Z 2135 (2 page)

Oh, God, he WAS bitten.

“You were bit.” Shaw pointed to his wounded ankle, stating the obvious.

Eyes were mostly on the ground—all four of them were thinking of Drey. Ana had only known Drey for a month, but she doubted she’d ever forget a day with the kind man. He was older than her father, but younger than Duncan, and knew how to turn every situation better simply by seeing it differently. If it was raining Drey would say, “The world’s getting washed so we don’t have to scrub it!” If something was on fire he’d say, “Sometimes a seed has to burn before it can sprout!” When he had been bitten on mission two months back, Drey said, “Everything will turn out, it always does!” proving he was unflinching in his optimism, though not always right.

Because things
didn’t
work out for Drey. Rules were rules, and he had to make his choice. There were zombies circling the grounds outside Paradise, more than usual, but Oli said no waiting—it was in or out. Getting killed by friends while still human was better than being banished and becoming a monster in The Barrens, so Drey fell to his knees and told Oli to go ahead and end it. Oli did, putting a bullet between Drey’s eyes without blinking.

Ana wondered if Oli would be as strict with the rules when it came to Daemon being bitten. Would Daemon be given the same choice of banishment or execution? Or would the leader find some excuse, some way to spare his son?

Daemon was ignoring his bite, perhaps pretending it hadn’t happened. He said, “Collect the weapons and any supplies we can salvage, and let’s get back.” Then he emptied the magazine of his reloaded gun into a pile of unmoving bodies before climbing inside the truck and rifling through the cabin.

“What are we going to do?” Ana whispered to Shaw.

“About what?”

“You know what,” she looked at Shaw like he was stupid, both because of his question and because he was. “Daemon’s infected.”

“You don’t know that,” Shaw said, as if their leader’s ankle hadn’t been raw hamburger. Shaw always followed Daemon like a puppy, was mostly indifferent to Ana, and slightly hostile to Liam. She got the feeling that Shaw would always see them as outsiders, even if they stayed in Paradise forever. “The zombies were bloody. They could’ve got some of it on his leg.”

“You know the sentence for infection,” Ana said, ignoring Shaw’s idiocy.

“Yeah, but that’s decided by Oli. He won’t kill his son.”

Though Ana had only known Oli only for a few months, she figured she was about a million times more perceptive than Shaw, who’d known him for at least a decade. Liam was silent, too smart to argue with an oversized moron.

Talking to Shaw was pointless. Ana gathered weapons in silence, pounding twitchers with her heel as she did. Liam and Shaw went to collect the truck they’d come in, parked just down the road and tucked away in the woods. Unfortunately, they wouldn’t be filling their ride with supplies.

Daemon emerged with nothing from his fishing expedition in the truck. He and Ana stood together in awkward silence while waiting for Liam and Shaw. She tried not to notice his ankle. He made no attempts to hide it, as if daring Ana to look.

She wanted to say it was his own fault. He should’ve listened to Liam and stood down. Liam had known it was a trap, but Daemon had been so damned eager to put them all at risk, and for what?

But she didn’t say any of that. There was no point in stating the obvious and rubbing salt in Daemon’s grievous wound.

The truck was only a half mile away, and the boys were back in no time. Shaw and Liam got out to help Ana with the extra weapons, and they quickly loaded what remained of the supplies.

Shaw rode shotgun beside Daemon, while Ana and Liam rode in the back—an empty cargo box, which only made their losses seem more painful. Rather than delivering a truckload of supplies, they were going home with eight fewer campers and Oli’s bitten son.

Their raid was a bust.

They had fallen into a trap.

Liam was right.

The back of the truck had a light, but neither Ana nor Liam wanted it on. The dark somehow seemed safer. Ana whispered, “Do you think Oli will banish Daemon?”

“We’ll know soon enough.”

The Barrens

Jonah stared through the scope of his crossbow, hungry to pull the trigger, desperate to hit anything. Ever since he had seen the faked footage of Ana’s and Liam’s deaths last winter, Jonah had wandered The Barrens alone in search of Ana. He was exhausted from the endless miles and near starvation he faced every day. The Network had gone to great lengths to fake their deaths, which Jonah had seen on the orb Egan had given him. The orb showed the direct network feeds of The Games, the footage that people back in the cities didn’t see. Judging from what he’d seen, The Network was attempting to hide the fact that Ana and Liam had managed the impossible—to escape The Games.

Jonah hadn’t seen his reflection in anything other than muddy water for months, but his cheeks were hollow—thin skin caving in from both sides—so that he assumed
gaunt
was an accurate description of his physical condition as well as his mental. The winter had been too long, and nearly had killed him too many times, yet it seemed like only yesterday that his life ended along with Molly’s. Only yesterday since everything Jonah had ever cared for was warped, ruined, or taken from him.

No, not taken. I did it. I killed Molly. Even if Keller or someone somehow made me do it, I still did it. I was the one who butchered her, right in front of our daughter.

