The Farm (17 page)

The Collab up on the second floor was trying to slice through my rope.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Carter

Carter strolled past all the Collabs on the first floor and walked out of the building so easily, it seemed like proof that Lily really was an
abductura
. Not that he needed proof. Spending a night in her company, having her inadvertently messing with his emotions, that was all the proof he needed that she was exactly what he’d promised Sebastian she was. An
abductura
capable of controlling the thoughts and emotions of others.

Which explained perfectly why he’d been such a mess for the past day. The last thing he should be doing right now was kissing Lily. He had one job. Get her off the Farm and away to safety. Kissing her, cuddling her in the closet, reminiscing with her about the past, and falling asleep beside her so he could wake up with her draped across his chest were not on the agenda.

It didn’t matter how the hell he felt about her. It didn’t matter if he wanted to do all those things. His job was to keep her safe. And he couldn’t do that if he was distracted by wanting to be with her. He kept talking about military school for a reason. Defense and strategy weren’t the only things he’d learned there. He’d learned focus and determination. He would keep her safe, even though he wasn’t keeping her safe for himself.

Worse still, because of the effect she had on him, he knew every emotion she felt for him. But he knew her personality well enough to guess how she would react when he told her the truth. When he explained that she was an
abductura
and what that meant and why he’d been searching for her, she wasn’t going to be happy about it. She’d probably resent the hell out of him for it. She might even hate him for it. On the bright side, he thought grimly, at least then he wouldn’t have to worry about his feelings for her anymore. But he had to get her off the Farm and to safety before he could come clean.

Then, just as he was walking around the corner to the south side of the building, he walked straight into a Collab. And the guy already had his tranq rifle drawn and raised.

It happened so fast, Carter barely kept himself from slamming into the barrel of the rifle. In the second it took him to sling his own rifle off his shoulder and bring it up, the other guy cocked his weapon.

“What are you doing here?” the Collab shouted.

Carter eyed the other Collab. The guy looked tweaked. Nervous eyes. Twitchy fingers. Adrenaline pounding. A nice little cocktail of paranoia and fear.

If this guy was freaking out, was there something wrong with Lily? Was he picking up on her emotions? Was she nearby but in danger? If so, why hadn’t he felt it?

“I’m doing the same thing you are,” Carter said, trying to keep his voice slow and calm, despite his fear for Lily.

“Yeah? What’s that?” The twitchy Collab jerked the barrel of the rifle, like he couldn’t decide where to shoot Carter.

“The Dean sent me.”

The Collab’s eyes narrowed in obvious suspicion. “He sent twelve of us. You weren’t there.”

A Collab with a brain. Just what he needed.

“He sent me to see what was taking so long.”

“Why didn’t the Dean radio me and tell me he was sending you?”

If this Collab had a radio, that meant he was high ranking. He had more than a brain then. Now would be the perfect time to just shoot the guy with his tranq rifle. If he still had darts in it.

Since shooting the guy was off the table, Carter started edging closer, but before he could dodge around the rifle, a blur of motion rocketed into the Collab, knocking the guy clear off his feet. The guy grunted in surprise as the tranq rifle flew out of his hands. Carter almost felt sorry for him. He’d been on the receiving end of one of Lily’s tackles not that long ago. She was stronger than she looked.

But Carter didn’t spare the guy any sympathy. Especially since the Collab managed to twist on the way down and land on top of Lily with a sickening crack.

Dropping his own useless tranq rifle, Carter dashed for the Collab’s, praying it was still fully loaded. He snatched it up from the ground, lined the Collab up in the sights, and fired. After a long second, the Collab drooped forward.

Carter reached out a foot and gave the guy a firm shove off Lily. Without lowering the rifle, he asked, “You okay?”

“Took you long enough,” she grumbled, struggling to wiggle her legs out from under those of the fallen Collab.

Carter gave the Collab another nudge with his toe, watching to see if the guy moved. He didn’t. “The guy was like a bull elephant. I didn’t want to have to shoot him a second time.”

Lily sat up, rolling her shoulder as if working out a kink. “Ah, man. What a jerk.” She used her foot to scoot herself away from him, maybe with more enthusiasm than she needed to. Then she stilled. Slowly, she reached behind her to feel at the back of her shirt under the backpack.

For a second, she was so still, Carter half expected that she’d pulled her hand away and her fingers would be bright with blood. Instead, she jerked her hand around and shucked her backpack while scrambling to her feet. It wasn’t until she let it fall to the ground that he put the clues together. She’d been carefully guarding that backpack since the moment they’d met. As she grabbed his hand and began running away from it, he knew there could be only one reason why. She must have made a third jar that she’d kept in her backpack. The crunching noise he’d heard had been it breaking.

If the glass jar had broken, then her bag was now soaked in methanol. Her bag was so tightly packed that the bomb hadn’t yet been exposed to air. That was the only reason it hadn’t already burst into flames.

