The Vault (A Farm Novel) (8 page)

“Because you’re the best person for the job. And because it’s probably going to save your life. And because your brother was on that helicopter, too.”

LILY

I don’t let myself dwell on what I’ve just learned about my father. I have more pressing concerns.

I need to kill myself. I’m not even sure if that will work. Maybe I’m already too much of a Tick. But I have to try.

The only other option is to wait it out, suffer through the effects of the virus, and wait for the transformation to happen. And then I’ll be one of them. A soulless monster. A killing machine.

I can’t let that happen. I’ve seen what they can do. Up close and personal. I’ve seen their dumb eyes and thoughtless glazed stare. I’ve seen the ruthless thirst. I’ve felt the hot breath of a Tick on my neck. I’ve watched as a Tick cracked open my sister’s rib cage to get at her heart. I know what they’re capable of. That’s not going to be me.

But out here, in God only knows where, I don’t have a lot of options. My father is drifting in and out of consciousness. No help there. I don’t even know how much time he has left. He’s lost so much blood. He can’t survive long with those wounds. That much blood seeping out of him. Blood.

I shake to make myself look away from the blood, but it’s everywhere. All over him. On his clothes. On his useless bandage. On the ground. Even when I look away, all I see is the blood.

And then I really do see more blood. A smear of dark brown in the red-brown dirt. A drop here. A streak farther away. More drops.

I follow the trail, stupidly at first, my gut guiding me more than my brain. Slowly I figure it out. This isn’t a trail to food. This is a trail away from something. Away from the site of the helicopter crash. Away from the Ticks. This is the blood my father lost when he dragged me here.

At the site of the crash I might find something. A gun. A weapon. A . . . something.

I pull myself step-by-step over toward the rise, following my nose and my instinct. I’m not as cold anymore. I’ve stopped shaking, but I don’t know if this is a good thing.

Beyond the hill, I can see a plume of inky smoke. I follow that when the drops of blood become more sparsely spaced. I hadn’t noticed it before, so dark against a line of trees. When I crest the hill, it’s there before me. A field of some kind of grain, and in the center of it, the smoking metal heap that was once a helicopter.

It seems huge. Much bigger than the Life Flight helicopters we would sometimes see overhead in Dallas. It must be a military helicopter if it was big enough to bring . . . how many of us had he said there were? Four patients?

Three predators that could awaken at any moment. Starving and mindless. I may want to die, but I don’t want to be eaten by a Tick. And I’m not sure that would kill me anyway.

Am I different already? My body feels heavier somehow. And there’s a deep gnawing hunger in my belly.

As I stumble toward the wreckage, my head spins. The air reeks of smoke and hot metal and something else I can’t pin down. Something in the twisted pile of metal is smoking, but the helicopter is too intact for there to have been an explosion. There are bodies littering the ground near the helicopter. I can’t tell if they were thrown clear or if someone dragged them out. My father dragged me, but would he have bothered with anyone else?

Two weeks ago, I would have said he wouldn’t have even bothered with me. Two weeks ago, I hadn’t seen him in nearly a decade.

I am drawn to the other bodies with a kind of twisted fascination. There are two men, both wearing singed and torn hospital gowns. Both large hulking types, with bulky arms and pronounced brows and heavy jaws. Their bare arms and legs are covered with thick, coarse hair. They look like a cross between professional football players and the wax Neanderthals from the natural history museum. Like mercenary soldiers who have almost turned into Ticks but aren’t there just yet.

They should be less terrifying unconscious, but they aren’t. They are too close to what I will become. Another day? Maybe two? No more than that, now that I’m awake.

I stumble around to the other side of the wreckage; the air is heavy with the stench of fire and blood and singed hair and roasted flesh. I see another body, this one impaled on a hunk of helicopter metal. The pilot. He didn’t even survive the crash. I trip backward, desperate to get away. I move up the hill but stop at the sight of another body. A woman, dressed in a white doctor’s coat. Facedown in dirt, like she stumbled away from the site and collapsed. Instinctively, I drop to my knees and roll her over. I place my hand on her chest and feel her take a shuddering breath. One of her arms flops oddly, like her shoulder has been dislocated. Her belly is strangely distended. A nasty gash oozes blood on her temple.

