Eat the Ones You Love (The Thirteen Book 2) Page 21

  “Time to wake up,” said Jenny.

  “You’re dying.”

  “I’m stronger when I’m dead.”

  And then the red swallowed her up, rising from her mother in a wave, covering the walls, dripping down and crashing down over Jenny. The red filled the room until she floated in it, and she let it fill her eyes and mouth and throat. It filled her head and her still, unbeating heart. It filled her until she thought she would burst. She let it take her.

  Declan was right, she thought. She was free.

  THIRTY-THREE

  In the red, Jenny heard screaming and prayers. Her mouth filled with blood and she drank and let the meat slide down her throat. The praying stopped. The screams ceased. Jenny opened her eyes.

  She was crouching with her hands on the floor. Her feet were bare and touching something wet. She couldn’t see, liquid matted her eyes. Jenny reached her hand up and wiped wetness away with the back of her wrist. She blinked.

  All she saw was blood.

  This was no hallucination. The silver walls dripped with splashes of blood and gore. Her cot was soaked with it, white sheets turned scarlet. And the floor was an ocean of red with shapes emerging, like rocks on a bloody shore. A leg here, an unseeing face there. Hands and guts and shredded torsos. Jenny stood carefully. She recognized the deadness inside her. Body parts still and unmoving, a feeling of strength she didn’t have before, and rage glowing white-hot. She sensed one heartbeat, one human still alive in the room. She turned and could see him, under the blood, as if he were glowing. She smelled the fresh blood, the fresh meat. The heart beating impossibly fast.

  “Please,” Will said, his voice quavering.

  Jenny looked down at him coldly. Her hospital gown, soaked in blood, stuck to her. She could feel the blood dripping from her hair and running down her face like tears. She turned to the foot of the bed and gripped the bar, shoving, grunting, and twisting until, finally, it snapped off. She walked across the room, ignoring Will’s whimpers, and smashed the card key security panel. It sparked and hissed and smelled of burnt electrical wires. Then, shoving the sharp, broken end of the bar between the glass doors, she wrenched the bar towards her. With a squeal the doors cracked open.

  She smelled gunpowder and blood, but the screaming had stopped. She put her palm to the glass and wiped away a thick layer of blood, peering out. The hall was deserted. She lay on the sticky floor on her back, shoving the bar further into the gap, and shoved with her feet, bracing herself on the doorway. Another squeal and the door opened more. A gap big enough to squeeze her shoulder through, which she did, standing and pushing with her hands and feet until the door opened more. Enough for her to slip through. She grabbed the bar from the floor.

  “Please,” said Will again. She looked back at him. She felt nothing when she saw him.

  “It isn’t safe here,” she said. “It’s not safe anywhere.”

  “Will you help me?” he said.

  She stared at him for a long moment. He had told her where Sarah was. “No,” she said. “And if I see you again, I’m going to kill you.”

  She started to slither through the gap in the door.

  “But why?” he said.

  She stopped, irritated.

  “Why what?” she said.

  “Your mom’s dead, it sounds like most other people are, too. Why don’t you just find your friends if they’re still alive and run? Why do you want to kill everyone?”

  Jenny regarded him coldly. She felt a smile grow on her face.

  “Because I can,” she said. And wriggled through the door.

  In the hall, she saw medical equipment scattered across the floor, and smelled burning in the distance. And farther away, she felt the Living. She started to walk, her feet sticky with blood, leaving a trail of red footprints.

  As she passed each operating room, she felt for the Living. She came to an open area with a wide counter, papers scattered all over the floor. Someone was panting behind the desk. Jenny could smell the hot blood, the beating heart. She peered around the counter and saw a woman in blue scrubs hugging her knees underneath.

  “Come out,” Jenny said.

  “No,” the woman said. Her black hair hung in damp ropes, the fabric under her arms wet with sour sweat.

  “Don’t make me come get you,” said Jenny.

  The woman was crying, too scared to move, too scared to stand. Jenny crouched down and met her eyes.

