The Farm (4 page)

Had I killed him?

I pushed myself off his back, then struggled to flip him over. It was easier than I would have thought, given how much bigger he was. I leaned down and pressed my ear to his chest. I felt it rise and fall beneath my face even before I heard the strong, steady rhythm of his heart.

Relief poured through me. Not just because I was still alive, but because he was, too. I felt my throat close and tears burn my still-tender eyes. I didn’t want to be a murderer.

Before my tears could fall, I scrambled back. I didn’t want to die, either. I didn’t know why he’d come looking for us instead of going straight to the Collabs, but I wasn’t going to stay around to find out. I had to get Mel out of there. Fast.

And yet, for some reason, I hesitated as I saw his face for the first time. There was something familiar about him. It was like I should know him, but just . . . didn’t. Most of his face was obscured by the beginnings of a beard, too long to be mere stubble, like he hadn’t shaved in weeks. Most of the guys on the Farm didn’t bother to shave. Still, not many guys our age could grow anything like a beard. Some of the Collabs were older, but he obviously wasn’t one of them or he would have been wearing the blue uniform. I studied his features, looking for some hint as to why he seemed so familiar. His nose had a funny little bump in it, like it had been broken.

I pushed back his hoodie to reveal dirty blond hair. A single lock of hair flopped back into place to drape across his forehead. Recognition rocked me back on my heels.

He must have moved the second I took my eyes off him. He sprang up, flinging me flat onto my back, covering my body with his own. My head banged against the floor, and I squeezed my eyes shut against the pain. The impact knocked the breath out of me.

There was nothing groggy or slow about his movements. Obviously he’d only pretended to pass out. I’d fallen for one of the oldest tricks in the book. And as if that weren’t bad enough, I felt the cool edge of my shiv press into the skin at my throat.

Damn it!

Could I make any more mistakes today? How had I been so careless as to let him get my weapon? My shiv!

I swallowed hard against my frustration, bumping my chin up a notch to relieve the pressure against the blade.

Slowly I opened my eyes to stare up into familiar blue ones.

I forced a smile. “Hey, Carter. Long time no see.”

CHAPTER FIVE

Lily

Carter and I had gone to school together back in the Before. Despite what teen novels everywhere would have you believe, sitting beside a hot guy in ninth-grade biology is not the basis for eternal love—at least, not the requited kind. And, yeah, I admit it, in my more romantic moments, I imagined that I alone saw through his tough, bad-boy exterior to the wounded soul inside. Carter had been the kind of guy who ran hot and cold. One day he’d be all charming smiles, the next brooding glares. Some days he’d flirt with me; others he’d ignore me completely. What can I say, that charming, bad-boy thing he had going was like catnip to a geeky girl like me. And, yeah, my predictability disgusted even me. I’d spent the first two periods of every day reminding myself not to be an idiot—because a guy like Carter didn’t even exist in the same social universe as I did—and I’d show up to class ready to banish my crush forever, only to have him flash me one of those crooked smiles that made me melt inside.

Then one day, he’d pushed his parents too far by driving his dad’s Lamborghini to school. I still remembered when the police had come to arrest Carter. I’d been standing outside of English, books clutched to my chest, when they marched him down the hall, his hands cuffed behind his back and an I-don’t-give-a-crap grin on his face. He’d flicked his shaggy blond hair out of his eyes with a shake of his head. When he met my gaze, he winked at me.

I hadn’t seen him since then.

Now, he levered himself off of me and sat back on his heels.

My heart pounded inside my chest as I waited to see what he would do. Carter Olson—who I hadn’t seen in years—was alive. He was here at the Farm. And he’d just tackled me. Oh, and I’d tried to kill him.

A second later, I pushed all those emotions aside with more determination than I’d ever managed in the Before. I wasn’t that fifteen-year-old girl anymore and I had bigger problems than a hopeless crush.

Carter had seen the pills. He’d followed me back from the quad. He’d disarmed me and winded me. He had every advantage. If he wanted to destroy me, there were about a dozen different ways he could do it.

But instead he held out a hand to help me sit up.

“Hey, Lil,” he said.

I blew out a breath. If he was going to kill me or even take me to the Dean’s office, would he be offering me a hand up and using that nickname I’d disliked even back then?

I took the hand he was still holding out and let him help me into a sitting position, aches already cramping the muscles of my back. Cringing, I scooched away from him, giving an experimental little twist. A little gasp of pain escaped.

“You alright?”

“I’ll live,” I quipped, but then cringed a little inside and sent up a silent prayer,
I hope.

“Sorry about that.” He gave a little nod to indicate the brawl. Then he reached out a hand and ran his thumb along the spot on my neck where he’d held the shiv against my skin.

He hadn’t broken the skin, but the scratch he’d left burned like hell. Still, there was something disconcerting about his touch and I twitched back from him, not liking the way his gaze went from my neck back to my eyes.

