The chair opposite me slipped out from under the table, and Nova sat herself down in it. She clasped her hands in front of herself and stared at me silently.
“What?” I snapped, still cranky from waking up and my severe lack of caffeine.
“Nothin’, I was just sitting with you. What’s up your ass?” she bit out.
I rubbed a hand down my face and then looked at her apologetically. “Sorry, I’m still waking up. I never was much of a morning person.”
Nova snorted out a dry laugh. “You’re not much of a day person, either. Or a night person, or a—”
“All right!” I snapped again. “I get it.” I turned away from her, slinking back into my own thoughts. I couldn’t help how hurt I felt at her assessment of me. I felt different inside, and thought that meant maybe I wasn’t as toxic as I used to be. That maybe I was turning over a new leaf and heading into “not a
total
bitch” land.
“I thought I had changed,” I mumbled out, keeping my eyes looking out the window so as to avoid her stare. “At least a little.”
“You have,” she replied automatically. “But you’re still you.”
I finally tore my gaze away from the rotting bodies and met her stare.
“So what are you telling me? That there’s no hope for me? That I’m destined to be the bitch that everyone hates no matter what I do?” I huffed out an annoyed breath and tried to calm myself. I was taking this way too personally, and I wasn’t quite sure how we had gotten to this standoff.
Mikey cleared his throat from across the room, and I glanced across to him to see that both Joan and Adam were staring at me open-mouthed. Heat traveled up my neck and embarrassment flooded me.
“You said the B word again,” Adam said with a shake of his head. “But it’s okay, I can tell that you’re upset. Mom used to use bad words when she was upset.”
I looked away from his big round eyes, resting my gaze on the wooden table. I fought for something to change the subject, anything to draw the attention away from my stupid, overly dramatic outburst.
“Stop being so melodramatic.” Nova rolled her eyes at me. “Seriously, chew some bubble gum and lighten the fuck up.” She slid a fresh piece of gum across to me.
“When are we leaving?” I asked, clearing my throat. “It’s stopped raining.”
“That’s what I said,” Nova replied.
“We’ll leave soon,” Mikey said, still looking at me with concern in his eyes.
I hated that look. It made me feel weak and pathetic. And there was one thing I knew after all this time out here: I was not weak. Even when I felt I was really weak, when I didn’t think I had the strength to fight through another day, I did, because I was strong.
“If we leave now we might not get there in time for nightfall, and I hate driving at night. It attracts too much attention.”
I nodded and turned away. Nova was still staring at me, and I had an unnatural urge to scream really loudly in her face just to scare the shit out of her.
I pushed my chair back and stood up. “I’m going out,” I said, moving toward the door.
“I’ll come with you,” Nova said, standing up.
“No, I want some space. I need some space,” I replied sharply, emphasizing the need.
“No one goes out on their own. You know that, Nina,” Mikey said calmly. “Calm down and sit down.”
His words had the opposite effect on me and instead incensed me to leave this stuffy little room even more. I could hardly breathe with everyone’s stare, with their condescending, judgmental looks. I hated it. And I hated the thought that I would always be seen as this snippy bitc
h
.
And my attitude at the moment wasn’t helping me win anyone over. But I couldn’t help it.
“I’m just stepping outside. I’ll be fine. I won’t go from right outside,” I pleaded.
I stared at Mikey and he stared right back. Of course if I wanted to go, I damn well could, but we were a team, and we worked as a team, and I was trying really hard to be a part of it. I swallowed, feeling the suffocating, stale air make its way down my throat and into my lungs.
“You stay where we can see you, and I’ll be at the window watching,” he said, his words gruff.
I really wanted to tell him to stop acting like an over protective boyfriend, but in reality, I knew he’d do this if it were anyone and I wasn’t getting any special treatment. Still, it pissed me off. A lot.
“Fine,” I snapped. I pulled on the handle and opened the door, already starting to feel better when the fresh air hit my face.
“Nina!” Mikey barked, out making me jump.
“What?”
“Machete?” he asked with a raised eyebrow.
I patted my opposite hip and he nodded unhappily, and I finally stepped out into the fresh air.
I clicked the door shut softly, ignoring the little voice inside me that wanted to slam it hard enough to make pictures fall off the walls, and then I began to pace. I moved out from under the small canopy that covered the motel room door and let the heat of the day soak into my skin.
It wasn’t exactly warm, but it was warmer than it had been in a long time—as if the storm of the past couple of days had blown away the last of winter, and spring was now well underway. That thought put things into perspective and made me smile. I had made it through another winter—my first winter outside the walls. I had come so far, learned so much, and yes, I had lost a lot, but each loss had made me stronger, and I truly felt ready to take on anything and anyone.
