Eat the Ones You Love (The Thirteen Book 2) (7 page)

“When I was dead,” she heard herself say, “I still loved him. I stayed away so he wouldn’t get hurt. So I wouldn’t hurt him. And when he did find me, and I was about to hurt him, I put a knife through my arm to stop myself. I never stopped feeling. If anything it got worse when I died.”

“I know,” said Faron.

“He’ll never feel that, will he?” The words were almost a whisper. Like they were an unutterable truth. “He’ll never love again. He’ll never want to.”

“He will if you let me help you.”

Jenny met Faron’s eyes. Pale blue eyes, pale skin, pale hair. She could see his pulse jumping in his neck. He was telling the truth. They’d done it to him too. Jenny looked at him for a long time. When she spoke her voice was flat, tired.

“I tried to help him before,” she said. “It never turns out the way I want it to. Everything goes to hell. I’m tired of caring about it.”

“So you don’t want my help?” said Faron.

“No,” said Jenny. “I don’t want anyone’s help.” She thought for a moment. “No, that’s not right. I don’t want anyone. Not you, not Declan, not Trix. Not your weird friends and definitely not some fucked-up corporation that’s holding my mom prisoner.”

“She’s not a prisoner.”

“I don’t want anything,” said Jenny. “I’m going to take care of Zeke because he’s the only one who seems to give a shit what happens to me. He’s the only one who doesn’t have an agenda. But when he’s better, I’m going to get him somewhere safe and then I’m done.”

“You’d leave him behind?”

Jenny knew Faron wasn’t talking about Zeke anymore.
 

“It hurts to be near him,” she said. “I feel like I’m picking up the pieces every day and he just doesn’t care. If I stay it’s going to break me.”

“You’re not broken,” he said. “I’ve seen broken, and you’re not there.”

“Maybe not,” said Jenny. “But if I stay, I will be.”

“Do you ever see the red?” said Faron. “Since you came back?”

The honesty of the question surprised Jenny and she took a moment to mull the answer.

“No. But sometimes,” said Jenny, “I don’t even think the world is in color anymore.”

EIGHT

The bunker was invisible even when you were right on top of it. Faron waded into a particularly nasty-looking mess of brambles, bent over, and then Jenny heard a noise like a soda bottle opening. He straightened, turned to her, and motioned for her to enter. Jenny ducked through a hatch concealed in the rock, then started down a seemingly unending staircase, covered in moss, the walls crawling with ivy and the occasional fern busting its way through a crack in the concrete. When the staircase ended, they started down a tunnel that crawled even deeper into the ground.
 

Vents above allowed dim, filtered sunlight through the dirt and plants and insects that crawled down through the slats and up through the drains set into the floor. The tunnel floor itself was sloped on either side with a center ridge, giving Jenny a sense of vertigo as she walked, only exacerbated by the dimness, the heavy smell of earth and mold, and the fact that she had to stoop to avoid hitting her head on the ceiling. As they continued deeper into the tunnel, the vents in the ceiling disappeared and they managed in pitch darkness.

Jenny was all too aware of Faron’s gun, strapped across his chest, the barrel slapping against the backs of his legs. They didn’t speak, which heightened her dread even further, and she felt a drop of sweat crawl down her back. He had said she couldn’t die. What if he wanted to put it to the test? She took a deep breath and blew it out through her nose. And suddenly she realized:
 

If Faron kills me, it’s all over. Everything. I’m done and I don’t have to do this anymore.

She felt a little more free then, a little less burdened. If he killed her, she wouldn’t have to run anymore. And if she wasn’t the only one, for lack of a better word,
altered
, then it wasn’t on her. They didn’t need her.

“Why did you ask me to come back with you?” she said. The close space of the tunnel deadened her voice, flattening it until it didn’t sound like her, but like a recording. She spoke softly, but he heard her all the same. She heard the steady rhythm of his step falter, before he recovered.

“What?” he said.

“My mother doesn’t care about me,” she said. “So if she made others like me, like you, what the hell do you need me for?”

“For your family,” he said. “Like I said. I can bring you to her.”

“Why travel all this way?” she said. “She’s in New York, right? What do you want from me?”

