The Defectors (Defectors Trilogy) (16 page)

I hesitated. The question had caught me completely by surprise.

“I mean, Logan couldn’t even look at the blood, and she’s about as tough as anybody I know.”

“You were hurt,” I responded, dumbfounded.

He grinned over the pain. “You’re unbelievable.”

I looked at him sideways, cracking a smile. “I think you’ve lost an awful lot of blood.”

“I just mean you’re a lot tougher than I gave you credit for.”

I laughed. “I did almost stab you myself once.”

Roman reappeared in the doorway. He was looking at me for once, avoiding eye contact with Amory. “We need to scan the perimeter,” he said. “Make sure the carriers are gone.”

“I’m a little busy,” I said. “Take Max.” I wasn’t going to leave Amory unattended.

Roman rolled his eyes. “Great. Maybe he can fillet them to death.”

He moved to leave and then turned back around to look at Amory.

“Better find yourself someone else to do night watch with. From now on, I’m taking Logan. She doesn’t hesitate when it counts.” His words hung in the air like noxious gas.
 

Amory straightened up with a slight grimace. “We should throw you out after that stunt you pulled tonight.”

“They were trying to ambush us!” Roman glared at him. “At least I’m not a fucking coward.”

“Oh, that’s rich. Last time I checked, you weren’t the one who got stabbed.”

“You’re the one putting us all at risk! Every time you don’t shoot a carrier, that’s people’s lives you put in jeopardy.”

“Just because —” Amory gasped for air, “I’d rather live than go trying to slaughter every carrier that passes through —”

“Every dead carrier is one less monster to worry about.”

“Well, next time you decide to go off book, don’t expect me to stick around.”

Roman threw him one last seething look and turned to go. “Max!” he barked. “Let’s go.”

Max poked his head around the corner. “You got this under control?” he asked. He gave me a look that suggested going out with Roman to look for carriers was the last thing he wanted to do.
 

I nodded.

With a sigh, he gathered up the weapons from the table and followed Roman outside.

I looked back at Amory and was alarmed to see that his eyes were closed. He looked feverish, and it seemed as though the shouting match with Roman never happened. He was beyond caring about that.
 

I filled a bowl with cool water and knelt down tentatively beside him. Feeling slightly awkward, I dipped a clean towel in the water and gently dabbed at his forehead. To my surprise, he sighed and sank deeper into the chair.

I wiped the sweat and dirt off his face, and he relaxed visibly beneath my touch. I refreshed the towel and, hesitating for a moment, sponged the cool water over his chest and shoulders to clean away the blood. My faced warmed at the intimacy, but I continued, and it seemed to comfort him.

After cooling him down, I could see some color return to his face, but I didn’t think he was strong enough to move upstairs to bed. I ran to grab sheets and blankets from the linen closet and made him a bed on the couch. By the time I returned to the kitchen, he was slumped half-asleep in the chair where I left him.

I threaded my arm behind his shoulders and helped him out of the chair.
 

“Where are we going?” he asked through bleary eyes.

“Couch. Come on.”

He allowed me to steer him into the living room, where I deposited him on the overstuffed couch covered in blankets. With a wince, he let me ease him back into a reclined position. His bandage stayed white, which meant the bleeding was under control for the time being.
 

I covered him up, lit a fire, and went back to the kitchen to grab him a glass of water. But by the time I returned, he was fast asleep. I settled into the chair across from him and trained my eyes on his bandage, watching for any sign of more bleeding.

I stayed up with Amory later than I needed to, afraid he would soon present symptoms of a more serious injury. Ida was still gone, so there was no way to send for a doctor to examine him. By midnight, I felt my eyes growing heavy.

“Haven.” His voice was scratchy.

“What?”

“Stop.” He cracked a smile. “You can go to sleep, you know. I’m fine.”

“I just —”

“You’re worried I’ll die in my sleep, so you’re watching to make sure I don’t stop breathing.”

“No! I’m not,” I lied. I was scared, but it sounded stupid when he said it aloud.

He looked at me with a concerned expression, more alert than he had been all evening. His eyes found mine. I felt a pang of guilt in my chest; my anxiousness was making him feel worse.
 