I walked, listening to the sound of my boots crunching the stones underfoot. I stepped around the corpses and tried my best to see the beauty of the day: the trees that were beginning to bud with leaves, the color of flowers ready to open, the fact that the sky was freaking blue! Blue…it had been gray or white for so long, I had almost forgotten that it could be blue.
I sat down on the hood of an old, beat-up Mustang, pulling myself up until I was comfy and then I took in the motel. It was rusted and falling apart from years of weather abuse and neglect, and I wished I could have seen it in its previous state. Sure, it was a shitty place and one I wouldn’t have ever been seen dead in, but there was also a hidden beauty to it. If you looked past the cheapness, it was also quaint. Or maybe it had never been cheap and broken; maybe it had always been pretty and quaint but I hadn’t taken the time to see it properly.
In many ways, nothing was what it seemed anymore, and nothing was to be truly trusted. People, things, places—there was always another side to them, and not always bad. There could be good in the world…if you took the time to look.
I thought of where I had come from, and how far I had come, and then my thoughts drifted to the other people from behind the walls—the many people that were still being forced to live under somebody’s rule. People that were starving and dying, and being sentenced to death because of the people running those places.
And then I thought of the Forgotten.
I squeezed my eyes shut, hating that they were still inside my head, haunting me. The memories of what they did to me and what they forced Mikey to do were suddenly fresh. For a while I had put them aside, but now I felt angry—not just for me, but because they could do so much good. They could help other people if they wanted to. If they knew the truth, they could save those people.
I slid off the hood and made my way back to the motel, standing outside the door, knowing that Mikey was at the window watching me and knowing that Nova thought I couldn’t truly change, that I was selfish and always would be selfish. And then there was Adam, the little boy inside, an orphan who’d survived out here on his own for all this time, despite all the odds stacked against him.
But we’d made it this far, and as much as I wanted to run and hide at Ben’s parents’ cabin, there would be a time for that, but right then I knew what we needed to do. Because Emily had said it to me months ago, and yet somewhere along the road we had forgotten—I had forgotten. Or maybe not forgotten, but I’d been too afraid to do it. But now that Emily was gone, now that I didn’t have her to worry about, I knew that now was the time.
I opened the door and all eyes turned to me. No one said anything, and after several long, tense moments I broke the silence. “Sorry, that was a little dramatic. But then, what I have to say is pretty dramatic.” I swallowed, my throat feeling dry. “I have a plan. But I’ll need some help.”
“A plan?” Nova asked, lighting a cigarette.
“Well, not a plan, more of an idea.” I rolled my eyes.
“An idea?” Mikey said, coming toward me.
“Well,” I shrugged, “I guess it’s more of a vague, very loose concept.”
Mikey smirked. “Well, go on then. Tell us this vague, loose concept of a plan that you’ve just thought of.” He folded his arms across his chest and waited.
“Yeah, get on with it,” Nova said through a mouth full of smoke. “The suspense is killing me,” she added drolly.
Joan raised her hand in the air.
“What?” I asked.
“Did you find it?” she asked with a smile.
“Did I find what?”
“Nova said you were going to find yourself, did you find it? If you find yourself, maybe there’s hope for me! I lost myself a long time ago and haven’t been able to find myself since,” she said with hope.
“Oh,” I replied. “Well, yeah, I guess I did find myself, in a way.”
“So your plan?” Mikey asked, ignoring Joan completely. “Or your vague concept. Because I thought we had a plan that was more solid than whatever thing you’ve just thought up.”
Nova frowned. “You two thought up plans without me? What am I, a fuckin’ leper?”
“Bad word,” Adam mumbled.
Nova scowled at him. “The world full of bad words, bad people, and bad things, kid.”
“I’m leaving,” I said to her, drawing her attention back to me.
“Correction, we’re leaving,” Mikey interjected.
“When? What do you mean you’re leaving?” Nova stood up, her scowl growing by the second.
“Once we get back to the mall, I want to go out on my own.” I rushed out the words, feeling like a traitor for saying them.
“Is this because of what I did? Because I killed the zombie kid? I thought we’d sorted that shit out?” Her nostrils flared in anger, and I sensed Mikey staring at both me and her in confusion. We hadn’t ever really told him what had happened when we found Deacon and the baby—just that the whole trip had been a waste since Hilary was dead—and I realized that I probably should have told him the full story.
“No, it’s not because of that, and in some ways yeah, it’s everything to do with that. And more.” I held up my hands when she tried to interrupt me. “This is all beside the point.”