“Hey, nice apology.” I aimed for sarcasm, but didn’t quite hit it, since I was still winded. “Considering you just beat the crap out of me and all.”

“Hey, you’re the one who jumped me,” he said. He scooted back to lean against the nearest lab table, stretching a leg out between us.

Good point.

“And you’re the one still holding the weapon,” I countered.

He looked down as if surprised to see the shiv still in his hand. With a shrug, he reached up and set it onto one of the lab tables, then casually draped his arm across his raised knee. “Feel better now?”

Not by a long shot. On the bright side, Carter was definitely the Green from the quad who’d picked up the pills. The fact that he was here now meant he wasn’t off turning me in to the Dean’s office. Also, a moment ago, I’d been at his mercy. He could have killed me and he hadn’t.

On the not-so-bright side, I still didn’t know why he’d followed me. Had he recognized the pills? Did he know what they were?

I wrapped my arms around my knees, hoping to hide the trembling in my muscles. My tears were still crawling up my throat and the only way I could keep them down was by talking. Like if I stopped to think about things too long, something inside of me would crack open and the jagged pieces would shred me from the inside out.

So I just kept talking. Like this was all perfectly normal. Like I hadn’t tried to kill him a few minutes ago. “You could have, you know, said hello or something. I didn’t know it was you.”

“Hey, when you attacked me, I didn’t know it was you, either.” He stood slowly, smiling as if completely unperturbed by my belligerence. He ran a hand pointedly across his windpipe, which looked red. Then he held out a hand to help me stand. “Besides, I couldn’t exactly talk. You were choking me, after all.”

Hmm. ’Nother good point.

I gave him a suspicious once-over, but I couldn’t ignore his hand, so I took it and let him help me to my feet, even though I dropped it just as quickly.

The way he ran his hand over his throat drew my attention to his jawline. It was too scruffy and unkempt to be a full beard. Still, on Carter, it looked less ridiculous than it would have on a lot of other guys.

When I’d known him back in the Before, Carter had been maybe three or four inches taller than I was. Sometime in the past year or so, he’d shot up a good half foot. Now he towered over me. He used to have a sort of whippetlike leanness to him. That was gone.

Because we gave donations every week, none of us Greens looked really healthy. We ate a lot, but we never seemed to be fed. Not Carter. Whatever he’d been doing, he’d put on muscles that even the benign, genderless hoodie couldn’t hide.

Of course, whatever he’d been doing since the Before, he hadn’t been doing it here. Not on this Farm. If he’d been here, I would have known about it.

“What are you doing here?” I asked. “Why were you following me?”

“I just got here two days ago. When I saw you on the quad earlier, I knew I had to talk to you.”

“Why?” I pressed.

“What do you mean
why
?” He looked at me like I was crazy and brushed at the lock of hair that had once again tumbled into his eyes. “Because you’re the first person I’ve seen here that I knew in the Before. I didn’t know for sure if anyone I knew was still—” He broke off sharply as his gaze shifted away from mine. I saw him swallow and got the feeling maybe he was doing that talking-to-keep-from-blubbering thing, too. I looked away until he spoke again. “I was glad to see you.” He gave a little chuckle. Like maybe he was embarrassed. “Really glad.”

“So why not talk to me then?” I had no way of knowing if his story was true.

“What? Out on the quad?” he asked, mockery in his tone. “You wanted me to just stop and chat with you there? In front of the Collabs? I haven’t been here long, but even I know better than that.”

“So instead, you just followed me back here to beat the hell out of me?”

Okay, I knew, this was irrational.
I
had attacked
him
. But I was trembling inside and right now my tough attitude was all that was holding me together.

He hesitated, smiling just a little. “Actually, beating the hell out of you was plan C.”

I sucked in my breath at his smile, faint though it was. People didn’t smile much on the Farm—not Greens anyway—and I’d completely forgotten that warm fluttering feeling a smile could give you.

I shoved the feeling aside. If Greens didn’t smile, it was because we didn’t have the energy for that kind of crap. We sure as hell didn’t have the energy for warm fluttery feelings, either.

“So what were plans A and B? Stalk me for a while and scare me to death?”

“I’d already noticed that Greens don’t loiter much on the quad. I was afraid stopping to talk to you out in the open would attract attention. So plan A was to follow you into the dining hall and talk to you there, but you disappeared in the crowd. So I went back out to look for you. When I saw you come into this building, I followed. Some guy I saw on the first floor told me a couple of girls lived on one of the upper floors, so I came up, hoping it was you.”

“Hmm.” I mulled it over.

Yeah, it made sense, and yet I hadn’t kept us alive on the Farm this long by blindly trusting everyone we’d known in the Before.

“Jesus, Lily, you always so suspicious?”

