Ruins

“The Ivies?” asked Kira. She looked around wildly for something to stanch the bleeding in his abdomen, but she knew he wouldn’t make it. They were too far from anyone who could help, even if she could find a way to move him. She grunted in frustration and simply ripped her own shirt, several inches off the bottom hem, and shoved the wad into his wound.

“You have to run,” he said, his raw voice painful just to listen to. “They’ll want yours too.”

“My hand?”

“Your blood.”

She saw a flash of movement from the lake—not on the water, but under it, the dark black shadow of a massive fish.

“What’s going on here?”

DEATH

The water erupted in a geyser, a pale white figure bursting up by the edge of the dock and grabbing Kira’s arm. She screamed, backing away, fumbling for her gun, but the pale figure yanked her forward and she lost her balance, tumbling toward the water. The last thing she saw was his neck flaring open, wide fishlike gills flapping delicately in the open air, and then her face hit the water and the world went black.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

S

amm dreamed about Kira.

They were walking together through the ruins of old Illinois—not the flooded necropolis of Chicago, and not the toxic badlands west of the Mississippi River, but the rolling fields and wide, flat nothingness between them. They walked, hand in hand. Birds circled lazily in the sky above them, and herds of wild mustangs roamed from field to field, trampling the fences that separated the vast checkerboard of empty farms, running free in a world that didn’t remember the war, the Break, or anything but sun and wind and rain and stars. They drank from cool streams and lay on their backs staring up at the moon, finding shapes and faces in the craters. The world was still and ancient and new, and they were together.

The dreams never lasted. Samm woke up, bleary-eyed, and stared numbly at the faded walls of the old business office he used as an apartment.

“Today I’m going to leave it all and go find Kira,” he whispered. He said it every morning. He pulled on his shirt and shoes and trudged down the stairs and across the compound to the hospital. His body built up a measurable amount of Particle 223 every six days, and he was due for another extraction. Calix had started volunteering in the hospital, still too unsteady on her feet to go back out as a hunter, and she greeted him in the lab with a smile. Samm smiled back wearily, easing himself down onto the homespun blanket covering the cracked plastic surface of the examination bed.

“Good morning,” said Calix. She prepped a syringe of local anesthetic; the procedure involved a very long needle spending a very long time very deep in Samm’s nasal cavity, and while he didn’t like the drugs, he liked the needle even less. Samm lay on his back while Calix applied the first shot—a tiny sting, and a slow, spreading numbness. They waited for the shot to take effect, and Calix chatted idly. “Gorman was walking pretty well last night.”

That was good news; the soldier’s health seemed to have plateaued over the last few days. “How far?”

“Just to the bathroom and back,” said Calix. “He didn’t even call us for the first leg, just the return trip.”

“He doesn’t like being dependent,” said Samm.

“Nobody does.” Calix picked up the syringe again. “Time for number two.” Samm held still, and she slid the needle deep into his nostril. Another sting, much farther back, and Calix sat down with a mischievous smile. “Want to see the needle?”

“No,” said Samm, “but show it to me anyway.”

Calix laughed and held it up—the needle on the end of the syringe was about four inches long. “You always ask to see it.”

“That’s because I swear you’re shoving it halfway into my brain,” said Samm.

“I barely put it in that far,” said Calix, placing her gloved finger about halfway along the slim metal line. “Wait for the third shot when we hit the back wall, that’s the doozy.”

Samm closed his eyes. “Always my favorite.”

“Any good dreams last night?”

“Dreamed about Illinois.”

“Odd choice,” said Calix. “What’s in Illinois?”

Samm thought about Kira, and the horses and the moon. “Nothing.”

Calix chattered a bit about the hospital, and the other Partials, and her soccer team’s standing in the current tournament—she couldn’t play since she had gotten shot, but she cheered harder on the sidelines than any other fan. Samm smiled and nodded, genuinely happy for her, but he was too . . . busy? Too busy to care? That’s not the right word, he thought. Weary? Lonely?

Lost, he decided. I feel lost.