The Defectors (Defectors Trilogy) (29 page)

Another carrier was ambling toward us, looking much worse for the wear.
His disease must be more advanced than the others’
, I thought. He also didn’t seem to register our weapons or that he was outnumbered. He was headed straight for us.

Steeling myself for the inevitable, I clutched my rifle and breathed deeply. I heard Amory’s voice in my head as I aimed and fired once, twice, three times. The carrier twitched where he stood from the force of the bullets. I hadn’t missed.

The carrier looked surprised and then blank before collapsing into a heap of rags and bones. I watched his body jerk once, and any trace of life left his eyes. He’d fallen forward with his chin jutting into the pavement, and his dead, open eyes stared blankly up at me. His sunken cheeks were dirty, pinched, and jaundiced.
 

I coughed, realizing I hadn’t breathed since I pulled the trigger. I eyed the dead carrier before me.
 

“Come on,” said Amory, tugging on my arm.

I shook my head to clear away the ringing in my ears and followed them at a jog.
I had just killed a carrier.
Did he count as a human? Or was he so far gone he was more like an animal?
 

Did that make it any better, really?

I knew I should be racked with guilt. I had ended a life. There was no shared responsibility this time; it was entirely my doing. But somehow, I couldn’t bring myself to feel anything except a strange emptiness, like a ringing in my ears. Maybe that was what happened when you started killing people: little by little, you became empty and dead inside.

As the yells of the officers and groans of escaped carriers grew quieter, we slowed our pace. The PMC had lost control — that much was clear. They were being slaughtered like cattle one by one, and carriers were spilling out across the block in every direction. Battle cries faded to groans of the wounded and dying.

“We should keep moving,” said Greyson. “It won’t be long before the PMC rebounds — sends in more troops.” He gestured to a dead officer slumped on the sidewalk as if he were a bag of trash. “There’s more where they came from.”

I shuddered and nodded. We jogged toward the bridge, zigzagging down alleyways to avoid being seen.
 

In the back of my mind, I couldn’t help but feel as though something had gone terribly wrong. Amazingly, miraculously, we had gotten Greyson out of Chaddock and were on our way out of the city. The PMC was weakened, and as far as we knew, everyone on our side had eluded capture.

I studied Greyson carefully as he ran in front of me — just as he had on so many mornings back home — but it felt very different than before. I stared at him, trying to place the disconnect I felt.
 

There was a difference in the way he carried himself: pride and a dogged purpose in the arch of his back and the tilt of his head. Those brown eyes that were once warm and honest now looked almost menacing. Then I realized I might be more frightened of him than I was of the PMC. Something had changed inside of him, and I was terrified of it.

The sun shone blindingly bright behind the delicate outline of the bridge in the distance, to the point where it was almost impossible to see rising up over the skyline.
 

Nearly there,
I coaxed myself. We hadn’t run far, but I was exhausted.
 

We were only about five hundred yards away from the bridge. I couldn’t yet see if the PMC had set up a blockade, but somehow, I didn’t care. I wasn’t afraid anymore. We had made it this far, and we were so close to escaping with Greyson for good.

Suddenly, the bridge erupted in a cloud of smoke, and a tremor shook the street. We stopped dead as the bridge crumbled beneath the line of buildings.

Greyson took off at a sprint, and Amory and I followed. I coughed as the smoke thickened all around. Soon, I could barely see Greyson in front of me. I pulled my shirt up over my mouth to keep out the smoke. Shouts echoed off the tall buildings, but they didn’t sound like screams of terror.

As the mouth of the bridge came into view at street level — the wall of smoke and flame where the bridge had been — we saw a mob of people attacking a small horde of PMC officers. There were a few prisoners in gray jumpsuits, but most of them were dressed all in black and heavily armed — the rebels.

I was immediately shocked at the sheer number of them. There had to be over a hundred, and dozens more were spilling out from side streets. They looked wild. Some were already covered in dust and dirt and blood from the fighting at the prison. I couldn’t see Rulon or Mariah, but I knew they were there somewhere.

“We have to get out of sight,” I said.

