“No, I have to find my dad as soon as possible.”
“Okay, follow the road until you hit a wall of cars. The compound’s inside.” He pointed at the top floor of the building. “I’ll be up there in case you change your mind.”
Despite how much I hated giving in to the smug jerk and despite the tick-tick-ticking in my brain, I said, “Fine. I’m coming.”
He didn’t even glance back as he headed in. “Figured as much.”
Dirt and rubble covered the ancient lobby floor, black mold climbed the walls, and the elevator door opened onto an echoing darkness. What were we doing puttering around in a crumbling firetrap?
Many of the doors to the apartments stood open, revealing rooms littered with furniture, books, clothing, and other personal possessions. During the exodus, people brought only what they could carry, since they had to go through the checkpoint on foot. Everything else got left behind.
A coyote stood inside one doorway, watching us climb the stairs. Rafe barely gave it a glance. I, however, kept my eyes on the coyote until we reached the top floor. I don’t know what I expected it to do, but I wasn’t taking any chances. It was a wild animal after all.
Rafe stopped at the first door on the landing, turned the knob, and entered. No knock. No “anybody home?” Was that typical in the Feral Zone? Probably. If he was anything to go by, civilized behavior was a thing of the past. I followed him in. The apartment was vintage, with high ceilings, but the floors were practically buckling from the weight of all the furniture. Jewelry was piled on every surface, and we were standing ankle deep in cash. The old kind — pre-exodus — which was worthless in the West.
“Great,” Rafe muttered. “Another nutjob who thinks the quarantine will end in his lifetime. Dream on, pal.”
We moved through the front hall into the main room where a girl, barely a teenager, sat in the open window. In her green gown and gold necklaces, with her dark hair falling to her waist, she looked every inch the fairy-tale princess … until she threw a jelly jar at us. “Get out of here!” She smeared her sticky, red fingers on her dress and then jiggled her wrist until something dropped from her sleeve into her palm. A switchblade! Snapping open the blade, the girl sprang at us, only to be brought up short by the chain around her waist.
I followed the winding chain with my eyes from the padlock at the girl’s hip to the other side of the room where it wrapped around a defunct radiator. Was she feral? I scuttled back. Why else would she be chained up? Although Rafe didn’t seem too concerned as he strolled past her. Nor did he seem fazed that the girl had her switchblade pointed directly at him. “I’m looking for Alva Soto. Is that you?” he asked as he opened a closet door.
“What are you, a thief?”
“Nope.” He brushed his hand over the colorful gowns and fur coats hanging in the closet.
“You look like a thief.”
“Yeah? Usually I get astronaut.” He double-checked the furs with a rough shake.
“If you’re looking for my papa, he’s out.”
He glanced back at her. “I’m here to talk to Alva. That you?”
Pursing her lips, the girl turned her glare on me. I was tempted to apologize for busting in and for the way Rafe was pawing through her things.
“Alva, yes … no … ?” he prompted, but the girl just glared at him. “Come on, Lane.” He turned for the door. “Guess we have the wrong crappy building.”
“Wait!” the girl screeched before he’d even gone a step. “I’m Alva.”
I tensed, expecting him to laugh at Alva’s quick about-face, but his expression was placid as he turned, like this situation was no big deal. “Glad we got that settled.”
“Who left you like this?” The words blurted out of me. I couldn’t believe how blasé they were both being. “Who chained you up?”
“Who do you think, smart girl?”
My mouth dropped open. She was locked up, in need of help, and yet she was giving us attitude? Alva swished the chain, knocking over a dozen empty jelly jars on the coffee table. “I’m not talking unless you get this off me.”
“All right. Where’s the key?” Rafe asked.
“You’ve got a gun. Shoot it off.” She lifted the padlock.
“What happens when the bullet rebounds and hits you?”
Alva frowned, considering it.
“Your dad has the key?” Rafe guessed.
She nodded. “He doesn’t want me to go outside. He’s scared I’ll disappear like my sister.” There was irritation in her voice, nothing more, which made the whole scene worse.