“Your mother—“

“Fuck my mother,” Jenny interrupted. “It’s something else, isn’t it?”

“You need to learn to trust.”

“Trust has brought me nothing but shit,” she said. “And I know a lie when I hear one.”

He only hesitated for a second. “It doesn’t matter if you trust me. I have the guns.”

“You can’t kill me.”

“Maybe not, but “I can sure as hell kill your friends,” he said.
 

“Glad to finally see your true colors,” said Jenny.
 

“I tried to be nice,” Faron shrugged, and she could tell he was smiling. She was going to wipe that fucking smile off his face if it killed her. She just needed time.

Her forehead smacked into something solid in the darkness, and Jenny staggered back from the door that marked the end of the tunnel.

“We’re here,” said Faron, reaching over her and turning a handle. There was a creak and a thunk and then she had to put up one hand to shield her eyes as light exploding out of the doorway blinded her. The smug bastard behind her was laughing. When her vision cleared, she saw that the light came from odd-looking bulbs set every two feet into the walls of a room. A circular room with a sofa and bookshelves and an open kitchen against the wall.

It looked like a home.

“What the fuck?” said Jenny.

“Welcome to the bunker, Jenny Hawkins,” said Faron, guiding her inside and closing the door. He locked it behind him, then pocketed a set of keys. He saw her watching and shrugged.

“Can’t be too careful,” he said.

“You think I can’t get those keys from you?” she said.

“Maybe you can,” he said. “But you’re going to want to take a look around.”

“Why?” said Jenny. “You’ve probably already taken anything worth a shit.”

“We didn’t take anything,” he said.
 

“Why should I care what my mom’s old house looks like?”

“Because it’s not just your mom’s house,” he said, grinning again. “It was Casey’s house too.”

Jenny looked away. Faron was watching her closely when he said her brother’s name. It felt like a violation. “Where is everyone?” Jenny said, too loudly, refusing to let him see her reaction. He didn’t get to watch her feel. “What did you fuckers do to Zeke and my friends?”

“Relax. They’re probably in the lab.”

“There’s a lab?” she said.

Faron rolled his eyes. “Have you even met your mother?”

There wasn’t even any dust on the painted concrete floor. The air, so dense and wet in the tunnel, was fresher here than it had been outside. There was a faint whir from the ventilation system. But Jenny was most interested in the lights. As she watched them, they seemed to flicker a bit.

“It’s gas,” said Faron, “if you’re wondering. It powers the filtration system too. It turns on automatically with the lights.”

“Gas?” said Jenny.

“Not gasoline,” said Faron. “Propane. There’s shitloads of the stuff. Buried tanks and whatnot. Enough to last for years if you’re frugal.”

Jenny looked at him. “You know an awful lot when you’re not acting like a freak.”

He shrugged. “It comes and goes.”

She walked through the room. There were no personal items belonging to her mother here. No pictures or scribbled notes. But then, Anna Hawkins had never been much for reminiscing. Except for the one letter, she’d never given her daughter so much as a birthday card. Any kindness she had received as a child had come from her father. Jenny ground her teeth. But her father was dead. As dead as Casey. He had to be. There was no other reason he wouldn’t have come back for them. She and Casey had been left alone with their mother and grandfather, along with a hundred other kids. Jenny had to believe he would have come for them. He wouldn’t have left them unless he had to. Unless he was dead.
 

“Where’s the lab?” said Jenny.

“Down this hallway,” said Faron. “Follow me.”

The hall went off the side of the kitchen. Jenny watched Faron’s giant gun bounce gently against his back. It was a mistake to believe they were anything other than hostages. Even though these newcomers hadn’t pointed the weapons straight at them, it was implied that they could at any time. Jenny understood Faron and even Angel. She couldn’t quite make out Rayanne yet. But Benji, that confused her. Unless he was the best actor in the world and he was playing her, she got nothing but a feeling of honesty from Benji. She couldn’t wrap her mind around him being a killer, a kidnapper who would hurt them to get what he wanted.
 

She stopped suddenly and Faron looked around. Jenny reached out and touched a door. They had passed two others, but somehow she knew.

“Go ahead of me,” she said.

“Don’t you want to check on your friends?”