She won’t make it. Somehow, I know this instinctively. I tell myself this, gazing at the lovely smear of blood on her forehead. It’s bright red and fresh. Before I can stop myself, I lean down and lick the blood from her skin.

It’s sharp and tangy on my tongue. My eyes roll back in pleasure. I’m so hungry. And she’s dead anyway. I know she is. Internal bleeding. Surely. All that blood.

That blood.

I jerk away, throwing myself back from her so hard I roll down the hill, before catching myself and scrambling into a crouch. My every muscle tenses, poised to flee or to destroy. To destroy myself and not to destroy her.

I can’t let myself become that. To lose my mind. My will. My everything that makes me human. I cannot lose that. I will not.

That’s when I hear it. In that moment that I’m completely still and feel nothing but the thundering of my own heart and the wavering of my resolve. That’s when I hear the crying.

It’s not my father. I’m sure of that. It’s younger than that, but not a baby. Not an animal. Not the mournful keening of someone out of control, but a soft, fearful crying. The noise of someone hurt and hiding.

I tip my head to the side and listen for it again. It’s gone. Almost. I hear a sharp, trembling breath from near the helicopter. I lope around the tail and then stop short when I see the kid huddling close to the crumpled end of the helicopter.

He sees me and instantly cringes away, arms upraised to block my attack. He’s younger than I am. Maybe fifteen. Maybe younger. Latino. Short cropped hair, dirty clothes. I’m sure I don’t know him and yet I do. I know this boy. Or someone who looks like him. Exactly like him. But older.

Ely.

This is Ely’s younger brother. It must be.

As sluggish as my brain feels, seeing this boy still brings understanding.

Ely had been one of Carter’s best friends from the military academy. Carter had asked Ely to keep McKenna and me safe when we’d left Base Camp to search for somewhere that McKenna could have her baby. Carter had trusted Ely. We had trusted Ely. He’d been so damn good at staying alive on his own no one had thought to ask how he did it. No one thought to wonder if he’d survived by forming an alliance with Roberto. Now I know why he did that. He did it because Roberto had his younger brother.

I crouch down beside the boy, but he cringes away from me, scuttling deeper into the shadows so that he’s almost back inside the wreckage. His fear pulls at something deep inside of me. No one has ever been afraid of me. Not in the Before. Not on the Farm. Not even at Base Camp, where people thought I was an
abductura
. But this boy. He fears me and what I’m becoming.

What do I look like that this kid is afraid of me?

Except he’s not a kid. He’s a teenager. In the Before, he was probably the kind of kid who was scared of nothing. And now I terrify him.

Which means two things: one, he doesn’t yet know that he’s been exposed also, and two, I’m far enough gone that I must look like a Tick. At least to him.

I should just leave. I haven’t found anything in the wreckage that I could easily use to kill myself. Maybe I would be better off just running into the wilderness. Leaving him alone with his fear, rather than making it worse.

But there’s this: what is he going to do if I leave him?

No matter how tough he was in the Before, he’s just a kid. If he’s terrified of me now, then how’s he going to react when the mercenary-Neanderthals wake up? And if my father is right, when they wake up, they’ll be violent. And they’re a lot less human than I am. They’ll turn not long after they wake up. Then he’s dead.

I can run or I can try to protect this kid. It’s not really a choice.

I crouch down lower, ducking my head so my hair falls forward, covering part of my face.

“Hi,” I say. My voice sounds lower, rougher than it normally does. The kid doesn’t respond, so I add, “I’m not going to hurt you.”

He shifts then, to peer at me over his arm.

His palpable fear mingles with confusion, but he doesn’t say anything, so I add, “You’re Ely’s brother, right?”

He jerks back, clearly surprised to have heard Ely’s name from me, but after several heartbeats, he nods.

“I’m a friend of Ely’s.” The lie nearly catches in my throat, choking me. Ely is not my friend. He was Carter’s friend. Once. Me, he tranqed and tried to deliver to Roberto.

On the other hand, if Ely had succeeded, I might not be transforming into a Tick right now.

But on the other hand, if he had succeeded, Josie would be dead. There isn’t anything I wouldn’t do to keep Joe and McKenna’s baby alive, including sacrificing my own life.

And on the other hand, wouldn’t I have betrayed a friend to protect Mel?

But wait, that’s too many hands. Too many ifs and fears and buts for my Tick-ish mind to take. And not enough getting our asses out of here before the mercenary-Neanderthals wake up.

