The Deadly Nightshade (13 page)

“Wonderful,” says Reina, clapping her hands together. “We will get Connor set up right away—can someone go and tell Dr. Lam she has a new patient to tend to?” One of our escorts, the tall woman with shoulder-length light brown hair, immediately hurries from the room to do as asked. Reina points to the other two. “Claire, Sheppard, would you be so kind as to help this young man to his new home? Put him in one of the empty houses and report back to me with the number. I will take note of it.”

The older man and the blonde obediently begin to help Connor out of his chair, but I stop them.

“No, I’ll do it,” I insist. I don’t trust them to handle him. For all I know they could be trying to separate us on purpose.

“You have no reason to worry. They will be gentle, I promise,” Reina assures me. “For now, Nate, would you please show Nightshade around Sweetbriar? Give her the full tour, introduce her to some of the residents, and take her to the cafeteria and get her something to eat.”

“What about our weapons?” I ask as the two escorts carry Connor toward the door. The older man, Sheppard, still has my swords. “I want them back.”

“Why? You have no need for them here. This is a very safe community.”

I glare at her, feeling the tension build once again as we lock eyes, both wrestling to assert our dominance over the other. “I would feel more comfortable if I had them,” I say.

Reina hesitates for a moment and then nods to the others. The older man stops what he is doing and tentatively hands me my swords—as if I might be stupid enough to use them against him—and, since Connor cannot take them at the moment, the blonde returns the black machete and Angelica’s knife to me. Nate relinquishes my knife belt, but refuses to give back the guns. I turn back to Reina to ask what the hell this is about, but she explains before I get a chance to speak.

“We have minimized the carrying of firearms in Sweetbriar, since within these walls they are not a necessity. No one is allowed to have a gun unless he or she is on sentry duty or outside the camp. I will allow you to keep your swords and knives if having them in your possession puts you at ease, but for now I will keep your handguns in our arsenal. And unlike the others, you will not be allowed to take them outside of Sweetbriar. It is just a precaution, of course, but for the time being I think everyone would feel safer if we held onto them.”

I don’t object to this and gladly put my swords and belt back where they belong. Although I do not like the idea of these people taking my guns away, I am honestly surprised they gave me back
any
of my weapons, but I suppose Reina knows we would have to be crazy to try something. As I hold the black machete in my hand, I decide it is better if I hold onto it from now on instead of Connor. After all, it was me who killed The Leader, so this weapon is my burden to bear, not his.

As Nate escorts me toward the door so we may begin the tour of the town, I cast a final sidelong glance at Reina, who keeps her cold brown eyes fixed on me until we exit the building.

Chapter 26

“Don’t worry,” Nate says as we begin our walk through the quaint little town, his tone much more amiable than before. “Your boyfriend will receive the best treatment possible. The town doctor—Dr. Lam is her name—she’s amazing at what she does. She was this super important physician at some real prestigious college before the War, so you can be assured she knows exactly what she’s doing. We’re real lucky to have her here.”

“Not my boyfriend,” I say.

“Oh, I’m sorry. I just assumed . . . I’m Nathan, by the way—you probably already knew that—but my friends call me Nate.”

“Nathan it is, then.”

He smirks. “Alright, I mean, whatever you’re comfortable with. So, I guess I should tell you a little about Sweetbriar. Ready for a history lesson?” I nod and he begins heartily. “Okay, so, not to brag or anything, but I was a big part of the reason why this whole place came to be. After the War I found a few other survivors who hadn’t gone batshit crazy and we went looking for somewhere to settle down, somewhere we could protect ourselves from the gangs. I met Reina at some point along the way—can’t remember when, exactly. It’s all sort of a blur now. She was always kind of our leader, even from the beginning. She just has this real natural authority, that woman, the kind that makes people fall in line behind her. Anyway, it took months and months, but eventually we happened to stumble upon this place way out here.

