Black River Falls by Jeff Hirsch(4)

I took a shaky step toward him. “Greer, listen . . .”

He turned away and started down the trail. “Forget it, man. Good luck with your gardening.”

The dogs followed him as he headed back to camp. Soon their footsteps faded, and I was alone again. I tore off my mask and dropped it. My hands were ice-cold and shaking bad, so I curled them into fists and squeezed until I felt as if a bone was about to pop. There was an angry buzz in the back of my skull.

Everything was so damn simple to Greer. A couple kids might be in trouble? Go get them! Who cares that there might be a price to pay? Who cares that one wrong move could lead to everything we’d built being taken away? And the thing was, it wasn’t just Greer. All the infected lived in a world that, as far as they knew, was unbreakable. Every betrayal they’d ever felt? Every disappointment? Every failure? Every disaster? Gone. That’s why they needed me. I remembered how fast the world could fall apart, and I remembered what it was like when it did.

I kicked at one of the branches and started back to my tent. I wasn’t going to be able to get any more work done that morning. As I stepped through the woods, a flash of red caught my eye. Greer’s bandanna. He’d left it sitting on a rock by the trail. Right where he knew I wouldn’t miss it. I knelt and untied the bundle. The two biscuits were still there. Golden. Untouched.

When had I eaten last? Not that morning. The night before? Sometime earlier the previous day? That was the thing about Greer. He was never more annoying than when he was right. Kind of like you.

I took the biscuits off the rock and devoured them.





2


BY THE TIME I made it down to Greer’s camp, it was in full-on riot mode.

“Let’s not forget our ponchos, people!” Greer shouted as the kids sprinted from cabin to cabin, getting ready. “Radio says rain later on, and I don’t want a repeat of last time. Let’s move! We don’t have all day!”

There were eleven of them, five boys and six girls, ranging in age from seven to fifteen. They all lived on the grounds of the old summer camp about a quarter mile down the mountain from my tent. I had lived there myself for a while, but once Greer and the kids showed up, I’d grabbed some camping gear and found a place of my own closer to the peak of Lucy’s Promise.

Greer caught sight of me and planted himself a few feet away, his arms crossed over his chest. “What’s up, Cassidy? You forget something?”

“I’m coming with you.”

“Coming with me where?”

I stared at Greer until it dawned on him.

“What? No. Card, that’s not—”

“I’ll get Snow Cone’s meds, and then I’ll talk to Gonzalez about those two kids. We’ll work something out.”

“Work something out so you can bring them up here?”

“So we can find them a good home.”

“Card—”

The buzz in my head started up again, but I forced it down. “If we bring more people up here, Gonzalez can’t protect us. That’s it. Game over. Benny and DeShaun and all the others get stuck in that National Guard shelter. You want to take that chance?”

Greer looked away, his eyes narrowing on Eliot and Ren, who were play wrestling in the dirt by the main lodge while the girls cheered them on.

“We protect who’s here now.”

His jaw tensed, as if he were gnawing on a scrap of leather. “You haven’t been in town since—”

He cut himself off. No one liked to mention the night of the sixteenth, especially to me. To tell you the truth, I hated it—the way they tiptoed around me like that.

“Look, I’ve got my mask and my gloves. And it’s not like I’m going to stand in the middle of Monument Park. I’ll go see the doc, talk to Gonzalez, and come right back.”

“But—”

“Can we just go? Please? Seriously, Greer, we don’t have all day.”

Greer spun away from me and headed back to the kids. I hadn’t meant to snap at him. I’d apologize later. I just wanted to get this over with.

“Yo!” Greer called out. “Rugrats! Anyone not with me in five seconds stays here and cleans bathrooms! Five—four—three—two—one!”

The chaos stopped at once, and everyone snapped into a single-file line at the head of the trail that led off the mountain. As always, Carrie was in the lead, since that meant she got to be closest to Greer. She stared up at him adoringly as he gave the group their final inspection. He sent Astrid back to her cabin to put on more sunscreen and told Isaac to get a bigger backpack. Once they returned and Greer double-checked the four wagons they used to haul things up the mountain, it was time to go.

“Okay, troops! Let’s move out!”

I started to follow, but stopped when I saw Benny standing off by himself a few feet from the trail. He was all hunched up, head down, skinny arms hugging his chest. It was like he thought that if he tried hard enough, he might be able to make himself disappear.

Lassiter’s didn’t have any after-effects. Once it did its work erasing someone’s memories, it left them perfectly healthy. Unfortunately, that rarely meant they were okay.

At seven, Benny was one of the youngest kids in camp. From what we could figure out, he got separated from his mom and dad when they were all infected on the night of the sixteenth. Once the quarantine was in place, the Guard tried to reunite him with his folks, but as far as Benny was concerned they were trying to make him live with two complete strangers who acted like they were his parents. He ran away. The Guard dragged him back. He ran away again. Greer found him nearly a month later, hiding out in an old muffler shop. He’d been living on creek water and a vending machine he’d smashed open with a brick. Greer brought him up to Lucy’s Promise and, I don’t know, I guess the Guard finally decided they had bigger things to do than chase around one pissed-off seven-year-old.