The Farm (8 page)

CHAPTER TEN

Lily

The three chimes echoed through the frosty night air announcing that final curfew was ten minutes off. Joe and McKenna were nowhere to be seen. Mel and I had waited as long as we could. The plan had been to meet them beside the north wall of the gymnasium where we now sat. When Joe had left to go collect McKenna, he’d sworn he only needed twenty minutes to get her and meet us there. Then we would all leave together. That had been thirty minutes ago.

The thought sent a bead of sweat trickling down my spine, despite the icy wind that beat against the thin denim of my jacket, straight through my many layers of clothes. Mel’s humming didn’t help. It was some relentlessly cheerful tune I didn’t have room in my brain to try to place.

I’d given her the Valium right before leaving the room. Was that why she seemed so upbeat? The good news: she calmly followed me without complaint. The bad news: the song was grating my already frayed nerves.

The second set of chimes followed thirty seconds after the first. Joe and McKenna weren’t going to show. Less than an hour ago, Joe had been desperate to get off the Farm, but now, nothing. Something must have happened to them. I’d already given up Carter for lost.

I stood, pulling Mel to her feet. “We gotta go.”

For once, Mel seemed to understand exactly what I was saying. She stuck close to my side, not pulling away when I wrapped a hand around her biceps. Not even stumbling as we ducked out of the shadow of the gymnasium and crossed a bare, moonlit swath of grass toward the nine-foot-high chain-link fence that surrounded the football field, cutting it off from the rest of the Farm. There was another fence on the other side of the football field. We’d deal with that one when we got to it.

I hated how screwed up our plan had gotten. In a perfect world, we would have left the Farm just before dawn, when the fence was still off but the Ticks were already back at their nests for the day. I didn’t know where they went when the sun was up, but I knew they were nocturnal and we never saw or heard them then. Leaving at dawn would give us all day to find a working car.

This new plan scared me. Leaving at night was dangerous. Getting to a car would be harder. Even though I’d spotted several in the deserted side streets near campus, I just assumed if there were cars near the Farm, there would also be ones on the other side of the river. Could I get one started? Maybe. Showing me how to hot-wire a car had been my crazy uncle Rodney’s idea of great postgame Thanksgiving Day fun, much to my mother’s dismay. But that had been several years ago. Sure, I’d looked it up in the Farm’s library last month to review, but watching, reading, and doing were very different things. When the time came, would I remember how?

Pushing that concern aside, I focused on keeping Mel moving, hugging the fence until we’d reached a sprawling oak. The fence came within three or four feet of the trunk and the night was bright enough that the tree’s massive limbs offered some shadowy protection where they dipped close to the razor-wire-topped fence.

The stench of rotting garbage filled the air this close to the stadium. The Collabs dumped trash in the football stadium and the air seemed thick with the scent of their lazy neglect. But at least it overpowered the scent of death from the corpses left tethered beyond the Farm’s southern fence.

The lights on this end of campus had burned out long ago and the plump moon cast inky shadows across the weed-choked landscape. Something scuttled through the grass along the fence. Probably a rat. A shudder ran up my spine, but I shoved aside my revulsion.

I looked at Mel. “What do you say, Mel? Time to go?”

She didn’t look me in the eye, but muttered, “Red rover, red rover. Red rover, red rover.”

“Okay.” I squeezed her hand, suppressing my alarm at how icy her fingers felt. A norther was coming through. Like our timing wasn’t bad enough as it was. “Red rover.”

Yeah, we had the gloves and coat now, but I didn’t want her wearing them during our escape. They were both packed in the bottom of Mel’s pink bag. Maybe I was being paranoid, but it seemed too early for her to wear them anyway. Like maybe they would jinx us.

Mel’s mouth twisted into something that looked almost like a smile.

I tugged my collar up against the cold and then blew quickly on my fingers to warm them. Warning chimes rang in the distance, but I ignored them. I’d lost track of how many had rung. And it didn’t matter anyway. It was too late to turn back now. After flexing them a few times, I pulled my prized gardening shears out of my pocket. I just hoped I could use them to cut a hole in the chain-link fence big enough for Mel and me to slip through.

