Because we gave donations every week, none of us Greens looked really healthy. We ate a lot, but we never seemed to be fed. Not Carter. Whatever he’d been doing, he’d put on muscles that even the benign, genderless hoodie couldn’t hide.
Of course, whatever he’d been doing since the Before, he hadn’t been doing it here. Not on this Farm. If he’d been here, I would have known about it.
“What are you doing here?” I asked. “Why were you following me?”
“I just got here two days ago. When I saw you on the quad earlier, I knew I had to talk to you.”
“Why?” I pressed.
“What do you mean why?” He looked at me like I was crazy and brushed at the lock of hair that had once again tumbled into his eyes. “Because you’re the first person I’ve seen here that I knew in the Before. I didn’t know for sure if anyone I knew was still—” He broke off sharply as his gaze shifted away from mine. I saw him swallow and got the feeling maybe he was doing that talking-to-keep-from-blubbering thing, too. I looked away until he spoke again. “I was glad to see you.” He gave a little chuckle. Like maybe he was embarrassed. “Really glad.”
“So why not talk to me then?” I had no way of knowing if his story was true.
“What? Out on the quad?” he asked, mockery in his tone. “You wanted me to just stop and chat with you there? In front of the Collabs? I haven’t been here long, but even I know better than that.”
“So instead, you just followed me back here to beat the hell out of me?”
Okay, I knew, this was irrational. I had attacked him. But I was trembling inside and right now my tough attitude was all that was holding me together.
He hesitated, smiling just a little. “Actually, beating the hell out of you was plan C.”
I sucked in my breath at his smile, faint though it was. People didn’t smile much on the Farm—not Greens anyway—and I’d completely forgotten that warm fluttering feeling a smile could give you.
I shoved the feeling aside. If Greens didn’t smile, it was because we didn’t have the energy for that kind of crap. We sure as hell didn’t have the energy for warm fluttery feelings, either.
“So what were plans A and B? Stalk me for a while and scare me to death?”
“I’d already noticed that Greens don’t loiter much on the quad. I was afraid stopping to talk to you out in the open would attract attention. So plan A was to follow you into the dining hall and talk to you there, but you disappeared in the crowd. So I went back out to look for you. When I saw you come into this building, I followed. Some guy I saw on the first floor told me a couple of girls lived on one of the upper floors, so I came up, hoping it was you.”
“Hmm.” I mulled it over.
Yeah, it made sense, and yet I hadn’t kept us alive on the Farm this long by blindly trusting everyone we’d known in the Before.
“Jesus, Lily, you always so suspicious?”
I studied him through narrowed eyes as I stepped over to the desk where he’d placed the shiv. I made a show of picking it up and sliding it back into my belt loop. “Yeah. Lately I am.”
“Lately?” He raised an eyebrow. “Only lately?”
Let’s see, I’d been hiding a weapon, I’d negotiated the trade of a Class A controlled substance, and I’d bought a homemade shiv from the one guy on campus I hoped I could trust. All while planning a prison break. Any one of those things could get me sent to the Dean’s office. So, yeah, lately I was even more suspicious than normal.
Which was why I wasn’t about to say any of that aloud. Instead I stated the obvious, speaking slowly, as if he were a total moron.
“Yes, Carter. Lately, vampire monsters have swept across the country, killing everything in their path. We were brought here for our own protection, but we haven’t heard anything from outside the Farm in months. So it’s feeling more and more like we’re just being raised as food. Like veal. And where the hell have you been for the past six months that it hasn’t made you paranoid, too?”
I was surprised at how bitter my words sounded. Not that the whole being-raised-as-food thing wouldn’t make anyone bitter.
“Hey, Lily, I’m—” Carter reached out a hand toward me.
“Look, I don’t have time for this crap. Why did you come find me?” I dodged out of his reach and bent down to pick up the sweatshirt I’d dropped on the floor.
He shoved his hands into his pockets. “Like I said, you’re the first person I’ve seen here that I knew in the Before. As far as I know, you’re the only person I know here on this Farm.”
A flood of questions rose up inside of me as the implication of his words registered. He’d been on the outside. He’d seen what was beyond the fences. He knew what was out there. I opened my mouth to let out that flood of questions, but felt my throat close over them.
