Struck (11 page)

I struggled, fought, scratched, kicked, snarled, swore, but the Dealer had nearly fifty pounds on me, and whatever drug was pumping through his system had made him strong. I tried to scream, but he clamped a hand over my mouth. I bit down hard and tasted blood and tried to spit, but I couldn’t because his hand was still on my mouth, and his other hand was pulling at my shirt and working at the zipper of my pants.

The taste of blood in my mouth became the taste of copper wires humming out the flavor of electricity.

The heat inside me came crackling to life, and for once I didn’t try to calm it. I let it rage.

“What’s this?” the Dealer said, sounding mystified. I felt his hand on my bare stomach. So he’d seen the lightning scars. I should have cared, but I didn’t, because the fire in me had taken over and was traveling through my arms, and it was hard to care about anything when you were about to explode.

“You got some kind of disease?” the Dealer said, suddenly repulsed.

“Yeah,” I said, my voice faint to my own ears. “You want some?”

He sat up, his face twisted with fury. “You weren’t gonna tell me, you little whore?”

He hauled back to hit me. Before the blow could land, there was a sound like a baseball bat hitting a grapefruit, and the Dealer grunted, and his eyes bulged. Droplets of blood flew like splattered paint, and he fell flat on top of me. Smothering me. I shoved at his limp body, but he was dead weight and I could barely budge him.

And then someone grabbed the Dealer and rolled him off me. It was so dark I couldn’t make out who stood over me. An image flashed behind my eyes. There was something familiar about the silhouette, but I couldn’t place it. The guy looming over me had something clutched in his hand, but in the memory trying to climb to the surface of my mind, there had been something else in his hand. Something shiny and—

“Mia,” the silhouette panted. “Are you all right?”

“Jeremy?” My mind went blank with surprise, and the recollection I’d been struggling to capture said goodbye.

“Are you all right?” he demanded.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine.” I was getting there, anyway. The fire in me dimmed, making it easier to form a clear thought.

Jeremy turned his eyes away. I looked down and saw that my pants were undone, and my shirt was pulled up to just beneath my bra. I sat up, scrambling to right my clothes. Had he seen my lightning scars?

“Let’s get out of here before he wakes up,” Jeremy said. He scowled at the Dealer’s prone figure. In one hand he held a heavy, cast-iron skillet that he must have grabbed from someone’s cook fire. The way his fingers clenched so hard around the skillet’s handle made him look like he wanted to bash the Dealer’s head with it a few more times. I’d thought earlier today that Jeremy had the saddest eyes I’d ever seen. Now I thought he had the angriest.

But how had Jeremy gotten past the guard? And how had he known I was here?

He started to reach out his free hand to me to help me up, and then withdrew it, so my hand fell short.

He shook his head. “Sorry. I can’t.” Can’t what, he didn’t say, but I got the point. The last time I’d touched his hand, I’d woken up on the floor of Mr. Kale’s classroom.

I started to climb to my feet on my own, but a low, rumbling growl like the sound of a motorcycle idling froze me in place.

Jeremy and I both looked toward the sound. Rosemary’s moist black eyes glinted in the candlelight.

“No sudden moves,” Jeremy said, but I immediately reached for the pepper spray. I had to fight to get my hand into my pocket. Damn skinny jeans!

I wrested the can loose and we began to ease slowly toward the tent flaps, the huge black dog’s eyes following. Then she grumbled a warning, but too late. A hand grabbed my ankle and jerked my leg out from under me. I landed flat on my stomach in the sand. The breath was pounded from my lungs.

The Dealer’s eyes were wide open. Full of rage. But I was prepared this time. I pointed the pepper spray right at his eyes—at least I hoped the nozzle was pointed in the right direction—and pushed the button.

Sssssss!

The Dealer roared and released me to clap his hands over his eyes. He started coughing like he had a lung stuck in his throat. My own throat began to burn, and then I was coughing, too. And so was Jeremy. I doubled over, feeling like I’d swallowed a handful of fire ants that were eating their way toward my lungs. My eyes teared up and oozed fat droplets that felt thick as oil.

The Dealer grabbed blindly at me again. I crab-scrambled through the sand.