I studied him through narrowed eyes as I stepped over to the desk where he’d placed the shiv. I made a show of picking it up and sliding it back into my belt loop. “Yeah. Lately I am.”

“Lately?” He raised an eyebrow. “Only lately?”

Let’s see, I’d been hiding a weapon, I’d negotiated the trade of a Class A controlled substance, and I’d bought a homemade shiv from the one guy on campus I hoped I could trust. All while planning a prison break. Any one of those things could get me sent to the Dean’s office. So, yeah, lately I was even more suspicious than normal.

Which was why I wasn’t about to say any of that aloud. Instead I stated the obvious, speaking slowly, as if he were a total moron.

“Yes, Carter. Lately, vampire monsters have swept across the country, killing everything in their path. We were brought here for our own protection, but we haven’t heard anything from outside the Farm in months. So it’s feeling more and more like we’re just being raised as food. Like veal. And where the hell have you been for the past six months that it hasn’t made you paranoid, too?”

I was surprised at how bitter my words sounded. Not that the whole being-raised-as-food thing wouldn’t make anyone bitter.

“Hey, Lily, I’m—” Carter reached out a hand toward me.

“Look, I don’t have time for this crap. Why did you come find me?” I dodged out of his reach and bent down to pick up the sweatshirt I’d dropped on the floor.

He shoved his hands into his pockets. “Like I said, you’re the first person I’ve seen here that I knew in the Before. As far as I know, you’re the only person I know here on this Farm.”

A flood of questions rose up inside of me as the implication of his words registered. He’d been on the outside. He’d seen what was beyond the fences. He knew what was out there. I opened my mouth to let out that flood of questions, but felt my throat close over them.

He’d also been glad to see me. Me, even though we hadn’t really been friends. I thought about what he hadn’t said. The way he’d cut himself off earlier before finishing his sentence.

All my questions sort of hung there in my mind. I could have asked if he’d been to our hometown. If he’d seen my mother. I could have asked, but I didn’t. I was too afraid that I knew the answer, and I wasn’t ready to hear it aloud.

“Where were you before now?” I asked, my fear making me sound angry. I wasn’t brave enough to ask about my family, but if he’d been somewhere else—
anywhere
else—then he might be able to tell me what awaited Mel and me once we got out. I hadn’t been beyond the electrified fence surrounding the Farm in over six months. Sometimes I’d go up to the roof of the science building and stare out into the town beyond the fence, looking for signs of life. Signs of anything outside. For miles around, there was nothing but empty buildings, deserted cars, and the path of destruction left by the Ticks.

Maybe this was what every town looked like now. But I had to believe that somewhere out there, civilization chugged on. Truckloads of food arrived every week. That food came from somewhere, right? I never saw anything during the day.

At night sometimes, you could hear the Ticks out there, howling in an obscene cacophony. Like someone was skinning a dozen puppies alive. But we never saw or heard humans from beyond the fence.

“Have you been out there?” I asked softly, wanting to hide how anxious I was for any shred of information about the outside world. “What’s it like? Are the Ticks everywhere? Have they killed . . . everyone?”

I’d mindlessly walked closer to him. He searched my face, and there was something unsettling about the intensity with which he looked at me. His eyes seemed to scour my face, taking in every detail, as though he had been desperate to find me. Like I was somehow important to him. I shivered and stepped back.

Jeez, he must have been alone a long time if he was this glad to see me.

He glanced out the window again. “I don’t want to talk about what’s happened out there.”

He sounded so damn vulnerable, part of me just wanted to let it go, but I couldn’t. I’d never be able to trust him unless I knew more about where he’d come from and how he’d gotten here. Even though I’d known him in the Before, I couldn’t afford to just trust anyone these days. And maybe there was some tiny part of me that still
hoped
.

I was about to risk Mel’s life with this crazy escape plan, and I owed it to her to find out everything I could about the outside.

“Please,” I begged. “Can’t you tell me anything about what’s out there? I know nothing about what’s going on beyond that fence. When our parents sent all of us here, they were told it was temporary—just for our protection. Just until they could find a way to kill the Ticks. And when they couldn’t find a way to kill them, they said that as we got older, our blood would be less appealing to the Ticks and that they could set us free, but I don’t think that’s what’s happening. It’s been months since we’ve seen or heard anything from the outside other than food deliveries. Are there still any humans out there at all? Did you see any sign that the police or the army was fighting back? Is there any place that’s safe?”

He sent me a suspicious look. “Why do you want to know all this stuff about what’s outside the Farm? There’s no way out of here.”

Crap. Had I tipped my hand? These all seemed like normal questions to me. Things anyone would want to know. But had he guessed that I actually needed the information?

“Because you just showed up here,” I improvised. “Out of nowhere. And I have no idea where you’ve been or what you’ve been doing.” I let my hand drop to the handle of the shiv. “And unless you can give me a pretty good reason why you showed up now, I think you better leave.”