“But did you cross to Arsenal and go to a checkpoint? They were still letting people in after the wall went up.”
“Only if you had a guaranteed contact over there who could give you a place to stay and help you find a job. They said they didn’t want refugees living on the streets.”
“What? No. You just had to be an American citizen and —”
“‘Not pose a health risk to the general population.’ On paper, it looked like you just had to test clean for Ferae. But that phrase was twisted to suit the gatekeepers. And it suited them to keep a lot of people out.”
My hands had balled into fists on the table. How could the government have abandoned all these people? “I just can’t believe it,” I said.
“Sorry, honey.” Hagen chuckled. She reached out and patted one of my hands. “It’s true. I should know, I lived —” A long, loud squeal cut her off. We turned to see Sid running through the front door. “Mayor!” he shouted.
She sighed. “It’s always something. Come over here and spit it out, Sid.”
“Line patrol,” Sid wheezed. As others turned to listen, the place fell silent, except for Sid’s hooves tappity-tapping across the marble floor. “They’re here!”
“What?” Hagen strode over to meet him with me close on her heels.
“They have assault rifles!” Sid said. “When I wouldn’t open the gate, they shot off the lock and drove in. Drove! They wouldn’t answer my questions. And they nabbed Rafe.”
“Rafe?” I echoed.
“Yeah. Out on the square.” Sid dabbed his brow with a dirty handkerchief. “He gave them a good run, but they got him.”
I turned to Hagen. “I thought line guards weren’t allowed to cross the bridge.”
“They aren’t,” she said, her jaw tight.
I still couldn’t fathom it. “They broke quarantine just to come after Rafe?”
“No, missy.” Sid cast his piggy eyes on me. “They came for you.”
Sid smirked at me, but Hagen snapped, “The line patrol just arrested the one guy who knows something about the feral that’s terrorizing this compound. Exactly how is that funny?”
Sid wiped the amusement from his porcine face. “They came in asking if I’d seen a girl with long brown hair, wearing clothes like theirs.” He pointed at my camouflage pants.
An engine roared in the square. Those still inside the station crowded at the window for a look.
“Lane!” Rafe’s voice didn’t sound upset. If anything his tone carried a hint of triumph. “Come on out!”
Hagen and I hurried to the door, but when she threw it open, I hung back. “What if they’ve come to arrest me for breaking quarantine? The whole patrol saw me cross the bridge.”
“People have done a lot worse on Arsenal Island and escaped across the bridge, but no guards ever came after them,” Hagen assured me. “Seems to me that someone high up is bending the law for you. Someone with a whole lot of clout — like that big wheel you mentioned.”
Not a chance. Spurling wouldn’t risk her reputation for me. She’d said as much to my face.
“Come on, Lane,” Rafe shouted. “They just want to talk to you. Everything’s okay.”
Brows raised, Hagen held open the door. Still, I hesitated. Rafe had gotten me out of the chimpacabra warren alive, escorted me to Moline, and offered to do the fetch on my father’s behalf. Discounting the supply closet incident and his prejudice against manimals, he deserved my trust. So why was I feeling so wary?
“Would you get your butt out here?” he hollered.
Inhaling deeply, I took the machete from my bag and stepped outside to find Rafe lounging in the back of an open-top jeep. Two line guards stood beside the vehicle, dressed in carbon-gray body armor. They had their assault rifles drawn and at the ready. The pimple-faced, pale-skinned male guard gaped at the furry vendor, while the young black woman scanned the square, her gaze always coming back to Rafe. They seemed very jumpy, considering the fact that other than the vendor, there weren’t any manimals on the square.
“What is that thing?” I heard the male guard mutter under his breath.
Rafe, on the other hand, seemed completely relaxed, as if it were a day at the park. He waved me over and introduced the guards as Fairfax and Bear Lake. “She goes by Bearly, as in barely able to resist me,” he added, giving her a smile but getting no reaction from her. Her mouth was drawn down at the corners. “This is Lane,” he added. Neither guard so much as glanced my way. They were distracted, watching for the ambush they apparently expected.
