Into The Fire (The Ending Series) (23 page)

16

DANI

MARCH
18, 1AE

Dr. Wesley studied me, her gaze sharp and unwavering. I was
in her office, again, sitting on her small, unyielding sofa, again—but unlike
the last time, I wasn’t lost in a haze of pain. I was paying attention. The
décor was as stark and no-nonsense as the doctor herself, lacking any
embellishments or personal touches.

Dr. Wesley sat behind her wide, wooden desk, looking as
exhausted as she’d sounded the previous day, and I felt a little guilty about
the arsenal of questions I’d just launched at her. Anything and everything I
could think to ask about the Re-gens, her work in the Colony, and the Colony in
general had erupted from my mouth.

“I’ll answer your questions,” she finally conceded, and I
squirmed under the intensity of her stare. “But nothing I tell you gets written
down.” She made a shooing motion in my direction. “Put that away.”

I glanced down at the small notebook on my lap. Later, when
my Ability finally came back online, I was planning to relay everything I’d
learned over the past day and a half to Zoe, Jason, and the others, and it
would be a whole lot easier if I was able to take notes. But, once the doctor
pointed it out, I realized it was one of the dumbest ideas I’d had in a long
time—and dumb ideas seemed to have become my specialty lately. Absently, I
hoped Jason wasn’t too worried about the fact that I hadn’t checked in with him
this morning.
Fat chance…

Tucking the book into the blue- and green-striped canvas
tote bag I’d found in my coat closet earlier that morning, I crossed my legs
and nodded. “I just need answers, Dr. Wesley. This place is so…” I shook my
head. “I feel like I’m losing it, and—”

The doctor’s wan face transformed as she laughed
halfheartedly. I thought it might have been the saddest laugh I’d ever heard.
“I understand,” she told me. “You feel like you need to be doing something, taking
a stand, because everything around here is too unbelievably”—she raised her
eyebrows—“awful…at least, under the surface. And you need more information to
do whatever it is you’re thinking of doing.” After a short, contemplative
pause, she added, “You and I…we’re not so different, Danielle. I bet you’d do
anything—whatever it took—for the people you love. You’d pay any price, or
exact it from others, just so long as it meant
they
would survive.”

I moved my head in a single, protracted nod. I suddenly felt
an odd connection to her…an unexplainable familiarity.

“Just remember that you can’t fight if you’re dead. If
you’re dead, you can’t do anything.”

Again, I nodded.

“Very well.” She took a long, deep breath. “The Re-gens are,
for the most part, my greatest creation. Giving life to a being that has passed—there’s
no greater form of redemption.”

“Wait…” I shook my head, utterly confused. “Are you
saying…you can’t mean that the Re-gens
died
,
and you brought them
back to life? That’s—”

“Crazy? Impossible?
Noli, si quid tibi effectu difficile,
opinari, hominem id non posse praestare
.”

“‘Because a thing seems difficult for you, do not think it
impossible for anyone to accomplish,’” I said. It was a quote I’d translated
repeatedly during my graduate studies in linguistics. “Marcus Aurelius was a
wise man.”

Surprise flashed across Dr. Wesley’s face, but was quickly
hidden behind a mask of disinterest.

In a twisted way, I was actually enjoying myself. It was
like playing conversational chess, and I hadn’t played a good game of chess in
a really long time. I bit my bottom lip to keep from smiling. “So, you really
did bring people back to life. But as they say, they didn’t come back the same.
They came back different…wrong.”

“Not wrong, exactly,” Dr. Wesley countered. “Just different.
They’re…well, they’re
changed
by the process in ways that even I don’t
entirely understand, and
I
created the process.” She laughed bitterly
and shook her head, making her black, chin-length bob sway. “They don’t
remember anything of their former lives, though some report having disturbing
dreams. Camille and I believe these are memories from their pasts attempting to
resurface. And it would seem that, among other factors, those who are nurtured
more fully upon waking the first time are more open to such dream
recollections.”

