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TWELVE

KITTEN

We spent a restless night in the barracks, on bunk beds with twenty or so soldiers in the room. I listened to their snores and muffled moans, smelled their body odor and farts, cataloging every shift they made in the middle of the night. And the whole time I worried about Cipher. Where was he? What were they doing to him? What if he came back to find himself alone and trapped in a strange place?

What if he didn’t come back at all?

One of the soldiers spoke to us early in the morning, just as the light was coming through the skylights in the roof, but I was so lost in my thoughts that I missed what he was saying.

“Breakfast is in the mess hall at zero seven hundred hours,” Macon told me from the bunk above mine. I sat up in bed and tried to pat down my hair. I was wearing the same clothes as yesterday, my mouth was grimy, and my eyes were gritty from lack of sleep. And none of it mattered if Cipher wasn’t okay.

Macon climbed down from his bunk and offered me his hand. He pulled me to my feet, then wrapped me up in a good, hard hug.

“You’re going to make me start crying again,” I told him, wiping my eyes against his shoulder. Too late.

“I know, but you looked like you needed a hug.”

“I did need a hug. Do you think he’s okay?”

Macon took a moment to consider his words. “I think he’s probably no worse than he was with us. You did the right thing bringing him here, Kitten. We weren’t equipped to care for him. Maybe here, they are.”

I nodded glumly and followed Macon out of the barracks. After asking a soldier for directions, we headed toward the mess hall. Cautiously, I glanced around at the other people occupying the space, mostly soldiers in fatigues or higher-ranked officers in jackets with sharp creases, their lapels adorned with medals that signified their rank and accomplishments. There was something comforting about a hierarchy where everyone knew their place and who to answer to. Cipher would hate it though. It was the opposite of the way we lived our lives, where everyone had a say in things, where impassioned arguments often led to the best ideas. We practically had to force him to be King Asshole.

I tried to pay attention to what I observed in passing because Cipher would want to know these details–where the barracks were located, how many people they housed, what sort of weapons they carried, what their defensive and offensive capabilities were. As we turned corners and entered new corridors, I tried to make a mental map in my mind. Maybe I could even draw it for him.

The mess hall was a windowless warehouse structure, lit by the same skylights we’d seen in the barracks. The kitchen, though, had fluorescent lights and working electrical appliances, which meant they must have generators. A lot of them. It reminded me of the communal cafeteria in Promised Land, only the population here seemed divided between soldiers and medical workers. Each division appeared to stick with their own–lab coats and scrubs in one area, people in uniform in the other.

Macon and I kept our heads down, not knowing whether we’d be welcome here or seen as intruders. I saw only a few people in plain clothes like us, perhaps medical workers on their day off. Breakfast was scrambled eggs and potatoes, and each of us were allowed a thick slice of crusty bread with butter and strawberry jam. I generally loved strawberries but now they left a bad taste in my mouth, and the butter–I was too sad to even taste it. I cursed my brother and myself too. The more I thought about it the worse I felt. There was nothing Cipher wouldn’t do for me. What if I failed him?

“When’s the last time you’ve eaten?” Macon asked, bringing me back to the present.

“I dunno. Yesterday morning?”

“Then you must be hungry.”

I shrugged in response. My stomach was grumbling, but I didn’t have much of an appetite. Hungry, Cipher had said to me. He hadn’t known who I was or who he was. What if he never came back?

“You need to take care of yourself, so you can take care of Cipher,” Macon said. “He wouldn’t want you to miss meals, especially ones like these. You gotta keep up your strength now, Kitten. This might take a little while.”

I nodded, appreciating his words, even if they did nothing to soothe my worries. I picked up my fork and stabbed at the potatoes, mechanically putting them in my mouth and chewing. They were crisp and well-seasoned but even those details didn’t seem to matter.

“I promised him I wouldn’t let him become that, and I’ve already broken that promise. I shouldn’t have let him go out there alone with my brother,” I said, voicing my regret. I didn’t want to think of my brother right then or else I’d get angry all over again and that really wouldn’t be good for my appetite.

