Unfed (19 page)

I roll my eyes. I know it’s a lame, Alice kinda thing to do, but I have no witty comeback, so it’ll have to do until I dredge one up.

Smitty sighs, leans back in his chair, and sticks his feet up on the dashboard again, where I’m perching.

“So Alice is after Russ, then?”

“Huh?”

“You know.” He makes some gross pelvic-thrusting movement.

“No!” I shout, unnecessarily loudly. “God.” I shake my head. “Well, she might be. But I don’t think he’s that interested. He didn’t seem to be too bothered when she went for a ride with the teens from hell.”

Smitty laughs, overly casual. “So he wants to get into
your
pants, then?”

“Smitty!” I practically choke. “No! What is wrong with you?”

“What is wrong with
you
?” Smitty chuckles at me. “He seems all right for a meathead. You should go get you some, Bob.”

“Shut up.” I don’t know what else to say. I can’t believe tears are pricking at my eyes.
What’s up with that?
I turn away and look out the window so that Smitty can’t see my face reddening. This is so not how I’d pictured the big reunion. He obviously doesn’t care who I lust over, and he
certainly doesn’t think it will be him. Which means he couldn’t give a damn about me like that. “Truth is, I don’t even know if … I trust Russ.”

“No?” Smitty looks up. “Why not?”

Focus, focus
. It is so not about my love life. I stare out at the sodden countryside, feeling utterly miserable.

“He stopped me from running out into the street and saving Alice.” I bite my lip. It sounds like nothing now that I say it out loud. “Held on to me.”

Smitty whistles and laughs. “Bet he did, Roberta. He’s the protective type, you should like that.” He twiddles a bit of hair girlishly. “Did he cop a feel?”

“God!
God!
” Still that witty comeback is elusive. And I’ve nowhere left to go on the indignation scale. I turn away from him and concentrate on the outside instead.

We’re trundling along at a good pace now, leaving behind the McZoms in the field. The rhythm of the train is vaguely comforting, and my face cools. In the distance, the fog hangs ominously over the sea. It will come back; it does that. We don’t have too much time, and I need some questions answered. I clear my throat.

“You’ve never told us exactly what happened. After the crash.”

Smitty raises his eyebrows. “You remember anything?”

“I remember you trying to help me.” I look at him steadily. “And then I blacked out. When I came round, you had gone. There were just these men in black.”

“Xanthro.”

“Presumably. So you hid?”

“No!” His turn to get angry. “I went looking for something to get you out of the wreckage, get that crap off your legs and pull you free. We
were in the dark, in the trees, there were bodies everywhere … some of those kids on the bus had already turned. I wandered into the woods, looked some more. And then suddenly I was out of it.”

“You fainted?”

“No!” Angrier still. “Your mum coshed me. On the back of the head with a branch.”

“She did?” I suppress a laugh. Although I can believe she did it. She’s all for extreme measures. And let’s face it, I’ve been tempted to knock him out a few times, too.

“When I woke up, we were in a hut in the woods.” He plays with some lever on the dashboard. “I don’t know how long I’d been out. It was still dark outside. Your mum left me there — for a day, I think. I was a mess: I had a fever, my legs were all screwed from the bites. She came back; she must have given me something for the pain. And she’d brought” — his face wrinkles at the memory — “a needle and thread.” He pulls up one leg of his jeans. “She sewed me up.”

I look. His leg is a real horror show. I have no idea how he’s been able to move at all, let alone run. It looks like he’s had a fight with a great white shark and been patched up by Dr. Frankenstein. Two huge, curved, jagged lines run around both sides of his white calf. There are purplish-red raw places where I guess the skin wouldn’t quite stretch over. It looks wet to the touch. And there’s a smell — a smell I’ve been aware of for a while, but only now can I see the source. Yellow stuff oozes from the stitch marks. It is not a good scene.

“Sexy, eh?” He smiles. “I think it must have stung a little when she stuck the needle in. Good thing now is that I seem to have lost most of my nerve endings. Reckon I’m going Zombie Hybrid?”

