“We don’t want anything you have,” I said, not lowering my gun. “Get out of here.”
The Fec shrugged. “Fine. Be that way. You might not want her, but she wants you guys.” He turned and started slinking down the road, feet utterly silent.
“Wait!” I whipped around at the sound of Dad’s voice. He stood framed in the doorway, pajamas wrinkled, white hair mussed.
“Who do you have, Arris?” Dad asked, coming to stand beside me. His eyes slowly moved over every inch of the Fec, calculating, like when he was trying to determine whether to give someone a root canal. And then he took the rifle from my hands and aimed it at the Fec.
Arris turned his back to us and cupped his hands around his mouth. “Come on out!” His yell echoed down the street, and in less than two seconds all three of my older brothers were standing in the yard with Dad and me, guns ready.
Five houses down, someone stepped out of a front door. A man, not a woman. He put his hand above his eyes, blocking the noon sun, and looked at us. Behind him, another person came out the door. Her tan pants were filthy from the knees down, like she’d been wading in something brown, but her shirt was still mostly white, like her hair. The man put the woman’s hand on his arm and the two of them started walking toward us.
“Lower your guns,” Dad said. My brothers obeyed without a word.
The man and woman skirted around the Millers’ abandoned truck, stepped over snow-covered trash and tumbleweeds in the road, and stopped beside the Fec. My skin crawled. They obviously didn’t know their lives were in danger by merely being in the same vicinity as the Fec. And then I saw the Taser in the man’s hand, pointed at the Fec. Maybe he did know.
I looked at his face, at his dark hair and blue eyes, and frowned. I knew this man. He was from the walled city. He was the doctor who tried to get my dad to live inside the wall.
“Jefferson Bloom? Is that you?” the woman asked. She hugged her arms over her chest and started rubbing them for warmth.
I stared at her. It had been a long time since I had seen a woman other than my own mother. I forgot how soft women were, how small and gentle their hands looked, how their bodies formed subtle curves instead of hard angles. I had forgotten how long hair hung in waves when it was clean. Hers wasn’t as white as I first thought. It was dark blond, streaked with white.
“Abigail Tarsis.” The words came out of Dad’s mouth on a breath of air. I knew that name. This woman was Fiona and Jonah Tarsis’s mother, one of my mother’s best friends from before. She’d been living inside the wall.
Eyes wide with disbelief, Dad handed Dean his gun and then strode out of the yard and stopped in front of the woman. The Fec crouched on the balls of his feet like he was about to pounce and stared at my dad. Dean lifted his gun and pointed it at the boy.
Dad put his arm around the woman’s shoulders and held his free hand out to the doctor. “Doctor Grayson, how are you?” he asked.
The doctor shook Dad’s hand and gave him a tight smile. “I’m well enough.”
Dad nodded and looked both ways down the road. “Let’s get you two inside,” he said, and then ushered them into the yard, past the dogs, and to the house.
“I need payment,” the Fec yelled after him.
“Jack, give Arris a plate of beans,” Dad called. “Josh and Steve, stay in the yard.”
Josh and Steve put their guns on their shoulders and simultaneously aimed them at the Fec. “Don’t come any closer,” Steve warned.
Dean walked into the house with me and stood at my side as I opened the pot of warm beans and began scooping some onto a plate, but he wasn’t paying any attention to me. His attention was riveted on Abigail Tarsis.
Dad, Doctor Grayson, and Mrs. Tarsis were sitting at the kitchen table. Mom joined them. Tears started streaming down her hollow cheeks, and she reached across the table and took Mrs. Tarsis’s soft hands in her hard ones. “Abigail, it is so good to see you, but what are you doing here?” Mom asked.
“I turned fifty-five last week,” said Mrs. Tarsis. Her eyes lost focus. “When I refused to be euthanized, the Inner Guard forced me out of the walled city, and Lissa’s husband . . .” Her words caught in her throat.
