Inhuman (10 page)

“Money?” His grin softened the precise angles of his face. “That’s good. Silky, the only thing I can do with paper money is burn it or wipe my —”

“Got it,” I said quickly. “You don’t need money.”

“What’ve you got to barter?”

I pulled off my father’s bag and peered inside. “A flashlight, matches —”

“How about a sleeping bag?” he interrupted.

I slumped. Of course, something like a sleeping bag would be valuable in his world. “No.”

“Perfect. Share mine tonight and I’ll take you to Moline in the morning. Deal?”

My lips parted, but words failed me. He wasn’t serious. He couldn’t be. “You’re a pig!”

“Absolutely not.” He extended his arms as if offering himself up for inspection. “I am one hundred percent human.”

“That’s debatable,” said a voice from the doorway.

I turned to see Everson with a gun in his hand. With relief I took a step toward him, only to be jerked backward, hard. A tan forearm stretched across my ribs. The guy’s naked chest was pressed against my back. With a cry, I tried to pry his arm off, but then a cool line touched my throat. His knife.

Everson’s alarm froze me into place. “Rafe, right?” His too-calm tone amped up my panic another notch. It was the pitch I used when trying to soothe a snarling stray. “Let’s talk about this.”

“Jerk, right?” Rafe said, sounding sociable, though his arm tightened across me. “Shut up and get in the closet.” He tilted his head toward a door on the far wall.

Everson might have been taller and broader, but I had no doubt about which of them was more dangerous.

“Let the girl go first.”

“Why?” Rafe asked. “What’s she to you?”

Everson glared at him. “Let her go.” He set his gun on the floor and held up his hands. “And you can walk out of here. I won’t stop you.”

“Heck of a deal. Here’s my counter….” The pressure of the knife against my throat vanished.

Releasing my breath, I started to pull away when a flash of pain seared across my forearm.

“You son of a —” Everson beat a fast path into the closet. Once he was inside, Rafe dragged me over as well. Stumbling, I stared at the blood beading up on my arm.

He’d cut me. With a knife. Who did that?

He flung me against Everson, sending us both sprawling against the shelves at the back of the closet. “She’s all yours,” he said, and slammed the door shut.

Everson leapt up and grabbed the knob just as there was a loud scrape from the other side. The knob turned futilely in his fist. Crouching, I peered under the door and saw two legs of what must have been a leaning chair propped under the knob.

“Have fun, you two,” Rafe mocked, and his footsteps faded away.

In the dim glow from my dial, Everson did a quick search of the shelves and tossed me a gauze pad. “Press it to your cut. It’ll slow the bleeding.”

I gingerly did as he said and was rewarded with a throb of pain. Trapped and bleeding. Just when I didn’t have a minute to spare. “Who was that scumbag?”

Everson ran his hands over the wall on either side of the door. “A thief who’s turned Arsenal into his own personal Quickie-mart.” He gave up patting down the wall and crouched beside me. “The light switch must be outside the closet.” He nodded to my arm. “Show me.”

I lifted the bloody wad of gauze and bit back a cry. That savage had sliced a nasty three-inch cut into my arm. What passed for civilized over here? Not eating your neighbor?

“Could be worse.” Everson snagged a bottle of hydrogen peroxide from a shelf.

“That’s comforting,” I grouched. At least my tetanus vaccination was up to date.

“You could’ve gotten knifed in the gut, like the cook’s assistant. His mistake? Walking into the pantry while Rafe was cleaning it out last month.”

Okay, yes, that was worse. But I still wasn’t happy about having an open wound this close to the Feral Zone.

“Can your dial go brighter?” He ripped open a new gauze pad.

I lifted my dial, remembering only then that it had been recording the whole time. This was going to make a heck of a movie — if I survived to edit it. With a tap of my finger, I made the screen glow with emerald light — not as bright as a flashlight, but enough to see by.