They ran through the darkness, trying to put as much distance between themselves and the backpack as possible. It caught fire just as he pulled her around the corner of the next building over. Without the breaking glass, it was less dramatic, but he bet a flaming backpack in the middle of campus would still attract plenty of attention. Out of breath and heart racing, he pulled her to a stop, leaning against the building and clutching her to his chest.

He let himself drop his head to hers and just rest his cheek against her hair, breathing in the scent of her.

Christ, that had been close. Too close.

He’d gotten almost a hundred Greens out of Farms. He’d faced Collabs, manipulated Deans, killed Ticks. In the past six months, he’d done all kinds of crazy crap he never would have thought himself capable of doing in the Before. And he was pretty damn good at it.

So why was he having such a hard time keeping this one girl alive and safe? Was it just because he actually cared about her? Did these close calls just seem closer because it was Lily and not some Green he barely knew? Or was he somehow screwing up?

When he’d first told Sebastian about Lily, Sebastian had wanted to send one of the other guys in after her. But Carter had insisted he be the one to come get her out. He knew her. Knew she wouldn’t just trust a stranger to get her off the Farm. But had Carter made the wrong decision? Was he too close to her to keep her safe?

Of course, it didn’t help that she questioned him at every turn. That she didn’t trust him. That she was cautious enough to sneak an extra bomb into her bag without telling him.

But he had to admit, if he was in her shoes, it’s what he’d have done. If someone he’d barely known in the Before showed up out of the blue, offering a ticket out, he wouldn’t trust the guy, either.

By nature, Lily was cautious, suspicious, and loyal. Those were exactly the qualities he loved about her. They were what was going to make her a great
abductura
. But right now, those qualities were making his job that much more difficult.

Finally he forced himself to let her go. “Let’s see your hands. Did you get . . . what kind of fuel was that? Methan—”

“Methanol.” She brought her hands up to her face and sniffed them. “Yeah, I got a little on them.”

“Let me see if I’ve got a rag or something to clean them off.” He slung his bag off his shoulder and dug around until he found a package of baby wipes.

She blinked at them in surprise and then chuckled. “You have the weirdest stuff in that bag.” But she took the wipe and used it on her hands as they started walking. “How much time do we have?”

“We need to move fast, but we’ll get there.” He nodded back the way they’d come. “Besides, at least the Collabs will be distracted for a while.”

She groaned. “Everything I owned in the world was in that backpack.”

“Then maybe you shouldn’t have been carrying around an explosive combination of liquids in a glass jar.”

Clearly annoyed by his observation, she shot him an evil look. He probably deserved it for giving her hell when she was down.

“I’m just saying, you wouldn’t have lost the backpack if you’d just trusted me.”

“I’ll keep that in mind the next time someone’s forcing me to rappel down a trash chute.”

“I got you out, didn’t I?”

Her gaze softened. “Yeah. Thanks for that.”

“Let’s get out of here. It’ll be dawn soon and we still need to get across campus.”

He pretended not to notice the expression in her eyes. He didn’t want her thinking he was some kind of hero. It would be easier on both of them later if he kept his distance now. When she found out the truth, she was going to hate him.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Lily

After the rapid descent in the trash chute, getting out of the basement of the science lab had been pretty easy. Yeah, my fingers had fumbled getting out of the harness, and sure, I’d been terrified that the Collab was going to figure out my escape route and cut me off before I could scurry out the ground-level window, but strangely, both of those fears paled compared to my panic when I’d rounded the building and saw the Collab attacking Carter.

My nerves still buzzed with adrenaline as we made our way across campus. This was it. We were getting out. Assuming Sebastian kept up his end of the bargain and met Carter and me at the rendezvous point, Mel and I would be off the Farm.

After all these months of planning, we were really going to do it.

Dawn was near and as we made our way across campus, the outlines of the buildings and trees slowly became more clear, dark shapes looming against the lightening sky. We didn’t see any more Collabs. Not after the last bunch of them that rushed past our hiding spot, heading toward my exploding backpack. Despite that, dread began to crawl up my spine like the itsy-bitsy spider that had come back out now that the sun had dried up the most recent batch of obstacles.

Slowly the truth dawned on me. As terrifying as being on the Farm was, I was scared to leave. To stay meant certain death, but it was a certainty I knew and understood. Beyond these walls . . . was something else. I had no idea what would happen once we were out.

Yes, I’d seen Ticks on TV, back when there was TV still, before everything went completely to crap. Right when the Before was becoming the Before. I’d seen the same blood-chilling news footage everyone had seen when the Ticks started appearing. The pathogen that transformed ordinary people into Ticks spread quickly across the Southwest and Midwest. Most people merely got sick for a few days. But some people’s bodies transformed, almost overnight, into something no longer human. Something bloodthirsty and animalistic. Something the police couldn’t stop or control. It had been terrifying. The idea that any one of us could turn into a monster capable of massacring our families and friends.

And since coming to the Farm, I’d even glimpsed them outside the fences. Especially this winter, with night coming early, you could sometimes see the hulky shapes lurching through the darkened streets of the town, their movements somehow both unnatural and graceful all at once. And, of course, I had heard their howls.

But I’d never seen one up close. The thought of what they must be capable of terrified me. But I was more afraid to stay. I didn’t want to be a placid cow. I wanted to fight for my freedom.

Mel was waiting for me somewhere out here in the darkness and Carter’s hand held mine. He pulled me forward, one step after the other, as we crept through the night.

Carter led me past the cafeteria toward the north side of campus, toward the football stadium near the same tree Mel and I had hidden behind a mere eight hours earlier.

To distract myself from my fear, I asked, “Now what?”

“Now we wait.”

Carter wore a watch, and when he checked the time, the light-up face flashed briefly in the darkness.

“How long?”

“Five, maybe ten minutes.” His voice sounded tense and I wondered if he was worried about Sebastian. If he was, then Mel would be in danger, too.

“I thought this guy was former military,” I whispered.

“He is. Why?”

“Well, shouldn’t it be ‘T minus three minutes’ or something? You know, something more—” I broke off when I spotted a shadow moving in the distance down by the gymnasium.

“Shh,” Carter hissed.

“I see it,” I breathed back, barely loud enough for him to hear it, let alone anyone else.

As soon as I focused on the movement, I realized it couldn’t be a Collab. The creature was low to the ground, about the size and shape of a medium dog, but it didn’t move with the cheerful gait of a dog. It scuttled and scurried, zipping side to side in the shadows. It didn’t see us until it was maybe twenty feet away. Then it paused, looking at us, its whiskers twitching and its orange teeth gleaming in the moonlight.

I stepped back, pressing my spine against the tree, hoping the creature would move on. It ducked its head and scurried off toward the lush vegetation over by the gymnasium.

I’d never seen a nutria on campus before. I’d seen them outside, though. Mel used to pull me over to the north fence and show me their fried corpses.

The Farm was surrounded on all four sides by twelve feet of electrified chain-link fences. On the north side, there were two fences, one separating the football stadium from the rest of campus—that one was never electrified—and then another fence on the far side, between the stadium and the river. That was the one that got turned off each night because of the nutria. If a nutria had gotten onto campus, it must have come through a hole in the fence.

Before I could mention it to Carter, I heard a low buzzing noise.

He cursed under his breath and bent down to his leg. He removed something from a case strapped to his calf. The item was gray and rectangular. About the size of a can of Coke. It was so unexpected it took me a minute to recognize it.

“You have a phone?” I asked in a whispered hush.

Waving my question aside, he spoke into the phone, keeping his voice as soft as mine. “Carter here.”

He was silent, listening for a long moment, while I stood beside him grinding my teeth. I realized that was what I’d seen him do on the way into fourth meal. He’d gotten separated from us because his phone had rung and he’d been unable to answer it in front of all the Greens. I wondered what that call had been about almost as much as I wondered about this one. Then he hung up without saying anything else.

“You have a phone?” I repeated as soon as he hung up.

Of course, I had a phone, too, but mine didn’t work. His did. Which meant it had to be a satellite phone or something.

I don’t know why it surprised me so much. What else didn’t I know?

Instead of answering my question, he grabbed my hand and tugged me in the direction of the stadium fence.

“This way. They had to bail and they’re already waiting for us on the other side.”

“They’re waiting for us?” I asked stupidly. Then I realized he was leading me toward the exact same hole in the fence that I’d made just last night.

The hole was bigger now, the chain link stretched out as though several people had already climbed through. Carter pulled the cuffs of his sleeves down over his hands to protect his palms and grabbed the edge of the chain link and pulled it out of the way so I could climb through.

Crawling on my hands and knees, I grumbled, “After all that, we’re still just sneaking out through the back fence?”

“What did you expect?” he asked, leaning down to unsnag a bit of sweatshirt that got caught on the fence.

He was close enough that I felt the warmth of his breath on my cold cheek.

“I don’t know. Something a little more elaborate. Smuggled out in a car trunk or airlifted out in helicopters.”

On the other side of the fence, I stood, then mimicked Carter’s actions with my sleeves and the fence. The other side of the fence curved inward and I grasped that edge and pulled, leaving room for him to wiggle through. The thick wire of the fence was stiff and cold, even through my sleeves. It took all my strength to make enough room for him to squirm his big shoulders through the hole.

Once through, he stood and dusted off his hands. “Right. ’Cause helicopters wouldn’t attract any attention.”

“If you two are finished, we could use your assistance over here.”

Sebastian.

