Blight Read online

  I grab the water bottle and stand over him. “Drink this.”

  He opens his eyes. “Tempest . . .”

  “No.” I stamp my foot. “Get up. You’re going to drink this.”

  He sits up awkwardly. “You’re the one who’s going to need it.”

  “Alder.” I grit my teeth. “If you don’t drink the damn water, I’m going to have to go back to my original plan of murdering you.”

  He cracks a ghost of a smile.

  I flop down next to him, exhausted, my back against the jeep. The clover is cool, alive.

  “Okay.” He unscrews the cap. “I’ll make you a deal. You drink half, I drink half.”

  I roll my eyes and snag the bottle from his hands. “Fine.” I tilt it back and down half the water in a few gulps. It’s warm as tea, but that doesn’t matter to my cracked lips and aching throat.

  I wipe my mouth and hand the bottle back. “Your turn.”

  Alder laughs once, low, and sips. I lean back against the wheel well. We sit in silence while he finishes the water.

  “Did you ever make chains out of these?” Alder runs his hand over the tops of the white flowers dotting the clover. “When you were a kid?”

  I frown at him. “No.”

  “Really?” He plucks a flower and looks at me like I’m the crazy one.

  “Really,” I say, pulling my own flower. But as I do, something hazy flashes in the back of my mind. A clover flower with a long stem wrapped around my finger like a ring. “Look, Papi!” I blink.

  Alder pierces a hole in the stem with his thumbnail, plucks another flower, and threads its stem through the hole. “Eden and I used to make them,” he says, not raising his eyes from his work. “I would make necklaces for her, and she would make me a crown.”

  That pressure builds in my throat again.

  “I think . . . I think maybe I did make them. For my father.” I look up at him. “I think I used to bring him bunches of wildflowers. He would pull out the yellow dandelions and we would chew on them.” I taste it in my mouth as I say the words.

  Alder frowns. “Deacon Ward said most company farms raise the kids in barracks, away from their parents.”

  I nod. “I didn’t always live on the compound. My father, he was like one of you. I think we wandered a long way, tried to stay away from the company farms.” I shut my eyes, a tumble of images coming at me. Memories. “Then it was winter one year, and we were out of food. An animal got into our packs—a bear, I think—and ate it all. So he thought . . . my father, he decided to make for a compound after all. And then . . .” An image of my father fills my mind—eyes wide, on his back, a clean red hole in his forehead and snow drifting down gently all around.

  Something squeezes my arm. My eyes spring open on green and more green, the clover and earth and trees. And Alder, crouching beside me. When did he move so close? I shiver.

  “You should sleep a little,” he says.

  I shake my head. “We have to keep moving. I’ll sleep after we’ve found help.”

  “You’ll crash the jeep.”

  I press my fists against my eyes.

  “We’d sweat out all the water we drank, going back on the road now, anyway,” Alder says. “Just an hour’s rest. I’ll keep watch.”

  I feel myself slipping, my vision going bleary. “One hour.”

  “Good,” Alder says, and play punches the spot where he held my arm moments before. “Right answer.”

  I curl up on the clover. I can smell the earth and the plants, the greenness of them. It wouldn’t be so bad to die here, I think. To sink down and let the cool earth wrap around me, to let crickets sing me to sleep forever. But how long will this place still be here? Will it be gone in a matter of days, like my compound and the trees around the lake?

  I open my eyes. Alder is staring at me with an expression that makes his face look like it’s about to fracture.

  “I’m sorry.” I swallow against the hardness in my throat. About everything, I mean. About Eden. About Ellison. About what he suffered with the Red Hand and the virus that’s probably coursing through his blood. About the loss of everything we’ve known.

  “It’s not your fault,” he says.

  I squeeze my eyes shut against the hot tears welling in them and turn my face to the earth.

  “Tempest,” Alder says, in a way that makes me look up again. “It isn’t. It’s not your fault.”

  I blink the blur from my eyes.

  “No crying, huh?” He makes an attempt at a smile and raises an eyebrow. “Don’t go wasting all that water I so generously gave you.”

