The Lair

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Lily

By morning, the mood in Base Camp had shifted from fearful to angry. Lily sensed the change the second she stepped out of the RV to go empty the composting toilet, which had to be emptied every day. Most people rotated the duty between everyone who lived in their RV, but she certainly wasn’t going to make McKenna do it. She could use the exercise anyway. Funny, she’d never been much for exercise in the Before. Being able to run had never seemed important until she had something to run from.

McKenna had already been out for food and back again by the time she got up. Lily had hoped that by morning, McKenna would be ready to see reason, but she wasn’t. She was just as determined as ever. She woke Lily with perky descriptions of how they could steal a car from the nearby city of Logan.

Listening to McKenna’s plans made her head spin, and for once she was actually glad to leave the RV in the morning. Even drop duty was better than trying to change McKenna’s mind.

She watched her step as she made her way through the cavern. After twelve hours, a bucket of piss really starts to reek. The ammonia seems to worm its way into her nose and lodge there. The last thing she wanted was for any of it to slosh out. But worst of all was the wrenching pain from her shoulder. Pain was good, right? Her body’s reminder to take it easy.

Besides, once she was up there, she planned to talk to Carter about McKenna’s plans to leave Base Camp. If anyone could talk some sense into the girl, Carter could.

Early mornings were usually busy around Base Camp, but this morning everything seemed unusually still and quiet. People were staying in their RVs. The few people who were out and about kept their gaze down and skittered away from each other. She wanted to believe that this was a normal reaction to the Tick attack. That people just wanted to grieve in private, but what if she was wrong? What if people weren’t grieving, but were hiding from her? Carter had been with her when the attack had happened. If he’d been here instead, maybe it wouldn’t have been as bad. Maybe people blamed her for the attack. Maybe they were right.

As she made her way toward the receiving bay, she noticed the front doors were still closed. By this time there should be enough light to scare off the Ticks. The doors should be open. So why weren’t they?

She skirted around the new triage area and made her way to the doors. The smell grew overwhelming as she got closer. A row of buckets lined the wall beside the doors that a pair of Elites was guarding.

Lily set her bucket down near the others and went over to Chris, one of the Elites standing guard. She gave a nod of greeting to Merc and then asked Chris, “What’s up with the doors still being closed? I have drop duty.”

Chris gave a sympathetic shrug of his shoulders. “Sorry, Lil. Can’t let you out. We’ve been ordered to keep the doors closed this morning. We’re going to have armed guards to go out with the group in about an hour. You can leave your bucket here until then.”

“Okay, I’ll be back.”

Only then did Merc speak up. “Didn’t you get shot yesterday?”

“I’m okay,” she lied. “It’s barely a scratch.”

Merc just shook his head. His voice was deep and no-nonsense. “Sorry, Lil. No way you’re doing drop duty today.”

She wanted to argue, but could tell it would be pointless so she left the bucket and walked away. Great. Now she was making more work for people.

The block of offices at the front of Base Camp where the Elites lived was like a rabbit’s warren, but she’d been back there enough that she knew her way around. The door was partially open, so she knocked on the frame and then let herself in but Carter wasn’t alone. There was another guy in there with him, someone Lily had never seen before.

He was shorter than Carter, but broad through the chest, like a pit bull. He had long, dark hair and enough tattoos to have had his own reality TV show in the Before. Okay, so she didn’t really know how many tattoos he had. She was just extrapolating based on the fact that he had tatts peeking past each sleeve cuff and his collar. One sprawled up his neck. Mi Familia. This guy had “Latino badass” written all over him. Literally.

The desk had been moved back to the center of the room and had a map of the U.S. spread out across the surface with bobbleheads holding down the corners. Both of the guys looked up when she walked in. Carter smiled when he saw her, but there was something invasive about the way this new guy sized her up. It was a look that simultaneously assessed her physical assets and dismissed her as useless.

That kind of good ol’ boy bullshit annoyed the crap out of her, so she walked up to him and stuck out her hand. “You must be Ely.”

His eyebrows inched up his forehead then slowly he smiled as he gave her another once-over. “I guess my reputation precedes me.”

“Only forty-three Elites made it out of the Academy. I know forty-two of them already, so . . .” She thrust her hand forward again. “You’re Ely, and I’m Lily Price.”

He had already started reaching for her hand, but when he heard her name, he froze. “Lily?” He sent a look to Carter, before finally taking her hand in his. “Lily. You’re Carter’s Lily.”

She firmed up her handshake a little. “Actually I’m my Lily.”

Ely chuckled. “Yeah, you are.”

