The Lair (11 page)

We had no way of knowing who—if any of them—would have the regenerative gene. We had to be sure that the people who died today, stayed dead.

I would do it myself. Every cell in my body rebelled at the thought. It made my stomach wrench and my skin crawl, but I would do it. Because I couldn’t ask anyone else to do it for me. Because I had to be sure. And because I was the leader.

This job—this horrific job—fell to me and no one else.

Besides, the deaths of those thirteen people . . . their blood was on my hands. If I’d been here, I wouldn’t have been able to stop it, but I damn sure could have fought. I couldn’t have saved all these lives, but I could have saved some of them.

Yeah, the girl I loved was safe, but at what price? Even worse, part of me was glad Lily had been shot.

If she hadn’t been shot then she would have been here this afternoon when the Ticks attacked and I knew how she would have reacted. She would have jumped right into the fight.

It was one of the things I loved about her—her complete refusal to back down from a fight, even one she had little hope of winning. What if she’d been one of these Greens who had died senselessly? The thought literally made it impossible to breathe. It crushed me.

“You okay?”

I turned to see Merc walking out of the caves. “Should I be?”

Merc didn’t meet my gaze. “No.”

“You and Taylor didn’t run into any trouble?”

“We only got here about ten minutes ago. Taylor’s fine.”

I nodded, but didn’t comment. Thank God Taylor was alive. As horrible and unthinkable as this was, Base Camp couldn’t function without Taylor. This attack might break us. I knew that, but without someone to keep what little electricity we had up and running, we would all be dead.

Merc nodded toward the bodies. “I figured . . .” He gestured and only then did I realize he held an ax in each hand. The blades gleamed in the weak afternoon sun. He’d just sharpened them.

“Yeah,” I said, because I couldn’t say anything else aloud. I held out my hand, palm up. “I’ll do it. Just keep the parking lot clear for a while. But I’ll prepare the bodies for disposal myself.” Besides, if I did the work alone, no one would notice when I puked my guts out midway and cried like a friggin’ baby afterward. “You go on in, Merc.”

Merc slanted me a wtf
look and handed me one of the axes on his way to the bodies.

Merc wasn’t the kind of guy who talked a lot, but he followed orders and never hesitated to step up. Even to do what had to be the crappiest job on earth.

Back in the Before, before this whole nightmare began, I never would have conceived that my job description would have included chopping the heads off my murdered friends.

I’d sworn to protect these people. Some of them were just kids. Kids I’d personally rescued out of Farms. And now, they were dead and it was my job to defile their bodies. I couldn’t even bury them afterward.

As cold, hard, and rocky as the land was up here, it would take days to dig enough graves and there were too many bodies for a funeral pyre. We couldn’t afford to burn that many trees. The absolute best we could do was load all the bodies into the back of one of the trucks and drive up to a nearby ravine and drop them over. Even though I would never have asked Merc to help, I was glad he was there.

All those times I’d played “Assassin’s Creed”—all the times I’d thought how badass it was to swing a sword—all those points I’d racked up, none of that could have prepared me for the first swing of the ax. This wasn’t the first time I’d done this, but it never got any easier.

We worked in silence. It was gruesome, terrible work. No matter how many times or how many ways I told myself that it had to be done, that it was honoring the human this body had been, I still hated it. It made me feel like a goddamn serial killer and I just freaking hated it.

It helped, somehow, knowing Merc hated it, too. We both threw up more than once, but we worked quickly and were finished loading the bodies into the back of the truck within an hour.

Afterward we cleaned up the best we could. Out by the tree line, the dirt was sandy and there were a few dry patches. We used that to scrub off most of the blood so that we wouldn’t waste precious soap. We had both worked barefoot—shoes were too difficult to clean and too hard to come by if they were ruined by blood splatter—and despite the cool weather, we both stripped off our shirts and scrubbed them in the dirt, too. Sand absorbs a lot of blood.

