Feast of Weeds (Books 1--4) Page 19

  “All clear,” she said.

  “All right,” Spencer said. “Weapons check, bathroom, trash duty.”

  Leaf opened the boxcar door and blinding white light streamed in. Once my eyes adjusted, I saw an open field and open horizon, and the smoke haze keeping the sky a sickly orange, blocking the skyline.

  We jumped out of the boxcar and trudged a quarter mile to the makeshift port-a-potty latrine. Ano, Ricker and Jimmy took turns standing guard, but it didn’t feel like danger could be possible this early in the morning.

  I took my turn and found the dispenser still contained antibacterial gel. This little gift made me smile. I thought it was probably Leaf’s doing. He seemed thoughtful like that. When I was done, Leaf motioned me back to the boxcar.

  It was still early yet, and the morning frost made the weeds crunch under my shoes. At a particularly loud crunch I looked down and saw I had stepped on wild chamomile. It wasn't supposed to flower in the winter, but here it was. A seed had gotten just enough water, nutrients, and sunlight in this forgotten field to bloom in spite of winter. I thought about Gabbi’s angry red bites. I shaped my fingers like a fork and harvested the last few flowers. I cupped my hand into my chest as if protecting a baby kitten from the cold.

  Spencer stared at me, but did not say a word as I scrambled into the boxcar with my flowers. “Do you have a pot?”

  Spencer wordlessly handed me the oatmeal pot and I left the bits of oatmeal inside. They would help. I grabbed a spoon, the propane stove, the oatmeal pot, some water, and my weeds. I smashed everything together and then heated it. By the time it had boiled and steeped, everyone had returned to the inside of the boxcar to watch me work.

  As the concoction cooled, I motioned Gabbi over. “I have something that will help the itching.”

  Gabbi’s hand froze in the act of scratching her ankle as if she’d been caught stealing. She looked to Spencer and then me. “I’m fine.”

  “If you keep doing that, they’ll turn into sores and get infected,” I said.

  “I’ll volunteer,” Leaf said. “I’ve got bit a million times on my back and can’t reach any of them. It’s driving me crazy.” He lifted his shirt and turned his back to me. Angry welts from who knows what—fleas, spiders, mosquitoes—crisscrossed his spine.

  I dabbed the watery paste onto his skin.

  Leaf’s profile showed he had closed his eyes.

  “Is this okay?”

  “It doesn’t…it doesn’t itch anymore.” He grinned and stretched his back. “This is fantastic, Gabbi. You gotta get some.”

  She didn’t move. Ano, Ricker and Jimmy lined up to expose limbs and backs and stomachs and necks, and Maibe had me paste a welt on the inner part of her arm. I also used the paste to clean up my shoulder, which still hurt, but hadn't gotten infected and at least seemed like it was healing.

  Gabbi came over when I was finished with my wound. By the look on her face I knew she didn’t want me to touch her so I handed her the rest of the pot. She jumped out of the boxcar with it and went out of sight.

  “Oh,” I said, realizing Spencer had not received any of the paste. I looked at him and said, “I’m sorry, I—”

  “Explain to Leaf how to recognize the plant you used. I’ll get some later,” Spencer said.

  I went outside with Leaf and showed him the wild chamomile. I explained the few other things I knew it could be used for.

  “This weed, all of this? The entire patch?”

  “Yeah.”

  “All the nights I spent itching myself crazy.” He shook his head. “Thank you. Spencer would thank you too, or I mean, he kind of did, asking you to show me how to do it. That’s the best you’re going to get, but—”

  “—No, it’s fine. I get it.”

  We returned to the group. The boxcar was closed and locked and the chain of the key glinted around Gabbi’s neck.

  “We should leave Mary a note,” Gabbi said.

  “She’s dead,” Ano said.

  “She’s not! Take that back.”

  Ano stood there with his arms crossed. The others looked uncomfortable.

  “You don’t know that,” Gabbi said. “Not for sure.”

