The Breeders (20 page)

Clay flies in and tackles the stranger. They both go sprawling into the wall with a loud thud. A drooping ceiling tile dislodges and crumbles on their heads, covering them in soggy white clumps. The stranger lets out a strangled cry as Clay’s arms circle around his throat. His fingers claw at Clay’s arm as the stranger gags and digs his boots into the tile. Clay pulls tighter, his jaw locked, the veins in his neck bulging. The stranger jabs elbows into Clay’s ribs. Clay
oomphs
and his grip loosens. The stranger wiggles out of Clay’s arms, turns and grabs Clay by the throat. I watch as Clay’s eye pop and his face purples. I’ve got to do something. I run over.

Clay cocks an arm back and slams his knuckles into the stranger’s nose. There’s a loud crunch and a muffled cry. Two rivers of blood gush from the stranger’s nostrils. Stunned, he touches his upper lip with the pads of two fingers. His yellow eyes go wild. He finds his rifle as Clay’s catching his breath, pulls it back and bashes it into Clay’s forehead. The sickening crack as the gun smashes Clay’s skull makes me cringe.

Clay goes limp, eyes dropping closed, mouth open. The stranger lifts a sick, bloody smile up over his rotting teeth. He claws up the wall, leaving a red handprint. Slowly he turns his grin toward me. With his long, stringy hair; popped, yellowed eyes; and blood-covered face, I have one thought: this is what crazy looks like.

He lifts his rusty rifle up to his shoulder and points it at Clay’s chest.

Clay.
I don’t think. I move.

I jump on the stranger’s back and I throw my arms around his skinny neck. He smells like death in a moldy trench coat as I try to tighten my arms around his throat. He claws at my arms, tripping over Clay in the process and we fall. My body hits the floor and pain snaps up my spine. A second later his weight lands on top of me. All the air slams out of my chest. As I gasp for air, his scent of urine, sweat and decay gag me. My arms go limp. He squirms out of my grip, his elbow digging into my chest. The stranger rolls away and staggers up.

“You came to take the castle.” His hands shake as he pulls the bolt on his rifle to reload. “But I’m not going give it ye. No, no. No, siree. You brought the bugs and the blood and thought it’d do me, but no. I survived.” He strikes his fist against his skull once, leaving a red smudge there like a third eye. “Now you come to drag me down to hell.” He swipes blood from his lip before he lifts his rifle. “You’re going along first.”

I need to run, but I can’t get my breath. I scramble on my hands backwards in a strange crab crawl. The gun fits into the grove of his shoulder. He squeezes one eye shut as he aims for me.

Please don’t let the end hurt.

“Riley?”

Ethan. I whirl around. He’s standing in the hallway, staring in horror at the scene before him. The man swivels the rifle away from me. He points it at my baby brother.

“No!” I croak. I lurch upward. The gun goes off with a sickening crack. A massive force punches my stomach. Any air I had is knocked away. I crash to the floor, a gun blast ringing in my ears.

Time slows. The world dulls until everything has soft edges. I want to move, but the world’s far away. I close my eyes, and when I open them, the stranger leans over me. I see the sweat mixed with blood on his upper lip. Deep in my brain something tells me I should be concerned, but all I feel is a warm, tingling ache.

When I open my eyes again, the stranger’s gone. I manage to slide my head over and there’s Clay. He pounds his fists into the stranger, who’s lying in a bloody mess on the ground. At least that. At least he can’t hurt anyone else.

I’m having trouble focusing. There’s a dull ache just below my ribs. I touch my stomach and lift my hand to my eyes. It’s slick with blood. I’ve been shot. This thought dawns on me slowly like a cresting wave. But Ethan’s okay. Clay’s okay. The man with the gun isn’t moving. Darkness creeps around the edges of my vision.

Ethan’s crying behind me. I want to comfort him, but I can’t move. Then Clay’s above me. He reaches down and touches my stomach. It’s the first time I feel pain, but it’s fuzzy and far away. He’s ripping off my shirt. I want to tell him to stop. My secret will be revealed, but I’m being pulled backward into the blackness. The night air on my skin tells me my chest is bare. The shocked look on Clay’s face tells me my secret’s out.

Then it’s dark.

Chapter Sixteen

Pain. Pain like being gutted.

I open my eyes. Clay’s carrying me in his arms. I try to speak, but my throat’s a dry cave. Pain sears my stomach. Hot coals burn me from the inside out. I writhe in Clay’s arms. He looks down to me, his face awash in worry. “Shh,” he murmurs sweetly. “We’ll get you help, Riley. Just hold on.”

