Eat the Ones You Love (The Thirteen Book 2) (17 page)

Jenny led the rotters and the RV over the bridge, around City Hall, and past decrepit business buildings standing like sentries. Past broken windows and busted doors, and dirt and rust and corrosion. Jenny had the odd sensation that this had happened before, but with different people. A different person. She tasted grape soda for a split second and stopped, touching her mouth. Her feet hurt and she realized that felt familiar too. Now she wondered whether she had known where she was going all along. She stepped off the street into a small churchyard cemetery and towards the cool stones of its recessed windows and doorways. She had a powerful memory of that feeling: Warm sun shining on her smooth hair, braided, and ducking into the cool and dark of an arched window. The smell of garbage and the murmur of people. Passersby unaware that two children were hiding there. The hot dusty smell of summer and melting asphalt and sweat.

Who was she with? Casey? No, it was a girl. A girl her age. A girl who looked just like her. A girl her mother would later convince her was imaginary. And then Jenny remembered her name. Her sister’s name.

“Sarah,” she said.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Trix said.

“Jenny, are you okay?” came Declan’s voice. Weak but concerned. Weak from hunger. Jenny remembered being hungry that day, too.
 

“It wasn’t grape soda,” she said. “It was snow cones. It turned our lips and tongues purple.”

“What?” said Trix.
 

“Just give me a minute,” Jenny called.

“Whatever,” said Trix. “Losing it.”

Jenny crouched down and looked closely at the large stones of the window. Sarah had brought her the snow cone from a sidewalk vendor. She remembered crying because her blisters hurt and one was starting to bleed, and Sarah had stroked her hair. She let Jenny touch the scars that she hid under her hair.
 

“Sometimes Mommy sends me away,” Sarah said.

“Why?” said Jenny.

“Because sometimes Mommy is good, and sometimes she’s bad. But even when she’s really good, she won’t ever love us.”

“She loves Casey, I think,” Jenny said, licking the ice in the cone.
 

“That’s different. Casey’s a baby. And he’s a boy,” said Sarah, her eyes reminding Jenny of grown-up eyes. “When he gets older, maybe she’ll send him away too. It’s better when she sends me away. No one hurts me.”

“Why doesn’t she send me away?” said Jenny.

“Because,” Sarah said, pulling her hair down over the scars again. “She hasn’t broken you yet.”

Jenny started as if waking from a dream. She could still feel Sarah’s warm skin on her fingers, the hard, puffy feeling of the scar. She could smell the garbage and the sweat and the scent of fresh baked bread coming from somewhere. She stared at the churchyard, at the bell, the leaning headstones. Why hadn’t she remembered Sarah before?

“Jesus Christ,” Jenny said. She looked around at the rotters. They were watching her, like they were waiting for her to tell them what to do.
 

“If they catch us,” Sarah said, “you have to run. Okay? Just remember to run. Don’t let them hurt you.”

“They won’t catch us,” Jenny had said. “We’re hidden.”

“They’ll catch us,” said Sarah. “But you have to run away before they hurt you.”

“I’ll run with you,” said Jenny. “Because we’re sisters.”

Sarah hadn’t said anything. Just looked at her sadly while they ate their snow cones.

Jenny stood up. Where had they come from? Where had they run from? She remembered a white building. She thought it was so pretty, like a mansion from the old black and white movies that her father watched. The Academy, her mother called it. So many books. So many important -looking people in sweater vests and glasses. She remembered the sound of voices droning as she and Sarah ran through the halls.
 

“The Academy,” Jenny said.

“What are you even talking about?” said Trix.

“That’s where she is,” said Jenny. “If she’s alive, she’ll be at the Academy.”

“So, you know where it is?” said Trix.

“No,” said Jenny. “But I think it’s close.”

“How do you know?” said Trix.

“Because,” Jenny said. “I remember now.”

She was amazed by the memory, an entire chapter of a forgotten life. How could she forget a sister? How could anyone possibly forget that?

Because, she reasoned, because of who her mother was. And who her grandfather was. They didn't want her to remember. They worked to make her forget. Jenny wanted to punch something, to make someone bleed. She clenched her fists and strode to the corner. She looked out over the desolate street and looked at the street-level shops. She remembered the once brightly-colored bodega, faded now. They had looked in the windows at the bakery with a cupcake on its sign.
 

