Chapter Thirty-Seven
GREELEY SHIFTS THE GEAR INTO park. Manual drive. Dad never had a chance to teach me. Grandma barely knew how to drive an automatic.
Greeley drives Telulah—er, Tony—up a mountain, through dense woods, and parks us in front of a small lake. An oasis.
The water is blue-green, the color of a turtle’s shell. While the lake is small, it’s long enough that swimming the entire distance would wear me out. Maybe not when I was an athlete in high school, but certainly now.
Out of practice, out of shape, deficient in nutrients.
Warm, humid air hits me like a slap in the face as I step out of the truck. I breathe in swampy air. Exhale.
Trees, both alive and zombie, surround the water like eyelashes.
Crinkled and crushed leaves form a crown around the bank, some dipping into the water like a feather in ink.
Under other circumstances, the setting would be beautiful.
But as it stands, it’s terrifying. It’s peaceful, but peace in this world isn’t a sure thing, so I can’t trust it.
Every sound puts me on edge: the wind, the leaves, the creaking of our new vehicle.
Every bubble of water sends shards of lightning through my core.
“When did you find this place?” I ask Greeley. The two of us stand at the edge of the bank. The water’s surface wrinkles like a velvet blanket.
“We can go anywhere we damn please. Whenever we damn please. Remember?”
“There’s a reason we weren’t allowed to go to forests in Egal,” I say. “Do you not remember the boar?”
“Can’t recall . . . I was busy slaying a deer.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“I’ve had lots of time to explore,” she says, bending down to pick up a pebble. She flings it, and it skips along the surface. Ah. So her earlier skipping was practice.
“Are we safe here?” I look around for wild animals. Close my eyes and listen. I hear no creatures. Peace.
Greeley huffs out a laugh and smears an evil smirk across her face. “Nowhere is safe.” I crack my knuckles and then squeeze my toes in my shoes, and am graced with a litany of crunches. “What are you, a Cracker Jack?”
“I think I’m dehydrated.”
“Boohoo.” She juts out her lower hip. “There’s a big lake just over there. Why don’t you jump in?”
I look at the lake, a shiver crawling down my spine as I wonder what’s hiding underneath the glimmering surface. There could be zombie moccasins under there, for all I know. “What are we doing here?”
“To fish, of course,” she answers matter-of-factly. She pulls bait and a bullet out of her pocket. “You first.”
“You don’t need to swim to fish, Greeley.”
“I didn’t bring a net; also, I need to get water from the center.” She points out to the middle of the lake. When I make a funny face at her, she says, “Thermal stratification. Less algae and muck the deeper you go—and I need the cleanest sample I can get.”
“For the cure?”
“No, for making snow cones.” God, what I wouldn’t do for an ice-cold Cherry Coke snow cone right now. “Yes, Blondie, for the cure. Besides . . .” Greeley pauses, licking her lips. “The big fish swim in the deep. And I, for one, have a hankering for pan-fried bass.”
“Go fish, then. Collect your own water samples. I’m not doing your dirty work for you.”
The humor drains from Greeley’s face. She narrows her eyes. “You say you want to keep your family safe. How do you plan on doing that? You can’t defend them, you can’t fight for them, and you can’t feed them. What can you do?”
“I won’t take your bait.”
“No.” She shoves a rubbery worm in my hand. “There’s your bait. Jasper won’t be around to feed you, and you have nothing to trade with other Macs. We hunt to survive. What’s your choice? What are you made of?”
I don’t know what I’m made of.
“Fuck you,” I say. “I will survive.”
Greeley claps me on the shoulder and smiles. “Let’s test that newfound strength, then, huh?”
Shit. Okay. Let’s test it.