I lean into his chest and inhale his musky, male scent. Then the pain rips through my abdomen. When I lose consciousness, it’s a sweet release.

* * *

Pain. Bouncing. I blink in the darkness. I’m in a dark box. Oh God, a coffin? Then I hear a car engine. We’re driving. I’m in the back of a car. We hit a bump and the pain blazes white-hot. I moan and pass out.

* * *

Light.

Then darkness.

Then light again. Light seeps through my eyelids and pokes at my brain. Ethan’s probably left the curtains open again. I try to throw a hand over my eyes, but my arm doesn’t want to move. I open my eyes.

Blinding white is all that registers. Then blurry black shapes form into furniture, a door, a bed. This isn’t my room. A dull pain twinges at my stomach as I move. Then it all comes flooding back—the gunshot, Ethan crying, Clay clutching me tight to his chest, telling me to hold on. I should be dead. No one survives a gunshot wound to the stomach. You bleed out in a messy puddle and if you’re lucky someone will bury you so the coyotes don’t eat your insides. Yet when I look down, there’s the outline of my legs under a thick beige blanket. My hands are curled on my lap, the nails clean and trimmed. Where am I?

I scan the room. The clean, cushy bed smells like meadow flowers. The sheets are so white they hurt my eyes. The white walls have no cracking plaster, no clumps of black mold growing in the corners. Behind me something’s beeping. There’s a black screen with scrolling squiggly green and red lines that appears to be a working computer. My eyes shift up to the overhead lights, blazing bright with electricity.

A quiet panic grows in my chest. I rip the sheet down and search my abdomen for the gunshot wound. Last I saw, a bright red pool was spreading through my shirt. Now I’m wearing a clean white gown. I probe my stomach with my fingers and feel the dull soreness. I hike up the gown and find a clean white bandage. I’ve had medical attention. Good medical attention. There’s only one place I could’ve had medical attention like this.

With my breath hitching in my chest, I roll my palm up to reveal the skin of my forearm. Three inches from my wrist I find the brand, a cross with a head on it. The ankh. The Breeder’s mark.

My head buzzes. Oh god, no.

Before the terror can grip me, the door slides open and in waddles a girl. A girl? She’s got blonde curly hair done up in a pink bow at the top of her head. Her white hospital gown billows around her plump body and her red cheeks throw off a heated glow. She waddles over with a dimpled smile on her chubby cheeks. When she turns to lower herself into the chair by my bed, I see why she waddles. She’s eight months pregnant.

This is all wrong.

“Well, it’s about time you woke up, puddinhead. I’ve been waiting for days.” The girl smiles at me like we’re long lost friends. “They had you on some whopper drugs while they fixed you up. How did you get shot, by the way?” She cocks her head and blinks at me in a way that reminds me of a curious pup.

I sit up, ignoring the flare of pain from my wound. “Where are we?”

“Oh dear. Got the brain wipe, eh? Too bad. Well, at least you won’t know what you’re missing.” She leans over and snags the bread roll on the tray by my bed. “You gonna eat this?” She stuffs it in her mouth.

The electric lights. The pregnant girl. The Breeder’s mark. Terror floods my brain until I’m choking on it. I yank off the sticky pads connected to wires on my chest. The monitors next to my bed go wild.

“You shouldn’t do that!” the girl says. “Dr. Rayburn’s not going to like that!”

I yank out the tube that’s snaking into the vein in my arm. When I stand, I wobble a bit, but then I’m out of bed. The girl wraps her arm over her belly as if some wild animal has just been unleashed. I ignore her and turn for the door.

Three men rush in. Two guards in matching white uniforms spread out, arms outstretched to block my exit. A short, pudgy teen in long white coat peers at me behind the wall of guards.

“I told you,” the girl says from behind me. “I told her, Dr. Rayburn.”

My eyes flick to the teen in the lab coat. He’s the doctor? He doesn’t look older than fifteen. His pimpled cheeks and soft chin quiver as he gives me that wild-cat-out-of-its-cage look. His nasal voice warbles when he speaks. “Miss, uh, please get back in bed. You will re-injure yourself,” He waves the guards toward me.

I dive under the guards as they reach for me. My hands scramble on the hard tile as I make it under the first guard, but the second grabs my legs. He pins me beneath him.

