The Lair

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

Carter

Joe left at dawn. He took Josie and the bulk of our supplies and headed back to the Farm at San Angelo. He’d probably be there by noon. I had told him that no one would blame him if he wanted to bail on the Farm and head straight for whatever safety could be found at Base Camp. He had Josie to think of now.

He disagreed. Yes, he had Josie. But there were also nearly a thousand other Greens in San Angelo and they needed help, too. As he pointed out, his return would go a long way to convincing the Greens that there was hope they could actually fight the Ticks and survive. The very fact that he believed it enough to bring a baby into that fight might be the edge they needed. And I let him go, because I understood that he needed to be somewhere he was familiar with and that it would be too painful for him to be where McKenna had been.

I called ahead and talked to Dawn. I wanted her to know Josie was coming so she’d be able to get whatever supplies she needed to keep Josie alive. She sounded exhausted because she’d been up most of the night treating Greens for various injuries that had been ignored too long. Listening to her talk, I sent up a silent thanks that she’d convinced me to bring her and Darren. Competent medical care had gone a long way toward convincing the Greens to trust us. Far more than my reputation had, that was for sure.

Watching Joe drift off, I run through the situation in my head.

I’d been doing the math, thinking about the statistics until my head spun. My father had always been great with manipulating numbers so things benefitted him. When you were the CFO of a multinational corporation, that was just part of the job description.

There is no good and evil, he used to say. There are only facts and numbers. It’s all about making the math work for you.

I’d thought a lot about that as Joe was packing up. A thousand kids were waiting to be rescued in San Angelo. Another hundred or so up at Base Camp. Plus the people who lived in Elderton. If I rounded up, that was close to three thousand humans. There was no way—no way—those three thousand lives were worth trading for one life. Lily’s life.

Despite that, I would never be able to stand by and watch her suffer, because even though she was just one person, she was the one person I loved.

After Joe was gone, I handed Lily the tranq rifle. “I know you hate these things. Since it has to be done, you should do it yourself.”

She held it clumsily, like she didn’t quite trust it to do what it was supposed to do. “Based on the map I found in the gas station, Roberto’s ranch should be a couple of hours away, somewhere between San Angelo and San Saba. Even if I go for the neck shot, which would be the most potent, it’ll wear off before that. You may have to shoot me a second time.”

I nodded. I kept my gaze on hers as she did it. No matter how many times I told myself this crazy plan would work, part of me knew this might be the last time I really saw Lily when I looked in her eyes. I didn’t want to miss a second of that.

As I drove, I pretended that Lily was asleep in the car next to me. That she hadn’t been tranqed. That there was nothing dangerous beneath the bandages I’d applied to her foot right before she knocked herself out.

Could this have been our life, if the Tick-pocalypse had never happened? Maybe if I’d never been sent off to Elite Military Academy.

I had told her once that I’d stolen my father’s car that day because of her. Because I’d been scared of what she made me feel and because I knew stealing his car was the one thing he couldn’t ignore.

I’d been telling the truth, but not the whole truth. At the time, when I was that dumbass fifteen-year-old, I’d been scared of her and of how much I wanted her. But that wasn’t all I was scared of.

Those nine months were the longest I’d lived at home since Giselle—my mother—had gotten tired of having a kid and shipped me off to boarding school when I was ten. At ten, I’d worshipped my father and loved my mother, even though they were indifferent to me. By eleven, I’d learned that rotten behavior got visits from home more reliably than straight As. By fourteen, I hadn’t cared about visits nearly as much as my freedom. When they’d enrolled me at Richardson High School, it had been my ticket to unmonitored free time, fast cars, and more spending money than even I knew what to do with. But the price had been watching my parents up close and personal. Seeing them interact on a daily basis. Learning firsthand what total assholes they were. My mother’s vain indifference hardly mattered. It was my father who scared me. The casual cruelty with which he controlled everyone around him. Everything he wanted, he got. People adored him, and he treated them like crap.