Rafe rose in the back of the jeep, which required dragging a handcuff up the vehicle’s steel-tube frame. The other cuff was on his wrist. “She’s all yours,” he called to someone behind me.
I spun to see Everson by the door. How had I walked past six-foot-plus of stone-faced line guard and not noticed him?
“Hey,” Everson said. His eyes ran over me, catching with surprise on the machete in my hand. I could feel my face flush. I wondered how messed up I looked compared to the last time we’d seen each other. After all, since then, I’d met a tiger-man and barely escaped a chimpacabra. My fatigues were caked with dirt. My face had to be too. I squashed the impulse to smooth my hair.
“I’m sorry about the Lull,” I said.
He smiled faintly. “You owed me. Are you okay?”
I nodded and shifted, unsure of what to say. I’d forgotten how deep his voice was. “Please don’t arrest me. I know I shouldn’t have come, but —”
“Arrest you?” he interrupted, coming toward me, his gun pointed at the ground. “Lane, I came to help you.”
My heart picked up tempo. There was nothing he could do, but still, he was the first person to offer without sounding resentful.
“Quit acting noble,” Rafe said from the back of the jeep. “You’re just here ’cause she’s hot.”
In any other situation, I would have warmed to hear that adjective applied to me, but out of his mouth, it was just a way to slam Everson, who shot Rafe a death threat of a look. Rafe just chuckled.
“I don’t understand.” I touched Everson’s arm and he returned his gaze to me. “How did you get permission to come here?”
“Blackmail,” he said like it was no big deal.
“What?”
“You gave me the idea,” he said, lowering his voice. “I told Captain Hyrax that if he didn’t approve me for an immediate reconnaissance mission to Moline, I’d be forced to file a report about the unauthorized ‘friends’ he has flown over the wall.”
Everson’s determination to help me was flattering and dashing and kind, but still my stomach dropped. “The captain will make your life awful after this.”
“I’m not worried,” he said. And for some reason, he wasn’t. I could feel the excitement coming off him in waves. At least somebody was happy to be here. “Did you give Mack the letter?” he asked.
I felt my brief pleasure at seeing him drain away. “My dad isn’t here.”
“Okay, you got her,” Fairfax called to Everson. “Let’s get out of here before that pig thing comes back.” He glanced around the square and shuddered, which sent a flash of anger through me.
As if I had the right to judge him. I was horrified too when I first laid eyes on Sid. “It’s okay. Sid’s not feral. None of them are.” Fairfax didn’t seem to hear me — or else he didn’t think I was a reliable source.
“Aren’t you all forgetting something?” Rafe jangled his handcuff. “I held up my end.”
I gasped as I realized what he meant. “You lying scumbag.” I strode to the jeep. “‘Come on out. Everything’s okay?’ You got me outside in exchange for your freedom.”
“I did it for you,” he said without a drop of irony. “You’ll be safer on Arsenal.”
Everson joined me by the jeep. “She’ll be safer away from you.”
“Whatever you want to tell yourself, silky, but we had a deal.”
“Like the deal where you were going to let her go if I put dow
n my gun?”
“That wasn’t a deal,” Rafe protested.
“Okay,” Everson agreed. “I’m just reneging then.”
“No way! You can’t. You’re the good guy.”
“I’m in your territory,” Everson said dryly. “I figured I’d play by your rules.”
“Come on!” Rafe dropped back into the seat.
“Cruz, dump her in the jeep, and —” Fairfax jerked up his rifle and aimed it at the station. Bearly did the same, and I turned to see a horde of compound residents — human and manimal — pushing out the door, their weapons drawn. Hagen led them onto the square with Sid at her elbow.
“Don’t come any closer!” Fairfax shouted.
I swore I could taste the adrenaline radiating off all three guards. “It’s okay, they’re not feral,” I said again.
Everson’s storm-cloud eyes were practically flashing heat lightning. “Look at them,” he whispered, sounding agitated. “There are so many. They’re so mutated.” He glanced back at Rafe. “How long have they been living like this?”
Rolling his eyes, Rafe cupped his free hand to his mouth. “Hey, Sid, Ace here wants to know how long you’ve been a pig thing.”