Rosemary barked. The sound was earsplitting, and seemed to make the walls of the tent shudder. Then she leaped, knocking over a scented candle onto the pile of pillows. Flames erupted instantly and spread to the tent wall as though the whole place was doused in gasoline, which it might as well have been considering the recently applied coat of purple paint.

Rosemary’s teeth sank into the Dealer’s arm. She shook her head violently, like she was trying to snap his bones, and the Dealer screamed.

I found my feet and looked down at the Dealer. “You were right,” I rasped, my throat ragged from the pepper spray. “She does like me.”

The fire consumed the mountain of pillows and had nearly enveloped the far wall of the tent. The heat was reaching unbearable levels. Still, I considered attempting a quick search for the meds before remembering the Dealer kept them locked in a safe.

Covering his mouth with his shirt, Jeremy waved me toward the tent’s opening.

I felt the weight of defeat on my shoulders. The meds were gone.

A crowd of onlookers had gathered around the Dealer’s tent, but no one made any attempt to put out the fire. The Dealer had not allowed anyone to set up a tent within thirty feet of his, so they must’ve figured the fire wouldn’t spread. Apparently the Dealer didn’t have a lot of friends among the residents of Tentville. Even his guard had gone MIA, or so I thought until I saw him lying unconscious on the sand a few feet from the tent. No … not unconscious. His eyes were open, but twitching, as though he was experiencing some sort of waking REM sleep.

“What happened to him?” My voice clawed its way through my throat. Tears continued to seep from my stinging eyes.

Jeremy shrugged and looked away. “Maybe he’s epileptic.”

“That’s convenient.” Before I had time to fully express my suspicion that Jeremy had done something to the guard,
Rosemary shot from the Dealer’s tent and charged into the crowd.

“Doggy!” a little boy with a severely runny nose shouted. His mother pulled him out of Rosemary’s path just in time to avoid his getting rammed.

The growing crowd surrounded us.

“We should probably run now,” Jeremy said.

“Definitely,” I agreed.

We took off through the path the rottweiler had cut and didn’t stop until Tentville was behind us.

10

AS SOON AS
we stopped running, I started crying. I couldn’t help it.

I had failed. I didn’t get Mom’s meds, and now my only black market connection might be dead.

Dead. Because of me.

At least my tears cleared the remnants of pepper spray from my eyes.

About a block from my house, I was able to get control of myself. I sniffed and wiped at my face and avoided Jeremy’s eyes. He was so quiet I finally had to say something to break the silence. I didn’t really feel like talking, but I figured it might help me get my mind off the fact that I was probably directly responsible for a man’s death.

I had so many questions for Jeremy; I didn’t know where to begin. But when I opened my mouth, what came out was more of a statement. “You’re not actually enrolled at Skyline, are you.”

He took his time deciding on an answer. “No.”

“And you weren’t there for aid.”

“No.”

“So what were you doing there?”

He glanced at me, but for once his eyes were unreadable.

I decided to switch to a different line of questioning. Or accusing. “You’ve been hanging around my house.”

Jeremy staggered a little and looked alarmed. “You saw me?” The blood disappeared from his face.

“No, my mom saw you. And Militiaman Brent saw you after school today. He thinks you’re a stalker.”

Jeremy looked confused for a second, and then strangely relieved. “Outside,” he muttered to himself. “They saw me outside.” He took a breath and let it out. “I’m not a—Who’s Militiaman Brent?”

“One of the neighborhood militia guys. His name is Brent. He likes his Taser a lot, so you might want to steer clear of him.”

Jeremy nodded, and the anger gathered in his eyes again. “I remember him. If he hadn’t run me off, I could have—” He stopped.

“You could have what?”

He ignored my question. “So you never saw me … at your house? Not that you remember?”

“You I would have remembered,” I said, and then felt heat fill my cheeks. “I mean, because you don’t look like one of the Displaced, so you would have stood out to me. Not because of any other reason. Just … never mind.”

Jeremy wrinkled his brow at me as though I were some foreign language he was trying to translate.

We moved aside as a band of the Displaced approached on the sidewalk. They looked at us with pleading eyes. They all had the same hollow cheeks, and their eyeballs seemed loose in the sockets. Several of them had the raw, seeping sores around their lips and nostrils that came with earthquake fever.

