Heartless (37 page)

“Jo! You’re crying! You thought you couldn’t cry.” Lucy lay atop my back, holding me tight like she had all those drunken nights ago.

“No tears,” I managed, in between sobs. “Less satisfying.” I forced myself to calm, counting backwards from fifty like my mother taught me so many years before. Slowly the sobs faded. “I think I can sit up now,” I said, and Lucy pulled me up. I opened my eyes.

My father and Eli stood together, against the wall. They held the flashlights, pointed down at us on the ground.

Beside me, Martha lay. Dead. A decapitated monster. I’d destroyed one of my own.

We could be destroyed. I could be destroyed. I
would
be destroyed.

I clenched my hand into a fist, trying to keep from screaming.

It didn’t work, though, and I screamed out into the darkness beyond the flashlights. Then I tried to turn off my super-hearing so I wouldn’t have to hear my own voice echo through miles of otherwise silent passageways. It didn’t work. I heard myself scream again and again and again.

Adam, too, lay dead beside Martha, a knife handle sticking out of his neck.

“Who did that?” I asked when I could speak. I looked at the two men against the wall, but they shook their heads and pointed to Lucy.

She flushed, and looked down. “I thought for a second about feeling guilty, but instead I feel proud. He’s a liar and a thief and a killer, and he can’t hurt anyone anymore.” The corner of her mouth turned up, just a little. “It’s a shame. He really was gorgeous.”

I lifted my head from my mother’s lap. “How are you?” I asked, staring into her eyes.

Her face was flushed and filthy, and her hair had fallen around her face and shoulders. Makeup ran down her face in rivers of mascara and eyeliner. But she was my mother, and she held my broken hands in hers. Somehow, in her grief, she looked younger, and more beautiful, than I ever remembered. “I’m here,” she said. “That’s all that matters right now. I’m here, and you’re here, and your father’s here, and we’re all alive.” She tried to smile.

“I’m so sorry I got you into this. I wish you were back home, safe.”

“Baby, there is nowhere else in this world I’d rather be right now than here with you.”

“But I’m a monster.” I looked from her face to my father’s. “A killer. How can you guys ever love me again?”

She did smile, then. “From the minute you entered this world, you’ve been nothing but trouble. You wouldn’t sleep as a baby, wouldn’t eat as a toddler, wouldn’t leave my side as a kid. Don’t even get me started on high school. But I’ve loved you every minute of every day, and nothing will change that. Not even if you become a murdering monstrosity.”

She leaned over and kissed my face.

She never even flinched.

Then she pulled me into a hug, and seconds later my father held us both in his arms. I felt safe and warm and hundreds of miles away from the tunnel in which we sat, lost and trapped.

But it didn’t last.

Eli spoke, and he sounded wheezy and ill. “I hate to break this up,” he said. “But do we know where Sondra is? She’s not here, and she’s not dead. And if I’m not mistaken, haven’t you mentioned some others? On their way?”

I pulled away from my family, wiping at my face out of habit instead of necessity. “How many guns are on the floor?” I said. “She had one. Adam had one. Tell me there are two guns on the ground.”

But there weren’t.

There was only one, still clutched in Adam’s stiffening hand.

Wherever Sondra was, she was armed.

And now that we knew I
wasn’t
the first monster-girl, we had no idea if Sondra was even human.

F
lashlights provided meager light in the bowels of the mountain where we sat, battered and broken but together.

“Do we just leave them here?” Lucy asked, stepping over the dead bodies. She kicked Adam’s as she passed it.

She was so strong, I envied her. Even though there was no physiological reason for it, I shook from head to toe. I kept picturing the ax slicing through Martha’s arm, her skull. I couldn’t believe I was a killer. I’d destroyed another life, such as it was, and I was horrified.

Add to that the fact that we still weren’t out of danger. I needed to get my family to safety.

Plus, I had another problem.

No one else had noticed yet, but there was a small hole piercing my chest, right through the center. While no one was looking, I stuck my finger in and felt the hum of my heart pump, and also a hole right through its center. It already hummed a little slower, a little less consistently.

I didn’t have much longer.

My father pulled the gun, a small one that looked like a track meet starter pistol, from Adam’s dead hand. I stood beside him. My mother and Eli were unarmed, as was Lucy.

Lucy looked at us, then back down at the bodies. The ax was still imbedded in Martha’s neck, and I made no move to remove it. Nor did she look willing to pull the knife from Adam’s throat.

“Well,” she said. “We need weapons. More than just one gun anyway. I’m going to hop back up there and see what I can find. Jo, care to give me a boost? Just watch my ankle, okay?” She smiled and winked.

“Why not?” I stepped away from my father’s side and tossed her up through the trapdoor. Without the chaos around me, I heard more of the tendons popping and bones creaking than I’d heard earlier, but it was still surprisingly easy.

She turned on the light, and everyone jumped. The additional illumination settled on the pools of blood and embalming solution surrounding the dead, and I shuddered. My mother put her arm around me, but I could feel her trembling, too.

Eli stood below the trapdoor. He was stiff, partly bent at the waist, but he craned his neck upward to look into the vault. “Maybe grab some of that food we saw. It’s been a while, we could probably all use a snack.” He glanced at me, and then looked down. “I mean, most of us. Sorry, Jo.”

“No problem.”

