Unforsaken (26 page)

Rattler’s guns exploded a second time, several bursts in quick succession. A man fell from the second-floor balcony, hitting the ground with a sickening thud, and another lurched from the shadows across the room, took two tottering steps, and fell in a spray of his own blood.

For a moment Rattler and Prentiss stared at each other, and then Prentiss continued in a tight voice, as though Rattler hadn’t just shot two of his guards. “Are ready to act on my command, is what I was going to say, Mr. Sikes. My men are disciplined. They respond only to my orders. Although if you really want to see impressive loyalty, you need only look to the subjects of my study. My passion, you might call them, the results of millions of dollars and years of research, the fruit of a collaborative effort that your own people, as you call them, have made possible.”

There was silence as all eyes turned to the zombies, who had stayed motionless.

Prentiss walked slowly across the room. “Gentlemen,” he said when he was only a few feet from the ring of zombies. “Seize the Tarbells.”

The gasp that went up throughout the room echoed my own shock. I staggered backward to Prairie and grabbed her hand, and we held tightly to each other. I frantically searched the room for an escape, but the only exits were blocked by Prentiss’s men.

The zombies did not hurry. They shambled, their steps
uncertain and almost comic, the motions of a drunkard. Their hands reached out toward us and their mouths opened with flesh lust, and I heard my own whimper of fear.

“No.”

Another voice rasped out, and the zombies slowed. They turned, one after another, tottering on their rotting limbs, staring without emotion at the source of the voice.

Bryce
.

He had managed to drag himself into one of the chairs, his face red with exertion. “No. Do not do what Prentiss says. No, wait—go to Prentiss. Now.”

“Stop,” Prentiss barked.

“You forgot,” Bryce said. “All the training protocols, the recordings, the sessions … whose voice were they in, General?”

“Don’t call me that,” Prentiss protested, his cultivated voice going high and thin.

“Oh, but that’s what I
always
called you, back in the day,” Bryce said. With effort, he pushed himself into a standing position, leaning against the chair for support. “ ‘The General.’ You used to like it, don’t you remember? Made you feel important. Made you feel like you were a part of the team.”

The zombies approached Prentiss, clustering together like a second-grade class on a field trip.

“But you were
never
part of the team, General,” Bryce went on. It seemed almost like he was starting to enjoy the conversation. “I was the one who made it work.
I
was the one who figured out the impossible. And now
I’m
the one who has destroyed it all. You hear me, General? It’s gone, every last
backup. The boy and I made sure of it. And now it’s time for you to be gone too.”

Prentiss’s mouth worked in terror, but nothing came out.

“No one will grieve you when you’re gone,” Bryce continued. “No one will remember you at all. Didn’t you ever learn, General, that pride’s a sin?”

One of the men at the periphery had been stealthily advancing, creeping along the bases of the chairs, trying to get a clear shot at Rattler. As Bryce rambled on, Rattler suddenly whipped around toward the creeping guard and took his shot, and the guard fell to the carpet.

“Pride’s a sin,” Bryce repeated, almost reflectively. “And I guess no one knows that more than me. Deactivate Alistair Prentiss, please.”

Prentiss stood his ground for ten, maybe even twenty, seconds, sputtering and making threats, before he turned and tried to bolt from the room. But he’d gone only a step or two before Rattler shot the ground at his feet, and he spun and cried out in fear.

After that, it was just a matter of waiting.

We all waited: the staff, cowering in their small groups, clutching each other for comfort; me and Prairie, who had never let go; Kaz, who wrapped his arms around Dr. Grace to block out the sounds.

Most of all, Prentiss waited, his eyes going twitchy with terror as the first of the zombies set upon him.

I won’t describe the rest. I turned away after a few seconds. The zombies kept coming, relentless, and it was a
mercy that they set upon his throat first, so we didn’t have to listen to his screams.

It was over fast. When Prentiss was dead, the pack dropped him to the floor without ceremony, their task finished, and then Bryce’s voice was heard again.

“Now come to me.”

They started across the floor, festooned with Prentiss’s blood, and Bryce stood tall and proud, a slight tremor the only evidence of his body’s frail state. The zombies circled him in an ever-tightening scrum, and when they were so close that they bumped into each other, he took a deep breath and spoke in a calm voice.

“Open those doors and take me down into the waters with you and keep me there until the breath has left us all.”

I opened my mouth to protest. Prairie tensed and held me even more tightly. But no one tried to stop them.

The zombies did as they were told. They were not humans anymore, just flesh sacks that could follow orders, and they picked up Bryce as though he weighed nothing and carried him out the glass doors overlooking the pond. It was lovely in the moonlight, its blue-black surface broken only by the occasional water bug. Our view through the spotless windows was perfectly clear as the zombies held Bryce aloft like a treasured trophy and walked into the water.

Indifferent, they waded through the cluster of lily pads. Then they began to submerge, one by one, their expressionless faces sinking into the moonlit water up to their chins, their noses and finally their eyes, until those too were extinguished.

At last it was only Bryce who remained, cradled in a dozen decaying hands, and then even his serene face slipped below. Bubbles rose to the surface and then disappeared.