Even Carter laughed a little and the sound made something inside of her quiver with longing. God, it had been so long since she’d heard him laugh. Only then did she notice that he had a nasty-looking black eye forming and that the skin on his cheekbone was spilt open. The injury didn’t look fresh, but she was sure it hadn’t been there the day before when they’d left Armadales’ house. Ely had a similar collection of scrapes. His lip was busted open. And those were just the wounds she could see. Obviously they’d beaten the crap out of each other sometime in the past twenty-four hours.

Funny, everything in the world had changed. The friggin’ apocalypse had happened and she still didn’t get guys. Go figure. If they had so much extra fighting energy, did they not have enough targets?

Carter gave her a nod and asked, “What’s up?” She walked over to the desk but Carter rounded it quickly. “You need something?”

“Yeah, you got a second?” She tried to glance around him, but again he angled himself between her and the map. Which was definitely strange. Why the sudden secrecy?

“Sure.” He took her arm and started steering her out the door.

He led her a few steps down the empty hall before turning toward her. “What do you need?”

She sucked in a deep breath and just spat it out. “I need you to talk to McKenna. She’s freaked out about the Tick attack and about having the baby here. She’s started talking about leaving. Trying to drive up to Canada. But she trusts you. If you tell her she can’t go, she’ll listen to you.”

“Of course she can’t go,” he said stiffly, still not really looking at her.

He seemed distracted—which was fine, she didn’t feel like she had to be the center of his universe. But there was a distant, dismissive quality to his voice that she’d never heard before and it tore at her heart.

So this was it. This was him distancing himself from her. This was going to be brutal. This was going to hurt. Not just now, but every day, it was going to hurt.

Half to herself she muttered aloud, “Maybe I should just go with her. Solve all our problems.”

Carter’s gaze cut to her. “What was that?”

She blinked. “What?”

“You’re thinking about going with her?”

“Well, no. Not seriously.” Until now. Maybe leaving now would be better than this. “I can’t let her go alone. I can’t force her to stay here. And what if she’s right? What if we could find help in Canada? Maybe they have no idea there are still kids in the United States who need their help.”

Carter looked at her like he couldn’t decide if she was a genius or a crazy woman. “You can’t be serious. You can’t just take off for Canada on your own, when—” He broke off and spun away from her to plow his hand through his hair. “It’s out of the question.”

“What am I supposed to do? Base Camp is a sanctuary, not a prison. I can’t lock her in the RV and force her to stay. And I can’t let her go by herself.”

Carter paced the hall, clearly frustrated. Which was no different than how she felt.

She had wanted his help convincing McKenna not to go, and now—inexplicably—she was arguing to leave with McKenna. How had that happened?

“Forget it,” she said, turning to leave.

Except Ely was there in the hall, arms crossed over his chest, listening to their argument.

“She’s right.”

“What?” Both Carter and Lily asked at the same time.

“No one knows for sure if Canada is there, but it couldn’t hurt to send them to check it out.”

Carter’s expression darkened. “No way.” He took a menacing step closer to Ely. “There is no way in hell I’m sending two girls, unprotected and alone, to drive up to Canada just to ‘check it out.’”

Ely held up his hands in a gesture of mock surrender. “Just saying. It’s a short trip. Canada’s, what, a two-day drive from here? They’d be gone, what? Four or five days. Tops.”

“Did you miss the part where I said I wasn’t sending two girls alone?”

“If you don’t want them to go alone, no worries, I’ll go with them.”

“You?”

Ely flashed a smile that was more arrogance than charm. “Hey, you could do worse than me. I’m the best there is.”

She looked at Carter, expecting him to slap down Ely’s offer, but instead, he was looking from Ely to her, his expression calculating.

She held out her palm to Ely. “Give us a minute, okay?” She didn’t wait for him to answer, but closed the distance between her and Carter and leaned in to whisper, “Is this what you really want? You want me to go with Ely?”

Carter looked at her. For the first time today, she felt like he was seeing her. Really seeing her. His expression softened and she felt that familiar pull. That aching yearning that she’d always felt around him.

“He’d keep you safe,” he said simply.

“That’s not what I’m asking.”

How could he do this? How could he even think about sending her away?

His hand twitched, like maybe he was about to reach for her, but then he dropped it back to his side.

“McKenna isn’t safe here. And you’re right, we can’t make her stay. How do you think people will react if she bolts?”

Lily hadn’t thought of that yet. If McKenna made a run for it, other people would panic, too. They’d all want to go. It all came back to that house of cards. Yesterday was the earthquake that shook the foundation. McKenna bolting would be the tornado that knocked down the remains.

He dipped his head and kept talking, his voice low pitched and fervent. “But if you go with her, if Ely goes, if it really looks like a scouting mission, then it’s better, right?”