I don’t know what to say.

“I’m still waiting for my superpowers to kick in.” He brightens. “She sewed me up, then we shipped out. We went to the shelter. I was unconscious most of the time; she was there, then she was gone. I do remember her saying your name, saying you’d be coming.”

I give a low laugh. “That was optimistic of her.”

Smitty looks at me. “She wouldn’t have just left you, Bob.”

“Yep. Well, she did.” I shake my head. “And guess who she sent to help us?” I don’t wait for him to answer. “Grace.”

“What?” Smitty shouts. “Blondie, from the castle?” His face clouds as he thinks. “Shiznuts. That makes total sense. When we went to the bunker, we went on a Ski-Doo with a sled. Remember the ones at the castle? She must have met Grace there.” He shakes his head. “Why on earth would she trust her to get you out? And why would she think you’d trust her?”

“Apparently it was her only option.”

“And what happened to our Gracie?”

“Xanthro shot her,” I said. “When we were escaping. They took her down.” My voice cracks a little. “Right in front of us.”

Smitty sucks air through his teeth and looks off down the track. “That sucks for her.”

“Xanthro is divided. We heard the soldiers in the hospital say as much. Grace told us it only makes them more dangerous. So far, I’ve got to agree. Smitty …” I can’t hold back any longer. “Why didn’t my mum come for me herself? Why did she leave me there? In the middle of Xanthro territory? Why didn’t she come and save me?” I can’t prevent the sob. God, I hate it, but I can’t help one teeny, tiny, pathetic sob from escaping. “All this time I’ve been wondering the same thing, and it’s
been tearing me up inside. She left me. She saved you — she hid you, because you are valuable to her — and she left me to fend for myself.”

Smitty looks at me, shocked, and the sorrow on his face makes my stomach churn.

“She told me you were a survivor,” he says simply.

Suddenly the rain starts to pour, and the sound of it hitting the windshield makes us jump. Smitty flicks a couple of the switches until a wiper starts to sweep across the glass. We both watch it for a minute or two, and then he finally speaks.

“You know what, Bob? She told me she couldn’t go back there. She said that if she tried to rescue you they’d know, and they’d kill you both.”

“She did?”

“She did.” He thinks about it. “She said you were far safer there than out here with her, and that she’d help you get out OK when the time was right.”

“Really?” I try to smother the glint of hope in my heart. “But I wasn’t safe.” I pull out the piece of paper that I found in Martha’s office, the one with my name and Alice’s on it, and show it to Smitty. “Xanthro was testing Alice and me for something. I don’t think they found anything with Alice, but on my medical chart they said I was some kind of carrier. I think that’s why they’ve been after me all of this time. I think Mum knew it, too. So why risk me?” My head hurts thinking about it.

Smitty reads, shakes his head. “Better stick with me, kid. Mutants together.”

I swing the conversation to a safer subject.

“Did you learn anything about the outside when you were with Mum?”

He shrugs. “Pieces. The infection spread really fast. A lot of people fled south, but then they shut off the border to England. The army was rounding survivors up for a while, but when it got too bad, they stopped the rescues.” He shifts on the chair. “But that news is weeks old. Once your mum disappeared, so did my info. I figured I’d hang out for you for as long as I could, then see if I could find her.” He glances at me. “See if I could remember where she told me she was going.”

I almost choke. “You know where she is?”

“I didn’t say that.” He puts his hands up. “Here’s the thing. She told me, but I kind of forgot.”

I stare at him. “What?”

“She mentioned it. But I had a fever.” He rolls his eyes when he sees the look on my face. “Don’t freak on me! I was mainlining Osiris, rolling stoned down the rabbit hole. When the fog cleared, I couldn’t remember what was real and what wasn’t.”

“You just told me a bunch of stuff you remembered. How come you didn’t remember this?”

“Maybe she didn’t even tell me, maybe I overheard her, I don’t know.” He kicks the dashboard. “I had the idea she’d been planning a way to get us out of Scotland.” He pauses. “And I remember something about a … pixie.”

