Until We End (4 page)

Then Brooks tossed me over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes and carried me to the door.

Panic sent my heart racing as he carried me inside. I screamed for all I was worth, flung my legs out, balled my fists and hit him, calling him every foul name I could think of. Making him the target of my misery was easier than dealing with it alone. He grunted and tightened his grip, but didn't stop walking.

We were almost at the front door when a little common sense trickled back to me.

“Wait!” I cried, wiggling in his grasp. “Stop. Put me down.”

He flung me to the ground with a particularly nasty curse. I landed on my hands and knees, jumped back up, and ran through the house to my bedroom. I skidded to a halt in front of the closet and yanked the door open, searching the floor until I found what I needed.

Brooks wasn't far behind me. I ignored him and slung my backpack, a bright pink monstrosity with a purple flower design that Dad gave for my thirteenth birthday, over my shoulder.

He stepped in front of me when I tried to walk out the door. “What's in the bag?”

“None of your freaking business. The food's in the kitchen. Take whatever you want.” I walked around him and out of the room, down the hall, and through the front door.

I'd just gotten to the truck when he caught up to me. Ignoring Brooks as much as anyone could ignore a hulking giant toting a semi-automatic assault rifle, I reached out to open the driver's door. He slammed his palm on it and forced it closed.

“Where do you think you're going?” He stood close, invading my personal space, looming over me in the way big men use to intimidate people. I was so far beyond that. “Or do you even know?”

“I'm going to find Coby,” I said. What else could I do? Coby was the reason I got up every morning at the crack of dawn to dig in chicken poop for breakfast.

My muscles were taut with tension, coiled against my bones, ready to spring at a moment's notice. I had everything I needed in my backpack: a pistol with plenty of extra ammo, a bunch of military grade ready-to-eat meals, a flashlight with spare batteries, my compact tent, and a mini first aid kit. I didn't need Brooks. I didn't need anyone.

“Get out of my way.”

“You can't get Coby back, whoever he was.
If
— and that's a big if — he isn't already dead, he sure as hell isn't anywhere you can just swing by and pick him up.”

I whirled to face him and threw my shoulder against his chest, but still he didn't budge. “He's my
brother!
Of course I can get him back. I have to.”

Brooks punched the truck with a frustrated growl. “You don't even know the first place to look.”

“Oh, and you do?” I scoffed, and then watched his face change. He twitched. He wasn't looking me in the eye anymore — he stared at ground with a crease between his brows. “You do.” My heart leapt into my throat and shot a spasm of adrenaline into my blood. I almost reached out to grab him, but stopped myself just in time. “You do know where to look.”

“I might,” he hedged.

“Then you have to come with me. Where is he?”

“If you think I'm going with you on some half-cocked suicide mission, you've got another thing coming, sweetheart.”

“Well, I'm going.” I notched my chin up to look him in the eye. “Suicide mission or not. With or without you.”

He stared back at me from a few inches away like he was weighing his options. I tried to see through him, see what was going on behind his calculated mask of impartiality and bravado, but came up with zilch. Finally, he said, “There's a warehouse not far from here. Some people there might be able to help you. If the price is right.”

“Price?”

“Let's be honest with each other, Cora. I saw your greenhouse out back. That's not how you survived for nine months without leaving home.”

I decided not to respond to that. He opened the driver's door and climbed in behind the wheel.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“I'm driving. Get in.”

Good thing I didn't drive. Once that initial burst of energy and purpose faded, all I had left was a tangle of misery, pain and this horrible hope that made the emptiness in my chest even worse. Like someone carved out my insides and left me vacant, gaping, hollow.

Pre-TEOTWAWKI, I'd never experienced a physical reaction to an emotion. Fear, sadness, excitement and anxiety were all vague concepts. It was like I was living in a haze before. Fear was something that happened when I went to the latest
Saw
movie, not what happened when a Rambo-wannabe pointed a gun at me. Sadness was what I felt when my dad sent my favorite goat, Bertha, to the slaughterhouse once she stopped producing milk. It didn't hold a candle to the physical ache of despair that I felt sitting next to Brooks.