I hoped a lot of things. If we did get out, I prayed we wouldn’t run into any Ticks. We didn’t have much to fight them off with if we did. A few weeks ago, I’d thought about making modified Molotov cocktails to bring with us. After six months surrounded by chemistry textbooks and flammable chemicals, figuring out how to do it with what I had on hand was easy. I’d chickened out because I didn’t want Mel around anything that could blow up or burn her chemically.

Our mom used to have a saying: don’t give anything to Mel you wouldn’t hand to a toddler. So I’d scrapped the cocktails. Which left us defenseless, except for the gardening shears and the shiv. I tried to ignore the fact that both could kill Mel just as easily as they could a Tick.

We crouched low in the shadows and I got to work.

Most of the Farm was surrounded by two rows of twelve-foot-tall chain-link fences topped with razor wire. Here on the north side of campus, the abandoned football stadium overlooked the swollen Red River. There was an extra row of fencing between the stadium and the rest of campus. Beyond that, on the other side of the stadium, was the fence that was turned off each night. I started running through all those ifs in my head again. If we could get through this fence and the next. If we could swim across the river. If we could find a car. If we could make it to Uncle Rodney’s. If, if, if, if.

I clamped the blades of the pruning shears around one of the links and squeezed the handles, using all my strength to cut through the ifs. Finally I felt it yield to pressure then snap. One down.

Beside me, Mel rocked forward and back on her toes. “Red rover, red rover. Red rover, red rover.”

“Yeah, Mel,” I muttered, moving on to the next link. “Soon.”

By the time the long series of chimes signaled curfew, my arms were burning from exertion and sweat dripped down my temple, but I’d cut through a column of links about two feet tall. I wrapped my hands around the bottom corner, ignored the protests of my trembling muscles, and pulled upward, curling the edges of the fence apart.

As I stood back to survey my progress, I heard laughter coming from the other side of the athletic hall.
Shit.

A beam from a flashlight moved across the ground. A Collab. And he was coming this way.

How long ago had the last bell chimed? I couldn’t remember. I’d been concentrating too hard on cutting through the fence. I shot one last glance at the chain link. The gap wasn’t big enough to fit through. And if the Collab saw it, we’d be totally screwed. I shoved the fence back in place as best I could, then I grabbed Mel’s hand and pulled her away from the hole in the fence.

I tucked the pruning shears in my back waistband and tugged my jacket over them. We’d only made it a few steps when the Collab called out.

“Hey, you there!”

I ignored him, keeping my shoulders hunched as I shifted course and headed for the relative safety of the quad. Maybe I could claim I hadn’t heard the curfew chimes.

A hand grabbed my shoulder and whipped me around.

The Collab shone a flashlight in my eyes, making it impossible to see his features. Not that it mattered. One Collab was as bad as the next.

“We’re going to our dorm right now,” I said, hating the tremor in my voice. I shouldered in front of Mel and prayed the Collab wouldn’t notice anything strange about her.

“It’s after curfew,” the Collab said. He ran the beam of his flashlight down the length of my body. He chuckled. “You two could be in serious trouble.”

“We’re just running a little late,” I said, taking a step back. Mel stepped with me.

The Collab moved his light onto her, the beam traveling up the length of her body to her face. Then he barked with laughter. “Cool. Twins.”

His laughter made my stomach lurch with revulsion. Like most Collabs, he was soft around the middle from too much food and not enough exercise. Still, he was bigger than me. I took another step backward, but this time, Mel didn’t move. A glance behind me told me we’d been backed up against the side wall of the gymnasium.

“You know,” the Collab was saying, “I could bring you up to the Dean’s office.” Instead of threatening, his voice held a nasty undercurrent of suggestion. What a skeeze. “But I bet we can work something out.”

He swung his tranq gun off his shoulder. He held it one-handed, his stance lazily aggressive as he pressed the barrel to my neck then nudged it downward to part the zipper of my jacket. He flashed another stomach-churning smile. “I have always wondered about twins.”

In any sane world, a guy like this—all sweat and blubber—wouldn’t have a shot with one girl, let alone two. But it seemed unwise to point this out.

He looked at Mel and his expression soured. “What’s wrong with her? She doesn’t look like a Breeder.”

