This Savage Song (24 page)

“Tell me something,” said Kate.

The pain in her body had finally settled into something low and pervasive, but that was proving to be worse, because it made her want to fold in on herself, on the world, and that didn't work behind the wheel of the car. August sat silently beside her, looking out into the darkness as they passed from the yellow into the green, and finally from the green into the Waste. If he noticed the shift, he didn't say anything.

There wasn't a strict boundary, some bright billboard to announce that you were now leaving V-City. There didn't need to be. It was the transition from manicured lawns to wild grass, the change from streetlights and nice houses to
nothing
.

UVR lines carved out the road—not from overhead but set into the pavement below—and made the night beyond look solid. They were on the Eastern Transit,
one of four supply roads that led from the capital all the way to the Verity border. Kate tried to imagine what they looked like from the sky, ribbons of light running like compass spokes away from V-City. From that angle, the Waste would register as a massive black ring, a two-hundred mile buffer between the capital and the subcities that hugged the periphery, each little more than a speck of light compared to V-City's beacon.

Apparently the transit roads used to be packed, back in the days before the Phenomenon, when travel in and out of the territory wasn't restricted, and then after, when people tried to evacuate the city, only to be pushed back by those who already lived outside it. These days the Waste roads were largely bare, save for the semis carrying shipments between subcities and the capital.

It was a dangerous job. The Waste
looked
empty, but it wasn't. Not many Malchai came this way, but the Corsai loved to hunt in the dark and pick off anything they could, from a cow to a family of five. The monsters that ventured this far out served no master, and the people who braved the Waste were just as lethal. Survivalists, mostly, scavengers who raided homes and stole from semis. These were the people who didn't have the money to buy Harker's protection, the ones who didn't want to fight for Flynn and his task force, or die on his moral high ground. They didn't want anything to
do with V-City. They just wanted to stay alive.

But the dead zone didn't go on forever. She'd spent most her life on the other side of the Waste, and she knew that out ahead there was a place where razor wire gave way to open fields, and the high beams trailed into starry nights, and a girl could grow up in a house with her mother afraid of nothing, not even the dark.

“Tell me something,” she said again.

August had been sitting there, his eyes fixed on the night, his fingers tapping out some kind of short, staccato rhythm against his leg. Now he glanced toward her. His face looked strangely hollow, his eyes feverish. “Like what?”

“I don't know,” she said. “A story?”

August frowned. “I don't like stories.”

Kate frowned, too. “That's weird.”

“Is it?” asked August.

Kate drummed her nails on the wheel. The paint was chipping. “Yeah. I mean, most people want to escape. Get out of their heads. Out of their lives. Stories are the easiest way to do that.”

August's gaze escaped to the window. “I suppose,” he said. It was maddening how little he talked, how much she wanted to. She switched on the radio, but the signal was already full of static, so she snapped it back off. The quiet gnawed at her already fraying edges.

“Say something,” she whispered. “Please.”

August's jaw clenched. His fingers tightened on his pants. But he cleared his throat and said, “I don't get why people are always trying to escape.”

“Really?” said Kate. “Take a look around.”

In the distance beyond August's window, the nothing gave way to something—a town, if it could be called a town. It was more like a huddle of ramshackle structures, buildings gathered like fighters with their backs together, looking out on the night. The whole thing had a starved dog look about it. Fluorescent lights cut glaring beams through the darkness.

“I guess it's different for me,” he said, his voice taut. “One moment I didn't exist and the next I did, and I spend every day scared I'll just stop
being
again, and every time I slip, every time I go dark, it's harder to come back. It's all I can do to stay where I am. Who I am.”

“Wow, August,” she said softly. “Way to kill the mood.”

That
won her a small exhausted laugh. But by the time it left his lips, it was already fading. He turned his face away, and Kate flexed her fingers on the wheel and kept her eyes ahead. Pain sparked across her stomach every time she breathed. Beside her, August was quiet, coiled, eyes on the night.

“What happened to her?” she asked, trying to distract them both.

“Who?”

“Ilsa,” she said. “She doesn't seem . . . all there.”

August rubbed his fingertips over the tallies above his wrist. “She's never been
all there
,” he said. “For the longest time I thought . . . I thought that was just her way. Scattered. I didn't get it until recently.”

“Get what?”

“It's who she is,” he said. “It's
what
she is. Cause and effect.”

“You mean it has to do with the catalyst?”

