Elixir (Red Plague #1) (Red Plague Trilogy) (8 page)

Russell helped Hunny off his bike and then patted his pockets, a frown on his face.

“Everything okay?” Pollard asked his friend, offering his hand to me.

Ignoring his help, I said, “I’m good.”

“Sure you are,” he grumbled.

Russell checked his pockets one more time. “I lost my lighter.” He pulled a pack of cigarettes from his jacket. “It must have fallen out on the ride over.” He nodded at Pollard. “Can I borrow yours?”

“Sure.” From a pocket, Pollard produced a disposable, tiger print lighter and tossed it.

Besides the green tee Pollard wore cargo pants with bulgy pockets. Anything could be in those compartments. Knives. Ammo. Chloroform. Almost certainly more guns.

Violent types like Pollard always carried more than one weapon. It wouldn’t surprise me if he had three or four different handguns hidden on his body. Acid crawled up the back of my throat.

 “So weird.” Russell shook his head as he ambled around the side of the building.

I glanced at Hunny, feeling a pattern emerging. The sweet-faced eight-year-old was empty-handed, but at least two things had gone missing around her. Again, I realized I didn’t know anything about her except that her parents had been rich and she’d spent time as a glorified prisoner in a medical quarantine.

“I’ll help you inside,” Pollard said, grabbing my arm without asking and urging me toward the glass doors covered in duct tape. I couldn’t see any hint of the interior of the former restaurant and convenience store. Worst-case scenarios ran through my mind. Medical experiment lab? Torture chamber?

My dad would never allow me through that door, especially knowing one of my companions had a firearm and wasn’t afraid to use it.

But I needed water, and they had enough to share.

“What’s with the tape?” I asked, limping beside him.

“Light attracts Reds.” Pollard rapped on the glass door. A distinct knock-knock-knockety-knock. Not a great beat for a soulful country song, but it had its own personality. I might play with the rhythm later, just for fun.

A piece of tape pulled back and an eyeball appeared. Brown, not red. “Pollard?”

“It’s me, Simone. Let us in.”

A bolt was thrown, and the door opened on a very non-threatening, twenty-something female with limp brown hair and wide hips.

I exhaled. Not the serial killer I was expecting. Just a normal looking woman.

“Did you fill up?” she asked, swinging the door open. When she spotted Hunny and me, her smile fell away. “Who are they?” Her intelligent brown eyes took in every detail of Hunny’s appearance and mine.

“We found them at the McDonald’s to the south.” He ushered the little girl inside. “They’ll have to introduce themselves.”

I lingered in the doorway, spying as much as I could of the interior. No visible chains or bone saws, but it was messy with clothes and miscellaneous furniture.

“Hunny Green,” my little companion revealed. “She’s Maya Solomon.”

Good thing we didn’t have any real secrets or these people would already know them. Hunny had a big mouth.

“Maya.” Pollard gave me a grim smile, and then locked the door behind us. “Make yourselves at home.”

They’d redecorated. Most of the tables in the dining room were gone, probably bolted over the windows. The booths had been pushed around and converted into beds strewn with a myriad of blankets and coats.

If I’d thought it was hot and steamy outside, it was sweltering in the cavernous building. With all the windows sealed shut and no electricity to get a fan moving, the air was warm and heavy. Sweat popped up on my arms and the back of my neck.

While Simone eyed me up and down I slid a few hesitant steps inside. It smelled of sweat and old food, but I couldn’t detect any obvious threats. I chanced another step and craned my neck to see around the hostess counter.

I gasped at what I found. Through an archway, the convenience store half of the building was a nirvana of beautiful, pre-packaged, preservative-laden munchies. My mouth opened and stayed that way. Food. Delicious, sugary food. The kind I was almost never allowed to eat.

A lot of it had been consumed, but there were still hundreds of packs of peanuts, cotton candy, potato chips and cereal cups laid out like pirates’ treasure on the racks. Sodas, juices and teas were arranged in the shiny glass fridges. I hadn’t drunk a soda in months. My dad, being more concerned with health than taste, had only stocked our panic room with water and Gatorade.

The truck stop’s drinks would be warm, but I didn’t care. I hopped one-legged into the shadowy store, grabbed a can of apple juice from the fridge, popped open the lid, and guzzled it. The sugars hit my stomach hard, and I felt a pang of nausea, but I squelched it and finished the bottle. I couldn’t get enough.

