Contain (30 page)

“
He was very sick and knew
he was going to die, so he told me about the door and the tunnel
behind it leading outside. He said there were going to be people
hiding there and that I should give them food and water. He said it
was okay because the second bus never came, so there was
extra.”

Missus Abramson seems to be recovering
her senses. She stands up, the shock on her face turning to horror.
“You had no right,” she whispers. “You had no right to take our
food!”

“
Please don't be mad. Those
people were starving. I couldn't just let them die!”

“
Have you taken my father
to see them? Has he been down to see them?”

Bren steps between me and Hannah. She
tries to calm me down again. There are tears on her face, tears
which I can't tell are from sympathy or anger. She pulls me to her
and whispers that it's okay, that it's all going to be okay. Her
breath is hot on my cheeks, yet it somehow cools me
down.

“
Yes,” Hannah says,
replying to my question about my father. “He was angry at first,
too. But then he saw how much they needed our help. He saw the
baby. He said I could still give them food, but only what little we
could spare. And the leftovers from our meals we were just going to
throw away anyway.”

I know she's trying to make it sound
better than it is, because there’s very rarely anything left from
our meals. After all this time preparing the same courses for each
other, day after day, week in and month out, we've gotten quite
good at estimating exactly how much food we'll need at each sitting
so there's no waste. And when we err, it's almost always on the
side of there being too little. Nobody's starving or malnourished,
but neither are we overfed.

Although, now that I think about it,
the portions have seemed slightly smaller lately, while the rate
we're going through our larder supplies hasn't changed.

“
How long has Jonah known?
How long has been helping you, Hannah?

And why? Was it only to curry her
favor? Was he trying to take advantage of her?

A sickening feeling fills my
gut.

Bren must be thinking the same thing,
because she grabs Hannah and twists her around. “Did Jonah ever
force you to do anything in exchange for his keeping your secret?
Has he threatened you? Touched you?”

“
What? No! He's not like
that! I keep telling you!”

“
Would you say if he
had?”

Hannah scowls and pushes her away.
“You're wrong about him!”

“
Am I?”

But another question has been nagging
at me. “Has Jonah been through the door? Has he been
outside?”

Hannah starts blinking like her eyes
sting. I can see the tears welling up. “I told him not to go, but
he said he had to. He said he'd tell on me and then nobody would
get any food unless I let him go outside.”

Now
that
sounds like Jonah.

“
That explains why he's so
sure the Wraiths are gone,” Bren says, pulling me aside and
whispering. “He's been out there.”

I stare at Hannah over Bren's
shoulder. This may solve the mystery of the missing food, but it
doesn't change what's happening to us right now. Why is someone
trying to destroy the bunker? Why did they kill Doc Cavanaugh and
Rory?

“
Hannah, did you take your
father to the tunnel? Is that why we can't find him?”

For a moment, she doesn't move. She
tries to keep her emotions in check. I can see the struggle inside
of her, the strain on her face, the way her chin starts to tremble.
And then she can't hold it in any longer. She falls to her knees,
bows her head, and starts to sob into her hands.

“
He didn't do it! He didn't
kill anybody! He wanted me to come with him, but I couldn't. Who's
going to help those people if I go?”

“
No one's leaving, Hannah,”
I tell her. “And we'll figure out what to do about those
people.”

I kneel down beside her and gently
pull her hands away from her face. “But, Hannah, listen to me. We
need to find your dad. If he didn't kill Doctor Cavanaugh, then
it's quite possible he knows who did.”

“
I asked him,” she sobs.
“He said he didn't see anything. He escaped when he smelled the
blood and heard Mister Newsom scream.”

“
Smelled the blood?” Bren
asks.

“
He's changed,” I say. “I
already told you this.” My eyes flick accusingly to Missus
Abramson, who stares warily at me. “The accident, the burns left
him changed. He can see and hear things better. He told me he can
smell better, too.”

“
He's still my father,”
Hannah says.

“
If I could just talk with
him—”

“
Enough of this nonsense!”
Missus Abramson cries. Her eyes flash with fear. “Nobody is going
anywhere right now, certainly not you kids! And certainly not down
into the dungeons to meet someone who could very well kill us all.
I'm sorry, Hannah, but I'm not convinced of his innocence, and I
won't risk anyone's safety on some whim. You shouldn't, either,
Finn. Not while there's a killer loose. And those people in the
tunnel could very well be carrying the Flense.”

“
They're not
carrying—”

“
Let the senior members of
this community sort this out.”

She stands up and announces that it's
late and that I need to go back to my own quarters.

“
And what about Hannah?” I
ask.

Missus Abramson's mouth pinches.
There's a hard glint in her eyes, a mask which inadequately hides
the turmoil I know that's inside of her. But before she can provide
an answer, there's shouting from the hallway, frightened shouting.
The kind of shouting that even if you can't understand the words,
you know something terrible is happening.

“
The
killer?
” Bren says.

Then someone is pummeling the door,
and the girls shrink back.

“
It's happened again,” Fran
Rollins screams from the hallway. “There's been another
killing.”

I fling the door open, and Fran's jaw
drops when she sees me. “Oh, Finn,” she cries. “I'm so
sorry.”

Nobody stops me as I hurtle down the hallway, slamming into bodies,
walls. I hear them calling my name, telling me to stop, but I knock
their outstretched hands aside. Nobody tells me where it happened,
but I know. I know.

And I know it was Jack who did
it.

But my suspicions are obliterated the
moment I reach the watch room and see them both inside, their
bodies as broken as the security monitors and disk drives smashed
on the table.

Stephen Largent is there in the
hallway, and he struggles to hold me back. But I manage to force my
way through the door. Harry Rollins is there, too, his palm pressed
against my father's neck. Dad's lying on his back in a pool of
blood, streams of it spurting between Harry's fingers, and I
realize he's still alive.

Jack Resnick is not.

I slap the hands away from me, slap
away the buzzing words from my ears telling me it's too late.
Because it's not too late. My father is still breathing. His heart
is still beating. Those things inside his body will make him
better. They'll fix him. He just has to hold on.

The gash in Mister Resnick's throat
is, however, beyond repair.

Were they both attacked by the same
person? Or were the injuries inflicted by each other?

I crash to the floor beside Harry and
reach over to try and stanch the flow, but the blood squeezes
through my fingers, too. “Dad,” I wail. “Dad!”

His eyes flutter open, but they're
glazed, unfocused. A red bubble forms on his lips, and when it
bursts, it sends a rivulet of thick, black blood coursing down his
cheek.

“
Dad!”

I realize it's not my voice this time,
but Jonah's. He must have followed me in. But I'm too wrapped up in
my own horror to care, not until he starts to yell and people run
in and try to drag him away.

“
You bastard!” he screams,
kicking and hitting at the men holding him. He breaks free and
slides to his father's side. “You did this! This is all your fault!
You and your arrogance, you sonofabitch! You arrogant goddamn
sonofabitch!”

“
Jonah!” the men yell, and
they try to immobilize his flailing arms. “Jonah, stop
this!”

“
You stupid, stubborn
bastard! You made me do it! You made me! You made me!”

It takes several people to pull him
away from Jack Resnick's body. They drag him out into the hallway,
away from the room, away from everyone until his screams of fury
are just echoes from the stairwell. And then they're gone
altogether, just echoes in my ears.

My father's face is cold. I press my
palm against it, and it feels like a memory from a lost time, the
air in late winter, stiff and lifeless like the ground frozen
through. If there is warmth beneath the surface, it is hidden under
the permafrost of his impending death, too deep to find. His
whiskers scratch my hand. My tears thin the blood on his skin, but
no matter how many fall, they can't erase it.

Harry slips away from me, leaves me to
be alone with my dying father. I'm vaguely aware that he was the
only one brave enough to touch the blood, to try and stop it from
escaping. But I also know that not even a dozen people pressing a
dozen hands could have stopped it.

The pulse grows weaker. Less of my
father bleeds out. Less of him remains inside to fix him. He's
leaving me.

I feel so alone.

And now there are other feelings.
Pain— a mixed sort, full of loss and regret, of bitterness and
betrayal. I was his biggest disappointment, just another shade of
gray eclipsed within my brother's umbra. Pain and anger. Anger at
both of my parents. Neither tried very hard to hide their
sensitivity to our differences, to his strengths and my weaknesses.
They saw no wrong in treating Harper like the god he was and me as
a mere mortal.

Dad's eyelids flutter open
again. For a moment, all I can see are the whites, but then they
roll forward and I can tell he's trying to focus, to see my face
one last time. His lips part and he exhales. “
Hhhhh 
. . . .”
And for just a moment I am terrified that he might say my brother's
name. He coughs, gurgling blood.

“
I'm here, Dad,” I say.
“Hold on. Please, hold on. I— I need you. Don't go.”

Finally, the eyes focus.
They wander over my face until they lock onto my own.
“
Fffffiiiinnnn
 . . . .”

“
Dad, hold on. They're
looking for Mister Abramson. He can help you. He'll know what to
do.”

A shudder passes through
his body. He swallows, and it’s a wet noise. He sounds like he's
drowning. “No.
Lisssssssen
.”

I bend down and turn my head until my
ear is next to his mouth.

“
Fffiii . . . nd . . .
mmmm . . . .”

“
Find what? Dad?
Dad!
”

I realize he's gripping my arm only
when his fingers start to slip away. His whole body jerks, like
he's waking from a bad dream, and he cries out weakly. A tear slips
down his cheek.

“
Yyyyour . . . muh . . .
mom.”

“
Find mom? But
she’s—”

He squeezes my arm. “Woods,” he
whispers.

I close my eyes and choke back the
tears. Wherever my father is going, he's slipped beyond a boundary
I cannot cross, into a land from which he'll never return. He's in
his own dying head now. The lack of blood and oxygen is consuming
his mind. Mom is dead. Leah is dead. Harper is dead.

And now so is he.

“
Find . . .
mom
,” he whispers.

There's shouting at the door. I hear
Mister Abramson, yelling, demanding someone tell him what happened,
demanding to be let in. But they won't let him, the people in the
hall. They know, just as I do, that it's too late. “Leave them be,”
they tell him.