  I laugh.

  “Sleep,” Alder says. “I’ll wake you in a little while.”

  And at last, I do.

  I wake sometime later to the sound of thunder. Wind blows through the trees, flipping the leaves pale side up. I sit and hug myself. A small circlet of flowers lies next to me on the grass. I lift it gently and turn it over in my hands. A bracelet. Not a crown or a ring. Something else. A truce. Maybe forgiveness.

  Soon Alder comes back, carrying a bundle in the front of his shirt. I quickly tuck the flowers into my backpack.

  “There’s a meadow back there.” He displays a handful of small green apples. “I found these.”

  I grab one, bite into it, and immediately spit it out. “Ugh. Sour.” I roll my tongue. “What are they?”

  “Crab apples.” He takes a bite, screws up his face, and keeps chewing. “Taste terrible, but they’re better than nothing.”

  I try another bite and grimace. I shuffle through my backpack and pull out the last of the protein bars. That’s it. The end of our food.

  “I put the water bottle in the meadow,” Alder says. “With any luck, we’ll catch some rain.”

  I nod. “We’ll drive again, as soon as the storm passes.”

  Another gust of wind rolls over us, and rain patters down on the canopy above.

  “We should change your bandage,” I say.

  “I guess so.” He extends his arm and starts unrolling the gauze gingerly. He sucks in a low hiss when it sticks to his skin.

  I lean over the wound. “You need stitches.”

  “And a whole roast turkey. And a gold-plated helicopter.”

  I roll my eyes and look closer. “Doesn’t seem infected, at least.”

  He shrugs. We both know it’s not first on our list of worries.

  “Maybe go wash it off in the rain,” I say. “Then we’ll re-dress it.”

  He does. When he comes back, I start wrapping his arm again, more carefully this time.

  “Your father was a scavenger,” Alder says, watching me work. “What about your mom?”

  I shake my head. “I don’t remember her.”

  “Not at all?”

  “She must have died when I was really little.” I tuck the end of the bandage back in around itself. “What about you? Your parents must be with the Deacon.”

  “No.” He flexes his arm, testing the bandage, and winces. “We lived in a settlement northwest of here, in the mountains. Near the French Broad River. AgraStar raided our camp when I was four or five, flushed us out. Some people went west, farther into the hills. The rest of us struck out east, met up with the Deacon.”

  “And your parents?” I’m holding my breath.

  “They didn’t make it.” He looks away. “Jackers. They would have gotten me too, but one of the men traveling with us boosted me up into a tree and told me to keep quiet.”

  “So who raised you?” I ask.

  “Everyone. No one.” He shrugs and plucks another flower from the clover. “Same as you, really.”

  I look up. The rain has eased, and the sun is creeping back. The whole world is hazy gold and steam. “We should go,” I say. “While there’s still daylight.”

  Alder nods. He heads off to fetch the water bottle and returns with it half full. We pile into the jeep and drive south.

  Thirty miles down the road, the engine starts to sputter, and the power steering
goes out.

  “Dammit.” I struggle to hold the wheel steady as I pump the brake. We coast to a stop in the middle of the road.

  “What’s wrong?” Alder sits up straight.

  “Don’t know.” I tap the fuel gauge on the console. It doesn’t move—still on a quarter tank. I tap it again, and it hits me. It’s been stuck there for miles.

  I curse and slam my hands against the steering wheel. I look over at Alder. “We’re out of gas.”

  He nods and studies the road in front of us. Then he reaches over, shifts the jeep into neutral, and slides out of the passenger side. “Come on.”

  I follow him around to the back of the vehicle. “What are we doing?”

  He leans against the tailgate. “We’ve got to get this thing off the road. We don’t want to leave any clues for the Red Hand.”

  “Wait.” I grab my pack and the water bottle, then lock the steering wheel to the right.

  Together, we push. The jeep rolls off the road, slow at first, then it catches momentum and disappears into the thick mass of vines and ferns growing along the roadside. The forest swallows it up.