“It could have been any of us. Cipher was unlucky, that’s all. We’ll have our answer soon enough. Either they have something to help him or we put him out of his misery.”

Black or white. This or that. Macon made it sound so simple. Cipher’s fate was out of our hands. I had to give it up to God, truly.

We muddled through our meal, glancing around, not saying much. When we were finished, no one had given us any orders, so I looked to Macon and asked, “What now?”

“I saw a gym on our way here. How about we go lift some weights.”

I shrugged. It was as good a plan as any.

The next two days passed in pretty much the same manner. We ate our meals in the mess hall, worked out in the gym, played cards in the barracks, and waited for someone who knew something to come find us and give us an update. None of the soldiers or higher-ranked officers had any information, at least that’s what they told us when we asked. So, we existed in a state of suspension, waiting for news of Cipher.

At dinner time on the third day, we finally saw Captain Crenshaw. After apologizing for her absence–she was on a mission in the field–she sat down with us in the mess hall and asked us how we were doing.

“Not good,” I said. “How’s Cipher?”

“He’s stable,” she said, which was a relief.

“Is he still Rabid?” I asked.

“Technically, yes,” she said as if trying to be careful with her words.

“Can I see him?”

“No, not yet. He’s still very contagious.”

“When can I see him?”

“I don’t have any say in that, I’m afraid, but I was sent here by the lab to act as an intermediary.”

“What does that mean?”

“A lot of our patients have been infected with the disease for a long while. The treatments aren’t as effective. Sadly, a lot of them don’t survive.”

I blinked, trying to read between the lines. “Are you telling me he’s going to die?”

“No, you did the right thing bringing him here. The chances of his survival are far greater than if you’d waited.”

“Do you know his chances?” Macon asked. “A percentage or something?”

“I’m afraid I can’t give you an estimate. But Dr. Godara, the researcher assigned to his case, said he’s responding very well to treatment.”

All of it was good news, but it wasn’t nearly enough to reassure me.

“What if the treatment doesn’t work?” I asked.

“We have a lot of different things we can try, but if it comes to it, we can end his life in a humane way.”

“He’s not being tortured is he? Are these treatments… are they painful?” I asked.

“There are drugs that help ease the process. And it seems the virus itself is pretty painful. Imagine a hunger so intense that you’d want to eat other humans.”

I didn’t need to imagine it. I’d seen Cipher struggle with it. The hunger had taken over completely.

“Now, we need to discuss another matter. I noticed the vehicle you arrived in. In fact, I recognized it as one of our own,” Crenshaw said.

I glanced toward Macon, who only gave me a warning look, the set of his brow telling me to be careful.

“Did you know its previous owner?” she asked.

“Um,” I said, trying hard to play it cool.

“He was also the person who owned those two rifles you have in your possession and various other weapons, I’m sure. He was a former lieutenant with the United Forces, stationed in Texas, dishonorably discharged.”

“Oh,” I said.

“So, why did you lie about the vehicle, Joshua?” Crenshaw asked, staring directly at me.

I looked at my hands, not sure I could keep this up much longer. “Cipher didn’t want anyone to know that we had it. He was worried someone might try to take it from us.”

“Well, as you can imagine, this complicates things significantly. I have more questions to ask you both, separately this time, so that we can get to the bottom of this. Are you finished eating?”

I looked to Macon, worried the burger I just ate was going to come right back up.

“Yeah, I’m finished. I’ll go first,” Macon said, then balled up his napkin and threw it on the table.

He was stalling, giving me time to get my story straight. But how could I? Crenshaw had already caught me in a lie once, and something told me she wasn’t easily fooled. I didn’t have Cipher here to coach me on what to say. What if I screwed this up too?

“Did you know that the vehicle’s former owner, Jeremiah Lange, had an arrangement with the leader of Promised Land, the man you knew as Brother Larry?”