August nodded. “Sunai are the result of tragedies,” he said, “acts of horror so dark they upset the cosmic balance. Leo came from some kind of cult slaughter in the first weeks of the catalyst. This whole group thought the world was ending, so they threw themselves off a roof. Only they didn't go alone; they dragged their families with them. Parents. Children.”

Kate let out a shallow breath.
“Christ.”

“No wonder my brother is so righteous,” he said softly.

“Ilsa was different,” he continued. “Emily—Henry's wife—she told me the story. Ilsa came from a bombing in the basement of a big hotel in North City.”

The Allsway Building,
thought Kate.
Harker Hall
. You could still see the scorch marks on the walls.

“It was right after the chaos started,” he said. “Not
even weeks,
days
. Days of confusion and terror. They didn't even know yet what was going on, but something got inside that place, and the people who managed to get away all went to the basement. They huddled down, just trying to stay alive. Barricaded the doors. But someone decided that if they were going out, it wasn't going to be at a monster's hand. That someone brought a homemade bomb into that basement with them and lit the fuse.” August shook his head. “No wonder my sister broke apart.”

“And you?” asked Kate. “Your brother is righteous, your sister is scattered. What does that make you?”

When August answered, the word was small, almost too quiet to hear. “Lost.” He exhaled, and it seemed to take more than air out of him. “I'm what happens when a kid is so afraid of the world he lives in that he escapes the only way he knows how. Violently.”

Silence, so heavy it hurt.

August leaned his head against the window, and the glass began to fog with steam. A bead of sweat ran down his cheek, and Kate reached to turn on the air, when the car made a sound.

It wasn't the kind of sound a car should make.

August straightened.

The engine stuttered.

“What was that?” he asked.

The car began to rapidly lose speed.

“Oh no,” she said.

And then it died.

A light on the dash was blinking. The high beams were still on.

The rest of the car was dead.

“Shit,” muttered Kate.

“Kate,” ground August through his teeth. “What's wrong with the car?”

“It's out of gas,” she said, already swinging open the door. She was digging in the trunk by the time he got out and joined her.

The night was cool but it wasn't enough to dampen the fever. “You couldn't have picked one with a full tank?”

“I'm sorry, I was a little busy trying not to die.” Something like a groan escaped his throat. “It's fine,” she said, producing an HUV flashlight.

“How is this fine?” he growled, anger burning through his chest, flaring with every breath.

“We'll find a ride,” said Kate, keeping her voice even, as if the calm would help.

August wheeled on her. “Do you
see
a ride?”

“What the hell's gotten into you?” she shot back.

August opened his mouth to say “
nothing
” but he couldn't, and the urge to shout was fighting with the urge to hit something, so he turned and walked away, trying with every step to steady his breathing, calm his heart, knowing that panic would only spread the sickness faster.

His feet carried him down the line of light at the edge of the road. He wasn't going anywhere really, just moving.

Mind over body
.

He knotted his fingers in his hair and stared out into the dark. They were in the middle of nowhere. The light from V-City was nothing but a ghost against the distant clouds, and the night around them black as pitch. They'd passed some kind of fortress a few miles back. It hadn't looked welcoming. In the distance somewhere, gunfire echoed like far-off thunder, and he didn't know if it was real or just the phantoms in his head.

Hunger plucked at his muscles and sang through his bones, and it felt like something was trying to claw its way out.

He should have eaten the man back in the garage—
would
have, if he'd had the chance—but to his dismay,
the human hadn't been a killer. Of all Harker's men, what were the odds of Sloan sending an innocent? Did the Malchai
know
Sunai could only feed on sinners? Or was it just bad luck?

After several deep breaths, August had the anger under control. He turned back to the car and saw Kate leaning against the driver's side door, arms crossed carefully over her ribs, clearly fighting back the cold. August couldn't feel it, not through the fever.

“Here,” said August, setting the violin case on the ground and shrugging off his jacket.

“Keep it,” she said, but he was already settling it around her shoulders. He could see her relax beneath the added warmth.

His hand lingered a moment on her good shoulder. Something about the contact—simple, solid—made him feel steadier. He started to pull away, but Kate caught his fingers. Her eyes were dark, and the way her lips were parted, he could tell she wanted to say something, but when she spoke, all she said was, “Your hand is hot.”

August swallowed, and pulled free as gently as possible as something flickered across the sky above Kate's head. He looked up, and the air caught in his throat. It was a clear night, and the sky was
filled
with dots of light.

Kate followed his gaze. “What?” she drawled. “You've never seen stars before?”

“No,” he said softly. “Not like this.” The sky was on fire. He wondered if Ilsa had ever seen stars—not the black icons across her skin, but the real things, which were so strange and perfect. One streaked across the sky, trailing light.