Before he could look at her too long, I knocked the barrel away from my chest. “Get away from me.”

Clearly the Collab wasn’t used to people talking back to him.

“Isn’t it bad enough you betrayed humanity by collaborating to feed us to the Ticks?” I stepped forward, not out of bravery, but so he wouldn’t have the room to raise his tranq rifle again. Surprise was the only advantage I had. The words poured out of me in a flood of uncorked resentment. “The rest of us Greens have no rights. But we have to put up with this crap, too?”

I got right in his face. He stumbled back a step. By now, adrenaline was pumping through my veins like battery acid. Fueled by six months of fear and one hell of a bad day, I reached up and shoved his shoulder, praying he wouldn’t notice that I was reaching for the pruning shears with my other hand.

But before I could grab them, the Collab overcame his shock.

He was in better shape than I would have thought, because he moved fast, grabbing my wrist and giving it a sharp twist. It felt like he was going to wrench my arm right out of my shoulder. I dropped to my knees with a yelp of pain but he kept twisting, pushing me face-first into the ground. He rammed his knee in between my shoulder blades. The sharp tip of the garden shears dug into my back. He was practically sitting on them. How could he not feel them beneath his leg?

I bucked against him, kicking with my legs. He raised up to flip me over. I let him, hoping I could get an arm back to the shears, but he was back down on me in an instant, his knees pinning my shoulders to the ground.

The Collab tilted his crotch forward so it was right in my face. He laughed. “I do like this.”

This close, his body odor clogged my nose, closing off my throat. I turned my head and saw Mel standing just a few feet away. Anyone else would have run for it. Not Mel. She was still staring up at the night sky, her gaze blank and out of focus, her head tilted just so, as if straining to hear the upper register of some distant tune. Why the hell had I given her that Valium?

Beyond the heavy thrust of my thundering heart, I could faintly hear the song she was humming. And I finally placed it. Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. She’d finally reached the “Ode to Joy” part at the end. What a great time for her sense of humor to pop up.

Again I tried to kick up, but my legs didn’t come anywhere near close to his back. With his knees on my shoulders and his legs on either side of my chest, both my arms were pinned. My left arm was almost beneath me. I could almost reach the gardening shears, but I needed more room to move. I bucked again, but the guy was like an anvil planted on my chest.

I thought of how Carter and I had fought just that afternoon. Carter was bigger than this guy. Stronger. He must have been taking it easy on me this afternoon. He’d been holding back, trying to keep me safe. This guy didn’t care if he hurt me. Maybe he’d even relish it. Suddenly panic flooded me. I was in serious trouble unless I could get my hand on those gardening shears.

His grimy fingers were mere inches from my eyes. His fingers were chubby. His nails rimmed with dirt or grease. He was stronger. He was armed. And—Christ—he was reaching for his belt buckle.

I blinked, trying to force down my fear so I could think.

He’d have to lift his hips off me to get his pants down—again, I had to choke back my fear. If I could get to the shears, I’d have to stab the Collab. If he didn’t make too much noise, I could steal his tranq rifle and shoot him. If he was out long enough for me to finish the work on the fence then maybe we had a chance. My list of ifs just got considerably longer.

I fumbled at my back, feeling for the pruning shears. My palms were sweaty and slipped on the handle, but I finally gripped them tightly as he yanked on his zipper.

“Let her go!” a voice called out.

I felt a flood of relief. Carter. Thank God.

The Collab and I both froze. The harsh beam from a flashlight cut across the darkness. For an instant it shone straight into my eyes, then it jerked away, bobbing up and down as he jogged toward us.

My attacker left his belt buckle dangling as he reached for his rifle. With the light slashing across my face, I could see nothing, only hear the steady thud-thud of Carter’s footfalls as he ran toward us. The Collab started to stand and I scrambled out from beneath him. He grabbed a hunk of my hair before I could get away.

“Oh. It’s you.” The Collab holding me let go of his rifle.

“Yeah. It’s me,” Carter said.

I waited for him to attack the Collab, but he didn’t make a move and didn’t even look in my direction.

Fear trickled down my spine. How the hell would this Collab know him? And why wasn’t Carter helping me? Was Carter a Collab?