Z 2136 (Z 2134 Series Book 3) (9 page)

Early morning light pounded on Adam’s eyelids, almost forcing them open as he slowly woke to the sound of movement. He managed to keep them closed. Something might be wrong, and if it was, Adam didn’t want to open his eyes to danger. It was best to feign sleep.

He kept his eyes closed, barely moving his fingers, hand slowly inching toward his blaster. Hand around the butt, Adam finally dared to open his eyes. He was ready to shoot . . . but didn’t need to. The “danger” was only Colton, who knelt a few feet across from him, stuffing his pack with supplies that probably weren’t worth the weight on his back.

The old store where they’d been staying had been picked dry already, who-knew-how-many times across who-knew-how-many years. Packing his bag with scraps made Colton seem as desperate as Adam knew he probably was.

With a guilty flush, Adam remembered that he had fallen asleep on the job. After Colton declared that they needed to rest before attempting to reach Zelle, Adam had been supposed to take—and stay awake through—the final shift.

At first, Adam had only pretended to sleep. After arguing with Colton over the necessity of shooting Hooper—which Colton insisted he’d had to do to save both of their lives—Adam wanted time to think. And think he did, over both Colton’s seemingly heartless action, and whether or not Adam would do the same thing if put in that position. Wondering was the last thing he remembered before nodding off and sleeping through the night despite the sporadic gunshots, screams, and rolling groans that seemed an ever- present soundtrack in The Outback.

“Why didn’t you wake me?”

Colton turned to Adam. “I wasn’t tired.”

“Really?”

“That so hard to believe?” Colton feigned insult. “You may be young, kid, but I’m in the prime of my life. There’s an old saying: ‘you’re only as old as you feel.’ Well, I feel fantastic, son. Top o’ my game.”

Colton stood with loudly creaking knees.

“Yeah,” Adam said grinning. “Might wanna grease those rusty gears.”

They laughed together.

After so long without laughing, it was like sun melting snow. Adam had suffered in deep isolation for too long. It felt wonderful just to be with someone, even while facing impossible odds trying to discover the girl who might be able to lead them out of the ravaged city that Kirkman had called The Outback.

Perhaps
especially
in that situation.

“So,” Adam said. “What’s the plan once we find the girl? How will we convince her to trust us and escape The Outback without us all getting killed?”

“One step at a time,” Colton said. “First we need to reach her.”

“But you do have a plan, right? You’re not just making this up as we go.”

Colton’s face wore no expression.

Adam pressed. “You’re
not
just winging this . . . right?”

Colton broke into a smile. “Naw, man. I’ve got a plan. Trust me.”

“My dad said to never trust a man who says ‘Trust me.’”

“Your dad was a smart man. If only he had taken his own advice. In the end, it comes to trusting the
right
people, those who prove themselves, which I think I’ve already done by saving you. Your father, however, trusted Liam Harrow blindly, and it was that blind trust that got him into trouble. Liam ratted him out, ya know? That led to Keller ordering your dad to kill your mom.”

“What do you mean?”

“Keller had a chip put in your dad. A control chip that’s in all City Watchers. They activated your dad’s and forced him to kill your mother.”

Plenty of Colton’s words sounded—and
felt
—wrong, but the cloth was too large, and Adam didn’t know where to start cutting. He barely stammered, “W-w-why would Keller do that?”

“Because your father was part of The Underground and a threat to the status quo. And you know what they say about the status quo?”

“What?”

“That men at the top will sell their souls, kill their brothers, and destroy nations if it means they can maintain their power.”

Outside, they heard the sound of clopping hooves on the street.

“Shit,” Adam said jumping up and heading to the window.

Colton was there a beat before him. They stared through the glass as Adam’s heart gathered speed. A black and red stagecoach pulled by four armored horses was on the street below. Atop the stagecoach was a man in a black hat and matching trench coat clutching reins like a cowboy from The Old Nation flix.

It was hard to see inside the carriage, through the thick, drawn curtains and grime-coated windows.

But Adam was most horrified by what he saw behind the stagecoach—two women in blue Darwin Games jumpsuits being dragged by chains. One of the women was older and had dirty, matted blonde hair, but the other was young, with long dark hair, and reminded him of his sister, Ana.

The women wore large metal collars—evil black bands circling their necks and attached to thick black chains that looked to be around 70 feet long. Both looked exhausted, eager to die.

Adam had seen some horrible things happen in The Games. Of course, there was murder—The Darwins were “Kill or Be Killed,” after all—but there were also the rapes, which Adam hadn’t really understood when he was little, but as he got older, he saw how they presented a new level of barbarism as mass entertainment. Now with The Games being held in the lawless Outback, a city crawling with depraved bandits and worse, The Darwins were “throwing meat to the wolves.”

Adam wondered if the women were sex slaves or if they were being dragged behind the stagecoach as some sort of zombie bait. He thought of his father and how Jonah had always said that no matter what, you had to do what was right, even if it was hard or felt wrong. Adam had never stopped believing that, even after he was no longer certain what else he believed.

