stay home when we go to meet people. Right, Anne-Marie?”

Normally, she’s the first to call him out for being a creep, but she’s sitting by the wall, with her back against it and her knees pulled up to her chin. She gives no indication that she can hear me at all.

In Cherish’s eyes, she starts to dim as a stifling depression sets in. The bright colors the Fade originally attached to her dull.

“Annie?” Trey asks. A sickly sweet amalgam of concern hovers around him, more intense the longer she stays quiet.

“I want out of here,” she says finally. “I can’t stand it. I just want them to stop talking and let us go home, but I don’t know how we’ll get there. What if we have to live here forever?”

“We won’t. It won’t be much longer.”

He doesn’t get it. Anne-Marie’s being crushed by reality closing in on all sides. There’s nowhere we can go that she won’t always know the wild-Fade are out here.

I’m so focused on the meltdown I expect at any second that it’s a surprise when Rue nudges me.

You have visitors.

It’s a curious way to put it, as we’re actually the strangers here, but the little girl from the other table is standing two seats away, holding the hand of the boy who wouldn’t let her approach me before. Both of her shoes are back where they belong.

“Look, Annie, a kid,” Tobin says a little too enthusiastically.

“Seriously—stop talking,” I say.

Getting Anne-Marie out of her fog is going to take more than a curious little girl.

“Hi,” I say to the girl. “I’m Marina. What do they call you?”

Peanut,
Rue suggests.

You stop talking, too,
I tell him.

The girl reaches for my braid and pulls it, so I’ll bend down and let her whisper in my ear.

“Your name’s Noor?” I ask.

She nods happily.

“She wants to know if you have any more of that,” the boy with her says. He points to the jar, which is still on the girl’s other hand, and she shakes it at me. “The rest of us want to know why your hair is white.”

“It grows that way.” I shrug. “My body doesn’t make the stuff that gives hair its color.”

Slowly, two others from their side of the room straggle in, trying to find ways to peek around him without being fully in the open themselves. A girl my age with a serious face glares at me, like maybe she knows it’s our fault the wild ones attacked. The other one, another boy, just looks hungry. His face and his eyes carry an emptiness that goes deeper than his stomach needing food.

These kids aren’t surviving; they’re pictures taken at the point of death.

“You were born like this?” the first boy asks.

“What’s it to you?” Tobin asks, crowding closer.

“You ever see what happens when a Killer burns?” the boy challenges. “All the black stuff melts off. What’s left behind looks like her.”

We are not a Killer
. Cherish fumes, boiling through my blood like a fever. This would be the absolute worst time for me to find out if I’m the only one who can see the random patterns that appear on my skin when she’s upset.

“If she was one of those things from the Dark, you’d already know,” Tobin says.

“I still want to hear her say it.”

“I’m not a Fade,” I say.

Any longer.

“Is she okay?” I nod to the girl whose serious face has changed. She’s staring off at the corners of the room, grinning as though she’s seen the most beautiful thing in the world.

“She’s as good as she gets since the surge.”

Noor pulls my hair again, shaking the jar at me, in case I’ve forgotten what’s really important to her.

“I think Trey’s the only one who packed peanut butter, but how about these?” I tell her, fishing through my bag for the container of dried berries I brought along. “They’re my favorite.”

I pick one out of the container and offer it to the boy, figuring he won’t let Noor eat something on my say-so alone. He pops it into his mouth and starts chewing—then his eyes light up. He reaches out for the container automatically, but draws his hand back just as quick.

“You can take them,” I tell him.

He grabs a handful as he passes the container to Noor. Like the boy, she’s hesitant to taste the first berry, but after she has, dashes back under her table.

“I think she likes them,” Trey says.

“I guess she does.”

Trey resumes his position as our leader by default and stands up to introduce himself.

“I’m Trey,” he says. “The grumpy one’s Tobin. Marina’s the blonde. This is my sister, Annie. She’ll never be this quiet again, so enjoy it.”

His attempt to rile her fails.

“Michael,” the boy says.

He introduces the other boy as Javier and calls the girl Gina. She’s drifted off into her own world, walking two steps one direction and turning to go three in another, swaying to music no one else can hear and laughing at things that aren’t there.

“She’ll do that all day. You get used to it.”

No, I don’t think I will.

“Where’d you really come from?” Michael asks.

“We call it the Arclight.”

“Is that New Mexico? My folks said there used to be people in a place called New Mexico, at a university.”

“That’s out west,” Tobin says. “We’re east.”

Gina’s watching us again, cocking her head like she’s tuning an antenna between our conversation and our elders’.

She’s listening,
Cherish says.

“Is it a prison? We heard there were some prisons in the northeast that survived. All cinderblock and cement.”

“It’s a military base.”

Michael keeps firing questions, and Trey and Tobin keep answering.

Something here isn’t right.

Our elders are still negotiating with Rami. Most of Rami’s kids are still at their table. Noor’s given up the berry container, and they’re passing it around.

Javier has taken the seat across the table from Anne-Marie. He drags one of our bags closer to inspect what’s inside. He takes out a knife, flicks it open and shut before stashing it in his pocket.

Rue’s exactly where he’s supposed to be, holding his tongue while keeping an invisible hand on my shoulder.

Things
seem
fine, but they’re not.

Tobin leans in close and whispers, “Where’s the ink blot? I think that girl’s tracking him.” He cuts his eyes at Gina, who’s gone creepy-still beside Javier. She’s fixated on the spot over my shoulder where Rue’s head would appear, if he was visible. “Tell him to move; I think she can see him.”

“She’s lost her mind, Tobin. Don’t stare.”

If Rue moves, he could create a shimmer-line, and
that
everyone could see. It’s too much to risk because one girl’s gone spacey.

Affirmed,
Cherish says
. Gina has gone Spacey Tracey. Hide. Flee. Conceal.

Spacey Trac—

The girl from Honoria’s book?

Affirmed
.
She’s listening.

“Gina?” I call her name out loud; she turns the fraction of an inch it requires to look me in the eye, but it’s enough. The irises of her eyes are running with vertical lines of metallic gold.

She’s turning.