“You sure?” Lucy called. “Didn’t Mr. Hall say it looked old?”

My father nodded. “Yeah, that stuff looks like it’s been up there since I was a kid. I think you can wait.”

“But look at this!” Lucy appeared at the hole in the ceiling. She dropped down a rope, a shovel, and a baseball bat. It was an old one, wooden, and I picked it up. It felt solid in my hands, like it belonged there.

Eli picked up the shovel, and my mother the rope, although she looked at me and whispered, “I have no idea what she expects me to do with a rope!”

When Lucy dropped back down, she held a garden hoe. “I’m not sure where they were planning on putting the garden, but they were prepared. There are seeds up there, and all kinds of other gardening things. I guess they thought they’d celebrate the end of the world by growing a victory garden?”

“Well, if nothing else, I feel pretty invincible with my shovel,” said Eli, but with the way he winced as he spoke, he looked anything but invincible.

“We need to get you to a hospital,” my mother said to him.

I tried not to be sad about the fact that even she knew a hospital couldn’t help me.

My father came up behind me and draped his jacket over my shoulders. It came halfway down my thighs, and I buttoned it up to make him happy.

We headed back the way we’d come. It was much easier for the group now that we had some light, but the twists and turns were still difficult to navigate, and the floor was less than smooth. We had to move slowly, carefully, and by the time we reached the room in which I’d awoken, I was running low on battery. There was no sign of Sondra Lewis. She’d disappeared completely into the darkness.

I sat down on the table and my mother plugged me in. I felt better as soon as the electricity flowed in, but the flow was no longer steady. It came in fits and spurts, like I was short-circuiting somewhere. I knew it was my heart pump, not doing its job.

I could tell that, even plugged in, I didn’t have much longer.

But there was no reason to tell anyone else that. Not then.

I looked at Eli. “You need to get to the hospital as soon as we’re out of here.”

“No.” His voice was flat.

“Yes,” I said, glaring at him. “You’re hurt. You need some help.”

“If I go to the hospital, they’re going to ask what happened. If I tell them what happened, they’ll come for you. If they come for you, you’ll die. And I’m not ready to say goodbye, after all we’ve been through. I love you.”

My mother walked to him and put her arm around him. Her eyes were again filled with tears. “I’m not ready, either. I’ll never be ready. But Jo’s right. You need to go.”

My father nodded. “We can tell them you were in a fight. We can stall long enough to give Jo a chance.”

“A chance at what? I don’t know what chance you all think I have.” My voice, though much repaired and more like the old me, was still harsh.

“A chance to stick around a little longer,” said Lucy. “A chance to be with us some more.”

I nodded. “Let’s get out of here first. Get me back to the dorm. Then I want you all to go with Eli to the hospital, and then to the police. I think I need some time by myself.”

“I understand,” my mother said. “But I’m not leaving your side. I hope you realize that.”

“I do.”

Eli grew angry. “Don’t I get a say? Don’t I get to choose when I say goodbye?”

“Eli, I love you. I’m sorry things worked out this way, I really am. But I’ll be around for a while yet. There’s no way to tell when my battery will run out for good. I need to know you’re safe before I go.”

R
ight before we were about to leave the lab to find the rest of the way out, Lucy pressed something into my hands. It was a sheath of papers, spiral bound, covered in a thin, transparent layer of plastic.

On the cover: The Order of the Adversaries It was their manifesto.

“This’ll be great for the cops,” I said, and everyone nodded.

And so we left. The way out was simple. A few sterile, fluorescent-lit hallways, and suddenly we were at a door that opened onto a campus parking lot. It was a back entrance to the campus police station. Parked near the entrance were three large, gray vans, like the one that filled me with such dread. These were newer, cleaner, still sparkly, even in the snow, but they were the same. And we were only minutes from my dorm. Something about that sight, the vans parked at the police station, terrified me.

But at least it was quiet. No one was nearby, as it was dark and, once again, snowing. Streetlights glowed faintly in the distance, but we were protected by darkness.

Adam’s cruiser sat right next to the door.

“Who’s driving?” Lucy said, and she opened the door.

“Not me. But I can ride in the trunk.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

In the end my father drove, with Eli beside him in the front seat, directing him to Calvin Hall. Lucy, my mother, and I sat in the back seat, squeezed together like little girls out for a fun afternoon outing.

“Jo,” Lucy said, and I wondered what was coming.

“Yes?”

“No offense, but you really stink.”

“I love you, too,” I said.

When we got to the dorm, Lucy ran ahead to clear the way for us, but it was conveniently mid-term week, so most people, in my dorm at least, were inside studying. We snuck in easily through the side door and headed up to my room.

I settled immediately onto my desk chair and plugged myself into the wall socket. I could barely feel the current anymore.

No need to tell them that.

“Okay, you guys. I’m safe. Dad, you’ll take Eli to the hospital now?”

“Yes, baby. Sit tight. We’ll be back soon. I’ll see you soon, Champ.” He looked like he was about to kiss me, then reconsidered. I didn’t blame him in the least.

Lucy looked at me, and I could tell. She knew. “Eli, I’m gonna stay here with the girls, okay? I’ll get my ankle checked tomorrow,” she said, taking his hand for just a second. He nodded. He had no idea.

But he walked to me anyway, every step looking more and more painful. “You’ll be okay?” he said, and he rested his hand on my cheek for a moment.