I tapped my pointer finger against my lips, thinking. “So…Camille
and Mase, they were nurtured more than other Re-gens?”

Dr. Wesley nodded. “In a manner of speaking. With every
Re-gen—Camille and Mase excluded, though nobody but a select few knows that—as
soon as they wake up, they’re programmed with General Herodson’s commands and
teachings, but they’re not shown much in the way of genuine care. They’re
extraordinarily impressionable during their first few hours of rebirth, and
they learn remarkably quickly. This impressionability is the reason why Herodson
likes them so much—he acquires devoted followers without ever having to use his
Ability.” She took a deep breath and frowned. “It does seem that some remnants
of their former personalities and preferences remain, though again, that effect
is greatly enhanced in Camille and Mase.” Her lips curved into the first
genuine smile I’d seen on her since entering her office. “You may or may not
have noticed Mase’s penchant for a certain word that starts with ‘F’—that’s
spillover from who he was before. Camille took very good care of him when he
first woke.”

Fiddling with my hands, I said, “This is going to sound
completely ridiculous, I know, but…are they zombies?”

Her genuine smile evolved into a genuine laugh. The sound
was musical and heartwarming. “For goodness’ sake, no! They’re
alive
.
They breathe, their hearts beat, and so far as we can tell, they age normally.
They were the recently deceased, made into Re-gens before too much cellular
deterioration made them impossible to revive.”

Cellular deterioration. Recently deceased.
Re-gen.
Pieces were starting to fit together, and the image they created was
unsettling. I pictured rows of hospital beds, the people lying in them being
drained of blood day and night. “Let me guess…you use the blood of someone with
the Ability to regenerate.”

“How could you possibly—”

“A friend of mine almost died—well, actually, she did die
for a few seconds—but they brought her back by transfusing her blood with that
of someone who could regenerate,” I explained.

The doctor looked pensive. “Hmmm…would this be one of the
friends you mentioned the other day?”

Glancing down at my hands, I frowned.
How much should I
tell her? How much can I really trust her?
“Yeah…it was my best friend,
actually, though I didn’t know about it at the time. Someone poisoned her, and
she died.” I shook my head, swallowing repeatedly and blinking away tears. “I
can’t believe she actually died.” As terror filled me, my eyes flashed to the
doctor. “Oh my God…is she a Re-gen?”

Dr. Wesley took a long time to answer. “No,” she finally
said. “The process is very specific and requires the delivery of precise
electrical pulses, several chemical compounds, and an infusion of a substance
derived from the blood of someone with hyper-regenerative abilities. Your
friend’s body probably just shut down for a few seconds before the regenerative
properties of the donor’s blood could take effect.” After a pause, she added,
“Danielle, I’m so sorry for what your friend went through…so unbelievably
sorry.” She sounded on the verge of tears.

“Thanks, Dr. Wesley, but it’s not your fault.” But a
nauseating feeling was settling in the pit of my stomach.
Why is she sorry?
I
replayed several other things I’d heard Dr. Wesley say over the past two days…
no
greater form of redemption…you’d pay any price, or exact it from others…I don’t
deserve…
“Can I ask you a personal question?”

She sat up straighter and, hesitating for only a moment,
nodded.

“Why are you here?” I asked.

Dr. Wesley looked down, lowering her chin, then glanced up
at me through her lashes. “I guess you could say I made my bed…this is me lying
in it.”

Does that mean…
I threaded my fingers together,
straining to hold my hands in place. “Did you create the Virus?”

Without lowering her eyes, Dr. Wesley said, “Yes.”

17

ZOE

MARCH
19, 1AE

The morning after Jason and I opened the box, Jake, Carlos,
and I ventured over to the other side of the Arkansas River, which was about a
mile south of our new camp. We brought the dogs with us, while the others
stayed in our ghost town home. I was glad to be away from Jason. Every time I
looked at him, I thought about what we’d found in the box, and I was
tired
of thinking about the box.

The night before, while we’d all been eating dinner around
the fireplace in the larger parlor, Carlos had reached for a metal skewer
sticking out of the fire, evidently forgetting that it would be searingly hot.

