Jamb: (21 page)

Except that when his field and mine were ripped apart, he went screaming, even though he said he wanted to go into the Jamb to be with my mom. 
And I haven’t heard anything since.  No voices in the walls, no whispers of my name.

Milo turns and I follow, into a hallway where we are alone.  I still whisper my question to him.

“What is the Jamb for?”

“
To gather up and stop the knowledge.” He drops into step beside me as he whispers back.  He also reaches down and takes my hand.  It seems weird, but I don’t pull my hand away.  If someone pops up in the hall, it will look better to be holding hands.  Milo glances at me.  “The more spirits are trapped, the less Memories are recorded and the knowledge—hopefully, it’s the knowledge that stops
us
from getting to live the lives we want—is snuffed.”

“Real death,” I say.  “We forget everyone, but ourselves.”

“It’s the perfect life. Care frickin’ free,” a voice says as it walks toward us.  I lift my gaze off the floor to see a beautiful face I never thought I’d see again.

“Mark?”  I scream and
feel the urge to hug him.  I rush at him and the one thing that comes back to me is that
I care
.

CHAPTER TWELVE

I nearly tackle Mark in a hug that isn’t returned.  I wait for his arms to fling around me as I stretch mine around him and his backpack, but when they don’t, I know something is majorly wrong.  I untangle myself awkwardly and realize how stiff Mark’s body is as I back away.  His face remains blank.

“Yo
u should ask before you touch people,” he says.  It’s a scolding.  From Mark.  Garrett’s adorable little brother, who was always cracking jokes and bouncing his Hacky Sack off my head.  Now, he’s staring at me like I’ve turned into a stranger and he’s become a military man.  His voice, maybe just because his answers are clipped, even sounds deeper.  “I hate being touched and if you do it again, I’ll break your arm.”

“Sorry,” I say.  I
t hurts so much to see Mark not being Mark, the sound of my heart cracking in half should echo.  This must be why he didn’t come back.  They probably put him in the Jamb too.  Maybe he still doesn’t care, because none of us came for him.  Maybe he traded out to The Fury.

“You seen the Mastermind yet?” he asks.  Milo answers for me.

“Nope.  But Nalena went through the Jamb.”

There is a flicker in Mark’s eyes that I can’t interpret.  Then, with a sickening smile, he says, “Good.”

“How about you?  You seen the Mastermind around?” Milo asks as Mark brushes past me.

“
Nope.  You going on a raid?”

“Yup,” Milo answers
just as coldly.  Mark turns and points in the direction opposite from where we are heading.

“G
o out the South exit.”

“I’ll go out any exit I want,” Milo
says and Mark laughs.

“
Fine.  Keep going.  Go out the North and get killed.”

“Why?  What’s out
the North exit?” I ask.  I can’t help but hope that Mark, the one I know, is still in this shell that’s walking around and that maybe a little spark of care is warming him to try and protect us.

“Ghosts and goblins and witches, dummy,” he says and then,
with one hand on the strap of his backpack, he turns and walks away.

“Come on,” Milo says
, continuing the same way we were going, after Mark’s disappeared.

“
He said not to go this way.”

“Of course he did. 
The Fury are never going to steer you straight.  He’s probably trying to keep a huge pile of treasure for himself.”

“What if he’s not?  What if he really is trying to warn us?”

“Then we fight,” Milo throws up his hands, annoyed. “Stop questioning every damn thing I say and just do what I tell you, got it?”

He grabs my hand and
I give it a second before I dodge a glance over my shoulder, expecting to see someone trailing along behind us, listening to the show Milo’s putting on for them.  But, no.  No one is there.

***

We trudge along the hall and
it feels like we’re climbing a mountain, although I don’t notice the slant of the floor until I look behind me.  It’s some weird, optical illusion, I think.  Milo pulls on my hand and it takes me a few minutes before I give it some thought and wrench it away.

I’ve got to remember who I am. 
Even if I have to play along to stay alive, it doesn’t mean that I have to do whatever Milo wants.  But the second I pull my hand back, Milo grabs it again.  This time I kick him in the shin, hard enough that he lets go and hops backward once in pain.  But then he’s got my hand again.

