Enemy Inside (Defectors Trilogy) (31 page)

Finally, as we took the corner around the back of a mini-mart, I saw it: a white twelve-passenger van with the words “God Deliver Us to the Great White North” running in streaked car paint across the elongated side window.

Amory whooped loudly, and we ran across the parking lot. Each of the doors had “North Glen United Church of Christ” emblazoned in blue paint with a thin cross. Yanking open the door, I slid in the passenger seat and admired the spaciousness. There was a cross knitted in rainbow yarn hanging from the rearview mirror, and the keys were dangling in the ignition as though they were waiting for us.

Amory hopped in beside me and turned the key. Nothing happened.
 

“No gas. Must be why they left it here.”

“Praise the Lord,” I muttered.

We got out and walked around to the pumps. The first one had a crumpled, sun-faded paper sign that flapped in the breeze. “Sorry, no gas” was barely discernible in the smeared, dripping writing.

“They’re all out of gas,” called Amory from across the parking lot. “We should see if there’s anything else here we can use before we head back to the others. We can siphon from the truck and fill it with the two tanks in the back.”

Crunching through the snow around the pump, I took in the overflowing trashcans and the faded signs propped in the dark windows: “NO GAS — DON’T ASK.” Amory pushed against the front door, and I was surprised when it swung open.
 

Behind the counter, the empty cash register drawer was hanging open. The coolers, which were dark, had been looted of all the soda, beer, water, and energy drinks. The racks for candy and snacks were nearly empty, as was the convenience section near the back. Somehow, the greasy, burnt stench of hotdogs from the rotating display still stung my nostrils.

The only food that was left on the shelves was gum and a few dusty cans of Spam. In the convenience aisle, there were pens, an emergency sewing kit, dental floss, bandages, shoe polish, and a few boxes of tampons. I grabbed the tampons and the bandages and shoved them in a plastic bag with the Spam.
 

As I inspected the aisles for any salvageable food, Amory nicked a key hanging behind the counter and unlocked the door to inspect the back room.
 

He emerged a moment later lugging a jug of water in each hand and wearing a huge grin.

“Idiots. The looters forgot to check the back. There’s food in there, too. We should get the others to gas up the van and pull it around.”

I deposited my haul on the counter and followed Amory back to where Greyson and Mariah were sulking in the truck.

“Hey! Let’s go. We found a van,” said Amory. He was clearly very proud of himself. “Where are Logan and Jared?”

Greyson shook his head. “They should have been back by now. How long does it take to get a few groceries?”

“Maybe they had trouble breaking in,” I said, the nerves creeping into my voice. It was five minutes past the half-hour mark, and I didn’t like that they were late.

“We’ll be right down the road,” said Amory. “They’ll see us.”

Climbing into the truck, I could feel the tension emanating from the back seat. Amory coaxed the engine to life, and we rolled through the snow and parked next to the van.

“What the hell is that?” Mariah asked with a sneer.

“Salvation,” said Amory with a smirk. “We need a long tube to siphon the gas out of the truck.” He turned to me. “See if you can detach one of the hoses from the soda machine.”

I nodded and went back into the store, pushing open the door to the back room to get a look at the hoses. Amory was right — the haul here was much better than the picked-over remains on the shelves. There were big boxes full of chips, nuts, jerky, and other snacks, and even two pallets of canned soup and tuna.

I found one of the hoses Amory was talking about and tugged it free from the machine. As I emerged from the back room, I could hear voices outside.
 

Peering out through the grimy window, I could see Amory arguing with Jared next to a cart full of groceries. Amory’s face was contorted in a yell, the planes of his face more prominent than before, and Jared’s slick blond waves were disheveled, as though he’d been arguing animatedly.
 

Logan was nowhere in sight.

“Where is she?” I yelled.

Jared shifted his weight from one foot to the other, avoiding my gaze. “Look, she went fucking crazy. I had to leave her.”

“The fever’s set in! She’s not in her right mind!”

“Yeah, I know that, all right? I know it’s not what you want to hear, but she’s a fucking liability. We can’t just drag her around with us anymore. She’s gonna get us killed.”