There’d been a soft sizzling sound as his skin burned, and
he’d yelped a curse. At the same time, a dust-covered radio sitting atop one of
the antique cherry bookshelves had turned on. Carlos had dropped the scorching
metal skewer back into the fire and shook his hand vigorously.

I’d risen and dunked a napkin in one of the buckets of water
we kept near the fire. “Here,” I’d said, handing the wet cloth to Carlos before
running to get burn cream. The instant the cloth had been wrapped around his
hand, soothing his burn, the radio had shut off.

The others anxiously glanced around at one another. The
static of the radio had been the first electronic sound we’d heard in months,
and it had been strange how creepy the noise was.

Chris had been the first of us to connect the dots. “Was
that…” She’d glanced back and forth between Carlos and the radio. “Did
you
do
that, Carlos?”

“I—I don’t know,” Carlos had said. His eyes had been filled
with pain and confusion, making him look a little wild-eyed.

It hadn’t taken us long to come to the conclusion that
Carlos’s previously unseen Ability was directly connected to energy. It turned
out it wasn’t just pain that enabled him to channel energy into electronic
devices, but concentration and control. If he really focused, he could even
send out an electromagnetic pulse that would shut down everything nearby. He’d
done so with our flashlights…repeatedly.

We didn’t know how far his Ability would reach, but we thought
it could be useful in retrieving Dani, so it merited more exploration. We
needed to test how far it could reach, which was why we were heading to the
other side of the river. Our horses trekked effortlessly over the mountain
trails toward Royal Gorge. The considerable amount of traveling they’d been
doing was turning them into oversized mountain goats.

Once we reached the mile-long pedestrian suspension bridge, the
horses were reluctant to step onto it. Eventually, after much coaxing, they
did, falling into an easy pace.

As we crossed, Jake’s horse leading the way, Wings fell into
step beside Arrow. Peering down at the rushing water of the Arkansas River far
below, I realized the river had been the only constant part of my journey since
leaving Fort Knox months before, following us as we made our way through Kansas
and into Colorado. I’d come to rely on the sight and sound of the water to calm
my nerves. The clomping of hooves on the wooden planks resounded throughout the
canyon, and I closed my eyes in momentary contentment.

Jake and Cooper plodded ahead of us, while Jack trailed
behind, sniffing and exploring the unfamiliar wooden slats beneath his feet.
His tail wagged happily, and his nose found its way back to the ground every
few strides.

“Holy shit,” Carlos gasped beside me. His arms were tense.
His knuckles whitened as he gripped the reins more tightly, and his eyes were
opened wide like those of a frightened child. I could see the sweat beading on
his brow.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“I don’t like heights.” Carlos cleared his throat and looked
straight ahead, refusing to let his eyes wander.

I’d never seen him afraid of something so normal. In an odd
way, it felt good to know I wasn’t the frightened one for once.

As Arrow and Wings stepped onto solid ground, Carlos drew in
a deep, calming breath.

Barren, rocky bluffs quickly gave way to dense shrubbery as
we drew closer to the wooded hills. We searched for a shady spot within the
trees that was large enough for all of us to dismount and concentrate on Carlos
and his Ability.

“Over here,” Jake said quietly. He’d stopped his horse
beside a squat fir. He pointed through the trees to a farmhouse down in a
narrow dell, letting his reins slacken momentarily while his horse gnawed on
the bit.

The single-story farmhouse was old, and junk was strewn all over
the yard surrounding it. An overgrown, surprisingly bountiful vegetable garden
filled multiple raised beds on one side of the house, and a few laundry lines
were strung between trees on the other, a handful of chickens pecking at the
ground and clucking between them.

“Should we check it out?” Carlos asked.

The place looked abandoned—the gardens were unkempt, there
was no laundry hanging from the lines, and the chickens were running around freely.

I nodded, having the same interest in the property that
Cooper and Jack displayed with their excitedly wagging tails and anticipative
whines. They were eyeing a rickety chicken coop beside a small stable. There were
another handful of chickens clucking around inside the coop.

