The Lair

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

Lily

Lily didn’t have a lot of time to consider what the hell Ely had meant when he’d said Carter wasn’t the only one who wanted her alive. She had to get Josie and get the hell out of there.

She started out by kicking Ely soundly in the ribs a couple of times just to be sure he was really out and not faking it. Then she kicked him once in the groin for good measure. She grabbed the knife, quickly unbuckling the sheath from his boot and taking it as well. Good gear was too hard to find to leave something like that behind.

A quick search of his body uncovered the keys to the Cayenne—thank God—a flashlight, one more knife, a Glock with a full clip, and a little pistol. She emptied all but one of the bullets from the pistol and left the loaded gun a few feet away from him, where he’d be sure to see it when he woke up in an hour or so.

After that, she ran, stumbling, toward the sounds of Josie’s crying in the building. It turned out to be an old bunkhouse of some kind. A single room deep, three rooms long. The windows were long gone, the door hung on its hinges. Trash and debris littered the floor. And there, in the center room, on a disgusting old mattress lay Josie, squalling in the shadows.

The building offered her some small level of protection.

She scooped Josie up and held her to her chest as she stumbled back to the Cayenne. Josie gave an exhausted little hiccup. But by the time they were back in the Cayenne, she was crying again, and Lily’s brain was starting to clear enough to know they were in serious trouble.

She didn’t know how long she’d been out for sure, but it was dawn. Josie had been born more than six hours ago and still hadn’t had anything to eat.

She had no idea how long babies could go without eating, but she was guessing it wasn’t as long as she could. She needed to find food, and she needed to do it fast. She didn’t know where the hell they were, but she knew even if they headed back to Base Camp now they wouldn’t get there anytime today. She didn’t dare risk driving at night and attracting Ticks on the way. She needed to find food for both of them before dark.

She held Josie close to her chest with one hand as she fumbled with the keys in the other. She scrambled into the Cayenne, slamming the door behind her and jamming down on the lock button on the door’s console of controls. In the rearview mirror, she could see the dark shape of Ely’s body on the ground maybe twenty feet back.

Heart pounding in her chest, she tried to jam the keys into the ignition one-handed without ever taking her eyes off that dark lump on the ground. Finally the key engaged and the engine roared to life. As she slammed the SUV into gear and drove off, she could have sworn she saw a flicker of movement from the black mass in the mirror. Was Ely waking up or was that just a trick of the wind? Or a trick of her mind?

The road seemed to stretch for endless miles through the featureless west Texas, so flat and so broad, it seemed like she could actually see the curve of the horizon off in the distance. It was emptiness like nothing she’d ever known. She passed abandoned houses too run-down to bother searching, broken pump jacks, and more tumbleweed than she could count—if she was counting, which she wasn’t. Josie finally screamed herself to sleep, and still Lily drove, just to put distance between herself and Ely. And also because she simply didn’t know what else to do.

Finally, the houses seemed closer together, the road merged with another, and eventually she reached a town that looked as barren as the surrounding desert. Sweetwater was the town’s name, if the sign on the car dealership was any indication. Five gas stations and innumerable houses later and she’d found jack. At one of the gas stations she’d come across a map and a handful of beef jerky sticks. Standing in the parking lot, she ate one of the beef jerky sticks, scarfing down the first three bites quickly and then forcing herself to slowly gnaw on the rest while she considered her options. It almost took the edge off her hunger. She thought about offering a second piece to Josie. And, yeah, she knew babies didn’t need beef jerky, but the sucking alone might be enough to calm her. Except beef jerky was so damn salty. From what she knew about dehydration, salt would only make it worse so she dribbled a little water in Josie’s mouth instead.

Lily changed Josie’s diaper the best she could. The fact that the diaper was barely wet didn’t comfort her at all. Being snuggled in the backpack seemed to comfort Josie as much as anything, so Lily wrapped Josie back up like a burrito and carefully placed her back in the bottom of the backpack, folding down the top flap so she got plenty of air. Then she put the bag on, over her chest, so Josie rode in front. Sure, it wasn’t exactly like those sling things she’d seen parents using in the Before, but it had to be better than letting Josie roll around on the floorboard of the car.

Josie was still crying, but her cries had lost their intensity. She seemed almost to be giving up the fight and that made Lily want to weep, too.

Since it was still light, Lily opened up the back of the Cayenne to survey the last of the supplies. She had two gallons of water left—which was maybe enough for another two to three days, if she stretched it.

Other than that, there were the four remaining beef jerky sticks, the rest of the tub of peanut butter, two cans of tuna, and about a dozen big glass jars of vegetables. Ely must have found those at the farmhouse and loaded them up, because they looked homemade and she hadn’t seen them before. There were six jars of tomatoes, four of green beans, and one jar of peaches.

None of it was the case of pre-mixed formula she’d been hoping to miraculously find stashed in the back, but surely peaches were a better option than beef jerky. She would give Josie more water if it came down to that, but the baby needed nutrients, too. She needed milk.

Praying she wasn’t going to make things worse, she opened up the jar of peaches, used her knife to slice off a tiny bite, and nibbled on it herself. She hadn’t had real fruit since the Before. The sweetness of it hit her tongue in an explosion of flavor that flooded her mouth with saliva and made her taste buds burst. It was all she could do not to fish out the entire slice and gulp it down.