“You know ferals can climb stairs, right?” Rafe said. “So can mongrels and scumbags. Anything could have walked through that door and found you.”
“You think I asked for this? Lecture my papa, not me.” Alva closed the switchblade and tucked it back into her sleeve. “He’s going crazy,” she grumbled.
“We noticed.” Rafe waved at the piled jewelry that made the place look like a dragon’s lair.
“What’s that got to do with anything? He’s crazy because Fabiola is gone.”
“So why are you still living outside the compound?”
She shrugged. “Papa thinks people in town will steal our savings.”
I really hoped she wasn’t referring to the obsolete electronics stacked in the corners.
“If it were powdered milk or potato flakes, maybe. But this crap?” Rafe snorted.
The girl didn’t reply, just traced her fingers over the knife in her sleeve. He shouldn’t make her feel bad about her father. I nudged him. “Can you do something about that chain?”
Sighing, he pulled a couple of thin tools from his back pocket, swept a stack of pre-exodus money off the coffee table, and sat. When Alva moved to stand in front of him, he studied the padlock. “So, how long has your sister been missing?” he asked without looking up.
Alva inhaled sharply. “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?” Her hands flew to her throat. “Because of Fabiola. Someone found her. She’s dead!”
“No,” he said quickly. “I mean, I don’t know. I just came for information.”
The tension left Alva’s body and she slumped. “Is the feral back? That’s what Papa heard. That it ripped up a farmer.”
“Nobody knows for sure what killed him. Lots of things have claws.” Rafe went to work on the lock. “Is there any chance your sister just ran away?”
“If she was going to take off, she would’ve told me.”
“Does she have a boyfriend?” He jiggled the slender tool and the padlock popped open.
“We’re not allowed to date.” The chain snaked from around Alva’s waist and clattered to the floor, but she didn’t move, just fingered her many necklaces. “Papa worries. He told us to carry a blade at all times. A lot of good it did her,” Alva said, sounding as if all the fight had been stamped out of her. “The feral is back.”
Rafe got to his feet. “Did you see something?”
“No, but when we were outside, Fabiola felt it. She knew.” Alva drew in a ragged breath. “And I told her she was crazy.”
“Knew what?” I asked.
“That she was being hunted.”
“You were checking to see if Alva knew something about her sister that their father didn’t,” I guessed when we were outside again.
“Yeah.” Rafe exhaled slowly. “Too bad she didn’t run off with a boyfriend. Means the feral probably did get her.”
The buildings slouched closer together as we walked north, and yet the street seemed rural because of all the creeping, climbing vegetation that was slowly tearing down everything man-made.
He pointed down the road a ways to a wall of crushed cars, stacked like bricks. “Welcome to the Moline compound,” he said. “When we get inside, stick close.”
I bristled. “I’m not totally helpless you know. I’ve taken self-defense classes and kickboxing and —”
“Yeah, ’cause Mack made you.”
I stopped in surprise, but R
afe walked on. “He worries that you’re too nice,” he said over his shoulder.
“I’m not too nice!”
Rafe held up his hands. “Getting no argument from me.”
“Oh, I’m supposed to be more like you? A selfish jerk?” I jogged to catch up. “Stealing from infirmaries, throwing people in closets when they get in the way? Cutting them!”
He shot me an amused look. “You might try it sometime.”
I shook my head, suddenly feeling sick.
“What?” he asked, catching my expression. “You’ve been the good girl your whole —”
“No. Not when I was little. Just the opposite.” The words felt like broken glass in my mouth. “I was so … so awful. I wore my mom out.”
His brow furrowed. “Your mother died of cancer.”
“The doctor said she had a year to live, but she died two months later — because of me.”
“Says who?” Rafe scoffed.
“The home health nurse.” I rubbed by eyes — like that would erase her red, sweaty face from my mind.
“She told you that?”
