“No.”
“Not at all?”
McKenna stood, grabbed the bag she’d been packing, and managed to sweep past Lily, even though she was waddling and there was barely room to walk, much less sweep. “I’m fine. Not a scratch on me.”
“But the Ticks—”
“Don’t like pregnant blood, remember? They didn’t even sniff in my direction.”
Lily got another hit of adrenaline. “What the hell, McKenna? Why were you even out there? Why not just run in here and hide? It’s what I would have done.”
McKenna’s gaze hardened. “No it’s not. You’re not a coward. You would have run into the battle and fought.”
“No one expects you to fight, McKenna. You’re pregnant. You’re—”
She whirled on Lily. “I was right there by the door when the fight broke out. I just grabbed a stake and I ran out and I did it. And it didn’t matter. The girl that thing was killing was already dead and the battle ended so quickly. And it had already killed so many; what I did barely made a difference. They’re so much faster and stronger and—”
McKenna’s voice broke and she sagged against the cheesy Formica counter. It was like all the energy just sapped out of her, and she crumpled to the ground. She brought her knees as close to her chest as she could and braced her elbows on them, hiding her head.
Not knowing what else to do, Lily went and sat beside her. She placed a hand on the back of McKenna’s head. She could feel her taking in deep, ragged breaths.
“McKenna, I—”
“Joe couldn’t have made it out of something like that.”
“Huh?”
She twisted her head to look at Lily with tear-damp eyes. “All this time I’ve been telling myself he might still be out there, looking for me, and that all I had to do was stay alive and that he would find me. But I—”
Her voice broke again in a way that made Lily’s heart ache. Nothing about today had prepared her for the yearning in McKenna’s voice. For the open longing. The crushed hope. The burgeoning sorrow.
So she did the only thing she could think of to do. She continued to stroke McKenna’s hair. “Oh, McKenna —”
“But if he got cornered by more than one, then there’s no way. He’d be dead for sure. There’s no way he could make it. He—” She broke off again and sucked in another deep breath.
“If he couldn’t make it, then what makes you think you could? You can’t go. You need to stay here, where it’s safe.”
“It’s not safe here! Three Ticks, Lily! Just three Ticks and they decimated Base Camp.”
“Look, let’s think about this logically.”
“I’m going to have a baby in a month! I can’t do that living in a cave with a bunch of teenagers! There’s no doctor here. No hospital. No—”
“Have you even thought this through? I mean, really thought it through? Where are you going to go? How are you going to get there? This is crazy!”
“It’s not crazy.” McKenna pushed herself to her feet, rubbing the bottom of her belly as she stood. “I’m going to head to Canada. That was always the plan, right? Head north and seek asylum?”
“But we don’t even know for sure if Canada is still there. What if it’s fallen to the Ticks, too?”
“I don’t know.” She was struggling to pull air into her lungs, like she was battling a full-on panic attack. “All I know is that I can’t stay here. I just can’t. I can’t keep waiting for him. I can’t. I—”
Lily could hear the panic rising in McKenna’s voice again. That desperation and fear. The way she was sucking in air like she couldn’t breathe.
“Hey, calm down.” Lily rubbed a hand up and down McKenna’s arm. When that didn’t seem to help, she gently pulled her friend into her arms and just held her. “We’ll figure something out. I promise.”
“But—”
“Just give me a while to think about it, okay?” She could feel McKenna nod against her shoulder. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you or the baby. We’ll figure it out.”
McKenna started crying again, leaning so heavily into Lily that she had to brace herself against the wall of the RV to hold her friend. But the RV’s walls were flimsy. They were no better at holding up her weight than they were at keeping out the cold, and Lily couldn’t help but feel like the walls were going to collapse in on them.
Here at Base Camp, they didn’t live in RVs, they lived in a house of cards. Carter’s leadership, Lily’s ability as an
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Carter
I couldn’t wait to get back to my room, just to have a moment alone. To get out of these damn serial-killer clothes and to breathe in air that didn’t smell like blood. When you do something like bury the dead, the stench of blood clings to your nose and the sight of it is seared on your retinas, so that every time you close your eyes, you see it again. For days. Weeks, sometimes.
I’d never paid much attention in English class, but ever since Sebastian first taught us how to prep bodies after we fought off the Ticks who overran the Elite Military Academy, I’d thought a lot about Lady MacBeth and how the sight of all that blood drove her crazy. After a few hours of hacking bodies to pieces, I knew how she felt. Like I’d never be clean again.
Normally, I couldn’t walk through the main cavern without twenty different people stopping me. Not today.
The Elites all knew what Merc and I had done. They knew to steer clear of either of us. The Greens followed their lead. So Merc and I walked through the cavern in silence. At some point, he disappeared into his room and I walked on to mine, glad to be completely alone.
I shut the door behind me and immediately changed into clean clothes. None of our clothes were washing- machine clean, but anything was better than the jeans I’d had on. I wanted to burn the damn things, but who knew when I’d find another pair that fit. I pulled on socks, too, first rubbing my toes between my palms. They’d lost all sensation in the cold and now that they were warming up, they burned like hell.
What did frostbite look like? Would I know it if I had it? And what the hell would it matter if I did? Having all my toes wouldn’t do shit to keep my people alive.
I pushed myself to my feet, my mind racing, my anger and despair threatening to pull me under. How the hell was I supposed to do this? How was I supposed to lead this rebellion against these crazy odds? Without even Sebastian around? He was badass in a fight, and all vampires had a sort of spidery sense that let them know when other vampires or Ticks were around. If he had been here today, things would have been different.
Sitting on the shelf right at eye level was that row of superhero bobbleheads. The damn things were taunting me, with their overly cheerful faces and silly bobbing heads. Superheroes in movies made it look so damn easy. Rally the forces, kill the bad guys, save the world. Why didn’t movies or video games show how it really was? Why didn’t they show the hopelessness, the failure? The grief? Or maybe it was just that I wasn’t a superhero.
I felt another wave of anger at the injustice of it all and I swung out an arm, swiping all the bobbleheads off the shelf. They flew through the air to land in an arc on the floor. One of the superhero heads snapped off its head and rolled across the floor. The irony was the last straw. I stomped over to my punching bag. Violence may not solve everything, but it sure as hell cleared my head.
I don’t know how long I pounded away on the bag, only that when I heard a noise behind me, I whirled around to see Ely Estaban standing in my doorway. Ely had been with us at Elite. He came by Base Camp