“Like fuck it is,” she snapped angrily.
“Bad word,” Adam said again, placing his hands over his ears.
I pinched between my brows. “No, it really is, because I don’t want to leave now—at least not yet.” I hurried out before she could yell at me again. “I’m not leaving.”
“We’re not?” Mikey asked, looking thoroughly confused. “And please start including me in the whole ‘are we or aren’t we leaving’ thing,” he said with an edge of pissiness solely directed at me.
I rolled my eyes at him dramatically before speaking. “No, we’re not.”
“Why not?” he asked, still sounding pissy enough that I wanted to shake him. I guess I hadn’t realized how much he had been looking forward to going off the grid with me.
I looked down at my feet, knowing the next thing out of my mouth would cause the most arguments, but it had to come out regardless. I took a deep breath before looking up. “Emily said that she wanted to kill the Forgotten for what they did, and I want to live out that wish.”
“Nina!” both Mikey and Nova said at the same time.
I hushed them both and hurried on. “Not all of them. Just Fallon. If we can kill him, then I think we could get the others to listen to us.”
Because obviously killing people is my thing now,
I thought sourly.
“Listen to what, though?” Nova asked, still looking angry but curiosity winning her over now. “What do you want to say to any of them?”
“We’re not going back there,” Mikey said.
I glanced over, seeing his body rippling with tension.
“I want to help the people behind the walls, and to do that we need an army. We need the Forgotten,” I said, mumbling the last part because really, I wasn’t so sure of my loose concept of a plan now that I had said it out loud. It was clearly a death sentence…just hopefully not for us.
Silence had descended upon the group, and Adam finally took his hands down from his ears and continued shuffling the cards.
Joan looked up at me, her expression soft. “I’m in.” She smiled, her chin high.
“Umm, thanks,” I replied, not bothering to tell her that there was no way in hell that she was coming with me, and yet feeling equally pleased that someone was on my side.
“Where are we going?” She smiled again, looking from me to Mikey, and then over to Nova. “Will they have mojitos?”
The mood was somber in the truck the following morning. Mikey had barely said a word to me since the previous night’s discussion, and I couldn’t entirely blame him, I guess. Well, I could—of course I could—but I was choosing to be a responsible adult for once and lay the blame at my own feet. It sucked.
Nova had briefly spoken to me, and had apologized over and over for killing Deacon and “the thing,” as she referred to it, begging me not to leave. The whole thing just made me all the more frustrated, because she was missing the entire point. I wasn’t fucking leaving! At least not quite yet, and only if I made it out alive.
Which I had every intention of doing.
Now that my own strength had been proven to me, I knew I could survive anything. Well, almost anything. Some things would just make a girl dead no matter how strong you were. Like a bullet to the brain, for instance, which I’m sure Fallon—the leader of the Forgotten and his band of merry psychos—would have no problem in doing.
But God, if we could just kill him—again with the whole killing thing being second nature to me—and get the others to listen to what I had to say, things could work out. Mikey had said that a lot of the Forgotten didn’t agree with the way things were being done, but did it because they wanted to live. Surely if we took out the threat to their lives, or at least the major one, they would be willing?
I had to believe that there were some good people left in the world. I had to, or I would just curl up and die right then. Emily couldn’t have been the last good person in the world. I looked over at Adam, his face pressed against the window as he watched the world pass by, and I knew then that there was at least one other good person in the world.
We rounded the corner and the mall loomed in front of us. It seemed just the same as the last time I was there, and yet so much had changed. Deaders loitered in the parking lot, surrounded by their murdered brethren.
Same old, same old,
I thought with a heavy heart.
They turned at the sound of the truck, and began their slow shamble toward us. Mikey and Nova steered between the rotting bodies as best they could, but some hits were inevitable. Adam curled up in the footwell of the truck with his hands over his ears, blocking out the destruction, and I kind of wanted to join him. I didn’t want to see that, the bodies breaking apart as our trucks hit them, their flesh splitting open and releasing dead maggots and rotten guts. We zipped passed a female deader, her coat whipping up around her as the air briskly moved. She spun and almost fell, and then her feet must have got confused with which was doing what because she collapsed to her knees, and even with the noise from our engine, I heard her kneecaps crunch.
We pulled around the back of the mall, Mikey jumped out to open the service entrance, and I slipped into his seat and eased the truck inside. When the gate was secure in place, I cut the engine and climbed out. Adam followed me out, his hand slipping easily into mine.