He’d also been glad to see me. Me, even though we hadn’t really been friends. I thought about what he hadn’t said. The way he’d cut himself off earlier before finishing his sentence.
All my questions sort of hung there in my mind. I could have asked if he’d been to our hometown. If he’d seen my mother. I could have asked, but I didn’t. I was too afraid that I knew the answer, and I wasn’t ready to hear it aloud.
“Where were you before now?” I asked, my fear making me sound angry. I wasn’t brave enough to ask about my family, but if he’d been somewhere else—anywhere else—then he might be able to tell me what awaited Mel and me once we got out. I hadn’t been beyond the electrified fence surrounding the Farm in over six months. Sometimes I’d go up to the roof of the science building and stare out into the town beyond the fence, looking for signs of life. Signs of anything outside. For miles around, there was nothing but empty buildings, deserted cars, and the path of destruction left by the Ticks.
Maybe this was what every town looked like now. But I had to believe that somewhere out there, civilization chugged on. Truckloads of food arrived every week. That food came from somewhere, right? I never saw anything during the day.
At night sometimes, you could hear the Ticks out there, howling in an obscene cacophony. Like someone was skinning a dozen puppies alive. But we never saw or heard humans from beyond the fence.
“Have you been out there?” I asked softly, wanting to hide how anxious I was for any shred of information about the outside world. “What’s it like? Are the Ticks everywhere? Have they killed . . . everyone?”
I’d mindlessly walked closer to him. He searched my face, and there was something unsettling about the intensity with which he looked at me. His eyes seemed to scour my face, taking in every detail, as though he had been desperate to find me. Like I was somehow important to him. I shivered and stepped back.
Jeez, he must have been alone a long time if he was this glad to see me.
He glanced out the window again. “I don’t want to talk about what’s happened out there.”
He sounded so damn vulnerable, part of me just wanted to let it go, but I couldn’t. I’d never be able to trust him unless I knew more about where he’d come from and how he’d gotten here. Even though I’d known him in the Before, I couldn’t afford to just trust anyone these days. And maybe there was some tiny part of me that still hoped.
I was about to risk Mel’s life with this crazy escape plan, and I owed it to her to find out everything I could about the outside.
“Please,” I begged. “Can’t you tell me anything about what’s out there? I know nothing about what’s going on beyond that fence. When our parents sent all of us here, they were told it was temporary—just for our protection. Just until they could find a way to kill the Ticks. And when they couldn’t find a way to kill them, they said that as we got older, our blood would be less appealing to the Ticks and that they could set us free, but I don’t think that’s what’s happening. It’s been months since we’ve seen or heard anything from the outside other than food deliveries. Are there still any humans out there at all? Did you see any sign that the police or the army was fighting back? Is there any place that’s safe?”
He sent me a suspicious look. “Why do you want to know all this stuff about what’s outside the Farm? There’s no way out of here.”
Crap. Had I tipped my hand? These all seemed like normal questions to me. Things anyone would want to know. But had he guessed that I actually needed the information?
“Because you just showed up here,” I improvised. “Out of nowhere. And I have no idea where you’ve been or what you’ve been doing.” I let my hand drop to the handle of the shiv. “And unless you can give me a pretty good reason why you showed up now, I think you better leave.”
He stared at me for an instant and I got the impression he was trying to decide just how much to tell me. Finally he turned away, stalked over to the windows on the far side of the room, and stared out for a long moment.
I’d just started to wonder if he was going to answer at all when he spoke.
“When I left Richardson High, my parents sent me to this military school, way out in south Texas. The guy who ran it had some pretty unique military experience.”
“You mean he’s, like, a Green Beret or something?”
“Yeah, something like that.” He spoke in a flat voice, the way people do when they’re trying to sound bored but aren’t doing it very well. “When everything collapsed, we hunkered down and held out. No one was much interested in some boys’ school. So we hung on until . . .”
He let the words trail off like he didn’t want to say anything else.
“Until?” I prodded.
“Until we didn’t.”
The stark simplicity of the statement chilled my blood. He turned back to face me, all traces of his smile gone. Somehow, he looked both less and more like the boy I’d known.
“And now you’re here?”