“No,” Jake told the dogs sternly, a smile curving his lips.
“You’ll scare them off,” he said, like the dogs might understand. “Stay.”

I leaned down and patted Wings’s neck. “We should check the
garden and the stable, too. It couldn’t hurt.”

Jake nodded and we dismounted on the side of the road, tied
the horses to a couple of firs atop the hill, and headed down into the shallow
valley to catch some dinner.

Unsure what to expect, we held our weapons at the ready—Jake
and I with our pistols, and Carlos with Chris’s shotgun—moving silently and
swiftly toward what appeared to be the back of the house.

The place looked like a junkyard. We passed a few rusted
tractors and a mound of bowling balls that had been there so long weeds had grown
up out of the finger holes of each ball. Old, splintered doors were piled up in
what might have been a burn pile at one time, and a pale pink bathtub from the fifties
sat inside an upside-down truck hood, broken in half.

I began to feel uneasy as we approached the garden. Letting
my mind find the offending sensations, I realized there was someone inside the
stable. Someone…wrong.

Without hesitating, I grabbed Jake’s arm and pointed to the dilapidated
structure. “There’s someone in there,” I mouthed. My index finger drew a few
invisible circles beside my ear to indicate it was probably a Crazy. I looked
back at Carlos to make sure he understood, but he was gone.
Shit.

“Stay here,” Jake mouthed, and I knew he was going to find Carlos.

I shook my head and raised my pistol back up in front of me.
I was going with him. I didn’t have the best aim, nor was I a strong fighter,
but I wasn’t going to keep waiting behind the scenes to get attacked, or worse.
I preferred to be with him, knowing what was going on, instead of guessing and
hoping for the best.

Jake gave me an exasperated look, but I ignored it and
followed him. I could feel the emotions of whoever was inside the stable shift
between blissfulness and anger before settling on excitement.

Without warning, the person stepped out of the stable, and
Jake and I crouched down behind a mound of stacked firewood a few yards away,
watching the stranger through the cracks between the logs.

It was a slender, young woman in a floral nightgown that
looked like it was meant for a woman three times her age. Her golden hair was
gathered on top of her head in a messy bun, and her nightgown was covered in
brown smears. She was wearing a gas mask and carrying something at her side as
she glided closer to us. I strained to see what it was—some sort of dark,
fringey mass hanging from her fingers. I glanced at Jake, finding his eyes wide
with disbelief.

Looking back at the woman, I watched as she dropped the mass
onto a pile of…
are those…shoes…and hooves?
Bile rose in my throat.
And
hair?
The woman took a few steps to a nearby stump and struggled to pull
out an ax that was wedged in its surface. Her arms shook and strained as she
tried to manhandle the ax, but eventually her efforts paid off. She heaved it up
to her shoulder and walked back into the stable.

Jake and I exchanged glances, and his eyebrows lifted in
curiosity. We continued creeping toward the house, hoping Carlos was inside.

“Carolann!” a woman called from the far side of the house.

Instantly, Jake and I crouched down again.

“Carolann, I’ve got somethin’ fer ya!” she yelled and
finally came into view.

Carlos stumbled ahead of her, the barrel of a shotgun
pressed between his shoulder blades. They were on the far side of the garden
beds, their forms coming in and out of sight as they walked between cornstalks.
It was difficult to see Carlos’s face, but I could feel his fear. As they
passed the last cornstalk, I could see his right hand twitching to grab the
knife stowed in one of his cargo pockets.

“Shit,” I breathed, looking at Jake.

He nodded and brought his index finger to his lips.

I returned my attention to Carlos and the woman holding the
gun. She was old, in her seventies or maybe even her eighties. Her hair was
long and matted and appeared to have been white at some point, but was streaked
with brown and deep red. She was only wearing a bra, a long denim skirt, and a
pair of mud-stained slippers.
Jesus.