  I watch it go, feeling sick. Finding someone to help when we had the jeep to speed us along was going to be difficult. Finding GAP-12, or anyone else, on foot is going to be next to impossible. I count down the hours. Half a day since Alder was bitten, maybe more. How long until he starts hallucinating? Until he can’t swallow? A day and a half? Two? Once he’s reached that stage, there’s no turning it back.

  “Tempest!”

  I turn. Alder is several yards down the road already.

  “Coming?” he calls.

  I hurry to catch up to him. “What do we do now?”

  Alder shrugs. “We walk.”

  .15.

  MEADOW FOXTAIL

  ALOPECURUS CAROLINIANUS

  The fever hits Alder after sundown. The world has purpled into dusk, and the crickets and frogs have started up their pulsing song. I turn around and find him lagging several yards behind me on the road. His face is pale and slick. Heat still radiates from the blacktop, but he’s shivering.

  “We should stop,” I say reluctantly. We need to keep moving if we’re going to find help, but Alder looks like he’ll collapse if he takes another step.

  He doesn’t argue. He doesn’t say anything.

  “I can try to make a fire,” I say.

  Alder shakes his head. He points to the skeleton of an old billboard a quarter mile down the road, its silhouette barely visible against the darkening sky. “There.”

  I nod. The sides of the road here have been cleared recently, all the green things between the highway and the tree line shriveled up and chemical-dry underfoot. Less chance of an ambush, but no cover, either. Someone—a guard or a clearer—has planted a whitewashed cross in the dirt to mark the spot where a team member fell. I touch the flimsy wood and remember the same symbol around Eden’s neck. I don’t want to have to make one of these for Alder.

  We climb the billboard’s access ladder. Alder stops every few rungs to rest, but at last we reach the narrow platform below the board. A light wind ruffles the sweaty curls at the nape of my neck. I breathe in. The highway stretches behind us, running through the thick shadows of the trees. The blight is out there, hidden in the dark. Has it reached the pool where I soaked my burned fingers? The boathouse? The Red Hand compound? Ahead of us, the lights of Atlanta twinkle in the distance, skyline haloed in a pink glow, as if the sun has set there instead of along the western horizon.

  I didn’t know I’d be able to see it from so far away. AgraStar is there. That means medicine. Civilization. Safety for me, a return to normal. Death or imprisonment for Alder. If he makes it.

  “You want to go there, don’t you?”

  I shake my head. “I’m just thinking they’d have medicine.”

  He sits slowly, as if it pains him, and lets his legs dangle off the side of the platform. “They wouldn’t give it to me. Besides, I’d rather die out here.”

  “No, you wouldn’t.” I drop down next to him and let my legs hang beside his in the open air.

  “Rather than have them heal me, only to execute me later? Or make me into one of their cogs?” He leans back so he’s looking at the sky. “I think I would.”

  My stomach twists. I look away.

  “Tempest.”

  I turn back to Alder.

  His face is drawn, serious. “If we don’t find the vaccine—”

  “Stop it.” I know what he’s going to say.

  “No, listen. If it gets bad, if I’m too far gone, I want you to promise me something.”

  I fold my arms tight across my chest and glare at him.

  “Promise me you’ll end it.” He nods at my gun. “Don’t let me suffer like those people the Red Hand kept. Okay?”

  I turn away. I can’t keep insisting we’re going to find help, because we’re not. I’m only lying to myself and Alder, and Alder isn’t fooled.

  “You’d be doing me a mercy.” His hand touches mine, sudden and warm. “I’d be with Eden.”

  I snatch my hand back. Her name is like a cold knife. A reminder of what he did, what I did, what happened to everyone around us. Ellison in the open dirt. Eden laid out and washed in the glowing tent. The creeping death following us. The woman clothed in blood.

  “You’re tired,” I say. “You should sleep.”

  “I’m not—”

  “You need to rest.” I stand and walk to the other end of the platform. The remnants of a faded image rise on the billboard above me—half a smile, red lips, white teeth. “I’ll take first watch.”

  “Tempest . . .”

  “Just go to sleep, Alder.” I lean against the safety rail. I can’t look at him. “If you still want me to kill you in the morning, we can talk about it then.”

