Feast (8 page)

“And Dr. Masse? She died at the house?”

Ella nodded, and then spoke to Peter. “But it didn’t need to be done in front of the kids.”

“Couldn’t have been avoided,” Peter replied, anger creeping into his voice.

“Now, now,” Mason said. “I am not a fan of lover’s quarrels.”

“Sorry,” Peter said. “It’s all still...raw.”

“What about the girl with you?” Mason asked, shifting subjects.

“Sir,” Boone said, speaking for the first time since entering. “I was wondering if I might—”

“Let them answer, Boone,” Mason said. “Be polite.”

“Her name is Alia,” Peter said, and when Mason didn’t shush him again, he continued. “Daughter of Brant and Misha Rossi, owners of the first biodome we reached. I promised I’d look out for her.”

“What happened to the parents?”

“We were attacked.”

“More of those Stalkers?”

“ExoGen,” Peter said. “They were looking for Ella. They had a Black Hawk and two Apache helicopters.”

“And yet you survived,” Mason said.

“Not all of us,” Peter replied.

“And have you seen these helicopters since?”

Peter shook his head. “I told them she was dead. I think they believed me, but they tried to kill us anyway. The leader, a man named Kenyon, I think he had feelings for her.”

“Sounds like Dr. Ella Masse was a knockout.” He held a hand out to Ella. “No offense to you, Mrs. Crane. A woman with that much control over the opposite sex tends to bring trouble wherever she goes.”

Ella grinned. “I couldn’t agree more.”

A knock at the door turned everyone around. Boone opened it, revealing a nervous looking Stevie.

“Better be important,” Boone said.

“Gunshots,” Stevie said. “Three of them. Distant. Perimeter guards haven’t seen anything, but Roy and the others aren’t checking in. We’ve tried calling them a bunch of—”

Boone unclipped a handheld radio from his waist, flicked it on and spoke into it. “Roy, this is Boone, come back?” He lifted his finger and waited, listening to static. Then he pushed the call button again. “Roy, quit fuckin’ around. If you’re hearing me, you best answer. Over.”

When no reply came, Boone just looked to Mason.

“Go ahead,” Mason said. “But take Mr. Crane with you.”

Peter grew tense, but didn’t complain.

“Sir, I don’t think taking this—”

“Nonsense,” Mason said. “I believe Mr. and Mrs. Crane have been forthright in their answers to me, and while I still have questions that need answers, I don’t see any reason to refuse this man’s help…if he’s willing to provide it.”

There was no mention of the children, but everyone in the room knew Mason had them as collateral.

Peter stood. “I’ll do my best.”

“Very good,” Mason said, standing and offering Peter his hand. When Peter shook it, the older man added, “And don’t worry about your wife none. I’ll entertain her in your absence.”

Peter smiled and withdrew his hand. “Thank you.” He turned to Ella and said, “Be back soon.” Then to Boone, “Lead the way.”

When the two men had left, Ella turned back to Mason, whose smile had widened enough to reveal teeth as white as his clothes. “Well then, Kristen, what am I going to do with you?”

10

“Don’t look at them,” Jakob whispered to Anne, who was staring at the people sitting on the far side of the cell. He didn’t fully understand what made someone a Questionable, but he guessed they’d done something wrong to end up here. Sure, the people who ran the place had an obviously skewed sense of right and wrong, but that didn’t mean they only locked up nice people. Murder and theft were probably still jailable offenses, even to the morally ambiguous.

“They’re not going anywhere fast,” Anne said, not averting her eyes. “
Look
at them.”

Against his own advice, Jakob followed Anne’s instructions. She was a lot younger than him, but when it came to the wild world, she was far more experienced. That included dealing with people. While Jakob had spent two years holed up in a farmhouse with his father, Anne had lived in a large community, and then fled across the country with a group of people, including Eddie Kenyon, a man who turned out to be a little psycho. So he trusted her judgment. Not of their cell-mates’ character, but of their ability to cause him harm.

The three people sharing the concrete floor with them—two men and one woman—were in various states of living decay. The oldest of them, a skinny man with wispy gray hair, looked the worst off. He stared back at Anne with defiant eyes, as though he resented her assessment, but was still unable to prove her wrong. The second man and the woman, were huddled up together in the back corner, clutching each other, more afraid of Jakob than he was of them. They had the wide-eyed look of people who expected the worst to happen at any moment, probably because it often did.