The air smelled stale, with not even a breeze to move the smell along. Everything seemed quiet, yet we could see several of our trucks from base camp, and so knew that our group—or what little of it remained—was here, and we collectively breathed a sigh of relief.
“Are you okay?” I asked Mikey as we walked to the small employee door.
He looked down at Adam and then back at me. “I think your plan is stupid.”
“It’s not a plan, it’s a vague concept,” I replied with a smirk, hoping to win him over with my wit and charm. It didn’t work.
“We’ll all be killed,” he said, his words heavy with worry.
“They’ll listen to you.”
“No, they won’t.” He looked away from me, as if the very sight of me annoyed him. “And you’ll die, and it will be my fault.” His words were somber and painful.
Maybe it was a stupid idea that would get us all killed. And maybe I should just have just left it and been on my way, but at that point it felt like I’d been running for years, and I didn’t want to run anymore. I wanted to stand and fight. I want to protect and I want to survive, not just live day to day. And currently, my nightmares were filled with the threat of the Forgotten and the horror of life behind the walls. Living with those horrors was no way to live, and the only way I knew to make them go away was to destroy them.
“No, it will be my fault. Now get a fucking grip, Mikey. We can do this.”
At my words he jerked his face back to mine, a small curve starting on his lips. “I love it when you talk dirty.”
“Shut up.” I laughed lightly and pushed his shoulder.
“You two bitches done?” Nova said, pushing past me. She scowled down at Adam, who closed his mouth before he said anything about her swearing.
The hallway was like I remembered, though now it felt used—as if I could hear the movement of feet echoing along it. We hurried along, eager to see everyone, our friends, our family, or what little was left of them. I wondered how they were all settling in; it was, after all, their new home. At the end of the corridor, Nova pushed the door wide open, stepping into the bright hub of the mall. A loud
crack
rang out and she stumbled backwards with a cry of pain.
I looked at her flailing body stumbling backwards, trying to work out what the hell had just happened, and then I looked to Mikey, confused. Another
crack
sounded out, and Joan yelped and quickly slammed the door shut and we were plunged back into semi-darkness again.
“Nova!” I yelled, before Mikey’s hand clasped tightly over my mouth.
“I’m here,” Nova panted out. “I’m alive. Fuck, that hurts,” she gasped, and I felt the air shifting around us.
I followed the sound of her voice, watched for the subtle shadow of her body on the floor, and I knelt down at her side. “What happened?” I asked, still confused.
“Gunshot,” Mikey said, his ear pressed to the door.
I looked at the place where Nova was clutching her stomach, noticing the dark patch seeping around her hands, and realization finally hit me.
“Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.” I tore off my blouse and pressed it against the wound.
Nova hissed but clutched at the blouse, stemming her own blood flow. “I’m okay, I’m a tough bitch,” she said through clenched teeth.
“Who’s in there, Mikey?” I asked. My voice sounded too loud and panicky, and I knew that any second, whoever was in there was going to come out and kill us all. In theory we should have been running, dragging Nova, Adam, and Joan out of the danger. Yet there we were, frozen to the spot in fear.
“Fallon,” he said, turning to face me. “It’s Fallon in there, I’d know his voice anywhere.”
“Shut the fuck up!” both Nova and I said in total disbelief at the same time.
“What are the fuckin’ chances of that?” Nova looked over at me, her jaw hanging slack from both the revelation and the pain.
Tears of anger and frustration burned my eyes. Why wouldn’t he just let us go—let Mikey go? How could one person be so intent on slaughtering so many innocent people? It was then that I realized that Fallon would never let Mikey go, or me.
“They came to end this, end all of you.” Mikey pulled out his gun.
I could hardly see him in the dark, but I heard him—heard his gun. I heard the safety click off, and I heard the thump of his heart, heavy and foreboding in the dark.
“Nina, take Adam and Joan, and you and Nova get the hell out of here.”
I watched his shadow turn away from me and I stood up abruptly. “No, don’t you dare go in there, Mikey. Don’t you fucking dare!”
Adam had begun to whimper next to me, and his little hands were tight around my leg, his small fingers digging into to my skin. Joan was off whimpering somewhere else in the dark, but God knew where because I couldn’t see her.
I dragged Mikey back away from the door, knowing we only had seconds before they came to find us. The only reason they were hesitating was because they didn’t know how many of us there were out here. Clearly, we had taken them by surprise, and they were taking it cautiously because of that. They hadn’t expected someone to just walk right in like that, but we wouldn’t be so lucky a second time. We needed to go. Now.
Mikey pulled out of my grip. “He’ll kill you, Nina, and it will all have been for nothing. I can’t let him get you again—I can’t watch what he did…”
“We’ll do this together, we’ll take him together,” I pleaded, gripping his arms roughly.
