Banished (19 page)

“You can’t think our own government would be involved in something like this!”

“No, of course not, not officially. But there’s corruption at every level. Hailey, Bryce used to get visits from men who looked official. I never paid much attention, since I assumed it had to do with our funding. But thinking about it now, you could totally tell they had once been in the military. They had that air about them. There was someone he just called the General, and we used to joke about that in private—but now I’m thinking that was his principal contact.”

“But why would they let him sell to enemies of the United States?”

“The governments on the list, their battles are on their own soil. They’re extremists, terrorists, at war with each other—or with their own people. I’ve wondered if that wasn’t part of the plan, that some rogue branch of the military might
want them
to exterminate each other.”

Zombies.

Terrorists.

Shadowy operators, working outside the control of our own government, funding this study in horror.

It was too much. Especially when I thought about the fact that, without even knowing it, I was one of the keys to its success.

A day ago I would never have believed that there could be something worse than being hunted by killers.

But now I knew different. There was something much worse, and it was in
me
.

C
HAPTER
22

W
HEN WE GOT HOME
, Kaz was in the backyard with Chub, teaching him to throw a lacrosse ball.

“Hailey, watch me, watch me!” Chub shouted, waving the stick around, his voice clear and distinct, the improvements in his speech growing every day. Kaz waved, grinning. But I raced past them with nothing more than a mumbled hello.

Anna had been cooking, as promised, and the house smelled wonderful, but I couldn’t bear to talk to her. I went straight to Kaz’s room, closed the door and lay down on the bed and pulled the pillow over my face, trying to block out the images in my mind.

Vincent in the hospital bed, staring without seeing.

Rascal, after I found the bullet wounds and pushed him to the floor, unhurt and uncaring.

Zombies walking straight into battle, unfazed by the sights and sounds of war.

Public squares full of people, erupting into explosions and flames.

I didn’t know how long I lay there trying not to think. There was a gentle tap at the door. I pulled the pillow off my face but didn’t answer.

“May I come in?”

I couldn’t very well keep Kaz out of his own room, so I sat up and pushed my fingers through my hair, hoping I didn’t look too messed up. “Come on in.”

He opened the door hesitantly and gestured at the bean-bag on the floor. “Mind if I …”

“It’s your room,” I said, blushing. “I mean, I should be asking if
you
mind.”

He sat, strong forearms draped loosely over his knees, and looked at me. I mean,
really
looked at me, in a way I wasn’t used to.

“Prairie told me about Vincent and everything. Wow, that’s a lot, you know, to find out. I’m sorry.”

I shrugged. “Yeah, I guess. At least the healing … well, I was kind of getting used to that part.”

“But the rest?”

“It. Um. I can’t …” I tried to think of a way to describe how I felt—almost like I was guilty of something, because if Bryce did manage to find me, I was pretty sure he could force me to go along with his plan. “The zombie thing. Just, I don’t get how anyone could do that on purpose.”

“Yeah …”

“Did you know? About Rascal?”

“No. I mean, I thought there was something wrong with him, and I was kind of surprised. I knew Prairie could heal animals, because she fixed our cat’s leg once when it fell out of a window, a long time ago. And when I met you I could tell you were a Healer too. So I thought it was strange that you weren’t able to fix your dog. But I never knew about the … reanimated dead thing until Prairie told me just now.”

“Reanimated dead?” I grimaced.

“Well … that’s what Prairie said. I think she has a hard time saying ‘zombie.’ ”

“But Kaz, if you’d seen him—”

“Hey, it’s okay with me, you can call them whatever you want. I mean … decomposing flesh walking around, that’s kind of the definition of a zombie.” He flashed me a tentative smile and I felt a little bit better. “Besides, other than that little issue, I think it’s cool, what you can do. Your gift.”

That surprised me, but then I remembered that he’d grown up knowing he was Banished. “What about you?” I asked. “Do you … you know, have visions?”

