The Farm (18 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Lily

This escape plan just kept going from screwed up to worse.

Mel’s scream cut off abruptly. Either she’d run out of air or she, too, had recognized the howl and panic had choked her. But the grunts and moans of a struggle still came from whoever had tried to hold Mel back.

Carter was right behind me now. “Keep moving,” he barked.

I’d only stopped for a moment and sure as hell didn’t need to be told twice. I moved as quickly as I dared, hand over hand, still not letting loose of the fence entirely. Knowing what was on the other side of the river, I wanted to risk swimming across even less.

Then another howl joined the first. And another. They yipped and yapped, like dogs, dissonant and eardrum piercing. Still moving, I glanced across the river. They were there, right at the edge of the river. Outlined against the dawn sky, they were all shadow and darkness. Their chests were massive and bulging with muscles, their arms out of proportion with the rest of their bodies. The disparity made them look clumsy, but they moved with surprising agility, dancing along the bank, desperate to attack us but unwilling to jump into the river to get to us. Even in the darkness, even from so far away, their features looked horrific. Or maybe my mind was superimposing the images I’d seen on TV onto the Ticks across the river. I imagined I could distinguish the grotesquely distended jaw. The inhumanly large teeth.

One of the Ticks held something in its fist. A lifeless, decapitated nutria, I realized with a jolt of revulsion. It shook the nutria’s body in frustration.

I jerked back around, my hands suddenly pouring with sweat, despite the cold. I couldn’t look at them. My heart clenched at the very wrongness of them. My hands trembled and my fingers slipped on the icy metal. Another howl split the frosty air, this time much closer. From this side of the river.

Carter was right at my side, keeping me moving.

“Get them in the car!” he shouted to whoever was still struggling with Mel. To me, he said, “Keep going.”

“What do you think I’m doing?” I snapped.

“I think you’re panicking. Let go of the fence. I’m not going to let you fall.”

I didn’t let go, but tried to move faster.

There was more howling. Closer.

We were only a few feet away from the edge of the fence now and Carter grabbed my hand before I could grab the fence again. “There’s a gap and insulators between this fence and the other one, but that corner post is electrified. You have to let go now.”

For a second, I stood there looking from the cliff to the electrified post. Just once, I wanted to face a dilemma where at least one of the options wasn’t a horrible death. I swallowed hard and edged toward the corner. I could feel Carter’s hand around my arm, but it offered little reassurance. If either of us slipped, we’d both go.

Ten heart-pounding seconds later, I was at the post. The electricity pumping through the fence hummed like the sound you hear walking past a mountain laurel in the spring when it’s buzzing with bees. I held my breath as I crept past, felt it pulling at me, trying to suck me into it. If I so much as brushed the metal, the force of the jolt would propel me off the cliff, no slipping required.

Then we were both around the fence. Carter’s hand was at my back as we ran for the car. The howl of a Tick came from somewhere on this side of the river. Too close. I could hear the thundering of its uneven gait as it plowed toward us. Ahead, the doors of the car were open. One of the people had climbed inside. The other was trying to force Mel into the car. She was struggling and making a soft keening noise of protest, much softer than the wail of the Ticks that flooded the air.

“I’m here!” I yelled to Mel. “Get in the car, Mel.”

Whoever had been trying to get her in abandoned the job and hopped in, slamming the front passenger door behind him. Then we were there at the car and Mel, Carter, and I all seemed to tumble in through the rear passenger door.

It was some kind of crossover SUV with plenty of legroom between the seats. Still, my calves rammed the running board and my shoulder clipped the seat as I landed on Mel. Carter just grabbed the arm of the seat in one hand and the edge of the door in the other as he jumped onto the runner.

“Go! Drive!” he yelled to the driver even though he was barely in the car.

And for just an instant, I thought he was being overly dramatic. But then the driver threw the car into reverse just as something slammed against the back of the vehicle. Tires squealed as the Tick we’d hit yelped in pain.

Mel scrambled out from under me and I jerked my legs the rest of the way into the car. I scuttled farther in on my hands and knees, desperate to make room for Carter. Another creature hit the car just as he got the door closed. And then another. This one landed on the roof and the sound of crunching fiberglass seemed to echo in the momentary silence.

