Cured (22 page)

I shake my head. “No. I said I wouldn't, and I didn't.”

“Then how do you know there are raiders in this neighborhood?” His gaze moves slowly over me, searching every inch of my body, as if it will give him the answers to his questions.

“The day you locked me in the shelter so you could meet my friends at the lake, I found the tunnel and followed it to your house. Fo and I were watching you through the telescope.” I unzip the top pocket of my vest and take out the wire initials, placing them in my palm and holding them out for him to see. “Why did you dress up as a vagabond and come to my house?”

Kevin stands perfectly still and stares at the letters. Then his eyes locked on mine. “Jacqui Bloom,” he whispers. He steps away from the window, strides up to me, and puts his hands on my shoulders. “I went to your house to see you.” He speaks fast, so fast I almost can't understand him.

“Me?”

He nods. “Every time you gave me food, I could see how big of a sacrifice it was for you to part with it. It made me want to know more about you. The day you gave me applesauce, and then started crying because you didn't want to give it away? That's the moment I started to fall in love with you. Every time I saw you after that, I fell in love with you more, until it felt like I was living for the days when I got to see you, and the rest of my life was just spent waiting for those days.” His words are still rushed, so rushed I wonder if I've heard him right. I don't have time to ponder what he said because he blurts, “And now, I need to kiss you one last time.”

He takes off his hat and leans toward me until our foreheads are touching, staring into my eyes like he's seeing all the way to my soul, and I can't stand it. I grab his face in my hands and kiss him. He tastes like salt, and all I can think is how glad I am that the raiders didn't catch him, how glad I am that he is right here with me, safe. How glad I am that I made it down the mountain in time to warn him.

His hand moves to the back of my neck and squeezes, hurting my scabbed bullet wound. I pull away from him. For a moment, he studies my face, but then his eyes focus on a point above my head, and he takes a deep breath of air that fills his lungs until the buttons on his shirt start to strain.

I turn and look behind me, trying to see what he's staring at, but there's nothing. “Kevin?” He won't look at me. My skin starts to crawl. “What's wrong?” I whisper.

He puts his hands on my shoulders and gently turns me around so that my back is to him, and then he pulls his hat onto
my head, tugging the bill low over my eyes. His hands trail across my shoulders and down my arms. I close my eyes and try to shake the feeling of wrongness growing in me. When he gets to my wrists, his hands stop. He tugs my arms behind my back.

“I'm sorry,” he whispers, his lips against my ear, and then something rough and scratchy circles my wrists, cinching them together so tightly my skin chafes. I jerk away but he's holding me tight. He takes the gun from my belt, and then my knife, and just like that, I am disarmed and restrained.

I whirl around to face him. “Why in the world are you tying me up?”

He tucks my gun into the waistband of his pants and slips my knife into his pocket. Taking my shoulders, he turns my back to him again and grips my arms. “I'm a raider, Jack.”

His words jolt me. “But you don't have any raider markings.”

“The better to catch unsuspecting prey.” His hands tighten on my biceps. “I'm the ‘wolf' that Flint warned you about.”

Survival mode kicks in. I ram my head backward and feel a crunch on the back of my skull. Next, I stomp on Kevin's foot. When I try to run, he digs his fingers into my skin until I yelp.

“For future reference,” he says, “don't try to headbutt someone who is eight inches taller than you.”

I twist in his arms and lunge, head bowed, ramming him in
the stomach. He loses his footing and falls backward. His head crashes into the copper chandelier, and then somehow he grabs me and
I
am the one falling. My head crunches against the hardwood floor and my vision blurs.

He's straddling me with my bound arms pinned over my head. I can hardly lift his weight to breathe, so I lie there, stunned, staring at the swinging chandelier. The throb of a deep voice floats into the house through a broken window and my heart soars with hope. “Bowen? Jonah?” I yell.

Kevin shakes his head. “It's the raiders. Pretend you don't know me.” He grips my upper arm and climbs to his feet, pulling me up with him. And then his entire face changes. The muscles under his skin seem to harden and turn to cement, and the corners of his mouth turn down.

The front door opens. “Yo, Kev,” someone calls.

