Chapter 23
There are three cabins in the row near the front of Camp Sunnyside that you can’t miss.
The one on the left belongs to Caroline.
I know that because the older woman sits outside of it most days, drinking her precious watered-down coffee and keeping an eye on everyone like we’re still campers whose parents paid her to make sure we don’t drown in the lake.
The building on the right is the trading post, of course, where Annie somehow manages to turn scavenged junk into things people actually need.
But the cabin in the middle? I was curious when we first came to stay at Camp Sunnyside.
After our days became routine, I stopped paying attention to it.
It wasn’t the kitchen, the laundry room, the infirmary, or the kitchen.
I’ve never seen any of the rebels go inside of it, so I didn’t think it belonged to anyone.
I guess I thought it was just a fixture from the before times and that was it.
Until today. Until I’m antsy because Chase went out because David asked him to, and I’m too much of a chickenshit to approach Veronica while she’s dealing with the loss of her twin.
I’m being ridiculous. If there’s anyone at camp who knows what it’s like to lose the other half of you, it’s me.
When I realized that Xandra… I had to mourn my twin twice.
First, when I thought it was Hallie who died.
Then when I had to accept it was Xandra.
There are days I wake up and the grief is as fresh as it was when I came to at St. Matthew’s and Dad had to tell me my sister was gone.
It’s rough. No. It’s fucking awful, but I also know better than anyone that sometimes… sometimes you just need space to process your new reality, even if it’s a nightmare.
That’s why we’re still here. Chase and me…
as much as we had planned to go back to the Grave once we blew up the last of Project Phoenix, that changed in the direct aftermath.
Aaron and Delilah are dead. Veronica is…
she’ll be okay. Eventually. I have no doubt in my mind about that.
One day, she’ll be back to her flirty self, winking at Maverick in between passing out work assignments to the rest of camp.
For now, she’s in mourning, and that means that the rest of Sunnyside basically is, too. It would be cruel to sneak out without saying goodbye, especially when they’ve already lost four people in the last month and a half. When Chase and I go, they’ll have less than sixty left.
As for Mav… I don’t know what he’s doing, though I have a pretty good guess that he’s going to stay. He did what he set out to accomplish, his explosives blew up the NRI and ended Project Phoenix for good. Now… like he said, maybe it’s time to embrace his second chance at life.
We never figured out where Delilah got the one she used to blow herself, Winston, and the other almost-lurkers up with.
The five explosives that Maverick built were all placed beneath the building.
Chase and I figured she must have rigged her own, and considering how smart Delilah was… it’s the only thing that makes sense.
It’s been three days since we drove back to the Hills.
We put Gwen in the front seat with Nicky.
Veronica slumped next to Maverick, in shock that Delilah died in such a horrific manner.
It doesn’t matter that her last words to her sister were an apology and an explanation.
She killed herself to buy us time to escape, and while we did…
it’s going to take a lot longer for Veronica to understand just what her sister sacrificed for her.
I rode with Chase, Simon, and David. He wanted to go with Veronica once he saw how hysterical she was, but when Maverick was the one who calmed her enough to convince her to climb into the backseat of the SUV, he begrudgingly left the two together.
The two men are stepping up for Veronica. David is running the camp, and Maverick is making sure she eats, drinks, and sleeps. When she needs some time to be alone, Mav is usually somewhere talking to David, figuring out what comes next for all of us.
That’s another reason I haven’t started for the Grave yet. I’ve been waiting for a moment to talk to Maverick before we go, and I didn’t have the chance—until now.
He’s sitting on the front steps of that middle cabin. The way he’s crouched forward, I thought he was just taking a break, but as I walk over to him and see the lock on the door, I have a totally different interpretation of what’s going on.
“What’s this? We have a jail now?”
He looks like he’s guarding something, and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out what we have at Sunnyside that is worth a lock on the door.
Maverick pats the space beside him on the stair. I plop down next to him. “It’s for her own good. I’m making sure she stays safe.”
“Gwen?”
He nods. “We were keeping her with Veronica. She seems to think that Vee is Delilah and Delilah is safe. She doesn’t realize that Delilah is gone.
Vee is going along with it, but it’s rough.
Sometimes… sometimes she can’t. That’s when we put Gwen here.