  “You’re right, Gabbi,” Leaf said. “Not for sure.” He grabbed a rock from the ground, examined it’s edge and handed it to her. “You should leave a message.”

  We watched in a sort of sacred silence as she scratched letters into the wood next to the door.

  Mary, we’ll be back.

  When Gabbi finished she dropped the rock. I noticed that everyone, including Maibe, had a weapon of some kind. A bat, a stick, a crossbow, a rock. Spencer held out a knife.

  “So you trust me now?”

  “Let’s say, we trust you’re not going to kill us yet,” Spencer said. “If we’re going to help each other, you have to defend yourself.”

  “What did Officer Hanley do?” Maibe asked.

  “He’s responsible for Ike needing to be put down,” Ricker said.

  “It’s his fault Ike didn’t get the cure in time,” Leaf said.

  “I’m not going to help you kill a man,” I said. “I told you last night.”

  Leaf sucked in a breath.

  Gabbi laughed. “You’re a dumb towelhead.”

  “We’re not killers,” Leaf said to Maibe.

  “This is an information collecting trip,” Spencer said. “Nothing’s happening today.” He looked at each member of the group. “Got it? No stupid moves today. We’re going to plan this careful.” He turned to me. “I thought you wanted information. If so, Cal Expo is the place to get it. Come along with us. Or not.”

  Chapter 15

  We took the railroad tracks into the neighborhoods and into a clothing store where we all abandoned our grubby clothes for dark, thick, clean clothes.

  It was cold enough to see the mist from our breaths well into late morning. We took a zigzagging path, sometimes following the train tracks, sometimes dipping into the neighborhoods and back alleys, sometimes skirting along the roads, across parking lots, and through strip malls.

  We saw people from a distance, but Spencer seemed to have a sixth sense for avoiding close contact. Not as many as I would have thought after that first horrifying day, but they were there, and we heard screams echo across the eerie silence of a city gone dark and motorless. Gabbi walked on the other side of Leaf. Maibe was to my right, Spencer in front, and the pup-boys in back.

  A few birds chirped, a cat howled, some stray dogs ran away as soon as they saw us. The fires must have taken out the electricity. Sometimes mini-explosions sounded, like a gas tank had exploded or someone had set off fireworks.

  “Where is everyone?” I asked Leaf. “Where are all the people?”

  “Well, we’re not totally sure, but a lot of people got out. We think that’s how it got here, you know, other people from other places brought it. A lot of people got out, a lot of people are dead and a lot of people might as well be dead.”

  “What do you mean they might as well be dead? I’m happy to be alive, I—”

  “I don’t mean Feebs, people like us,” Leaf said. “A lot of people are locked inside their memories. They haven’t been able to beat them back. You go into any of these houses, you’ll find them. Standing, sitting, lying down. Like in a coma. Sometimes the memories make them act like a V or a Feeb in the fevers, but after the memory is finished they go back into a coma. We call them Faints. It happens if they’re only infected with the bacteria.”

  I thought about Matilda and her family. “You know about that? The virus and the bacteria?”

  Leaf squinted at me. “How do you know?”

  “I…”

  “Never mind,” Leaf said. “Don’t let it trigger a memory.”

  “A memory-rush,” I said, using Christopher's name for it.

  “Yeah, that is kinda what it's like. A rush. The worst kind of high.” He shook his head. “Anyways, yeah we know about the memory-rush. We know a lot more than people give us cr
edit for. That’s pretty much how it’s always been. Runaways aren’t exactly seen as trustworthy.”

  “I trust you,” I said.

  “You probably shouldn’t,” Leaf said. “You don’t know us. If it comes down to you or one of us, I won’t think twice.”

  “I don’t believe that,” I said.

  Leaf shrugged. “We think the crazy violent ones are trying to fight back the memories and can’t. Us Feebs, maybe it overtakes us sometimes, but the double infection helps push it all back. The zombies don’t have that kind of luck, they’re stuck. The virus makes you crazy angry, the bacteria puts you into a sort of memory-coma. Together they balance each other out in a totally awesomely horrific way.”