I took two strides toward him, my rage boiling over. In that moment, I could have killed him. I didn’t care if he took pleasure in hurting me, made crude jokes about me behind my back to get a rise out of Amory, or hated me for throwing Mariah under the bus. That was his deal — his way of asserting power and getting back at me for wronging him. But now he had put Logan in danger.

Before I was aware of what I was doing, I had Jared by the collar. “The only person who’s going to get killed is you!” I hissed, shoving him into the van. “If
anything
happens to her, I swear to god . . . I will end your life.”

I pushed him again for good measure and turned back toward the grocery store.

Amory reached out and caught my wrist. “You shouldn’t go by yourself.”

“I’m fine,” I growled. I must have been shooting daggers out of my eyes, because Amory took a step back, looking wounded.

I shrugged off the guilt. If he was going to accuse me of dragging people into my reckless decisions, he couldn’t be offended when I didn’t want his help. Backing away, I stepped off the curb into the road.

It was unnerving seeing six lanes of traffic completely empty and covered in a blanket of unmarked snow. It was especially deep near the gutter, and my leg sank in too far, twisting my still-tender ankle painfully. As the snow and slush filled my boots, I became increasingly anxious to get on the road and far away from this creepy pit stop.

The automatic doors remained stubbornly closed as I approached. The store was dark except for a few emergency lights illuminating the aisles. One of the sliding doors was propped open with an overturned trashcan, as if Logan and Jared had wedged it in to squeeze through.
 

Stepping inside, it was strange to see the wispy cloud of my own breath in the dark store. The stand of ads had tipped over, papering the damp floor in weekly specials, and carts were strewn around haphazardly.

“Logan?” I called. I hoped she was close. The deeper into the store I walked, the darker it got.

Triggering the motion sensors, the emergency lights flickered on as I walked through the produce section. Nearly all the bins were empty — save for a few lone rotten pieces of fruit — but that had probably happened before mandatory migration was over. The shelves in the snack foods aisle were completely bare, as were most of the canned goods. I called out for Logan as I went, my voice getting progressively quieter as I entered the belly of the superstore.

The only aisle that looked relatively untouched was the cleaning products aisle. No one had much use for air fresheners or floor cleaner when they were abandoning their homes and moving north.
 

Making my way around the back, I wound around every aisle. Most of the electronics had been looted, and the clothes were depleted, too.

Logan wasn’t in the sporting goods or the camping sections — two aisles I thought she might be scavenging in hopes of finding a fishing rod, a pocket knife, or extra ammunition. Then I remembered Logan’s penchant for toiletries and made a beeline for the beauty section.
 

I heard a soft whimper.

It was an odd sound — halfway between a sob and a pant. I quickened my pace, footsteps scuffing on the dirty tile, and flew around the corner of the pharmaceutical aisle.

Logan was slumped on the floor against the shelves, fumbling with a bottle of Tylenol, trying to get the plastic seal off. She didn’t see me right away, and she wore a far-off look on her glistening face.

“Logan.”

She turned her head slowly, as if barely seeing me. “Haven,” she mumbled, not making direct eye contact. “Help me.”

“What’s wrong?”

“My head’s burning up.” She popped the top off the bottle, and it slipped from her hands like a bar of soap, sending the capsules skittering across the floor.
 

I bent to retrieve the bottle.

“I’m really glad this never happened to them,” she murmured, her eyes swimming with tears.

“Who?”
 

“Mom, Dad, Sebastian . . . at least you know it was quick.”

I handed Logan two capsules, and her hand shook slightly as she popped them in her mouth and dry swallowed.

“What do you mean?”

Logan had told me about her parents. She had stayed to train with the PMC so they could afford to go north.
 

“My family. They’re dead.”

“How do you know?”

“What do you think the PMC does to an officer’s family when that officer is a defector?”

My heart sank. She was probably right.
 

“Haven, what’s wrong with me?”

I sighed. “It’s the fever.”

