The Believers (The Breeders Series - Book 2) (16 page)

“I'll be right back,” I say, leaning to give my mother a kiss on the cheek. She frowns but says nothing. Great. She's finally back and I'm leaving. But, my anger won't let me drop this.

I angle past the tables and turn down the hallway to the bathrooms. I wait, my back pressed against the wall, running over everything I'm about to say in my head. I can't be too harsh, but Jesus, he told me he'd quit and there he is. If he didn't want to stop, why didn't he—

“Riley.” He steps into the dark hallway with me. His voice is rabbit-pelt soft and apologetic.

I fold my arms over my chest and stand rigid like I'm made of stone. Maybe it'll harden my heart enough to stop him from breaking it.

He extends his hand to touch me, but sees my face and withdraws. A small red sore the size of a pencil eraser has formed at the corner of his mouth. I stare at it, my heart thumping. “They've already got you,” I say, pointing.

He covers his mouth, embarrassment flooding his face. “They don't
got
me,” he says, reaching for my hand. He pulls it to his chest. The strong, steady rhythm of his heart pounds into my palm. “
You
got me.” His blue eyes peer into mine until they seem to be looking into my heart. I let him join. Encouraged him. How can I stay angry?

I fold into him as he wraps his arms around me. Still he feels miles away.

“We have to leave,” I mumble into the folds of his shirt. He doesn't answer, just strokes my hair. I almost let it placate me. Almost. Finally, I pull away. “We
need
to leave,” I say more forcefully.

His eyes flick down to my face and then upward at the cracked plaster for a long time as if divining the future in those lines like a palm reader. Finally he sighs. “'Member the story I tole you 'bout my baby brother?”

How can I forget? Clay's brother was murdered by marauders on the road while Clay watched. It's the burr in his saddle that he'll never be able to dig out.

“I keep havin' a dream,” he says, his eyes still far away. “I dream that Cole and me is pullin' up to that sports car again. And deep inside, I know what's gonna happen, but I can't stop. I can't stop myself from puttin' my car in park and gettin' out. I can't stop us from slidin' up to that goddamned beautiful car.” He swallows, his voice wavering. “And when Cole leans in, I can't look away when the motherless bastard grabs him and presses the knife to his throat. I can't—” He pulls back from me and presses the pads of his fingers to his eyes. “Riley, in the dream when I look up, it isn't Cole bein' cut.” He turns wet eyes to mine. “It's Ethan.”

I bite my lip, a chill sliding through me. “That
won't
happen.”

Clay sniffs and turns away. When his hand reaches for mine, I lace my fingers through his strong calloused ones. If there's one thing his story reminds me, it's how very few moments like these we’re allowed. The world doesn't announce its plans before it snatches your loved ones from you. It just takes them and leaves you behind, broken.

We make our way through the food court to the table. Mama smiles as Clay greets her with a gentle hug. Then she goes back to listening as Ethan drones on about the store he and Rayburn are staying in and how it must've been a game store because he found seven multicolored pieces in cracks along the floor and how he's creating his own game. And on and on.

I sit in a chair beside Mama, fatigue washing over me. I didn't sleep well the night before, or really the night before that. And for a moment, no one I love is in immediate danger. Mama's earthen aroma wafts by, reminding me of home. My heavy lids droop.

“Riley.” I snap up. Mama peers at me from her chair. The boys have gone off and left us.

“Sorry. Fell asleep.” I rub my eyes.

Mama nods, frowning slightly. “You look tired, baby.”

I sit up. My neck feels like a kinked hose. “You're one to talk.” I smile at her. “You look better, though.”

She nods, her hands finding her swollen belly.

The belly hasn't grown any, thank God. “It'll be okay,” I say, pointing to her stomach. “They said they slowed the growth.”

“Slowed it, yes…” Her eyes find mine. “Not stopped it, sweetheart. I just want you to know. I want you to be…prepared.” Her eyes are wet. She reaches out and grabs my arm. “I want you to be there to comfort your brother when…if I'm not—”

“Stop,” I say, a chill running through me. “You're not dying. Clay joined their crew so they would save you.” I grip her hand too hard and she winces. I let go. “You gotta be okay. They said you would be.”

“I'm sure you're right.” She won't meet my eyes.

I shake my head, a wave of nausea settling over me. “That goddamn baby.”

She frowns. “Now, Riley—”

“No, really, it's killing you. If there was a way…a way to get it out without hurting you, I'd do it.” I whip around and look at her. “Is there? Could Rayburn do it?”

