Page 43 of Chaos

“What? No. Jesus.” He steps aside and holds out the flashlight. “Here.”

I take it woodenly.

He roots around in his bag and comes back with a handful of protein bars and a water bottle. “Take these, too.”

He shoves them at me. The protein bars mostly fall in a noisy series of clumps to the carpet under our feet, but I manage to keep the flashlight and the water. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Just answer Yorke’s questions. You’re on the wrong side.”

“I’m always on the wrong side, so that’s nothing new.”

I was on the wrong side of my dad’s divorce when he moved to California, married a Swedish model, had new kids he loved more than he ever loved me. And in school, I was on the wrong side again. Too poor, too smart, too angry, tooeverything. And then I met Ben, and for once, I didn’t feel like I was on the wrong side, but now …

“You don’t have to be.”

He leaves, but his words stick around in his wake like a heavy cloud.

11 |Exoticalmonds

FRANKIE

ILEAVE SHASTAand feeble-wobble my way down the many flights of stairs to the lobby on rickety knees.

It’s full of eyes and tracked-in mud and soldiers who look like they’re waiting for a war to break out.

They stare at me, some with benign curiosity, others with malevolence, a few in ways that remind me of Scraggle.

Mitsy watches me with eyes like slits.

Duane winks, and my skin crawls with revulsion.

All of it leaves me itchy. I find myself checking my fingers for dirt, smelling my shirt when no one’s looking, wondering what they're thinking.

Just when I’m about to turn around, original Thorneys come to my rescue.

Pearl presses a beautiful red freshly-knitted beanie cap into my hands as a welcome home gift, and Venus lifts me nearly off the ground in a hug. Hank gives me a teary, wet, and whiskey-scented embrace. Even Puck and Ty, who I’ve never been very close to, stop to give me hugs as they carry in new supplies.

And then there’s Colleen.

I want to hug her. I should hug her. We’re friends, we have been from the beginning. Her face on the TV comforted Jimmy as he died, but somehow, one look at her confirms my worst fears.

Ben isn’t going to die quick and clean.

Shasta was right.

She leads me to a private room she’s turned into her office, where she sits behind a desk in a silence that underscores that Ruby is well and truly gone. She’d be here otherwise with a clipboard and a husky-voiced wisecrack.

I fold my arms over my chest. “I hear you’re going to keep Ben alive.”

“That’s not my goal. I’d prefer to let him stand a fair trial, use this as a chance to cement a precedent at Thornewood.”

A year ago, I’d have agreed, but now I don’t. “He doesn't deserve a trial.”

“No. He deserves to die painfully. But it’s not for him. It’s for the rest of us. For the people who came from town and don’t trust us yet, some of whom feel a degree of sympathy for Ben, none of whom like Yorke anymore.” She clamps her lips together. “We have a crisis of trust with the military as well. We traded a lot of ammunition forinformation on your whereabouts and soldiers died looking for you.”

The air gushes from my lungs. “Who?”

“I don’t say that to make you feel guilty, but to explain how things are. We’re in a war no one wants to be in with the Butcher. Ben’s people and the Raiders are off in the hills. I’ve been working hard to connect with nearby settlements, and now they’re suspicious and nervous around us. Our own army is unhappy and resentful, our civilian population scared. We’re running out of bullets, as well as food. Duane nearly just caused a riot out there. We can’t add a public execution to the mix. I refuse to run Thornewood on terror.”