“Over here.” Kevin's hand tightens on my arm.

Three men and a dog file into the dining room, crowding it.

“So, did Lil' Red Riding Hood get caught by the big bad wolf?” one of the men asks. He's the youngest of the group, probably a few years older than me, with a shaved head and a black goatee that's braided halfway down his chest.

“Yep.” Kevin's hand tightens on my arm to the point of painful, and I can't help but think about the food in his shelter. What was it Bowen said? The raiders pay several years' worth of food for a female like me? I wonder how many women Kevin has sold in exchange for his enormous food supply. I want to barf. I
ate
some of that food.

The dog, a German shepherd, starts barking and lunges at me, snapping its chain taut before it gets close enough to sink its
teeth into my flesh. The man holding the dog's chain pulls it until the dog is restrained at his side.

“That was fast,” the goateed man says, holding his raider-marked hand out to Kevin for a high five. “How'd you catch him? We thought you might need backup.”

Kevin slaps the guy's hand. “Stupid boy walked right up to me.”

Goatee Man looks me over and sneers. “We thought he might be tough like those other two.”

Those other two?
He's turned Jonah and Bowen over to the raiders. Hot, violent anger scalds my insides. I thrash against Kevin's hold on my arm, kicking him in the shins, trying to knee him in the crotch. He grimaces and holds me at arm's length but doesn't loosen his hold.

Goatee Man laughs. “He looks kind of on the scrawny side. And young. Do you think it's worth it for us to take him to headquarters? I'll put him in the crosshairs right now and save us the trouble.” The raider lifts a rifle that's strapped to his back and points it at me. I stop thrashing and stare down the barrel.

“He's tougher than he looks,” Kevin says. “But you're right. He is young. Maybe we should let him go. Unless he wants to join us?” Kevin shakes my arm. “You want to join us, kid, and be a raider?”

I spit on Kevin for an answer, though like in all things currently happening in my life, my spit falls way short of what I intended. It hits the edge of his sleeve.

Kevin frowns at my spit. “He doesn't want to join. Just let him go and save ourselves some trouble.”

Goatee Man grins. “Let him go? Let him
go
? Let's set him loose in the foothills and use him for target practice!”

I whimper. The dog growls, its lips curling up to expose yellow teeth. Goatee Man's eyes light up, and he rubs his hands together. “Better yet, let's bring him to the compound and use him for throat-tearing practice.”

“Oh, man, Striker, now you're thinking,” the raider holding the dog says. The third raider, a grizzly man with a long gray beard, glares at me and leaves the house.

“What's throat-tearing practice?” Kevin asks.

“That's right. You haven't been around the compound for a while,” Goatee Man—Striker—says. “Have you met that new guy, Soneschen?”

I clench my teeth. That is a name I will never forget.

“Soneschen? Is he at the compound?” Kevin asks.

Striker nods.

“You mean the guy who used to be the governor of the walled city?”

“Yep,” Striker says, beaming with pride.

“What does Hastings think about that?” Kevin asks.

“Hastings hasn't killed the guy, so that's something. Believe it or not, Hastings has been less violent since the women got away. He's only beat one guy to death this week.”

I shudder.

“In fact, Hastings and Soneschen have been working together. You know Hastings's little science experiments?”

Kevin nods.

“Soneschen figures it's time we started training them for
better things. He also says we need something to take our minds off the missing women. This kid is just perfect.” Striker grabs the scruff of my neck and yanks me out of Kevin's hands. “We left your supplies on the porch. Catch ya next week, Kevman, if we don't see you sooner.”

I am being herded out of the house. Striker is squeezing the back of my neck like he's trying to make my head pop off. The dog growls at me and snaps when I walk by, but the leash-wielding raider yanks it away.

Striker opens the front door and a gust of wind whips Kevin's sweatshirt against my chest, making all the bulky pockets of my vest bulge against it.
Please don't take my vest!
I think. Because for now these guys think I am a boy. I duck my head, letting the brim of Kevin's hat hide my face even more, and walk down a cracked and crumbling cement driveway.

