“Really?” Rafe scoffed. “ ’Cause I’m thinking the feral has picked its next victim. You. And we have one gun between us. So if you won’t let this stiff take you back to Arsenal —”
“No,” I snapped. “And I’m not staying put in Moline either.”
He leveled a hard look at me. “And I’m not taking chances with Mack’s daughter.”
“What’s that mean?” Everson asked. “The feral has picked its next victim?”
“It means you could get hurt.”
“Wow,” Rafe said, oozing sympathy. “Guess all your guard training doesn’t impress her.”
“That’s not what I meant.” Why did Rafe have to turn everything into an insult?
“Look, unless he skipped boot camp — You didn’t, did you?”
“I ranked highest in my class in every skill set,” Everson ground out.
Rafe turned to me. “See? The silky can use a gun and compass. If something happens to me, he’ll get you back to Arsenal. Right?”
Everson frowned. “Of course.”
“Okay. Discussion over.” Rafe jangled his cuff. “Now how ’bout unlocking me?”
I tossed him the key and looked at the two of them — one clean-cut and controlled, the other a lewd, crude scam artist. What could possibly go wrong? “Promise you won’t fight.”
“I’m not going to arrest him, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Everson said.
“That’s not what she’s worried about.” Rafe dropped the handcuffs onto the floor, leaned back in his seat, and propped his booted feet by my headrest. “She’s worried we’re going to fight over her.”
I shoved Rafe’s feet off the seat. “I am not. That’s not what I was saying.”
I really hoped Everson didn’t believe that. I glanced over and caught his grin, which was big and broad — like him. Well, he could choke on it. Yes, the idea of two boys fighting over me was hysterical, but he could’ve at least tried to hide his amusement. I flopped back into my seat and stomped on the gas. “Forget it. You two can kill each other for all I care.”
They both cracked up. So glad they could share a laugh over a joke, except that I hadn’t made one. I narrowed my gaze on the weedy road and turned the wheel sharply, sending them spilling toward the jeep’s open sides. Their amusement vanished as they scrambled for handholds.
“Pothole,” I said with a shrug and got a couple of disgruntled looks in return, which had me smiling. Should be an interesting trip.
We sped past ravaged, desolate towns and overturned cars, all of them either scorched or rusting. But each time I started to feel hollow over the devastation, around the next bend I’d spot deer in a pasture, grazing like small herds of horses. There was wildlife everywhere, and above, the sky was blue, with high puffs of clouds.
Even though the land itself was as flat as a book, the road was so broken up, I felt like I was riding a bucking bronco. Still, Everson and I twisted in our seats, eyes wide, trying to take everything in.
Rafe had long since given up his carefree attitude and turned into an old lady, complaining about how fast I was going and how bumpy the ride was. At first I’d taken it personally, since I considered myself to be a conscientious driver, but then Everson asked Rafe if he’d ever ridden in a moving vehicle before. To my shock, Rafe hadn’t. Now he sat in the backseat, looking very green. Had he been anyone else, I might have felt sorry for him.
I made a sudden swerve off the road and heard Rafe gag as the jeep bumped down the embankment. I hadn’t had a choice. Smashed, burned-out vehicles clogged the highway in a miles-long collision dating back to the exodus. I had seen plenty of recordings of that time and been required to watch documentaries about it for school ad nauseam. But as horrifying as those recorded images were, passing miles of wreckage and glimpsing charred skeletons still belted into their seats gave me a sense of what it had really been like during the exodus. How people’s desperation to escape the plague had messed with their judgment.
After we’d driven along the shoulder for nearly an hour, Rafe said, “Got to make a stop. Pull in there.”
I didn’t want to slow down, let alone take a break, but I thought maybe he had to pee. Rafe directed me onto what once had been a golf course, according to a sign. The links were gone, replaced by deep ditches as far as I could see, and another weather-beaten sign, which read “Quarantine Cremation Site.”
As soon as I touched the brake, Rafe hopped out and strode through the waist-high grass toward one of the ditches.
If this was a cremation site, then these were graves, I realized with a start.
Everson pulled off his Kevlar body armor shirt and refastened his gun holster over his T-shirt. “I’m taking this back,” he said, scooping his gun from off the seat between us.
“Look.” I pointed to the ditch on our right. “It’s still smoking.”
As Everson and I climbed out to take a look, I saw Rafe snap a wildflower from its stem and toss it into the open grave. His lips were moving, but from where I stood, I couldn’t hear what he was saying. As Everson and I approached the smoking crater, I had a sudden, creeping sense that we weren’t alone. I paused to scan the tree line beyond the open graves, but saw nothing within the red-gold foliage — human or otherwise. Ahead of me, Everson let out a long breath, and I hurried to join him.
Blackened bones and ash filled the pit, with burnt skulls topping the heap. My self-control splintered. “Why are they burning bodies?”
“They can’t bury an infected corpse,” Everson said grimly. “An animal might dig it up.”
I wondered who Rafe was paying his respects to. Everson followed my gaze. “Here’s what I don’t get — that guy is only out for himself, so how did you get him to agree to do the fetch for you?”
“Not for me. For my dad. He got Rafe out of an orphan camp.”
“Yeah, the one on Arsenal,” Everson said. At my look of surprise he added, “That’s why all the career guards know him … and hate him.”
“They don’t hate me,” Rafe said, coming up beside us. “I’m fun.”
“Fun? You stabbed the cook’s assistant.” Everson snapped. “The guy lost two feet of intestine.”
Rafe shrugged. “He was coming at me with a butcher knife.”
I stepped between them. “You said you wouldn’t fight.” I waved Everson toward the driver’s seat, figuring it would keep him distracted, and I climbed into the passenger seat. Rafe gave the open grave a last look, swung into the back of the jeep, and wiggled the rolled blanket out of his pack frame.
“Your sister?” I asked softly.
Rafe stiffened. “What do you know about my sister?”
Shoot. I’d forgotten that I wasn’t supposed to mention it. “Hagen just said …”
“What?” he pressed.
I swallowed. Why had I brought up his sister? “That her husband went feral and killed her.” Right in front of you …
Everson glanced over in surprise.
“No, he didn’t.” Rafe stretched out on the backseat, using the blanket roll as a pillow. “He felt it coming on and took off before he could hurt us. But then we didn’t go back to the compound like we should have. We kept living in the Feral Zone because my sister couldn’t bring herself to leave with him still out there.”
“What happened?” Everson started up the jeep.
I braced myself, knowing this story was going to leave a bruise.
“He came back. Because that’s what ferals do.” Rafe gave me a pointed look. “He knew her scent, and what used to be love got twisted up in his animal brain and mistaken for hunger. He came back and he tore out her throat.”
I clapped a hand to my mouth as my mind reeled, trying to reject that mental picture even as it formed. And he’d lived through it firsthand. How could he function with a memory like that? I’d never leave my house again, never even go near a window, knowing what might be outside.