Then there was the roar of tires and several people shouting at once and Mel whimpering and I could barely hear any of it over the thundering of my own heart.

Mel had folded herself into the tiny space of floorboard behind the driver’s seat. She had her legs pulled tight to her chest. I was beside her, on my knees, my arms braced on the nearby seats as the SUV picked up speed, bumping over the uneven ground of the field near the fence. Carter was right behind me, still shouting orders to the driver I hadn’t even seen yet.

“Faster! Get on the road. It’s just ahead.”

“Stop yelling at me!” screeched a panicked female voice.

“There’s one on top,” he said, ignoring her. “You’re going to have to shake it off.”

As if to punctuate his order, the creature scraped its nails across the roof of the SUV. A hand slapped the window above Mel’s head. It looked so perfectly human, I nearly cried out.

“Take a hard left. Now.”

The driver started to turn, but Carter stepped over me, half knocking me down so I went face-first into the seat. I couldn’t see anything but cream leather upholstery, but he must have jerked the steering wheel from the driver, because the SUV made the hard left Carter had ordered. For a second the car spun and the tires squealed. The sound of something sliding across the roof followed, punctuated by an inhuman yelp as it was flung off.

A moment later the SUV bumped and jerked and landed on smooth road. The engine roared as the driver accelerated.

“Where do I go?” she asked in a trembly voice.

Carter panted, stepping back over me and then dropping into the open seat. “Just drive. West for now. We’ll cross over the river in the next town.”

“I don’t know—” She broke off, clearly on the verge of tears.

“Away from the rising sun.” He placed a hand on my back, his touch gentle.

“West? Don’t we want to go north?”

“We won’t go west for long. The safest place to cross the river is about an hour away.” He searched my face. “You okay? Sorry I knocked you over.”

I straightened, unkinking my body. “I’m fine. Mel, how are you?”

She just looked at me, shaking her head, her eyes wide and terrified.

“We should all get buckled in,” Carter said. “You two take the middle row. I’ll climb in back.”

He climbed over me to the third row of seating and a second later I heard the clicks of buckles coming from the front seat and the back.

Numbly, I knew he was right, but I didn’t have the energy to move, let alone coax Mel up into the seat. She sat on the floorboard, her bright pink backpack still on her shoulders. I barely spared a thought for the mysterious passenger and driver. I pulled the armrest up on the seat beside me and sank into it, legs wedged between the seats to leave room for Mel. Her low keening had subsided and she rested her head on my knees. I hesitated for a second, then let my hand rest on her hair. I waited for her to flinch, but she didn’t. For once she needed to be touched. I knew how she felt. I wanted to pull her into my arms and hug her tight, but for now, this would do. It was better than nothing.

I slouched there, staring blankly at the empty seat beside me for several heartbeats before its significance registered. Then I sat bolt upright. “Oh, my God, Sebastian! Where’s Sebastian?”

“He stayed behind,” Carter said from the backseat.

I ripped my gaze away from the accusingly empty seat to glance back at Carter. There wasn’t a lot of room in the third-row seat and he’d angled his legs across them. The seat belt was strapped across his lap. His eyes were closed, his head tilted back. If I hadn’t just heard him speak, I would have thought he was asleep.

“What do you mean he stayed behind? He stayed with those—” But my voice shuddered as revulsion crawled up my throat and my mind raced. How many Ticks had attacked our car? Was it three? Four?

I knew better than to hope that we killed any of them, even the one the driver had thrown off the roof.

“We have to go back for him! Turn around.”

I felt the driver ease off the gas, then Carter sat up and barked, “Don’t slow down. Don’t turn around. We can’t go back.”

Realizing Carter was the one I had to convince, I shifted over to the empty seat so I could talk to him better. “We can’t just leave him there.”

“Sebastian chose to stay behind.” Carter scrubbed a hand down his face, then straightened, opening his eyes. For an instant, his gaze flickered to my hands. “He stayed behind because . . . somebody needed to close the hole in the fence.”

“The hole in the . . .” I started to ask, but I let the question trail off. The hole in the fence was five feet tall. No way was anyone going to be closing that hole. Not without serious equipment. Not while three or four Ticks sat by and patiently waited to gobble him up. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

Then I glanced down at my hand and the smear of blood on my palm. “Oh.”

