Wisteria (Wisteria Series) (25 page)

Still in shock, Steven nodded and they started to move. Running through the alleyway, they circled back to the library. Six biters were on their trail by the time they reached the library’s entrance. She searched through her backpack for the key.

“Hurry, hurry,” Steven begged her.

“Ugh…”

There were seven or eight biters now.

“Wisteria!” Steven shouted in panic.

When she found the keys, Steven grabbed them from her and started to unlock the door.

“Faster,” she said nervously.

She could smell the creature’s foul breath.

“It’s Scott!” Steven gasped as he got the door open. “But Scott died years ago.”

Shoving the bewildered boy inside, she slammed the door shut. “Hear me, Steven,” she ordered as she started turning all the locks “Finish fastening all these locks, put up the steel cage over this door, and then get to the bunker.”

“Where are you going?”

“I need to sound the alarm.”

“No. You can’t leave.”

The biters were scratching on the door.

“We’ve got to warn the town. Do you want to do it?”

He didn’t answer.

“This way, everyone has a chance at getting to safety.” She placed the keys in his hands. “Lock the security cage and we’ll be fine. The windows have iron bars so there’s no other way in.” She left him.

‘‘Ugh…” The biters thumped against the door.

“Get to the bunker and lock yourself in. Don’t open the door for anyone except for me!” she called as she ran to the stairs.

“What if you don’t make it?”

“Wait down there for two weeks and pray.” Ascending the stairs two at a time, she headed to the library’s alarm system on the second floor. When she got there, she sped through the stacks until she reached the offices. Forcing the office door open, she leapt over the counter into the back offices where the alarm was located.

Using a large book, she smashed the glass window of the inner office and climbed through. “Ahh.” She winced as glass from the window cut her shin. Limping across the room, she found the large red box mounted on the wall. Inside the box was a smaller rusty box, a switch, and a lever. Hitting the lever to set off the siren, she was taken aback when nothing happened.

“No!” She banged her fist against the smaller box and hit the button again. Still nothing happened. “Okay, think about what to do, Wisteria!” The battery was most likely dead. She pumped the lever to recharge the battery until her arm hurt. Then, closing her eyes, she flipped the switch. The loud booming siren went off.

Clambering back through the window, she raced down the rear stairs, toward the underground floor to the bunker. When she got to the basement, she hurried into the old staffroom to the steel door of the bunker. Letting out a deep sigh of relief, she pulled the door, but it was locked. “Steven,” she whispered.

Then she heard movement from behind her.

“Steven, it’s Wisteria.” She tapped on the bunker door.

“I can’t let you in,” he replied. “You might be infected.”

“There’s no way I could be infected because you locked the main doors.” She pulled on the door. “You locked the cage, right?”

“No, there was no time. I’m sorry.”

Her heart sank. “Okay, there’s a rifle in there. If I’m infected you can shoot me.” Wisteria could smell the stench of the biters.

They had broken into the library.

“Please, Steven?” She closed her eyes. The idiot would be dead if not for her, and now he was too scared to do the one thing to save her.

“I’m sorry, Wisteria.”

“Please, Steven, I’m scared and I don’t want to die. If you let me in, you’ll save my life. Please, I’m begging you let me in,” Wisteria heard herself crying. “Steven Hindle, open this door!”

No response.

Scanning the room for another option, she spotted drops of her blood trailing out the room like bread crumbs. Tim’s silhouette appeared at the end of the dimly lit corridor and she sped to shut the door.

She pushed a table against the door as a barricade, and then another one. Struggling, she placed the second table on top of the first. This probably wouldn’t save her, but it was something. The sofa was heavier and more awkward to move. At first, it refused to budge, but she kept trying. “Oh,” she cried out, slipping on her own blood along the floor.

Getting up, she furiously kicked the couch and started pushing at it again. It didn’t move. Looking around for something she could move, she bumped into someone.

“Ah!” she jumped back. “Steven?”

He’d opened the bunker door. “Hurry!” He took her hand.

She didn’t need to be asked twice and she ran in. They shut it, then bolted and locked the bunker’s three metal doors. Once secure, Wisteria sank to the ground while her body shook.

CHAPTER NINTEEN

Bach watched Hailey approach as he stood by Barton Lake. He hadn’t planned to see her that evening. Allowing Wisteria to believe that he was interested in this girl was only his way of distancing himself from her until he knew what he was going to do. He still didn’t know though, but he knew he did not like this Terran at all.

Even though he had no plans with Hailey, he wasn’t surprised to see her here. She had tracked him down at the Lake before. Bach liked coming to the water, and he’d come three times a day since Hailey first brought him. She’d always track him down and insist on keeping him company. Her version of keeping him company was talking about herself and how being the daughter of the head of the leadership council was the worst thing in the world.

Thankfully, a siren went off. He assumed it was one of the safety drills that Garfield had told him about.

“What day is it today?” Hailey frowned.

“In Smythe, it is Thursday.”

“We weren’t supposed to have a drill until Saturday. I guess someone was too eager. My dad’s going to kill Coles in the morning.”

“Are drills not supposed to be a surprise?”

“Yeah to everyone else, but my father’s the head of the …” she started to say.

Is the head of the leadership council
, he thought. He was tired of Hailey’s reframe and irritated with being around her so much.

“—is the head of the leadership council,” she continued to brag. “We know about things like this. There’s never been a breach on the Isle of Smythe—ever.”