Everson crouched next to me where I was sitting against the door — all the other walls were lined with shelves. He gently took my forearm and tilted it. I winced as he poured peroxide over the cut and watched as he neatly wiped away the excess froth with gauze. His movements were steady and efficient as he bent over my arm to bandage it, I’d always thought crew cuts were ugly — still did — but I was tempted to brush my palm over his hair just to see how it felt. Soft or bristly?

He sat back and caught me staring. I tugged my arm away and pretended to try to activate the dial’s call function.

“It won’t work as a phone,” he said, standing to reshelve the supplies. “The patrol jams the signal. We’re not allowed to have dials or cameras — nothing that can record. Actually, I should confiscate that.” He walked toward me, and I clutched the dial protectively. “But lucky for you, I’m only a guard on the outside.” He stepped over me to get to the door.

“What are you on the inside?” I asked.

He started pounding, trying to attract someone’s attention. Guess I wasn’t going to get an answer.

After a while with no results, he gave up. “I brought Jia here so the medics could work on the guy. I left her asleep in one of the empty beds.” He shoved a hand through his hair. “I need to get her to the orphan camp before someone finds her and sends her back across the bridge.”

“Is she okay? Not … grupped?”

He sank down beside me, his shoulder brushing mine. “She tested clean. So did the man, according to the medic. But it might be too late for him. He lost a lot of blood.”

And here I’d been feeling resentful about the passing time. Yes, every hour mattered if my dad was going to escape execution, but for the man who’d been mauled, minutes meant the difference between life and death. The air in the closet suddenly tasted stale.

I tugged down my sleeve to cover the bandage, even though I was starting to feel sweaty. “How come we know nothing about what’s going on over here?”

“Titan makes sure of it.” He leaned back, one leg outstretched, not seeming to care that we were trapped in a cramped closet together. “All of our communication is monitored — radio calls, letters. And those are just to other bases. We’re not allowed to talk to civilians while we’re stationed east of the wall.” He glanced at me, a hint of a smile on his lips. “So, I’m incurring some serious infractions right now.”

Was he flirting with me? Not a chance. Robots didn’t flirt. “What about when you go home? What’s to stop you from talking then?”

“Our mission is categorized critical-sensitive. If a guard reveals anything about what he did or saw over here, he’ll be court-martialed.”

Sitting with our shoulders and legs touching felt strange. Awkward. Maybe line guards got used to living up close and personal on the base, but I sure wasn’t used to it. I rarely brushed against anyone other than my dad and Howard. If I slid over, would Everson notice? Would he care?

I rubbed my damp palms on my pants, but stayed put. Why risk offending the only line guard on my side? “How come no one noticed the mutated humans running around before the wall went up?”

“It didn’t start happening until a few years after the wall was finished. During the first wave, if you caught Ferae, you went psychotic and died within days. We’re seeing more of the nonlethal strain now because when the host survives, he goes on to infect more people.”

“Okay.” I crossed my legs and twisted to face him. “But why’s the patrol keeping that secret? So what if we know that people don’t die from Ferae anymore, that they … mutate?” I choked on the word.

“It’s not just the patrol. People in the government know, but they contracted Titan to secure the quarantine line, so they’re following Titan’s protocol.”

“And they’re all keeping quiet about the ferals because … ?” I pressed.

“Think about how fast the exodus happened. A lot of people left without being able to get ahold of family members in other cities and states. By now, they’re assumed long dead. If people start to think there’s a chance their relatives are still alive, they’ll want to go looking for them. They’ll try like crazy to get past the wall and make it impossible to keep the quarantine line secure.” Everson shot me a look. “When you’re worried about someone you love, you don’t care about anyone else’s health — sometimes not even your own.”

Ouch.

I sat back against the door to avoid his gaze. He had a point, but as soon as we got out of this closet, I was going to cross the last bridge. I’d just have to deal with the guilt … and the ferals. Suddenly something Everson had said in the office came back to me. “If Dr. Solis has eighteen strains of Ferae, does that mean people can mutate into eighteen different kinds of animals?”