Jenny could hear the murmur of Declan’s voice. She heard Trix call faintly. There was nothing wrong, no urgency in their voices.
 

“I’ll be right there,” she said. She didn’t want Faron to see her. She didn’t even want her friends to see her, where she was planning to go. Where she knew she had to go before she broke apart.
 

“Whatever,” said Faron, trying to shrug. But he was watching her too closely to pull off his nonchalance. He turned and walked slowly down the hall, glancing back at her before he turned a corner. Jenny waited for him to disappear before she reached out. She didn’t want to do this, but she had to.

She had to go into Casey’s room.

Closing her eyes, she turned the handle and went inside.

NINE

It had been months since Casey died. Since Jenny had buried him. And she hadn’t cried. Not really. She never had a chance to talk to anyone about losing him, with so much happening all around her: Declan died and came back; Zeke killed his step-father and was disowned by his mother; so many others were lost. Trix rarely talked about them, and she couldn’t cry anyway. Declan didn't talk much either, between his fits of rage and feeding frenzies.
 

But now, Jenny was here. She wasn't sure how she knew this was his room. Maybe it was a smell, or a sense of him prodding her subconscious. But now, as she stood in Casey’s room, dark as a cave, she didn’t even have to turn on the light to know he had been here. He was alive when he lived here, before their mother left him disappearing in the night, before he’d been bitten and died, before he even met Trix. Casey had been here. He’d lived here and slept here and eaten here.
 

He lived here.
Jenny kept repeating it in her head, like a song stuck on repeat. Casey was alive here. He lived. Lived. Lived. Lived.

She sank down to the floor, back against the door.
 

“Goddammit, Casey,” she said and the sob took her by surprise. She was filling up inside and it wasn’t anger or rage or hunger. She felt a warm wetness on her face and she realized she was crying, the tears gushing out of her eyes, and she was glad for the darkness.
 

“It was my fault,” she said. “It was my fault and you shouldn’t have fucking saved me. You should have let Declan put a bullet through my head. You should have let me die.”

If Faron was right, it wouldn’t have mattered. She’d still be walking around with a beating heart while everyone around her died, and came back to life, and then died again. An infinite loop of death and grief and guilt. And blood. Always blood. Jenny made her way to Casey’s bed, crashing into a small table and hearing glass shatter on the cement floor. She sat down on the cot that was steeped in Casey’s smell. She found the pillow that his head had lain upon and put it over her face. And then she finally mourned him, with an anguished, keening wail.
 

Jenny found the light switch after crying herself weak. One guttering sconce on the wall blazed to life. Jenny looked around, her mouth thick with tears and her body limp with exhaustion. A ratty, torn-up Sex Pistols poster was held to the wall with something sticky. It looked as though it had been folded multiple times. Casey probably found it at an Expo or traded for it. The cot had one thin blanket, and the small table that Jenny stumbled into, knocking over a drinking glass, had others stacked beneath it on the floor, as though Casey spent a lot of time in his room and didn't leave, even to wash his glasses.
 

Jenny walked over to a set of shelves against the wall. Most were empty, only a random sock and a torn and stained tee shirt left behind. The last shelf was full of battered paperbacks. Jenny smiled at the covers of the romances, with shirtless men and subservient women. A few well-worn graphic novels, some Heinlein, a
 
Stephen King, and The Stranger, by Albert Camus. Jenny opened to the first page: “
Mother died today. Or, maybe, yesterday
,” she murmured. Jenny held onto the book. There was nothing else here.

Casey was gone. All she had left of him was an old paperback.
 

“You look like shit.”

Jenny turned, catching her breath. “Casey,” she breathed. He grinned. “I knew it was you, I knew you were alive.”

“Except I’m not,” he said. He shrugged. “Still dead, still in your head.”

“I’m going crazy, aren't I?” She reached out to touch him and he suddenly wasn’t there anymore. Jenny’s heart sank.

“You can’t touch me,” Casey said, now on the other side of the room, sitting on the bed. There was no indentation on the mattress. It was like he was a…

“Ghost,” said Jenny.

Casey snorted. “You wish. Then you wouldn’t be crazy.”

Jenny sat down next to him.