“You belong to me,” he snarls.

Under my breath, I snarl back, “You know the only one I belong to.”

“Garrett,” Milo sneers.

“No,” I say, yanking my hand out of his grasp again.  “Me.”

We stop at a stone archway, much like the one we entered through, but this one has a black door. 
Instead of opening the door, Milo twists and pins me to the wall.  My field is up and I punch my Cavis down so hard, it goes into the sole of my shoe.

Milo and I flash around each other, him getting me
in a hold and me escaping it, me throwing a punch at his jaw and him ducking it.  But our movements aren’t graceful or full of little surprise kisses, like when Garrett and I fought.  No, this fight is awkward and choppy and I totally mean to knock his teeth out.

“Enough!” Milo roars, but I don’t stop.  I spot his
drifting Cavis, but he moves it away too fast and I can’t see any pattern of where it is headed.  I jab at it at his elbow, at his wrist, and try to bash it right into the side of his head, but none of the hits even phase him.  None are his true weak point.

And then his finger darts toward my heart, and I think for a split second that
maybe I’m not standing on my Cavis anymore, but I am.  And now it’s too late.  He shocked me and in the moment I hesitated to question myself, he knocks me down and pins me really hard this time, on the ground.

I feel his entire body
laying on me.  He doesn’t suspend any of his weight.  He’s breathing fast and every time he inhales, his chest expands and crushes mine.

“Get off me,” I pant and,
manage to squeak out, “you ox.”

“I love it when you fight me,” he says
loud enough for anyone in the hall to hear, and then he dips his head into my hair, as if he’s kissing my neck.  But he whispers fiercely into my ear instead.  “They’re always watching, do you get that?  Always.  Check your pride, because if you want to stay alive, they have to believe I’m on their side and that I can control you.  Last time I say it.”

I don’t struggle.  I can’t. 
He’s smashing me.  His breathing slows, but his hips are pressed against mine and I can feel every muscle he’s got from the waist down.  I don’t trust him, but I don’t see that I have any other choice but to do what he says.  He lifts his head away and fixes his eyes on mine.

“Are you going to be good?”
  he says.  If I could get his lip between my teeth, I’d bite it off and spit it back in his face.

“
Sure,”  I say and he smiles.

“Good girl.”  He rolls away, and I still kick him as he does.  He just laughs, jumping onto his feet and hauling me onto mine.
  We walk until the hall comes to a dead end, the ceiling slanting into the wall.  A plastic step, like the ones outside the Addo’s old trailer, sit beneath a rectangular block cut in the wall.

“This is the North exit?” I say
, sniffing.  The smell of sour smoke leaches in.

“
The Fury always send each other on goose chases.  The South exit is probably the dangerous one,” Milo says and he grabs my hand, swinging the tiny door open.

***

The door is more like an escape hatch.  We climb out and kneel beneath the girders of an overpass.  When Milo closes the door behind us, I see that the outer side of the door looks exactly like the slanted brick we’re standing on.  Well, hunched over and squatting on. 

The smoke chokes me right away.  Milo pulls my shirt up, and before I can slap away his hand, he cups it to my nose.  He’s got his cupped to his nose too. 
We’re even, except that my bra is showing.  His eyes crinkle at the edges as he dodges a glance at my chest and then back at my face.  And the only reason that I don’t punch him in the head is because I get a look at what is all around us.

We’re standing on the slanted bricks, beneath a silent overpass
.  It makes me feel all disoriented, climbing out of a little hatch onto the downward slant beneath a bridge.  The Fury’s hideout is embedded in the berm that rises up and away from the edge of a four lane express way.

The first thing I se
e, jamming the four lanes of the express way below is the pile-up of cars.  They’re smashed and accordion-ed together.  There are black tire marks leading to the crash, pools of every color of car fluid all around it.  An economy car is wedged under a semi truck, the top sheered back like a convertible.  The smoke isn’t coming from the wreck, but the smell of it is still awful and only some of the car doors are open, as if the ones who were able to walk away, did.  There are no other signs that rescue trucks came or that anyone stopped to help.  From the looks and smell, I’m betting no one has.