“I’m married to her daughter. I couldn’t leave her on her own out here,” the doctor explained. “I asked the militia at the north gate to help us find somewhere safe for Abigail, but none of them would even look at us. The boy who brought us here was hiding outside the militia’s camp. In exchange for food, he led us belowground. He said you might be willing to help her.”
Dad’s mouth formed a hard line. “You’re her son-in-law. Why can’t you continue to help her?”
“I wish I could, but I am on the brink of finding a cure for the beasts! If I leave now, all my work will be cast aside, and no one will help the infected kids.” His eyes were wide with desperation.
“And I would rather die out here on my own,” Mrs. Tarsis said, “than risk losing any chance of curing those children. My daughter is in the lab waiting for the day the cure is perfected.”
“I’m sorry, but we can’t help,” Dad said. Mom started crying harder. “And I can’t let you stay here because you’d be putting my family at risk. As far as the raiders know, only men and boys live here. If they knew I had a woman staying here, they’d kill all of us to get to you.”
Mrs. Tarsis’s eyes grew round and she glanced at me, then back at Dad. “I’m sorry. I wouldn’t have come if I’d known. I would never have knowingly put your children in danger.”
“Thank you,” Mom said, sniffling.
“What I can do,” Dad said, “is give you some food, a water purifier, and have one of my boys escort you to the edge of the city.”
The doctor hung his head in his hands. Mrs. Tarsis stared at Dad. After a moment, a sob escaped her. She put her hands over her mouth and started weeping giant tears that poured down her face and over her slender hands, over a gold wedding ring with three diamonds. The doctor put his arm around her shoulders and started crying with her.
“Dad.” Dean’s voice made me jump. I forgot that he was standing beside me, forgot that I was supposed to be getting beans for the Fec. I looked into the pot and stirred it, then dipped the ladle deep, where the beans and rice had settled. I lifted the ladle from the pot and waited for it to stop dripping.
“I’ll take her,” said Dean.
“Thank you, son.” Dad smiled at Dean, but it wasn’t the kind of smile that touched his eyes. It was the smile he did when he resigned himself to bad news. Really bad news. “You’d better get going as soon as possible if you’re going to get back here before dark.”
I turned the ladle upside down over a bowl, and the beans and rice slopped into it.
“No. You don’t understand me,” Dean said. Mrs. Tarsis sniffled and looked at him. The doctor sat up tall and locked his bright, hopeful gaze on my brother. “That’s Lissa’s mom. I don’t think I can walk to the edge of town with her and then leave her to fend for herself. I’ll take her somewhere safe. And then I’ll come home.”
Dad stood up. “You don’t know what you’re saying,” he whispered, walking to Dean’s side. “We don’t know anyone who has survived out there and lived to tell about it. The raiders rule! It’s suicide!”
“That’s my point. I can’t let her walk into that! She will not survive alone!”
“But what if you both die?” Dad argued.
Dean pounded his fist on the counter. “I don’t care! I am so sick of sitting here, doing nothing but surviving while all around, people are being massacred by the raiders! I am sick of standing by when I might be able to make a difference—sick of being part of the disease when I could be part of the cure. I’m strong! I’m healthy! What if I save just one life? That would be worth it to me! I would rather die knowing I did something right, than live knowing I am such a coward that I have to hide in my house for the rest of my life! That is no way to live.”
The house fell utterly silent. The doctor wiped
his damp cheeks and leaned back in his chair. I looked from Dean to Dad to my mom, still sitting at the table. She had stopped crying. A tiny smile curved up the edges of her mouth, and her eyes shone with something I hadn’t seen for a long time. They used to get that look in them when Dean made a good play in football or when I won first place at a 4-H competition. I hadn’t seen my mother beam with pride in so long that I’d almost forgotten what it looked like.
She stood from the table, walked around the counter, and threw her arms around her son. “Thank you,” she whispered in his ear. “I knew I raised you right.”
One hour later, I stood in the front yard and watched Dean walk away from my house for the last time. He turned back once, right before he and Mrs. Tarsis came to the bend in the road, and raised his hand in farewell. A smile danced on his face despite the fact that he might be walking to his death, but that smile warmed me from the inside out. I raised my hand back at him and held it high until he was gone from view.