“I don’t know. Maybe,” she answered honestly. She couldn’t even think through this logically, because her mind was reeling and her emotions were raw. Carter was her protector. Her anchor. And now he was getting rid of her.

“You could go and be back in just a few days. If you find sanctuary in Canada, you could just stay there. Ely would come back for the rest of us.” Carter sent a look down the hall to Ely. “He’ll keep you safe. He’s the best of the best.”

“Do you trust him?”

Carter looked across the room at where Ely leaned insolently against the wall. “I do. I fought beside him at the school. He’s tough and he’s strong. The fact that he’s lived on his own this long means he knows what he’s doing out there. And Ely, he’s”—Carter broke off and rubbed his hand across the back of his neck—“he’s honorable. If that makes sense. If anyone can keep you safe, he can.”

She looked down the hall to where Ely stood, looking just as arrogant as he had a minute ago. Carter was really going to do this? He was really going to send her off with another guy to go looking for sanctuary in Canada?

She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. And she couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something going on that she didn’t understand. That more was at stake here than just McKenna wanting to leave. More even than them breaking up yesterday. But maybe this was just him distancing himself emotionally from her.

She grabbed Carter’s arm and led him farther down the hall, away from Ely. “This is really what you want? You want me to go?”

She held her breath, waiting for his answer. He glanced at Ely and then his gaze flickered to the room where the mysterious map was spread out on the desk.

Finally he nodded. “Yes. This is what I want. There is bad shit about to go down. I can’t take care of you here.”

“You don’t need to—”

He grabbed her arms, like he was going to shake her, but then he quickly let go and stepped back. “Don’t tell me it’s not my job to take care of you. Don’t say that, because it doesn’t matter. As long as you’re here, it’s my job. As long as you’re here, I’m going to care about whether or not you’re hurt or exposed to the virus or whatever. I can’t not care about that.”

“I’m not asking you not to care. You think I don’t care whether or not you’re hurt? We all have to care about each other. But that doesn’t mean wrapping people up in bubble wrap and sending them away.”

“I’m not wrapping you in bubble wrap.”

“Then trust me to take care of myself!”

“It’s not that I don’t trust you. It’s that if you fail and you’re exposed to the Tick virus, then I’m the one who has to deal with the consequences. You’ve asked me to kill you if you get exposed. Have you thought about that? About what it would do to me to have to do that? Because I have. Because after what I did yesterday, after I had to deal with all those bodies, I can tell you right now, I can’t do it.”

The raw anguish in his voice tore at her, but it didn’t convince her that this new plan was the right thing, either. “Look, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I have the gene and I’m sorry that you’re in this position, but this isn’t my fault. If you don’t want to dig my grave, then don’t do it, but—”

“Dig your grave?” he asked, shaking his head. “Lily, what is it you think we do with bodies that have been exposed?”

“I—” She broke off, thinking. Thinking hard. “I don’t know.” In all the time she’d been here, no one had talked about it. From the revulsion that flickered across Carter’s expression, she could guess it was something horrible. “What do you do to the bodies?”

Carter turned, making his expression impossible to read. “It doesn’t matter.”

In other words, he was trying to protect her. Her mind raced along the path he wouldn’t take her down. “You’d have to make sure the bodies wouldn’t regenerate.” Sebastian had said something about this once, after they’d escaped The Farm. Something about how a stake through the heart would slow them down but to really stop them— “You cut off their heads.”

She sagged against the wall, rubbing her hand over her forehead.

“Jesus, Carter.” She knew he was tough. She knew he was strong and determined. Dedicated to this cause like no one else. But, Jesus, that’s what he had to do? Correction: that’s what he’d been doing. Yesterday.

And that’s what she’d asked him to do to her.

Was it any wonder he didn’t want her to go outside? Any wonder he wanted to send her as far away as he could?

Now that she knew, now that she’d thought it through, she could never ask him to do that.

Leaving Carter would nearly kill her. It would . . . No. She drew in a shuddering breath.

She had watched her sister’s death. This was nothing compared to that. If she could live through that, if she could walk away from the sister she loved more than her own life, then she could do this.

She shut down all her emotions. If she was going to cry, she’d do it later. No way would she beg Carter not to send her away. She’d get through this the same way she’d gotten through everything since the Before. With logic and sheer determination.

“Okay,” she said, pushing herself away from the wall. “The three of us will go together.”

She didn’t particularly like Ely, and she wasn’t entirely sure she trusted him. On the other hand, he could drive and he could fight. And if Carter trusted him, then she could trust him to do what needed to be done. If it ever came to that.

If everything went as planned, by the end of the week McKenna could be tucked away in some Canadian hospital and Lily could be returning to Base Camp to guide everyone else to safety up north. Not a bad bargain.