  “They’re not zombies,” I said. “Don’t make them into crazy supernatural monsters. They’re sick and crazed, not risen from the dead.”

  Gabbi gave me a withering look over her shoulder. “We’ll call them whatever we want. Anyways, it’s not like we think they died or whatever, they’re just locked in, under the control of their memories. In Haiti, that’s what makes you a zombie, when you aren’t in control of your own actions or thoughts. When you’re somebody’s slave, you’re their zombie. These people, they’re slaves to their memories, so we call them zombies, because that’s what they are.”

  I ignored the anger in Gabbi’s voice and thought about her version of zombies. It made more sense than the movie version. People under the power of memories, of their past selves. They were trapped—like a form of paralysis or locked-in syndrome, except it was their memories they couldn’t escape—good or bad. Lost either way.

  “You’re smart and not just street smart,” I said. “That Haiti stuff involves book smarts. How did you learn all that and end up homeless?”

  Her face contorted and she turned away. “People were violent long before these zombies showed up. Or did you get to have one of those happy childhoods from out of a fairytale?”

  She walked away before I could tell her she was all wrong about me.

  We stopped a few times and Spencer would tell us to wait and he would duck into an alleyway or behind the gate of a long-abandoned building. After a while, I realized he was checking up on people. He’d come back and say someone had gone V or was in a coma. I had thought the city was empty but began to realize how wrong I was.

  “Could that happen to you, to any of us?” I asked Leaf, continuing our conversation after Spencer returned from another side trip. “Going V for a time even though we’ve been tagged?”

  “If you can’t control the memory-rush, and it’s a violent one, who’s to say what we’re capable of?” Leaf said.

  I thought about Christopher and what he had done to us. Maibe said she couldn’t remember much of what happened in there, except that Christopher always seemed next to me. The idea that I could lose enough control so that a memory might make me hurt someone else—this repulsed me. I would not let that happen.

  “That’s what we think, anyways,” Leaf said. “The city has filled up with zombies. Some violent, some not.”

  This time I didn’t contradict him. What better word was there for people like us? People who zombied-out at a memory trigger? “We’re sick, but we’re not hopeless.”

  “That’s not what Cal Expo believes,” Leaf said.

  “They’re screwed up,” Gabbi said, slowing to walk beside us. She kept her eyes away from mine, but must have decided she forgave me for my offense. “They think we’re zombies, and they have the weapons and the desire to back it up.” She shifted her stick to the other shoulder. “They’re taking the Normals, or anyone they want to run tests on, and killing anyone they think is a zombie.”

  I looked at them in disbelief.

  Leaf said, “It’s true.”

  Gabbi shrugged her shoulders. “You’ll see.”

  We came across a burned-out neighborhood. The six-lane street had acted as a fire gap. One neighborhood was reduced to ash and soot, and the other neighborhood was untouched. Well, untouched by fire. Likely all its residents had been touched in other ways.

  There were people. Of course there were people around. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t felt it before now. You could feel them walking around, staring at walls, gazing out windows, but there was no way to know if they were Normal or Violent or lost in a memory-rush or had just gone nuts.

  A sudden thought occurred to me that I still didn't understand. “But how does the bacteria spread by itself?” The Lyssa virus spread itself just fine, but who had infected Matilda and her family?

  “We don't know,” Leaf whispered and motioned me to silence.

  “We’re jumping on the tracks until Exposition Boulevard,” Spencer said to the group.

  The tracks were raised and paralleled the freeway which was about a half mile away. I’d imagined the freeway jammed with cars of people trying to escape. And there were cars, but no people, and all the cars had for the most part been pushed to the shoulders. We cut over and across Exposition Boulevard, skulking in the shadows. The wind had shifted, blowing the smoky haze at us. It hung heavily, altogether obliterating the downtown landscape. When we stopped for even a moment, our new, warm clothing lost some of its effectiveness.

  The crack, crack of shots sounded, then silence, then shots again. Spencer led us through and behind several warehouse buildings, around a closed-down department store, and then sent us up into several large oaks.