Ana, if she were alive, probably hated him. Adam too. Jonah deserved it. He was a monster. He couldn’t explain why he had done what he had, other than that The State had somehow forced him to via the implanted chip that Father Truth removed, but Jonah could no longer lie to himself and call it an artificial memory. He suspected that Keller was behind it, of course, but not
why
he’d put such a plot into motion
.
Jonah would find out, and have his revenge, but not before he found Ana— if she were still alive. And even if she was, he had little faith she was the same girl he had left last winter.

Jonah wasn’t the same either. He had done many awful things in the last few months, worse than the petty crimes for which he’d arrested people when he was still a Watcher.

Two weeks back—he only knew the passing of time by tallying tiny nicks on his machete’s black handle; he wasn’t sure of the actual day and date anymore, though—Jonah stole food from a sleeping family.

There were more families scattered throughout The Barrens than Jonah had ever imagined, at least in those areas clustered closest to City 6. He wondered if populations thinned or thickened further into The Barrens. Jonah didn’t know, since nearly all of his time had been spent wandering the same loops, searching for Ana.

The State said The Barrens were empty except for savages and scavengers. Jonah knew that was a lie, of course. He had been helping The Underground move people to West Village. And while the Village was burned to the ground, which he discovered after leaving Egan’s camp, Jonah saw signs of life everywhere. Groups like Egan’s weren’t all that uncommon: small clusters shoved into tiny pockets of The Barrens, too mistrusting of others to fall in with a larger family.

Seeing small groups of survivors (rebels, outsiders, aliens—Jonah didn’t know what to call them) was common; seeing them starving, shaking and near death only slightly less so.

Which once again brought his thoughts to two weeks ago. He had buried himself behind a thicket of trees, watching as a family’s matriarch killed a deer. The father was weak, maybe something wrong with his leg. The father stayed in camp with the two young girls and the one toddler boy. The mother dragged the deer back to camp on a homemade wooden cart, which Jonah helped himself to as soon as they were sleeping. He crept up, and stole what he could, quiet and fast like the thief he was, caring little since the slumbering family wasn’t also starving. He snuck into the night, only part of him sorry. The rest wished he could have stayed longer and taken more, telling himself that they had plenty and he had none. And his darkest part—the part The Barrens taught Jonah to never look in the eye—wondered what he would have done if the family had woken, and the father or mother had come out to face him. That was the reason to avoid the darkest part’s eye: even if Jonah knew he would bloody hands and soul to survive, he didn’t want to see it. Not if he didn’t have to.

Jonah justified all this by telling himself he was preserving his life because he wanted to protect Ana’s. Ensuring her safety was worth everything, including his soul. He had to know she was fine—or at least know she was dead—and make peace with the truth. Jonah had been searching for her since leaving Egan, Calla, and Father Truth.

Every day he walked as far as his energy took him, then set up camp in the safest place he could find or craft. Ana was nowhere, but still Jonah swore he felt her in the wind. The instincts that had made him such a highly decorated major at such a young age—and the best in City Watch according to Keller—told Jonah that Ana was still out there in The Barrens, alive, waiting to be found. He had to stay strong, even if that meant sticking to shadows, stealing food, and contemplating murder.

The only person Jonah had seen that reminded him of Ana was a teenage girl, malnourished enough to resemble a zombie. Somewhere behind her thin and haunted face quivered something still human, but nothing that looked like it would—or even could—smile again.

At spring’s earliest notes, Jonah had come across a small village with the most people he had seen in one place outside The Walls. He found the village by accident, after following a quad of travelers—one man, two teenage boys, and a woman who looked like she was in her late 20s—into a giant field of forsythia. The sea of bright-yellow bell-shaped blossoms had been a promise that warmer weather was finally on its way. He had maneuvered around the village’s perimeter, making sweeps for four full days, his eyes on the village, waiting for any sign of Ana. He had seen none, and his gut told him she wasn’t there, especially after bearing witness to their handling of a stray visitor—a brusque response that quickly escalated to the visitor being murdered by guards.

Jonah thought it best not to introduce himself.

But the village had haunted Jonah since. Though it was the largest gathering of people he’d seen, he left it further behind him each day. As his machete’s handle gathered tallies, he couldn’t stop wondering if Ana were there
now
, just past the fields of forsythia, even if she wasn’t before. Or maybe she
had
been in the village, but left a day before he started watching and had gone off in the other direction.

These thoughts—and many others like them—plagued him with indecision. Finally, Jonah had surrendered, figuring he’d return to City 6 to get more information. He knew it was dangerous, but he also knew enough people to help him stay hidden for a while—just long enough to get strong, lean on his contacts, and see if maybe word of Ana’s whereabouts had reached back behind The Walls.

Resolved, he had trekked back to City 6, only to find on arrival that it was surrounded by more orbs than he had ever seen. They swallowed the skyline outside City 6, and buzzed like bees through the hives of the hidden tunnels he knew. Something big was happening behind The Walls.

Having to turn away once there had been even harder than deciding to return to City 6 in the first place—as hard as it was to leave that village beyond the forsythia. He had only seen The City on lockdown once, when a zombie had somehow been smuggled behind The Walls and threatened The City with infection. It had made him wonder if that’s what had happened again.