“It was some sort of retirement community for well-to-do old folks or something—at least, that’s what we’ve speculated over the years. By some miracle, we found it pretty much untouched by anything except for time. There was no damage from the bombing raids or gangs or anything. It was
perfect,
like God had floated down from the sky and plopped it right in the middle of the woods just for us. Reina built this town for a few of us—there were maybe twenty or thirty of us back then—but soon we began to look for more and more people who needed refuge, so it became kind of like a sanctuary. Eventually, though, it got too dangerous to keep sending scouting parties out to find people, not that there were a whole lot of good people left to be found, so we stopped those altogether. It’s been a long, long time since anybody new has walked through that gate. Years, maybe. But we’re proud to say no gang has ever gotten through that gate or climbed these walls, not once, which is why everyone feels so safe here.”

“And how many people are there, exactly?”

“With you two, I think that makes sixty-three.”

Sixty-three people!
I haven’t seen that many people in one place since before the War. No gang or group I know of has ever reached a population this large. Whatever these Sweetbriarans are doing, they must be doing it right.

“Like Reina said, everybody here has a job. We have bakers, farmers, teachers, a doctor, a preacher, and hunters like you and me. My job is to lead the patrols and hunting missions. I decide when and where we go, and I’m also responsible for assigning people to sentry duty. Other than that, Reina makes most of the decisions for Sweetbriar.”

“You trust one person to make all of the choices for your town? Isn’t that sort of a dictatorship?”

“We all trust her judgment, but when it comes to important matters we usually call a town meeting and everyone will voice their opinions. We try to have an assembly at least once a week to discuss any problems or grievances any of the residents have. This way everyone gets a say. It’s all very democratic.”

I attempt to find a flaw in this system, but for their purposes it doesn’t seem so bad. Maybe these people really do have it all figured out. As Nathan takes me around the town, rattling off a list of its inhabitants and short biographies of each, I am struck by the realization that these people are living in a more civilized world than I have known for the past six years of my life. They aren’t wandering around all day in the wilderness scavenging for food, sleeping on the ground, killing other people in order to stay alive—they’re sleeping inside of warm houses and working nine to five. Nate tells me of the bakers, Mr. and Mrs. Walker, a lovely older couple who have never picked up a weapon in their lives aside from a knife to cut bread with. He talks about the elementary school teacher, Savannah Kaysen, a sweet girl with a lamb-like disposition who is barely more than a teenager. He also speaks of the preacher, Mr. Elijah Sheppard, the forty-something-year-old man in his patrol group, and although he carried a gun today I am sure he has never known violence in his life.

These people are nothing like me—they do not know real danger or what it is like to live outside these walls. They are sheltered, ignorant, naive; and the longer I am here, the greater danger I am in of becoming just like them. I don’t belong behind stone walls or iron gates, ignoring the chaos around me. My place is outside amidst the fray. I resolve not to stay here any longer than I have to. I refuse to see myself become as cushy as the inhabitants of Sweetbriar.

It is dark by the time Nathan finishes the tour and leads me to the indistinguishable gray house Connor and I will be staying in for the time being. After I half-heartedly thank him for being my guide, he tells me to be ready for hunting duty in the morning. With that, he leaves and I enter my temporary dwelling.

The low flame burning from the fireplace, the moonlight streaming in through the windows, and a candle in the middle of the floor are all that brighten the dark interior of the house. It is not exactly homey—the only furniture in the room is a little cot pushed up against the back wall. I watch the thin white blankets draped over the cot rise and fall with Connor’s gentle breathing. He must be asleep. I creep over on silent feet as not to disturb him, but as I get closer I realize his eyes are open and he is watching me. Smiling, he pushes himself into a sitting position as I take a seat against the wall.

“How’s the leg?” I ask.

“A lot better. Dr. Lam removed the bullet, cleaned it out, and wrapped it up for me. She said the tissue and muscle damage wasn’t nearly as bad as it could’ve been, and I’m really lucky it missed the bone. By her estimate, I should be able to start walking again in a matter of weeks.”

Weeks!
I was expecting to stay for a couple of
days
at most. But it isn’t worth the risk to try to move Connor before he is ready, since doing so might exacerbate the injury. I suppose a few weeks are doable.

“We’ll stay as long as you need,” I say.

He grins. “Thank you, Nightshade. Hey, so what do you think of Sweetbriar? Pretty nice, huh?”

“I don’t like it.”

Connor laughs. “You know, somehow I knew you would say that.”