Earlier, when I got to the water tank, I thought I didn't know what to do. I was wrong. Then, I had choices.
Now
I don't know what to do. I am completely defeated.

“Wait,” Kevin's calls. A burst of hope fills me. In my mind's eye I can see what he's about to do—pull my gun from his belt, knock off the raiders and their dog with four perfect shots, run to me and untie my hands, and then tell me he did all of this because it was the only way he knew to save my life. I turn and watch him, his head held high, his hand on my gun as he strides out of the house. The wind blows loose strands of his dark-copper hair across his face so he whips his head to the side. He opens his mouth to speak, and I tense for the boom of gunfire.

“I'm coming with you guys. I want to see what neck-tearing practice is.”

My hope shatters, leaving me filled with so much despair I can hardly lift my feet, but somehow I do. I make my feet walk in a straight line down the middle of the street. The wind lashes dust and sand against the side of my face, so I turn my head away. Something hard crashes into my cheek, forcing my face back into the wind.

“Eyes forward.” Striker lowers his rifle.

Kevin steps up beside me. “Listen to him,” he says, voice rock hard. But I don't want to. And I
really
don't want to listen to Kevin. I grit my teeth and taste blood and kick the side of Kevin's knee as hard as I can, sending him sprawling.

The ground leaps at me. I am on my stomach and someone is smashing my face against pavement, grinding loose gravel into my cheek. “First rule of the raiders: you never lay a finger on one of us,” Striker says. “You touch one of us again and I will shoot you in the leg and leave you to die.” He pushes my face harder and then drags me to my feet. I blink sand from my eyelashes, stare straight forward, and walk.

We come to a fork in the road and turn left, but instead of continuing forward, we turn left again, onto a driveway that is covered with the dark shadow of tire marks.

I peer up at a two-story house covered with fractured tan stucco. Armed men are staring down at me from second-story windows, so I look away. The dead grass in the yard has trails worn into it, and, where it isn't covered with dog crap, is filled with shallow holes. The man with the dog goes into the yard and hooks the dog's chain to a spike in the ground.

“Yo! Open up!” Striker bangs the butt of his rifle on the garage door. A motor hums and the door rises, exposing two four-wheelers and a side-by-side in front of a wall lined with red plastic gas cans. We walk between two of the vehicles and up some steps that lead into a small mudroom.

The first thing I notice are the glaring electrical lights. Next, I notice the purr of a generator. And then the smell hits me—man smell—and not a good soap/cologne/aftershave type of man smell. Something more along the lines of sweaty armpits, greasy hair, athlete's foot, dirty butt, and teeth that haven't seen a toothbrush in years.

I am shoved through a doorway, into the next room, and I forget about the smell. I have stepped into raider central.

Raiders are everywhere, packed into the house like sardines—eating, cleaning weapons, sleeping on the filthy carpet, standing at windows with binoculars. I want to run and never look back. I want to faint. I want to pee my pants.

In a corner of the room, beside a cold, ash-filled fireplace, sit Bowen and Jonah, their hands tied behind their backs. Jonah's face is bleeding, his blind eye swollen shut. Bowen's eyes meet mine, and I can hear him curse clear across the room. The raiders, all greasy and burly and armed, turn and look at me and the room goes silent.

Someone starts laughing. “Is that scrawny-assed kid the person Morrison saw running down the foothills?” Other raiders laugh. “Why don't we set him loose and use him for target practice?”

Striker puts his hot, damp palm on my shoulder and towers over me like he owns me. “I have a better idea.” He cups my chin in his hand and slowly tips my head back. I'm too scared to protest, to fight back. And I hope and pray they can't tell that I'm female. His fingers caress my neck and I squeeze my eyes shut. “Let's bring him back to the compound and volunteer him for neck-tearing practice.”

The raiders explode with conversation, ignoring me so completely I might as well have just died. Their eyes gloss over as they start betting food, clothing, and weapons on how long I'll last.

One man steps up to me and puts his beefy hands around my neck. I flinch and wait for him to tear it, but all he does is measure it, and then hold his fingers up in a small circle. He frowns. “I don't see how he's even worth betting over. Look how tiny his neck is!”