“I’m a friend of Ely’s,” I repeat, and this time I try to sound like I mean it. “I know he would do anything to protect you. I would do anything to protect my sister, too.” This is easier to believe when I say it. “I know you’re scared. I won’t hurt you.”

I know that’s a promise I can’t keep, but I make it anyway.

I won’t hurt him. Not as long as I’m me. Not as long as I can hold on to the shreds of myself.

Finally, he drops his arms, leaning forward to get a better look at me from within the shadows. “Are you one of them?” he asks. “Are you a . . .”

“A Tick?” I ask, when he leaves the question hanging. Jesus. How do I answer that? “I don’t know. Not yet.” I can’t lie to the kid. He needs to know what I’m becoming, what’s he’s becoming, too. But we’ll get to that soon enough. So I tell him what I do know. “I was exposed to the virus. I will turn, but I haven’t yet. I was put in a coma. I think you were, too. We were being brought to a Farm, but the helicopter crashed.”

I tried to sneak in the bit about him, but he catches on and crawls forward to get a better look at me. “Then I’m one, too?”

“Neither of us is yet.”

His gaze meets mine for only a second, then he juts his chin out just a little and nods. There’s a quiver to his jaw, but he’s trying so damn hard to be tough, it about breaks my heart.

I might hate Ely. I might have been damn close to killing him. Hell, I left him unprotected and without transportation in the middle of nowhere. He may be dead already. But no matter how much he pissed me off, he would have done anything to protect this kid. And now, somehow, it feels like it’s my job to do so, too.

“We gotta get out of here,” I tell him. “You and I both woke up, that means those other guys will soon. We can’t be here when they do.”

He nods, but he doesn’t come out the rest of the way. “Are you gonna just eat me?”

“No. Not yet anyway.”

Either my answer or my honesty must reassure him, because he ducks his head and starts to climb out. He braces his hand on some kind of support beam, and before he can even cross under it, the whole thing shifts. It tips toward me, and instinctively, I thrust up an arm to catch it. The weight of the metal slams into my palms, but somehow I manage to hold it up. My muscles strain and tear, but I keep it from crushing us.

I don’t have to tell the kid to get out of there. He scrambles out from underneath the twisted metal, and as soon as I see he’s clear, I let go and spring free from the falling wreckage. I fall and roll, landing maybe ten feet away. My heart is pounding, and I’m struggling to suck air into my lungs, but I’m free.

I push myself up and glance around. Ely’s brother is maybe five feet away, but from the way he’s staring at me, I know he’s still afraid. I don’t blame him. I glance down at my hands because that’s where he’s looking. Deep cuts cover my palms from where I grabbed the helicopter. Blood drenches my hands, but I can barely feel the pain. It’s nothing. No worse than a scratch. A cut like this, in the Before, and Mom probably would have taken me to get stitches. But it’s not like we can just call 911.

For once, I don’t bother trying to clean the wound, but just shove my hands in my pockets.

“So, kid,” I say, trying for nonchalance. “What’s your name?”

“Marcus Estaban.”

I realize then that I never even knew Ely well enough to learn his full name. Somehow that makes me sad.

I nod to Marcus. “Hi. I’m Lily.”

He nods back, but I can see I haven’t exactly won him over. “We need to start moving. You can walk, right?”

He nods again.

I push myself to my feet and start walking. “We gotta get out of here.”

“Where are we going?” he asks after maybe fifty feet.

I don’t realize until then that I have no idea where we’re going. Away from here, obviously. Away from the mercenary-Neanderthals. But where? I had just started walking without giving any thought to it at all.

I give my head a shake and try to think through things. The landscape is unfamiliar. Lots of sprawling live oaks and rolling pastureland. The trees are bigger than I’m used to, which means we’re in the eastern part of the state, where the trees get taller. I know we were headed toward one of the Farms in northeast Texas, maybe even the one Mel and I had escaped from. That’s probably still our best bet.

I try to guess north based on the position of the sun and start to head northeast.

Except, again my brain is sluggish, so I’m not really paying attention when we crest the rise and I see my father, pale and bloody, leaning against the trunk of the tree. I stop for a moment and just look at him. If I hadn’t been here only ten minutes ago, I would swear he’s dead. But when I walk up to him, his eyes flicker open and something almost like a smile twists his lips.