“Sometimes. Usually only when something really bad’s going to happen. Like when I was a kid I had this vision of our garage burning down. I made Mom go look, and some paint rags had caught fire in the corner. Or when our downstairs neighbor had a heart attack, I saw it a few days earlier, how she was lying on the floor of her apartment, dead. Stuff like that.”

“Can you make yourself have a vision of something you want to see?” Like whether a crazed one-eyed redneck is coming after you.

Kaz shook his head. “No, it doesn’t work that way. You can’t, you know, summon it or whatever. It just happens sometimes … I get a dizzy feeling and then there’s a sort of extra layer on top of my vision that fades in and out. If I close my eyes, I just see the vision. Otherwise it makes me feel like I’m going to hurl, like motion sickness.”

“So you don’t want to have it while driving or something.”

“Yeah. That would be bad.” Kaz grinned at me and I realized he’d done the nearly impossible: he’d lifted my spirits.

“Thanks,” I said. “For taking care of … burying Rascal.”

“Oh, that was no big deal. No problem.” For a minute I thought he was going to say something else about it, but then he just stood, offered me his hand and pulled me up off the bed. “You missed lunch. I saved you some.”

After all that, unbelievably, it was a good afternoon.

Prairie and Anna were having a serious conversation when we came out of the room, and Chub had managed to corner Anna’s cat and was trying to pick it up and hug it, an experiment that ended with him getting a couple of scratches on his forearms, which made him cry. I thought about healing them, but then I decided that healing should be reserved for when it was really necessary. Chub still needed to experience the little hurts and challenges of childhood so he would grow up strong and self-sufficient.

After Kaz microwaved me some lunch, we all walked to the park, Kaz carrying a couple of lacrosse sticks and a duffel bag. He tried to teach me how to throw and catch, and we lost a few balls in the hedges circling the park. We pushed Chub on the swings and fed stale bread to some ducks, and by the time night was starting to fall, I’d managed to forget for a while, which was what I suspected Anna and Prairie had intended.

On our way to a pizza place that Anna and Kaz raved about, Prairie caught up with me.

“I’m going up to the lab tomorrow, early. There’s only one guard on duty on Sundays. I’m thinking I can wait until he goes to the bathroom or something and get past him. Then I have the prox card to get in the lab.”

She didn’t look all that confident. I figured there was more to the plan, but that she didn’t want me to worry. “Do you want me to come along?”

“No … I think it’s best if I do it alone.”

I didn’t argue. Maybe I should have, but it had been so nice to not think about it for a few hours, and I wasn’t ready to give that up. Instead, I tried to put it out of my mind, telling myself there would be plenty of time to worry later, but when we returned home and got Chub bathed and put to bed, I was exhausted. I hadn’t had more than a few hours of sleep in days, and it hit me hard. I crawled into Kaz’s bed, Chub on his nest of blankets on the floor, and fell into a dreamless sleep.

I woke to someone shaking my arm.

“Hailey, wake up.” It was Kaz, whispering, his face hard to see in the moonlight. “There’s a problem. I’ll get Prairie. Meet me in the kitchen.”

I got up quietly so as not to wake Chub. I splashed water on my face and went to the kitchen. When Prairie and Kaz came in a minute later, she looked completely awake, as though she’d never gone to sleep.

“You’ve been through so much already,” she said when she saw me. “Kaz, I wish you’d let her sleep.”

“She has a right to hear this.”

“What?” I demanded as a door opened down the hall and Anna came into the kitchen.

“What are you all—”

“I had a vision, Mom,” Kaz said. “They need to know.”

Anna tensed up, and I remembered that Kaz said his visions always signaled something bad. “What is it?” she whispered, her face going pale.

“Bryce … he’s medium height? Brown hair, going gray here?” Kaz gestured along his hairline.

“Yes.”

“I saw him, in a room … looked like a motel room? Or a dorm room? There were people in the beds … hurt people. Hurt bad, Prairie, they weren’t even conscious.”

“What was he doing?”

“It wasn’t what
he
was doing. He was just sitting there, taking notes or something on his laptop—”

“What was it?” Prairie demanded, her voice going high and thin. “What did you see?”

“I’m sorry, Prairie … he’s got another Healer.”

