The Believers (The Breeders Series - Book 2) (8 page)

Rayburn drops his eyes, his fingers trembling around a pod. He wasn’t made for life outside of the hospital and frankly, he needs to toughen up. I open my mouth to say so when Clay interrupts me.

“I don’t like this place any more'n you do.” He pauses as one of the cooks shuffles by with a huge stack of bowls. “We’ll bide our time and figure out what they plan to do with us. Then we make our move. But not before.” He fumbles with a peapod, it slips out of his hand, and plops on the floor. He frowns at the cotton bandage on his hand. I look away from the pain on his face.

“What about Mama?” Ethan asks, tossing a dark curtain of hair out of his eyes.

“Mage said she’ll come back later to take us to see her.” I watch the slow burn creep up Ethan's neck at the mention of Mage. I want to tell him that a crush on the daughter of this commune’s crazy leader is about as dumb as shaking hands with a rattler, but I don’t. I look back to the peapods, green and slick between my dirty fingers, and pop one in my mouth.

“At least it, uh, it happened here,” Rayburn says, squinting behind his glasses. He rubs a thick hand across his forehead and continues. “Your mom, I mean. At least if she’s going to m-m-miscarry, she’s here instead of… of on the road.” He drops his eyes and shakes his head. “Not much I could’ve done.”

I frown at him. “You think that’s what happening? That she’s…miscarrying?” I have no idea how I feel about this. That baby in her stomach is my brother or sister. But maybe not. I’m not even sure if the fetus has any of our genes. Nessa Vandewater’s words echo in my head:
problems with the fetus
. I squeeze a peapod so hard the pea shoots out and skids across the floor.

Clay’s hand finds mine. I stare into his sky-blue eyes, so kind, so understanding. I fight the urge to shuffle around the table, fall into his arms, and let him hold me. Instead I relish the brush of his fingers on mine until someone walks by and he pulls them away.

“So, we watch and wait,” I say, trying to sound confident. I scan the food court before I continue. Stephen is leaning over the counter, his fingers tracing down the girl's bare arm. I crouch forward. “But I want everyone’s eyes and ears open. Watch for where they stash weapons, look for exit doors, back alleys, anything that might be important.” They nod. I look up into the searing mid-morning sky. “I don’t know how, but we’re gonna get outta here.”

After peapod duty is dish duty. After dish duty we serve lunch. When we're finally released to eat our bowls of pea soup, the sloppy green liquid is cold, but I don't care. We've been eating charred jackrabbit and lizard for weeks. A vegetable feels like a treat. I slurp the fresh green liquid until my bowl is empty and look around for more. Seconds are not offered and I don't ask. Andrew walks around with a clipboard, shuffling between tables, eying everyone's portion size. We're just five more hungry mouths to feed. Why is the Messiah so hell-bent on keeping us?

Mage appears as we're finishing lunch. She's got another folded paper animal in her hands, a frog this time, made out of paper the color of our pea soup. She sets it on our table, reaches out, and presses an index finger to the frog's backside. It springs forward at her touch. She giggles and bats golden eyelashes. Ethan drops his eyes. He's getting attached, just like he does with any animal we trap. The ending with Mage won't be so brutal, but it's still gonna cut him when we leave.

“So, you said you’d take us to see our mom?” I ask.

Mage nods, the blond coils of hair bobbing. “I got permission, but only you and him.” She points at Ethan and me. “You two,” she says, pointing to Rayburn and Clay, “are going to get your permanent job assignments.” She shrugs her narrow shoulders, making her cotton jumper rise and fall. “Sorry,” she says, pocketing her paper frog. “Best I could do.”

“It's fine,” I say, anxious. Mama. I am dying to see her and dreading it. I push up, needing to move my body. “Can we go?”

Ethan stands beside me. I wait for his hand to slip into mine, but they're locked at his sides. His eyes follow Mage.

I turn back to Clay and Rayburn. Clay hugs me, a sympathetic smile at the corners of his mouth. “Go,” he says. “We'll be fine.” He looks at Rayburn, who stares blankly back. An elbow from Clay gets Rayburn unstuck.

“Yeah, uh, fine,” Rayburn manages.

Mage leads us back down the hallways at a fast clip. No one speaks. I'm too nervous and Ethan is either love-struck or feeling the nerves too. Mage fiddles with the frog in her pocket. Her silence makes me worry.

