“Are you okay?” I asked.
“My ass is sore, but yeah, I guess so.” He was still holding his shoulder.
“What happened?” Ell burst out. “Are Mia and Monica okay? Where’s Chewy? What about Nick? Debbie?” She leaned forward, inches away from Stone’s face. He backed up and widened his eyes.
“Relax, relax,” Stone answered, one hand out, “I heard the tank’s engine and knew it was you guys. I had to see if I could get to you before they did.”
I didn’t like how he wouldn’t answer Ell’s questions.
“Hold on a minute,” George warned. “We need to examine him. Scarlett seemed fine too.”
“I’m not infected…” Stone furrowed his brow and continued, “…Which is exactly what a person who was touched would say, isn’t it?” He sighed. “All right, do your worst.”
George ran his light over every inch of Stone’s face and neck. He made him remove his jacket and lift up his shirt. After George finished scanning there, Stone pulled down his pants, and, without shame, his blue and black checkered boxers.
Red-faced, Eleanor turned away.
“Satisfied?” Stone said, yanking his jeans back on with one hand. “Because I’m not. You do that to a dude, you gotta at least buy him a drink first.”
“Okay, now I know he’s one-hundred percent himself,” I said. “Only Stone cracks lame-ass jokes like that.”
Ell nodded and said, “It’s true.”
George arched a brow. “Fine, I believe you all. Now get on with it. What the hell happened?”
“Scarlett said something about more of those marked people. They came back for revenge,” Ell said.
“Bullshit,” Stone said. “It was a stranger, yeah, but she had help.”
“Berretti,” I whispered.
Stone snapped his fingers. “Bingo. Him and Credence started another massacre, and the Two Stooges helped ‘em. We weren’t prepared for it.” He bowed his head, and his voice was strained when he spoke next. “I saw Debbie get her skull bashed in. Jesus Christ, Grady, it was the worst thing I’ve ever seen, and I couldn’t do a damn thing about it. It was Larry. He did it with a crowbar. Ray took a swing at me, but he missed. I don’t know how I got away. Forgotten instincts kicked in and I moved like I never got in that car accident all those years ago. Guess all that working out was worth it.”
My stomach cramped. Bolts of pain shot through my chest. Debbie? No, not her.
I swallowed with a dry throat and almost choked. There were more questions on my mind, but I wasn’t sure I wanted the answers to them.
“Where’s the others?” Ell asked.
“Nick’s got a room—” Stone answered.
“Panic room,” George said. “Told you. He’s a sly son of a gun.”
“Bingo again,” Stone said. “They’re in there, just the few of us who got out when the shit started to hit the fan.”
“Who?” I asked, almost not wanting to know.
“Mia, the baby, and Chewy are there, believe that, but other than them, it’s just Wendy and Nick and about half a dozen other people.”
“Where’s everyone else?” Another question I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer to. My gut told me they’d been murdered, but my heart hoped that wasn’t the case and maybe there was still a chance.
Stone set his jaw and shrugged. “I-I don’t know.”
“Dead?” George asked.
“I don’t know,” Stone repeated. “I don’t think so. I think Berretti and the crazy chick need them. I think we have another Woodhaven situation here.”
“A feeding?” Ell whispered.
“Something like it, yeah,” Stone agreed.
But I felt differently. This was bigger than that.
So much bigger.
“What the hell do we do now?” Ell said. Her determination had wavered since we first got here. I didn’t blame her for that. I felt aimless, lost, but since George wasn’t leading, I had to step into that role. Someone did, right?
“Plans haven’t changed,” I said. Now that the shock had passed, a rage was growing inside of me. I wanted revenge. “We don’t back down. We fight.”
I imagined the others still felt the same way. The City was ours.
“What exactly happened?” Ell asked as we moved. “Why did they start killing people?”
Stone shook his head. “I don’t know, I’m not sure. I think it’s some sort of fucked-up ritual.”
“A ritual?” I said.
Stone was squinting, snapping his fingers. “They said something about a mother or a mom or—”
Snippets of the journal Ell found a while back went through my head. Enlightened written over and over. The Matron written the same way on the other pages. Was that Credence’s? Had she left it behind?
“The Matron,” I said.
Ell gasped. She had seen the notebook too.
Stone nearly jumped. “That’s it! Whoa, wait. How do you know, Grady?”
I filled him in. “I had no idea what it meant. I still don’t. I’d forgotten about it until you mentioned something about a mother.”
“What do you think it means?” George asked.
I shook my head. “I don’t know, but whatever the hell it is, it’s not good.”
“Are they trying to bring the Matron—that thing—here?” Ell whispered.
No answer from any of us, but I thought so.
“It must be the queen fucking bee,” Stone said. “The mother of the monsters.”
“The Matron…” I said, the word now starting to make sense to me.
George sighed. “Shit.”
Stone and George took us to the panic room. It wasn’t far, thankfully.
Stone knocked an intricate pattern, the knob rattled, and the door cracked open. A person didn’t step out, however. Instead, we were greeted with a double-barrel shotgun.
“It’s me, Nick. Relax,” Stone said. “I’ve brought company too.”
The door opened wider, but the gun stayed in place. Holding it was Nick Rider.
Two electric lanterns lit the small room. Nick looked about twenty years older. What was left of his hair had gone a few shades grayer, and the wrinkles around his mouth and at the corners had grown deeper. Seeing him like that brought on a great sadness inside me, not