C
HAPTER
23

“W
HAT DO YOU MEAN
, another Healer?”

“I couldn’t see her all that clearly. She had long hair, and she was leaning over them, chanting or talking. I couldn’t hear. I don’t hear anything with the visions.”

“What made you think she was healing them?”

“Well, first of all, it was so obvious they were … dying.” Kaz hesitated. “I mean, they were unconscious, and one of them had his head shaved and what looked like a recent scar. And the other one had a breathing tube and a body cast. Young guys.”

“Military,” Prairie said. “Had to be. Only question is whose.”

“And the Healer, this woman, she put her hands on them, on their faces.” Kaz demonstrated, cupping the sides of his face with his hands. “And after … it was hard to tell because the visions jump around, but, after, they, ah, woke up.”

“Woke up?” Prairie repeated sharply.

“Yes, they moved, you know, opened their eyes, sat up. That was about it, all I saw.”

Prairie was silent, but I could tell she was thinking hard.

“Who could it be?” Anna asked after a moment. “There was no one else in your village? You are sure?”

“No one.” Prairie was vehement. “Clover’s dead. Hailey’s here. Alice is broken. Mary’s dead. There’s no one else. I don’t see where he could have found one.”

“One of ours, then,” Anna said. “The Healers must have made it out of Poland after all.”

“We have to go
now.
” It was me speaking, to my amazement. “Prairie, we have to stop him. You have to destroy the research. We can’t let him find her, we can’t let her make zombies.”

“But we can’t—”

“There isn’t much time,” I insisted. “Isn’t that right, Kaz? How much time between your visions and what happens?”

Kaz looked from me to Prairie. “I don’t know. Maybe a day or two. Maybe … less.”

“There still might be time,” I pleaded.

“I’ll help,” Kaz said, pushing his chair back from the table. “The three of us will go. Mom can take care of Chub. You will, won’t you, Mom?”

“What do you mean to do?”

“Whatever needs to be done to stop that bastard.”

“Kaz,” Anna snapped. “There is no need for that.”

“No need for what, Mom? No need to call Prairie’s boss what he is? She’s right—he has to be stopped. We have to destroy everything.”

“What is this
we
?” Anna demanded sharply. “There is no
we
—”

“I’m going with her,” Kaz said. “She can’t do it alone.”

“Do not talk crazy.” Anna was shaking with fear or anger or some combination of the two emotions.

“I’m not crazy,” Kaz said. “Prairie is right. We have to destroy the research and stop this guy.”

“This man is
dangerous
, Kazimierz. He hired people to kidnap Hailey. They kill all those others.”

“Papa went to war,” Kaz said. “There was killing there, but you didn’t stop him.”

I saw that he wouldn’t back down, and I had a feeling no one was going to be able to tell him what to do. I could relate: no one was ever going to tell
me
what to do again either.

“Anna,” Prairie said softly. “I understand. I’ll go alone.”

“You can’t!” I protested. “You can’t go alone. Bryce will kill you.”

“Not if I plan,” Prairie said, but I could tell she was grasping at straws. “Not if I come up with a strategy—”

“Strategy is not enough,” Kaz interrupted, his voice hard as steel. “You need help. I can see things. Especially if I’m there, if I’m close. It might make a difference.”

“I can’t ask you that,” Prairie said. She raised her shoulders and let them fall. Her arm, I saw, moved easily, bandage or no bandage. “It’s my fault all this happened, and—”

“I’m not letting you go alone,” I said.

“We’re going with you,” Kaz said. He turned to Anna. “Mom, you didn’t raise me to be afraid. My father was brave, you tell me that every single day of my life. You can’t deny that.”

“Your father
is gone
, Kaz. I can’t lose you, too … I can’t.”

Anna’s face reflected a mother’s agony. Prairie, too, looked uncertain.

But
I
knew. I knew that Kaz would not be stopped.

“If something happens, if Kaz gets hurt, we’ll be there too,” I said urgently to Prairie, praying she would understand. We could
heal
him—he’d be safe with us there.