Sid scowled. “Let me think…. Oh yeah, screw you, that’s how long.”
Rafe sent Everson an I tried shrug. “Being a freak makes him touchy.”
“What kind of sicko place is this?” Fairfax asked, his voice edged with hysteria.
“You came to us,” Hagen said coldly. “Broke through our gate, so if we make you uncomfortable, maybe it’s time for you to go.”
Fairfax didn’t seem to have heard her. He jabbed Rafe’s arm with his rifle. “What are those people doing standing so close to grupped-up ferals?”
“Well, they’re married.” Rafe nodded at the walrus-man and his wife. “And those two” — he pointed at a grizzly-man holding hands with a young woman — “they’ve been shacking up for a while now. She has a thing for furries. The hairier the better, right, Alice?” he called over.
“I hope the rogue rips out your heart, Rafe,” she retorted. “Oh wait, you don’t have one.”
“Huh.” He sat back. “Don’t know why she’s touchy.”
“Won’t she get infected?” I asked.
He shrugged. “As long as she doesn’t kiss him on the mouth or let him bite her, she’ll probably be okay. Well, till he goes feral. Then all bets are off.”
“Enough,” Bearly said. “Let’s go.” She climbed into the driver’s seat and revved the engine.
Hagen moved toward the jeep while taking her gun from its holster. “Rafe stays.” She cocked her head and the crowd surged forward to surround the jeep.
Rafe put a hand over his heart. “I’m touched.”
“Ev, get in the jeep,” Bearly hissed. “Now.”
But Everson couldn’t take his eyes off the manimals. “Record them, will you?” he whispered to me. “Every angle you can get. Dr. Solis will learn a lot more from seeing their mutations than from hearing Mack describe them.”
As I hit my dial’s record button, a man with a scaled face and a pointed snout flicked out his long, thin tongue. “Who’re you calling mutated?”
“You’re infected with armadillo!” Everson’s hands trembled as he holstered his gun and shifted the shoulder strap of a box labeled “med kit” so that it was in front of him. “I need a sample of your blood.”
Now it was the manimal who looked stunned. “What the heck for, ya weirdo?” He backed away from Everson.
“In case you haven’t noticed, Ev,” Bearly said in a low, lethal tone, “this situation is verging on unstable.”
Everson ignored her. “Your blood will bring us closer to developing a vaccine for Ferae, maybe even a cure,” he told the armadillo-man while taking a syringe and rubber-topped vial from the med kit.
The crowd erupted in excited chatter. Several voices rose over the rest, lobbing questions at Everson. The sudden shouting electrified all three guards. Everson edged back, Bearly popped the jeep into park and lifted her gun, while Fairfax totally lost it. He jumped onto the back of the jeep, waving his assault rifle. “The first freak that bleeds near me is getting a snout full of lead, and I am not kidding. In fact, move one inch closer and I will shoot your hairy freaking freak faces off.”
The buzz of the crowd turned hostile and they clustered more tightly around the jeep.
A muscle contracted in Everson’s jaw; however, he dropped the vial and syringe back into the med kit and snapped it shut. “All right, we’ll go.” He beckoned to me. “Come on, Lane.”
“Not until you free Rafe,” I said, even though I had no intention of leaving with the guards. “The compound needs him right now.” And I needed him uncuffed.
“You bet they do,” Rafe chimed in.
Everson stiffened in surprise. “You’re defending him after what he did?” His hand brushed my forearm. “He cut you.”
“He also saved my life.”
Fairfax was still on top of the jeep, brandishing his gun. “We’re taking the skag in. The captain promised fat bonus checks to the guards who catch him.”
“But you came here to get me,” I said.
“He did.” Bearly jerked her chin at Everson. “We’re here to make sure he gets back to camp in one piece.”
“Why?” Rafe asked. “What’s so special about him?”
Everson frowned and led me away from the jeep until we were out of earshot. “I’m working on another way to help your dad. One that won’t get you infected or killed.”