Amory nodded, backing down into the alley, but Greyson didn’t move.

“Come on! It’s too dangerous.” I tugged his sleeve.

He looked at me, clearly conflicted. “Haven. This is what I wanted. This is what I was working for in prison.”

A spark of terror ignited in the pit of my stomach.
Who was this person?
 

“Greyson, this isn’t the solution.”

He glared at me. “This is the revolution we’ve been waiting for.”

“No,” I said, defiance edging in my voice. “No, I’ve been waiting for a chance to get you out of prison. I ran over sixty miles, teamed up with a gang of murderers, and finally found a way to get to you and get you out. We need to head west.
Now
.” I punctuated the last word like an angry parent, but I didn’t care. Greyson was acting like a child.

“You don’t know what it was like!” he shouted.

I took a step back.
 

Greyson had never shouted at me in all the years we’d known each other. This wasn’t him.

“They
tortured
me, Haven. They would withhold food and water and keep me in that spider hole of a cell for days at a time. They gave me hallucinogens to make me think I was drowning or burning alive!” His eyes were ignited with a rage that looked completely foreign to me. “I endured all that suffering so I could help make this a reality.”

His words stung. He hadn’t said he endured it so he could go west with me to make a new life. Of his whole speech, that was the part I hung on to. How pathetic.

“This isn’t right, Greyson. So many people are going to die today. Carriers are on the loose. These people are destroying the city. This is a war.”

“Yeah, it is. It’s been a war for a while; you just didn’t see it. You’ve been out there in the world doing god knows what for a month. In all that time, did it ever occur to you that a war was already happening?”

I felt my rage boil over. “What the hell do you know?” I screamed. “You’ve been holed up in that prison this whole time, plotting your stupid revolution. I didn’t have time to worry about a revolution, Greyson. I was too busy fighting off carriers and trying not to starve or get caught by the PMC. I’m sure it was horrible in there, but don’t act like I’ve been on a fucking vacation.”
 

My face was burning with anger. My eyes stung, but tears would not come.

I glared at him — hating him. “I’ve
been
in this war. My parents are
dead
because of these people. I can’t go back home! I have no one left. No one except you, and you’re so far gone, you might as well be dead, too.”
 

The words stung in the air as they left my mouth. Worst of all was that as I said them, I felt a noxious cloud of truth hanging over my regret. The words could not be unsaid.

Greyson was gone. This wasn’t the person I knew. But then again,
I
wasn’t the person I knew, either.

We stood there listening to the shouts from the bridge. He studied me with those dark eyes, his jaw cold and taut. I could tell he was thinking the same thing I was: we were done, he and I.

It was Amory who finally broke the silence.

“Come on. We have to get out of sight.”

I pulled my eyes away from Greyson and gave a weak nod. Amory walked almost casually up to a shop door, peeked in, and jerked his head for us to follow. He pushed open the door, and the bell hanging over us rang out harshly in the silence of the empty shop. Dust hung in the air, and the smell of old mustiness and mold filled my nostrils.

We stepped inside what appeared to be an abandoned deli. This wasn’t unusual; many undocumented business owners either fled their homes when PMC presence in the city became too dangerous or were forced out when the city was reestablished as the military capital.

The glass meat case was broken — probably from a raid — and chairs lay haphazardly around the floor. The only unaffected vestiges of the deli were the garish red and yellow booths affixed to the exposed brick wall.

We sank into a booth, and I braced my head against the cold brick, listening to the far-off shouts and bursts of destruction.

“I guess we just ride out the storm here,” said Amory, looking cautiously from me to Greyson.

I nodded, still angry at Greyson and at a loss for what we should do. We had no way of knowing if Roman, Max, and Logan had made it to the other side before the bridge explosion.

“Then what?” Greyson demanded. “After the rebels get tired and the PMC go home, we can head for the hills?” He laughed a cold laugh. “In case you haven’t noticed, the bridge has been demolished. Anyway, we probably wouldn’t make it that far between the carriers, the PMC, the —”

“Shut up,” said Amory. His tone was icy. “In case
you
haven’t noticed, we’ve made it this far. Haven was captured by a gang of carriers trying to save
you,
and she managed to escape then.”
 