“She said I was an unmanageable little beast and that I’d send my mom to an even earlier grave.” I caught my breath. I hadn’t thought about that horrible nurse in years and I didn’t want to now. “Can we go find my dad now?”
I strode toward the car wall, only to realize that Rafe had known how my mother had died. I slowed my pace. “What else did my father tell you? Why would he talk to you at all?”
“Get a mug of moonshine in Mack and he won’t shut up.”
“That’s not true. He’s very private and he almost never drinks.”
Rafe shrugged. “So he cuts loose over here.”
Or maybe I didn’t know my father at all.
We’d reached the wall of crushed cars, but my legs felt so unstable I couldn’t take another step. A scorching sensation rolled over my skin. I cast about for somewhere to sit.
Rafe’s aqua eyes widened. “What are you doing?”
“Leave me alone.” I sank onto a car bumper that barely jutted out of the wall. I put my hands over my face.
“Oh no,” Rafe scolded. “We are not stopping out here in the open. Come on, let’s get inside the compound. Then you can cry all you want.”
“I’m not crying,” I snapped. Though I wanted to. What else had my father lied to me about?
Rafe unslung his pack and dropped it at his feet with a sigh. “I guess Mack wasn’t exaggerating. You are as tough as a declawed kitten.”
“Stop talking.”
“Whoa, you dropped the please. That’s progress.”
When I didn’t look up, Rafe settled by me on the bumper. “Want to know what else he said?” Rafe put his lips near my ear. “That with the right guy, you’d turn wild.”
I shoved him hard. He was laughing before he even hit the ground. I shot to my feet and glared at him. “You’re disgusting.”
Grinning, he rose and dusted off his pants. “Got you up.”
I hated him in that moment. He was obscene and obnoxious, but he’d also escorted me to Moline as promised. If I found my father inside the compound, then he’d helped me save my dad’s life. “Thank you for bringing me,” I ground out.
“Don’t thank me yet.” He strode toward a break in the car wall. “You’re not past the gate.” Cupping his hands around his mouth, he yelled, “Hey, Sid, open up!”
I peered through the bars of the gate at the compound beyond. Like everywhere else, invasive vines and stray plants had reclaimed the town center, but I was starting to get used to the lush ruins. Even starting to see the beauty in them.
“Sid, get your porky self out here!” Rafe shouted.
Inside the compound, a short, pudgy man appeared in the doorway of a ramshackle building across the street. “What are you doing back so soon?”
“What’s it to you?” Rafe replied. “Unlock the gate.” He stepped in front of me as Sid hurried over with a jangling key ring, but Sid had already spotted me.
“Who’s she?” he demanded.
“Aren’t you full of questions?” Rafe said, still blocking me from view.
“That’s how I earn my keep, you know,” I heard Sid huff.
“Open the gate, or I’ll kick your guts into sausage.”
With a grunt, Sid unlocked the chain and pushed the gate just wide enough for us to slip through. “I’m not supposed to let strangers in without checking them out first.” Rafe rolled his eyes but Sid’s back was turned as he relocked the gate. “It’s a big responsibility, you know, keeping this compound safe. It all rests on me.”
From the back, Sid was an oily little guy in a stained undershirt and suspenders. I waited for him to turn so that I could assure him that I wasn’t a threat, but when he finally did, I jerked back with a gasp. Tusks curled out of his mouth and ended in sharp points on either side of his piggy snout.
“You got a problem?” he squealed, thrusting out his chin, ready to charge.
Laughter erupted behind me. “She’s seen a guy infected with tiger.” Rafe nudged me aside. “I don’t know why you’d freak her out.”
“I’m so sorry,” I sputtered. “I didn’t mean to —”
“Mayor’s holding a compound meeting,” Sid told Rafe, while turning his back on me. “In the station, as soon as Jared’s memorial service finishes up.” He shot me one last indignant look before trotting back across the street with his giant key ring jangling.
“I thought you silkies were big on manners.”
I turned on Rafe, who was still grinning. “Why didn’t you warn me?”
“About?”
