Contaminated 2: Mercy Mode (2 page)

Somewhere along the way, I’ve changed.

When Tess looks up at me with blood smearing her fingers, something inside me starts to go dark. She should leave me alone, but she won’t. I can see it in the way
her eyes narrow all at once, how her body tenses like she’s getting ready to jump up. She’s going to keep coming after me until one of us goes down and stays down.

“Stop,” I say again. Useless. She can’t stop. All she is now is aggression and hate and anger. She will keep coming until she is unconscious or dead.

Her mouth moves but nothing like words comes out. Just that same low growl, raspy and hoarse as if she’s spent so long screaming, she broke something deep in her throat.

I could run on. I should leave her behind. She’ll wander around the woods until the soldiers find her and take her away, lock her up in the hospital where they’re keeping all of them, maybe stick a shock collar on her if she’s lucky. Maybe do something worse to her if she’s not. But what if she finds someone else first? I’m not the only one who runs through these woods. What if she attacks someone else, someone who’s not able to defend herself?

My fists go up in front of me. My knees bend a little, my toes digging into the soft earth and finding support. I don’t know how to fight; I just know what feels right, and when Tess launches herself toward me, I’m ready for her with a one-two punch that sends her to her knees. I grab a double handful of her hair. My knee connects with her jaw.

It breaks.

I kick her in the stomach while she flails, her fingers skidding along my dirty jeans and catching in the cuffs hard enough to knock me off balance. She’s on top of me as soon
as I land on my back. Despite the broken jaw, her teeth snap inches from my face. Her breath smells like mint gum and this more than anything makes me hate her. It’s been a long, long time since I had a pack of gum.

I’m on top, then she is. We roll in the dirt, with rocks digging into us. Connies might barely feel pain, but I sure do. I grunt when a sharp stone cuts my side, but I don’t have time to wince because Tess is wrapping her arms and legs around me as she tries to smash my head into the side of a boulder.

I hit her in the face until her hands fall away and her growls become soft sighs. Blood bubbles from her lips. Her eyes are open but unfocused. She twitches a few times before she goes still.

I have a rock in my fist. It fits my hand just right. A weapon. I could smash it against her again and again until the light in her eyes goes out entirely, and it would probably be better for her than whatever waits. I could make sure she never hurts anyone else again. I could kill her.

I
want
to kill her.

But, in the end, I drop the rock and back away on shaking legs, the air hot and tight in my lungs. I leave her broken and bleeding in the dirt. Tess and the other Connies who’ve lost their minds to the prion disease eating holes in their brains might not be able to stop themselves from hurting other people.

But I still can.

THE LINE’S SO LONG, IT TWISTS THROUGH THE
metal guardrails that have been set up in the Foodland parking lot and around the back of a couple of army Jeeps and trucks. It goes all the way to the sliver of grass between the parking lot and the road, and that’s where I get in it, at the end.

“What’s the holdup?” A man who’s three or four people ahead of me snags one of the ration-disbursement workers as she passes down the line with an old-fashioned clipboard in her hand.

She frowns at him, distracted, her lips moving as her finger ticks off lines on the paper. “The supply train was delayed. They’re unloading it now; the trucks will be here soon.”

“We’ve already been waiting for almost an hour,” the man says.

She gives him a look. “Yeah. I know. But I can’t make
it get here any sooner, so maybe you need to take a deep breath and chill out.”

For a second, it looks like he’s going to say something to her, and it looks like she’s almost daring him to do it so she can get up in his face. Something in the flash of her eyes and jut of her chin makes him back down, grumbling under his breath. She looks at the rest of the line and counts again, tapping the clipboard, still frowning. Shakes her head.

That can’t be good. The trains have been late before, and that usually means bad news, but the way the ration worker looks, it must be
really
bad news. She gives the man who questioned her another glare and stalks off to the tables, set up for people to get checked in, just as the trucks finally pull into the parking lot. The line rouses, people shifting around, but then we all quickly relax. Nothing is going to move fast.