Whatever they did to her… she’s brilliant, but she’s broken.
Veronica already got her to give her the first few ingredients for the antidote.
Like I said, she trusts Delilah. But there are times…
” Maverick scowls, and his dark eyes become impossibly darker.
“The Doctor fucked her up even more than me. And that was after she deleted all of the files the NRI needed.”
I’ve heard a little of Gwen’s story in the last few days.
Mainly through Chase, who got it from David.
I guess Kristian was able to pass along more intel than we initially thought.
Delilah found out what exactly they did that made Gwen decide it wasn’t worth it to create any more antidotes, even if that meant the rest of the world would suffer for it.
She was the lead on the team that was tasked with creating a failsafe switch for Project Phoenix.
In case the Injection didn’t work the way it was supposed to, they wanted another medicine that would reverse the effects.
When the first batch seemed to work, the antidote was put on the back burner.
Only a few thousand were made, and she would’ve made more except—after the Turning—she did something to piss off the Doctor.
The suspicion is that she deleted anything that had to do with the antidote, and since she had a didactic memory, she was the only one who could create it.
And then she refused to because she felt like Project Phoenix should face what they had done. They rushed out an imperfect Injection, and the proud scientist that she was, Gwen decided they needed to fix it on their own.
In retaliation, the Doctor used her family against her, experimenting on her children to get her to obey.
He gave her two children the tainted Injection and waited until they were Turned into a younglings to and demand that she create a dose that would heal lurkers after the Turning.
She explained in horror that her formula only works up until twenty-four hours after an Injection or a bite, and the Doctors said “try”.
When she obviously failed, one child ate the other, and she had to watch.
Staying alive and refusing to rebuild the antidote ever again was her revenge, even if more people died because of it.
I totally understand that. Being forced to watch one child eat the other… I don’t think there’s any coming back from that. But it seems as though—when she’s having her better moments—she understands now that there’s more to life than Project Phoenix. It wasn’t just the NRI she was punishing.
So many people died because we didn’t have the antidote. Our main goal was to find Gwen, bring her here, and put her to work, and just like how she was kept captive at the NRI facility, she’s locked up in a cabin on our campground.
I sigh. “We’re just as bad as Project Phoenix, aren’t we?”
“Don’t talk like that, kid. We’re the good guys here.”
“We have a mentally shattered woman locked in a cabin. There’s a grumpy former cop watching her because, just as I stop pretending to be my dead twin, his new girlfriend is doing the same because it’s the only mercy we can offer the mentally shattered woman that is, remember now, locked in this cabin behind us. ”
Maverick opens his mouth. Pauses as he thinks over what I said.
He sighs. “Skipping right past the ‘girlfriend’ comment, you have to understand something, Holden. We don’t want to hurt Gwen.
She doesn’t understand how bad it is outside of the NRI.
If she sees a lurker, they’ll eat her, and she’ll let them,” he says bluntly.
“We have to keep her protected. If anything happens to her…”
He doesn’t finish his sentence. He doesn’t have to.
I know exactly what he means.
If anything happens to our hope for some help against the lurkers, what was it all for?
It hits me then. Really hits me.
We’re all fucked up. Every single one of us.
Me. Chase. Maverick. Veronica. Gwen. Dad. Everyone back at the Grave. Everyone at Sunnyside. There isn’t a person left who hasn’t lost someone or done something or seen something that would’ve destroyed them before the Turning.
But you know what? Maybe surviving doesn’t mean you’re okay. Maybe it just means you’re still here, but as long as you are, there’s still hope that, someday, it’ll be better.
I think it has to be.
So… Chase has a dress.
That’s the first thing I notice when I finally make it back to our cabin.
Not Chase himself, who I wasn’t expecting to find waiting for me.
He’s sitting on the edge of our bed, elbows on the knees of his jeans, leaning forward as though content to wait forever.
His head pops up, his warm voice calling my name, but for once, I don’t follow his face like a sunflower tracks the sun.
Nope. I’m too busy staring at the dress.
The white dress.
It’s laid out on the bed beside him so I can’t miss it. Shutting the door behind me, I point at it. “What is that?”
Chase glances at it. “It’s a dress, Holden.”
Yeah. I can see that. “It’s a white dress, Chase.”
