The Scavengers

  Chapter 16

  “We need to go.”

  I didn't know how long I'd been kneeling in the shallow water next to the burning bridge, but when I focused my eyes on Jeb I realized that it was now fully dark out.

  “Go?” I asked. I couldn't even feel my legs. They had gone numb sometime around the same time as the middle section of the bridge had collapsed into the river. All that was left of the bridge were a handful of burning piles of wood. The remains of the support beams that had held up the railroad tresses.

  “Drake and Shayla are up there somewhere.” Jeb pointed towards the bluff above us. “The bus still needs the radiator we pulled.”

  “The bus.” I frowned at him and at the massive radiator that he’d propped against a nearby boulder. It seemed like the bus had broken down so long ago. It didn't seem possible that it had only been three days since I'd left the Cube.

  Jeb nodded. “We can't do anything without the bus.”

  I looked around. “Where's Seth?”

  Jeb shrugged. “He wandered off a little while ago saying he had some business to take care of. Told me to stay put and take care of you. Said he'd be back but I don't really think I want to wait on him.”

  “I'll wait for him,” I said. I tentatively tried to make my right leg move. Pins and needles shot through my nervous system and made me moan.

  “Pilar?” Jeb looked alarmed.

  “I've sat here too long. My legs are asleep.” I forced myself to stretch out both legs. I felt incredibly woozy. “The rock candy isn't helping either. My head feels like someone cut it in half with a blade.”

  “I didn't know rock candy could make you sick,” Jeb said.

  “Me neither,” I said. “Jeb, I don't think I can walk yet. If you want to go back to the bus without me, I'd understand. I can just stay here until I feel better. I'm sure Seth will come back. He's been pretty hard to get rid of so far.”

  “He said you were with Drake when you met him?”

  “I was,” I confirmed. “We were on the roof of the bus...talking.”

  “Talking.” Jeb sighed and held out his hands to me. He pulled me onto my feet and held me upright when my knees tried to buckle. “You can't trust Seth. He's not a friend of the Cube.”

  “We can't trust Drake either.”

  “I never said we could. Drake was pissed off at Cya after she got Conner killed but no one deserves to be torn apart by zombies.”

  “Drake told me Cya left some other girls to be torn apart by zombies. He said she'd done it on her second or third hunt, I think. He was pretty angry when he was telling me about it. He said she'd tried to blame Conner and then she'd let Conner die. Maybe this was his way of paying her back for everything he felt she'd screwed up?”

  “I don't know. He never told me any of that.” Jeb rubbed his face with his hands. “Not that it changes anything. We have to go back. We've already been gone a long time. Drake and Shayla may think we died.”

  “They haven't come looking for us.”

  “I don't think they would. Scavengers die all the time, remember?” He sounded incredibly bitter. “I want to confront him.”

  “What?”

  “I need to confront him. About Cya. He promised he would take care of her and then he dropped her to her death. He's not supposed to do that. He's the leader of the Scavengers. The Powers That Be have entrusted him with the responsibility of making decisions for the team. He can't just make the decision to execute someone by zombie. It’s inhumane. If he felt she'd committed crimes against the other Scavengers then he should have brought it to a hearing in front of the Powers. She would have been dealt with appropriately,”

  “No one trusts the Powers That Be to handle anything,” I muttered.

  “I do.” Jeb looked insulted and I belatedly remembered what Drake had said about Jeb being slated to become a member of the Powers That Be.

  “I guess it's different when your family runs the Cube,” I said awkwardly.

  “Pilar, if this is about what happened to your parents, I'm sorry. You have to understand that the Powers that Be are responsible for over 7,000 lives. It can be hard to keep track of everyone. No one could have helped what happened to your family.”

  “My parents went missing from inside what is supposed to be an impenetrable prison.” I purposefully looked away from him. It was difficult to resist the urge to scream in his face but it wouldn't do me any good. I seriously doubted that Jeb had any better idea about what happened to my family than I did. “I’ve gone over that day in my head a thousand times. Mom was in our apartment getting ready for Dad to come back from his night shift in the generator room. She had already brought his coffee up from the dining hall. She did that every morning because Dad liked to get his shower before he sat down with his coffee. I didn’t see him before I left to go on duty at the hospital ward, but I know he came back to our apartment that morning because his boots were there when I got off duty. His only pair of shoes.”

  “He only owned one pair of shoes?” Jeb seemed startled.

  “He gave all his redemption points to Mom. She loved books, so he had one pair of shoes and she had 200 paperback romances.”

