The Vault (A Farm Novel) (21 page)

CARTER

“Do we have a backup plan?” Ely asked five hours later. “In case things go badly.”

“Nope.”

We had spent most of the past few hours planning the raid on the Ticks’ nest and waiting for dawn. Once everything in the house had been quiet for a couple of hours, we’d crept out of our hiding spot and crossed the street. In the front yard, Ely slung off the backpack he’d been wearing and dropped it by the pathetic remains of the landscaping.

“Based on the pattern of movement at the windows . . .” Ely said as we stopped on either side of the front doorway. The door itself had long ago been ripped off its hinges. Ticks weren’t big on doorknobs. “They sleep all together in the front living room on the first floor. We should be able to walk right in and start firing.”

I nodded, not bothering to mention that he’d told me this already. We each had two of the tranq rifles strapped to our backs and one ready to fire.

“We go in, we shoot everything that moves until they stop moving.”

I nodded again. My heart was thundering so hard I was surprised it didn’t wake up one of the Ticks. I’d fought and killed my fair share of Ticks in the past ten months, but I’d never walked right into one of their nests.

I counted down on my fingers from five and then Ely and I both swung through the doorway. The foyer, which we’d been able to glimpse through the open door, was empty. To the immediate left was the living room. Heavy curtains hung on the windows and the only light came in through a thin gap in them. My eyes darted around the room and I fired automatically as I found the huddled shapes. On my right, two shapes curled on what looked like a sofa that had been torn to shreds. I darted them, twice each. The soft phffft, phffft, phffft of my rifle firing was matched by identical sounds from Ely.

Ely and I both pulled out our flashlights and held them up, surveying the room.

“I only see four,” I said.

As I spoke, one of the Ticks on the sofa twitched, then gave a whole-body shiver that was almost violent. It reared up, howling drunkenly. I fired another dart into it at the same time Ely did. Then he spun around, putting his back to mine as we both scanned the room.

“I still only see four.”

“Agreed.”

“Is there any chance you miscounted?” I asked.

“No. There were definitely five here as of yesterday. I don’t see the alpha Tick.”

Together we turned slowly, watching the other Ticks in the living room for signs they might wake.

“Are we sure they all came back last night?”

Ely cursed.

“I’m going to take that as a no. Okay,” I said, my mind racing. “We’ve got two options. We grab Marcus and Lily and get the hell out. Or we split up and one of us goes to find the alpha Tick.”

From deep within the house came a low rumbling growl followed by the creaking of floorboards and the sound of wood splintering.

We automatically both turned toward the sound.

“Option one is looking a lot less possible,” I commented.

“You want to go find that beast or should I?”

Behind us, one of the Ticks made a snuffling noise. I whipped around, looking from Tick to Tick. One of the ones in the corner shifted and then stilled. Somewhere else in the house, the other Tick howled again, a long low-pitched cry followed by several short yips. Like he was calling for the others. When he didn’t get a response, he howled again and this time another voice joined his. There were two of them. And then they both fell silent. But I could hear them moving somewhere in the house.

Just from where we stood, I could see hallways and rooms shooting off in several directions. Back in the Before, when I’d been at all those East Coast boarding schools, my friends and I had crashed a couple of frat parties. We’d been young enough that we’d been kicked out on our asses pretty fast, but still, I’d been inside some frat houses. They were always big and labyrinthine. These Ticks could be hiding anywhere and they could be damn hard to find. They’d stayed alive this long, which meant they were smart—for Ticks.

“I’m tired of waiting. Get your rifle ready.” I propped my own rifle against my hip and pulled out my pocketknife. I used my teeth to open it while I rolled back my sleeve. “Hey, buddy,” I called out. “You gonna come find us or what?”

“What the hell are you doing?” Ely demanded.

“Are you ready?” I asked Ely. He nodded and I ran the knife across the outside of my forearm, keeping the slice nice and shallow. It still hurt like hell. “’Cause here he comes.”

I swapped the knife to my left hand and grabbed the tranq rifle in my right, propping the barrel on my left wrist. The cut was throbbing and I could feel the blood oozing from it. One drop ran down to my elbow and then fell to the floor.

