The Scavengers (5 page)

“I see.” The stranger dropped his arms to his sides and frowned at me. “You're awfully brave aren't you?”

His words took me by complete surprise and I didn't know how to respond. Drake choked on whatever words he had been about to say. “Leave her alone, Seth.” He spoke the monster's name with a familiarity I knew I didn't trust.

“You leave her alone,” Seth countered. “I'm not her enemy.”

“You aren't her friend,” Drake said.

“Neither are you,” Seth replied. He focused his one-eyed gaze back on me. “Don't trust him. He'll lead you to slaughter, little lamb.”

“Go to Hell, Seth.” Drake made dismissive gesture at Seth and wrapped his arms around my shoulders, pulling me back against his chest. I hesitated for a moment and then allowed him to draw me to him. The pity in the stranger's – his name is Seth, a voice in my head reminded me - one good eye was igniting the unsettled feeling I'd had in the pit of my stomach ever since I'd come back to our apartment from my shift at the hospital ward to find Mom and Dad gone without a trace.

Our timing is all wrong for a trip to Ra-Shet, Shayla said.

The Church of Chaos wants too much, Drake told her.

We need her.

I shuddered hard but it did nothing to dislodge the growing suspicion that everything I'd thought I'd known about the world outside the Cube was wrong.

Drake tightened his hold on me. “Leave.” He told Seth. “You're scaring her.”

“I'm not the one she should be afraid of,” he replied with a small shake of his head. I felt his one-eyed gaze burning into the top of my head but I refused to look up from my scuffed boots. I didn't want to see his horrifying, half-zombie stare again. The last fragile piece of the little girl I had been before the brickyard had burned was insisting that as long as I didn't look at Seth again I could pretend he wasn't really there. If I didn't have to see that dead eye again then I could go back into the bus and tell myself that zombies were zombies and people were people and there was no gray area in between the two.

I swallowed a lump of panic that was growing in my chest but I couldn't help the low whimper that came out of my throat.

“Go.” Drake told Seth.

After another moment of silent staring, Seth disappeared back into the trees far more quietly than he had come.

“What the hell was he?” I fought against a months’ worth of unshed tears and a hurricane's worth of barely contained emotions.

“Don't worry about him. You don't want to know.” Drake gently rubbed my back. I could feel the steady pressure of his heart beating against my cheek. He smiled down at me and as I stared up into Drake's beautiful, soulful eyes and remembered Seth's warning not to trust him.

I put both my hands on Drake's chest and pushed him away. “What was he?” I asked again.

“You don't need to know.”

“I want to know.”

“It's complicated.”

“Explain it to me.”

“You wouldn't understand.”

“Try me. I'm smarter than you think.” I crossed my arms over my chest and decided to try a different tactic. “What is Ra-Shet?” I asked.

Drake opened his mouth and then closed it abruptly. “Where did you hear about Ra-Shet?” He demanded.

“You were talking about it earlier today, after Conner was killed.”

A muscle in Drake's jaw twitched as he turned his back to me under the guise of scanning the tree line for more uninvited guests.

“If I'm going to make it as a Scavenger then I need to know what I'm dealing with,” I pointed out. Drake hissed in annoyance.

“You don't know anything about being a Scavenger,” he said angrily.

“Obviously not. You don't want to teach me.” I couldn't keep the tears from stinging my eyes. I was exhausted and emotionally overwhelmed. Drake frowned at me as a single bead of salty moisture leaked out of right eye and traveled down my cheek.

“I'm not trying to hurt you, Pilar,” Drake said as he stepped towards me and pulled me back into his arms. “It’s not personal. It’s just that most new recruits can't handle the truth. It breaks them.”

It was the first time I'd heard him use my name. Funny how the Spanish syllables didn't sound nearly as dreamy coming out of his beautiful mouth as they had in all my fantasies back in the Cube.

“I want honesty, Drake. When my best friend was dying in the hospital ward no one wanted to tell me that she wouldn't make it. Everyone kept lying to me and telling me that Julie would pull through because they didn't think I would be able to do what I needed to do to take care of her if I knew I was losing her.” The tears were escaping freely down my cheeks now. “My parents disappeared from our apartment in the middle of the afternoon on a Tuesday. The Powers That Be keep telling me that Mom and Dad must have gotten tired of Cube living and escaped to the outside. What the Powers That Be don't realize is that Mom is terrified of her own shadow. She watched her first husband turn into a zombie during the middle of dinner. He chased her into the bathroom and tried to eat her. He killed her little sister when she couldn't make it out the door in time. He killed their daughter. Mom is so completely petrified of zombies she wouldn't even go out into the brickyard. Dad couldn't even get her to go out onto one of the patios without physically carrying her outside. My Mom didn't leave the Cube on her own two feet and Dad wouldn't have made her go.”

