Love and Decay (29 page)

“I’m with you, buddy.”

“Good.”

“You riding with me and Mertz? Or in the
back?”

Miller’s expression darkened. “Who the hell
is Mertz?”

“Navigation,” I explained quickly. Before he
started killing first and asking questions second. “He knows the
area.”

“He better.”

I cleared my throat and suggested, “Why don’t
you ride in the back? There’s more room back there.”

He growled something excessively foul but
took my advice.

Thank God.

I did not have the patience for Miller’s
Hulk-out right now. I had my own shit to deal with.

Once everyone was loaded, I climbed up into
the driver’s seat and turned the key. The engine jerked and banged
and I rolled my eyes at the unstable puttering.

“How reliable is this thing?” I asked Mertz.
“Am I going to regret this decision?”

“She’ll be fine,” he insisted. “Sounds worse
than she is.”

“Sure, that’s usually a good sign. Whenever
somebody says that it always ends well.”

“Are you being sarcastic?”

I put the truck in drive and ignored
Mertz.

Earlier when we’d been out and about, we’d
driven straight to the town- or as close to it as we dared to go.
We’d taken careful inventory of the area, but I hadn’t seen any
sign of Page or the group she was with. I hadn’t been able to find
the car they’d taken either.

And that was what I was looking for now.

I doubted they’d driven straight into town.
My guess was they’d stashed their ride somewhere and hiked in a
back way.

Whether or not they’d gotten out of town was
still a mystery, but I wanted to find the car.

I wanted to recreate as much of this as I
could.

“What’s the deal with these missions?” I
asked Mertz. I had a good sense of direction so I knew I was headed
in the right direction, but I need more information from my new
co-pilot.

He rubbed at his stubby nose. “What do you
mean?”

“Is there some sort of protocol you guys
always follow? I’m guessing they dropped the car off somewhere
before they hit up town. Where would they have done that? How close
to town would they have risked getting?”

“About three miles. And yeah, there are a few
spots we use for the cars, but they’re generally the same. Of
course, there’s no guarantee of that either. Luke does what he
thinks is best. So he could have used an entirely new spot for all
I know.”

“Well, since we can’t check spots we don’t
know about, let’s start with the ones we do know about.
Mmmkay?”

He glanced sideways at me but started
announcing directions to the first place. I tried to give this guy
the benefit of the doubt, but experience had taught me not to trust
anyone. Ever. So, I studied Mertz, looking for signs of betrayal or
suspicious behavior.

Mostly, he was just kind of weird.

But his directions were clear and succinct so
that didn’t really matter.

If anything, I figured he didn’t trust me
either and that’s why he wanted to tag along. From his perspective,
I possessed the power to blow his entire operation.

And I would if it took that to get my sister
back.

We checked out the first spot. No car.

We moved onto the second.

“So what other little helpful tips can you
give me about this mission? After they dropped the car, then
what?”

He pointed to the right and I turned the
wheel and went right.

“So they would have dropped off the car, then
ran to Allentown. We have, er
had
, a spot near the back of
the wall that we knew we could get through. There were always
guards, but this one blind spot you could make, if you knew what
you were doing.”

“And you had a contact inside?” I followed
another finger point.

“Yeah, a guy named Micah.”

“How did you meet this Micah?”

“Sometimes we pass out food and supplies,”
Mertz explained. “If we know the people can keep it quiet, we’ll
drop off what we can. Sometimes the people that pick up our
supplies become allies. Sometimes they just take our food or
whatever and pretend like we don’t exist.”

“And if they become allies?”

“Then they spy for us. They keep us updated
on what’s happening inside the wall and with the Colony. They’re
invaluable.”

“So what happened yesterday?”

Mertz shifted in his seat and pointed to
another right. “We got word that our contact had been
compromised.”

Goddamn, this guy would make me pull every
single thing out of him. “Meaning?”

“Meaning that most likely he would die. He
would have been beaten to death in front of the town’s people.”