I’ll be here for hours. The woods were cool, but here in the open, the springtime air is warm and the sun overhead, blisteringly bright. It splinters into my eyes until, blinking, I press my fingertips to them and wait for the dancing spots to go away. My stomach is empty because I puked up the half a slice of bread I’d had for breakfast while scrubbing my hands clean of Tess’s blood in a scummy puddle of water gathered in a drainage ditch. Now I’d sit on the grass while I wait, but the line’s advancing just enough that I’ll only get a minute or two before I have to move. Better to keep on my feet in case I find out that once I’m down, I can’t get back up.

I’ve smoothed my hair and tried to make sure my face was clean as best I could, but my clothes are still dirty and shabby. I’m sure I reek. I tell myself I don’t look much different from most of the other people waiting in line, but it’s a lie that doesn’t make me feel any better. Everyone else in line is waiting for their government handouts, same as me, but I’m sure these people still live in houses with running water and electricity. They go to work, school, church. They go to the movies because there’s hardly ever anything on television, and even though everything in the theater is rereleases of movies that are years old, it’s better than sitting at home. None of them, I bet, are squatting in their childhood homes without power, relying on a generator for the barest of necessities and hiding from the roving patrols of soldiers who sweep the streets every few weeks. The patrols are supposed to be looking for uncollared Connies, but they spend a lot of time just driving around, sometimes shooting at stuff for the fun of it.

The woman in front of me looks a little like my mom. Same dark hair in a similar cut. But she smiles and murmurs hello, and the resemblance disappears as fast as a bone can break. My mom smiles a lot, but never at strangers. She has a few words, sometimes even complete sentences, but still communicates mostly through hand gestures—I’m sure it’s as frustrating for her as it is for us.

It’s been a few months since we got the collar off my mom just minutes before the soldiers would’ve taken
her into custody in one of their sweeps to reclaim all the Connies who had been previously released. They’d taken away Dillon’s mom and dad during one of those raids, and we haven’t been able to find anything about them since … but we know where they went. They took everyone to the Sanitarium. That’s what the Voice, the guy who broadcasts the underground radio show, calls the old veterans’ hospital. Like it’s some place for people in white lace dresses to cough blood into delicate handkerchiefs. And just like the old-time sanitariums, it’s a place where people go and don’t come back. It’s a research facility where they poke you full of needles, cut into your brains, and try to figure out what is going on. That’s not the official word, of course. People aren’t being stolen away in the middle of the night; they’re not being locked up in cages or experimented on. They’re simply being “taken care of.”

I don’t believe it, and a lot of other people don’t, either. We can’t get the Net, but the government hasn’t figured out how to completely block out underground transmissions. The broadcasts that share as much rumor as truth have been reporting about what they do to people who get taken away. The stories are chilling. Horrible conditions. Overcrowding. Experimental therapies. Neglect. Thinking about how my mom could’ve ended up there makes my stomach sick again.

“You okay?” The woman in front of me puts her hand on my arm, fingers squeezing gently. “You look really pale.”

“I’m okay.” Shaking my head’s a mistake, because it makes the world swim. I lick my lips, thinking of the water bottle that had been in my pack. It broke and emptied during the struggle with Tess. “Just thirsty. Do you have anything to drink?”

The woman tilts her face toward the bright sun, then at me. I can see her taking in my clothes, hair, the dirt I’m sure I missed on my face. When her gaze flickers toward my hands with the broken, filthy nails, I tuck them into the sleeves of my sweatshirt.

She takes a step away from me, her face going hard. “No. Sorry.”

I should’ve known better than to ask. It feels like begging. I straighten my shoulders and try not to think about gulping down a long, cold drink of water. There will be bottled water in my rations. I can drink then.

The line shuffles forward. I’m not the last one anymore. Behind me is an older man holding a little girl by the hand. She’s got red hair pulled into curly pigtails. Her clothes are clean but clearly hand-me-downs a few sizes too big. Under one arm she clutches a doll that’s seen better days. When she smiles at me, I smile back.

I’m so hungry, I feel like one of those cartoon characters who starts imagining everything as food. Dancing fried eggs and bacon, a giant chocolate bar. I press my hand flat to my stomach and try counting the cracks in the asphalt to keep my mind off the emptiness.