The sweet apple scent nearly cleared the earlier, clinging stink of decay from my nose. Almost.

Pollard reached around me and helped himself to a sparkling citrus soda. “Cool, right?”

I couldn’t talk through my second bottle of juice, so I just nodded.

“Where is Shelly?” Simone called from the dining room.

Pollard cast me a sad look before answering. “She didn’t make it. We were ambushed.”

The expression in Pollard’s eyes, quickly mirrored in Simone’s, brought up a sympathetic rush of emotions in me too. I knew that look and the confusing grief that went with it, the look that said someone you cared about had died without warning.

Simone clutched her shirt over her heart. “Oh, no. Where’s Russell?”

Swallowing thickly, I turned my back on their shared grief and hid my reaction by downing a bottle of strawberry flavored water until my stomach bulged at the seams.

“Still outside,” Pollard said.

Simone hurried to find him.

“I’m sorry about your friend,” I said to Pollard.

“It’s not your fault,” he said. “We’ve been inside so many places like that I got overconfident. I messed up rushing in there without a plan. A good soldier always has a plan.”

“Are you a soldier?” I asked. That would explain the U.S. Army apparel, but not the crappy shooting skills.

“No.” He hung his head. “I was going to enlist, but then…”

Yeah. A lot of things changed when the lights went out and civilization crumbled. I used to have a dad, go to high school, and blog about songwriting. Not anymore.

Hunny jumped around the booths in the dining room in a happy little circle, swinging her arms. “I love this place! I never want to leave!” She dashed past me and raided the convenience store shelves, a joyous ball of energy. Chip bags crinkled and soda caps hissed.

“Help yourselves,” Pollard said, and I sensed he was sincere. “We all went a little nuts when we found this place. Don’t worry. There’s even more stuff piled in the stock room.”

“Thanks.” But I still didn’t trust him or his two friends. Not when they were so quick to pull the trigger.

From the outside Mason hadn’t looked like a murderer. Cal hadn’t looked like a sadist and a bully.

Pollard, Russell, and Simone seemed like good enough people to leave Hunny with, though. She was pro-gun.

“Let’s get you off your feet.” Pollard gestured toward the booths in the next room, and I hopped over and stretched out my sore legs on a bench. Keeping his eyes averted, he wadded a sweater into a pillow and stuffed it under my right foot. My leg felt immediately better.

“Thanks.” I twisted, taking in more details of the truck stop. Nothing screamed danger. All I saw was mess and clothes and some empty water bottles. But I was no longer comfortable around other people. I couldn’t completely relax.

He inspected the cuts on my shins, moving my torn black leggings up to see better. Little Jack’s metal tractors had cut bloody crisscross lines into my legs. I leaned forward to help clean them.

“What happened to you guys?” Pollard asked.

“The boy in the McDonald’s.” I didn’t say,
The boy you killed
, but I thought it. There had been other options than shooting Jack. I’d survived as long as they had and never hurt anyone. I hated that he’d pulled a gun first and asked questions…
never
.

“We have first aid. Can I clean these cuts and put bandages on them?”

“Uh.” Overwhelmed by so many new people, I didn’t know how to politely say I'd rather be alone for a few minutes, but my exhaustion gave me the excuse I needed. “Can I rest first? I’ve been on my feet all day.”

“Oh, yeah.” He jerked to his full height of near six feet. “Do you want a blanket or something?” Without waiting for an answer he snapped open a fuzzy afghan and dropped it over my hips. “Make yourself at home.” He left in a rush.

I didn’t sleep, but the garbled voices coming from outside, the security of the barricades, and the warm air lulled me into a hazy daydream. I curled up and fantasized I was home in my own bed and not injured in a hot, sort of sour smelling truck stop surrounded by strangers.

With my eyes closed, I imagined my white ceiling and lavender walls. I could see my dresser and all the stuff spread over the top, every piece of it important to me. A guitar-shaped porcelain dish where I kept my earrings. A miniature bottle of perfume I wore on special occasions. Painted clay frogs I’d made in ninth grade art class. I could practically smell the carpet and feel the soft cotton sheets embracing me.

