Black River Falls (2 page)

“You make sure everyone took their meds?”

“Yeah, right,” he said. “Like I'd go anywhere with those kids if half of them weren't hopped up on happy pills.”

“Oh, hey. I fixed Crystal's backpack and sewed that button on Ren's shirt. Left them by their cabins last night. Tell Eliot his shoes are probably a lost cause, though.”

“We'll try to find him a new pair today.” Greer held up another branch. “How's this?”

“That'll work. DeShaun and Benny doing okay?”

He shrugged. “Better, maybe? I don't know. They're still not talking much, but they ate breakfast with everybody this morning, so—you know, baby steps.”

“If you think they can't handle going to town—”

“They'll be all right. Hell, it'll probably be good for them.”

He kicked through a pile of brush, sending Snow Cone into a frenzy. She jumped into the air and did a 360, chomping at the flying leaves.

“I think it's time to go talk to the doc about her,” I said. “Her side's not getting better.”

“Ugh. Seriously, dude? That guy
hates
me.”

“He doesn't hate you.”

“He does too! You remember that time I asked him to get us that flea stuff for Hershey Bar? He said I should try using some on myself.”

I laughed. “Send one of the kids to talk to him, then. Send Makela!”

“Ha! Yeah, right. By the time she's done with him, he'll be so terrified he'll hand over the entire pharmacy.”

“And maybe a Guard helicopter.”

Greer shook his head. “Nah, the poor guy doesn't deserve that. I'll take care of it. I'll just add it to Greer's eternal to-do list, won't I, Snow Cone?”

The dog gave an excited woof. Greer dropped the branch he was carrying, and they started to wrestle. As soon as Greer got the upper hand, Hershey Bar joined in, flattening him onto his back.

“Help! I'm being attacked by a rabid bear! Help!”

Hershey Bar pawed at Greer's shoulder, pulling the collar of his shirt down enough to expose the corner of one of his tattoos. A chill crept up my spine.

This is probably a good time to mention that, yes, when I say Greer, I mean
that
Greer. Trust me, I find the amount of time I spent hanging out with Greer Larson just as strange as I'm sure you would. Even after all those months, when­ever I looked at him, it was like I was seeing two Greers at the same time: the Greer of Lucy's Promise and that scowling kid at the bus stop with the shaved head and the grubby denim jacket. The one whose big brother gave him his first tattoos in the seventh grade with a ballpoint pen and a sharpened paper clip. What happened to that Greer? Same thing that happened to all of us, I guess. October Sixteenth.

Once we got the branches I needed, we headed over to the clearing. Greer and the dogs flopped down by a stand of mountain laurel while I started digging four holes for the main posts that would hold up the fence. It was sweaty work, made sweatier by the leather gloves and the rubber and plastic mask.

“So I was talking to Eliot this morning.”

I muscled out a shovelful of dirt and rock. “Oh yeah? He decided whose heart he's going to break yet? Astrid's or Makela's?”

“Jury's still out on that one,” Greer said. “No, you know Jen and Marty? They have that cabin over near Mantel Rock? Eliot was talking to them the other day, and they said they'd heard about a couple kids living on their own out on Joseph's Point.”

“Why would anybody live on Joseph's Point?” I asked. “The place is nothing but a swamp.”

“Marty says they've been there since the outbreak.”

I stopped digging. “You serious?”

Greer shrugged. “That's what he said.”

“How old?”

“He says six. A boy and a girl.”

I pushed the blade of the shovel back into the hole. “No way. Two kids that age couldn't make it alone on Joseph's Point all this time.”

“Word is they come out for the supply drop, grab what they need, and then go right back. Marty said he even saw them once. Looked pretty bad off.”

I thought about that for a second, then tossed the shovel aside and grabbed one of the larger branches. “Okay, well, find Gonzalez when you get to the supply line. He'll get his guys to look into it.”

“Absolutely. Good plan.
Or
I could just go down to Joseph's Point and get them myself.”