“… I hear they have peanut butter this week,” the woman in front of me is saying to the couple in front of her. “God. I haven’t had peanut butter in so long. I’m really craving a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.”

The man, who wears a clean and pressed pair of khakis and a white polo shirt with a blue cardigan, cranes his neck to see up toward the front of the line. His wife’s blond hair has a good couple of inches of dark roots showing, but it’s obvious she’s made the effort to style it. Her outfit matches his. Their shoes give them away, though. Both pairs have worn soles, cracked leather, knotted shoelaces. The scuff marks on the toes of hers have been filled in, probably with a Sharpie marker. Those shoes have seen a lot of use they weren’t meant for. Their cloth shopping bags, too, tell a story. These people aren’t just trying to be “green.” They’re used to carrying whatever they need with them.

The ground tips a little under my feet, and I close my eyes for a second against a rush of dizziness. The back of my neck is hot, and sweat drips down the line of my spine. So gross. My pits are swamps all of a sudden, but my hands are like ice. I take a step forward to keep my balance.

The woman in front of me twists to stare over her shoulder at me. “Are you
sure
you’re okay?”

“Yeah.” A gag strangles my answer. I swallow hard again. I’ve gone from hunger to nausea. You can’t run the way I did, fight the way I had to, without your body needing more than a slice of stale white bread and a handful of walnuts.

She flicks an uneasy glance toward the front of the line. There are only two soldiers there, both in full combat uniform, both carrying guns. Two others are at the back of the truck, passing out packages and cartons to the ration-disbursement workers manning the table. Another soldier stands by the front of the truck. Five isn’t so many to stand against the what, hundred? hundred fifty? people waiting to get their supplies.

If we all rose up, I think with sudden, fierce clarity, they wouldn’t be able to stop us from taking over the trucks. Cleaning them out of everything inside. Months’ worth of food instead of a few days’. I could take the truck, drive it away, drive it fast and far—

“You sure?”

I nod, blinking.

She gives me a suspicious glare. “Maybe I should get you some help.”

“No!” My shout turns heads and hurts my throat. I clear it. “I mean, no. Thanks. I’m okay. Just hot and tired and thirsty.”

She shakes her head. “You look terrible. I’m going to see if someone can help you—”

“NO!” This time, even the soldiers all the way at the front of the line hear me. My hand shoots out, fingers digging into the soft, doughy flesh of her forearm. “No. I’m fine.”

I’m hurting her. I can tell by the way she winces and her
eyes widen. For a second, just a second more, I dig a little harder. A little deeper. I can’t let her alert the soldiers to me. I can’t draw undue attention to myself. But that’s what I’m doing now, so I let her go.

She steps away from me, out of the line, rubbing her arm. Now she doesn’t look annoyed or pissed off. She looks scared.

“I’m sorry.” I sound miserable. “I’m just really hungry and thirsty, and it’s so hot. Please don’t worry. I’m really okay, I promise.”

The man behind me nudges my elbow to hand me a bottle of water. The label is faded, the bottle obviously refilled a bunch of times, but I gulp it gratefully. Some spills down my chin, over my throat, onto my shirt. I wipe it away and drink until the bottle’s empty. The little girl is staring at me when I’m finished. She doesn’t smile at me this time.

I hand the man the empty bottle. “Thanks.”

He smiles at me, but warily. “You’re welcome.”

The line has shuffled forward a few more feet. I feel better. Not great, but better. The woman in front of me is very carefully avoiding me, which is fine, since I’m embarrassed at how I overreacted. I can’t blame her for being freaked out. For all she knows, I could totally be ready to blow.

By the time I get near the head of the line, it’s easy to see the shaking heads and frowns. It’s not uncommon for the trucks to run out of the “good” stuff—peanut butter today, powdered milk or toilet paper on others. The Voice says it’s
not that the government doesn’t have enough to go around. It’s a way of controlling us in the places where more people became Contaminated than in others. The maps they used to show were color-coded. Green for areas of safety. Orange for midlevel Contamination. And the rest of everything, a deep, solid black.

Lebanon, Pennsylvania, is always entirely black.