He couldn’t just sit and do nothing. Adam turned to Colton and looked up into his darkening eyes. “We have to do something.”

“No, we don’t. We sit tight until they pass.”

“But those women look like slaves! We can’t just watch from the window and not do anything.”

“There could be as many as four in the carriage, and old Big Hat on top,” Colton said. “I don’t like the looks of this—at all. We need to hit the building where Zelle is this morning and can’t afford to take unnecessary chances.”

“I saw your shooting,” Adam argued. “You could take two or three of those bandits out before they knew where the shots were coming from.”

Colton looked down again, as if assessing their odds, then met Adam’s eyes. “Do you see the guy driving the coach? You know what that is there beside him?”

Adam peered over the sill again and saw a long thick black rifle, like nothing he’d seen at the Academy. “What is it?”

“It’s called a Hellweaver. It fires ammo in bursts over a target, and those bullets explode above you. It’s like raining fire. One shot up here, we’re done for.”

“Then you hit him first,” Adam said as if raining fire meant nothing.

“And what if they have more Hellweavers inside? What if the coach is bulletproof? What then? We’re not doing anything, kid. Getting into a gunfight with them isn’t just stupid, it’s suicide. We’re too close to everything right now. The building’s just up ahead. We need to reach it. Dealing with the swarm of zombies at the bottom will be bad enough, the last thing we want to do is invite other players, bandits, or more zombies to pay us mind. I’m not trying to be cold, but there’s too much at stake to concern ourselves with worries that aren’t already ours. We can’t afford to have anything stop us from finding the girl. Not to mention that if any Darwin orbs see us together, and somehow catch on to what we’re up to with Zelle, we’ll
never
get outta here.”

Adam couldn’t believe Colton’s indifference.

“But if we do nothing, those women will die.”

“We were all dead the minute we got here.” Colton turned from Adam, looking down, then out the window. “You can’t save everyone.”

“Maybe not,” Adam stood. “But I can save
them
.”

He grabbed his blaster and turned toward the stairwell, making it one step before Colton grabbed him hard by the arm, dug his fingers into his flesh, and yanked him back toward the window.

“You can’t do this.” Colton’s face twisted into a scowl. “You’re putting both our lives at risk.”

“Let me go!” Adam shouted loud enough to attract the bandits below.

Colton let go of his arm, eyes wide. “Think about what you’re doing, boy.”

“I know what I’m
not
doing: sitting up here like a scared old man.”

Adam turned and ran down the stairs two at a time until he reached the street below.

He heard Colton bounding after him, but Adam was too fast, and by the time he hit the door, Colton had already realized the folly of chasing him out into the street.

Ana stormed into Egan’s office.

“Where are Liam and Katrina?”

Egan sat at his desk, hands folded as if waiting for her arrival. One of his youngest soldiers stood behind him, a skinny kid with thick glasses, hand resting on a shock stick hung loosely at his belt. Ana glared, as if daring him to raise it, and made him find something on the floor to stare at.

Egan spoke softly, “Please, Ana, sit.”

She didn’t want to sit, damn it.

She sat, leaned forward and repeated, “Where are Liam and Katrina?”

“They went to The Outback. To look for your brother, of course. This morning. Before you woke.”

“I was supposed to go with them!” she yelled. “You said we could take a skidder and you wouldn’t stop us.”

“Yes, I know what I said. But after speaking with Katrina last night, and then Liam . . . they were both concerned for your safety.
They
asked if I would give them one of my men if they left you here.”

“Damn it!” Ana said, kicking Egan’s desk. She couldn’t believe Katrina had tricked her like that. And that Liam had gone along with it. Katrina’s move was an unflinching betrayal; Liam’s a knife in her back.

“I’m going too,” she said, standing. “I’m not staying here when my brother’s out there.”

“Yes,” Egan said, “you are. You won’t be going anywhere.”

She spun back to Egan, rage already boiling inside her.

“Are you going to stop me?”

Ana glared at the skinny kid, wishing he’d try something so she could have an excuse to grab his shock stick and use it on him, then maybe on Egan. Though the blaster at her side would be the quickest way of dealing with them both, or any other trouble that might be coming her way.

Egan remained infuriatingly calm. It was as if he were dealing with a child and didn’t see Ana as capable of leaving The Station if she chose. After several seconds of a silence stretched to a maddening length, Egan pulled the elastic further, as if to prove his perfect control, before saying, “You’ll never reach The Outback if you leave on foot. And you’re certainly not taking one of our vehicles. Clark, Katrina, and Liam have already gone with one of our two skidders.”

“Who the hell is Clark?”

“A citizen kind enough to volunteer himself to go in your stead.”

“I didn’t ask for any volunteers,” Ana snapped. “I don’t need anyone to
go in my stead. I
should be there. Adam is
my
brother.
My
responsibility.”

“I appreciate the sentiment, Ana. Your father would be proud.” Egan gave her a smile that Ana found impossible not to hate. She thought how nice it would feel to carve it from his face with a knife. “But sometimes the right thing to do is the hardest to choose. For you that means staying put even though you don’t want to, so you can help us develop a cure for the virus.
That
is what’s best for us all.”

