The First Twenty Read online

  He laughed. “No, I’m not. Enrique was our best chance. With him gone, it’s Graham or you.”

  “You’d take an old man over me?” Ryan shouted, gesturing toward Graham. His face turned red in the dim light of the room and Peyton saw a flash of hatred flicker over his eyes. Graham stood tall, his usual calm gone.

  Julian was arguing with Ryan now, in defense of Graham. Old Joe slammed his cane onto the ground three times, calling their attention back to him.

  “Shall we vote, then?” he asked. A murmur of agreement rippled through those gathered and Peyton stayed at his side. Ryan took up position to his right, his chin tipped up as his eyes flashed around the room.

  “Those in favor of Peyton for new head of security, raise your hand.”

  Peyton glanced around at the room and watched as Graham, Julian, Willow, Jasper, and five others raised their hands as if they were back in the schoolrooms. Nine for her. She raised her own hand, casting the tenth vote. There were only eighteen members of the security crew. Old Joe went with the formalities anyway.

  “Those in favor of Ryan, raise your hand.”

  The remaining five members in the room raised their hands, including Ryan. He shot her a glare.

  “I’ll speak with the three currently on duty tonight to see what their votes are and let you know of the official decision in the morning,” Old Joe said as he shuffled out of the room, seemingly eager to leave.

  Those who had voted for her stood to offer their congratulations and encouragement. She didn’t hear it as she stared at Ryan, whose eyes never left hers.

  “Don’t worry about Ryan,” Jasper said in her ear. “We’ve got your back.”

  “I’d still be careful,” Willow warned from her other side. “He’s got his friends. He won’t make this easy for you.”

  “Nothing ever is easy,” Peyton said softly, finally breaking eye contact with Ryan as his friends led him from the room.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “I thought I told you not to come back until you got what we needed!” Faulkner yelled from his makeshift shack.

  Nixie sat on the ground outside, trying to listen quietly. Bark pressed sharply into her back at an awkward angle, making her position uncomfortable, but she was afraid to move. If she didn’t move, didn’t make a sound, they would just leave her alone.

  She was tired. The trip had exhausted her. The dowsing had exhausted her, and it hadn’t been worth anything anyway. All the water they’d found had been impure and needed filtration equipment—equipment they didn’t have, equipment they were supposed to steal from the Settlement they’d found.

  But they couldn’t get it, and when they’d run across a group of them…

  Nixie shuddered despite the heat. She’d never seen so much blood before. The stench had been so strong that, for the first time in her life, she hadn’t been able to sense any water. And the man who had been killed…she frowned at the memory, still too fresh, and wondered if it would ever fade. Who had he been? He shouldn’t have tried to stop them, really. It was his fault he was dead. The so-called Settlers should share with everyone else. Nixie scowled. There were so few people left compared to Before, at least according to Faulkner, so why shouldn’t they all work together and pool resources? What was a little filtration equipment when they could probably make more anyway?

  The blue tarp that created the doorway to Faulkner’s shack pushed aside and Ranger emerged. He shot a brief, narrow-eyed glance her way before striding off in the direction of his own shack.

  “Nixie!” Faulkner roared. The tarp shoved aside again and his grizzled beard preceded him. “Get in here.”

  She scrambled to obey as quickly as possible. Of all people to cross, Faulkner was not the one. His hand may have been firm and tyrannical, but at least he kept the people in line. She’d heard horror stories from Travelers about times when they’d run across a group with no clear leader. They were better off this way.

  “Yes?” she asked timidly as she entered, not needing to duck like the others to get into the shelter.

  “What the hell happened out there?” He settled into an armchair. Stuffing protruded from a tear in the cushion, and stains covered much of the once-yellow fabric. The tinkling of glass followed as he settled back and stretched his feet out. One of the dozens of glass bottles surrounding him tipped over and rolled toward her. She brushed it to the side as she kneeled on the dirt floor.