At the end of the hallway is a large department store, with a wide rectangular entrance and glass display windows that have naked, limbless life-sized dolls piled like a plastic holocaust. A guard sits at the entrance on a metal stool, slumped over, one boot hooked around the stool leg. He’s wearing a patched security guard uniform that must’ve come from the days when this mall still saw shoppers. He doesn't have a gun, but there's a seriously long knife hung at his belt. Does he use it to keep people out, or patients in? I run my hand over the ankh brand on my wrist. I vowed never to step foot in a hospital again.

“We're here to see the newcomer.” Mage shoves both hands in her jumper pockets and smiles innocently up at the burly guard.

Rising to his full height of over six feet, the guard stands, his stool scraping on the concrete floor. “I heard no visitors.” His voice is mumbled and phlegmy. When he opens his mouth again, I see a red sore like a smooshed raspberry on his tongue. There’s another blistered patch of skin just above his wrist. My stomach lurches. Have we already been infected by whatever it is they carry? But then, why doesn't Mage seem infected? Why have all the women looked healthy?

Mage rocks back and forth, heel to toe, looking every bit a little schoolgirl. “My daddy says we can go in.”

The guard's brow furrows. He scratches his crop of brown hair and shrugs. “Didn't hear nothing.”

Mage tugs down a blond curl. “That's 'cause he didn't tell
you
. He told
me
. Can we go in now?”

The guard blinks, confused, but he shuffles aside and sits back on his stool, falling easily back into looking bored. Mage grabs my hand and I tug Ethan along. When we're out of earshot, she leans in to us.

“Perks of being the Messiah's daughter.” She winks.

“He didn't tell you we could visit?”

She smirks and places a finger to her lips in a don't-tell gesture. I have found myself one powerful ally. Or maybe she just likes getting me into trouble.

She leads us around the gutted department store. The front has nothing but discarded racks and old display tables. The dirty, scratched linoleum sits bare and lifeless. Faded posters cling to the walls. My eyes trail across a large poster with two bored-looking girls in tight jeans and even tighter shirts. What would it have felt like to be a kid when this mall lived and breathed? When throngs of girls marched with plastic shopping bags slung over their wrists.

We turn the corner. Cots and mattresses line the floor. Patients lie on them. An elderly woman with rheumy eyes and skin like crinkled paper. A middle-aged man covered in large red sores writhes on the bed. A little boy with a splinted arm watches us with wide, wet eyes. Then he turns and buries his head into the yellowed mattress.

I search the beds, my heart starting to pound. What will Mama look like? Will she be awake? With sweaty palms I walk, eying each patient. A girl about my age lies so still on a cot I wonder if she’s breathing.

Then I see Mama. My heart freezes to ice as I walk over, Ethan at my heels. She's lying on her side, turned away. Slowly I walk up, bend over, and place my hand on her frail arm.

She jumps and I yank my hand back. As she rolls toward us, I see her burned side first, the diminished ear, the rippled skin of her cheek. When I can see her fully, my heart sinks. I was expecting her to look better than I'd last seen her, but instead she’s worse—nearly translucent skin, dark circles under her eyes, sharp cheekbones that look cut out of stone. Her trembling hand seeks out mine and she lifts a smile to her cracked lips.

“Darlings,” she croaks.

I kneel by her cot and take both her hands in mine. Her knuckles protrude like walnuts beneath her skin. “How… are you feeling?” I swallow over the lump in my throat.

My mother nods and runs her tongue over her chapped lips. “Okay. How're you?” She reaches a hand out to Ethan. He’s a statue beside me, his eyes the size of dinner plates. I place my hand on his arm. If only I could spare him this.

“We're…okay.” I flick my eyes up toward the Middies who float around, checking temperatures and changing bandages. I thought they were supposed to fix her, not make her worse.

As if reading my mind, she answers. “I'm feeling better. They're giving me fluids and I need to rest. The time on the road was hard on me.”

I study her face. How can she be feeling better? She looks like a corpse.

“The baby?” I manage, nodding to her stomach beneath the scratchy blanket.

She drops her eyes. “It seems to be faring fine despite my...” she pauses and swallows “difficulties.” Is that bitterness in her voice? Did she ever feel this way with me? Like I was a burden?

“Mama,” I say, leaning close, my elbows resting on the saggy cot, “we'll get you out. If these people are making you worse, we'll find a way to—”

She cuts me off with a shake of her head. “No, darling. We can't chance that right now. You stay and eat and rest up. Auntie can wait a little bit longer.”