“Come on!” I yelled again, but I didn’t need to.

A roar came from within the house and then the thundering sound of a huge creature tearing its way past cheap furniture. I started firing before it even made it through the doorway. Phffft, phffft. Ely was firing too. Phffft, phffft, phffft. And still it came barreling toward us.

The darts didn’t seem to faze it at all. He just ducked his head and rammed me. I flew through the air and landed on my back, his massive weight on top of me. I still had one tranq rifle strapped to my back and it bit into my shoulder as I landed. I tried to roll with the impact, but the alpha Tick was too strong. I slammed the rifle I still held into his temple, but he didn’t seem to notice. Hell, maybe the five tranq darts had just deadened his pain.

He howled again, not in anguish but in fury, and bared his huge teeth at me. I grabbed the rifle in both hands and shoved it up under his jaw, straightening my arms to keep his snapping mouth away from me.

“A little . . .” I never got the word
help
out.

“Busy,” Ely grunted back. Only then was I aware of the bangs and crashes coming from his direction.

The Tick on top of me grabbed my ear and started to pull. His arms were way longer than mine. And stronger, too. My muscles started shaking. I could not hold this beast off for much longer. And if I could, he would actually rip my ears from my head. His claws were digging into my skull and I could feel the blood seeping from beneath his fingers.

My left arm started to give out and the rifle tipped down. He lunged forward toward my shoulder in the same instant that Ely thrust a stake through his back. A jagged piece of wood pierced his heart and came out through his chest, stopping five inches from me.

He roared and rolled to the side—thankfully losing his grip on my ears. I gave one last push and thrust him off me.

Sucking in deep, ragged breaths, I pushed myself up onto my knees, bracing myself on my good arm. I looked around. Ely stood a few feet away, his last tranq rifle held ready, pointing at first one Tick and then another, occasionally looking past me to the Ticks that were already knocked out.

At his feet lay what I took to be a female Tick, several tranq darts in her chest. A stake there, too. For an instant, my heart stopped. What if—

But, no. Her hair wasn’t the right color. And her clothes, the tattered remains of a flowered dress, were all wrong. Lily had had on jeans and a gray hoodie. A lot of Ticks stopped wearing clothes altogether. When they still wore them, it seemed like an afterthought, like something they just never bothered to take off. Still, the idea haunted me. Had Ely known that? He’d seen Lily recently. He would have known what she was wearing. Maybe. Maybe he just hadn’t cared, when it had been his life or this Tick’s.

I couldn’t think about that.

God, there were so many things I couldn’t think about. Like the fact that these two Ticks were now dead. If things had gone differently, they could have lived long enough to get the cure. And in some weird way, I knew I owed this Tick. He’d kept Lily alive long enough for me to find her.

I used my good arm to push myself to my feet and wavered as my head swam. I put my fingers to the skin behind my ear and they came away bloody.

Ely glanced at me. “You okay?”

“I think I need a hepatitis shot.”

“You had one.”

“What?”

“It was one of the vaccines we all got before Sebastian let us into the academy.” He didn’t stop surveying the room as he spoke.

“We should have known then this was fucked up.”

“No shit.”

My breath was still coming in bursts and every muscle in my body was shaking from the aftereffects of the adrenaline. And to be honest, I totally wanted to puke. Or sit down and cry. Not that I had time to do either of those things.

I looked around at the six Tick bodies littering the floor. Given how hard it had been to knock out the two Ticks who’d been awake, we were damn lucky the other four had been asleep.

I looked over at Ely, who was only now lowering his tranq rifle, even though I was pretty sure it didn’t have any darts left in it. “Five Ticks, huh? You do know how to count to six, right?”

“Screw you.”

I pulled the tranq rifle off my back and held it out to him. “You want to stand guard while I grab Lily and Marcus?”

He looked at my hands, which were shaking visibly, and nodded. “Sure.”

I might not trust him and he was such an ass sometimes, but I was glad he didn’t call me on the shaking hands.