  “We found water, but when I got closer, I realized it wasn’t pure. No amount of boiling would have made it safe to drink. It had some sort of…chemical in it.” She waved her hands vaguely, gesturing toward the ground.

  “Fine, but what about the equipment? How hard can it be to steal from a bunch of foraging Settlers? They’re like a pack of yearlings out here.”

  “They had a guard with them. He spotted us first.”

  “And you killed him. So where’s the goddamned equipment?”

  Nixie cringed. She was sure Ranger had just explained it all, so why did he ask her now, too? Was he trying to corroborate their stories? Make sure they weren’t lying? Why would they?

  “There were more of them than there were of us, and the guard blocked our attempts to retrieve—”

  “I thought you said you killed him.”

  “Before he died. He didn’t die right away.”

  “One guard against the five of you. Really?”

  “I don’t know. I’m just supposed to find the water.” She spread her hands wide and hunched in on herself, trying to become as small as possible. “I’m not trained to fight.” It was the one thing her mother had argued against, claiming it would dull her senses when it came to the dowsing. What had that lack of skill cost them?

  Faulkner sighed and hung his head, muttering under his breath. Nixie could barely make out the words, but she heard a faint useless witch mixed in there.

  It wasn’t the first time she’d been called that, and it wouldn’t be the last.

  “We need that equipment to survive. I don’t need to tell you how hard it is to find clean water around here.”

  “I understand that, but if we moved farther north, I think—”

  “We’re not moving. We have just as much right to this land as they do.”

  “I know,” Nixie quickly stated, trying to defuse the situation, “and I know you decide what’s best for us, you always have, but other groups have said food and water up north are more plentiful, and—”

  “We’re going to raid their settlement and take what they won’t share.” Faulkner ignored her. He stood up and paced the few feet between his walls.

  Are you insane? Nixie wanted to shout. They hadn’t even managed to get what they needed with the five in their party against a bunch of foragers and one guard. How would they manage to get inside their settlement and find the small device they needed to live? Has the madness spread to him? she wondered, eyeing him nervously as he continued to pace. His lips moved soundlessly.

  “Faulkner, I’d never question your decision, but is it wise to go after the filtration unit while it’s still inside their walls? I mean, after what happened, killing one of the guards, they’re probably more protected than they were before.”

  “They won’t expect it. It’s bold. They’re complacent when they’re in those walls. They’re just as bad as people from Before.” He sneered and Nixie shifted back on her knees. “Yes, this will work. Go,” he said after a moment. “Tell Ranger I need to speak to him again. We have to plan. This time we won’t fail.”

  Nixie scurried from the shack as quickly as she could. Outside, the camp had settled into its nightly routine, with mothers boiling water to sanitize it and preparing meager meals for their children. Ranger wasn’t at his shack. She asked the others if they had seen him pass through, but most just shrugged and went about their business. Weary, disappointed eyes were turned back toward their food.

  Word had already spread around the camp that she hadn’t found water.

  Finally one of the childre
n spoke up. “I think he went huntin’ with Harper,” he said from his mother’s feet.

  “Thanks,” Nixie said quietly, offering him a smile. It was all she could give him at the moment.

  Nixie sat down at the edge of the camp, just beyond the ring of trees, and settled in to wait. She wouldn’t go after them now; no way would she end up on the pointed end of their weapons like that guard had. With Ranger in a foul mood after talking to Faulkner, she wasn’t sure he’d stop even if he knew who it was.

  Trying to make herself as comfortable as possible, Nixie rested her chin in her hands. Her thoughts drifted to the others in the camp. They needed her to find clean water. These people who had become her family needed her, and she’d let them down. How much longer could they survive without a new source of water? Supplies were already so low. Nixie could feel it in her pores, in the way they tightened. She felt dry, as though her skin would crack from the gentlest of touches.

  Tilting her head back, she closed her eyes and breathed in deeply. If she concentrated hard enough, she could just make out the faint scent of the water from the cooking fires. In the air above her, though, was a different perfume. This one sang of gentle showers and plenty. Crisp and cool. Green. Alive.