He gives me a sheepish yet earnest grin. “Annie said it was the closest thing she had to a wedding dress that would fit you.”
Holy. Shit.
Okay.
It’s not a wedding dress. A further peek at it is enough to prove that.
It’s white, yes, and sleeveless. The skirt looks long enough that it will probably hit somewhere below my knees.
Before the Turning, I would’ve worn something like it to a graduation party of a summer fling.
It’s too plain to be any bride’s version of a wedding dress.
Except Chase went and got it for me, and I’ll treasure it as much as I do the gold-colored twist tie that I have in the pocket of my jeans for that reason alone.
Even if I’m not so sure why he feels the need to get me a white dress.
There’s one back home at the Grave waiting for me, one that was donated to me by Kimberly Mitchell, a recent newlywed who got married the Christmas before the Turning.
She offered to let me use hers when I finally married Chase, and when we make it back to the Grave, I plan on it.
And then Chase says, “You promised.”
Huh? “What?”
He gets to his feet, grabbing the dress carefully, laying it out over both of his arms. “You promised. You said that, when you set food back in New Jersey, you would marry me. After everything that happened… I knew we’d have to wait a little, but since the only thing that really matters is that I want to marry you and you want to marry me, I thought…
let’s do it. Now.” Moving over to me, he holds out the dress. “Put it on for me, Holden. Won’t you?”
For a moment, I freeze. But then I think: we’re all fucked up. We’re here, though. We survived. If this is the last “tomorrow” I have, why not have it as Mrs. Holden Knight.
Will we really be married if I put on that dress and make my vow to Chase? Not any more legally than I would be if I walked down the aisle at St. Matthew’s like we planned on. There is no “legal”. Not anymore.
So why not forget the pain, the sorrow, the struggle ahead of us for a moment and, if only for now, embrace the hope.
Believe that, as impossible as it sounds, there could be such a thing as happy-ever-after.
I take the dress.
Chase swallows roughly.
I grin. “You’re supposed to leave while I get dressed.”
“I’ve seen you naked. Many, many times.”
“Not before our wedding, you haven’t.”
His eyes gleam. “You mean it? We can… I know it’s not real… and your Dad—”
I press my finger to his lip, hushing him. “Do you want me to change or not?”
Chase isn’t stupid enough to continue talking. After kissing my finger, he gooses my hip, then hurries to the bathroom to give me some privacy before I tell him to forget the whole thing.
I wait until he’s closed the door to pull the twist tie ring out of my pocket.
I drop it on the bed, then change faster than I have in my whole life.
I put Rory’s jacket next to the “ring”. Having it there…
it’s almost like I have Xandra and Rory with me.
Until we can go to the Grave and do a similar ceremony in front of Dad and the rest of the survivors who know and support Chase and I, this will do.
The dress is better than I would’ve thought.
It fits well, and at the last minute, I kick off my boots and keep on going until it’s just me standing there in the dress.
My hair is loose. I give it a shake, letting it fall down my back.
I don’t have any make-up, but that’s okay.
When I call out to Chase that I’m ready, the look on his face as he stalks into the main room makes me feel like the most beautiful woman in the world.
I throw out my arms. “Well. What do you think?”
For once, Chase Knight has nothing to say.
I giggle. “Okay. I’m in the dress. What happens next?”
There’s that sheepish grin again. “Honestly? I never thought I’d get this far.”
“A ring helps.”
His face falls. Taking pity on him, I move by Chase, grabbing the twist tie from the bed. Seeing it, it suddenly sinking in that I didn’t toss it, that I kept… his hands are trembling as he takes it from me.
I stick out my left hand. “It might not fit on my ring finger. I didn’t want to mess it up by re-shaping it. Pinkie is fine.”
Chase peers at the twist tie. At the ridiculous little piece of gold-colored wire I’ve carried with me since he asked Holden to marry him instead of assuming Hallie’s answer still counted.
The tip of his tongue sticks out between his lips as he carefully, carefully fixes it so that it’s both wider and a circle again.
Then he takes my left hand, his expression suddenly so serious that I forget how to breathe.
“When we do this for real,” he murmurs, easing the twist tie onto my finger, “I’m getting you actual jewelry.”
I glance from the “ring” to him. “Isn’t this real?”
He kisses my knuckle. “It is to me.”
It is to me, too.