  “We’ll watch for awhile,” he said as he boosted Maibe up. I pushed back a memory of climbing trees as a kid and positioned myself on a branch high enough to give a direct sight line to the main gate.

  Cal Expo's fairground fencing had grown taller since I last worked there and now sported barbed wire and military-like vehicles and lookout towers.

  We watched for about an hour. That’s how long it took me to determine things were as Spencer said. That’s how long it took me to feel sick over what I saw.

  There were men in fatigues at the gate. People stumbled up the wide street, almost freeway-wide, and made their way to the gate. Some passed through. Many were turned away. Some were shot. The old and infirm, the ones who limped, whether from age or injury or the cure, those were the ones the guards didn’t bother checking.

  When the bodies were shot down, a front-end loader dumped them into a burn pile along the interior of the fence. Part of the haze came from that fire. I had thought to challenge Spencer’s notion of how things stood. Cal Expo was a place for refugees, a place of safety. So the radio had said.

  Leaf shared a branch in my same tree. He spoke softly. “They took a lot more inside at first. Like they said on the radio. Rounding up people for their own good, they said. Shooting anyone close to looking sick, shooting people like us. Asking questions later. Or not at all.”

  My parents had told me stories. I had watched the news of what happened in other countries. People with guns and too much power had always shot first and asked questions later.

  Someone whispered. Spencer was at the base of our tree. He motioned for us to come down. No one spoke until we had regrouped blocks away from the gate.

  “Officer Hanley isn’t on duty yet,” he said. “But he’ll be on tonight. Do you still want inside?”

  I thought about backing out. How could I disguise myself, how could I possibly find Dylan in this mess? The situation was hopeless, yet I needed to try or I might as well limp myself to the gate and let them shoot me. “Yes.”

  “If your guy is alive, he’s probably somewhere near the old Waterworld section. Officer Hanley will be on duty where the fence backs up to the bike trail and river. We could pick up Old Bully, maybe bash our way through. The fence isn’t so high or as controlled as here.”

  “Actually, there’s a gap in the fence,” I said, remembering my state fair smoking days. “If they haven’t sealed it.”

  “Do you remember where the gap is?” Spencer asked.

  “Yeah, I remember,” I said. “Who’s Old Bully?”

  Leaf shook his head and grin
ned.

  “You’ll see,” Spencer said. He turned to Leaf. “Tell the others we’re opening the shop again.”

  The fog always came in at night along the back end of the grounds, waist-high along the sandy field behind the racetrack. Even with all the lights on, I remember thinking the fog was thick enough to cover anyone with the courage to crawl through, military-style, for a free ticket to whatever event was being held.

  “There’ll be coyotes and stuff now though,” Ano said. “Now that people aren’t around.”

  “And others like us. Or Vs,” Maibe said.

  “There might be some,” Leaf said. “We’ll need to be on lookout.”

  I shook my head. “But if you can’t see them, they won’t be able to see you, and the fog covers all the smells.”

  “As long as we get to the fog in one piece,” Spencer said, “you won’t have a problem, unless you do something like stand up.”

  Coyotes, jackrabbits, owls, dogs: the bike trail was a forest avenue through the city. Its own kind of no-man’s land. A strip too intimidating for most, even when the city had thrived. The bike trail was a few dozen miles of semi-wilderness long, but less than a football field wide, on either side of the river. I thought through how the plan might work. The trees would protect us until we reached the fog. We could enter Cal Expo the back way, under full lights, protected by fog. I felt excitement. This could work.

  If the gap in the fence still existed, it was behind a livestock building. People washed their prize-winning llamas and goats and pigs with a spigot attached to the outside wall of that building. It was flat there, empty of trees.

  If the fog wasn’t as thick as I remembered, if there were too many Vs, if the gap in the fence was fixed, we’d be lost. But there was no other way to get inside. There was no alternative but to break in.

  “Maibe should stay behind,” I said.

  “No!” Maibe said.