I trembled with the horror of what I’d witnessed. But now I knew: Bryce really had repented in the end. He’d done the one thing that would prevent anyone from forcing him to replicate his work ever again. He’d given Kaz the passwords, and together they’d wiped out the data once and for all.

“Anyone else?” Rattler demanded. I’d noticed the staff slipping away one by one toward the doors, skirting the mess that had been Prentiss. Kaz gave Dr. Grace a little push, and she stumbled after the others.

“I said, anyone else want to step up?” Rattler demanded again. “No? We’ll be leaving, then. I imagine your little deal with the townfolk’s officially over now. This place’ll be crawlin’ soon, and I was you, I guess I’d be trying to get outta here.”

Kaz reached for my hand and drew me close. I hugged him hard, making room for Prairie to join us, but she didn’t—and then I saw that Rattler was holding her hand tightly.

When her gaze met my eyes, for a moment I thought I saw something of her old spirit there—a flash of defiance—before she turned away. But then her shoulders slumped as she trailed behind Rattler.

She was his now. She had bought our freedom with her promise.

C
HUB HAD FALLEN ASLEEP
in the cab of Rattler’s truck, curled up with his fist pressed to his cheek. He woke when I opened the door. Then he yawned and held up his arms. Prairie picked him up and held him close, and he wrapped his arms around her neck and went back to sleep as she kissed him.

“I’ll ride up front,” Prairie said.

She had directed her words to Rattler, who was stowing his firearms in a metal box behind the seat, but there was a note of uncertainty in her voice.

She was asking his permission.

My heart constricted. This was her new life, then; Rattler was now her mate and her master, and she would have to beg for every favor and freedom.

She’d done it for me. And Kaz and Anna and Chub.

I wanted to protest, to tell her that she and I would take our chances together. I had survived too much to be afraid, and I’d go anywhere with Prairie, face anything. And I knew Kaz would too. But the problem was that it wasn’t just us.

Rattler snapped the lid of the box and spun the padlock, then put a hand on the driver door and considered Prairie, who was shivering in the cool of the evening.

“You ride next to me. Put the boy on your lap. You two, in back.”

Prairie complied without a word, settling Chub onto her lap, where he snuggled in and fell back asleep. Kaz shut her door gently.

Then it was just me and Kaz. Out on the road I saw the first of the cars peeling out of the garage. County fire and emergency would not be here for a while, I guessed, since Prentiss had no doubt paid them handsomely to keep their distance. Eventually, though, they would come, and they would find the place deserted except for the bodies in the atrium. Bryce and the zombies would wash up on the edges of the pond. Depending how long it took, maybe their decomposition would be chalked up to the time in the water.

One thing was sure: no one would ever know what had really happened here.

Bryce and Prentiss were dead. The research was finally destroyed.
The Banished, once again, would be free to live their lives in peace.

Kaz offered me a hand, and we scrambled up the bumper into the truck bed. The cold wind whipped our faces, but Kaz wrapped his arms around me and I closed my eyes and held on.

B
UT THE TRUCK DIDN’T MOVE
.

I waited, shivering in Kaz’s arms, for the engine to turn over. Off to the west of the office park I saw a bobbing, flickering light. Someone had had the sense to find a flashlight before running. Good for them—they’d be glad to have it when the moon went behind a cloud.

After several long moments, the passenger door opened and Prairie got out, carrying Chub. He was sleeping soundly, loose as a rag doll in her arms.

“Get out, hurry,” she said. “I need you to hold him.”

“What about—”

“Rattler’s taken care of.” Prairie cut me off, flashing me a quick, humorless smile. “Come on, Hailey, that trick you pulled with Maynard?”

“What—”

“You’re not the only girl in town who can do that,” Prairie added. “Only I did it with a kiss.”

I imagined how it had gone: Rattler, alone with his love at last, Chub sleeping between them. Rattler, unable to wait, stealing a kiss before he took her home to start his new empire.

The determination and loathing I’d glimpsed, which she’d kept coiled and hidden all through her ordeal, bursting free, coursing through her body into his. Intensified by the blood bond between them, the eternal attraction of the Banished.

“Hurry,” Prairie urged, and Kaz and I scrambled out of the truck bed. I took Chub from her and hitched him up on my shoulder as she leaned back into the truck and rooted around behind the seat.

When she straightened, she was holding one of Rattler’s guns—the smaller one, which still seemed plenty big to me. It looked at home in her hand and I realized that I’d never asked her if she knew how to shoot.

She seemed to read my mind as she gestured at Rattler with the gun. He was slumped over the steering wheel, his arms limp at his sides. “Who do you think taught me?” she asked, her voice as hard and cold as steel. “Him and Dun Acey. First it was BB guns in the woods. Didn’t take long to move on from there.”

She took aim and I almost stopped her, because I was remembering the photo in the room Rattler had prepared for her: two skinny kids playing in the creek. The look of
longing on his face as she sparkled and danced in the sun. He’d been a dangerous and reckless child; he’d grown into a dangerous and twisted man. But he had loved her always and that love refused to die.

He was my father, but he’d never loved me. Only one woman would ever shine for him, and every terrible thing he’d done since I met him, he’d done for her.

That was my last thought before she shot him.