I turned back to the living room, where two Ticks still lay on the sofa nest and the other two still lay in the corner, curled up like dogs. I gave a passing glance at the two on the sofa. One was a male that looked underfed, the other a female with a thick lock of gray in her hair. They were both sleeping soundly thanks to the darts, so I moved past them to the pair of Ticks in the corner. To Lily and Marcus. Even though he’s bigger than her, Marcus was tucked into the corner. She was in front of him, draped over him, almost like she was protecting him. Her dark hair was a tangled mess and I reached out a shaking hand to brush it back and look at her face.

I’ve seen so many Ticks up close, but I’d never seen a person I loved transformed into a Tick. It was impossible not to catalog the changes. Her eyes—closed, but twitching restlessly from the tranquilizer—appeared more sunken. Her cheekbones more prominent. Her teeth had grown. She now had massive incisors that barely fit in her mouth. They were like the teeth of a lion, meant for tearing flesh and crushing bones.

Instinctively, I gave my shoulder a roll, imagining the damage that alpha Tick could have done if Ely had been just a few seconds slower.

Tentatively, I picked up her hand and felt its deadweight in mine. She was really out of it. Thank God. Because she would not have liked what I had to do next. I picked her up gently and carried her out onto the front lawn and laid her down on the sidewalk. Then I went back for Marcus. And finally, I collected the backpack Ely had dropped and pulled out the zip ties and the duct tape.

I worked quickly and not just because I didn’t know how long the tranquilizers would last. I’ve done a lot of shit in the After that doesn’t sit well with me. I’ve stabbed monsters, I’ve hunted animals, I’ve had to decapitate the mutilated bodies of my dead friends—shit that really messes with your head and doesn’t ever go away. Shit you never forget.

Somehow, this was right up there with the worst of it. Zip-tying my girlfriend’s hands and feet. About a dozen times. Duct-taping her mouth. Jesus.

Maybe five minutes later, Ely and I carried Marcus and Lily away from the house. My car was just two blocks down the street. By the time we loaded them in the back, my hands had stopped shaking. Suddenly I felt exhausted and thirsty. And just . . . tired of this whole damn situation.

“How far away is this place?” Ely asked.

“Less than an hour.”

“And how long do you think they’re going to stay tranqed?”

“I don’t know,” I lied. I did some mental math. I had tranqed Lily before. Back when we were first trying to get off the Farm in North Texas. I had done it to protect her, because it was the only way to get her to safety. But I still felt shitty about it. Worse still, when I thought back on it, Lily hadn’t been out that long. “Hopefully more than an hour,” I told Ely.

He scrubbed his hand down his jaw. “’Cause I seem to remember that everyone metabolizes those tranquilizers differently.”

I glanced over at him. “What are you saying? You think she’s going to wake up first?”

“I’m just saying I sure as shit don’t want to be trapped in a car with a couple of Ticks when they wake up. I don’t think all the zip ties in the world are going to hold them for long.”

“You got any better ideas?”

“No.”

“Because this is Lily we’re talking about. And your brother. If you do have any better ideas, tell me now.”

“I’m just not a big fan of making a pointless sacrifice.”

“What? You want me to drop you and Marcus by the side of the road and let you figure something else out?”

“No. But I do want you to drive faster.”

“Then stop distracting me.”

*  *

In the Before, Huntsville Unit A had been the site of more state executions than any other prison in the United States. I’d learned that in the ninth grade when my English class had written editorial essays and I’d been assigned the topic of capital punishment. I don’t know why that one random fact stuck in my head, but it did.

It’s why I’d thought of bringing Lily and Marcus to the prison—because I’d seen pictures of solitary cells on death row. No, I didn’t like the symbolism of locking Lily up on death row and then shooting her full of a serum that might or might not kill her and might leave her suicidal if it didn’t, but there wasn’t a lot to like about this situation.

And that was all before we actually saw the prison.

Whatever awful and horrific things had happened in this prison in the Before, it was nothing compared to what had happened after.

Ely and I stood right outside the fences, staring at the dead bodies littering the yard. There were a lot of them. Some looked like Ticks, some looked like they’d been killed by Ticks. There were piles of bodies near the fences, like people or Ticks had tried to climb over them and the fact that they were electrified hadn’t stopped them.