“Sorry,” I said, setting down a glass of water for him on the side table. “I’ll just . . . go up to bed — let you sleep.”

Amory looked conflicted, so I didn’t stand up right away.
 

“I didn’t mean you should go,” he said in a rush. He opened his mouth again but hesitated. “Would you mind . . . staying?”
 

“Sure.”
 

“All right.” He seemed to settle in a bit. “Good.”

We didn’t say much after that. I could tell Amory was spent from his whole ordeal, and the pain was taking its toll. Soon he fell into a restless sleep. I watched his bare chest rise and fall and felt reassured that he was breathing. A muscle in his strong jaw twitched now and then, which led me to think he was still in pain even as he slept.

I got up to put another log on the fire, and my eyes felt heavy as the warmth washed over me. Pulling the ratty quilt up around me and listening to the sound of Amory’s breathing, I fell into a light sleep.

I stirred sometime before dawn — not because Amory had woken up, but because I felt the uncomfortable sensation of being watched. Sitting upright, my eyes focused through the dim, bluish light on Roman. He looked as though he had just come in from the back, and he was staring at me with a cold expression and his arms folded across his chest.

“Look at that. Sitting vigil for the hero.” His voice was thick with sarcasm.

I shifted uncomfortably, still in last night’s clothes.

“Did you find them?” I asked.

He shook his head. “They’re long gone by now. Missed our only good chance at killing them.”

I felt a flash of irritation at his callousness. “Do you even care that he’s hurt?” I snapped.

Roman glared at me. “He wouldn’t be hurt if he hadn’t hesitated. This isn’t a game. You kill the carriers, or they kill you.”

“Do you think more will come?”

He snorted. “There are always more where they came from.” He eyed Amory. “Next time, there won’t be room for screwups.”

I felt angry, disgusted even, but I couldn’t argue. Clearly, the rules had changed. They changed for me the moment the PMC took Greyson. Survival was the only law.

“Do you really think you can run with rebels?” Roman asked.

“They’re just a means to an end.”

He looked down at me, a sneer cracking his lips. “Rebels always want something in return. I don’t think you have the stomach for it.”

I glared at him. “You don’t know me at all. There’s nothing I won’t do to get Greyson out.”

“I wouldn’t tell them that. You should never give someone the advantage of knowing your weakness.”

“It isn’t a weakness.”

“It is. And they’ll exploit that.”

He walked out, and I suddenly felt small and foolish. There really wasn’t any reason the rebels would want to bring me with them. What use would they have for a girl from the city who could barely hit a stationary target?
Carrier bait
, I thought with grim satisfaction.
 

And how did I plan to release Greyson? I had no strategy, really. What if he was already dead — beaten to death or infected in prison?

“Hey.” Amory’s soft voice interrupted my thoughts. “What’s wrong?”

I realized I’d spaced out, consumed with my worries. I tried to clear my expression.
 

“Nothing. Nothing’s wrong. How are you feeling?”

“Not one hundred percent yet.”

“I’ll bet.”

He winced. “I couldn’t help overhearing.”

I felt a twinge of guilt that we had woken him.

He regarded me seriously. “Don’t listen to Roman.”

Heat crept up my face; I wasn’t sure which part of the conversation he was referring to.
 

Amory sighed. “Caring about Greyson doesn’t make you weak.”

“No. It does,” I said. “The people who always survive are the people who have nothing to lose. Besides, why would they even take me with them?”

“They’ll take you. Rebels are always looking for followers to join their cause.”

I swallowed twice to ease the tension building in my throat. “He might be dead.”

Amory nodded once. “He might. You should prepare for that.”

My eyes were welling up. I breathed deeply, not wanting him to see me cry.
 

“If he’s alive, though, you can find him.” Amory was speaking quickly now in a low voice, as though he was afraid we would be overheard.
 

“He was just caught stealing, and he’s undocumented. Those are pretty minor offenses. They have no reason to think he’s a dedicated rebel, and he was picked up alone. The PMC has a lot of undocumented illegals to deal with. For a minor crime, he’ll be in the lowest security prison. They don’t do a great job keeping track of petty criminals. You might be able to help him escape.”