“Seems like a waste of time, going to get them just to hand them over to Gonzalez.”

When Greer didn't say anything, I turned around to find him grinning at me in that slightly maniacal way of his.

“No way, man,” I said. “You know the deal.”

“But—”

“We don't bring anyone else up here, and the Guard leaves us alone.”

“Oh, come on,” Greer said. “Gonzalez was totally winking when he said that.”

“He was not winking! The only reason we even got to
make
that deal—”

“Is because Gonzalez is a comic book nerd who's obsessed with your dad.”

“—is because we keep to ourselves and the Guard's got bigger things to deal with. Bringing more people up here changes that.”

“How?” Greer asked. “It's two kids. Little ones. They're probably adorable.”

“If you want to go look for them, fine. But if you find them, you have to hand them over to Gonzalez.”

“And what's
he
going to do with them?”

“He'll find their families or something.”

“Dude!” Greer said. “They've been out there for
eight months.
That means no one's looking for them. So what're Gonzalez and his guys going to do? Stick them in that stupid shelter of theirs? How do you think
that's
going to turn out?”

“Greer, I
promised
him.”

He jumped to his feet. “Well, what the hell did you do that for? It's not like you talked to me about it. Like you talked to
any
of us about it. These are two little kids! Alone!”

“What did you want me to do? Go to war with the National Guard? Take the chance of screwing over everybody here just because
you
want to play superhero again?”

“I'm not trying to play—”

“You think they'll just ignore this? Why? Because we're a bunch of kids?”

“We're supposed to be helping!”

“We
are
helping!”

“Card!”

“The answer is no!”

Suddenly Makela called out from down in the camp. “Greer, come on! It's time to go!”

I snapped back to reality, surprised to find Greer and me squaring off with each other, panting as if we'd just run a mile flat out. His gray eyes had gone stormy and were locked on mine. My throat ached from shouting I didn't really remember doing.

“Gre-er!”
she called again.

“I'll be right there!” he yelled back over his shoulder.

But he didn't move. He stared at the ground, fists clenched, shoulders hunched. The silence between us was heavy and strange. It was like when a storm tears through a summer day and then retreats so fast it's hard to believe it ever really happened.

I took a shaky step toward him. “Greer, listen . . .”

He turned away and started down the trail. “Forget it, man. Good luck with your gardening.”

The dogs followed him as he headed back to camp. Soon their footsteps faded, and I was alone again. I tore off my mask and dropped it. My hands were ice-cold and shaking bad, so I curled them into fists and squeezed until I felt as if a bone was about to pop. There was an angry buzz in the back of my skull.

Everything was so damn simple to Greer. A couple kids might be in trouble? Go get them! Who cares that there might be a price to pay? Who cares that one wrong move could lead to everything we'd built being taken away? And the thing was, it wasn't just Greer. All the infected lived in a world that, as far as they knew, was unbreakable. Every betrayal they'd ever felt? Every disappointment? Every failure? Every disaster? Gone. That's why they needed me. I remembered how fast the world could fall apart, and I remembered what it was like when it did.

I kicked at one of the branches and started back to my tent. I wasn't going to be able to get any more work done that morning. As I stepped through the woods, a flash of red caught my eye. Greer's bandanna. He'd left it sitting on a rock by the trail. Right where he knew I wouldn't miss it. I knelt and untied the bundle. The two biscuits were still there. Golden. Untouched.

When
had
I eaten last? Not that morning. The night before? Sometime earlier the previous day? That was the thing about Greer. He was never more annoying than when he was right. Kind of like you.

I took the biscuits off the rock and devoured them.

B
Y THE TIME
I made it down to Greer's camp, it was in full-on riot mode.

“Let's not forget our ponchos, people!” Greer shouted as the kids sprinted from cabin to cabin, getting ready. “Radio says rain later on, and I don't want a repeat of last time. Let's move! We don't have all day!”