Shit.

“And Luke went to rescue him?”

“No,” Mertz answered immediately. “Luke went
to confirm that it was true.”

Oh, shit.

“So Luke would have just let him get beaten?
To death
?”

“What else could he have done?”

“I bet you a thousand dollars my sister
figured out what else he could do.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, my sister isn’t the kind of human
that just sits back and watches innocent men die.”

Mertz started laughing until he realized I
was serious. “You’re kidding. You don’t really think… You don’t
really think she would have tried to save him? That’s insane. They
would have… They probably… I mean, there is no way that they could
have gotten away with…”

“Oh, yeah.”

“That’s insane,” he repeated.

“It explains how the city burned down.”

I could see his wide-eyed gaze from the
corner of my eye. “Hey-o!” I pointed to an abandoned car with the
hood popped open hanging out on the side of the road. It sat ugly
and beat up and would have fit in with all the other gas-drained,
abandoned cars speckling American highways everywhere, except that
I recognized it from yesterday. “Isn’t that the car?”

“Holy shit, it is!” Mertz exclaimed.

It was the most emotion I’d seen from him. I
slapped his back. Hard. And when he turned to glare at me, I
grinned at him. Maybe Mertz wasn’t so bad.

A little weird. Sure.

But everybody was at least a
little
weird.

In life you got two choices: Be weird or be
boring.

Even at the end of the world I preferred
weird.

I pulled up behind the abandoned car and put
the truck in park. The engine heaved and moaned, threatening to
explode, so I dropped my voice and spoke to her in soothing
tones.

“You’re alright, baby. Just hang out here for
a little while and I’ll be right back to make sure you get home
safe.”

“Are you talking to the truck?”

“You’re the one that called her a she.” I
grinned and started petting the dash. “If you don’t tell her how
will she know you love her?”

He stared at me. “Maybe your whole family’s
insane.”

I stuck out my bottom lip and thought about
it. “It’s likely. Actually, it’s highly likely.”

By the time I jumped down from the cab, King,
Joss and Miller were already inspecting the car.

“Is this the one?” King asked.

“Yep.”

Miller dove inside to examine it more
thoroughly and King and Joss started circling it. I focused on the
surrounding area. There had to be a clue here.

Somewhere.

Smoke still billowed in the distance. The
fire that razed Allentown had to be intense. There were no people
around us, but they were somewhere.

When we’d driven by in the middle of the
night, we’d seen plenty of dead Feeders and even some humans.

Last night had been scary for a lot of
people. I just hoped it wasn’t that way for my sister.

“What do you think?”

I looked down to see Adela standing next to
me. She was the shortest of all the girls I knew. I towered over
her.

“I think she ran that way,” I pointed toward
the smoke. “But what happened after she got there?”

Adela sucked in her bottom lip again,
nibbling on it hard enough to drive me to distraction. “What do
you
think happened to the city?”

“I think my little sister burned it to the
ground.”

King and Miller looked my way. “What makes
you think it was her?” King asked.

“Mertz told me the Colony was probably
beating a resistance sympathizer to death. That’s what Luke went to
check on. He wanted to confirm his contact was indeed caught and
dying.”

“What do you mean confirm?” Miller barked.
“It wasn’t a rescue mission?”

Mertz stepped in, unafraid of Miller- which
was a new and entertaining development.

Entertaining for me, that is.

Miller was probably going to smash this guy
into tiny little Mertz pieces that we would use for Mertz confetti
during the next birthday party.

“We can’t rescue every single person that
gets in trouble with the Colony,” Mertz explained. “There are too
many of them. We’d all be dead by now.”

Miller’s entire frame seemed to shake with
barely restrained rage. “Oh, so instead, you let them die? That’s
better? They risk their lives to help you people and then when it
comes to them needing your help, you bail?”

“It’s not that simple,” Mertz argued. “Our
people aren’t replaceable. We can’t just risk lives every time
something like this happens.”