  “Do you know me?”

  She nodded.

  “Where’s my father?”

  “Your…father?”

  “Dr. Grant Hawkins,” she said. “Where is he?”

  “Why?”

  “It doesn’t fucking matter why,” said Jenny. “Tell me where he is.”

  She jumped as Jenny raised her voice.

  “Upstairs. He’s upstairs. I saw him leave. He said he would be joining Dr. Warnken.”

  “Where’s my sister?”

  She pointed to her left and Jenny saw another set of doors with a glowing box for a key card.

  “Give me your key,” said Jenny.

  The woman took a lanyard from around her neck and, hands shaking so hard she almost dropped it, held it out to Jenny, who took it and looked at the picture.

  “Cheryl Santiago,” she said.

  “Are you going to kill me?”

  “To tell you the truth,” said Jenny, “I couldn’t possibly eat another bite.”

  She stood and walked towards the doors. As she slid the card and pushed her way through, she heard singing. A male falsetto. Singing somewhere down the hall. Jenny cocked her head to listen.

  “This is what it sounds like when the doves cry…”

  “Faron?” Jenny called. The singing stopped for a moment, then started up again louder, coming closer.

  “You’ve got the butterflies all tied up, don’t make me chase you,” he sang, his voice quavering as he came closer. Then he came into view, smiling wide and covered in blood. He carried a gun identical to the one he’d had when Jenny met him. “Even doves have pride.”

  “What’s happening?” she said.

  He walked toward her, his eyes too bright, his smile too wide.

  “It’s a revolution,” he said. “Just like you always wanted. Isn’t this what your friends were always talking about, Jenny? Anarchy.”

  “That was before,” she said, narrowing her eyes. “How did you know?”

  “I know what they know,” he said, gesturing around him. “Before what?”

  “Before we knew,” said Jenny. “Before there was no hope.”

  “Before we couldn’t go back,” said Faron, closing the gap. Jenny could hear his heart, fast like the others, but from excitement rather than fear.

  “How did you get out?” she said.

  “I didn’t kill him, Jenny.”

  She gripped the metal bar in her hand. It was cold against her cool hand. The blood had stopped being slippery and was tacky now, starting to dry.

  “Where is everyone?”

  “What are you feeling right now?” he said.

  “Guess,” she said.

  “I think you might be angry,” he said.

  “You should have told me.”

  His face went suddenly serious. Mournful.

  “I really thought you knew. It was never my intention to kill him. I just needed you with me.”

  “Then why didn’t you just say that? Why didn’t you just ask me to come? You had to blow us apart? You had to rip his guts out? You had to stab me and stab me and stab me?” She felt a heat inside of her that felt familiar. It felt natural. She hung onto it like a crucifix.

  “I’m sorry. I couldn’t tell you. I had to make you go to New York. They didn’t want you there. They wanted you as far away from the Institute as possible. They wanted to watch you out there.”

  “Field testing,” said Jenny.

  “Yeah.”

  “Benji’s dead.”

  “I figured.”

  Jenny t
ightened her fingers around the bar. It was razor-sharp where the edge had broken away from the bed frame. She moved closer to Faron.

  “Everyone’s dead,” she said. “Me, Casey, Declan…”

  “Jenny…”

  “Even you.” Faron barely had time to register surprise as Jenny shoved the sharp end of the bar up through his guts. He groaned as the air went out of his lungs. “I forgive you,” she whispered in his ear as he grasped her shoulders, gun swinging at his back. She kept shoving the bar, up, up, up into his body. Her arm was inside, feeling the warm blood gushing out. And then the bar ripped into his heart. His eyes went wide and then rolled up. As he fell, the gun clattered under his weight.

  Jenny realized he hadn’t fought back. He knew what was coming. He didn’t even raise a hand to defend himself. She took the gun and looked down at him. Blood pooled around him, but even standing there, she could see his wound closing up, his fingers twitching, his eyelids flickering.

  Jenny slid the strap of the gun over her shoulder and turned.