Jakob’s fear turned to pity. What had these people endured? None of them looked dangerous, not even the defiant old man. They looked...normal. Emaciated and hungry, but normal.

“I’m Jakob,” he said to the group. When no one replied, he motioned to Anne and said, “This is my sister, Anne. And my...” he glanced at Alia. They had been romantically involved, to be sure, but they’d never had a discussion about official titles. What were they? Friends with kissing benefits? Girlfriend and boyfriend? Would they become more? Were they already? Maybe romance was accelerated at the end of the world, when there was no one else left? He decided to jump to the logical conclusion. “...my girlfriend, Alia.”

Relief flowed through his muscles when she smiled and gave a slight wave. It was corny, he knew, to be concerned about his relationship with Alia while they were being held prisoner inside a hostile compound, separated from his father and Ella, but... Well, hormones paid the apocalypse no attention. And with the whole world out to eat him, a little bit of teenage affection—Anne called it ‘obsession’—kept him sane. And that was a good thing. One of the few left in the world from his point-of-view.

No one replied. Blank eyes stared back. For a moment, he thought the three of them might actually be dead. Then the woman blinked.

Jakob focused on her. She had ratty-looking blonde hair that hung in clumps over her dirt-covered face. He’d seen the look before. Hell, he emulated it. “Were you living on the outside?” he asked. “In the wild?”

The woman’s eyes twitched.

“We were, too,” Jakob said. “At least, for the past few weeks. Our farm was attacked.” He hitched his thumb toward Alia. “Hers, too. Now we’re here.”

“And here you will stay,” the old man said, his voice rattling like he’d enjoyed a few too many packs a day. Jakob reassessed the man. Was he starving or just miserable from nicotine withdrawal?

“H-how long have you been here?” Alia asked.

The old man turned toward the couple. “Two years in the camp. About a week in the cell?”

“For what?” Jakob asked.

“Well,” the old man said. “I took too long with the lemonade. These two were caught...well, doing what men and women sometimes do. And if that sounds ridiculous to any of you, the only men and women allowed to engage in such activities are those approved by Mason, and that is generally relegated to Mason himself and a handful of his most trusted hands. Mason’s got himself a real harem inside that house. Most of them want no part in it, but they don’t really have a say anymore.”

Anne clenched her fists. “Why doesn’t anyone help them?”

The old man grunted like a cantankerous horse. “Most people living outside the house never see them, let alone communicate with them. I only know them because I worked inside, too. I’m a handy kind of guy, and I know my way around a kitchen. Was a line cook in Philly, for a while. Aside from his motley gang of enforcers and guards, I was one of the few men let inside the house. Mason believed I was too old to fraternize with his wives.” The man tapped the side of his nose with his forefinger. “More than a few of them know that’s not true. I might have twenty years on Mason, but the plumbing is still good, and I’ve spent more than a few nights tending to wounds inflicted by that man.”

He took a deep breath, and as he let it out, the fight that had been building in his voice seemed to melt right out of him. “This place could have been a blessing. There’s food enough for everyone in those domes. The walls provide safety. The human race could have begun again, right here. Instead, he took Hellhole Bay’s name to heart. Brought his own kind of hell to Earth.”

Anne seemed unfazed by the man’s doom and gloom. She nodded her head at the woman. “Why aren’t you, you know, in the house? Looks like you might be pretty under all that dirt.”

The woman’s eyes flicked to the man beside her, with whom she’d apparently had an unsanctioned relationship.

“You don’t need permission to speak,” Anne said. “From him or anyone else. At least, not while you’re already locked up. What more can they do?”

The old man guffawed. “I’m going to walk out of this cage. So will she, despite the scarlet letter Mason’s branded on her chest. His boys can still have their fun with her. But him...” He pointed at the younger man. “He’s either going to wither and die in this cell, be thrown out against the next monster that comes looking for trouble, or be used for target practice. Whatever the case, his end won’t be—”

“Shut-up,” the woman said.

“Carrie,” the young man chided.

“No reason to keep quiet,” she said, her Southern accent far thicker than the old man’s. “He’s right. They won’t do anything more to me, and there ain’t nothing I can say that will make things any better or worse for you.” She turned to Jakob. “John, here, thinks old Willie in the corner there, is a spy for Mason, on account of his life in the house. But he’s just as hungry and dirty as the both of us.”