Jonah had wondered about the other cities too, and whether they were also on lockdown. Even though he had never thought of it before, Jonah wondered if he could reach City 5 without dying. It would be difficult to cross The Barrens, but if the other cities weren’t on lockdown, he could maybe sneak into City 5. Jonah didn’t have a network in 5 like he did in 6, but you only needed one connection to stay alive, and Jonah had at least that in four of the cities. He had decided it was worth a shot, and it might have been the only option still open to him.

But first, he needed to round up some supplies to take the trip. The provisions Egan had supplied him with were long ago depleted. The sphere he’d used to watch The Network’s direct feeds had given out a month ago. He also needed basic survival gear, including some first-aid supplies, some material for fire starters, tape, and some rope.

More important, he had to find a gun and either some energy packs to go with the blaster or bullets if it turned out to be an old lead shooter. Finally, he could use a new sack, as the one he’d been carrying on his back had torn through.

However, in the two days since he’d decided to make the journey to City 5, he had yet to find anything to eat, let alone other supplies to make his trip less dangerous.

Movement jolted him into the present: Jonah finally sighted a deer. It was a far off dot, but definitely in range. He swung his crossbow toward it. The deer looked up and over as he pulled the trigger. Something (hunger, fatigue, or mounting fear that his mind would soon leave him) tightened Jonah’s reflexes. It was a slight movement, but enough to send the bolt flying too high over the deer’s head, sailing between two trees before thunking into the thick trunk of a third. The startled deer raced off deeper into the woods.

Grumbling, Jonah lowered his crossbow, stood, then headed toward the tree to retrieve his bolt, wondering how much longer he could go without eating. Too weak to aim meant too weak to live. And it certainly meant he’d be too weak to fight if he crashed into any zombies, bandits, or predator animals.

He knew of another certainty, though: he had to keep going—
for Ana
.

He reached the tree. As his hand closed around the bolt and he jerked it from the trunk, he heard death behind him.

Jonah turned and looked up at a long gun, a type of blaster he’d never seen. He was only mildly surprised to find himself facing a woman on horseback. He smiled, too tired to do anything else; then kneeled, set his crossbow on the ground, and stood with his hands in the air.

Horses weren’t extinct, but were extremely rare. The zombies had infected them, sometime after the Original Outbreak cleared most of humanity from the planet, and had altered the horses’ ability to reproduce. Cities were too crowded for the most part for horses to be kept by commoners, though a few were raised behind The Walls, ridden by City Watch and select officials in parade lines like the trophies they were. In City 6, Keller’s stallion was biggest.

In addition to the woman’s large City Watch–like horse, she also wore City Watch–like black body armor and leather. Yet, she clearly wasn’t City Watch, so said everything from her careless posture to her wildfire eyes. Her hair was dark and cut short, a smart choice when it came to fighting.

She lowered her gun. “You’re a hard man to find, Jonah.”

He felt a burning in his gut, suddenly angry. The woman knew who he was, leaving him at a disadvantage.

He asked, “Who’s looking?”

“Sutherland.”

“Who the hell is Sutherland?”

“He’s the Chief of Hydrangea.”

“The Chief of Hydrangea? What are you talking about?”

“He’s the Chief of Hydrangea,” the woman repeated, not answering Jonah’s question. She hopped off her horse, eying him up and down. “You’re not going to do anything stupid if I give you back your weapon, are you?”

“If I wanted to hurt you, I would’ve already lodged my machete between your eyes,” he said matter-of-factly.

She kneeled, retrieved his crossbow, looked it up and down, and then handed it back to him. “As I’m sure you’re aware, there’s a network of camps scattered through The Barrens, filled with people who will one day bring down The Walls.”

Jonah said, “Hydrangea? That doesn’t exactly inspire fear.”

“The camps are all named for flowers,” she said, as if that were explanation enough.

“So what do you want with me?”

“
I
don’t want anything,” she started walking back toward her horse. “Sutherland does. He asked me to find you.”

“And what does
Chief Hydrangea
want with me.”

“That’s between the two of you. But I will say this: Sutherland might be your biggest fan.”

Jonah tried to temper his growing hope, which he had thought had abandoned him, but it was hard in the face of such good news from a stranger who wasn’t eager to rob or murder him. There were
camps
, plural. And they were part of a network. If Ana was in one, he might be close to finding her.

Jonah swallowed, waited a second for his breath and heart to connect, then with his voice so ragged and cracked that it barely sounded like him, said, “Have you seen my daughter?”

“Of course,” the woman smiled, “Ana is with us.”

Jonah wanted to collapse in excitement, weep with the news, but he didn’t dare allow himself to celebrate just yet. Nor did he want to show how desperate he was to this stranger, lest she later use it as a thumbscrew to motivate him.

She got on her horse, then patted its rump, waiting for Jonah. He took her hand and climbed up behind her, and without another word, they clomped off, his arms around her waist.

Jonah had felt dead ever since Father Truth unblurred his reality.

Now, with the thought of seeing Ana again, the ghost of hope was suddenly alive again.