“How do you know all this?” I asked.

“To operate outside the system, it’s important to understand how the system works.”

I should have asked him what he meant, but Amory looked exhausted from the bout of conversation, and it seemed unfair to demand answers when he was recovering from a stab wound. I wanted to ask him about his life before he ran away — why he was so guarded — because nothing I knew about him seemed to add up.
 

Maybe that was what happened when you went off the grid. You cut out your CID, and you cut out your old identity. I didn’t want to talk about my past. The memory of my parents was still too painful, and if I allowed myself to think about it, I didn’t know if I would be able to keep going. Maybe Amory was running from his past, too. Maybe all of them were.

Bringing a doctor to the farm was out of the question. The only doctors who hadn’t already migrated north were working for the PMC. Unfortunately, without a doctor, there was no possibility of procuring pain medication for Amory. Although he said the pain wasn’t bad, I knew from watching his fitful sleep that it was a great deal worse than he let on.

For the next few days, whenever I wasn’t needed for carrier watch — which was less and less often since we were down one person — I sat up with Amory in the living room, reading old issues of
The Patriot
by the light of a kerosene lamp. Despite the worries gnawing at my chest, reading other illegals’ accounts of events made me feel lighter inside. It was good to know that other people out there were fighting the PMC’s lies and trying to survive just as we were.

When my eyes grew too tired from reading in the dim light, I watched Amory fight through sleep, but I was reluctant to let my own eyes shut. Part of me was worried he would wake up in pain or that infection would set in. Between my lookout shifts and watching over Amory, I barely slept at all.
 

But on the third night after the attack, Amory said he felt good enough to move upstairs. I helped him get to his feet, and I could see he made a concerted effort to hide the discomfort he felt when standing up. I wrapped an arm around his torso, and he leaned against me and shuffled toward the stairs.

It seemed strange supporting some of his weight when he towered over me by a foot. Amory had a slender build, which prevented me from noticing what a big guy he was until I had an arm wrapped around him. I would never be able to catch him if he fell.

He must have realized this, too, because he said, “I feel a little ridiculous.”

“
I
feel a little ridiculous agreeing to help you up the stairs. You’re pretty much on your own if you fall.”

Amory laughed. “That’s fine. I feel like I could take on about twenty carriers right now, anyway.”

The steps were a long and painful process for him. Even with my help, he had to stop about every other step. I could tell he was embarrassed, but there was nothing to be done.
 

By the time I helped him down onto his bed, he looked exhausted and a little pale. I brought him a glass of water and helped him arrange the pillows comfortably. As I pulled the quilt up to his chest, I felt a slight twinge of awkwardness at our close proximity. He never asked me to play the nurse, but I had attached myself to him for the last four days.
 

“You probably think I’m an idiot,” he said.

“What?”

“I got stabbed by a carrier,” he said in a flat voice. “I’ve never even encountered ones that were armed before.”

I sank down on the bed. “What happened out there?”

He sighed. “Roman thought he saw a carrier passing through in the woods. He’s got these night-vision binoculars . . . he gets pretty into it. He was going to shoot, but I said to wait and see if the carrier kept moving.”
 

Amory’s brow was furrowed in rage. “That’s our policy,” he said. “If one moves in on our land, we shoot him. So we’re sitting there, watching this one like a hawk, and I see a group of them almost at the pasture.”
 

He ran a hand through his hair in exasperation. “Those sneaky bastards gave us a decoy to keep us from noticing they were advancing. I was about ready to shoot, but Roman was gone and running toward them.” Amory shook his head. “Crazy son of a bitch. He’s got this blind rage. I don’t even think he knew what he was doing. He scared off two of them, but the one I was fighting . . .” He trailed off, looking weary around the eyes.

“I had it there on the ground in front of me. I had a knife at its throat. I was ready to end it. Then I see it’s a woman — the carrier — and she’s older . . .” Amory’s eyes glistened, and his voice was thick. “She’s got these earrings on. These little dangly earrings like my mom used to wear. Everything else that’s human about her is long gone, but she’s still wearing those earrings!