But she wasn’t eating it for herself. This was for Josie, and the only reason she’d even tasted it was to make sure it was okay. She let the flavors linger on her tongue, waiting for that metallic zing that would mean it had gone bad. Since it tasted fine, she fished out another slice and dropped it in the sippy cup from Wal-Mart. Then she dribbled a little juice in, too, and mashed the peach up with her knife as finely as she could before fitting the lid on. She climbed into the backseat of the Cayenne, locked her doors, and lifted Josie out of the bag. Then she stretched the baby out on her legs and tried to coax Josie into eating. Josie turned her face away from the bits of peach, pushing them out of her mouth with her tongue. But the peach juice slowly dribbled in and she drank it—thank God.

Lily had no idea how long Josie could live on canned peach juice. She was guessing not very long, but it was better than dehydration, right?

Lily sat there, coaxing Josie into eating, nearly starving herself and wondering what the hell she was going to do.

None of this—nothing—had turned out the way she’d planned. Even if these peaches kept Josie alive, how long would they last without refrigeration? A day? She had to find real food. Formula. Milk. Anything. She couldn’t keep wandering around Texas. She needed a plan. Fast. She didn’t have enough gas to drive back to Base Camp. She was exhausted from being up all night and doubted she could make it in one trip even if she did. She obviously wasn’t thinking clearly because only one solution came to mind. She could think of only one way to save baby Josie.

She had to bring her to a Farm.

The Farms had tons of pregnant Breeders. They had to have some plan for dealing with the babies. They’d have supplies. Diapers. Formula. Medicine, if Josie needed it. All the things it took to keep babies alive.

The cynical, bitter, darkest part of her brain asked the unthinkable: What if the Farms had never intended to keep the babies alive? What if they were just more food for the Ticks?

But that didn’t make sense. Not really. Yes, they’d be food for the Ticks in the sense that, at some point, they would be giving blood donations. But Farms needed Greens to replace the Greens who were aging out of the program.

She had to believe that if she brought Josie to a Farm, the Farm would be able to care for her.

It would mean turning herself in. It would mean going back to a Farm herself. But she could live with that, because she had no one else to protect except Josie—she had no one else to love.

But before she did that, she had one more thing to do. She had to tell Carter what Ely had done. Ely had betrayed her. He’d tranqed her and kidnapped her. Why? What was it he’d said? That Carter wasn’t the only one who needed her alive.

What exactly did that mean? Ely hadn’t confirmed he was working for Roberto but who else could possibly need her alive? Why her?

Obviously someone still thought she was an abductura. That was her only value, right? But who?

The Dean from her Farm had obviously believed she had powers, but he was dead. Had he told someone else she was an abductura before he’d gone chasing after her and Mel? He must have, but who had he told? Another Dean? Unlikely, but not impossible. The more likely answer was Roberto.

She knew nothing about Roberto other than what she’d learned from Carter and Sebastian. They believed that he had at least one, but possibly more, powerful abducturae working for him. That he had bred the Ticks on purpose so that he could take control of some vast swath of territory in the former United States. And that he’d used the one-two punch of the Ticks and the abducturae to convince humans that the Ticks were unbeatable and unstoppable. They could only guess what his endgame was.

But whatever his motives were, it was a safe bet he’d do anything to get an abductura working for him rather than for Sebastian.

So if Ely was working for someone else, it was most likely Roberto. Just because she’d escaped Ely, that didn’t mean she’d escape whoever Roberto sent after her next.

She didn’t dare go back to Base Camp, even if she could make it. The only solution that didn’t endanger Carter and the rebellion was to hand herself over to Roberto. And finding him wouldn’t even be a problem. All she had to do was find the nearest Farm and present herself to the Dean.

She could live with turning herself over to Roberto. After all, she had no powers, so she would endanger no one but herself. But first she had to find a way to contact Carter.

By now, Josie had drifted off to sleep. A fitful, hungry sleep, but sleep nonetheless. So Lily moved the baby off her lap and onto the seat. Then she started searching the Cayenne. Ely had a lot of crap in the back of the Cayenne. He’d been living out of it for months. He had the same training as Carter. Carter never went anywhere without his satellite phone. She was betting Ely would have one. If she could just find it.

Searching the backseat turned up a dozen Clif bars, a flashlight, and a well-stocked first aid kit. Since she was starting to feel punchy from the lack of sleep and her arm was still aching, she ate one of the bars and took an Advil for the pain then went back to the search. Finally, she found what she was looking for, wedged into the Cayenne’s spare-tire compartment. It took her a few minutes to figure out how to set up the antenna, but she’d seen Carter do it and it wasn’t that hard. A few minutes after finding the phone, she was still working up her courage to call Carter. She was worried that just the sound of his voice might weaken her resolve. She couldn’t risk him talking her out of it.

While she thought about what she was going to say, she watched Josie as she slept in the backpack. She had strapped the seatbelt through the straps on the backpack. Yeah, it screamed “bad idea” as a car seat, but it was the best she could do.

That pretty much summed up the entire situation. It all screamed bad idea, but she was doing the best she could.