Auntie. There's the pang of worry again. With the Sheriff dead, who knows what's happening to her. Just one more problem to add to my heap. My mind returns to the human moaning I heard in that crevasse.

A Middie shuffles up, an aging woman in loose cotton pants and a tunic with only a single gold bracelet glittering on her wrist. Her face wrinkles into a look of displeasure as she scans our group.

“Really. That's enough. You're not supposed to be here anyway.” She fixes a disapproving gaze at Mage who shrugs her narrow shoulders.

“Please,” I say, facing the Middie, “is there anything you can do for my mother? She looks...” I can't finish. I clasp my hands together and will myself not to choke up.

The Middie turns her eyes to my fragile mama. “She needs rest. I assure you she has the best care here. Trust us.” She places her hand on my back and leads me toward the door.

I whip around and crouch down to grab my mama’s hand. Her eyes meet mine, and for a moment I think one or both of us might cry.

“I'll come back. Every day. I'll make sure they're doing what they need to do to get you better.” My eyes flick down to her stomach. “Both of you.”

My mama nods, her eyes wet. “Don't worry about me. Take care of Ethan and the others, but don't worry about me.”

There’s a special place in hell for whoever assigned me laundry duty. My fingers are wrinkled white raisins and my body aches from kneeling over the wash tub. The smelly undershirt I'm holding goes back into the sudsy tub and then I scrub it on the washboard. I've already nicked one knuckle on the board leaning out of the washbasin. Eying the jagged edge, I know it's just a matter of time before I rip open another.

Plunge and scrub. Plunge and scrub. Mage sits beside me twirling a wadded-up shirt through the soapy water in a figure eight. As the Messiah's daughter, her plunging and scrubbing are mostly for show. She chats with the other women stationed around us in this abandoned shop. It must've been a beauty parlor—some of the swivel chairs and mirrored vanities are still in place. Faded posters show women with big curly hairdos. On the back wall is a huge sign with the words Redken and some other faded print I can't read. I stare longingly at a cracked leather swivel chair that sits with its sisters along the wall. My knees throb from kneeling on the tile beside the washbasin. I look up at the woman in charge. Prema's frown looks like it's been etched out of rock. Her wrinkled brown skin and five-foot frame don’t diminish her bulldog manner. She shoots me sharp glances whenever my plunging and scrubbing slow. I scowl and shove the shirt down with a splash of sudsy water. Maybe if I rub a hole in one of their precious shirts, she'll kick me out. A few more hours of this and I'll wish I was back in the diner starving to death.

Mage bounces over, another paper animal in her hands. I'm not sure what this one is supposed to be, but she flits it in front of me anyway, making it loop and dive as I wring out the shirt and stand.

“Thirty minutes 'til dinner,” she sings, making her animal gallop over my shoulder with a “dumpty dum” song. “
Wook
at me,” she says in a baby voice, dancing her animal in my face. “I'm
Wiley
and I'm
soo
sewiuos
.”

I plod over to the clotheslines strung along the back wall and spread my shirt out. Two of the metal clips molded out of old wire hangers fasten my shirt to the line. The watery
drip, drip, drip
is soothing. I stand, staring dumbly at the black Redken poster, and wonder what a “wax pomade” is while the blood returns to my legs.

“
Eh hem.
” Prema glares at me. Her wrinkly chin waddle, that reminds me of a wild turkey, trembles angrily. I push a huge, dramatic sigh out of my chest, lumber over, and grab another dirty shirt from the pile.

Death by starvation might not be that bad.

“Tell me about the outside,” Mage says, resting her animal on my arm. “Tell me about,” she drops her voice, “the Breeders.”

She says their name like it’s a curse word she's afraid a parent will overhear. Her eyes flick to Prema nervously and then lock on my face, hungry to know. I stare at the sudsy water. The bubble-filled froth clings around my wrist where the ankh brand rests. It'll be there forever, just like the memories of the Plan B room. The skeletal girls strapped to beds with computers keeping them alive.

I shake my head to rid it of the image. “The outside's a cruel place. You're better off in here.”

Mage frowns, clearly not liking my answer. “But, there's so much to see. Old buildings. Mountains.” She grips my arm and leans in close. “Are the Breeders really taller than the tallest man?”