There were eleven of them, five boys and six girls, ranging in age from seven to fifteen. They all lived on the grounds of the old summer camp about a quarter mile down the mountain from my tent. I had lived there myself for a while, but once Greer and the kids showed up, I'd grabbed some camping gear and found a place of my own closer to the peak of Lucy's Promise.

Greer caught sight of me and planted himself a few feet away, his arms crossed over his chest. “What's up, Cassidy? You forget something?”

“I'm coming with you.”

“Coming with me where?”

I stared at Greer until it dawned on him.

“What? No. Card, that's not—”

“I'll get Snow Cone's meds, and then I'll talk to Gonzalez about those two kids. We'll work something out.”

“Work something out so you can bring them up here?”

“So we can find them a good home.”

“Card—”

The buzz in my head started up again, but I forced it down. “If we bring more people up here, Gonzalez can't protect us. That's it. Game over. Benny and DeShaun and all the others get stuck in that National Guard shelter. You want to take that chance?”

Greer looked away, his eyes narrowing on Eliot and Ren, who were play wrestling in the dirt by the main lodge while the girls cheered them on.

“We protect who's here now.”

His jaw tensed, as if he were gnawing on a scrap of leather. “You haven't been in town since—”

He cut himself off. No one liked to mention the night of the sixteenth, especially to me. To tell you the truth, I hated it—the way they tiptoed around me like that.

“Look, I've got my mask and my gloves. And it's not like I'm going to stand in the middle of Monument Park. I'll go see the doc, talk to Gonzalez, and come right back.”

“But—”

“Can we just go? Please? Seriously, Greer, we don't have all day.”

Greer spun away from me and headed back to the kids. I hadn't meant to snap at him. I'd apologize later. I just wanted to get this over with.

“Yo!” Greer called out. “Rugrats! Anyone not with me in five seconds stays here and cleans bathrooms! Five—four—three—two—one!”

The chaos stopped at once, and everyone snapped into a single-file line at the head of the trail that led off the mountain. As always, Carrie was in the lead, since that meant she got to be closest to Greer. She stared up at him adoringly as he gave the group their final inspection. He sent Astrid back to her cabin to put on more sunscreen and told Isaac to get a bigger backpack. Once they returned and Greer double-checked the four wagons they used to haul things up the mountain, it was time to go.

“Okay, troops! Let's move out!”

I started to follow, but stopped when I saw Benny standing off by himself a few feet from the trail. He was all hunched up, head down, skinny arms hugging his chest. It was like he thought that if he tried hard enough, he might be able to make himself disappear.

Lassiter's didn't have any after-effects. Once it did its work erasing someone's memories, it left them perfectly healthy. Unfortunately, that rarely meant they were okay.

At seven, Benny was one of the youngest kids in camp. From what we could figure out, he got separated from his mom and dad when they were all infected on the night of the sixteenth. Once the quarantine was in place, the Guard tried to reunite him with his folks, but as far as Benny was concerned they were trying to make him live with two complete strangers who acted like they were his parents. He ran away. The Guard dragged him back. He ran away again. Greer found him nearly a month later, hiding out in an old muffler shop. He'd been living on creek water and a vending machine he'd smashed open with a brick. Greer brought him up to Lucy's Promise and, I don't know, I guess the Guard finally decided they had bigger things to do than chase around one pissed-off seven-year-old.

The rest of the kids on Lucy's Promise had similar stories. Families that fell apart when the memories that bound them together were gone. Parents who died in the chaos of the sixteenth. Parents of kids who never got infected and left the Quarantine Zone to keep it that way. Some of them just couldn't stand living with all the other infected down in Black River. You remember that animated
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
movie we used to watch when we were little? The one with the Island of Misfit Toys? I guess that's what the sixteenth had turned them into. Misfit toys. Lucy's Promise was their island.

“What's going on, Ben?” I asked.

He scrunched up his face, still not looking at me. At first I thought he wasn't going to answer at all, but then I got a dry little whisper.

“Isaac and Eliot say there are ghosts.”