She felt a sense of dé-jà vu, hearing her father:
sometimes the right thing to do is the hardest
.

Ana wanted to keep raging, but even she knew that Egan was basically right. Maybe not about her duty—her brother would always come first—but about her options. She considered them now, and in reality, was left with relatively few. She had no idea how to find The Outback on her own, how far from The Station it was, or how long it would take her to reach it even under the best of circumstances. She
could
escape and flee The Station, but where would she go once gone? Where would she be safest? Besides: if Liam and Katrina managed to find Adam, they’d immediately return to The Station.

Ana couldn’t risk not seeing her brother again. It was bad enough that she’d lost her mother and father. Adam was all she had left, other than Liam.

No wonder Egan is so calm. He knows he has me.

Ana spent several seconds glaring into his smile, then left his office without another word.

Ana was sitting on her bed, back to the wall and mind full of darkening thoughts, when there was a quiet, barely audible knock on her door.

“Yes?”

The door opened and Calla timidly stepped into Ana’s room. Calla’s constant companion loomed behind her, like a Grim Reaper in waiting.

Ana looked up at the kid charged to watch Calla. “She’s welcome to come in, but you are not.”

“Excuse me?” he asked.

“She can come in my room, but you may not.”

“I’m supposed to watch her. I can’t just—”

“You can wait outside,” Ana said. “It’s not like she can go anywhere from here.” She gave the kid her coldest stare.

The boy looked nervously back and forth.

“It’s okay, Elijah,” Calla looked up at the boy. “I feel good.”

He swallowed, “I don’t know if I should—”

“It’s okay,” Calla repeated, reaching up and touching his hand sweetly, like a little sister.

“Okay. I’ll be right outside the door.”

“Thank you,” Calla said.

As the boy sheepishly left, Ana felt she had her morning’s first victory, minor as it was. She looked at the girl expectantly. Calla smiled, stepped the rest of the way into Ana’s room, peeked her head out into the hallway and said something to her shadow that Ana couldn’t hear, then slipped back into the room, quietly closed the door, and walked over to Ana’s bed.

Calla sat on the end, looking little like she had when they met. Before, she was hard as a box of nails and dirty as a bandit. Thick clothes were her shield from the world. Now, sitting slouched and freshly scrubbed, wearing a long blue dress with a single yellow flower on her chest, she looked like the frail child she was.

“He means well.”

“He means to kill you if you turn,” Ana said.

“I know, and he’s right. He
should
kill me before I hurt someone.”

Ana swallowed a lump in her throat as she considered Calla’s bravery.

Calla pulled up her dress sleeve and showed Ana a bandage: white gauze wrapped around her left bicep. Eyes haunted, she said, “They say you’re the only one who has ever survived infection and fully recovered. That true?”

Ana cringed at the bandage, remembering Duncan as he ripped into her flesh.

“Yes. Oswald was infected too, but he chopped limbs off, so he doesn’t consider himself to truly have fought off the virus.”

“What happened?”

Ana didn’t know what to say and wished she could say nothing. She felt oddly shy and uncomfortably ashamed. Though she hated talking about such an ugly reality with a child, she felt compelled to give Calla the truth.

“I was bitten. It was bad right away, then quickly got worse. I was weak and every bone felt hollowed out and stuffed with pain. Most of the time it felt like my body was on fire. I begged Liam to kill me, but he wouldn’t. Without mercy, I spent every second hoping for death, angry at being unable to find it. Then, one morning, right after it got its worst, I felt suddenly better. I still don’t know why.”

“Dr. Oswald says it’s something in your blood. That your blood reacted to the virus by fighting it, and that maybe he can get mine to do the same.”

“That would be nice.”

Calla stared into Ana’s eyes for an uncomfortably long moment. Ana felt like the girl was trying to read her thoughts.

“You don’t think I’ll live, do you?”

Ana swallowed, regretting the lies even as they left her lips. “I think you’ll be fine.”

“Please, Miss. Don’t lie to me. Everyone walks around The Station saying I’ll be fine, but I can see in their eyes that they’re lying. No one believes it, except maybe Percy the cook. He still won’t let me have sweets. If he thought I was gonna die he wouldn’t care about my teeth. But everyone else acts like I’m already dead. Even my father, sometimes. Please—tell me the truth:
Do you think I’ll be cured
?”

Ana thought back to her lowest point, when she’d begged Liam to leave her. She’d tried to run, but he’d kept believing in her, no matter what. Ana had often wondered if she could have survived without his faith in her, or if her body would have slouched in a corner to die.

Ana stared into the girl’s eyes and saw a bright fire that belied Calla’s scrawny frame. The child had to believe, and—more importantly—needed someone to truly believe
in
her, without candy or lip service.

“Yes, I think you’ll live.”

Calla leaped across the space between them and threw her arms around Ana, tears streaming down her face.

Ana allowed herself to cry and hoped she wasn’t wrong about Calla.