The Last Uprising (Defectors Trilogy) (18 page)

I glanced at Denny, who was lying with his eyes wide open.
 

Then I did a double take, and something else clicked into place. I hadn’t noticed it before when he was threatening us, but with the moonlight reflecting off his glassy eyes, there was no mistaking it.
 

His eyes were yellow around the edges, and his skin had a sickly grayish tinge.

“This one’s infected,” I said.

“What?” snapped Marcus.
 

“He’s an early-stage carrier. They both are,” I said, gesturing to the man who’d attacked me with the noxious, rotten breath.

“How do
you
know?”

I threw him a challenging look. “I’ve seen it.”

Marcus still looked doubtful.

“Check the others,” Amory prompted. “Haven can spot an early-stage carrier like no one I’ve ever met.”

Marcus bent down next to the two who’d held Godfrey. Their eyes were half-closed, but the signs of infection were there.

“How did this happen?” asked Greyson. “You think a horde attacked their family?”

Roman snorted. “I doubt it.” He flipped one of the other men over. “They’re meth heads. Every last one.” He yanked up the man’s sleeve. “See the track marks? Rotten teeth? My guess is one of them ran afoul of the carriers they were baiting, and then they were all sharing needles.”

“So if there are more of them left somewhere . . .”

Roman nodded. “We’re going to have a much bigger problem.”

Marcus ran a hand over the top of his short hair. “Well, I’ll be damned.”

My gaze fell to the heavy crossbow in his grip, and something clicked into place.

“Hang on . . .” I said. “Where’s your friend?”

Marcus glanced up at me in irritation, as though I were a fly he wanted to swat. “What?”

“There were two shooters,” I said. “Your arrow hit Hank, but someone else took out one of the men holding Godfrey.”

Marcus shrugged, but I could detect a flash of nervousness in his eyes. “Wasn’t me.”

“I know it wasn’t,” I pressed, urgency and distrust humming in my limbs. “The shots came too close together. You wouldn’t have had time to switch weapons.”

Amory stepped up beside me. He was glaring at Marcus. “If it wasn’t one of us and it wasn’t you . . . who the hell was it?”

Suddenly I was on high alert again.
Was there no one we could trust?

All around me, the others had picked up weapons and were scanning the trees for whomever Marcus wasn’t telling us about.

“Stop,” said Marcus. “It’s all right. They mean you no harm.”
 

“Who’s ‘they’?” snapped Roman, striding over to Marcus and training the rifle on his chest. “What are you hiding?”

Marcus sighed loudly, and I heard the crunch of leaves coming from the shadows. My spine went rigid, and Amory spun to point his gun toward the source of the noise.

“Krystal, I said stay out of sight,” growled Marcus, seemingly oblivious to the rifle pointed at his heart.

“Oh, I think I can take ’em,” called a female voice.

A severe-looking woman stepped out of the tree line, a challenging smile playing on her lips.

She had deep olive skin, and her straight black hair whipped out behind her, taking on an almost bluish hue in the light from the moon.
 

Marcus sighed. “This is my kid sister, Krystal.”

“And you didn’t trust us enough to tell us you weren’t alone?” asked Greyson sharply.

Marcus ignored him.

With a gleam in her dark eyes and a shotgun in hand, Krystal cleared a path between Godfrey and Roman like a tornado. Her baggy jeans and flannel shirt didn’t fully conceal her figure, and Roman’s eyes trailed after her every step.
 

“Your ‘kid sister’ is a better shot than you,” she snapped. “You couldn’t even finish the bastard you took out.”

“He was moving too much,” growled Marcus. “And I didn’t want to hit the girl.”

Logan’s eyebrow quirked in irritation.

“Krystal’s right,” said a third voice, swallowing down a burst of musical laughter. “She is a better shot.”

There was the sound of someone crashing through the trees behind the woman, and another man appeared. He was much younger than the other two — about our age, by the looks of it — and he was beautiful. He was six feet of pure muscle with short brown hair and golden skin.

Marcus rolled his eyes. “Meet Jason. He’s our younger brother.”

Jason shrugged. “Younger brother . . . best brother . . . whatever.”
 

He flashed a mischievous grin, and Logan shot me a look that I took to mean something like,
damn.