Anna looked at me carefully, her eyes narrowed. Then she looked at Prairie again. “What do you think?” she asked softly.

“I cannot ask anything more of you,” Prairie said. “Even this, even taking me and Hailey in, this is so dangerous.”

She was right. Bryce didn’t care about the innocent people who got in the way.

He wouldn’t stop. He didn’t care how many people died for his research, for the chance to study Prairie and me and learn how to use our gifts to turn people into killing machines. Everything this man touched seemed to be about killing.

He wanted to use me as a tool, a way to make him stronger and richer and more powerful while other people died.

There was silence in the room. Kaz went to the picture window and stared out into the dark streets with his arms folded across his chest, tense and ready.

After a long moment, Anna nodded slowly. I could tell the decision had been made.

We’d won this round, Kaz and me.

We were going with Prairie.

“I’ll guard him like my own,” Prairie said softly. “Hailey too. I will do everything I can to bring us back from this unharmed.”

Anna nodded. And then we were gone.

Kaz drove. Prairie sat up front with him, not saying much. She had slicked her hair back into a ponytail and was dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt, with an old pair of Anna’s sneakers. Dressed that way, she looked more like a college student than the elegant woman who had first appeared in Gram’s kitchen.

Kaz drove smoothly along Lake Shore Drive, the way we’d come only last night. Tonight the moon—nearly full—hung over the water near the horizon, its reflection shimmering beneath it. When we got to Evanston, I suddenly wished the drive had been longer. I didn’t feel ready.

Prairie murmured instructions. She took us through a neighborhood of stately old homes that got smaller as we drove farther from the lake, until they were mostly squat little bungalows. We crossed the commuter train tracks and I could see Evanston’s downtown ahead.

On the next block there was a cluster of low-slung modern office buildings. “Pull in,” Prairie said. “Park over here, by the Dumpsters.”

Kaz did as she directed.

We were shielded by a row of trees, the Civic nosed in under low-hanging branches. There were plenty of cars in the lot, customers of the Thai restaurant and the Laundromat across the street.

“Here’s what I’m thinking,” Prairie said. “The data is on computers in the secure lab. The prox card will get us in the main part of the lab—”

“Do you think Bryce could be in there?” I asked.

“Possibly … but what’s more likely is he’s got extra security guarding the place, with instructions to bring me in if I come poking around. By force, if necessary. Although I doubt there would be anyone here in the middle of the night.”

“Let me go,” Kaz said. “Alone. They won’t be expecting a man.”

Prairie shook her head. “No. I have to go with you.”

“What about me?” I demanded.

Prairie closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them, they were clouded with doubt. “There will be a guard in the lobby,” she said. “A night guard. Unless they’ve hired someone new, it will be an older man who likes to nap on the job. Still, he’s a danger. He can trip an alarm that will shut the whole place down and bring security running from off-site. And Bryce may have paid the guard to contact him first.”

“You want me to distract him?” I asked.

Prairie looked uncomfortable. “I don’t see any other way. I thought maybe you could pretend to have some emergency, I don’t know, like maybe you’re hurt or something. As soon as we’re in, you get out. Figure out any excuse, tell the guard you were mistaken, whatever you need to do. And then you come back and wait where you can see the car.”

She dug into her pocket and handed me a cell phone. “This is Anna’s. Kaz’s number is on it. Press and hold the three key and it will dial him direct. Call if you see anyone coming in the building after us—anyone at all. Or if there’s any kind of trouble.”

I didn’t like being left behind, but I didn’t see an alternative. “What are you going to do to the computers?”

“I have full administrative access to all the servers. Paul gave it to me, along with the master keys. We’ve got to hope that Bryce never found out. I’m sure he locked me out, but he might not have changed the admin log-in. I just need to get in and start the wipe-disk program.”

“How much data is there, anyway?” Kaz demanded. “Because it takes hours to wipe a big disk.”

“I—I’m not sure.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Kaz said, his voice edgy and low. “It’s going to be fire.”

We both looked at him.

“What do you mean?”

“I saw it. A vision … Tonight will end in fire.”