Jenny walked with a purpose. She knew Trix was yelling at her, but she blocked it out and concentrated on the memories of her sister.
 

She hasn’t broken you yet.

The manila folder with Sarah’s file had said
 
rupture
, and
compromised,
and
failed to regenerate,
and
immune response insignificant
. If Sarah were dead, Anna Hawkins had done that to her, just as she had done things to Jenny, to hundreds, maybe thousands of other children.
 

Jenny could barely see for all the white light behind her eyes. She could barely breathe for the lump of anger in her chest. But she stopped in front of a rusted gate. And as her vision cleared, she saw that the lichen-covered stone was etched with the words,
The New York Academy of Sciences.
 

She was so hungry. And she could smell the blood.

Suddenly she knew that her mother was alive. And she was surprised how relieved she was that she would be the one to kill her.

TWENTY-THREE

The door of the building burst open and a single figure emerged. Jenny felt the rotters behind her shift as they smelled the blood of him, the Living-ness of him. They must have suffered so long. To be so hungry for so long and not to die? It seemed like torture to her.
 

The figure was wearing a HazMat suit, giving him the appearance of a space alien. He had, ludicrously, pulled a bulletproof Kevlar vest, which said “NYPD”, over the suit. He was carrying a tank with a tube and nozzle in the other hand. Some kind of torch, Jenny saw.
 

“What the fuck are you supposed to be?” she heard Trix say from the RV.

“Please turn around and go back the way you came,” the figure said, his voice muffled. “This is a restricted area.”

Jenny laughed. “Are you serious? What are you going to do with that? Roast marshmallows?”

“I’ll do what I have to do,” he said.

“I’m here for my mother,” she said. “Get out of my way, or my friends are going to have a nice lunch.”

The man hesitated. “Jenny?” he said.

“So you do know me,” she said. “That’s not exactly a checkmark in your favor.”

“I-I can’t let you in,” he said. He sounded terrified. He clicked something on the nozzle several times before it took, and a blue flame shot about two inches out of the end.

“Is that a fucking Bunsen burner?” Jenny said.

“This is a restricted area,” the man said again. “Please turn around and…and go…go back…”

“Step aside,” said Jenny. “Now.”

The man held up the tiny blue flame like a sword.

“Asshole,” Jenny said.
 

She walked up and shook at the rusty lock on the gate. It crumbled away, and she opened the gate just an inch. The RV backed up and the back door of the vehicle swung open. Benji squeezed through the gate, followed by Robin, sending another shudder through the rotters, then Trix propping up Declan. Jenny motioned for them to go inside the building. The man in the HazMat suit just stood and watched them, holding his paltry flame. When they were all inside, Jenny confronted him.
 

“Do you work for my mother?” she said.

“Y-yes. Since just before the Collapse,” he said. “I’ve stayed with her. Even when the Group had her.”

“What’s the Group?”

“I’ll die before I tell you anything else,” he said. “You’re just one of them. You’re a dead freak. I’ve seen your file.”

“Did you know what they were doing?” said Jenny. “To the kids?”

“We were saving them,” he said.

“You were killing them.”

“You sound just like all those thumper freaks. They would have died anyway,” he said. “We were in the middle of a plague. But when they were dying, they wished we would have tried harder. If only we’d had a bigger sample.”

“If only you’d killed more kids?”

He flared his nostrils. “If need be.”

“Do you have kids?” she said.
 

“No.”

“Me either, you know why?”

“No.”

“Because my family fucking ruined the entire fucking world. And you helped them.”

Jenny pulled the white fabric helmet from his head, then grabbed him by a scraggly ponytail.
 

“Is my sister alive?” Jenny said. He was ugly. He had growths on his face and a bulbous nose. He started to sob.

“Yes! Of course she’s alive. She’s here.”

“Here?” said Jenny. “In this building?”

“Yes! Ow!”

“Do you regret anything you’ve done?” she said.

“What?”

“Do you regret it? The things you did with my mother.”

He seemed to stiffen.