  The rainstorm teased her. Small tendrils reached out in all directions and tickled her senses until her body vibrated from the pleasure of it. If they could have, her bones would have cried for it in welcome. But it was just that. A tease. The scent had been lingering in the air for the last two months with not a hint of the rain it promised. Faulkner had even gone so far as to send out scouts in the cardinal directions to track it after she had told him what she sensed. They’d all returned exhausted and without news.

  Nixie wondered if her desire to find water was overriding her abilities and making her mad.

  “Hey. Wake up.” A rough hand shook her shoulder sharply and Nixie’s eyes snapped open, all of her senses alert. She stared up at Ranger as he looked down at her, a mixture of amusement and momentary concern in his eyes. “What, you sleeping under the stars now or something?”

  “What?” Nixie asked, then looked around. She’d fallen into a trance waiting for Ranger to get back from his hunt, and she’d let her own concern get the better of her. “Did you get anything?” She saw the rabbit attached to his belt immediately after voicing her question and felt dim-witted.

  “You shouldn’t be out here alone,” he said simply, letting go of her shoulder and making his way toward camp.

  Nixie stood, scraping her palm on the tree bark in her haste to follow. “I was waiting for you. Faulkner. He wants to talk to you.” She’d nearly forgotten what she had been doing under the tree in the first place.

  Ranger grunted. “’Bout what?”

  “He wants to raid the Settlement.”

  “That so.”

  She hesitated before she voiced her concern. “I think…maybe the madness has gotten to him.”

  Ranger spun on her, grabbing her by both shoulders and stooping to her height. She gaped up at him, frightened.

  “Who else have you said that to?”

  “N-no one.”

  “Good. Keep it that way.” He let go, and she rubbed her left shoulder, wincing.

  “But, Ranger—”

  “But nothing. Don’t say a word. Don’t worry about it. If you’re right and he has been touched, I’ll deal with it.”

  Nixie stared after him as he walked away, letting him put more distance between them. If Faulkner had been touched, if the disease that seemed to creep up on the aged among the Travelers affected him, then the group could be in trouble. She’d heard tales whispered from people who never settled with one group, tales about entire groups of people destroyed by the foolish actions of a leader touched with madness. Sometimes she wondered just how much truth was in the tales of these people who preferred to be alone. Were they just stories told for a free meal and dry shelter for a night? But there had to be some truth in it. How else would so many of them mention the same thing?

  Besides, she’d heard Faulkner’s crazy idea earlier. And if Faulkner were going down that road, they shouldn’t travel with him. If they did, they were all vulnerable.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The apartment Enrique and Peyton had called home was too large without him there. Peyton turned around and took in the towering ceilings and covered walls. A few old maps of the city hung, the hunting trails etched out in red. Dad had altered the maps over the years as buildings fell and territory was claimed by other settlements. Would the task of keeping track of decay and potential hazards fall to her now that he was gone? Wouldn’t it be better to have one of the hunters keep track of the trails to monitor game movement? If she did accept the vote and take the position, the first things she’d change were the responsibilities of the group members.

  She glanced around at all of his other possessions. He’d been a collector, always finding something while out on security detail to add to his shadowboxes. He’d found the boxes in old buildings or made them from scraps of wood. Some of the other residents had called him a Scavenger because of his hobby, and she had grown up hating that, thinking they were insulting him. But Dad laughed it off. She could still hear him saying, Not a Scavenger. Just a collector of lost art. His lost art just happened to be little trinkets found on the trails.

  He’d always talked when they were at home, as if he couldn’t stand the silence. When he had first taken her in, he told her stories about the little odds and ends he’d picked up, making up tales of who they’d belonged to or what they were for. When she was little, she had believed everything he’d said, and the stories became a comfort to her. But as she grew, she knew not all of the tales were true. It had been nice, though, to hear about the good people whose items he reclaimed to keep them safe.

