The Last Uprising (Defectors Trilogy) (19 page)

“I don’t need your protection,” she said quietly.

“Just because I’m not as good in a fight as you, you think I’m
useless
,” he spat bitterly.

Logan’s voice was softer when she next spoke. “I never said that.”

“You didn’t have to.”

“I just don’t think you
get it
sometimes.”

“Get what?”

“How bad the world is now.” Logan’s voiced hitched. “I’ve been out here a lot longer than you have.”

Greyson paused, and I could almost feel the anger emanating from him. “What’s
that
supposed to mean? You think I don’t know what the real world is like because I was in
prison
for three weeks? While you were here, on the farm?”

“No. Because I was like them once. I was a bad person, Greyson. I did
horrible
things to plenty of innocent people when I was in the PMC, and I didn’t even care. Whereas you . . . you’ve been good your whole life.”

“That doesn’t make a difference.”

Logan sighed. “Yes, it does.”

There was a long, painful silence. Then someone sighed and walked away.
 

I hesitated, unsure who had left. As a friend, I should have been there to comfort either of them, but I knew instinctively that one would want me to be there and the other wouldn’t.

When I rounded the corner and saw Greyson standing there, my heart sank. I’d known him long enough to know he would rather have time to pull himself together than let me witness his pain and humiliation.
 

He had his back to me as he watched Logan walk away with long strides, and his shoulders were hunched forward in defeat.
 

She had wounded him and insulted him as a man, yet all Logan saw was the boy I did — the boy I’d grown up with who
was
good.

His head jerked around when he heard me coming, and I tried to arrange my mouth so there was no trace of pity in my expression. It was hard once I saw his face.

“You heard, didn’t you?”

“Not everything.”

“She’s impossible!”

“She’s Logan.”

“She thinks I’m weak because I wasn’t trained by the fucking PMC.”

“No, she doesn’t. Logan just has a hard time letting people in.”

“She makes me
crazy
.”

I grinned at the intensity of his tone.

“It’s not funny. She could have gotten us all killed mouthing off like that.”

“But she didn’t.”

“I thought I was going to have to stand there and watch him do something horrible to her.”

“You wouldn’t have let it get that far. None of us would have.”

“But she doesn’t think that,” he yelled, throwing his hand in the direction she’d gone.

My heart ached for Greyson. I wanted him to be happy so badly, but I had the horrible feeling that he would never get anything but grief from Logan.
 

It wasn’t that Greyson wasn’t her type; it was that they were too similar. Both were stubborn beyond belief and emotionally idiotic. Each would die refusing to yield rather than give in.

“Do you want my help?” I asked, trying to suppress a grin.

He threw me a furious look that burned out in an instant. “Yeah.”

I tried not to look taken aback by his willingness. “Stop trying to prove that you’re strong enough to take care of her. Logan doesn’t need to be taken care of — she doesn’t want to be.”

“I get that.”
 

“No, you don’t. Fighting is what she’s good at, and if you try to take that away from her, she’ll hate you for it.”

For a moment, he looked surprised — not by what I had said about Logan, but by me. “I’m not trying to take anything from her,” he whispered.

“That’s not how she sees it. Give her something she actually needs.”

“What?”

“A challenge . . . a distraction . . . a good laugh. Take your pick.” I took a step toward him and squeezed his arm once. “She’d be lucky to have you.”

Greyson broke into a smile that made me feel as though I could finally breathe.
 

“Thanks.”

I turned to go, but he reached out and tugged at my arm. “Haven? You give really good advice for someone who doesn’t remember her friends.”

My head twinged slightly, but it was nothing like the debilitating pain I’d felt a few days ago. I dragged in a huge stream of air, trying to find the right words. I didn’t want to get his hopes up, but I owed him an explanation.
 

“I’m starting to remember the important things,” I said.

I left him standing there heartsick over Logan, and I wondered what it was going to be like having them living under the same roof.
 

