Dead in Bed by Bailey Simms, The Complete First Book (22 page)

I felt tears drop down
my cheeks. I turned away and covered my face. I couldn’t bear to look at Ian. I
was so ashamed, and at the same time I couldn’t believe that he wouldn’t even
acknowledge that I’d just lost Morgan; that
I
had to be the one to snuff her out with my own hands.

I could hear my mom on
the phone in the living room. Whether or not Danielle had called the Home Guard
directly to the house, my mom was doing it now. I could hear her reporting that
there was an infected body to pick up.

“I have to go,” I
whispered.

Not only had I lost
Morgan, and Bryce, too,
but
it looked like I was
losing Ian.

“What about you?” I
asked him, struggling to speak through my tears. “What will you do?”

“I have to stay here,”
he said quietly, “at the house. I can’t leave my family vulnerable again. I
just can’t. I’ll stay in the attic for now. It’s what I have to do. The Home
Guard won’t find me up there, even if they come with a search warrant. There’s
a panel in the wall I can hide behind if anyone comes up there. I can take care
of myself.”

“And Morgan?” I asked.
“Her body?”

“The Home Guard will
take it,” he said. “There’s nothing we can do about that.”

Danielle called out
softly to Ian from inside the bedroom. He touched my shoulder in a
heartbreakingly cold way.

“You’re on your own,
Ashley,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry. If there was any other way—” But he
cut himself off. For a moment he looked like he was going to hug me, but he
stopped and said nothing more.

I had to leave.

As I stepped away, Ian
said, “Ashley, wait,” but I ignored him. I hurried down the stairs. Before
going back out into the night, there was one thing I had to do.

My dad was at the
dining table, sitting alone. His face was buried in his hands. I sat beside him
and put my hand on his back.

“Dad?”

He startled a little,
as if waking from a dream. He patted my hand,
then
looked away.

“I need to ask you to
do something for me,” I whispered. “I told you if I went to the ruins, Ian
would go with me. But that’s not going to happen. Not anymore. He doesn’t know
about them yet, and now he
can’t
know
about them. Not ever. Don’t say anything about the ruins at all. Not to anyone.
Not even to Ian. Okay?”

My dad nodded. He was
in a daze after everything that had happened in his house that day, but I knew
he wouldn’t tell a soul.

“You be careful,” he
whispered. He turned and hugged me. “Love you, kid.”

It was all I could do
not to break down crying in his arms.

“I love you, too,
Dad.”

I pulled away from my
father’s embrace and hurried out the back door into a dark, moonless night.

Moments later, I was running
as fast as I could toward the granary. Before anything else, I had to warn
Chris that the Home Guard was on its way.

I could barely see
where I was going, but I found the riverbank in the darkness. I didn’t stop
running until I reached the empty grain yard and felt for the granary’s rickety
door.

I found the loose
knob, and I pushed. Inside, it was completely dark.

“Chris?” I called out
softly.

There was no answer.
The granary was totally silent.

I felt my way toward
Chris’s desk. My hand bumped into his soda-can ashtray. I faintly smelled the
scent of stale, burnt weed. Next to the ashtray, I felt a cigarette lighter.

I flicked its flint
wheel.

A weak flame leapt up
and went out. The lighter was almost out of fluid. I shook it and tried again.
A tiny flame appeared and wavered, but this time it stayed lit. I cupped my
hand around the meager light source.

Everything in the
granary was gone.

Except for the ash
tray and a few empty antibiotics boxes strewn across the dusty desk, all of
Chris’s supplies had disappeared. Even his worn-out swivel chair was gone.

The lighter went out.

I lit it again as I
stepped around the elevator engines toward the back of the granary, doing my
best to protect the flame as I moved.

Three bodies, each
covered in the same grease-stained sheets, lay atop Chris’s makeshift
examination tables. I knew the first two were Mr. Hershel and the man from the
locker room. The other body must have been Bryce.

Again, I called out
for Chris.

Only silence.

I hurried outside and
checked each of the silos. All of them were empty. The refugees were gone.

I had no idea how
Chris got word that the resistance was in danger of being discovered, but
someone had obviously tipped him off.
Everyone had fled, but
to where
,
I had no idea
. I didn’t even have
Chris’s cellphone number, so there was no way of finding out.

I was totally on my
own.

And I couldn’t stay
here. After my sister’s call, the Home Guard would raid the place as fast as
they could get a squad ready.

After what had
happened with Morgan, I’d almost completely forgotten about the date I’d set up
with Jason Gibbs that night. Now, it looked like I only had one chance I left
to do a little good: I had to go wait at the bend in the highway where Jason
and I had agreed to meet and hope he’d show up. What else was I going to do?
Morgan was gone, but there were other refugee positives
who
still needed Chris’s antibiotic cocktail. If I managed to steal Jason’s
pharmacy access card, then maybe somehow I could track Chris down and give it to
him. I just hoped the raid on the granary wouldn’t make it impossible for Jason
to meet me tonight.

Just as I was turning
to hurry away, I caught a glimpse of something on the granary door—something
white standing out against the darkness. When I’d rushed through the first time,
I’d missed it hanging there.

As I approached the
door, I could make out a piece of notebook paper. It was tacked up with a nail.

I tore down the paper
and lit the lighter. It was a note:

Refuse Morgan

That’s all it said.
Just two words.

What the fuck? What
did
that
mean?

