New World Order (29 page)

Fadi rolled his eyes. “Pick it up.”

The handle had snapped in two. I jumped into the narrow hole, which was almost waist high, and squatted down to retrieve it. That’s
when I noticed the spade was shattered into five pieces. Working as fast as I could, I ran a finger along the edge of each piece to find the sharpest one. Since I was barefoot, the only place I could hide it was on my person. I tore a strip off the bottom of my shirt, placed the shiv against my thigh, and tied the strip around the shiv to hold it there. I pulled my pants back up just as Fadi came
to stand over me.

“Have you decided you like it down there, or are you coming out?”

I looked up at him, squinting against the sun. “I broke it. I was just picking up the pieces.”

He motioned for me to get out of the hole. “He needs another shovel,” he called over to Amos.

Within minutes I had another shovel in my hand. This time I didn’t dig into the dirt with as much vigor.

The sun
was low in the sky by the time Ryder showed up. Teegan was behind him, struggling to keep up with a water pitcher in her hands. The liquid sloshed over the sides and soaked her. A rosy, feverish hue colored her complexion. Her infection was getting worse.

She brought me water. “Thanks, Annie,” I said with a wink.

“How’s that hole coming along, Jack?” Ryder asked.

I drained the water and
handed the cup back to Teegan. “Not quite waist high,” I said with a smile. “Looks like I have a few more days of digging.”

“Ah,” he said with a wave of his hand. “You’ll finish up tomorrow.”

“It’s taken me three days to dig this far. By my calculations, I have another couple of days of digging before I can fit in there.”

Ryder gave me a toothy grin. “And your calculations would be right
if the hole were for you.”

My heart thumped harder, and I broke out in a cold prickly sweat. “Who the hell is it for?” I asked, not wanting to hear the answer.

“Annie.”

Blind rage sent me running at him holding the spade like a lance, prepared to kill him. The cocky bastard stood his ground, not budging. Before I could get to him, Fadi and Amos blocked my way, poised to seize the spade.
At the last second, I raised it and took a swing at Amos, clocking him in the side of the head. Fadi made a grab for me, but I body checked him into Ryder. Ryder staggered back, caught Fadi, and pushed him at me. Gripping the spade with both hands, I swung at Fadi, and as soon as he began to duck, I changed the direction and caught him under the chin.

A hot piercing sensation ripped through
my buttock, stopping me in my tracks. I looked down to see an arrow sticking out of me. Another one slammed into me. The devil’s blood took me under in seconds.

Sunny

I opened my eyes and looked around, wondering how long I had been asleep. My neck was stiff from the way I’d slept propped up against the rail. When I’d crawled into the back of the wagon
this morning, I figured the stench alone would keep me awake. It smelled exactly as I imagined the sewer in the Pit probably smelled. So I used my blanket as a barrier between the stained boards and me, balling Jack’s t-shirt against my nose to block the stench. Hayley raised an eyebrow when she saw the shirt, but I ignored her. She was still behaving sheepishly over letting her tough-girl exterior
slip when she had been almost eaten by a tiger, so I figured she couldn’t say much about my attachment to a piece of cloth.

The sun was warm today, even in its late afternoon position, and insects buzzed around the bears and us. In the wagon with me, Reyes was sprawled out flat in the middle with Summer tucked against him and using his shoulder as a pillow, and a still-unconscious Zach was at
the back, closest to the rumps of the beasts pulling us. From my position against the side rail, Hayley rode her bike across from me, and Jin-Sook and Eli were behind me, also riding bikes.

I kind of smiled when I remembered how mad Hayley had been when she’d found out the “heathens” (she’d whispered to me in a low tone) knew how to operate Dome vehicles. I was forced to confess that Jack and
I had borrowed a few from inventory and permanently loaned them to Dena’s barangay so they could have a little fun. That explanation hadn’t helped her mood any more than being forced to spend the day escorting our bear-drawn wagon with two heathens for comrades.

From behind my sunglasses, I studied Hayley. She had taken off her jacket and cap under the warm sun and she looked a lot smaller
without the added bulk. Her t-shirt hugged her lean, sculpted physique, making me wonder how much time she spent in the gym. Yet despite the tough image, her big brown eyes and the soft brown curls framing her face gave her a very vulnerable, feminine quality. She carried herself with a superior arrogance not uncommon among bourge upper crust, but after watching her yesterday I wondered how much of
that was an act.