“There’s just something strange about it. It’s too—too—”

“Safe?”

Shaking my head, I stand up and begin to pace around the room. Moving always helps me think.

“It just doesn’t feel right to me. I mean even the way that Reina woman was looking at us, did you see it?” In my pacing I happen to pass by the window, and as I do I notice two dark figures lurking outside our door, just staring at the house. “Look at this! There are guards outside. Guards, Connor. What does she think we’re going to do?”

Connor shrugs. “She doesn’t trust us yet. So what? You don’t trust her either.”

“Do you?”

He hesitates for a moment. “I don’t see any reason not to. She let us into her community, she’s feeding us, she’s helping us. I think we should give this place a chance.”

With a sigh, I stop pacing and sit back down in the same spot as before. For a while we are both silent and all that can be heard is the sound of the Sweetbriar townsfolk retiring to their homes for the night.

“Oh! I almost forgot,” Connor exclaims as he reaches for his bag and begins to rummage through it. From it, he draws a thick book, the cover of which I cannot see clearly until he places it in my hands. The words “A Tale of Two Cities” glint in the flickering candlelight. My breath catches in my throat.

“This? This is what you went into that bookstore for?” Then, after a moment’s hesitation, I add, “Is— is it for me?”

He shrugs again. “The way you talked about it made it seem like a book worth reading. And yeah, of course, it’s all yours. I
would
like to read it, though, if you’d be okay with letting me borrow it.”

“Yeah, sure, of course,” I reply as I flip through the pages, wafting their crisp scent. “Hey, I never thanked you for what you did earlier.”

Connor looks up at me in surprise. “What, you mean with that gang? You don’t have to thank me. I’m sure you would’ve done the same thing.”

But that’s just the thing—I wouldn’t have. If the roles had been reversed, I would have known the risk was too great and left him for dead. I can never repay that debt because I will never be able to do something as stupid and selfless for him as what he did for me.

Which is why, with a deep sigh, I make a decision.

“We were walking in the forest a few weeks after it happened, my father and I,” I say. “There were wars going on in the streets for food—I’m sure you remember—and it was too dangerous to be near other people, so he decided we should stick to the woods and try to find food there. We survived mostly on nuts and berries, and my father would catch the occasional squirrel or rabbit in one of his snares.”

Connor’s face displays his confusion as I speak, but he knows better than to ask where I am going with this, so instead he just listens.

“One day, while my father was setting up a few traps, he sent me looking for some things we could eat—you know, nuts and berries and the like. So I went off on my own, thirteen years old, this ignorant little idiot of a girl, and I came across this plant full of these delicious-looking black berries. Thinking I had done my job, I collected a few handfuls of those berries and was about to shove a bunch into my mouth when my father came and smacked them out of my hands. Naturally, I started to cry, but he grabbed me by the shoulders, kneeled down in front of me, and told me he had just saved my life.

“ ‘You see those pretty purple flowers?’ he asked me. ‘That plant right there is called deadly nightshade. As you can probably guess by the name, it’s very,
very
poisonous. You see, kid, nature can be deceptive—it has a way of disguising its true self. Sometimes it’s the most beautiful things that are the deadliest.’

“He plucked one of the delicate little flowers from the plant and folded my hands over it. I remember being afraid to touch it, as if even its petals were dangerous.

“ ‘I want you to remember this,’ he said. ‘The world isn’t as nice and friendly of a place as you think it is. Everything out there is dangerous—the people, the animals, even the plants. The world has changed, and you and I need to change with it. You need to become just as deadly as nature itself, if not more so. From now on, you’re not the person you were before, you’re not the same little girl. Now—now
you
are the deadly Nightshade.”

Connor is silent for a long time. In the flickering candlelight, I can just barely see his lips twitch in a slight smile.

“Thank you,” he whispers. “Thank you for telling me that.”

I nod absently as I turn the book he gave me over in my hands, tracing my fingers over the embossed title. We sit in silence for a while longer, listening to the early winter wind blowing gently against the house and watching the orange candlelight on the floor dance wildly in the dark. With nothing but old memories on my mind, I blow out the candle, extinguishing the dancing flame with a single breath, and lie down to sleep.