Captain Crenshaw and I were sitting across from each other in a room that I assumed was her office. The desk was huge, littered with stacks of paper and a single lamp that flickered every few minutes. Fluctuations in the voltage of the generators, I’d learned from Wylie and Gizmo. They must have a lot of gasoline in reserve to be able to run their generators nonstop. Cipher would want me to ask about that, where they got their gas and how many generators they had going at any given time, but I had more important things to deal with right now.

“What kind of an arrangement?” I asked at last, studying my hands so that I wouldn’t have to meet her hawk-like eyes.

“An illegal one,” she said.

“Oh,” I said, which seemed to be the safest response I could give her.

“We were working on apprehending Lange, in fact, when you and your friends found him deceased from a Rabid attack.”

“Were you going to arrest him?” I asked, trying to keep the waver out of my voice.

“Yes, we were,” she said.

“Then I suppose it’s not so terrible that the Rabids got him?” I ventured to say.

“Did you kill him, Joshua?”

Wow, I hadn’t expected her to come right out with it. I thought there’d at least be a warm-up to the murder accusation.

“No, ma’am,” I said.

“Do you know who killed him?”

I glanced to the corner of the room where a coffee pot stood, half full, the liquid inside of it black as tar. I wondered how old it was. How often did Captain Crenshaw get a craving for a cup of coffee? There had been coffee in Promised Land too. You couldn’t grow coffee beans here in the United States, which meant Brother Larry must have traded for it. Was it the same with the United Forces? Were they making black market trades with scum like Jeremiah?

“Where do you get your coffee?” I asked Captain Crenshaw.

“Guatemala,” she said shortly.

“There was coffee in Promised Land. I only tried it once or twice. Cipher used to have a cup every morning. And then it was hard for him to go without it. He has an addictive personality.”

“Did one of your friends kill Jeremiah Lange, Joshua?”

I only wanted to keep Cipher safe. He did it in self defense to save my life, and honestly, Jeremiah deserved it.

“He kidnapped me,” I blurted out.

“Who kidnapped you?”

“Jeremiah did. Brother Larry traded me for a neonatal incubator and some other stuff too. Weapons, I think. Jeremiah took me from our house in the middle of the night. Gassed us all. He wanted to use me as bait for Rabids, which he did. He also wanted to rape me.” The words came tumbling out before I could stop them.

My whole body started shaking then, despite the relative warmth of the room. Crenshaw stood and went over to a closet, pulled out a scratchy-looking field blanket and draped it over my shoulders. I gripped the edges and pulled it tighter around me.

Crenshaw’s voice was gentler now when she asked, “And how did you get away?”

“Cipher tracked us down by following the Humvee’s path. I was tied to a stake, passed out from an asthma attack. Jeremiah had the rifle and was picking off Rabids. They shot at each other–Jeremiah and Cipher did. Cipher killed him.”

I took a deep breath and exhaled, glanced behind me as if Jeremiah might be lurking there still. Dead as a doornail, Cipher told me and Cipher never lied.

“It’s okay, Joshua. You’re safe here.”

“Am I?” I asked because it seemed like yet another trap.

“You’re under my protection here. If you continue to be honest with me, I can help you and Cipher both.”

I tapped my foot under the table. Cipher would hate this, would hate me telling her our secrets. He’d warn me not to trust her, any of them, but I’d already given his life over to them. What else did I have to lose?

“What happened next?” she asked

“Cipher burned Jeremiah’s body with the other Rabids. We took his weapons and the Humvee and went back to Promised Land. We had to get the rest of our family out of there.”

“Did any of you see Brother Larry on your return?”

I bit my lip, remembering the argument we’d had, how stubborn Cipher had been, wanting justice for my abduction when all I wanted was to get our family to safety.

“Cipher went to confront Brother Larry, and he insisted on going alone.” Like always , I thought with some bitterness. “So I followed him to his house.”

“And what happened there?”

I forced myself to recall that night, though I’d rather not think of it ever again.

“Brother Larry admitted what he’d done and that I wasn’t the first. Cipher didn’t know I was there. I’d climbed in through a window in the bedroom. Brother Larry held a gun to Cipher’s head and was about to shoot him, so I snuck up behind him and stabbed him three times, aiming for his kidneys.”