At first, it seemed
like this was some strange, mean-spirited comment about Morgan. I almost
started to cry again. Why would someone write something like that? The Home
Guard hadn’t been there yet, so the note had to have been written by someone in
the Underground.

But after I cleared
the cobwebs of grief from my rational thought process, I saw that the note
couldn’t have been just some random disparaging comment about Morgan. I didn’t
recognize the handwriting, but I could tell it wasn’t Ian’s. I wondered if
maybe Chris had written the note as some kind of code, warning Ian that Morgan
had progressed to stage three.

But even that didn’t
make sense. As far as I knew, Ian had been with Chris at the granary all day.
Why would Chris need to leave Ian a note?

Was the note for
me
?

I turned the paper
over. Nothing was on the back. I read the two words on the front again.

Refuse Morgan

I had no clue what the
message meant. It had to mean
something
,
but I couldn’t afford to hang around at the granary trying to figure it out.

I folded the paper,
stuffed it into my pocket, and started making my way through my dad’s alfalfa
fields toward the bend in the highway and my date with Jason.

* * *

When I reached the road, I
had no idea what time it was.

I’d been keeping my
cellphone off, knowing that the Home Guard could track my GPS position, and I
didn’t want to risk turning it on even to check the time.

I climbed up the gully
to look for a hiding spot behind the cottonwood grove. This was next to
impossible in the dark, but eventually I managed to feel out a flattish place
between some boulders. I was well hidden, but if Jason decided to ambush me
here with his squad, I’d be shit out of luck. The gully above was steep, and
there was no place to run.

I waited.

Not a single car drove
by. The night grew colder. I was still only wearing a T-shirt with mid-length
sleeves, and I started to shiver. Soon I was chilled to the bone. I curled up
in a tiny ball between the rocks, trying to capture as much of my body heat as
possible. But I couldn’t stop shivering.

A sliver of moon rose
between the branches of the cottonwoods, offering practically no extra light.

By now, I had to
accept that eleven o’clock must have come and gone. It was probably well past
midnight, maybe two or three in the morning.

Jason wasn’t coming.

Maybe he’d figured out
I was setting him up. Or maybe the Home Guard was tracking the fugitives from
the granary, and he couldn’t get away. One way or another, it was clear that he
wasn’t going to meet me tonight.

I tried to sleep, but
I was miserable. Until now, I’d focused all of my concentration on the prospect
of stealing Jason’s access card. But now that he hadn’t shown up, my thoughts
had nowhere to go and nothing to do but fall into a downward spiral of
loneliness and regret. I don’t think I’d ever felt more hopeless or alone than
I did that night, shivering in the brush.

When dawn finally came
and I saw the girl approaching on the highway, I felt a moment of manic elation
just at the chance to be in contact with another human being.

But when I stepped
onto the road and couldn’t break her from her innocently vacant stare, it was
all I could do not to throw a rock at her back and scream, “Talk to me!”

Even after the girl
was out of sight, I couldn’t stop thinking about her empty green eyes and her
gruesomely broken foot, trailing that chain.

And it was only then
that I let myself really think about Morgan—I mean,
really
think about the fact that she’d been sick, just like this
girl. I let myself acknowledge that she was really gone, and what I’d done to
her. Right after her death, I’d slipped the knitting needle covered in her
blood into my back pocket. I took it out and looked at it. I don’t know why I
couldn’t get rid of it, but for some reason I didn’t want to let go of this
reminder of what I’d done. I thought about the last calm moment I’d shared with
her in the silo. I wished I could have had just a few more minutes with her,
even if it was just to sit there beside her while she slept among her filth and
discarded wrappers.

And that’s when I
remembered Chris’s weird note.

I tried to pull myself
together. I dried my tears with my sleeve. I took out the note, unfolded it,
and read it again:
Refuse Morgan.

Was
Chris trying to leave a message which he hoped I would understand, but which
would be meaningless to any Home Guard ranger who found it? None of the rangers
knew, after all, which silo Morgan had been staying in. Maybe there was
something there. Maybe Chris had left something else he wanted me to find. It
was a long shot, but it was possible.

I had to get back to the granary.

* * *

Now that it was daylight,
I took the long way around my parents’ property. I couldn’t just walk straight
through the fields again. Instead, I followed the irrigation channels—the
tall weeds would keep me hidden from view. Once I made it to the river, I kept
close to the bank. For all I knew, the Home Guard was searching the entire area.

But I didn’t see
anyone.

The granary was
completely empty.

The Home Guard had
obviously been there, though. Boot prints were everywhere, and
all of the weeds in the grain yard had been flattened by heavy
vehicles
. The three bodies in the granary were gone.

Morgan’s silo had been
mostly untouched. Someone had obviously searched it because the food wrappers
left on the floor had been trampled by booted feet.

That’s when I realized
what Chris’s message meant.

“Refuse” was another
word for “trash”! Chris must have hidden something among Morgan’s trash! He’d
known that none of the Home Guard would have paid any attention to trash strewn
around the silos in the middle of a night raid for fleeing refugees. None of
them even know which of silos Morgan had been kept in. But he knew
I
did!

I started to search
through every empty meal-ration packet and discarded candy bar wrapper that
Morgan had left on the silo floor.

And finally, I found
what I was looking for.

Inside a Hershey’s
wrapper, stained with streaks of leftover chocolate crumbs, was a much longer note
from Chris: