The Breeders Series: The Complete Box Set Page 32

  Mage leans into the counter and presses her face to the display front glass. “They're making lunch.” She peers in and makes a face. “Ham roast. Blah. Get ready for a lot of pork.”

  I shrug. “After what I've been eating? Are you kidding? Pork sounds amazing.”

  “Pigs will eat almost anything,” she says, shuffling forward. She twirls around on one toe, a clumsy ballerina, and then stops and looks at me. “I hate pork. Pork makes you a dork.” She hops on one foot across each tile as she says it.

  “If you say so.” What I don't say is, You've never known starvation. You have no idea what it's like out there.

  “The carousel,” Mage says, swinging around one of the outer poles. I stop to touch a horse's flared nostril, when footsteps thud toward me.

  “Riley!”

  It's Ethan, running at a full clip. He slams into me, his bony body nearly taking me out as he tightens his arms around my waist. I wrap my arms around him and press my face to his dark hair. Behind him Rayburn follows, pushing a greasy strand of black hair off his glasses. Clay limps between tables and chairs, his face breaking into a smile. He throws his arms around me. My heart thrums as I pick up his scent.

  “Didn't sleep at all,” he whispers into my hair. “I didn't know what they done to you.”

  “I'm okay,” I say, pulling back, realizing I have an audience. People have stopped their business and turned.

  “We heard 'bout yer ma,” Clay says, clutching a chair to help support his weight. “D'you know how she's doin'?”

  Ethan’s hand finds mine. “Is she okay?”

  I run a hand down his hair. “I don't know. Mage…” I pause. “Everyone this is Mage. Mage, this is Clay, Rayburn, and Ethan.” Ethan's hand slips from mine as he notices her. He stands up straighter, puffing out his chest.

  Mage smiles as her eyes linger on my little brother. The flush in his cheeks is unmistakable. “We don't know anything about your mom,” she says, “but I’m sure she's doing dandy. We'll go check when we're done.” She blinks those golden lashes and the blush burns deeper through Ethan's cheeks.

  I'm about to ask how long this tour will take when she grips my hand and pulls me close. “I have something to show you,” she whispers, her eyes flitting around the noisy room. “Can you be quiet?” She looks at everyone's face. We all nod. “Follow me and act natural.”

  She leads us through the noisy cafeteria and down a hallway. A group of women walk by and Mage smiles, but the instant they’re gone, her face becomes stony again. “This way.” Instead of heading back to the sleeping halls, she heads right, down a dark hallway.

  We walk together, Ethan at my side, Clay and Rayburn behind. Clay limps heavily. At the pace Mage is going, I know it hurts him. I bite my tongue. Nothing would embarrass him more than me asking to slow down so that he could rest his tore-up leg. I’ve got no idea what we're into and I don't wanna ask in case she changes her mind. She might be showing us a way out, trucks or even weapons, though I'm not sure why she'd do that. Either way, I wanna see what's on this side of the mall.

  As we move farther from the warm, bustling food court, the dark hallway is eerie and quiet, sending nervous tingles up my arms. The hallway has the worst signs of decay I've seen so far in this camp. Large cracks run up the plaster walls. The carpet’s been stripped away, leaving only pitted concrete. Our footsteps echo. It smells like mildew, stale air, and something else—something sulfuric and chemical.

  Mage turns around, her features hollow in the dim light. “If anyone asks why we're down here, I'm going to tell them that I found you wandering off and I’m bringing you back. It's the only lie I can think of that they'll believe. Okay?”

  “Mage, where are you tak—”

  “Shhh.” She presses her finger to her lips. “Just a little farther.”

  Clay's hand finds the small of my back. He's just as nervous as I am.

  “Stop,” Mage whispers and we do.

  Dim outlines lurk in the corners. Ethan's hand finds mine. I hear the distinct sound of a struck match and the hiss of flame. Then light floods the darkness as Mage turns on a gas camping lantern she's lifted from a stool beside her.

  A giant crevasse cuts across the ground where the floor used to be—a deep, black scar, ominous and ugly. We're only steps away. If Mage hadn’t stopped us at that exact moment, we would've plunged to our deaths. I peer down. Crumbled bits of concrete run around the crevasse wall in a jagged slope like a makeshift spiral staircase. There's no visible bottom. The sulfuric smells waft from its depths so strong it makes my eyes water.

  “What're we doing here?” I ask. Part of me wonders if she's going to shove us forward and be done with us. I grip Ethan's hand tighter.

  Mage steps closer and the light spills into the hole. Still no bottom.

  “This is the Temple of the Spirits. Or the hole as some call it. We aren't supposed to come near here or enter without the Messiah's permission. To do so means banishment. There will be no pardons.” She repeats her memorized warning and then swings the lantern back to look at our faces. “Freaky, huh?” A smile finally breaks out on her face. “Like Alice's rabbit hole.” She leans over. “Down, down, down.”

  “Who's Alice?” I ask, edging closer. A sick unease is crawling up my limbs. I don't like this place at all. “Why you showing us this if it's forbidden?”

  “Cause no one else will come with me,” she says, peering down, a strange wonder on her face. “I think there's something weird going on down there.”

  Goosebumps run up my arms as she says it. I step back and take Ethan's hand. “We should go.”

  “Yeah,” she says, dimming the lantern light until its rays die. I stare into the blackness and pray my eyes adjust soon. I don't like being in the dark with my back to that awful pit.

  “Well, back to the food court. Stay quiet now.” Mage's voice trails away. Ethan, Clay, and Rayburn follow. I'm about to go when a small noise catches my attention. Some sort of low, humming sound. It's coming from the hole. I can't see the black void anymore, but I stand stock-still and wait. Finally, I hear it again. A low, desperate moaning.

  Human moaning.

  Chapter 7

  I stand in the darkness, my heart thudding into my ears.

  “Riley?”

  It's Clay's voice. I'm about to answer him when a very large shadow appears out of the dark and grabs my arm.

  “What're you doing back here?” a man asks, his voice thick with anger. His breath is more rancid than the sulfur smell wafting up from the pit.

  I pull back. “I’m lost.”

  He shakes me and my head snaps back, a pain twanging in my neck. I pull away, but his hand is a vise.

  I recognize him now, even in the dark: the bandaged nose framing two black eyes, the same red lace-up sneakers. Stephen draws me close, heat radiating off his chest. He’s sporting a different tank-top. This one is an American Flag. “You listen to me,” he growls. “If I find you back here again, I'll make things very unpleasant for your family. You want your brother on solar panel duty outside? I hear it's going to be 108 today.”

  I can't see his face, but I know he's smiling viciously. He loves this. I say nothing and will myself not to do something crazy. He tugs me forward, down the dark hallway, and into the light trickling in from the food court. Mage and the boys stand at one of the tables with worry on their faces.

  Clay strides up, his eyes hardening as he looks at Stephen's hand on my arm. “Riley, you okay?”

  “Fine,” I say, glancing at Stephen. “I got lost.”

  “Keep this one in your sight at all times,” Stephen says to Mage. Then he points a meaty finger back toward the buzzing food court. Mage leads us in and sits us at a table near the center. The sun bores down from the open ceiling. Glass windows above must have insulated this area from the heat and sun, but that glass is long gone. Tarps and canvas sheets shade the tables from direct light, but it’s still hot. I don't mind it. Anything to get away from that creepy cavern.
>
  Stephen slams a giant container of peas down on the table. “Shell them.” Then he wanders to a booth and begins a conversation with a pretty blond girl.

  I take a pea and pinch it between my fingers. Rubbing the crisp green pods between my hands is strangely soothing. I lean in. “We gotta figure out how to get the hell outta here.” I think about saying something about what the moaning, but I don’t want to scare Ethan. And really, I’m not sure what I heard.

  Rayburn drops his eyes, his fingers trembling around a pod. He wasn’t made for life outside of the hospital and frankly, he needs to toughen up. I open my mouth to say so when Clay interrupts me.

  “I don’t like this place any more'n you do.” He pauses as one of the cooks shuffles by with a huge stack of bowls. “We’ll bide our time and figure out what they plan to do with us. Then we make our move. But not before.” He fumbles with a peapod, it slips out of his hand, and plops on the floor. He frowns at the cotton bandage on his hand. I look away from the pain on his face.

  “What about Mama?” Ethan asks, tossing a dark curtain of hair out of his eyes.

  “Mage said she’ll come back later to take us to see her.” I watch the slow burn creep up Ethan's neck at the mention of Mage. I want to tell him that a crush on the daughter of this commune’s crazy leader is about as dumb as shaking hands with a rattler, but I don’t. I look back to the peapods, green and slick between my dirty fingers, and pop one in my mouth.

  “At least it, uh, it happened here,” Rayburn says, squinting behind his glasses. He rubs a thick hand across his forehead and continues. “Your mom, I mean. At least if she’s going to m-m-miscarry, she’s here instead of… of on the road.” He drops his eyes and shakes his head. “Not much I could’ve done.”

  I frown at him. “You think that’s what happening? That she’s…miscarrying?” I have no idea how I feel about this. That baby in her stomach is my brother or sister. But maybe not. I’m not even sure if the fetus has any of our genes. Nessa Vandewater’s words echo in my head: problems with the fetus. I squeeze a peapod so hard the pea shoots out and skids across the floor.

  Clay’s hand finds mine. I stare into his sky-blue eyes, so kind, so understanding. I fight the urge to shuffle around the table, fall into his arms, and let him hold me. Instead I relish the brush of his fingers on mine until someone walks by and he pulls them away.

  “So, we watch and wait,” I say, trying to sound confident. I scan the food court before I continue. Stephen is leaning over the counter, his fingers tracing down the girl's bare arm. I crouch forward. “But I want everyone’s eyes and ears open. Watch for where they stash weapons, look for exit doors, back alleys, anything that might be important.” They nod. I look up into the searing mid-morning sky. “I don’t know how, but we’re gonna get outta here.”

  After peapod duty is dish duty. After dish duty we serve lunch. When we're finally released to eat our bowls of pea soup, the sloppy green liquid is cold, but I don't care. We've been eating charred jackrabbit and lizard for weeks. A vegetable feels like a treat. I slurp the fresh green liquid until my bowl is empty and look around for more. Seconds are not offered and I don't ask. Andrew walks around with a clipboard, shuffling between tables, eying everyone's portion size. We're just five more hungry mouths to feed. Why is the Messiah so hell-bent on keeping us?

  Mage appears as we're finishing lunch. She's got another folded paper animal in her hands, a frog this time, made out of paper the color of our pea soup. She sets it on our table, reaches out, and presses an index finger to the frog's backside. It springs forward at her touch. She giggles and bats golden eyelashes. Ethan drops his eyes. He's getting attached, just like he does with any animal we trap. The ending with Mage won't be so brutal, but it's still gonna cut him when we leave.

  “So, you said you’d take us to see our mom?” I ask.

  Mage nods, the blond coils of hair bobbing. “I got permission, but only you and him.” She points at Ethan and me. “You two,” she says, pointing to Rayburn and Clay, “are going to get your permanent job assignments.” She shrugs her narrow shoulders, making her cotton jumper rise and fall. “Sorry,” she says, pocketing her paper frog. “Best I could do.”

  “It's fine,” I say, anxious. Mama. I am dying to see her and dreading it. I push up, needing to move my body. “Can we go?”

  Ethan stands beside me. I wait for his hand to slip into mine, but they're locked at his sides. His eyes follow Mage.

  I turn back to Clay and Rayburn. Clay hugs me, a sympathetic smile at the corners of his mouth. “Go,” he says. “We'll be fine.” He looks at Rayburn, who stares blankly back. An elbow from Clay gets Rayburn unstuck.

  “Yeah, uh, fine,” Rayburn manages.

  Mage leads us back down the hallways at a fast clip. No one speaks. I'm too nervous and Ethan is either love-struck or feeling the nerves too. Mage fiddles with the frog in her pocket. Her silence makes me worry.

  At the end of the hallway is a large department store, with a wide rectangular entrance and glass display windows that have naked, limbless life-sized dolls piled like a plastic holocaust. A guard sits at the entrance on a metal stool, slumped over, one boot hooked around the stool leg. He’s wearing a patched security guard uniform that must’ve come from the days when this mall still saw shoppers. He doesn't have a gun, but there's a seriously long knife hung at his belt. Does he use it to keep people out, or patients in? I run my hand over the ankh brand on my wrist. I vowed never to step foot in a hospital again.

  “We're here to see the newcomer.” Mage shoves both hands in her jumper pockets and smiles innocently up at the burly guard.

  Rising to his full height of over six feet, the guard stands, his stool scraping on the concrete floor. “I heard no visitors.” His voice is mumbled and phlegmy. When he opens his mouth again, I see a red sore like a smooshed raspberry on his tongue. There’s another blistered patch of skin just above his wrist. My stomach lurches. Have we already been infected by whatever it is they carry? But then, why doesn't Mage seem infected? Why have all the women looked healthy?

  Mage rocks back and forth, heel to toe, looking every bit a little schoolgirl. “My daddy says we can go in.”

  The guard's brow furrows. He scratches his crop of brown hair and shrugs. “Didn't hear nothing.”

  Mage tugs down a blond curl. “That's 'cause he didn't tell you. He told me. Can we go in now?”

  The guard blinks, confused, but he shuffles aside and sits back on his stool, falling easily back into looking bored. Mage grabs my hand and I tug Ethan along. When we're out of earshot, she leans in to us.

  “Perks of being the Messiah's daughter.” She winks.

  “He didn't tell you we could visit?”

  She smirks and places a finger to her lips in a don't-tell gesture. I have found myself one powerful ally. Or maybe she just likes getting me into trouble.

  She leads us around the gutted department store. The front has nothing but discarded racks and old display tables. The dirty, scratched linoleum sits bare and lifeless. Faded posters cling to the walls. My eyes trail across a large poster with two bored-looking girls in tight jeans and even tighter shirts. What would it have felt like to be a kid when this mall lived and breathed? When throngs of girls marched with plastic shopping bags slung over their wrists.

  We turn the corner. Cots and mattresses line the floor. Patients lie on them. An elderly woman with rheumy eyes and skin like crinkled paper. A middle-aged man covered in large red sores writhes on the bed. A little boy with a splinted arm watches us with wide, wet eyes. Then he turns and buries his head into the yellowed mattress.

  I search the beds, my heart starting to pound. What will Mama look like? Will she be awake? With sweaty palms I walk, eying each patient. A girl about my age lies so still on a cot I wonder if she’s breathing.

  Then I see Mama. My heart freezes to ice as I walk over, Ethan at my heels. She's lying on her side, turned away. Slowly I walk up, bend over, and place my hand on her frai
l arm.

  She jumps and I yank my hand back. As she rolls toward us, I see her burned side first, the diminished ear, the rippled skin of her cheek. When I can see her fully, my heart sinks. I was expecting her to look better than I'd last seen her, but instead she’s worse—nearly translucent skin, dark circles under her eyes, sharp cheekbones that look cut out of stone. Her trembling hand seeks out mine and she lifts a smile to her cracked lips.

  “Darlings,” she croaks.

  I kneel by her cot and take both her hands in mine. Her knuckles protrude like walnuts beneath her skin. “How… are you feeling?” I swallow over the lump in my throat.

  My mother nods and runs her tongue over her chapped lips. “Okay. How're you?” She reaches a hand out to Ethan. He’s a statue beside me, his eyes the size of dinner plates. I place my hand on his arm. If only I could spare him this.

  “We're…okay.” I flick my eyes up toward the Middies who float around, checking temperatures and changing bandages. I thought they were supposed to fix her, not make her worse.

  As if reading my mind, she answers. “I'm feeling better. They're giving me fluids and I need to rest. The time on the road was hard on me.”

  I study her face. How can she be feeling better? She looks like a corpse.

  “The baby?” I manage, nodding to her stomach beneath the scratchy blanket.

  She drops her eyes. “It seems to be faring fine despite my...” she pauses and swallows “difficulties.” Is that bitterness in her voice? Did she ever feel this way with me? Like I was a burden?

  “Mama,” I say, leaning close, my elbows resting on the saggy cot, “we'll get you out. If these people are making you worse, we'll find a way to—”

  She cuts me off with a shake of her head. “No, darling. We can't chance that right now. You stay and eat and rest up. Auntie can wait a little bit longer.”

  Auntie. There's the pang of worry again. With the Sheriff dead, who knows what's happening to her. Just one more problem to add to my heap. My mind returns to the human moaning I heard in that crevasse.