  Dusk drifts into night, and the chorus of insects rises, invisible, from the sea of treetops around us. I pull my hair out of its ponytail and comb through it with my fingers. Why does it feel like my lungs are caving in when I think about Alder dying? Less than a week ago, we were trying to kill each other, but now . . . I drop my head into my hands. He’s my ally. I think I trust him. And he must trust me. Mercy killing, that isn’t something I’d leave to just anyone. If it were me, I’d want only the right person to do it. Someone who would make it quick and clean. No hesitating, no botching it.

  I lean back and look at the giant mouth. Alder may trust me to do the right thing, but I don’t know if I trust myself. I don’t even know what the right thing is anymore.

  I reach for the seeds and turn them over in my hands. I should braid my hair, clean myself up as much as I can. That will make me feel better. More like a soldier. More in control. But my arms are so heavy. Every muscle in my body quakes with fatigue. I want to lie down and let the kudzu and weeds grow over me. I trace the tiny teardrop shapes of the seeds through the plastic. AgraStar shouldn’t have them. The company might be able to clone the seeds, extrapolate which genes gave them their resistance, and transfer that resistance to other crops, but they’ll also hoard that information, profit from it, maybe even use it to build a more devastating biological weapon. Maybe I don’t know what the right thing is, but I do know one thing I can’t allow.

  Engines startle me awake. I sit up straight. A line of headlights moves through the night—it looks like two trucks, a car, and a small V of motorcycles bringing up the rear. Someone stands in the bed of the lead truck, sweeping a handheld floodlight across the trees bordering the road. I flatten myself against the platform and peek over the edge. Not an AgraStar caravan. The Red Hand? Are they still hunting us? Another dozen miles closer to AgraStar territory and they might not risk it, but here we’re still in no-man’s-land.

  The flood lamp sweeps up over the billboard, and I freeze, praying the angle is enough to hide us. Alder moans in his sleep.

  “Shh.” I reach out and squeeze his ankle, the only part of him I can reach. Please be quiet. Please stay still.

/>   The beam drops and plays over the trees to our right. I let out a breath but stay flattened against the platform, every muscle rigid. I lie there as the caravan passes, and as it doubles back an hour later, still strafing the trees with light and filling the night with rumbling.

  I don’t sleep again, even though shadows are starting to jump before my eyes and I can feel my heart beating too quickly. I’m dehydrated. But Alder is worse. His fever is high, flushing his cheeks and bringing a glassy sheen to his eyes. His hair is soaked with sweat. He watches me through barely open lids as I change his bandages.

  “You didn’t wake me for my turn on lookout,” he says as I peel back the last layer.

  “You—” I catch sight of his wound and choke down a gasp.

  “What?” He sits up.

  In silence, we both stare at his arm. His flesh is swollen, and red streaks radiate out from the punctures. Infection. I curse.

  “It’s okay,” I say quickly, stupidly. The fever. I should have known. I should have brought more antiseptic with me. I start rewrapping his arm. “It’s going to be okay.”

  “Tempest—”

  I ignore him. “Can you climb down?”

  He pushes himself up on shaky arms. “I’ll have to.”

  “Don’t go plummeting to your death, okay?” I try to give him a smirk. It doesn’t hold.

  “I can do it.” He looks me in the eye as he says it, but that doesn’t change the fact that he’s swaying on his feet.

  “I’ll go first,” I say. “I can try and catch you if you slip.”

  We make it down. Alder sits in the billboard’s shadow for what feels like a quarter hour, while I scan the horizon for movement, toes squirming anxiously in my boots.

  “Okay,” he finally says.

  I hold out a hand, and he lets me help him up.

  We tramp through the waist-high ragweed and foxtail along the side of the road, ready to drop down if we see anyone coming. Every few feet, I stop and look back, both to check on Alder and to scan the horizon for vehicles. We’re moving slow, covering barely two miles an hour. The sun is hot and my head pounds. We might get another afternoon thunderstorm—they come like clockwork every summer—but that’s still hours away.