She shakes her head.

“How do you know?” I lean forward, gripping the table. “There could be a chance. There has to be.”

“Please,” she says, tears welling in her eyes. “Seeing you upset just makes this worse for me.” A tear traces down her burned cheek, trailing past the rippled skin like a river over rocks. “I hate that you're always the one to take on all our troubles. I'm your mama. I should be the one.” She swipes her hand across her nose. “Why can't I be the one to save you?” She turns her face away, leaving me looking at her scar. The scar she carries because she once ran into a burning house to save me.

I touch her fire-ravaged cheek. She turns to me. “I love you,” she whispers. “I know you'll watch out for your brother.” Another tear. “He’ll need you. Already he looks to you as his mother.”

No. No, no,
no
. I’m shaking. The sounds of the cafeteria dims to a buzz. The heat in the room doubles and sweat trails down my back. The boys walk this way, laughing, but I can't take it. I stumble away. Where can I go? The bathroom. I nearly run. Once in a stall, I sit on the cool toilet seat and put my head in my hands. Mama cannot be dying. After all we did, after all we went through to get her out of the Breeders' hospital and she's going to die here with these freaks? I brush away tears with the back of my hand. No, I refuse to believe it. There has to be a way to save her. I'll talk to Rayburn. If he can't help, I'll go back to the Messiah. I'll offer myself up in exchange. I made a promise when I lost her the first time that if I ever found her, I'd never lose her again. I don't break promises.

I walk out into the food court, wiping my face on my sleeve. Mage and Ethan sit on the faded plastic fruit in the center. Mage hands him a folded paper flower in bright lemon yellow. He takes it, a smile breaking onto his face that I know all too well. A smile that says “here's my heart in my hands, take it and do with it what you will.” Before I can stop myself I'm tromping over.

“Ethan, we gotta go,” I say, my voice a razor's edge.

His eyes snap up. “Ri, Mage and I were just—”

“Mama needs to get back to her room.” I reach for Ethan's hand. He leans away from me, anger seeping into his features.

“They already took her,” Mage says, pointing. Our table's empty. I didn't even get to say goodbye.

“Well, then I need you for...” I grab his hand, “something else.”

“Riley, stop.” He eyes me angrily beneath his wave of dark hair. “What're you—”

“Come on.” I tug him away. He tugs back, but not hard enough considering my brain's on fire. He protests as I drag him behind me. When we get to a quiet part of the hallway, I let him go. He pushes away from me.

“What the hell do you think you're doing?” he yells. He tosses his thin arms up in frustration, a spitting image of Arn.

“Saving you from heartache,” I say, crossing my arms over my chest. I lean in and whisper angrily. “We're leaving here and that girl,” I shoot a finger toward the food court, “is
not
coming with us.”

He flashes his teeth. “Stop bullying me. Who says you can drag me outta there like that? You're not Mama.”

His words are meant to cut me and they do, but not for the reasons he thinks. If Mama dies, he'll— I stare up at the ceiling, feeling gut-punched. “I'm not your mama, but you'll listen to me all the same.” I lay a hand on his shoulder and take the steel out of my voice. “It's for your own good.”

He shrugs my hand off. “You used to hate when Daddy said that to you.”

His words feel like a slap. I rub my hands over my face and blow out a breath. “Ethan, getting close to someone who might not be on our side is only gonna get your heart kicked in.” I peer into his brown eyes. “The only people we can trust is our own.”

He studies me through the dark slash of hair, his mouth working. “So, what about Clay then?”

I pull back, feeling a prickle of pain around my heart. I force the words out, though they feel less true today than they did yesterday. “Clay's family now.”

Garage duty is a welcome distraction and I fall into my work with the men and the cars. My second day I sort through rusting bins until my fingers ache. After an hour, I stand up, stretching my back. Crank looks over at me from where he lies on the ground, staring up into the underbelly of a car.

“Sore?” he asks, smiling. A splotch of oil darkens his cheek.

I nod, popping kinks from my shoulders. “You got something I can do to stretch my legs a bit?”

He rolls out on the little dolly and stands. He nods to Rayburn who’s stacking old tires. “You two could hike out to the warehouse and pick up a couple more bins of scavenged parts we haven’t sorted yet. Give you a chance to stretch. It’ll be hotter than fried snot, though.” He squints at me as he wipes his oily hands on a rag. He's cross-eyed, his left eye turning in toward his nose, giving his face an off-kilter appearance. I couldn't care less though. He treats me like a human being.