“I see,” Drake said after a long hesitation. I very much doubted that he did. I considered telling him about the gun that I had hidden in the pocket of my jacket but Seth's warning suddenly came back into my mind.

Don't trust him.

I was surprised to realize that I didn't trust Drake. Not enough to reveal I was in possession of an illegal weapon and plenty of illegal ammunition. I couldn't trust him until he trusted me with the truth about the world I had just walked into.

“I want the truth.” I spoke the words so quietly even I could barely hear them.

After another moment, Drake nodded. He gestured for me to sit back down on the roof of the bus. “Have a seat, this is going to take a while.”

When I sat down on the cold metal roof, Drake settled down on his knees beside me. He took both my hands in his big, warm palms and gave me a small smile. “If I try to explain everything we'll be here for the next year and half, so I'm going to give you the basics. If you still want to hear more once I'm done we'll have plenty of time to go over the details during the next few weeks.” He squeezed my fingers. “Is that okay with you?”

I nodded.

“Okay, then.” Drake sighed and chewed on his lower lip as if he were having trouble deciding where to start with his explanation. We sat in silence for several minutes while Drake stared at the trees, the moon, and the clouds covering the moon and finally down at the roof of the bus we were sitting on. The smell of smoke brushed past us every time the wind blew. The smoke served as a constant reminder that I hadn't dreamed this whole mess up and I wasn't going to wake up curled up under my blanket on the couch in our apartment come morning.

“Do you know why we only eat canned foods?” Drake's question took me by surprise.

“They're the only food left,” I replied.

“Not exactly true,” Drake shook his head. “We can grow food, you know. Fruits, vegetables and grains will all still grow if you try hard enough and manage to get enough water to the plants.”

“Okay, if that's true, why did the Powers That Be destroy our garden?”

“Everything is contaminated by the zombie virus. Every single plant, animal, building, even the air and the water are contaminated.”

“We're contaminated.” I remembered Dr. Zeb's explanation from my first few weeks at the hospital ward. “Even if we don't show any outward signs of the virus we're still contaminated by it. That's why we still change into zombies when we die even though we were never bitten.”

“Right,” Drake nodded. “I don't know if you're old enough to remember it but the Cube used to have livestock as well as a garden.”

I shook my head. “I was just a baby when they killed off all the animals.”

“Did anyone ever tell you why they killed the animals?” He asked.

“I was always told that there was a bad storm and we ran out of food and had to eat them all.”

“The part about the storm is true, but the reason they killed off all the animals was because they had started showing the effects of the zombie virus.”

“The animals turned zombie?” I was confused. “I thought animals couldn't turn into zombies.”

“Animals don't turn into real zombies, but if they consume enough food and water that are contaminated with the virus then they will start to change.”

“Change how?”

“Did you get a good look at Seth?” Drake asked. I shuddered and nodded. He tightened his grip on my hands. “Seth is one of what we call the Changed. He's human, but he's lived off food and drink that contain the virus for so long that he's starting to turn into a zombie without ever actually being bitten by one.”

“Oh God. How awful.” A million of my worst hot, sweaty nightmares came rushing up at me out of the blackness. How many nights had I dreamed of waking up to discover that I had been turned into a zombie but somehow could still think my own thoughts and still had feelings?

Drake must have seen my distress because he instantly hugged me close. His chin came to rest on top of my head. “I know. Can you imagine how panicked people would be back in the Cube if they ever found out?”

I nodded, recalling how terrified some of the people in the hospital had been when they were facing relatively minor injuries. “I can't imagine what would happen if someone told everyone there was a chance they might start to very slowly and gradually become a zombie. There would be mass hysteria.”

“Now do you understand why we keep it a secret?”

“Wait?” My head jerked up abruptly. “Are you trying to tell me that
we
are
all
turning into zombies? That we're all,
Changed
?” I would have bolted if Drake hadn't been holding me so tightly.

“No. No, I'm not. We aren't.”

“But then, why would other people be changing?”

“Canned foods were sealed before the virus outbreak. If you only eat cans, then you're only eating foods that haven't been contaminated.”