My father was an ass. I could live with that. What I couldn’t live with was the pieces of him I saw in me.

It only got worse when I met Lily. I couldn’t stand the open yearning with which she watched me. Couldn’t stand how much I wanted her. How badly I treated her despite that. I hated her for how vulnerable she made me feel. For how much I wanted her. I was a monster. Just like my father.

So I’d bolted.

But what if I hadn’t? What if I’d stayed around?

I had this fantasy sometimes that I had stayed. That I’d let my ego take the hit. That I’d asked out the geeky girl from my biology class and that we’d spent the past three years dating like normal kids did. Then, maybe, we wouldn’t be driving across a barren wasted landscape right now. Maybe we’d be taking a spring break road trip. Maybe we’d be going on college visits our senior year. And she wouldn’t be tranqed beside me in the car. She’d just be asleep. Driving to El Corazon Ranch, that’s what I let myself imagine, because thinking about the reality of the situation, that just . . . that just didn’t work for me.

I figured we were getting closer when I saw the windmills on the horizon. The dusty plain lay spread out before us, flat and interminable. Then, we crested a rise in the road and there it was: a vast plateau looming over the land. The windmills dotted the jagged edge of the plateau. I had known that this part of the country was a leader in wind power. Now it kind of made sense. Of course Roberto would be in favor of that. He’d need a reliable and endless source of power to secure his holdings. Those windmills would provide more than enough energy to operate his ranch. I guess energy independence is a top priority when you’re staring down the barrel of the apocalypse.

As we approached the plateau, something seemed to shift in the air. A subtle change, but I could feel the tension dancing along my nerves. Or maybe I imagined it. Maybe it was just the weather. The wind, pressing hard against the sheer face of the cliff, buffeted the car. The steering wheel lurched in my hands. I gripped it tighter. I wouldn’t lose it now. Not when I was this close.

We zigzagged closer to the ranch. One county road, leading us to another, smaller, Ranch Road, which in turn led us to number 3214. It was a tiny, piece-of-crap dirt road marred with enough potholes to break the axle of a Hummer. Navigating the Mazda around them was like driving through a friggin’ maze. I couldn’t avoid all of them. The bigger potholes jarred Lily’s head from side to side, and I slowed down to twenty and held her head cupped in my right hand to soften the blows.

She murmured sleepily, turning her cheek into my palm, and something tightened in my chest. She looked so damn vulnerable like this. Her lashes dark against her cheeks, her lips parted slightly. A lock of inky-dark hair brushing against my hand. I couldn’t lie to myself anymore. She was sick. It was only going to get worse. And it was my fault. I had to make this right. Failure wasn’t an option. I would convince Roberto to give us the cure, or I would die trying.

She groaned and squirmed in her seat as she started to wake up. She pulled away from my hand. I trailed my thumb across her cheek one last time before letting my hand drop back onto the steering wheel.

She blinked her eyes and stretched. Her gaze was soft and dazed. She smiled sleepily at me and I could tell she hadn’t remembered yet. Slowly a frown settled over her face as the memories came back.

“How’s your stomach doing? You need me to stop the car?” The tranquilizer always made her queasy.

“No,” she answered softly. She straightened, pulling in to herself. “Are we almost there or should you give me another dose?”

“We’re close. I think you’re okay.”

Not a great choice of words, since she wasn’t okay. Not at all. If she didn’t get that cure, she would never be okay again. She’d be a bloodsucking monster. Not that I was going to let that happen. One way or another, I was here to prevent that.

She nodded, wrapping her arms around her chest.

“Are you cold?”

“Aren’t you?” she asked.

It was one of those beautiful, perfect days that we sometimes got in the early spring in Texas. The kind of day when the air was crisp and clear outside and the sun was shining so brightly that the inside of a car could get up to the mid-eighties. And she was cold. I could see the goose bumps rising on her skin and a shiver making her arms twitch. This wasn’t good.