A small tendril of hope uncurled inside of me. I wanted to rely on him, but that was a dangerous desire. Everson didn’t understand the scale of the problem — couldn’t — because he hadn’t witnessed Director Spurling’s determination to get what she wanted. “Unless you have another way right now, I can’t take that chance.”
“What?” He sounded astonished. Guess most people didn’t reject his help. “But I — How does staying here help Mack?”
“Rafe said he’d get the photograph for me.”
“You believe that?” Everson scoffed. “After he just gave you up to save himself?”
Did I believe it? I looked at Rafe…. Well, no. And considering the way my notion of reality kept shattering and reforming with each new piece of information, I didn’t expect to trust anybody anytime soon. Still, one truth hadn’t budged — if my father was going to escape execution, someone had to fetch Spurling’s photo.
“I don’t even want to think about what that lowlife has planned for you,” Everson growled.
“What are you two whispering about?” Rafe yelled. It seemed the standoff between the crowd and the guards was beginning to make even him nervous.
“I know he’s not the most trustworthy person on the planet, but he’s willing to do the fetch for my dad.”
“Forget the fetch.” Everson paused, his wide shoulders shifting. “My mother has clout … political clout. Let me see what she can do for Mack. There are better — smarter — ways to help your dad. Ways that don’t require a machete,” he added, gesturing to the weapon in my hand.
He was offering me a real solution. The inside of my skull filled with floating dots, and my legs started to tingle. Everson seemed so confident and capable in his Kevlar body armor. He could take me away from this dangerous place of snuffling, shuffling manimals and bring my father home safely as well. But did his mother really have the clout to help my dad? And even if she did, why would she? She didn’t know me or my father. What if Everson couldn’t persuade her to help us? As good as his intentions were, I couldn’t risk it.
“Cruz, stop jawing and let’s get out of this slum hole.” Fairfax hopped off the back of the jeep.
I shoved the machete into my messenger bag. Everson was right about one thing, though. Blindly trusting Rafe was stupid.
“Slum hole, huh?” a voice rasped.
I looked back at the jeep. The armadillo-man had resurfaced at the front of the crowd. He flicked his to
ngue at Fairfax, coming within an inch of his nose. Bellowing with disgust, the guard jerked up his gun and took aim. “You want to be put down, animal?”
“Fairfax, stand down!” Everson shouted.
A sick feeling bloomed in my stomach. The guards were here because of me and now it was looking more likely they weren’t going to make it back to Arsenal unscathed.
“We’re leaving, okay?” Everson told Fairfax and started toward him. Over his shoulder, he said, “Come on, Lane. No one here can help you.”
“You’re right.” I shouldn’t have kidded myself for even a second that I could put my dad’s life in someone else’s hands, sit back, and hope for the best. “I have help myself, and I’ll need your jeep.”
Everson stopped short, his momentum rocking him up on his toes. “What?”
I headed for him. “It’s the only way I can get to Chicago and back in time,” I said, trying to sound reasonable.
He stared down at me. “I’m not lending you our jeep.”
“You’ve got walkie-talkies. Call for another one.”
“No,” he said firmly, every inch the line guard again. “You’re out of options, Lane. Just come with us.”
I was getting really tired of people telling me that I was out of options. Spurling, Rafe, and Everson. Especially because it wasn’t true. I had another option: I could take the jeep.
But how? The guards had guns and I had … manimals. I turned to the crowd. “Excuse me, everyone. Hi. My name is Delaney Park McEvoy.”
“What are you doing?” Everson hissed.
“McEvoy?” the walrus-man asked. “Are you Mack’s kid?”
“Yes, I am. I came here because he’s in trouble. Big trouble. As in, his life is on the line. If I want to save him, I have to do a fetch.” I pointed at the jeep. “And this is the only way I can get it done in time.”
That was all it took. I didn’t need to mention that if something happened to my dad, he wouldn’t be bringing them medicine anymore. I didn’t even need to tell them how they could help me. They knew. Before Fairfax understood what was happening, the walrus-man had locked him in a clinch, and the mastiff-man had ripped the gun from his grip. The others surged forward and stripped Bearly and Everson of their weapons the instant I’d finished speaking.