Milo tugs me along with him, walking on the slanted bricks beneath the bridge and parallel to the car crash. 
The sky is dark with a coming storm, but as far as I can see down the road, there are a zillion crashes just like the one in front of us.  I think I see some bodies lying in the road too.  I look away.

We
climb out from under the overpass and onto the grass.  Smoke billows, hot and black, over the edge of the embankment.  We climb up it anyway. When we peek up over the side, past the ramp that leads back down onto the expressway, I see a subdivision and the reason for all the smoke.  Three houses, closest to the road, are on fire.

In the world I know, the wail of fire trucks would be cutting through the air.  People would be s
warming, trying to help and trying to put out the fire. 
Something
would be happening.  But here, three houses are on fire and the only sound in the air is the licking of the flames, the wood beams falling in on themselves, and laughter.  Laughter.

I scan for it and find a couple with
filled pillow cases thrown over their shoulders, laughing as they walk toward us.  The minute they see us, the woman drops her pillow case on the ground and pulls a pistol from her waistband, aiming it right at my head.

“Git,” she says, flicking the barrel to show Milo and I which wa
y we need to go.  Milo puts up one hand, to show we’re peaceful, and grabs me with the other.  We climb up the rest of the embankment and make a wide arc around the couple.  The woman keeps the pistol aimed on us as we jog away.  When I check over one shoulder, the gun is still aimed and the man swoops down and snatches up the woman’s pillow case.  Once we’re at a safe distance, the woman swings back on the man and aims the gun straight at him.

“Don’t watch,” Milo tells me.  I’m letting him drag me along so
I can keep my eyes over my shoulder.  He warns me too late.  The woman fires and the man stumbles backward, dropping both bags.  After he drops, the woman grabs both bags and disappears over the edge of the berm.

Mark was trying to protect us after all.

The North exit is probably going to get us killed.

As we jog down the street, past the
three burning houses that are already trying to lick at the fourth, I realize that the one thing that’s missing is people, even though it looks like a lot of people have already been here and left. 

This
subdivision is the kind that would usually have manicured bushes, nice cars in the driveway and matching curtains in all the windows.  But as I look around, what I see are doors hanging open, ruts of car tracks cutting across the manicured lawns, open garages without any cars in them.  And then I spot a woman’s face, peeking from behind a curtain, but it disappears before I can point it out to Milo.  Not that he is interested.

“It’s not like this everywhere…” I say, but I know the answer.  I saw it when Garrett and I first got to the Hotel Celare and we watched all the news channels scramble to keep up with how the world had gone insane.  Robbery and rape, accidents and shootings.  Beatings in the streets.  Looting.  And now I’m a part of it.

“We’ve got to move fast,” Milo says.  “Let’s pick a house and hope they’ve got some food we can take with us and that everybody’s left already.”

“What if
there are people there?”

“What do you think?” he says. 
I think this isn’t right.  I think the world’s gone upside down.  I think I’m hungry enough that I’ll steal from someone else’s house and fight them for it, if I have to.

Milo
motions to a driveway—I guess he’s doing the picking—and we go up to the front door.  I halt on the steps, but Milo walks right in.  “Come on.  Get in and out.  What are you waiting for?”

It’s too weird, just walking into a stranger’s house and the inside is worse than the outside.  Things are smashed, overturned.  Bits of glass from broken photo frames crunch under my feet.  A baseball bat, with a smear of red paint on the end, lays on the floor near a busted-
up entertainment center.  Wires hang loose from where stuff was ripped away.

Milo walks
stops off in the bathroom first and then he walks into the kitchen, like he lives here.  I finally move past the living room and around the corner.  Milo’s dumped some bathroom stuff into a fabric grocery bag before he starts banging through the cabinets.

“There’s not much,” he says.  “But I can’t b
elieve there’s really anything this close to the Cache.”

“Cache.
Is that what you call a stolen Veritas house?”

“When
we
confiscate a Veritas structure,” he corrects me, his eyes flashing around the space as if The Fury could pop up from behind the overturned table. I peek behind it to be sure no one is actually there.  And I am already starting to feel crazy, having to pretend that we are part of this insanity without ever taking a break, even when we are alone.