“That he’s …” I lowered my voice. “A feral.”
“Sid’s not a feral. He’s just an eyesore.”
“But … his feet, his nose — they weren’t human.”
“Wait till you see his tail. Actually, you won’t get to. He’s pretty self-conscious about it, with good reason.”
“Why is he inside the gate? I thought this pile of cars was supposed to keep the ferals out.”
“Learn that from your knight in shining armor?”
“Who?” I asked and then realized he was talking about Everson. “Just answer the question.”
“Your line guard might call everyone who has Ferae a feral, but over here, we have distinctions. Our lives depend on it.”
“What distinctions?” We entered the town square, which was bounded on one side by the Mississippi River. A path of boards, laid over mud, led past the buildings toward the rushing brown water. Tattered store awnings flapped in the wind, giving the place a desolate air. Or maybe I was getting that feeling because other than a few vendors standing by carts loaded with vegetables, the square was empty.
“Everyone must be at the service,” Rafe said, nodding toward the church. “We’ll wait in the station.” He pointed at the largest building on the square, a red brick box with several three-blade wind-power rotors spinning lazily on the roof. Strangely, a dozen bathtubs were mounted on top of the station as well. The tubs’ drainpipes ran down the wall and into four enormous tanks on the ground.
I wanted to ask more about Sid but was distracted by a woman pushing a tarp-covered shopping cart across the square. Slouching along, she cast her head from side to side in a weird manner that made the hairs on my arms stand up. She seemed off in a way that I couldn’t pinpoint. But off didn’t even begin to describe the vegetable vendor she stopped to talk to. He was covered in pale gray fur. “Distinctions,” I prompted. “How do you know who’s feral?”
Rafe followed my gaze to the vendor. “Is he drooling?”
“No.” If anything, the man seemed perfectly nice as he bundled up carrots for the old lady.
“Growling? Chasing his tail?”
“Ferals do that?”
“Ferals are feral. They’ve got animal brain.”
I remembered Dr. Solis saying it took a while for the virus to take over the infected person’s brain. “When will he get animal br
ain?” I made a discreet head tip toward the furry vendor.
Rafe shrugged. “No way to know. Some people beast out fast — usually if they’re infected with some kind of reptile. But most people stay sane for years, like Sid. We call them —”
“Manimals!”
“If you knew, why’d you ask?”
“I didn’t know I knew.” So, my dad’s stories were true, right down to the details. I’d loved the manimals he’d described, with their distinct personalities, often squabbling, sometimes eccentric, but almost always friendly. They walked upright and would offer the little girl help or advice when she got lost in the magical forest.
And that’s what Chorda was! A manimal, not a feral. He could talk; he was sane. I had been right to stop Rafe from killing him, even if Rafe didn’t want to admit it.
“Sid has Ferae,” Rafe went on, “and he’s mutating, but he’s not feral…. Not yet.”
“But he will be someday for sure?”
“They all think they can beat it, that their human side will stay dominant, but the beast always wins. Sooner or later, every one of them turns into a slobbering animal.”
His words gave me the sick feeling of free-falling. “That’s — that’s awful.”
“For them,” he said coldly. “What you need to know is that they can turn without warning. One minute you’re out scavenging together, the next, she’s leaping for your throat.”
“She?”
“Or he.” Rafe glanced away. “No one’s immune. Which is why most compounds have a sundown law. Manimals can visit during the day to trade or see their families, but they have to be out by sundown. Moline is the only place I’ve seen that lets them live inside the compound along with the humans. It’s stupid, taking that kind of risk when everyone knows manimals are walking, talking time bombs.”
“Nobody asked you,” growled a voice behind us. I turned to see a manimal whose oversized teeth protruded from his elongated face, while his hair seemed to grow naturally into a mohawk. I tried not to recoil, but couldn’t completely hide my alarm at the horse-man’s distorted features. So far, these people were nothing like the charming creatures I’d imagined whenever my father added a lemur-man or a camel-girl to a story. Nor were they alluring like Chorda.