  She had to find her sister.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  The floors were covered in blood everywhere she went. Blood was smeared on the walls, the linens were splattered with bits of brain and gore. And there were children. Jenny didn’t know who injected them, but all of the children were now animals. Rotters. Zombies. As she walked by, a boy growled low in his throat as he sat atop the chest of a man in a white coat, still twitching. Jenny found herself growling back at him before she even realized it.

  I’m losing control, she thought. The need had its claws in her again, just like before. And the red was always there, threatening to take over. And she was more and more inclined to let it. How could it be any different? At least in the red, she could pretend that everything was a dream. She stepped around bodies, almost all of them dead. Then she sensed the Living. Only one. She knew who it was and she knew why she couldn’t let the red take over.

  “Sarah,” she said. A little girl with blood dripping from her mouth and nose stopped eating the face of a man in a black jumpsuit. Jenny looked back down the hall the way she had come and frowned. Where no one had been a moment ago, a half dozen children stood now. All with blood soaking their tiny hospital gowns. All dead. They were all like her, except they never had a chance. They didn’t get memories with their twin sisters, running like thieves around a lecture hall, or hiding with snow cones in a city bigger than they could fathom. They all stood, staring unblinking at Jenny with wide, dead eyes. The two who had been feeding stood and joined the others.

  “What the fuck are you looking at?” she said, balling her fists. It was hard to look at them, their innocent faces smeared with blood. Jenny knew how dangerous they were. If it had been hard for Jenny to control herself the first time, it must be madness for a child.

  “He said you’d come,” said a boy.

  “What?” said Jenny. “Who? Faron?”

  “He said it would be easy once you were here,” said a girl. She had a chunk that looked suspiciously like a piece of brain stuck in her curls.

  Jenny shook her head. “Why?”

  “You’re the first,” said the girl. “You and your sister. Rayanne told us.”

  “Being first doesn’t mean shit,” said Jenny.

  “You have power,” said another boy, a bloody cowlick on the top of his head. “They follow you and so should we. That’s what Faron said.”

  “We’re your army, Jenny,” said the girl with the curls. She smiled a cold smile. “Jenny Undead.”

  “I don’t want an army,” said Jenny.

  “What do you want?” said the girl.

  “I just want to die,” said Jenny. She jumped as the words came out. But it felt like a weight off of her chest when she said them. “I want to die,” she said again.

  “You can’t,” said the cowlick boy. “None of us can. They follow you and so should we.”

  “Who fucking follows me?” said Jenny.

  “The dead,” said the first girl. “The stinking rotters. You have us all now.”

  “I don’t want this,” said Jenny. “Fuck off. I just want to get my sister out.”

  “We made you a present,” said the girl with the curls.

  “What do you mean the rotters follow me?” she said.

  “You must have noticed,” said another boy, this one with shaggy, uncombed hair. He had a chipped front tooth. “They’re all around us. Like a moat of dead people. That’s what they had in castles.”

  “This isn’t a castle,” Jenny said.

  The girl with the curls giggled. “Yes it is.”

  “We made you a present,” said the boy with the cowlick.

  Jenny could barely see for the red.

  “Why the fuck won’t you leave me alone?” she said. “I’m so hungry.”

  “Are you hungry or do you want to save your sister?” said the girl with the curls.

  “She can have both,” said the boy with the shaggy hair. “There’s still a whole bunch of soldiers.”

  “They thought they were keeping us in,” said a beautiful girl from the back. “Can you feel the rotters now?”

  “She’s hungry,” said several children in unison, and Jenny felt a chill. She closed her eyes. She remembered the rotters. In Colorado they had been coming towards her when Jenny cut them down. She thought they’d been after Zeke. When she stepped out of the motor home, they followed her, parting like the Red Sea. And she could feel them now, all around them, and they were coming. They wanted to eat, it was all they wanted. Nothing else. Such hunger. Jenny opened her eyes. More children arrived.

  “Why?” she said.

  “You were the first.”

  “You and your sister.”