Mulling over the scattered memories I had of them, I realized they were both my best friends for a lot of the same reasons. Both were intense and loyal — hell-bent on doing whatever they thought was right. Either they would kill each other, or they would be the most annoyingly in-love people in the world.

The next day, I awoke to the sound of Roman swearing loudly from the backyard.
 

I lay there for several minutes, willing him to stop, but if anything, his shouts just seemed to be growing louder.

I pulled on some clothes and padded out into the hallway, where Logan was slumped half-asleep, still in her pajamas.
 

“Too early,” she yawned. “I need my beauty sleep.”

“We need to get the place ready for the Hoopers.”

Logan groaned. “This is the first time in days when I haven’t been in imminent danger. I just want to sleep in.”

I nodded and waited for her to change, and then we both went down to the kitchen and out the back door.

By the time we came outside, Amory had joined in the shouting match. He and Roman had lugged Ida’s old emergency generator up from the shed, and by the sound of it, they were having trouble getting it to work.

Greyson was leaning against a tree, watching the argument with amusement.

“If you can’t play nice, you can’t play at all,” Logan crooned from the step.

“Oh!” said Roman, turning his sweaty face to her. “So nice of you to join us, princess.”

“What’s got your panties in a twist this morning?”

Roman opened his mouth to let loose what I was sure would not be a nice explanation, but Amory broke in first.

“He doesn’t like the idea of the Hoopers coming to live here.”

“Why not?” I asked.

Roman’s eyes darted to me. “They’re trouble.”

 
“You just don’t like the oldest one . . . Marcus.”

Roman rolled his eyes and went back to the generator. “
Him
I can deal with.”

That took me by surprise. “Who else didn’t you like?”

“The sister — Krystal. I don’t trust her.”

“He finally met the woman who could make an honest man out of him,” Logan teased.

I bit back a laugh. So I hadn’t been the only one who’d noticed how Roman looked at Krystal.

“What?” snapped Roman. He didn’t turn around, but I could see his brain working furiously to get ahead of whatever Logan was about to say.

“You
like
her,” said Logan. “Well . . . you like the way she looks.”

A dark cloud rolled over Roman’s face. He was such an angry person that it was hard for me to imagine him having a love life. But with Krystal, he had definitely met his match.

“She’s a lunatic,” he muttered. “We’ll be lucky if she doesn’t kill us all in our sleep.”

“You’ll keep an eye on her,” Logan mused. “I don’t imagine you two would be sleeping much.”
 

A laugh burst out of Greyson’s mouth, and he tried to cover it with a cough.

“Whatever,” growled Roman. “Since you slept in, you get to clean out the guest house.” He tossed the extension cord in the grass and stalked off in a huff.

Amory grinned at me, and I felt something flutter in my chest.

“You shouldn’t provoke him,” Greyson told Logan.

She shrugged. “He’s really more of a teddy bear than a grizzly bear.”

“If you say so.”

I smiled. If anyone could get away with teasing Roman, it was Logan.
 

He’d treated her like a porcelain doll ever since he’d found her weak and dying at the Infinity Building. Logan, of course,
hated
being treated differently, so she’d been goading Roman more than usual, as though she were trying to lure him into a fight just to prove she could still hold her own.

We each grabbed a power bar for breakfast and went off to the guest house to get it ready for the Hoopers. In the last few years, it had only been used occasionally to house illegals staying at the farm when the main house overflowed, and it had fallen into disrepair.
 

There were ten dusty rooms that needed cleaning and a broken-down kitchen with cupboards full of cobwebs. The bed linen was moth-eaten, and the whole place was overrun with mice.

It took the whole day to get the house in a condition that would be livable. It was nasty work sweeping the cobwebs, dust, and rodent excrement out of the rooms, but it felt good to sweat and do something productive.
 

While we cleaned, Roman and Godfrey scouted the rest of the nearby farms for food and supplies. Amory and Greyson busied themselves with dismantling the PMC’s work out in the fields. They began filling in the foundation of the plant and cleared away the mess the builders had left during construction.
 