  “He loved her,” Jeb said.

  “He did.” I said as I blinked back tears “My best friend Julie and I used to pray we’d meet boy who would love us half as much as my Dad loved my Mom. He adored her. He used to make her jewelry down in the mechanics shop. He’d take surplus materials, scraps, and bend them into bracelets, necklaces and rings for her. He’d do it for us too. For me and Julie. One time he made princess crowns. They had all these crazy spirals and twists. We used to run through the hallways of the block wearing our crowns and asking everyone to bow to us.”

  “Did they?”

  “Bow to us?” I smiled at the memory as I nodded. “They did. They laughed but they bowed to us. We laughed because they laughed at us.”

  “Sounds like you were happy.”

  “I was. Maybe that’s why my life seems so wrong now, Jeb. Six months ago, I was happy. Maybe Block E wasn’t the nicest block, but the people who live there treat one another like family. We watch out for one another. We take care of one another. We lived a decent life. Maybe my day-to-day life wasn’t epic or amazing, but I had my parents and they loved me. I had my best friend and I loved her like a sister. I always thought I’d meet a good guy and I’d fall in love. Maybe it sounds pathetic to a guy whose destiny is to become one of the Powers That Be, but I couldn’t wait to have the love and the life my parents had.”

  “Nothing about you is pathetic, Pilar.” Jeb wrapped one arm around my shoulders and pulled me away from the river and towards the still burning remains of the bridge. My knees tried to go out on me but Jeb held me up and kept me on my feet until we were within 5 feet of one of the smaller fires. He guided me to the nearest boulder and helped me sit down on the side of it. “You’re freezing. You need to get your wet clothes off.”

  “I don’t have any dry clothes,” I pointed out.

  “We’ll figure something out. Maybe we can use the remains of the fire to stay warm and dry our clothes out. I think our things would dry if we laid them out across these rocks.” He patted the boulder I was sitting on. “Seth told me we’d be safe from zombies for a little while, if we wanted to get some sleep. He says they won’t come anywhere near open flames.”

  “Sleep sounds….dangerous.” I rubbed my bare arms and realized I was cold because my jacket was missing. “Have you seen my jacket?”

  “No,” Jeb said as he pulled his t-shirt off and laid it flat on the boulders. “Not since we were in the junkyard. Did you lose it?”

  “I remember being burning hot. I must have taken it off.” I cursed under my breath as I thought about my Dad’s gun. Either Seth had it now or it was lost in the depths of the junkyard. “Seth didn’t have it with him when we crossed the river, did he?”

  “If he did, he lost it.” Jeb shook his head at me as he peeled off his boots, socks and jeans
. His thin, bare legs were almost blindingly white in the glow of the fire. “He nearly lost you. Heck, he nearly lost himself. I turned around once I reached the bank and looked back for you guys. He was struggling. Badly. I thought you were both going to drown.”

  “He’s a bad swimmer.” I remembered how hard Seth had been breathing as we’d crawled out of the river. I took a deep breath. “But at least he didn’t let me go.”

  “You mean he didn’t sacrifice you to save himself, the way Drake did with Cya.”

  “You said it yourself. Seth nearly drowned the both of us. The both of us. I might have drowned but-.”

  “But he would have drowned too. I got that. I had to pry you out of his grip so I could pull you on shore. I’m surprised you don’t have bruises from how tightly he was hanging on to you.” Jeb gestured at my arms.

  I looked down but I didn’t see any bruises. I did, however, feel sore all over. I decided to worry about the gun later. Regardless of whether Seth had it or it was lost on the other side of the river, there was nothing I could do about it. “Do you really think we’re safe enough here that we can sleep?” I asked Jeb.

  “Depends on whether or not you trust Seth,” Jeb admitted. “He knows we’re here. He says we’re safe.”

  “What happened in the junkyard this afternoon?” I asked.

  “What do you mean?” Jeb asked. He sat down on the ground, positioning himself so that the fire was in front of him and boulder was guarding his back. He laid his sword on the ground a few inches to his right.

  “I remember us going into the junkyard and finding the truck. I remember killing a couple of zombies and Seth appearing like he’d been conjured by black magic. He was critiquing my zombie slaying skills. He found them lacking. I was arguing with him when I realized I was feeling sick and then I collapsed. I vaguely remember being carried. I guess we were running?”