“Why would Mason want to spy on you?” Anne asked.

“On account of him fearing a rebellion. Mason and his men make up roughly thirty percent of the compound’s population. The rest of us are kept hungry, weak and separate. Took me a while to figure out why, but it’s because he’s a paranoid man. A little food and respect would have made loyal servants out of us all, but he chose the alternate route, and now he fears us. Maybe even more than we fear him. So every now and again, he conjures up a reason to deem some of us Questionables. Throws us in here. Less frequently, he puts someone to death, and I reckon ol’ Willie is right about John’s fate.”

John, a twenty-something year old man who looked like he’d stepped into a hurricane and walked out the other side with a story too horrible to tell, let out an anguished sigh, but said nothing.

“They caught us screwing, dead to rights, but we’re just friends.”

Ouch,
Jakob thought.
Post-apocalypse friend-zoned. Harsh.

“Was just letting off some steam,” she continued. “And it’s not like anyone else was having a go. One case of the creeping crawlers and those boys had no interest in dipping their wicks. Good for me they didn’t know the difference between crabs and them little red spiders. Sprinkled ’em on and presto, I was a free woman. For a time, anyway. Now I’m here, still not planning an insurrection.”

“Maybe you should,” Anne said.

The three captives on the far side of the cell tensed.

Jakob almost shushed Anne. For all they knew, their cellmates could be there to determine whether or not newcomers were a threat. If they spoke of rising up against Mason, maybe these three would tell him? Even if they weren’t spies, they might tell him with the hopes of gaining his favor. Of course, Willie and Carrie had already confessed to several other infractions that Jakob could trade for favor.

When he saw fear creep into Willie’s and Carrie’s eyes, he realized that they were thinking the same thing. The duo had let their guard down, probably because they were speaking to three kids they’d never seen before, but now they had that terrified look of children caught looking at pornography.

Jakob held up his hands. “We’re not here to spy on you, either, I swear.”

“Why’s she talking about rebellion?” Carrie asked.

“Because I don’t like being caged like an animal,” Anne said, “and if there were a few more people willing to help, our Dad would—”

“Ignore her,” Jakob said. “She has an inflated opinion about what our father can do. You know how kids are.”

Anne kicked him, but didn’t say any more.

“Your father the big fella Boone was talking to?” Willie asked. “And that tough looking lady with him...that your mother?”

“Yeah,” Jakob said. It was far more complicated than that, but Jakob didn’t want to explain.

“Certainly looked as capable as the girl claims,” the old man said. “But if he’s a smart man, he’ll join up and do Mason’s bidding. Only real way to get the lot of you out of this cage.” He pointed a shaky finger at Alia. “Except maybe her. Racism runs deep in these parts. Only a few people with skin darker than a sun given tan are here, and that’s because they’re useful. Used to be more at the beginning, but these Questionable cells have seen a lot of use over the years. So my advice to you, young miss, is to make yourself useful.”

“B-but, I’m just a kid,” Alia said. “I don’t know how to do anything.”

“Better learn quick,” Willie said, “or lie and then learn quick.”

“It won’t come to that,” Jakob said to Willie, and then turned to Alia. “My father won’t let it happen.”

“Sounds like you have a little more faith in your old man than you wanted us to know, eh?” Willie tapped his nose again and gave a nod. “You have nothing to worry about from any of us. We’re already up shit’s creek. Might as well be in cahoots, too.” Willie leaned forward, elbows on knees. He moved faster than Jakob would have thought, more aged than emaciated. “Your daddy trust you?”

“Yeah,” Jakob said.

“How much?”

“As much as anyone can,” Jakob said.

“And he’s a good man?”

“The best,” Anne said.

“Says his daughter.”

“I only met him five weeks ago,” Anne said.

Willie grunted and met Jakob’s eyes. “She telling the truth?”

Jakob returned Willie’s gaze, trying to get a read on him. Was he crazy? Was he a spy? Was he exactly what he seemed to be—an old man sick of living in a literal hell hole without much left to lose? “Yeah. He’s honorable, if that’s what you’re asking. Nothing like that Mason guy.”

“That’s exactly what I was asking,” Willie said. “Now then, let’s talk insurrection.”

“Thought you said there wasn’t one,” Anne said.

Willie grinned and looked to John, then Carrie, who returned his smile and nodded. “Well, there is now.”