“So,” I said, “where did they take him?”

“You don't need to know that yet.”

“Oh really? How do you expect me to give up some kind of payment if you don't even tell me where you think they have my brother?”

The shadow of a genuine smile was there and gone before I could blink. “I guess you'll have to trust me.”

“Fat chance. How do you know—” my mouth went dry as I forced myself to say the words, “—how can you be sure he's alive?”

“It would've left more of a mess if they'd killed him.”

Hearing him say that was like a punch in the gut.

“You can't know that. Not for sure. How do I even know you're telling the truth?”

He was silent for so long I thought he wasn't going to answer. Then he said, “Because I was a soldier.”

“But you're not anymore?” I prompted. I'd wondered. He looked military, except for the longish white hair. His ramrod straight posture, the way his shoulders didn't slump at all, screamed discipline.

“No.”

“What happened?”

“That's not your business, sweetheart.”

Condescending prick! “I'm not your sweetheart, so you can stop calling me that right now. And it is my business. If I'm going to be
trusting you
,” I said, punctuating the last two words with sarcastic air quotes, “I
demand
information.”

He barked a short laugh and didn't say anything for a minute, then the bitter expression on his face turned into an even more bitter
what the hell
smile.

“I'd just enlisted, before the virus.” He kept his eyes on the road as he spoke, like he didn't care whether or not I was listening. “Everyone in my brigade was fresh out of basic training. The oldest guy was twenty-one, I think. The youngest was eighteen.” He paused. “Most of them died in the first couple of months.

“Our orders were simple, at first. We were just supposed to keep the peace. Stop the looting. But four or five months ago, our orders changed. General Sharp released a statement saying civilians who weren't under direct government management were a national security risk — that's how they said it,
‘national security
'.” It took me a beat to remember General Sharp as one of the highest-ranking officials at our local Navy base. Dad used to talk about him sometimes.

Brooks cleared his throat before he continued. “General Sharp's orders said every civilian was supposed to be rounded up and taken into custody. Resistors were to be shot on sight.”

“Shot!” I interrupted, hands flying to my mouth. “Why?”

“Supposedly, because the civilians are living outside in the streets, they're spreading the virus. Making it worse.” His jaw muscles flexed. “The government's testing vaccines on the people in custody. Using civilians as guinea pigs for their medicine and calling it treatment. The doctors keep saying that eventually they'll find a cure, but you know what I think?” he asked. I shook my head. “I think they're making people sicker.”

My ears began to ring. I'd caught on one word —
doctors.
Doctors like my dad. Did he try to go to the government? To help?

No. He never would have made people sicker.

“When my brigade got the orders, we went AWOL. There were only six of us left at that point. We just couldn't do it. It wasn't right.”

I was surprised, I admit. I hadn't pinned Brooks as the type of guy who would balk at orders, especially if they involved some carnage. I mean, this was the guy who carjacked me at gunpoint. Maybe I'd misread him.

“But Coby wasn't shot,” I clarified, a little glimmer of hope in my chest flaring to life.

“No, it doesn't look like it. Though I don't know why. Judging from the debris in the house, it was clear he resisted.”

“They would have shot him for that? He probably just ran or tried to hide. He's only
eight!
”

“Don't you get it?” He finally turned to face me, and the expression in his eyes was haunted. “It doesn't matter how old they are.”

I swallowed my fear, forcing myself to keep asking questions. Trying not to remember the way Coby had peeked at me over his blankets right before I left him. “Then why wouldn't the military shoot him? If those were their orders?”

Maybe one of the soldiers had a moment of mercy, a moment of doubt — maybe one of them took Coby in, protecting him.