He hadn’t come because of me.

“Don’t worry about it,” Carter said gently, following the direction of my gaze. He reached out and took my hand in his, running his thumb across my palm as he studied the cut. He fished a clean rag out of his pocket and dabbed at the blood. His face looked lined with worry. Or maybe just exhaustion. “Someone needed to stay behind. With that many Ticks around and a hole that big, they would have found it. Even as dumb as they are. Sebastian stayed behind to make sure the Collabs got the hole closed and the fence turned back on. He didn’t want to leave the Farm vulnerable.”

“But—” I frowned, thinking it through, remembering what Carter had said about Sebastian. He so didn’t seem like the type to sacrifice himself to save a Farm full of Greens. “Will the Dean try to capture Sebastian?”

Carter snorted. “I’d like to see him
try
.”

“Was that the plan all along, for Sebastian to stay behind?”

“No. The plan was to climb into a sedan and cheerfully drive off into the sunrise. Even leaving this way, we should have had a clean getaway. This close to dawn the Ticks should have all been off trying to find nests for the day. Looking for somewhere quiet and dark. I don’t know why the plan went all to hell.” Carter scrubbed his hand down his face again.

I looked down at my hands. The bleeding had stopped. I’d thought my hands were just sweaty, but . . . “I must have actually cut myself on the fence as we were leaving,” I mused aloud.

Mel’s hair was shiny and smooth where I’d stroked her head. In the milky morning light, that was the only sign that I’d gotten blood in her hair.

Trying not to freak Mel out, I casually reached over and tapped the front-seat passenger on the shoulder. He and the driver had been quiet until now. “Hey, can you check and see if there are any napkins in the glove box?”

“Um . . . sure.” The guy hadn’t said a word before now, and I’d been too preoccupied to notice him. But as soon as he spoke, I recognized him.

“Joe?” I leaned forward and around the seat to get a look at him. I hadn’t thought much about the driver and other passenger until now. I guess I just assumed they were other people Carter knew. Though now that I thought about it, it made sense that whoever was on the outside of the fence was someone Mel knew. That was how Sebastian had gotten her to leave without me.

“Yeah.” He nodded. “Um, hi, Lil.” Then, without even glancing at me, he started rummaging in the glove box.

After our escape, after running from the Ticks and nearly not making it, his “Um, hi” seemed a little anticlimactic. Frowning, I looked at the driver. Surprise rocked me back in my seat. McKenna Wells.

For a long moment I didn’t get it. I just sat there, looking back and forth between Joe and McKenna. Then I started sifting through the conversations I’d had with him yesterday. There weren’t that many dots, but it took me way too long to connect them.

If Joe was here now, it meant he’d cut a deal with Sebastian. A deal that most likely had involved giving up our location so Carter could come find us. He hadn’t really believed I could get them all out of the Farm. Or maybe he just thought I wouldn’t do it. Either way, Joe had put his faith in Sebastian instead of us. Joe had sold us out.

I sank back in my seat. “Holy shit, Joe. I mean . . . I can’t believe . .
 
.”

I couldn’t even make myself say it aloud.

Joe had dropped his head into his hands. Then he straightened and thrust his hand back toward me, clutching a fistful of napkins. It took him a moment to speak, but when he did, his voice was firm. More resolved than I’d ever heard it. “I did what I had to do. I told you she was pregnant. I had to protect my baby.”

And instantly, all those words I couldn’t force out came gushing to the surface. “You betrayed us, Joe. You fucking betrayed us. You betrayed . . .” I felt Carter’s hand on my shoulder. I shook it off. “Christ, I can see you turning me in. But how the hell could you betray Mel? How could you—”

“Come on, Lily. This isn’t—” Carter tried to interrupt me.

I ignored him. “How could you? It’s Mel, Joe. Mel. What kind of monster would—”

“Lily, stop.” Carter’s voice was low. His tone, serious.

“No! I’m not going to stop.” My own voice rose, tinged with hysteria. Joe still held the napkins and I swatted them away. They drifted to the floorboard unnoticed.