I was still a little in shock that Reyes had comforted her after the tiger incident. He hated the bourge; she despised urchins. Water and oil, yet they somehow came together—if only for a few moments—even though awkwardness had set in when they parted. The thing was that those few
moments were
affectionate
. Not that I personally cared if they decided to start something with
each other. But on a greater scale, I figured if those two haters could overcome their prejudices enough to be friends, then there was hope for everyone else.

Hayley cast a sidelong glance at Reyes’ and Summer’s sleeping figures, and I quickly closed my eyes so she wouldn’t catch me staring at her. Then I remembered I had my sunglasses on and she couldn’t see my eyes anyway. I opened them again,
but her focus was back on the trail in front of her.

I knew there was no romance between my best friend and my ex. A few months after we had been liberated from the Pit, I gave Summer a little push toward Reyes. During my engagement to him, she had never been shy about telling me what a catch he was, so I let her know that I wouldn’t mind if they started a relationship. She laughed and assured
me that Reyes was like her brother. The thought of ever kissing him “that way”
was gross.

My neck really was stiff, and I finally moved, stretching it one way and then the other. A distant whirring, like that of a motor, made me sit up straight. I strained to make it out.

“You hear it too?” Hayley asked.

I nodded. “What is it?”

“I don’t know. It’s the second time today we’ve heard it.”

“Maybe we’re getting close to the city,” Eli said. “Ryder has quite a setup for recycling plastic.”

That perked me up. Was I close to Jack? I turned around to look at Eli. “How much farther, do you think?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “We haven’t come to the old city yet.”

“The old city?”

“I’ll know it when I see it,” Eli said.

I noticed sweat rolling down Jin-Sook’s face. She looked
to be in a lot of pain. I stood and stretched my stiff joints. “I need to move. Mind if I ride for a while, Jin?”

She didn’t hesitate. “Sure.”

Before I left the back of the wagon, I dug into my backpack, took a painkiller out of my first aid kit, and gave it to Jin as we switched places. We fell a little behind, but Eli stayed back with us to keep a lookout for cats. We caught up to the wagon,
and Jin-Sook hopped in the back. I pulled my bike alongside Hayley.

“You doing okay?” I asked.

She rolled her eyes at me. “Yeah, I know I lost my cool. Rub it in, Sunshine.”

I blew out a sigh. Did she ever switch off the tough-girl act? “I didn’t mean anything by it, Hayley. I would’ve been terrified by that cat too.”

“It’s just—” She stopped and closed her mouth tight for a moment.
“I sent my men away. It was stupid of me.”

It took me a second, but then the implication of what she’d said dawned on me. She had sent three of her soldiers to escort Wilcox back to the Dome, keeping only Zach and Jonas with her. Zach was unconscious, and Jonas had deserted her, leaving her alone to rely on a group of urchins and heathens when faced with death.

“Hopefully you know that you
can trust us now,” I said.

Her expression was contrite. “At least until we get home, right? Then we’re back on opposite sides of the fight.”

It wasn’t unexpected that war was on her mind. Ever since Reyes’ confession, I had been worried about the same thing. But it was surprising that she was bringing it up to me. At first I wasn’t sure how to respond. I didn’t agree with violence as the way
to resolve our issues, but I understood why the Pit would choose that route.

“Are you blaming the Pit for the fighting?” I asked.

She turned a sharp look on me, but within a few seconds her features relaxed. “I don’t know anymore. Alex, Jack, and I have been friends since we were kids. I knew something was—” She stopped talking and shook her head. “But Alex?”

My eyes shifted between looking
at Hayley and navigating the path in front of me. “You know something, don’t you?”

She heaved a sigh. “Just rumors. And I never act on rumors.”

I didn’t push her for more information. The thread of trust that was growing between us was too weak to support rumors. Better to deal in truths.

We drove in silence for a while, and I allowed myself the indulgence of appreciating my surroundings.
The trees were a little different from the ones I was used to seeing in the mountains, and their branches were thick with buds. There seemed to be more birds flitting through them and more animal burrows by their roots too.