Someday I would go back. After I got to Raleigh, found my dad’s lab, and liberated his cure to the 212R virus. I pictured myself, a little older and wiser, packing a bag and setting off along a road alone, headed home to Cherry Blossom Court.

I heard a tiny clinking sound and turned my head in time to catch Hunny sliding shiny quarters into her dirty socks.

“What in the world are you doing?”

Chapter Eight

Hunny startled wildly, a sure sign of guilt as far as I was concerned. She must have thought I was dead asleep and she was in the clear to steal things.

“Nothing.” She snapped upright. “What?”

“Where did you get those? The cash register?” It wasn’t taking money, now worthless anyway, that irritated me. It was the stealing and sneaking and lying. “Is my clicker pen in there? And Russell’s lighter? What else do you have?”

I pushed myself to my feet as Pollard entered through a swinging door from the kitchen. He’d washed the blood splatter off his arms and face and it improved his appearance tenfold.

 “You’re up.” He grinned at me, and as his expression warmed he appeared younger than ever. Not that much older than me.

Hunny ran and threw herself at Pollard, her arms circling his waist. “She’s being mean to me.”

Ha
. I snorted, surprised she wasn’t already giving the man her pretty pouty face.

He tried to disentangle himself, but Hunny held on like a monkey. Finally, he looked at me for help. “What happened?”

I didn’t give Hunny time to run off or tell a story about how it was all my fault. I yanked up the back of her shirt. She had a Barbie in a puke green ball gown and a TV remote jammed under the waistband of her jeans. She thrashed, but I was quick and emptied both her front pockets. A lighter, a wristwatch, a banana flavored lollipop and a beaded hair clip clattered to the floor. If I could have bent down on my injured leg and removed her shoes and socks I'd have done that too because I had a feeling there was more hiding in there than quarters.

Squeezing Pollard, Hunny wept noisily. “Don’t be mad at me,” she sobbed into his T-shirt. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry!”

“Unbelievable.” I sighed. “You don’t have to steal. Everything’s free now.” It didn’t make sense in my brain.

What was the point of sneaking around stealing stuff? What kind of rush did she get from dead people’s things? The rules were different now. It wasn’t like anyone was going to arrest her for shoplifting. So, why do it at all?

I was reminded, again, that I knew next to nothing about any of these people.

“You stole Russell’s lighter?” Pollard asked above the crying. He just kept shaking his head, looking as flabbergasted as I felt. “What for? There’s at least two dozen on the front counter.”

Hunny cried louder.

The high-pitched noise set me even further on edge. I palmed the handle of my short sword, waiting for Pollard’s reaction. With his itchy trigger finger I feared he'd have an equally hot temper. I had dealt with bullies before.

“Let go of me,” Pollard said gently. “No one’s mad at you. I’m just surprised is all.”

Simone and Russell, attracted by the noise, walked in through the kitchen. I watched to see how they would respond. I hadn’t seen Russell fire a gun at the McDonald’s, and Simone wasn’t obviously packing heat, but that didn’t mean they both weren’t violent gun nuts with pistols under their shirts.

Russell immediately spotted his recovered property.

“Cool, where did you find my lighter?” He picked it up and flicked the wheel. A tiny flame burst to life.

“Never mind,” Pollard grumbled. Because Hunny wouldn’t let go, he finally lifted her right off her feet and set her on a chair. She tried one last time to latch onto Pollard, but he carefully avoided her clutches.

“Listen,” he barked, silencing the entire room. I flinched at the harsh tone of his voice. But then his words quieted and his expression softened. “We’re a team here, you got it? And if you’re going to be part of our team, know that we don’t steal from each other. We help each other. We share and compromise and protect each other. If you want something, then ask.” He folded his arms. “Understand?”

And they listened to him. Everyone consented, even Hunny. Though Simone was clearly the oldest member of the little group, Pollard was in charge. I glanced from Russell to Simone. They looked up to Pollard. Either he had qualities worth respecting or he was some cult leader. People looked up to them too.

Hunny, red-faced and hiccupping, nodded.

“Do you understand?” he asked again.

“I understand.”

“Now apologize to Russell, and we’ll forget this ever happened.”

In the tiniest voice possible, Hunny apologized, and the tension in the room eased.

The little girl found a quiet spot behind a magazine stand to nurse her wounded pride, and Simone and Russell strolled into the store area.