Joss made a sound of disgust in her throat.
“Clearly you can. You’ve just prioritized the lives you’re willing
to risk. It’s disgusting.”

“That’s not what we’re doing,” Mertz
insisted.

We’d already turned away from him, though.
Our focus had moved on to better things because clearly we weren’t
going to get anything useful from him.

And just when I had started to kind of like
the guy.

Wah. Wah. Wah…

“I think I figured out what happened to
Page,” King murmured.

“No way was she going to stand for that
shit,” Miller agreed. It was the same conclusion I’d come to not
minutes before. “Son of a bitch,” he growled. He turned to me. “So
now what? You think they have her?”

“I don’t know.” I ran a hand over my
face.

Another engine rumbled in the distance. We
turned in unison to see it coming. The outline of it wavered in the
distance, but it was clearly another truck.

Since we knew it wasn’t anyone from our team
trying to catch up with us and Luke’s car was right here, it could
only be one other faction.

And it wasn’t the good guys.

Or Feeders that had suddenly developed the
ability to drive again.

“Get in the truck,” I ordered. I caught
Adela’s hand before she could dart away. I dropped my head,
suddenly filled with the need to tell her a thousand unsaid things.
Instead, I leaned in and ordered, “Get inside the cab and stay
low.”

She shook her head. “I can fight.”

I mimicked her head movement and allowed
myself the brief freedom to place my palm along her jaw. “But I
can’t watch you fight. I’ll go crazy.”

“Harrison…”

“Get in the backseat,” I ordered again. “It’s
tight, but you’ll be able to fit.” When she still didn’t move, I
rubbed my thumb over her cheek and tried a technique I’d never used
before, “For me? Please?”

She rolled her eyes but finally moved.
Thank, God.

Note to self: Girls will answer to
please.

Second not to self: Start using the word
“please.”

Joss, King and Miller had already climbed in
the bed of the truck, so Mertz was the only one left to deal
with.

“Get in your seat, Mertz.”

“Wh-what are you going to do?”

“I’ll find out where my sister is,” I said
matter of factly. “But they might have guns, so I’d suggest waiting
in the car. I’ll be sure to tell you if they say anything
interesting.”

“They’re going to kill you,” he declared.

“Not if I kill them first.” I jumped into the
driver’s seat, just in case they started shooting. I wanted at
least something between me and all those bullets. Even if it was a
door the strength of a tin can.

Mertz ran off to get in the cab. I was
starting to realize these resistance people were all talk. They
talked a big game like they were these badass warriors, but every
time the Colony came around, they ran and hid.

No wonder they hadn’t made any progress.

They treated the Colony like they were
superhuman or something. But these were men. They bled. They got
sick. They died. They did all the same things we did.

Only we didn’t complain about it.

The truck saw us around the same time we’d
noticed it. It started slowing down as soon as it was in gunfire
range and eventually rolled to a stop in the middle of the road. A
Colony henchmen pulled himself out of the window.

They had a similar set up to ours with the
open bed full of gunners. The only major difference was that they
had guns. And we had knives.

The guy motioned for me to roll down the
windows and I followed instructions. “What are you doing?” he
asked.

I looked down at the steering wheel for a
second and decided how to answer that inane question. “We’re having
a little car trouble,” I told him. “I saw this beauty,” my head
jerked toward the other car. “I thought I could find the part I
need in her.”

“Where are you from?” the same man asked. He
had long stringy hair, matted against his face and he was missing
his two canine teeth.

“East,” I lied. “On our way west.”

“West you say?”

“Yep.”

“You’re not from around here?” he
pressed.

“Nope. Like I said, I’m from east. I just
want to go west.”

“You’re sure you’re not from around
here?”

“Positive.”

“You look familiar,” the guy added. He turned
to his crew. “Doesn’t he look familiar?”

They nodded like the good little robots they
were. “I just have one of those faces, I guess.”

The guy’s attention turned to King. “You look
familiar too.”