  What would she do without him? For the first time since his death two days before, his absence loomed like a shadow as the sun faded and a darkness settled over the apartment. Solar-powered lights that had charged during the day slowly flickered to life, and she knew she couldn’t stay there. The silence weighed on her heavily.

  Bolting from the lonely rooms and choking down the sorrow she had managed to suppress the last few hours, she headed for the large tower at the front of the building. At six stories, the structure made it possible to see far into the distance, though most of the residents didn’t bother with it, claiming no air moved through the large, paneless windows.

  The sun had disappeared from the sky and the moon hung over the tower, watching everything below it. Though the heat from the day waned, it wouldn’t dip low enough to cool anything off. They needed a rainstorm, and they needed it desperately.

  Peyton tried to distract herself with these thoughts as she paced around the tower room. A stray breeze blew through the window and whipped her hair around her face. She pushed it back and her hand caught in a knot. Tears formed in her throat and she tried to swallow them. How stupid to get frustrated by a knot in her hair! A sob tore through her and she settled against the ledge, allowing the tears to finally fall after holding them at bay for the last two days. Dad was gone, and he was never coming back. He’d left her alone, just like her first parents. Alone to fend for herself in a world gone horrifically wrong. She wasn’t sure how long she’d sat there, tears running down her face, when a creak in the floorboards alerted her to another presence. She sat up, alarmed, and swiped at her eyes.

  What luck if Ryan catches me like this. She couldn’t let any weakness show; he’d find some way to manipulate it.

  “At least it’s a cooler night than it has been.” Graham’s kind voice instantly set her back at ease and she turned to him. He said nothing about her tear-streaked face. Just paced around the room, looking out the windows and checking on the landscape, then smiled and stood at her side.

  How like him.

  Peyton enjoyed his silent strength as the moon rose a few degrees higher in the sky.

  “There used to be a saying. Before. That tears are
not a sign of weakness. Just a sign that you’ve been strong for too long. My grandmother told me that. The only time I saw her cry was when my mother died. She was a strong woman, and my mother being taken was too much.”

  “You never talked about your mother before.”

  Graham chuckled softly. “No, I guess I haven’t. She died in the first wave of disease. We were too poor to afford health care and she wasn’t vaccinated. I was only ten years old.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. She didn’t suffer. She didn’t have to see the world fall apart.”

  “But you were young,” she said, turning to look at him. The shadows hid his face, and it was hard to read him.

  But he’s always been hard to read.

  “You were young when you lost your parents, too. So much younger. You know, sometimes I think everyone who died, they’re the lucky ones. We might be alive, but we’re stuck in this hell. But then other days I think maybe we were chosen because we’re strong enough to carry the world and make it a better place.”

  “Chosen? By who? Are you talking about God?”

  “No,” Graham said with a shake of his head. “Not God. I stopped believing in God a long time ago. Just fate, I suppose. Or destiny. Whatever you want to call it.”

  “I don’t believe in that.”

  Amusement colored Graham’s voice as he agreed with her. “No, you never have. Always the cynical child of the bunch. Jasper was the dreamer. Still is.”

  Silence settled over them again, and Peyton watched as the stars, so bright and vivid in the sky, seemed to pulse. Like they were giant fireflies far in the distance.

  “What do you miss the most about the world before the Collapse?”

  Graham tilted his head as he thought about it. “The noise. The food.”

  Peyton looked at him, startled, and he laughed.

  “Oh, I know you’ve heard that the food was bad, and it was. Bad for you, but so good anyway. The restaurants we see as shells used to be filled with people, every day. When I was seven, my mother took me to a restaurant with a buffet. She told me I could have whatever I wanted. Peyton, you wouldn’t believe the amount of food there. I piled my plate so high and carried it back to my seat. I barely ate any of it, though. It was too much. My eyes were bigger than my stomach.” He laughed again at the memory and shook his head.