“I can deal with a little heat. You up for it, Ray?”

Rayburn gives a slow nod. “O-okay.” He pushes the last knobby tire onto the lopsided stack and walks toward me. “It’s the old toy establishment across the lot? The one with the giraffe out front?”

Crank laughs, nodding. “Yep, professor. That's the one.” He points a finger out the garage door and across the sand-strewn parking lot. “Carry back as many bins of parts as you can lift. They’ll be over to the left of the tech bins, I think.” We head out and he hollers after us. “And snag me the best-looking battery in the stack.”

“Will do.” I say.

“And a nudie mag if they got any,” he yells. Donut, behind him, gives a hoot of approval.

I give them a wink.

The sun hits us like a spotlight. It must be at least a hundred degrees, no wind. Rayburn shrinks in the heat like a turtle going into his shell. His sunburn has started to peel on his ears and cheeks. He crouches down and cups his hands over his face.

“Here, look,” I say, digging back behind me to pull my T-shirt up and over my ears and neck. “It might look goddamn ridiculous and the shirt'll chafe under your arms something awful, but it’ll keep your ears and neck from getting sizzled.” I keep forgetting he was hospital grown and never learned to live out in the wild.

He pulls his undershirt up and over his head and neck and looks at me.

I laugh at the sight of him: his big round glasses on his big round face, poking through the hole of his t-shirt. He looks like a cartoon bookworm. I give him a playful shove. “Once you’re outside enough, you’ll brown up. Crisp like bacon, my Auntie used to say. Then you won’t have to worry about it.” I glance down at my arms as an example, but realize my tan, the one I’ve had since before I can remember, is starting to fade. I’ve been indoors too much. For some reason this really bothers me. Maybe it reminds me of being cooped up in the Breeders' hospital. Maybe I see it as weakness. Either way, this place is slowly eroding who I was. Who we all were.

“Those, uh, those men are awful trusting.” Rayburn thumbs back to the garage. “Letting us come out here alone.”

I squint behind me. Crank’s shadow lies under the car and Donut is in the back working on something electrical, wires splayed out in a mess of colors. “Yeah. If the Brotherhood knew we were snooping around unsupervised, they'd pee in their giant panties.” I waggle my eyebrows, realizing what I've just said. “Rayburn, we’ve got to make this trip count. How long d'you think we got 'til those guys expect us back?”

He shrugs, the shirt over his head making him look silly. “Twenty minutes. Thirty at most.”

I pick up my step. “Hustle your bustle. We’re gonna to search that warehouse for weapons, electronics, anything that could help us get the hell outta dodge.”

He shoots me a worried look. “W-w-won’t they n-n-notice?”

I grin at him. “Not if we’re careful.”

It takes a few minutes to jog across the boiling blacktop to the toy-store-turned-warehouse at the perimeter of the parking lot. The shop looks like it was once painted a rainbow of colors, but now the tile blocks are dulled and sand-blasted. The sign still reads TOYS, but the giant letters R, U, and S lie broken on the concrete, leaving behind faded outlines and twisted metal wiring. There’s a large two-dimensional giraffe standing beside the door. The plastic figure has a goofy grin and round eyes, but time has warped its orange neck until the giraffe bows down in defeat. We step through empty, glassless doorframes and into the shaded stillness.

“Huh,” Rayburn says, squinting into the dark. He pulls the t-shirt off his head and runs a hand over his shaggy curls.

“Huh is right,” I say, walking slowly inside.

The warehouse looks like a roadside swap meet on steroids. Boxes, shelves, and bins run in rows as far as the eye can see. The far left wall is lined with blue plastic shopping carts filled to the brim. To my right, cracked monitor screens and keyboards with half the letters missing are stacked on top of each other. A bin at my feet is stuffed full of wires that twist and jut out like a basket of snakes. We walk through slowly, touching copper piping, old wrenches, screwdrivers, a rusted saw with missing teeth.

“Geez,” I say, lifting a telephone with a cracked screen. I press dusty buttons. “What do they do with all this stuff?”

Rayburn sifts through a bin of medical equipment, his hand resting on one of those heart-listeners the doctors wore around their necks. He puts it on and then takes it off just as quickly. “They piece it out. Use, uh, use it for parts and the like. No wonder they, uh, have things running so smoothly. They have every spare part they could ever need.”