I am staring at a face I have known since the day I was born. But I don’t know it anymore, with its hard, cold expression and emotionless eyes. Who I am looking at is not my missing brother, Dean, but the man he has become. My throat tightens. I guess I’ve finally found out what happened to him. And now, more than ever, I wish I had never tried to find him.
Chapter 33
“What’s going on, Hastings?” someone yells.
My brother looks away from me, up to the roof. “I’m about to tell you,” he calls, his voice so familiar it stabs at my heart. “It seems there has been a small change in our scheduled event.” Men groan.
Perched in perfect stillness, I stare at my brother and wait for him to continue. Wait for him to say the change in the schedule is that he’s going to set me free.
Dean’s eyes lock on mine again, and he lifts his arm and points at me. “Someone helped this boy escape today.” His face hardens, and he takes a step closer. I can’t help but wonder if he doesn’t recognize me. Have I changed so much since he left? Does he not realize that it is his little sister hanging from a tree out here?
Slowly, eyes boring into me, he walks forward, black boots making small squelching noises in the wet grass. Please recognize me, I silently beg. If he recognizes me, he will find a way to let me go. I know that without a doubt. I know it deep down in my heart.
He walks to the middle of the courtyard. Stripes of light and shadow cover his face where the sun shines through the bare tree branches. He stops in front of me and I open my mouth to speak, but don’t know what to say—he is staring at me like he has never seen me before, like I am a stranger.
“Dean,” I whisper. “Help m—”
“Shut up!” He yells it so loud my ears start to ring.
“But Dean—”
His shoulder muscles bulge beneath scarred skin and his hand flies into my face, crunching against my mouth before I can finish speaking. I spin in a fast circle, the rope biting into my wrists, my shoulders straining.
As I come full circle, I stare at Dean’s retreating back, the way his shoulders roll with every step. Even his walk is familiar. Tears fill my eyes and I bite my tongue, trying to keep the tears from falling. Boys don’t cry.
“This boy,” Dean yells, stopping just beyond the tree’s broken shadow, “will not be fed to the dogs today.”
My head falls forward and I sigh with relief. I knew it. I knew he wouldn’t let them kill me.
The raiders start screaming their protest and I look up, waiting to see what my brother does. Dean pulls a gun from his belt and shoots the sky, and the raiders quiet down. “We are postponing the fight and spreading the word to all our brothers to come and see the event. Even our illustrious former leader is going to come,” Dean explains.
Wait. Postpone? I don’t understand.
A name is spoken in quiet voices, but whether the raiders speak it in reverence or fear, I can’t tell. The name makes my skin crawl. Flint.
“Flint will be here tomorrow, so we will postpone the feeding of this boy to the dogs until then. Unless . . .”
The raiders lean closer to Dean, their eyes intent on him. I hold my breath. “Unless what,” someone calls.
Dean looks at me and grins, but it isn’t the same grin that used to light up his face. His mouth turns up at the corners, but his eyes darken and close to mere slits. “Unless someone would like to volunteer to take his place.” Behind Dean, Soneschen nods and his eyes sweep over the raiders on the roof.
Utter silence settles over the men. They look at each other like they have suddenly lost the ability to speak English and need someone to translate what my brother just said. And then, one by one, they start laughing. The sound grows, like a wave rolling in to shore, until it reaches an overwhelming pitch.
I look up at the roof and my eyes are instantly drawn to one person. He stands as still as stone in the midst of the laughing raiders. His mouth moves, two simple words I can’t hear, and the raiders around him stop laughing. And then the raiders around them stop laughing. It spreads, this non-laughing, until all the raiders on the roof are silent once again, and all are looking at one person. Kevin.
Soneschen walks out into the courtyard until he is standing in the grass below Kevin, looking up at him. “Did you say something?”
Kevin nods. “I said, ‘I will.’”
“You will what?”
“I will take the kid’s place,” he answers, head held high and shoulders firm.
