then we’ll have to lie and pretend I’m an
“I’m not going to lie to them.”
“You may not have a choice. The reason civilization collapsed in the first place is because Roberto used an
I turned over her logic in my mind, trying to find the flaw. I didn’t want to lie to anyone. When had that ever worked out well? I’d lied to Lily when I came to rescue her from the Farm, and it had led to one screw-up after another.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “People are going to wonder. They’ll have doubts. And I don’t see how a lie like this can stand up to the questions.”
“Yeah, if it was just the one lie, it wouldn’t stand. But maybe lies are like cards. You can’t ever get one to stand up alone, but you balance them against each other and they’ll prop each other up.” Her lush mouth twisted into a wry, sad smile. “Didn’t you ever build a house of cards when you were a kid?”
“No. All I know is that they’re destined to fall down.” My childhood had been spent in the back wing of the house, playing video games and hiding from my parents, because if they forgot I was there, they were less likely to give me a hard time.
“Yeah. But we don’t need to convince everyone forever. We just need them to believe it long enough to come up with a better plan. Or find another
“Lily—”
“She’s right,” McKenna said from the backseat.
Lily and I both whirled around to see her slowly stretching as she sat up. Hell, I’d forgotten she was even back there.
“We have to stay here,” she said.
Lily’s mouth twisted a little, like she wanted to smile but was too sad to really do it. “You just want to stay here because you think Joe might show up.”
“Duh. This is where he’ll go. So, I’m staying no matter what. But I agree with Lily. You need to stay, too. You’re their leader. You—”
“I can’t lead these people,” I protested.
“You’ve led them this far,” Lily said gently.
“Yeah, but that was the easy part. I had a plan: find you. Let you convince the rest of humanity to fight. Let Sebastian do the rest. I could do all of that. I can’t do this.”
“Sure you can,” Lily said. “All you need is a new plan.”
“A plan to lead these kids, who are terrified and starving? In the middle of winter, when we can hardly leave the mountain?”
“Okay, so that’s the first step in the plan: find more food. Stay close to the mountain. And then when spring hits, we go get more recruits from Farms. That’s what you were doing before, right? So that’s what we’ll keep doing.”
When she broke it down like that, it seemed doable.
All my life, everyone had treated me like I was a screw-up. My parents, my teachers, even Sebastian. They’d all expected me to fail, miserably. And all my life, that had pissed me off. Now, here I was, ready to finally live down to everyone’s expectations of me and along came Lily. And she didn’t expect me to fail. In fact, she expected me to save the world.
When she looked at me like that, I almost believed I could.
CHAPTER TWO
Lily
Lily’s stomach turned over as she climbed out of the passenger side of the Hummer. Carter had parked it right in the middle of the otherwise empty parking lot. The parking lot was separated from the surrounding forest by a tall, chain-link fence, and it butted right up against the side of the mountain. Set into the mountain was a door under a sign reading “United Underground.” Beside that was a pair of huge garage doors, one of which was slowly rising. Carter had told her that nearly a hundred people lived at Base Camp, but the collection of kids huddled just inside the door didn’t seem close to that number—maybe because they were all so thin. Or maybe they were just small compared to the huge, open space inside the mountain.
Lily rounded the Hummer to help McKenna climb out. They’d been cramped in the SUV for a long time. Even though it was big in there, she needed a minute to get her legs under her and suspected McKenna would, too.
She automatically put her hand under McKenna’s elbow. Not that she knew what it was like to be pregnant, but if her legs were stiff, she could only imagine how McKenna must feel. Besides, it gave her something to think about other than the hundred people staring at her. The guy with the gun—Merc, Carter had called him—led them through the open doorway without getting too close. Or lowering his weapon.
The doors opened directly into a huge loading bay, a cavern carved out of the mountain. The ceiling was twenty feet up and made of smoothed stone, like the floor. Columns, maybe five feet across, dotted the floor every forty feet. Though the area near the doors was lit by overhead fluorescent lights, she couldn’t tell how far back it went. The cave just slipped away in the darkness.
“What’s with all the RVs?” she asked in a whisper.
A row of maybe twenty vehicles lined the communal area at the front of the cavern. They were fanned out in a semicircle below the last row of fluorescent lights.
“This used to be a mine in the Before, a long time ago,” Carter said. “When the ore played out, United Underground took over. They used the space for climate controlled storage. They stored everything from legal documents to RVs and boats. When we first moved in here, the guys and I stayed up near the front, in United’s offices, but when we started bringing Greens back, we brought RVs up from the deeps for people to live in.”
“The deeps?”
Carter’s steps slowed and he pointed off toward the darkness. “Deep storage, farther in. There are hundreds of storage units we haven’t even broken into yet. Once we get out of quarantine, stay up here, where there’s light. You don’t want to get lost until you know your way around more.”
When that guy whom Merc told him about had started to become a Tick, that’s probably where he’d hidden while he was transforming. He’d slipped away into the darkness, which Ticks loved best. What had it been like for that guy? Had he known his humanity was slowly slipping away? Had the craving for blood been so strong he hadn’t cared that he was becoming a monster?
Lily suppressed a shudder and pushed aside her thoughts, concentrating on taking in her surroundings. When Carter had first told her about Base Camp, that there was a place where kids were banding together to fight against the Farm system and the Ticks, it had all seemed very romantic. Not glamorous, but noble at least. And better than life on the Farm.
But the other teens seemed worn and suspicious. Hungry. And this cave they lived in—it may be safe, generally, when there wasn’t a Tick trapped inside with them, but it wasn’t hospitable. It was dark and even though it was warmer in here than it had been out in the Hummer, the air was cool and damp so that it already seemed to be seeping through her clothes.
Still better than a Farm. Still better than “donating” blood to feed the Ticks.
Carter led her and McKenna over to a portion of a cave, which had been walled off, and through a door. This must have been United Underground’s business offices. There was a large reception area and then a hall with closed doors on either side. Merc came in behind them, his grip on his rifle relaxed.
“Where are you going to keep us in quarantine?” Carter asked.