“Can you spare a few dollars?” asked a woman with ashes in her hair, holding the hand of a little girl sucking her fingers, like they might provide some sustenance.

A few dollars wouldn’t even buy this woman a loaf of Wonder Bread anymore.

Parker gave away enough money to the Displaced for both of us, so I said, “I’m sorry, I—”

The woman cut me off. She spoke quickly, trying to get the words out before I could escape. “We’re so hungry. If we can’t get food today, we’ll have to go to the White Tent, and I don’t want to take my daughter there. I hear what goes on inside. People like us go in, and then come back out … different.”

Chills shimmied up my spine.

The other Displaced surrounded Jeremy and me, and I felt a surge of panic. I hated to think it, but I was reminded of feeding pigeons at the park. Once one of them realized you had bread, the rest of them gathered around and followed you wherever you went.

I didn’t want to reach into my pocket and pull out my two hundred seventeen dollars in cash, afraid that one of these people might snatch it and run. But then I realized I didn’t have two hundred seventeen dollars in cash anymore. I didn’t have a single dollar in cash. The money I’d given the Dealer had gone up in flames in his tent.

I clenched my fists at my sides. For a second I thought the tears would return at the realization of yet another failure, but the well was dry for the time being.

“Please?” the woman begged. Her daughter continued to suck her fingers. Drool ran down the sides of the little girl’s mouth, cutting muddy trails through the dirt on her
face. The Displaced pressed closer around us. Others began to hold out their hands. As one man murmured his plea for aid, the sores on his lips cracked open and oozed a mixture of blood and pus.

“Please,” they said. “Please help us. Don’t make us go to Prophet.”

“He does something to people like us.”

“He changes us. Puts his hands on us and changes us.”

“We hear the stories.”

“Don’t make us go to him.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, swallowing my guilt. It filled my stomach, heavy and acidic. “I don’t have any money. I really don’t.”

“Here,” Jeremy said, and pulled a wallet out of his pocket. He began removing bills one at a time, and turning in a circle, handing out one to each of the Displaced. I caught flashes of Benjamin Franklin’s face before the hundred-dollar bills disappeared.

I stared at Jeremy with my mouth open.

“Thank you,” the woman said, breathless with gratitude. She moved awkwardly toward him like she wanted to hug him or something, and then thought better of it and backed off. “Thank you so much.”

The rest of the Displaced echoed her sentiment, one of them bowing a little like Jeremy was royalty.

“Stay away from the White Tent,” was all Jeremy said in response.

When they were gone, I turned to him. “Do you always carry a wallet full of hundred-dollar bills?”

He shrugged, avoiding my gaze as he put away his wallet.

I’d had enough of Jeremy’s evasive maneuvers.

“Look,” I said. “You’ve been watching my house, and you’ve obviously been following me. I appreciate you helping me out with my, um … situation at the Dealer’s, but I could have handled it myself.”

“No, you couldn’t have,” Jeremy said with such certainty that it made me blink.

“What?”

“He would have hurt you. He would have beaten you, broken your jaw, and dislocated your shoulder. Then, when you were unconscious, his bodyguard would have dumped you in an alley, and … the Displaced would have done the rest.”

I stared at him, stunned. “You don’t know that.”

“I do.”

I shook my head to clear it. Why did he seem so certain? Maybe something
like
that would have happened if Jeremy hadn’t shown up, but he’d been so specific.

“Fine,” I said. “Whatever. You saved me. You’re a hero.” I narrowed my eyes at him. “What did you do to the bodyguard? And don’t tell me ‘nothing,’ because I know you did something. Is it like what happened in Mr. Kale’s classroom?”

He put on a blank stare, and I sighed.

“You’re going to make me say it then, huh? Okay, here goes. After English, you know, when we were talking, and I … um … I touched your hand—which I didn’t mean to do, by the way—I passed out and had this weird dream, and when I woke up you were gone. Is that what you did to the guard? You …” I felt ridiculous even thinking it. “You forced him into some kind of dream state?”

He put a hand on the back of his neck, kneading. “They’re not dreams,” he muttered.

“Then what are they?”

“You won’t believe me if I tell you. You’re not ready to hear it yet.”

“How do you know what I’m ready for? You only met me a few hours ago.”