Page 65 of Chaos
“Where’re you gonna go?” Shane asks gently from behind me. “It’s cold and snowy. You can’t leave. At least not yet.”
I round on him. “What’s it to you?” When he doesn’t answer, I throw my arms out. “What the hell do you want from me?”
“Sometimes people are just nice.”
“No, they’re not.”
He huffs out a thick breath, looking up at the ceiling. “Look … I … I know how it feels not to have a place and to be all alone.”
“Oh, yeah, boy wonder with his adopted Marvel-hero dad knows what it’s like to be alone?” I cross my arms mutinously. “I’m not alone.” I have Ben. Or I will as soon as I figure out how to get him free.
Which, come to think of it, maybe Shane can help me with that.
Maybe he’s exactly who I should be cozying up to. I could push my tits together and offer a breezy smile. But that’s not me, and even the thought of considering it must put a glower on my face, because his hands come up in a disarming gesture, the one still partly bandaged, the fingers held stiffly immobile, laced with fresh pink scars.
“Fine, maybe I’m wrong.” He shrugs his backpack off one shoulder, tugs something from the pocket and shoves it into my hand.
It’s bright and brassy and heavy inside a plastic package. He shoves a screwdriver into my hand next.
My first thought is that I could use the screwdriver as a weapon. My second is … “A lock?”
His cheeks stain pink as he slides his pack back around his shoulders.
“The bathroom in the lobby flushes if you fill the tank with water, but the taps don’t run. People usually bring a jug, use some for washing up, and the rest to get the toilet going. You can get water in the hallway of the East Wing where there’s a cistern, or from the hot spring.” His voice is flat and cool. “There’s food in the Tastemaker. A conference room upstairs has extra clothes, toothbrushes, whatever you need.”
“What do you want?” I ask deliberately.
With a chiding shake of his head, he walks away, long, steady strides with long, steady legs.
I look down at the folded paper taped to the lock and flip it open. On it in shitty, wobbly, blue ink are the words:
So you don’t have to worry while you sleep.
The wobbly and fat letters make it clear they were written left-handed by someone used to using their right. Someone who wrote slow and tried hard.
My stomach rolls over.
A screwdriver worked for Monroe as a weapon in the third episode. She stabbed a zombie right in the temple with one. It would work on a non-zombie too.
I crumple up the note, hating the pit growing in my stomach. What the hell do I have to feel guilty about? I didn’t swing the hammer. I didn’t shoot that woman. I gave Frankie antibiotic ointment.
I don’t see him as I stomp down the corridor toward the cistern, shoving the crumpled note into my jeans pocket, or later as I head to the bathroom, or in the upstairs conference room where I root around in organized bins and find spare clothes, a new pair of sneakers, and a warm parka. I don’t see him at breakfast in the Tastemaker where I down three apples and half a loaf of bread covered in a funky cheese, while people gossip about a man who died in the infirmary.
He’s not there when Yorke drops into a seat near me, moving stiffly, his left arm in a sling. He props one booted foot on a chair opposite him. “Feel like talking yet?”
“No.”
He shakes his head ruefully.
People around us, soldiers and people who used to be part of Ben’s group, look at Yorke with suspicion and fear—a lot like how everyone looks at me.
“You know anything about Lavinia Hope?” he asks.
A tiny part of me wants to tell him he should pack up his things and everyone he cares about and leave, because, if Renata can be believed, there’s nowhere he can hide anymore. But maybe there’s a way I can use that to get Ben free.
He leaves without saying anything else.
I don’t see Shane at lunch.