A little bit off in the woods, we had set up a primitive bathroom. Water, which we pumped up from Bear Lake, was stored in a tank. There were tubs for washing up and a gravity-fed shower. There was very little privacy, which didn’t matter much because it was too miserably cold for anyone to linger out there. Usually, people signed up for time in the bathroom weeks in advance. Today it was predictably empty. I washed out all my clothes myself and Merc did the same. I put my jeans back on wet.

The last thing we did before going in was shovel buckets of sand across the stains in the parking lot. It helped. A little. The stains would fade slowly, from the concrete and from people’s minds, but covering up the blood made it possible to pretend today hadn’t happened.

I couldn’t look anyone in the eyes as we walked back into the caves. I thought about what Lily had said about the Roman generals who led the charge into battle, who were the first to kill and, if need be, the first to die.

After today, that didn’t seem like bravery or even stupidity. Charging into battle seemed smart, because the general who died in battle never had to bury his own men.

Because this was the stuff you never got over. This was the stuff that haunted you until the day you died. The stuff you never thought you could do but did anyway, because if you didn’t do it, who would?

But through it all, through the horror and anguish, through the bitter cold and aching muscles, I felt this awful relief, because at least Lily hadn’t been there. Because as hard as
this
was, there was nothing on earth, no fear great enough, no horror bad enough, no promise binding enough that would have given me the strength to do this to her.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Lily

Carter might have called after her, but she didn’t stop. If she had, she would have lost it. She couldn’t have stopped to look at a single body. She just couldn’t. Because none of them would have been just bodies. All of them would have been Mel.

She would have been back in that church parking lot where her sister had had her heart ripped out of her body while Lily stood by, unable to do a damn thing.

If she had stopped for even a moment, she never would have recovered. And the last thing Carter needed was for her to go completely catatonic on him. Especially when she’d just spent the last several hours trying to convince him that she could handle herself and whatever was outside base camp.

So she bolted for the cavern, each step making her more nauseated. Her head spun and so did her stomach. Whatever drugs Dawn had given her had messed with her system, but still she ran.

She thought she’d be okay once she made it inside, but there was more blood there. Not on the ground like outside, but on the people. Those thirteen were not the only victims. The Ticks had caused a lot of damage before they’d been brought down.

That’s when the panic set in. When it hit her that those bodies out there weren’t Mel, but real people. People she knew. People like Shelby. People like McKenna.

Oh, God.
McKenna.

Heart beating wildly, she scanned the crowd for McKenna’s distinctive, swollen belly. She didn’t see McKenna among the victims in the triage area, but she hadn’t looked at any of the bodies outside. She hadn’t stopped to make sure none of the victims were pregnant.

She ran for the door, only stopping to brace herself against the wall when she reached the exit. One of the Elites—some guy whose name she couldn’t remember—stood by the door. She sucked air into her lungs, trying to stop her head from swimming. Damn it, she hated feeling weak. Too out of breath to talk, she waved a hand at the door, gesturing for the Elite to let her out.

“Sorry, Lily. No one goes in or out.”

“What?”

“Carter’s orders.” The Elite’s expression was grim. The guy didn’t even look at her. “He’s taking care of the bodies.”

“But . . .” she stammered. He shook his head.
Oh God.
What if McKenna was out there? What if she was dead? What if she had died out there while Lily was off playing Joan of Arc? What if she never even saw the body, because she’d been too much of a coward to look at the victims?

She pushed herself away from the wall. “You have to let me out.”

“Can’t do it.”

“I’m looking for”—Her voice broke and a sob rose up. It took everything she had not to collapse right there—“for my friend McKenna. Maybe you’ve seen her, she’s—”

“Everybody knows McKenna.” Finally he looked at her, a flash of sympathy in his gaze. “I helped cover the bodies. I didn’t see her. I can’t promise, but—”

“Thank you.” She turned back around and surveyed the open cavern, looking one more time for McKenna’s form. The cavern was packed. It looked like every Green and Elite was either out in the triage area or over by the KP station. No one wanted to be alone. But she still didn’t see McKenna. That’s when she really ran. Past the tables at KP where the uninjured clustered, past the pallets someone had laid out on the hard, stone floor, past the dozens of injured Greens and Elites. She practically flew through the cavern so that it passed in a blur of blood-soaked clothes, anguished cries, and fearful whimpers.