“Stop!” I scream. There’s a sharp pinch as the guard jabs a needle into my butt.

“I told her,” the girl says.

It all goes dark.

* * *

Light. I slide my eyes open and see the same hospital room. I try to sit up, but straps tie my arms to the bed rails. When I tug against the bonds, the same plump girl turns her attention from the flickering TV to me.

“You’d better knock that off,” she says with a yawn. “They’ve got cameras. If they see you trying to bust out again, they’ll just slip the tranquilizers in your I.V.” She scratches under her round belly and then blinks at me.

“I have to get out of here!” I turn and yell at the camera. “Let me out!” I pull back and forth on the bonds.

The girl shakes her head at me and glances towards the door. “Geez, will you cut that out? You’re gonna get me in trouble.”

“Get me out of here! Undo my wrists!”

The girl looks at my wrists and then shrugs. “Sorry, Charlie. Doctor’s orders. You stay tied up until you stop acting like a loon.”

“What does that mean?” I say through my teeth. Instead of thrashing, I work my wrists back and forth testing these straps. They’re solid. It’s going to take a miracle to get free.

The girl points a plump finger at me. “You, young lady, need to learn the rules. And that’s what I’m here for.” She smiles and cocks her head, letting her curls bounce from side to side. “I’m your friendly neighborhood tour guide. I’ll show you around. Teach you the ropes. All that jazz.” She holds out her hand to me as if to shake, but then remembers mine are strapped to the bed. She drops her hand back in her lap. “I’m Elizabeth, but you can call me Betsy.”

“I’m Agatha,” I lie. I take in Betsy’s face. Small, dark eyes blink in her round head. She keeps smiling widely, making her fat cheeks dimple. I’m not used to seeing anyone who isn’t starving, so she’s off-putting. The fact that she’s so chipper about being a prisoner in the Breeders’ hospital makes me think she’s gone over the high side.

I narrow my eyes. “Where are we?”

“Albuquerque General. I’m told it’s the best hospital in the country, if not the world.” She spreads her hands across her face with a flourish. When I don’t smile, hers droops, but she continues. “We’ve got all the latest and greatest here: TV, all the best food, a pool.” She leans in, smiling to take in my excitement at the mention of a pool. I shake my head.

“Are you a prisoner here, too?”

She blinks at me.

“Are they holding you against your will? Making you have that baby?” I ask, nodding towards her stomach.

Her brow wrinkles. “I live here.”

I narrow my eyes. “You mean you
want
to live here?”

She nods happily, patting her watermelon-sized belly. “It’s the best. Of course when little dumplin’ comes, I’ll move into the nursery with her for a year. Then she’ll go live with the nannies and I’ll go back into the prenatal rooms.”

“So, you’re a prisoner here? You’ve never left this hospital.” My heart thumps in my chest. The monitors above beep in agitation.

She shakes her head. “Why would I want to leave? It’s awful out there. War. Disease. Look at you. You came from out there and you got shot. When that boy turned you in, you were basically dead.”

That boy. Clay. Clay who sold me to the hospital. He saved my life. It probably helped to justify making me a prisoner. How much money did he make off my enslavement? I lower my eyes and clench my hands open and closed. If I could move, I’d chuck something at that beeping monitor.

Betsy leans toward me. “They told me if I get a guard, I can give you a tour. Wanna see the place?”

She’s so innocent and sweet that I try a smile. My face won’t allow it. The only way I want to see this hospital is in my rearview. Then I remember that my mother was supposed to be here.

“Yeah, show me around. I’m dying to see it.”

She pulls out a small rectangular device that looks like a miniature computer. With a swipe of her finger the screen flares to life. She waggles it in front of me. The screen shows a map of the hospital. She points at a green dot on the screen. “This is you.”

When I look up puzzled, she tries again, slowly like I’m a baby. “They’re tracking you. Here, let me show you.” She heaves herself out of the chair, waddles over and presses a finger to the back of my neck. The skin there aches.

“They implant a tracking device in here,” she says, pressing just below my hairline. “It embeds itself into the skin and runs off the thermal and kinesthetic energy of your body.” She notes my confused look and tries again. “They know where you are. All the time. So don’t mess around. If you dig that one out, they’ll just put a new one in. So don’t.”

Satisfied, she waddles to the little box on the wall. She pushes a button and the speaker crackles to life.

“Yes?” that nasal male voice asks. The chubby doc is listening to our conversation.