  “We made you a present.”

  “Why do you keep saying that?” Jenny said. “What present?”

  The girl with the curls came over and took Jenny’s hand. So small and so cold. Colder than Jenny’s. She pulled her past her examination room, where she glimpsed the bodies of the students she killed. One survived. Where did he go?

  The girl pulled Jenny down the hall. Two doors down, three doors, five doors. Then she stopped.

  “We’re not allowed to eat her,” said the girl. “She’s the first too. Just like you. And it's her first time.”

  Jenny looked through the window, blinking away the red, but she could barely see. She saw only their shapes at first. A bed, piled with a person-shaped lump. A few figures standing around. One strapped to a chair, struggling. Jenny blinked and shook her head, trying to clear away the red.

  Jenny squinted and the lump on the bed started to take shape. The buckles of the straps on wrists and ankles. The sparkle of glass under the bright lights. Tiny shapes moving away from the bed, then a face. A hastily shorn head, covered in scars. And a face. Jenny’s own face looking back at her.

  “No,” Jenny said.

  “She’ll be stronger this way,” said the girl. “The rotters won’t get her.”

  “No, Sarah,” Jenny said, hitting the glass.

  The children backed away, holding the empty syringe. Jenny sensed the disease coursing through her sister. Her hard, tough sister was crying now. Watching her. Crying. She had done this. This was Jenny’s fault.

  “I didn’t come back for her,” Jenny said.

  “You just did,” said the girl. “We’re here now.”

  “No,” said Jenny. “It’s too late.”

  She ran to the glass door, and swiped the card key but the light stayed red. Just like everything else. And the door wouldn’t open.

  “Sarah!” she shouted, banging on the glass. She saw the moving shape in the chair now. It was Will, the student who had survived the carnage in her exam room. He was strapped to the chair with sheets. Jenny kicked the glass but it didn’t budge.

  “Let her go!” she screamed. “Stop it, don’t fucking touch her!”

  “It’s too late,” said the girl. “She’s about to turn. It’s magic.”

 
“It’s fucking death,” said Jenny. “There’s nothing magic. You’re going to change her, who she is, how she feels. She has a fucking child.”

  “We are all her children now,” said the girl.

  “No,” said Jenny. She kicked the door again and the glass vibrated. “No,” she said again. “Fix this shit. Fix it right now. Goddammit, fix her.”

  “We’re saving her,” said the girl. And Jenny watched Sarah’s eyes roll back in her head. Her back arched as she went into a seizure. Jenny was punching at the glass, kicking it, shoving it with her shoulder.

  “Fucking let me in there!” she screamed. She felt every bit of control leaving her body. She grabbed the girl and shook her. “Let me in there, she’s my fucking sister.” The girl was so small in her hands. She looked up at Jenny with big brown eyes. She smiled.

  “Let Jenny in,” she said, and a boy stepped forward and slid a card. The door opened. Jenny looked around. She felt wetness on her face that wasn’t blood and her body was starting to ache again as it healed.

  “You don’t even understand what you’ve done,” she said.

  “We do understand. It was necessary.”

  “For what?” said Jenny.

  “For what’s to come.”

  She smelled the rank stench of the rotters, and heard their moaning. They were coming. Jenny stepped into the room and the door slid closed behind her.

  “Jenny Undead,” said one of the children.

  “Don’t call me that,” Jenny said through gritted teeth.

  “Everyone calls you that.”

  Jenny hurried over to the bed, to Sarah. She reached out and touched the scar over her ear. Sarah’s skin was warm, but her heart wasn’t beating. Jenny looked over at Will in the chair and licked her lips. She forced her gaze back on Sarah.

  “I don’t even know if she can wake up,” said Jenny. “What if she’s just a rotter?”

  “She won’t be,” said one of the kids. Jenny didn’t even look at them. She stared into Sarah’s eyes, wide open and unmoving.

  “She’s not like me,” Jenny said, stroking Sarah’s face. “She’s not like us. She doesn’t get better.”