I recognized the voice instantly. I’d never met anyone else who spoke with such icy clarity. Or with that fancy-schmancy accent.

He stepped out of the darkness and I felt Carter stiffen beside me. A moment later, I realized I’d done it, too.

Sebastian gave a slight incline of his head, nodding in the direction he’d just come from, and both Carter and I started moving. Sebastian fell into step beside us and, a few moments later, the second fence—the one between the stadium and the river—came into view. The hole in this fence was much larger. I expected to see Mel there, waiting for us.

“Where’s Mel?” I asked.

“She’s waiting on the other side of the fence,” Sebastian said smoothly.

“She wouldn’t leave without me,” I said, trying to put into words the sudden choking panic I felt. “After all these months, she wouldn’t just walk out of the Farm with a stranger. I know that!”

Sebastian stalked up from behind me and grabbed my elbow. His fingers, sharp and painful on my arm, propelled me forward. Under his breath he cursed in a language I didn’t recognize. “Yes, my pet, she’s out there. I had just as much trouble with her. You have my word.”

At the fence, I dug in my heels.

“He wouldn’t leave her. Trust me,” Carter said.

But it was hard to trust someone dragging you somewhere by force, even if it’s somewhere you’re desperate to go.

“Lil-lee?” Mel’s voice called out. “Lil
-
lee?”

The fight left my body at the sound of her voice coming from somewhere nearby. She was, as Sebastian had promised, already outside the fence. The hole Sebastian had cut was ten feet or so from the corner. This side of the fence was only a few feet away from the cliff that dropped forty feet down to the Red River. Looking out through the chain links to my left, I saw the street that ran along this side of the Farm. Across it was a deserted restaurant that had once overlooked the river. And beside it were abandoned shops and fast-food places. Beyond the row of commercial properties, I could see the hulking shapes of an apartment complex. On the street nearest the fence, Mel stood in front of an SUV. The doors were open, and the overhead dome light cast a little glowing circle through the darkness.

Now that I’d seen Mel, I couldn’t wait to get out. I released my grasp on the fence, the edge of the metal sharp against my palm.

Carter and I tumbled through the hole in the fence.

His arm tightened around me for a second before he released me. “Try not to plummet to your death.”

There were only a few feet between the fence and the drop-off. Suddenly I wasn’t so eager to try swimming across the Red River. I wrapped my hand firmly around the fence, weaving my fingers through the links. I looked down the line of the fence and saw shapes moving beyond the end of it. Dawn was lightening the sky and I saw two figures waiting with Mel and the outline of the vehicle. Only then did I hear the hum of a motor, a sound that—like the elevator—was only distantly familiar now.

“Lil-lee?” Mel called again from her spot near the car.

It wasn’t light enough for me to identify anyone but Mel. Her jerky motions and flapping hands made her unmistakable.

I swallowed past my relief. “I’m coming, Mel. I’m almost there.”

After my near fall I was unwilling to let go of the fence, so I crept along, hand over hand, toward the corner where the fence ended maybe ten feet away. Determined not to look down again, I kept my gaze on Mel.

She stood just beyond the edge of the fence, flapping her hands, birdlike, as she looked from me to whoever stood behind her. I glanced back at Carter and was surprised that he wasn’t beside me, but had hung back and was talking to Sebastian in a whispered hush. The odd, slanting light of dawn made Sebastian’s features stand out in sharp relief, as though he was straining or in great pain.

Beside the car, Mel called out again, “Lil
-
lee?”

Whatever was up with Sebastian, it wasn’t my problem. “I’m coming.”

Her head twitched nervously in the direction of whoever stood beside her, waiting at the car.

I watched her as I walked; it was better than looking down. Besides, she was outside the Farm. We’d gotten out. We’d really done it.

Then several things happened in quick succession. From across the river came a high-pitched, anguished squeal. As if something had caught a nutria. The sound sent a terrified chill down my spine. Nutria were new enough to this part of the world that they didn’t have many natural predators, but there was one predator that would hunt anything.

Mel—who must have been as freaked out as I was by the noise—started walking toward me.

Carter called out, “Stop her! On that side, the fence is electrified.”

I knew that, of course. Mel knew it, too. She wouldn’t have touched the fence. But whoever was with her assumed she didn’t know. One of the people ran forward and grabbed her from behind. I didn’t know who it was. Maybe someone from Carter’s resistance. Whoever it was, they didn’t use a gentle touch on the arm, which would have been enough to stop her, but a full-body hold.

She screamed in panicked outrage. She kicked up her feet and they both were knocked over. Mel kept screaming, like only Mel can scream, one long wail. Like an opera singer cast in a horror movie.

Then, from across the river came an answering howl. Not the fearful screech of a nutria, but the inhuman wail of a predator that has sighted its prey. It was the bay of a Tick and it was coming for us.