“Carol—”

“Stop hollerin’!” the woman who must’ve been Carolann yelled
as she came out of the stable. She pulled off the gas mask and set it on the
stump, then wiped thick, brownish-red gunk from the ax blade onto her
nightgown. Her pretty features brightened with excitement. “Oooh…where’d you
find him?” she asked, her voice suddenly heady, like he was fresh meat and she
was completely starved.

“I was buryin’ the bones from this mornin’ for mulch in my
garden, and he crawled right past me, just like one of them damn ground
squirrels. I hate ’em, Carolann. You know I do.”

Carolann waved them over to her. “Come on,” she said.

When Carlos hesitated, the older woman urged him forward
with the barrel of the shotgun. “Move it!”

Carlos still resisted.

In the blink of an eye, the woman flipped the gun, ramming
the butt of it into the back of his skull as hard as she could, and he fell to
the ground. “I told you to move, boy,” she grumbled.

My stomach dropped at the sight of Carlos’s limp body. I
felt the old woman’s joy, her sheer excitement that verged on lust.

“Get the rope, Carolann.”

The gaiety they felt made me livid. We couldn’t let them
hurt Carlos. I nodded to Jake, and without hesitation, we both stood up and
opened fire.

Following two misses, I landed a shot in the old woman’s
chest. She dropped to the ground before she could even get her shotgun aimed in
our direction. As Carolann was trying to escape back into the stable, Jake took
her out with a single shot to head.

While our hearts still hammered, pumping adrenaline-rich
blood, Jake turned to me. “I’m gonna check the house for anyone else.”

I nodded. “Be careful.”

Once he was gone, I approached the stable. I was petrified
of what might await me inside.
More Crazies? Dead bodies?
I didn’t feel
any other twisted emotions, but I knew I needed to clear the structure…just in
case.

Hands shaking, I held the gun against my chest as I sidled
up to the splintered wall. The putrid smell of rotting meat permeated the air,
sending my stomach into somersaults. My gag reflex kicked into overdrive.
Covering my nose with the crook of my arm, I took a deep breath through my
mouth and held it.
Hurry up!

I aimed my gun in front of me and stepped inside with my
finger on the trigger just like Jake had taught me. I didn’t sense anyone. Weak
sunlight shone through the windows and the cracks in the siding. Riding gear,
hay picks, and rakes hung on the walls and from the rafters, but there was no
sound to alert me of anyone’s presence. I tried to read the shadows for
anything that might prove dangerous, but again there was nothing.

I moved quickly, still holding my breath. The gun was
slippery in my sweating hand as I swept my aim across the four stalls. When my
eyes settled on the origin of the stench—the decaying pile of human and animal body
parts in the far-right stall—I turned and ran out of the stable as fast as I
could. My eyes burned from the foulness, and I stumbled out into the open, into
Jake’s arms. His eyes were wide, and his grip on my shoulders was firm and
protective.

“I’m okay,” I panted and spat, the disgusting smell making me
salivate profusely. “There’s no one in there.”

On the ground a few yards away, Carlos moaned.

I pulled out of Jake’s hold and stumbled over to Carlos,
falling to my knees and rolling him onto his back. “Are you okay?”

He squinted in the sunlight. “Stupid crazy bitch came out of
nowhere,” he mumbled. He brought his hand up to the back of his head and
cringed.

“They’re dead,” I said. “But we should get out of here. I
don’t know if—” At the sound of footsteps behind me, I turned on my knees and
reached for my gun. It was Jake.

“You guys should see this,” he said, nodding toward the back
of the stable.

Fighting the urge to ask if I absolutely had to, I helped
Carlos up to his feet, and we followed Jake around the stable to a muddy
paddock stall. A thick, red rope was tied around the metal fencing. I followed
the line of it toward the ground and spotted a white mass surrounded by tall,
wild grasses. When I took a few, uncertain steps closer, Jake’s hand gently
touched my arm, warning me. I glanced back at him, raising my eyebrows in
question. He peered past me again, at the rope. I shifted my gaze back to it.
The red rope was attached to a white horse…a bony, dead horse.