“I read somewhere,” said Kate, “that people are made of stardust.”

He dragged his eyes from the sky. “Really?”

“Maybe that's what you're made of. Just like us.”

And despite everything, August smiled.

It was such a hard-won smile, but it was worth it.

And then, all of a sudden, it was gone, and August shuddered, bracing himself against the car. Something like a chill went through him, a tremor that seemed to run from his limbs to his core.

Her hands hovered in the air around him, helpless. “What's wrong?”

“I'll . . . I'll be okay,” he said.

“Bullshit.”

In response, he tugged aside his collar and she saw the edge of light, not bright but burning against his chest like the lit end of a cigarette. It drew a single line, the ember red darkening to black. A new tally. A new day.

“How many is that?”

He was still shaking, but when he looked up, there
was something in his eyes, a kind of grim triumph. “Four hundred and twenty-three.”

Just then, truck lights cut through the darkness, coming from the direction of V-City.

Kate waved the HUV, and to her relief, the truck slowed and hauled itself onto the shoulder. It was a semi, obviously reinforced for the trek through the Waste, its grill and flanks framed by grates with iron striping, its windows coated to make them bulletproof. There were several scores along its sides, and they probably weren't from Corsai. The monsters targeted humans. The humans targeted supplies.

Kate tucked the ornate silver pendant under her shirt and stepped up onto the truck's footboard as the passenger window inched down.

“What the hell are you kids doing out here?” asked the driver. He was middle-aged and had the cropped, weathered look of someone who'd spent too much of his life on edge.

“Car trouble,” she said, flashing her best smile. “Can you give us a lift?”

He looked past her to August, and Kate tried to see him as the driver would, just a lanky teen boy with an instrument case slung over his shoulder. “Where you going?”

Kate nodded at the road heading
away
from V-City.
She dug up the name of the easternmost subcity. “Louisville.”

He shook his head. “That's on the other side of the Waste,” he said. “You're better off trying to catch a lift back toward the capital.”

“We saw a town or something a little ways back,” she said, filling her voice with naiveté. “You think we should head there?”

The man grimaced. “You try to get inside a fort at night, the only thing you're gonna get is shot.” He ran a hand through his short hair. “Dammit.” He wasn't wearing a medallion. Kate swallowed, then tugged her pendant over her head.

The weight of the silver was solid, reassuring. She didn't want to get rid of it, but she couldn't stay here on the side of the road, either. She held it up for the driver to see. “Look, we don't want to cause trouble. We haven't got much cash, but if you can at least give us a lift in the right direction, I'll give you this.”

The driver's eyes went wide, and Kate knew she had him. After all, a Harker medallion was safety, and safety was a luxury, a commodity more valuable—and more expensive—than a truck, a house, a life.

The man's fingers closed around the silver. “Get in.”

Kate climbed into the front seat, and August slid onto a bench that looked like it also functioned as a
cot. He knitted his fingers and bowed his head. Kate wasn't an idiot. Something was obviously wrong. But every time she asked he just got mad, as if she was making it worse. He looked ill. Did monsters get ill? Or did they only get hungry? How long had it been since he'd eaten?

“Look,” said the driver. “I'm not in the smuggling business, okay? I'm a trucker. I only go as far as the subcities, so if you're looking for a way through the border, I can't help you.”

“It's fine,” said Kate. “We're not trying to cross.”

“Then what the hell
are
you doing out here in the dark?”

And it was weird, but Kate almost told him the truth. It seemed to bubble up, out of her mind and out her mouth, the words rising so fast she had to bite her tongue to stop them. What had August said, about Sunai and truth? She shot him a look, but he was sitting hunched forward, elbows on knees, staring at the ground.

“It was a dare,” she said. “We were with some friends.”

“There was a concert tonight,” added August from the back seat. “At the edge of the green.”

“Yeah,” chimed in Kate. “Our friends bet us twenty bucks we wouldn't drive into the Waste when it was over. Forty if we brought something back from the
subcity on the other side. Stupid me,” she added. “I didn't check the tank.”

The driver shook his head. “Kids these days,” he said, guiding the semi back onto the road. “You got too much time and too little sense.” His sleeves were rolled up, and his right forearm bore several nasty scars. Corsai marks. “I'll take you as far as the next truck stop. It's about as safe as it gets out here. After that, you find your own way back into the green.”

Kate nodded. “Works for us,” she said, casting a glance at August. But she couldn't see his face. It was lost in shadow.