Then we rounded a bend, and the sight that greeted us was so startling that I almost fell off my bike.

“What the—” Hayley breathed. At least she could form words. My
mouth was too busy hanging open.

“There it is,” Eli said. He smiled broadly at our expressions. “The old city.”

It stretched as far as the eye could see. Tall, crumbling spires rising out of the forest like monolithic giants, their iron skeletons broken and rusted to a bloody brown. I had never seen anything like it. The old city Jack and I had explored seemed like nothing more than a village
compared to the sprawling expanse of this kingdom. How many people must have lived there?
Millions?
More? Stark against the intense blue of the sky, the disintegrating spires were an ominous headstone for a civilization that had once ruled the earth.

The bears continued to amble on, unimpressed by the view, and Hayley and I grabbed the reins to stop them. It woke Reyes and Summer, and they
got to their feet.

“Holy crap,” Reyes said as he took in the sight.

“Is that the old city you were talking about?” Summer asked.

“Uh-huh,” Eli said.

“What was it called?” I asked. “Back before the War?”

“I don’t know,” Eli said. “All I know is that today it’s Ryder’s territory. Anybody caught looting there is as good as dead, so we’re going to avoid it. Our destination is about fifty
miles west of it.”

Zach’s groans distracted us. It had been almost forty-eight hours since he’d been shot, and we were all getting a little worried that he wasn’t going to wake up.

“Let’s take a break, and I’ll tend to Zach,” I said. It wasn’t that long ago that I had been shot, so the memory of how awful I’d felt was still pretty fresh.

We led the bears down to the river to drink and
rest. I gave Zach two painkillers, and he downed them with a full water flask and begged for more, but I made him wait until what he had in his stomach settled. Hayley looked after Jin-Sook, checking her stitches and giving her new bandaging. Summer volunteered to look after the bears. Eli, Jin, and Reyes waded into the river, and Reyes got his first fishing lesson.

A scream jolted us, and we
all reached for our weapons. I expected to see another tiger, but it was Summer throwing the plastic container of bear meat on the ground with disgusted horror.

“What is
that?
” she cried, pointing at the meat spilling out.

Hayley and I both hopped down from the wagon at the same time. Half of a hand—
a human hand
—was lying on the ground.

“Oh my God,” Hayley said.

“How did we not know what
we were feeding the bears?” I asked, and then covered my mouth with the back of my hand.

“Ew, ew, ew, ew!” Summer chanted as she ran into the cold river to wash her hands.

Reyes waded out of the river and kicked dirt over the flesh. “That’s sick.”

Eli clucked as if we were all nuts.

Looking at Eli, Hayley pointed to the human flesh. “You think
that’s
okay?”

Eli shrugged. “Recruits die,
and recruiters don’t let anything go to waste. Bears have to eat, and hunting and fishing for their dinner takes time.” He pulled up the net and took a couple of fish from it to throw to the bears. The fish flopped on the ground before the bears snapped them up. “If you’re going to throw the meat away, have you given any thought to what you’re going to feed them?”

“Yeah,” Hayley said. “Fish.”

“We’re going around the old city, so we leave the river from here,” Eli said.

“And you said Ryder’s city is fifty miles west?” I asked. He nodded. “If we feed them well now, they should make that distance.”

“What’s the plan from here?” Reyes asked.

“We’re in recruiter territory, so it’s time to be recruiters,” Eli said.

Summer glanced at the clothes I had swiped off the recruiters
and shivered in revulsion. “I get to be a prisoner, remember?”

“I’ll be a recruiter,” Reyes said, picking up a tunic and a pair of pants. He put them on over his suit.

“They’re a little small,” Hayley said with a barely concealed laugh.

The pants rode up at least five inches above his ankles, and the sleeves were not only too short but also stretched tight across his biceps. He struck a
pose and modeled the ill-fitting, filthy clothes. A giggle sprang to my lips, and for one fleeting moment I caught a glimpse of the boy who’d once stolen my heart.

“I can pull it off,” he said.

I shook my head. “I don’t know. You look ridiculous. Plus your exoskeleton is showing.”