“Fifty. You can only get infected once, but there are fifty strains of Ferae, each carrying the DNA of a different animal. Until Dr. Solis has a sample of all of them, he can’t even begin to develop a vaccine.”

“If he doesn’t have them all, how does he know there are fifty strains out there?”

Everson looked at his long fingers, which dangled off his knee. “You know where the virus came from, right?”

I nodded. I knew our country’s history. “Titan created it in a lab. They were going to add cool animal hybrids to the mazes in their theme parks.” I couldn’t help sounding excited about it — it did sound fun — but Everson slanted a cranky look at me. “And then some fringe group bombed Titan’s labs,” I went on, “and the infected animals escaped. In reparation, Titan built the wall.”

“The wall was a PR move,” he scoffed.

“I still don’t get how Dr. Solis knows there are fifty strains.”

“When the plague began, Titan’s CEO, Isla Prejean, made Titan’s research available to the scientific community. She was hoping that someone could find a way to stop the spread of infection. That’s how we know there are fifty strains.” Everson’s jaw tightened. “If we’re ever going to reclaim the eastern half of our country, we need a vaccine. Better yet, a cure. And we’re never going to develop either if someone doesn’t go deeper into the Feral Zone and find people infected with the strains that we’re missing.”

“Then what? You’d bring those people here?”

“No. All Dr. Solis needs is a sample of their blood.”

My brows rose. “Good luck collecting that.”

“It’s dangerous, yeah. But I’d go. I volunteered.”

“The patrol won’t let you?”

“The brass won’t even consider it. They say our job is to secure the quarantine line, not cross it.”

“Why doesn’t the president send in the army?” Even before I finished asking it, I knew the answer. “Because our military is a joke.” Anyone who wanted to enlist these days usually chose to work for a private security force, like the line patrol. Not only did corporate militias pay better, they also had state-of-the-art weapons, equipment, and training centers.

“The national armed forces aren’t a joke,” Everson said sternly. “Every branch lost more than half their people during the outbreak because they were stationed in hot zones, trying to contain the spread of infection.”

And clearly he admired them for it. “Are you sure you’re not a guard on the inside?”

A flash of something dark crossed his features and he glanced away.

“Sorry,” I said quickly. “Why did you join the line patrol instead of the army?”

He tipped his head back against the door and stayed silent for a moment. Just as I thought he wasn’t going to answer, he spoke, his voice low and rough. “You know how everyone says their parents are overprotective?”

“Yes, because they
are
.”

“Okay, take that paranoia, multiply it by a thousand, and you have my mother. She lives in terror of catching Ferae. My father died in the first wave of the plague and she never got over it. When I was growing up, she wouldn’t let me go anywhere or do anything with anyone.”

“Join the club.”

“No, I mean literally.” He turned to me, his expression serious. “She has blowers set up in every room. Plastic sheeting over all the windows and doors. She works from home, so the only people she sees are her employees, who have no choice but to put up with her insane rules. Even my tutors had to change into sanitized clothes before they could come near me.”

“Tutors, as in teachers you met with in person?”

He nodded stiffly. “When I was seven, I tried to sneak out. That’s when my mother told me that I was born with an autoimmune deficiency and that if I ever left home, I’d die.”

I struggled to understand. His mother had lied to him about having a birth defect just to keep him at home? “But it’s not true?”

“Obviously.” He gestured to the air around us.

“Whoa.” And I’d thought I had it bad. Suddenly my dad’s obsession with survival skills and self-defense seemed almost sane. “That’s … um, pretty messed up.”

“Yeah.” He rubbed his forehead like he’d downed a slushy too fast.

“When did you find out that you’re fine?”

“A year ago,” he said, dropping his hand. “I left home that day and joined the patrol. I’d read that there was a doctor on Arsenal working on a cure, so I got myself assigned here. I’d rather fight Ferae head on than spend my life hiding from it.”