  “I was working on getting the radiator loose when Seth came up behind me. The rock candy hit me funny too, I think. I’m normally pretty good at working with mechanical equipment but it took me a long time to pull the radiator. I can remember just staring at the bolts that were holding it in for a long, long time. I remember counting all the spirals on the bolt. Why would I do that?”

  “The rock candy was messing with your head,” I said with a sigh. I began pulling my own soggy clothes off. My boots were full of water and my toes were wrinkled beyond recognition. The dirt felt fuzzy underneath my toes. My wet jeans felt like they were glued to my skin. Goosebumps blossomed across my flesh as I pulled my pants off and then smoothed them flat against the hard surface of the boulder. I very much doubted they would dry anytime soon but it did feel better to have them off. The fire’s heat felt good on my bare skin.

  “I guess. I don’t remember when you walked off, but the next time I turned around, Seth was at my back. He was just sitting on the hood of a car about 12 feet from me.” Jeb shuddered. “I knew who he was when I saw his eye. Drake has described him to be me before. He said the easiest way to recognize Seth Ra was his eyes. He said one was blue and one was dead. I asked how an eye could die. He told me I’d know when I saw it. I guess he was right because I did know. I saw that white, scarred eye and I knew who he was.”

  “What did you do when you recognized him?”

  “I asked him what he’d done with you,” Jeb said with a small laugh. “He told me the rock candy had made you sick, so he’d hidden you somewhere where you would be safe. He said you’d made him promise to watch my back while I finished getting the radiator. I didn’t believe him. I thought he’d killed you. I said as much and he laughed at me.”

  “Sounds like Seth,” I said as I started to take off my shirt and then hesitated. It was bad enough to be sitting in front of Jeb in my panties. I wasn’t sure he needed to see my bra too. Of course, my legs were already a lot warmer than they had been. “Is it better to be modest or warm?” I asked abruptly.

  Jeb looked down at his boxer shorts. “Warm. A lack of modesty never got anyone killed. Hypothermia, on the other hand, can be fatal.”

  “You’re right,” I said. I stripped off my shirt and laid it next to my pants. “Now about Seth?”

  “I couldn’t get one of the bolts loose for the radiator. My hands kept slipping and then I’d lose focus and forget what I was supposed to be doing altogether. I guess Seth got sick of watching me stare at the sun, because he finally pushed me to the side and pulled the radiator out of the truck himself.”

  “Helpful of him,” I muttered.

  “He’d put you in the bed of a truck that had one of those shell things over it. We were walking back to get you when this massive horde of zombies suddenly came flooding into the junkyard. It was like someone had opened that main gate between the junkyard and the rest of the town. There had to have been a hundred of them. Maybe more. They were moving fast too. Seth grabbed me and pulled me on top of a pile of cars just as they first came past us. We got you out of the truck and just started running as fast as we could. There were way too many of them for us to fight. I remember hearing someone screaming, probably Cya. We were just running and running. I couldn’t keep track of where we were going or how we were getting there. Seth said to follow him and I didn’t see a better option. He had you and I had the radiator. He got us to the fence and then over the fence. You remember the rest.”

  “Unfortunately, yes. I do.” I sunk down beside him in the sand. “I don’t know who to trust, Jeb.”

  “Me neither,” Jeb admitted. “Maybe we should sleep on it.”

  “You think we’re safe to sleep?” I asked.

  “If Seth wanted us dead, he’d have left us to die in the junkyard. Seeing all those zombies bearing down on us was like something out of a nightmare, Pilar. There were so many teeth. Just so many teeth, gnashing at me.” He closed his eyes and hugged himself.

  “It’s okay. We got out alive.” I reached on hand out and put it on his arm, trying to be reassuring.

  “We did. The way I figure it, Drake and Shayla can’t go anywhere without a new radiator for the bus. I didn’t see them carrying one with them when they were running back across the bridge. I’m assuming they still need this one.” He patted the radiator he’d salvaged from the junkyard. “I vote we stay here for tonight. Try to get some sleep and let the last of the side-effects from the rock candy wear off. Figure out what to do in the morning.”

  “What about Seth?” I asked. “Do you think he’s coming back?”

  “If he does, I have some questions to ask him.”

  “If he doesn’t?”

  Jeb shrugged. “We have the radiator. Drake needs it. I’m sure he’ll be happy to see us.”

  I let out a short, bitter laugh. “I guess you’re right.”

  “You know I’m right, now get some sleep.”

  “I will,” I promised as I closed my eyes and curled into a ball in front of the fire. Within seconds, I was asleep.