“Well, just in case, you should go home.” He was going to return to Barton Lake the moment she looked away as he wasn’t ready to leave the water.

“I can go to your house? It’s closer, so technically safer.” She grinned at him.

“Ugh…”

Her smile vanished at the sight of two infected, moving toward them. “What is wrong with them?” She clutched Bach’s shirt.

“They have got your Nero disease.” Although he’d sensed the infected, he hadn’t sensed these specific infected in the town before now. He could tell that there were several other infected people in Smythe. About thirty, and not all were newly sick. “We should go.”

Hailey fainted.

The temptation to leave her was immense; she was truly annoying and might do better as a biter. After thinking for a moment, he gathered her up and ran past the infected toward his home. Taking the Terran girl to his apartment, he laid her on the new sofa Felip had acquired a few nights ago from the furniture shop.

“What’s going on? That’s Hailey, right?” Garfield approached the girl. “What happened to her?”

“There are infected on the island. Why are you not in the bunker?”

“I thought it was another drill. Besides, I’m with you and you’re…” Garfield paused. “Like immune to biters, and can fly or something, right?”

“Take her downstairs,” Bach instructed.

“I can’t carry her. Like you say, I’m only Terran, remember?”

“I will do it.” Felip came into the room. Seeing the girl on the sofa, he looked back at Bach and picked her up with one arm. “But you will have to stay with her,” he informed Garfield.

With the humans locked down below, Felip returned.

“I did not sense the infected were here—this close?” Bach asked him. “Did you?”

“No, I think the strangle weed on the island is making it hard to use our senses.”

Bach sat on the new sofa. It wasn’t as soft as the one he had in the Hunter Tower and in no way as luxurious as the furnishings back home, but it was ten times better than what they were using the day before. Yawning, he relaxed.

The infected groaned from outside.

“Maybe this is a good thing,” Bach commented. “The infected would cut down the number of Terrans and possibly infect the ones who stole our obsidian coral which would make their plans useless.”

“I guess.”

“If the Terrans who stole the obsidian coral are infected, we will not know what they were planning or how they got it. I know that, but the empirics will have to deal with that,” Bach concluded.

“Then you should renew your Terran tonight or she might get infected too. Then she would be useless as a Thayn. Unless you have settled on the prettier one downstairs?”

Getting to his feet, Bach started feeling dizzy, but the spell soon passed. “You are right. We should not let the infection spread any further. I will draw the swarm together, can you find—?”

“Your Terran? I will bring her back here and you can renew—”

“No.” Bach couldn’t bring himself to admit that he felt anything more for her than ownership. Thayns were interchangeable, so sending a Famila to rescue one would be admitting that was not the case. “Just make sure her friend Garfield is safe.” He could find her on his own.

 
Returning to the town square, he sensed the infected spreading through the island. There were over forty now and he secretly hoped Coles was among the freshly infected.
Come
, he whispered into the wind. He closed his eyes. “Come, now.”

After ten minutes, some of the infected began shuffling into the square. Then one of the flesh eaters dropped and blood poured from its head.

Looking up, he saw Mrs. Kuti standing on the courthouse roof with a rifle gun. Curiously, her rifle was quieter than he’d previously heard. Firing again, she downed another and another.

Soon, other armed men appeared in the square, firing at the biters.

Bach left just as a bullet zoomed past his ear.

Most of the infected would find their way to the square. But a handful didn’t respond to his call for some reason, including the one who had infected the others. But he knew where it was. It was in the library and it was looking for food.

* * * * *

“I guess I panicked.” Steven put his arm around Wisteria as they waited in the bunker.

“Thank you for changing your mind,” she replied. Hearing a series of loud crashes, she knew one or more biters had broken through her barricade.

Latching onto her, he asked, “How many people do you think are infected now?”

“I don’t know. The roads were quiet, so hopefully not a lot.”

Single biters were opportunists and with no one on the street, the biters had no one to infect. They only became a real danger as their numbers grew. Enough of them could overrun entire cities.

“The siren sounded, so the soldiers will stop them.”

“Yeah.” She hoped he was right.

“You’re lucky, because you’ve seen these things before. You know what to do.”

“You’ve never seen the infected before?” She looked up at him in disbelief. This certainly explained the way he behaved.

“No,” he admitted. “I mean—not up close. When my family sailed to France I saw some of the infected from far off, you know, like miles away. Not face-to-face—like now.”

“Even your mother? I heard she was infected?”

“I only saw her body after she passed away for the last time. When she got infected we thought she died and she came back at the funeral and killed so many people. That’s what my dad said. He didn’t let me go and he didn’t go either.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Your leg’s bleeding.” He leapt up. “Are you bitten?”

“I had to break a window to get to the alarm.” She had forgotten about her cut. Touching the wound, she felt some glass in her leg. “See? There’s glass.” She showed him.

Nodding, he headed to the metal cabinet where the rifles were.

“Steven?”

He brought out the first aid box and handed it to her. “Here.”

Collecting the box, she started to clean her cut.

“I can’t believe you’re so calm!” he exclaimed.

Calm?
No, she was scared out of her mind, but she couldn’t afford to lose control.

Sitting back down next to her, he started tapping his feet nervously. “I can’t believe that was Scott.”

“Who was Scott?”

“Mrs. Reynolds’s son. We thought he died during the initial outbreak, three years ago. Why is he here?”