Brooks looked thoughtful for a moment. “There were certain people, in the beginning, who were offered special protection. Politicians, scientists. Rich people in general. But those people were rounded up way before things got bad. You don't come from a family of millionaires, do you?”

I shook my head, eyes fluttering closed as the flash of hope I'd had died.

“Didn't think so,” he said. “I don't know why they took your brother, Cora.”

The rest of the drive passed in silence. I was trying to absorb everything Brooks had told me, and he was probably just grateful I'd stopped asking so many questions.

The warehouse was nestled deep in the industrial district right outside the city, and when it finally came into view, I realized that I'd forgotten a very important question.

“Who lives here, exactly?” I asked, looking wide-eyed at Brooks. He just flashed those bright white teeth in a grin, put the truck into park, and got out of the cab.

Thick pine trees surrounded the warehouse on all sides, hiding it from view of the street. It was one of those places where big-rigs would pick up their cargo, and looked sturdy despite its age. A chain-link fence topped with spiraling barbed wire enclosed it. Brooks led me alongside the fence till we came to a hole cut into its side. He peeled back the fencing and I ducked in.

We walked across the yard, red clay dust kicking up around our ankles, and up a loading ramp to a sliding metal door. He paused for a moment before turning to face me.

“They might not be happy to see you,” he said. “Try to keep your mouth shut.”

I took a breath to argue, but he'd already begun opening the door.

The inside of the warehouse was cavernous, its interior all industrial metal and concrete. Makeshift walls sectioned off little living areas around the circumference of the space. Some of the walls were only thin sheets hung on sections of piping, and others no more than a few large pieces of cardboard propped on their sides.

Rickety furniture surrounded a battered coffee table in the center of the warehouse, all of it sitting on a black shag rug straight out of the seventies. I made a mental note to be vigilant about checking for fleas.

A man rose from a truly horrible vomit-green couch with a floral pattern as we walked inside. His hair was shaved close to his head; it looked like it might be as light as Brooks', but was too short to tell for sure. His dark eyes caught mine, and I realized I'd been staring. I looked away.

“What's this,” the man said, jerking his chin in my direction.

“Good to see you too, Jackson. This is Cora,” Brooks said easily.

I started to wave, but Jackson ignored me.

“Is Lu still out?” Brooks asked.

“Obviously,” Jackson said. “But she and Smith should be back any minute.”

“Good.”

They walked to the middle of the warehouse without looking back at me. I followed them, feeling uneasy, like I'd been caught crashing some swanky invitation-only party.

Brooks collapsed into an overstuffed recliner and Jackson settled onto the couch beside him. I took the chair as far from them as possible: a straight-back wooden relic with thin, spindly legs.

“So,” Jackson said, “who is she?” He spoke like I wasn't there, like I wasn't looking right at him.

“She's Cora. I told you that.”

Jackson's nostrils flared in annoyance. “What is
Cora
doing here? Is she one of Romeo's? We don't take strays, McKenzie. You know that.”

“She's not a stray. She's an opportunity.” Brooks' voice lowered to a soft rumble. “And she's none of your business.”

I wondered if I'd just been pissed on, metaphorically speaking.

I narrowed my eyes at them, the last threads of my patience snapping. “You can both stop talking about
her
like
she's
not here, okay? Because she's actually right in front of you,” I said.

Jackson finally turned to me, his eyes flat and uninterested, like I was a chair or rug instead of a person. He didn't even speak before looking back at Brooks. “Well, she'll be Lu's business. The sergeant won't be happy.”

I swallowed my anger, reminding myself that I needed these people, and if they helped me get Coby back, that was all that mattered. They could think what they wanted about me. I'd be gone soon.

The guys lapsed into conversation, happy to ignore me, and I half-listened, lost in thought.

Coby was probably hurt. Brooks was right: the destruction in the house meant he must've put up a fight, maybe trying to get into the gun cabinet or running for it. He was small and frail, even for an eight-year-old. He never would have gotten away, but I was proud of him for trying. Me and Dad taught the kid well.