“Huh!” I snort. “So she’s at the end of the rainbow with the magic leprechaun?”

“It all feels like dreams.” He sighs. “Look, I have this random vision of pixies … They were coming out of your mother’s mouth.”

I stare at him. “This is one of your perverted fantasies, isn’t it?”

“I know it sounds ridiculous, but I’m serious.” He reaches out a hand to my arm. “I’m sorry.”

In my head, the light switch flips. I stand up from my spot on the dashboard, moving away. The tears begin to rise, and I fix my eyes on the track ahead, willing myself not to cry.

“She didn’t say all that stuff about me being a survivor, did she?” I can’t look at him. “She never said I was safer at the hospital. You just made that up to make me feel better.”

He’s silent.

“Thanks,” I mumble, “for trying to help. I appreciate it.”

We let the train rumble over the tracks for a few beats, the rain making me wish that this was all washed away, all this bad stuff, all the fog in our heads, all the dirt that has lodged in our brains. Smitty finally rises up out of his chair and turns to me.

“I looked for you, Bobby.” Our eyes lock. “After I left the shelter, I went looking for the hospital. I couldn’t find it, and I began to wonder if I’d made it up, if she’d even said you were in a hospital, or if it was anywhere nearby.” He chances a hint of a smile. “I was hoping that I’d spot a town full of little people and that would be my screwed-up vision of mouth-pixies.”

My stomach bounces up into my throat, and I feel the blood drain slowly from my face. Smitty’s expression changes, the half smile replaced by an alarmed stare.

“What’s wrong? What did I say?”

I quickly reach round into my backpack and pull out the postcard. There it is on the back of the picture, the words printed in tiny black letters.

I shove the postcard at Smitty. “Smitty, I take it all back,” I say, my voice trembling. “Check out the name of the lighthouse.”

He turns it over, reads the print.

“Elvenmouth Light. What — ?” Then he gets it. He shakes his head in disbelief. “This is my pixie fixation, isn’t it?” He looks up at me. “She told me the name, and my medicine head turned it into that rubbish.”

“So now all we need to do is find Elvenmouth,” I say. “With a map … that we don’t yet have.”

“Still, this is huge, Bob.” He’s smiling again. “This is way better than a bunch of numbers we can only half remember.” He twinkles at me. “And you can relax about me having some weird fantasy about your mum.”

“What?” I blurt. “Why would I care about that?”

“Oh, I dunno, Bob.” His eyes twinkle in that annoying way they have. “Perhaps ’cause you were jellybags?”

“Huh?” I almost shout. “As if —”

He reaches over suddenly and touches my collar. Then he slowly pulls me toward him, his eyes never leaving mine. I let him. Our faces are apart by an inch.

“Miss me?” He’s smiling, but his eyes are deadly serious.

I can feel the heat coming off his body. I open my mouth to make some wise-guy retort, but I’m all out of clever. I want to kiss him. I hate that I want to. I hope he makes me do it anyway.

Pete bashes into the cab. “You’ve got to come and see this.”

We spring apart guiltily.

“The zoms are still contained?” I shout unnecessarily loudly.

“Yes, yes,” he says, waving his hand at us. “But come and see. I’ve worked out where your mum is.”

He hustles us out of the driver’s cab, then down to the bottom of the first carriage, jumping up and down like he’s obviously dying to show us something. That always makes my heart sink. We pass Alice, who is
gently snoring. As we approach, I can see Russ in the next carriage down. It looks like he’s secured the door to the zom-carriage, and he’s kind of pacing and checking on it. I knock on the glass and beckon him to join us.

He throws me a smile as he punches the button to open the connecting door.

“There are six of them in there,” he reports. “The conductor, one youngish girl, but the rest are oldies. They definitely smell bad, but I don’t think they’ll be giving us any real trouble, so long as we keep the barricade up.”

“So.” Pete is practically hyperventilating from waiting on us. “A map of Britain.” He taps the wall with a pencil. There, in a thin metal frame, is a grubby cardboard map with all the major cities and rail routes marked.