Soneschen nods and looks at my brother, then me. I wonder if he is blind to the family resemblance. “It seems,” he says, his eyes locking on mine, “that Solomon has weeded out the one who loves you most.”
Ten minutes later, I stand in an empty room with a broken and barred window. It overlooks the courtyard. I have been told to watch. Told to see the fate that has been taken from me and given to Kevin. He won’t die today, Soneschen assured me before he locked me in here. He is just giving Kevin a preview of tomorrow’s death, so he can think about it and decide whether or not he really wants to take my place. If Kevin does, he dies tomorrow. For me. In my place. And if he doesn’t, I will die tomorrow.
“Jack. Come to the window.” It is Soneschen’s voice. My feet hardly work, dragging against the ground as I go to the broken window. Kevin is in the courtyard, walking beside Dean toward the tree. Walking beside my brother.
At the tree, Dean takes the rope I was bound with, which is still tied to the branch, and begins tying the dangling end to Kevin’s wrists. Kevin doesn’t fight it, doesn’t even look upset as he willingly holds his wrists out. While my brother binds Kevin, his lips barely move. After a minute, the rope is pulled taut and Kevin’s stretched so tight he can barely stand on his tiptoes. Dean, with a quick glance at me, jogs to the glass doors leading into the building and goes inside.
Kevin hangs there, spinning in a slow arc, and nothing happens. My heart starts to pound as I stare at him, because I know I am waiting for something awful.
A dog howls and then barks. A man screams from somewhere inside the building. Kevin just dangles in sunlight slotted with shadow. Another dog starts barking, and I hear the sound of a door slamming.
Nothing happens.
I stare out the window at Kevin, waiting. And each second that passes, the air seems to get heavier, until I want to start screaming and kicking and punching. When I think I am going to die from waiting, the door Dean left through is opened and I see my brother look out. He props the door open and pushes a cage out—a huge kennel. The kennel is jumping and jolting from whatever is being contained inside.
Dean’s muscles bulge as he takes a chain thicker than my wrist from the top of the kennel. He hefts a few feet of it back inside the building and attaches it to something. The other end of the chain leads inside the kennel.
Dean goes back into the building and then shuts the doors as much as he can, with only a few inches open where the chain comes out. And then the front of the kennel slowly begins to rise up, like a miniature automatic
garage door. Before the door has risen six inches, the animal inside shoves its head out, its white teeth snapping.
When the door is a little more than halfway up, the animal drags itself out and, without so much as sniffing the air, tears across the courtyard, dead grass flying from its hind paws, to the prey hanging from the tree. Kevin screams and flinches as the dog lunges for him. When the beast is mere inches from Kevin, the chain pulls taut with an audible clang, and the creature is jerked backward by its own momentum. I gasp and clutch the metal bars blocking the window, pressing my face between two of them.
The dog is a German shepherd with matted fur. It is the biggest German shepherd I have ever seen, with massive muscles in its neck and hind legs. It rolls to its feet, snarls, and walks toward Kevin until the chain is pulled tight again. It stands there for a minute, and I forget to breathe as I watch. When it lunges for Kevin a second time, I jump away from the window. It tries a third time to get to him, and then a fourth, scraping a hole into the ground where it digs its claws into the earth, but the chain holds it back every time. When it realizes it can’t reach its prey that way, the creature sits and watches Kevin, as if trying to decide what to do next. Kevin, poised on the tips of his boots, loses his balance and starts spinning.
The movement is the invitation the dog needs. It lunges again, at the exact moment Kevin swings his legs to try and turn so that he can face the dog. The dog’s teeth latch onto the hem of Kevin’s pant leg and it yanks.
Kevin’s arms and shoulders bulge and strain as he tries to pull away. The dog starts whipping its head from side to side. It digs its paws into the ground and gives one huge, hard heave. The pant leg tears, the dog tumbles backward, and Kevin screams.
He starts spinning again, and only one of his feet is on the ground. Something about the way he’s hanging looks wrong. His left shoulder appears too narrow, and he’s moaning.