I must have been a heartless bastard because I felt little remorse for what I’d done. The choice between Cipher’s life or Brother Larry’s was an easy one to make. Larry even deserved it for what he’d done to me and the other victims before me, what he’d intended to do to Cipher. Still, I hadn’t wanted to kill him.

Crenshaw sat back from the desk, steepled her fingers in front of her and eyed me steadily. “According to the autopsy, you were accurate in your aim.”

I nodded somberly, feeling zero satisfaction from knowing it. I didn’t tell her Cipher had taught me that move. She probably considered us murderers already.

“And what happened after that?” she asked.

“We left Promised Land, arrived in Greenville a few days later, and started building our compound.” I stared at my hands, turning them over so they were palm-side up, remembering the blood and how it dried on my fingers and got caked under my fingernails. For days they were black with it. Dumb as it was, I felt better for telling the truth. I didn’t want to be a dirty liar and a murderer.

“Cipher didn’t kill Brother Larry, and what he did to Jeremiah… the man deserved it, you said so yourself,” I told her.

“I did,” she nodded.

We stared at each other, neither of us speaking. The suspense of it all was unbearable. The quiet was too loud. “So, what happens now? Are you going to arrest me?” I practically held out my wrists for her to handcuff.

“Are you a threat to our safety? Do you plan on hurting anyone here on base?”

“No, ma’am. Absolutely not.”

“Then there’s no need to take any immediate action. I’m going to need to write this up in a report to my superiors, your account as well as Macon’s.”

“And then I’ll be arrested?” I asked. I didn’t want to be jailed, but it seemed like I deserved some sort of punishment for taking a life.

“Our criminal justice system has changed significantly since the virus took hold. We don’t have the resources to house prisoners, nor the manpower to watch over them. More often criminals are sent to labor camps or executed. That’s if they’re not pardoned.”

“Are they going to execute me?” I asked. I’d rather know up front what she thought my punishment might be.

“Hopefully not. That would be a waste.”

“So, a labor camp then?”

“I’m going to make sure the disciplinary board knows the full extent of what happened. The fact that Jeremiah Lange was known to traffic in humans and illegal firearms will help your case. His death could be reasonably considered self-defense.”

“But not Brother Larry’s?” I asked.

“That one is a bit more complicated. It happened in his home, there were two of you, no witnesses or prior history of violence from Brother Larry, though we’ve long suspected that he also trafficked in humans and other illegal goods. But your honesty in telling me what happened will shine a favorable light on your case. There is also one other thing you could do that would demonstrate your commitment to law and order.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“Simple fact, we need more soldiers, Joshua. We’re understaffed here as it is. The work is taxing and dangerous. Not everyone is cut out for the service, and you have a lot of skills that we find desirable.”

“What would that mean for my case?” I asked.

“As a United Forces service member, you’d be granted clemency, and any and all crimes would be pardoned.” Crenshaw slid the recruitment pamphlet across the table toward me. I knew what it said already, had memorized every detail along with the map. “I’d like you to consider joining the United Forces of America,” she said.

Cipher would hate it, would tell me not to sign my life over to an imperial force whose mission was to stomp out the little guy.

They’ll change you, he’d say.

They’ll use you as fuel in their ravenous war machine.

You’ll hate every minute of it. Kitten, don’t do it.

But Cipher wasn’t there. He was fighting for his life in the lab, thanks to my own inability to protect him. I’d sworn to never leave him alone, and I never would by choice, but I had to do what was best for both of us. I had a better chance of surviving the service than a labor camp, and part of me believed I needed to atone for my sins. Cipher would be safe and when he recovered, he’d be free from any repercussions. He could return to our compound and take care of our family. It was only five years…

I’d second-guess any decision I made, especially one this important, but at the end of the day, I had to be able to look at myself in the mirror and like the person I saw staring back. Cipher would understand. I’d make sure of it.