“Why are you all here?” asked Roman. He didn’t bother hiding the edge to his tone.

“We’d been hunting about a quarter mile out when we heard the yellin’,” said Jason. “We knew no one was supposed to be living here, so we thought we’d check it out.”

“Just to make sure no one was trespassing besides you?” Roman muttered.

Marcus shot him a look. “Ida was a friend. She’s always let us hunt on her property.”
 

“Said we kept the deer from eating all her corn,” Jason chortled.

“Well, thank you for your help,” said Godfrey. “You saved our lives.”

Krystal’s eyes landed on him for the first time, and her expression softened slightly. “Godfrey! What are you doing here?”

“We’re on assignment from Ida.”

Krystal’s eyebrows shot up. “She isn’t here with you?”

“She’s up north right now, rallying the documented people to stand with the rebels. She asked us to come back here to establish a stronghold in the Midwest.”

Krystal looked suspicious. “That doesn’t sound like her.”

“You don’t know what it’s been like.”

Krystal shook her head. “I know Ida wouldn’t be running with the rebels.”

“She didn’t have much of a choice,” growled Godfrey. “The revolution has started.”

Krystal and Marcus exchanged a look.

“There’s not gonna be a revolution,” said Marcus flatly. “The PMC is taking over. S’only a matter of time before they bulldoze our house and everything else along with it.”

Godfrey shook his head. “The PMC is acting under the orders of Aryus Edric, who owns World Corp International.”

“World Corp is behind all this?” Jason laughed. “No way.”

Godfrey continued. “Aryus’s focus is up north. If we can raise hell on all sides, they won’t be able to hold it together.”

“Oh yeah?” said Marcus. “You and what army?”

I felt a stab of fury, and Amory, Logan, and Roman shifted angrily on either side of me.

“We’re trying to rally whoever is left in the area,” said Godfrey, clearly used to Marcus’s brusque manner.

“No offense, but we’re doing just fine on our own,” said Krystal. I could feel the distrust wafting off her, though I didn’t understand why. Clearly, she knew Godfrey and Ida from before the Collapse.

“I’m sure you are,” said Godfrey. “But this is about more than that. We need to make this farm defensible so we can put up a real fight against the PMC.”

“You’re on your own,” said Krystal.
 

“Hey!” snapped Jason. “I want to fight.”

She shot her brother a deadly look. “No, you don’t.” She turned back to Godfrey. “You won’t have our help raising the PMC’s ire.”

“Krystal. Stop,” said Marcus.

Godfrey raised an eyebrow.

Krystal folded her arms across her chest. “The answer is no.”

“It’s not up to you!” yelled Marcus.
 

“I’m not interested in being the PMC’s prisoner,” she shot back. “Or
worse.
”

Amory took a step forward, glaring at her. “If you think there’s anything worse than being the PMC’s prisoner, you’ve been hiding in the woods too long.”

A look of rage flashed across Krystal’s face, and for a moment, I thought she was going to hit Amory.

Marcus had been watching him out of the corner of his eye.
 

At Amory’s words, he seemed to make up his mind about something, and he leveled Godfrey with a fierce look. “What would you need from us?”

Godfrey shrugged. “You join us, help us rally others . . . then we reclaim this territory from the PMC. It gives us a foothold in mid-Missouri, and this base serves as a nice diversion. The goal is to hem them in on all sides . . . divide their focus.”

Marcus nodded slowly. “Makes sense.”

Krystal had fallen silent, but the sullen look on her face told me this was not the last the brothers would be hearing from her tonight.

“So you’ll join us?” I asked.

Marcus didn’t answer right away. He seemed to be mulling it over, while Jason was bouncing on the balls of his feet waiting for a verdict. Krystal was the voice of the group, but it seemed Marcus had the final word.

Finally, he nodded. “Count us in. We’ll pool our resources . . . food, ammunition, anything we got.”

Krystal scoffed but didn’t say a word.

“Look for us the day after tomorrow. And when you talk to Ida, you can tell her . . . we’re with you.”

The Hoopers disappeared into the woods, and I had the immediate feeling that we must have imagined the whole thing. In one fell swoop, the Hoopers had saved our lives and increased our numbers by fifty percent. Plus, they were bringing supplies.