Lily’s eyes moved frantically over the crowd, cataloging the wounded without really seeing them.

What would she do if McKenna was hurt?

But no. McKenna couldn’t be hurt. She just couldn’t be.

Fear pounded through Lily’s veins as she wended her way through the honeycombed cavern. Anxiety, cramps, and pain all mingled in her gut so that by the time she reached their RV, an Itasca Sunrise with the double teal stripes, she had to bend over at the waist and spit a mouthful of bile onto the hard rock of the cavern floor. She pressed a palm to her side as she straightened, willing her stomach into obedience. Her stomach muscles were cramping from her burst of running, and the pain from her gunshot was so intense it was like fireworks bursting behind her eyelids, but she dragged herself up the three steps and threw open the door to the RV.

“McKenna?” she called.

“I’ll be out in a minute!” came a voice from the RV’s bedroom.

Oh, thank God.

Lily’s knees gave out and she slid to the floor, her back against the closed door. She was shaking. Not just a little tremble in her hands, but shaking all over. Every major muscle group quivered as wave after wave of adrenaline swept through her. She clutched her legs to her chest, desperate for warmth, and cursed the cold humidity of the cave, sure she would never be warm again. Not after the months of living under this damn mountain. Certainly not after seeing all those bodies. Not after fearing that someone else she loved might be dead.

She had no idea what McKenna was doing in the bedroom, but she was glad for this moment of solitude, this chance to pull it together before she had to face her friend. She needed to be strong. Not just for McKenna, but for herself, too. If she cracked now, she’d never be able to put the pieces of her shattered self together again.

She didn’t know how long she sat, burying the tears and panic deep inside. When she felt a little steadier, she pushed to her feet and walked to the bedroom. She needed to make sure that McKenna was okay. She needed to see for herself that her friend was uninjured.

“Are you okay?” she called through the door.

She could hear McKenna moving around in there, but she didn’t answer. Lily asked again.

“I’m fine!” she called back, her voice far too cheerful under the circumstances.

“Are you sure?” Lily asked.

Why would McKenna be hiding in the bedroom? Was she hurt? Crying? Possibly huddled in the corner, a broken emotional mess?

She swung open the door to find McKenna bustling about the tiny little room, grabbing things from the built-in storage and jamming them in a duffle bag.

“What are you doing?”

McKenna looked up, a towel clutched in her hand. She gave an exaggerated wince. “I’m packing to leave.”

“I can see that.” Lily didn’t need to ask why. Probably everyone left at Base Camp was considering bailing. But where would they go? As dangerous as it was here, wasn’t it more dangerous out there? “Are you hurt?”

“No.”

“Not at all?”

McKenna stood, grabbed the bag she’d been packing, and managed to sweep past Lily, even though she was waddling and there was barely room to walk, much less sweep. “I’m fine. Not a scratch on me.”

“But the Ticks—”

“Don’t like pregnant blood, remember? They didn’t even sniff in my direction.”

Lily got another hit of adrenaline. “What the hell, McKenna? Why were you even out there? Why not just run in here and hide? It’s what I would have done.”

McKenna’s gaze hardened. “No it’s not. You’re not a coward. You would have run into the battle and fought.”

“No one expects you to fight, McKenna. You’re pregnant. You’re—”

She whirled on Lily. “I was right there by the door when the fight broke out. I just grabbed a stake and I ran out and I did it. And it didn’t matter. The girl that thing was killing was already dead and the battle ended so quickly. And it had already killed so many; what I did barely made a difference. They’re so much faster and stronger and—”

McKenna’s voice broke and she sagged against the cheesy Formica counter. It was like all the energy just sapped out of her, and she crumpled to the ground. She brought her knees as close to her chest as she could and braced her elbows on them, hiding her head.

Not knowing what else to do, Lily went and sat beside her. She placed a hand on the back of McKenna’s head. She could feel her taking in deep, ragged breaths.

“McKenna, I—”