But making her panic wouldn’t help, especially if Sebastian was right and a low heart rate would slow the progression of the disease. Hell, even aside from that, I just didn’t want her upset.

So I smiled at her and shrugged. “No worries. I’m sitting on the sunny side of the car. Here, let’s turn on the heat.”

She nodded, the frown not quite leaving her face.

When she wasn’t paying attention, I sped up the Mazda. Yeah, west Texas seemed to go on forever, but this was frickin’ ridiculous.

I had to slow down again when the potholes got worse. Eventually, it felt like we were crawling there. I drove with the Mazda half off the road, dodging tumbleweeds taller than the car. Letting Joe take the Cayenne seemed like a great idea when we were packing it full of supplies, but now I was really missing the clearance of the SUV.

Then we drove across a cattle guard and onto a paved road. Not the crappy asphalt of a county road, but a concrete road, like you saw in high-end neighborhoods. I sped up to fifty, and a couple of minutes later, I saw the guardhouse ahead.

Towering fences stretched out on either side of the guardhouse, one dead-ended straight into the cliff, the other shot out for maybe another hundred yards before turning and running parallel to the road. The guardhouse itself looked like something out of a maximum-security prison. A series of three gates, one right after another, a dozen guards outfitted in full combat gear, and no fewer than eight pit bulls, two of them between each of the gates and another four on leashes on the other side. And beyond that, there were three tanks.

The Farms weren’t half this well-guarded. No surprise there, I guess.

This place would be impossible for a team of trained special forces guys to break into. Forget a mindless Tick. Or a desperate guy.

Suddenly, driving up to this thing in a beat-up Mazda seemed like an incredibly stupid idea. Did I mention the pit bulls? And the tanks?

Beside me, Lily blew out a breath. “Did we remember to pack the Milk Bones?”

I smiled. “I think I have a stick of beef jerky,” I joked back. “That’ll work, right?”

I slowed the Mazda to a stop about twenty feet from the gate. The guards on the other side were already scrambling. A dozen rifles were aimed on us. The dogs were on point, their muscular bodies coiled with energy. And—I’m not even kidding—the cannon on one of the tanks swiveled toward the car.

“Wow,” I muttered. “I wonder if Bob feels inadequate much.”

I glanced at Lily, hoping to see a smile. Instead, she’d twisted to face me. “Here’s what we’re going to do. I get out of the car and walk up on my own. You take off in the other direction. They’ll deal with me first. You’ll have plenty of time to get away.”

I just shook my head. “Stop.”

“What?”

“Just stop, okay? When are you going to get it? I’m not leaving you. Ever. I am in this for as long as you are you. Longer. I’m not ever going to turn my back on you.”

“But—”

“Ever.”

“But when I—”

“That’s not going to happen. We’ll find the cure.”

“If we don’t—”

“Then I’m still in. I’m here. To do whatever you need me to do.”

She turned and looked out the window. And I knew that she was blinking back tears, even though I couldn’t see them. And that was okay. I could live with that. I totally got that thing she had about not wanting other people to see her as vulnerable.

“Okay,” she finally said, her voice quiet. “So how do we want to play this?”

I felt my heart sink. I usually didn’t walk in to any situation without plans A, B, and C ready to go. I had backups to my backup plans.

But I had no plan for this. I had no backup. No strategy for surviving Lily turning into a Tick.

Before I could think of a response to her question, there was a sharp rap on the driver’s-side window.

I about jumped out of my seat. When I turned around, one of the soldiers was leaning over to peer in the window. That was fast.

My mind raced as I rolled down the window. What the hell was I supposed to say to this guy? How could I get us out of this? I could take him. Even armed as he was, I could probably take him out. But there were a dozen more guys—all just as armed—waiting behind him. Besides, that would defeat the purpose. We hadn’t come here to storm the gates. We’d come here to beg.

The guy looked at me from behind mirrored glasses so I couldn’t see his eyes. He nodded in Lily’s direction and then mine. “Ms. Price. Mr. Olson. We’ve been waiting for you.”