“What was
that
about?” Roman asked. Clearly he also found our turn of luck a little disconcerting.

“The Hoopers are good people,” said Godfrey. “They’ve just been through a lot, is all.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

Godfrey sighed. “Their mother died years ago, God rest her soul, but their father and brother . . . Back in the early days of mandatory migration, the Hoopers took in an infected family . . .”

I felt my jaw drop.
 

“The family was so early stage the Hoopers couldn’t have known,” he said quickly. “They were on the run from the PMC — a family with three young kids and a sick father. They were living in the Hoopers’ barn, and the father was stage three. Violent. Unpredictable. He broke into the house in the middle of the night and killed Mr. Hooper and his youngest son.”
 

“There was a fourth Hooper kid?” Amory asked.

Godfrey nodded grimly. “Thirteen years old. The infected man ambushed Mr. Hooper, and the boy got caught in the middle of it all. Krystal heard the struggle and shot the man, but it was too late.”

“What happened to the others? The family?”

Godfrey’s face fell. “Marcus went out to the barn. The mom and the three kids had heard the shots, so of course they were terrified. The mom was clearly infected, too, but the kids . . . well, I guess we’ll never really know one way or the other.
 

“Marcus will always insist those kids looked infected, too. I think he was just scared. Back then, see, no one knew
how
the virus spread.”

“He killed the whole family?” I asked, horrified.

“Yep.”

“And that’s why Krystal didn’t want anything to do with us.”

Godfrey nodded. “After that, the Hoopers really went underground. Ida would come around every now and then to bring them supplies and check to make sure they hadn’t turned. I’m surprised they’ve survived this long, to be honest. It’s hard to make it these days if you’re not out west or with the rebels.”

As Godfrey’s chilling story sank in, I realized there probably wasn’t a family out there that hadn’t been touched by the devastation World Corp had wrought on the world. My family’s end had been tragic, but I couldn’t imagine having to witness it.

Greyson wouldn’t rest until Logan let Amory examine her leg wound. While she argued with them and insisted the bullet had only grazed her, I helped Roman and Godfrey drag the dead moonshiners out to the field and returned to the cellar to lock up. It was late, but I didn’t feel tired with all the adrenaline still coursing through my veins.
 

As I came around the side of the house, I heard yells echoing in the still night air. I flattened myself against the porch rails, listening intently.
 

One voice belonged to Greyson, and he was furious.

“You could have gotten us all killed!”

“But I
didn’t
!” snapped Logan. “If anything, I kept him from blowing your brains out.”

“Right,” Greyson said in a clipped tone. “Because that went
so
well.”

“In case you haven’t noticed, we’re all fine.”

“Yeah . . . thanks to Krystal and Marcus.”

I remembered Greyson tackling Hank, and I realized he had tried to save Logan, knowing he would be shot.

“I was just trying to keep them talking,” Logan persisted. “We needed
time
. Roman was unconscious . . .”

“You were
antagonizing
them!”

“Would you rather I surrendered?” snapped Logan. “Huh? Let him . . . do whatever he wanted to me?” Her voice was shrill but deadly serious.

“No. No! Of course not.”

“Then what was I supposed to do?”

“You shouldn’t have provoked them.”

My insides contracted, and I knew Greyson had said the wrong thing.

“
Provoked
them?” Logan snarled. “They came at us, remember? What would you have done?”

“We were outnumbered.”

“So I was just supposed to let them kill us?”

“We might have been able to walk away.”

“
Walk away
? Are you serious?” Logan’s voice was just getting higher. “Do you have
any
idea what he was thinking of doing to me?”

“Of course I do!” yelled Greyson. “Do you really think any of us would have let that happen?”

“You had a gun pointed at your head.”

“So did you.”

“I don’t care. I wasn’t going down without a fight.”

“Neither was —” Greyson sighed in exasperation. “I would have
died
before I let him hurt you.”

“It wouldn’t have made a difference.”
 

There was a long, heavy pause, and I cringed with dread. I’d forgotten a lot about my past, but I remembered that driving Greyson to speechlessness never meant victory in a fight.

“So that’s it, then?” His voice was ragged. “You think I couldn’t protect you?”