Shaking her head, Logan pulled her knees up to her chest. Her eyes were bright, almost insane looking, and her face had a faint grayish tinge to it.
 

Then I heard it: a low, shaky intake of breath behind me and the pop of mucus in infected lungs. I dropped the bottle and spun around.
 

Ambling toward us from the front of the store was a carrier. My hands tingled, empty, and I realized I’d left my gun back at the van.
 

I grabbed Logan by her arms, pulling her up into a standing position, and dragged her over to the next aisle. Moving awkwardly supporting half of Logan’s weight, I began shuffling us toward the doors.
 

I heard the sound again, this time coming from my left. There was another one, further along than the first, saliva oozing over the bloody sores around his lips. His head was bald and covered in scratchy dry patches, and his clothes hung about him in shreds.
 

For the first time since I’d known Logan, she was regarding the carrier with fear, as though seeing her own future. I pushed her down past the pharmacy window and around the corner. We stopped dead when we reached the front.

Shuffling around, noses tingling with the smell of their next kill, stood over twenty carriers. Some of them were balding and decrepit, slower than the others. But some looked only a few weeks along. They looked human — hungry and sick, but just as strong and fast as me.

We backed away around the perimeter of the store.

“Is there another way out?” I hissed.

“There has to be,” whispered Logan, stumbling slightly in my grip.

We backtracked to the lawn and garden section, and I saw the closed doors to the nursery that led outside.
 

Fumbling with the door, my sweaty hands slipped over the smooth metal and glass. To my surprise, Logan yanked it open without much trouble, and we ran out into the nursery.
 

Pallets of soil and fertilizer were hidden under the dusting of snow, and I tripped over a lone pallet, flying face-first into the snow and skinning my knee. We made it to the gate, which towered high over our heads. I shook the chain links, and a heavy padlock rattled against the bars.
 

“No!”

I pushed it forward as hard as I could, but the fence swung open only a few inches — not wide enough for either of us to squeeze through. Grabbing Logan’s arm, I dragged her back through the snow toward the door. We skidded inside, our wet boots squeaking and slipping on the tile.

Moving along the perimeter and searching for a fire exit, I could hear the groans of carriers echoing in the big empty space. My heart leaped when I found the double doors. I pushed, and the door cracked open, sounding the fire alarm. A cold burst of air whipped in through the opening, and I pushed harder.
 

My stomach clenched when I saw it: a chain and a padlock holding the door handles together from the outside — no doubt to discourage looting during mandatory migration. We were out of options.
 

I pulled Logan into the sporting goods section and down the row where they kept the guns locked behind a glass cabinet. Feeling broken glass underfoot, I looked up. Someone had already raided the cabinet, and all the guns, bows, and knives were gone.

“There has to be something,” I muttered wildly, scanning the shelves.

In the next aisle, a wooden baseball bat caught my eye. I snatched it up and yanked Logan back in the direction of the front entrance. Her eyes had glazed over again, and she was tripping and faltering more than before.

Some of the carriers had wandered off toward the decimated produce section, but there were still at least a dozen crowded around the sliding doors.
 

Ducking behind a drinks cooler in front of the checkout, I picked out the smallest ones I thought I could take out easily. They were too close together, and I would have very little time with one before I would need to move on to the next.

The sliding doors rattled, and another squeezed himself in and looked around for the source of the food. It was now or never. We had to try before even
more
came.

I grabbed Logan by the shoulders, pulling her back to earth to refocus. Logan, the best carrier slayer I’d ever known, could do this in her sleep.
 

“Stay right on me,” I said. “And whatever happens, get across the street to the gas station and find the others.”
 

She nodded. The vacant expression was gone, and I thought I saw that old gleam in her eyes that she always had just before the kill.

I moved into a crouched position, sneaking around the checkout station. “Now!”
 

Breaking into a run, we sprinted straight for the door. Several carriers turned their heads, shuffling toward us. One faster, newly infected one stepped into my path, and I whipped the baseball bat up at his jaw as hard as I could. It made a sickening
thunk,
and he staggered backward.