“Oh my God.” I put my hand over my mouth. “The Powers That Be killed all the animals because eating fresh meat was turning us in to zombies?”

“Basically,” Drake released his grip on me slightly. I noticed that my skin was bright red where he had been holding me.

“Then, that guy, Seth – he hasn't been eating cans?”

Drake hesitated. “I'm not sure I need to tell you any more tonight. I'm afraid you might have a hard time handling everything. In the past we've had recruits go crazy when we told them the truth.”

“Trust me when I say anything I can imagine is probably worse than the truth,” I told him honestly. “I've always had an overactive imagination. The nightmares I had about monsters under my bed were 1,000 times worse than any zombie I've ever seen, including the two today.”

Drake hesitated for a moment and then nodded. It was apparent that he was gathering his thoughts and I didn't try to rush him. I was having a hard enough time accepting that the flavorless 30 year old canned food I despised so much was the only thing keeping me from looking like Seth. I couldn't get his dead, white eye out of my thoughts.

“You realize that you'll never be able to go back from here?” Drake asked me unexpectedly.

“Huh?”

“Once I tell you everything, you won't be the same girl. You won't look at things the same way. Even if you run screaming away from the Scavengers and go back to the Cube and your job in the hospital ward, you'll see things that will remind you about what you learned tonight. You'll understand things you don't want to understand.” Drake shrugged his broad shoulders. There was sympathy in his eyes.

“I already see things I don't want to see. Maybe understanding them will help me figure out how deal with what I see,” I told him.

He chewed his lip for a moment longer, then raked his fingers through his glossy hair.

“What did you think you would be doing when you joined the Scavengers?” he asked.

“Um, I don't know, really. Just whatever was needed of me. Why?”

“What did you do at the hospital ward?” He switched tactics.

“I was a nursing assistant.”

He shook his head no. “Nursing assistant is just a job title. What did you
do
?”

“Oh.” I understood what he was asking now. “Mostly I took care of people. I dressed a lot of wounds. Brought water and food when people asked. Changed bandages. Changes bed pans.” I made a face at the last one. “Why?”

“What did you think you would be doing when you joined the Scavengers?” he repeated his original question but now I understood the context of his words.

“I guess just helping find supplies and bring them back to the Cube,” I said. “My Dad always told me the name Scavenger comes from the idea of a scavenger hunt. He said that the Scavengers kept lists of supplies that were needed in the Cube, things like food and medicine, and went out to search the outside world for those items – kind of like a big scavenger hunt. With zombies thrown in for a bit of excitement,” my voice wavered a little bit as I attempted to make light of the situation.

Drake shook his head at me. “Your Dad was probably right about 20 years ago.”

“Twenty years ago?” I repeated in disbelief.

“Yeah. The description you just gave me is what the original Scavengers did do, back when finding food was just a matter of locating your nearest zombie-infested grocery store and clearing out the aisles. What we do now is a lot more complicated. And a lot more political.”

“Political?” Now I was really confused.

“You already met Seth. He's the leader of...well, we don't need to go into that right now, but let’s just say he's kind of my antithesis.”

“Antithesis?” I wasn't familiar with the word.

“To put it simply, I'm the good guy, he's the bad guy.” Drake smiled at me and this time it was genuine.

“Oh, I get it,” I said, pushing away the memory of Seth telling me not to trust Drake. Drake was telling me the truth now and according to him, Seth was the enemy. It only made sense that the enemy wouldn't want me to trust Drake.

“Good. I hope you never see him again, but if you do then you'll need to remember how dangerous he is.”

“He said we were in his valley.” The words came back to me unbidden.

“Yeah,” Drake scowled. “The Cube is located inside the area of land he considers to be his turf.”

“What?”

“Don't worry about it right now. It’s really not important.”

“But?”

Drake shook his head fiercely. “It's not important, Pilar. It really isn't. They don't bother the Cube and we avoid them when we go outside of it. We almost never cross paths.”

“Why did he come here tonight?” I countered.

Drake kicked at the bus. “He was probably hoping I'd need his help. Seth would like nothing more than to see me beg.”

“His help?” I asked.

“It all goes back to what we do,” Drake shook his head in frustration. “You see, the Scavengers were scavengers originally but useful goods are becoming harder and harder to come by. The grocery stores are pretty much empty now. We're down to searching through individual houses and hoping like hell no one beat us to it. The thing is...” he trailed off but I didn't think I needed him to finish explaining anyway.