When we all gathered around the kitchen table for a late supper of noodles in thin broth, we were sweaty, exhausted, and irritable.

Amory still hadn’t managed to get the generator running, and Roman and Godfrey’s supply runs had not been very fruitful. At this point, we faced the strong possibility that we would run out of gasoline and be unable to make more trips into the city to gather food.

“We need to rebuild the barn by spring,” said Roman. “We need more room for people.”

“How can we house people if we can’t feed them?” Amory muttered.

“Well we can’t defend this place with just us and the Hoopers. We may be able to drive off the workers, but the PMC will send in reinforcements.”

“Once they know we’re here, all they’ll have to do is set up a roadblock. They’ll be able to starve us out.”

“We can still hunt,” said Logan.

Amory shook his head. “All the carriers drove off most of the game in the area. That deer the Hoopers shot was probably the last of its kind.”

“We have enough gas for one more run,” said Godfrey. “We’ll have to go far and wide this time. With any luck, we’ll find enough fuel left to make it worth our while. That’s what we need to worry about. As long as we have gas, we can do runs to get more food.”

We finished our unsatisfying meal in irritable silence, and I went upstairs to be the first at the bathroom. I didn’t care if the water was cold. I just wanted to wash away the filth and grime from the day.

When I emerged, Logan was sitting outside the door, waiting her turn. Amory, Roman, and Godfrey were talking downstairs, but Greyson’s door was cracked.

I knocked half-heartedly and pushed the door open before he could respond. He might have wanted to be alone, but I didn’t.

He had his back to the door, and he sighed when he heard me come in.

“Can you shut the door?” he asked.

I pushed it closed and walked around to the bed.
 

Greyson was leaning against the wall, the side of his jaw twitching as though he wanted to cry. He had something in his hands I couldn’t quite see.
 

Cautiously, I sank down next to him.

“Why are we here, Haven?”

I was startled by the lump in his throat. “W-What do you mean?”

“I mean . . . why am
I
here?”
 

He sighed, and I could sense the energy this confession took from him. “I feel like I’m just an extra person . . . like I don’t belong with you guys.”

“Of course you belong with us!” I said, taken aback by this statement. I’d never considered that my friendship with Logan and Amory had made him feel left out, or what it must have been like for him when I wasn’t myself.

He shook his head. “I should have gone west. That’s what we planned on doing, and that’s where I should have gone.”

“We
will
go west,” I said, my voice wavering despite my resolve. “I promise.”

“When?” he demanded. “When will we go? It seems like everything we do just takes us farther and farther away from my family . . . farther from what we wanted in the first place.”

I was taken aback by his words. I vaguely remembered Greyson
wanting
to fight with the rebels after Sector X fell.
I
had been the one who wanted to flee, but I’d joined up to save Amory.
 

“I thought . . . I thought you wanted this,” I said quietly. “I thought you wanted to be a rebel.”

“That was after I got out of prison,” he said, his face contorting in pain as he remembered. “I was angry. I wanted to get back at the PMC for what they took from me. But now . . . I just want to live my
life
.”

His voice was tired, defeated, and that sobered me more than anything.
 

“I don’t want to be on the run anymore . . . to go to bed every night thinking I might be killed in my sleep or hauled back to prison.”

“What brought all this on?” I asked. “This isn’t you talking.”

“I don’t belong here!” he snapped. “I’m just in the way!”
 

It seemed odd that Greyson was telling
me
he didn’t belong — after I’d spent two weeks tied up in a tent while the others debated whether or not I was going to turn on them.

But then Greyson shoved what he was holding into my hands, and I understood.
 

A stack of glossy Polaroid pictures slipped between my fingers. They were all pictures of Logan: Logan laughing, Logan lying in the grass with the sun in her eyes, Logan perched in the old tree with a rifle slung across her lap.

“Where did you get these?” I asked. I knew he couldn’t have taken them.

“They were under the bed. They must have belonged to —”