“DO YOU REGRET WHAT YOU FUCKING DID TO THOSE KIDS?”

“No!” he said finally.
 

“Then I won’t regret this,” said Jenny.
 

The man screamed as she dragged him by his hair to the gate and threw him out to the waiting rotters. It was only as the screams died away to the sound of wet ripping and tearing that she realized she still held his ponytail in her hand. She threw it on the ground and entered the building.

As she shut the door behind her, Jenny could hear the beating of several hearts. One was very fast. And she could smell the Living again. It made her unexpectedly happy until her mouth watered and she remembered what that meant. She glanced at Declan, being propped up by Trix. Jenny joined her and put Declan’s other arm around her shoulder, her arm around his hips. She could smell the reek of him, like spoiled meat. Like maggots and mold and long-dead things. She’d forgotten her objective here, overwhelmed with memories of her sister. Her twin. Jenny looked away guiltily. She had to help Declan and she had to find Zeke. But she couldn’t get Sarah out of her head. The man said she was here.
 

Sarah. Jenny and Sarah. They’d been inseparable. Until the day they sent Sarah away for good. Jenny’s eyes watered as she remembered. Men dressed in black uniforms. Jenny crying and screaming in unison with her sister until the van pulled away. And then, nothing. Beds with stiff white sheets. Doors with little windows where they would come and look at her. Needles, sedatives, mush being forced down her throat. Rough fabric cuffs restraining her wrists. Claw marks all over her arms and face. A nurse clipping her fingernails so short they bled. And a doctor, blurring in and out of view, her hair pulled back from her face, her glasses perfectly clean and gleaming under the fluorescent lights. Then her father, looking disappointed. Yelling at her. Yelling her name. “Jenny, Jenny, Jenny…”

“Jenny!” said a voice in her ear.

She started and looked up. Her face was wet and she was on the floor, hugging her knees, rocking back and forth. She let go of her knees and looked around. Three faces were staring at her, hovering over her. Trix and Declan exchanged a look that Jenny didn’t like.

“What happened?” said Robin. “What happened to you?”

“I don’t know,” said Jenny. “I started to remember and…”

“Remember what?” said Declan.

“Sarah. Her name was Sarah. She was my sister. And when they took her away, I went crazy.”

“How crazy?” said Trix.

“Shut up, Trix,” said Declan.

“I was in a place,” said Jenny. “I think it was a mental institution. It was like a hospital, only real quiet. And there was this doctor.”

“Is that why you couldn’t remember?” said Robin.

“Because I went crazy?” said Jenny. She concentrated on the memory, unwilling to let it go now that she had it. “I don’t think so.”

Jenny stood up and wiped the tears off her face. She looked at her friends.

“I think they sent me there to make me forget,” she said. “I think I was there so they could mess with my mind.”

“They didn’t want you to know about your sister?” said Declan. “Why?”

“Because,” said Jenny. “If I had known, I would have run, too.” Jenny clenched her teeth together and listened for the heartbeats again. “And they weren’t finished with me yet.”

TWENTY-FOUR

Jenny remembered the Academy. Its rooms, once full of scientists and scholars, were now mostly empty, dusty. Some were stacked with supplies: Boxes, cans of food and propane tanks. She had to restrain herself from just opening up the flammable tanks and lighting a match. But Sarah could be here. She could save Declan and find her sister at the same time.

“The books,” Jenny said. “She would be close to the books. It’s this way.”

She led them up a staircase and then another. Jenny thought she saw two small figures holding hands out of the corner of her eye. But when she turned her head to look, there was no one there.
 

The staircase led to a set of double doors. Jenny blocked out Robin’s pulse, which was jumping quick as a rabbit. There were two Living heartbeats inside, one fast and one slow. Jenny turned the handle and pushed the doors open with her foot. And there she was. Anna Hawkins. Just sitting there at a table with her back to them. Just sitting there. How could she just be sitting there after everything that had happened? After all she had done?

“Hi, Mom,” she said. Like it was the most normal thing in the world.
 

There was a flurry of motion beside her and Jenny looked to see Trix on top of someone, a knife to his throat. Jenny could feel his heartbeat in her belly, so fast she thought it would explode.