“And the kid? What happens to him if you die?” Mikey said flatly, stepping backwards.
“I can barely keep myself alive. What are the chances he’ll be safe with me?” I bit out angrily.
“It’s better this way. I’ll kill myself before he makes me hurt anyone else, I promise, but I can’t do that if he has you.” His voice was tinged with deep desperation, and I felt sorrow and loss like I hadn’t experienced before. It cut worse than Emily-Rose, and worse than Ben. Because I had let him in, I had let him have my heart. I wouldn’t ever get this chance again; our time was over. “I love you, Nina.”
A shadow moved behind Mikey, and I realized that Nova had stood up and was limping back toward the door. My heart froze when I thought of her life-threatening injuries, and what would happen to her when she died from them.
“Nova?” I whispered, almost too scared to say her name in case she growled in response and lunged for us. Because if she were dead and had just turned, then she was about to take a bite out of one of us unless we took her out first.
“Take care, darlin’. It was worth the crazy ride, I promise you that… now fuckin’ run, all of you!”
I saw the space around us light up as she lit a cigarette and then, holding it between her lips, she turned and charged at the door.
She shoulder-barged it open, and as the light flooded in I saw her two guns in her hands. I saw the flash of them as she fired them over and over, and I saw firsthand as her body shook while bullet after bullet pounded into her flesh. She fired back at the threat beyond those doors, her body blocking any bullets that tried to make it past her. And whoever was there continued to shoot back at her, riddling her already-damaged body with bullets. She dropped to her knees and her guns rang empty, and then she fell face forward just short of the door.
The door swung back closed, and we were embraced back into the darkness, trapped with the sounds of crying and whimpering from Joan and Adam. Yells and shouts rang out loudly from behind the closed door, and I realized that I was gasping for air. I was panting, the room going dizzy and spinning as I struggled to suck the oxygen into my lungs. Because it was all too much, too goddamn much. How could it be happening now, after what we had done to get back there, to save Jessica, to give Adam some sort of peace?
“Nina?” Mikey whispered, his voice close to my ear. “We need to go. She’s bought us time, she may even have killed him, but we can’t risk sticking around to find out.”
“What about everyone else?” I whispered back, warm tears bleeding from my eyes. “All the people from the base?” But I was already moving, already backing out of the hallway as quietly as I could while still staring at the place that Nova had just been.
“They’re dead. Fallon wouldn’t let them live if he knew they were with us,” Mikey replied darkly, and I knew he was right.
The shock of that simple statement broke me, and fresh misery erupted within my warring mind. Because of me all of my friends were now dead. Because of me. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t carry on. I couldn’t live with the guilt.
Adam clung to my leg tighter, his cries sounding muffled as he buried his face in my pants. And I realized that I
had
to carry on. I had no choice. Because I had Adam to look after now, and somewhere else in that godforsaken corridor, I had Joan.
“We need to go,” Mikey said again, his words more urgent.
He gripped my hand and began tugging at me, pulling me along the hallway until we were back outside and the sunlight was blinding me. I turned to see Joan stumbling out of the darkness too, her face crippled in pain and sadness. She avoided things like this, she hid, and so to see it, to be a part of it, was soul-destroying for her. Even her alter ego couldn’t take this much stress.
Mikey pulled us toward the truck, and I pushed Adam and Joan inside while Mikey dragged open the gate. I looked back toward the staff entrance one last time, thinking how only moments ago Nova had walked in there with us, alive and looking forward to seeing her brother and her friends. Of how she had bought us precious moments by going back through that door and hopefully killing some of Fallon’s men.
I thought of how I had wanted to go after Fallon and kill him, how I had wanted to use the Forgotten to take down the people of the walled cities. To help free those people trapped in misery behind their walls.
Now it all seemed so ridiculous. Pointless, and so impossible. Yet beyond that, I felt angry and frustrated. Because for every step forward, there seemed to be so many more backwards. And I couldn’t do it anymore. Because men like Fallon needed to die, they needed to be ended—finished—if there was ever going to be hope for anyone again.
“Nina!” Mikey urged, climbing inside the truck. “Come on, quickly, they’ll be coming.”
I looked in at him—seeing him, and Adam, and Joan, and knowing I would never see Emily or Nova or so many other people that I held dear to me, ever again. My mouth tightened into a thin line. Because I knew what I had to do—what I wanted to do to protect the people I cared about. Because I couldn’t lose another person I loved. I couldn’t let another innocent person go through the suffering that those men were subjecting people to.