I felt a swell of pride as he said my name, but I was also reminded why I’d come in the first place. For weeks, I’d been on a mission to save my best friend — the boy I’d grown up with, the boy who was willing to run west with my dad and me. We’d had a plan. We didn’t have much, but we’d had each other.

Greyson was fearless and tenacious with an unflagging sense of moral duty. I realized he was still all of those things, just dangerously hell-bent on fighting for his beliefs.

I looked up at him again and spoke softly this time. “I know you want to stay. I don’t agree with the rebels’ methods, but I believe in what you’re fighting for. I just think you’ve thrown your luck in with the wrong people.”

“They’re visionaries.”

“They’re terrorists.”

“It’s a revolution.”

I felt my voice waiver. “This is out of your control. I don’t think this is what you signed up for in prison. They don’t mind destroying cities, freeing carriers, and hurting innocent people.”

“
Innocent?”
His voice was dripping with distain. “The PMC officers aren’t innocent.”

“I’m talking about all the civilians they’re going to get killed once this spreads. The prisoners — people like you — who are going to get slaughtered in the streets. And what about the carriers? Do you really think the PMC is just going to let them live now that they’ve escaped?”

“Did you think they would let them live in Saint Drogo’s?” His voice was rising with every syllable. “Do you think they were just locked up for their own good . . . with games and finger painting like a damned mental hospital?” Greyson’s brow was furrowed with disgust. “The way they’re treated — the way
we
were treated — it’s despicable.”

“I know that,” I said, trying to regain some composure.
 

“And I haven’t —” he spluttered. “I haven’t ‘thrown in my luck’ with anyone. I’m just —”

“I know,” I said.
 

He was just trying to survive and get out.
 

“But throw in your luck with me, okay?” I grasped his arm across the table. “This isn’t the way, Greyson. We can’t be involved in this.”

The harsh line across his forehead seemed to soften at my use of the word “we” — as if I were calling him back from far away.

“I’m not going to leave you here,” I said.
 

I glanced at Amory, worried I was speaking for the both of us, but his face was hardened into a look I recognized to mean he was deep in thought.
 

“Either you come with us and we get the hell out of here and run west . . .” I took a deep breath, knowing I couldn’t take back the words once I said them. “Or I — we — will stay and fight.”

Amory seemed to come back to reality, and his face was calm, unfazed by my promise to Greyson. It was an unmistakable expression of trust.

“Okay,” said Greyson. “Let’s get out of here, then.”

Relief washed over me like warm sunshine.

“You came this far to find me without knowing if I was even alive. The least I can do is believe you can get us out of this mess.” He grinned at Amory and me.

Amory turned to me. “What about the others? Do you think they made it across?”

“There are more of you?” Greyson sounded impressed.

I nodded. “They should have had time to get across before the explosion.”

“All right. How do we get out of the city?”

“There are other bridges,” said Greyson. “The rebels will have an exit strategy for sure.”

“Why didn’t they tell you?”

“They wouldn’t let me know the entire plan in case they tortured the information out of me. I didn’t even know for sure they would release the carriers. There were rumors, of course, but all information is need-to-know.”

“You didn’t know about the bridge bombing?”

“No.”

Amory looked skeptical. “So they would just leave all their men who helped start the attack for dead?”

He shook his head. “They’re going to hold a rally once the battle has died down. They’ll need to regroup.”

“Where would they go?”

Greyson smirked. “The pub.”

We sat waiting in the abandoned deli for what felt like hours, formulating a plan and contemplating what we were about to attempt. I didn’t like the idea of infiltrating the rebel army, but the only way to discover the rebels’ exit route was to join them temporarily.
 

It would be easy for Greyson; he genuinely believed in the cause and accepted their methods. He was also considered a rebel hero for sparking the violence that led to the prison riot. I was concerned that Rulon or Mariah would expose Amory and me as deserters. No doubt they knew that Max and Logan and Roman had fled their posts as well.