Find Me Series (Book 3): Finding Hope Read online

  “You like gardening?” I asked, noting how he stared at the compost bin.

  With a quick shake of his head, he pointed at the loosely packed earth. “They’re stuck in there,” he said. Then he stuck his finger in his mouth and began to suck loudly on it.

  “What’s stuck in there? Did you lose something, a toy maybe?” I poked once at the rich soil that otherwise seemed to be undisturbed.

  “Can you dig ‘em out?” he asked.

  I flicked a rotting apple peel to the side. “Not sure you’d want whatever is buried in here, Mickey.”

  He nodded emphatically. “I do. Can you get ‘em out?”

  With a glance around the room, I located a small hand rake and began pushing back the soil, exposing the healthy dirt and a few worms that wiggled beneath the top surface, expecting to see a collection of plastic army men or Lego blocks, but finding only more squiggly worms instead. “Did you want to see the worms?”

  Cautiously, he peered around the edge of the bin, took a quick glance, then shook his head. “Deeper,” he said.

  “Hmm, not sure you’ll find anything else in here, kiddo.” But I continued to dig. I created a hole a foot deep before the rake snagged on a piece of fabric. After a sharp yank, the rake came free, and so did the skeletal remains of two bound arms. Cursing, I flew backwards away from the bin and fell down on a stack of potting soil.

  “Shit!”

  Mickey stared sadly into the bin, his finger still stuck in his mouth as he talked. “You found them,” he said around his thumb. “Thanks.”

  Still sprawled on the bags of dirt, with one hand clutching the front of my shirt, I stared at the bin. My voice shook. “Found who, Mickey?”

  “Papa and Nana. That mean lady put them here.”

  “What mean lady? Did someone hurt your grandparents, Mickey?” I was able to move again, and stood on shaky legs.

  With a nod, he looked back into the compost bin. “They’re sad,” he said.

  I approached slowly, hesitant at what else might be buried in the bin.

  But curiosity had always been my downfall. A few more digs in the dirt exposed a polo-clad torso, and a pair of tan-colored pants. Draped across the hips was another arm, slightly smaller in size. I pointed at the clothing, sure I’d seen them before, when it clicked in my memory. Mickey didn’t have to tell me who they were. I was looking at the old couple from the woods.

  When I put a hand out to touch him, he flinched back, avoiding contact. “I won’t hurt you, Mickey. Can you tell me who did this?”

  “I’ll show you,” he said with a curt nod. Then he bolted toward the exit, where he waited for me to join him. I began unzipping my own coat to give to him, but when he saw me pull an arm out, he shook his head. “I’m fine, promise. It don’t bother me.”

  “Mickey, it’s really cold outside,” I said, while pushing the door open. But he ran onto the narrow staircase before I could stop him. Full of energy and stubborn attitude. Just like any kid his age would be. When he got to the ground, he bounced on his feet and urged me to hurry.

  Once I met him again, he took off running around the building toward the front, despite my urges for him to slow down. He hopped in and out of the snow like a pro, swinging his bare arms up and down with each jump, apparently oblivious to the cold surrounding him. I’d gone to the garden for alone time, and was sucked up in another mission.

  It took me considerably more effort to make it through the drifts and between the buildings to the front of the main structure. I found Mickey just inside the lobby, where it was warmer for him, with the same thumb stuck firmly in his mouth again. With a heavy push, I opened the door and stepped inside, stomping the snow off my feet.

  “It’s freezing out there,” I grumbled. My California blood wasn’t liking the snow anymore. Sure, the first few flakes that fell were beautiful, but after being snowed in and forced to wear three layers of clothing just to not freeze to death in the short time it took to walk one cycle around the compound, I was over it. Way over it.

  Mickey pulled his thumb out of his mouth with an audible pop. He seemed paler and smaller than when I first saw him. “This way,” he said, turning to the left side of the first floor.

  “The infirmary is through there. Is someone hurt, Mickey?” I asked. He didn’t answer, so I continued to follow his small form around the elevator and toward the back rooms.

  He led me beyond a few doors and through the infirmary’s main room. I’d never been so deep inside the building, so after we went through the third set of doors, I got nervous, and asked where we were going. There were no signs, and it seemed as if he was leading me through private rooms we had no business being in.

  “It’s a secret,” he whispered.

  A light flickered above our heads, then blinked out. That left the only light coming from two tiny windows on the top of a double set of doors straight ahead of us.

  “Are we going in there?” I asked, unsure.

  “Uh-huh.” Mickey moved his hand, as if he wanted me to take it, then thought better of the idea and shoved his thumb back into his mouth. “I can’t go in there,” he said around his finger.

  “Okay. I’ll be right back, then.”

  The cool air dipped in temperature around me chilling through my layers as I approached the doors. For a moment I debated whether I should knock or simply enter uninvited. But a glance over my shoulder at little Mickey told me knocking wasn’t necessary. He wanted me to go straight through. Like a hospital emergency room, the doors appeared to swing both ways, so I pushed gently on them. With a subtle swoosh of air, the bright and sterile room before me came into sharp focus. Antiseptics and alcohol drifted by me, and the sound of pumps, machines and respirators whispered softly from all around.

  My eyes shifted from one side of the curved room to the other, roving over each body that lay motionless on a hospital bed, until they settled on the young form of a girl I knew.

  “What in the bloody hell is going on here?” I demanded.

  * * *

  Kris’s body was covered with a thin white sheet and light blue blanket, and she wore a white hospital gown. So many tubes and lines ran around the bed, I couldn’t tell which was which. Except for the urine bag, a thing that was impossible to miss. I hadn’t seen her in almost 24 hours, but it looked as if she’d been in a deep sleep for a year.

  “What’s going on?” I yelled. My fingers felt frantically along her body until they located her hand. I lifted it carefully from beneath the covers and held it to my face. “Kris, can you hear me? Wake up, sweetie.”

  A young man with a silver patch of hair above his left temple stepped around a nearby corner. He held a tray with a bowl and several washcloths folded neatly on top. “You shouldn’t be in here, Ma’am,” he said with surprise and authority.

  “What’s happened to her? Is she okay?” I snapped. Kris was non responsive, but breathing on her own. Her brown hair was clean and brushed back away from her face. “Is she hurt?” There was no sign of injury, no sign of anything wrong.

  “Oh no, nothing like that, but really, you shouldn’t be in here. This is a controlled environment.” The man’s face was scrunched with concern, and he set his tray down on Kris’ bedside table. “Let me see you out,” he urged, putting a hand on my arm.

  With a jerk, I pushed him back. “Get off! Tell me what’s happened to her, before I fuck up your controlled environment!”

  Confused, he looked around the room. “If you’re here, you must know. She’s under her mandatory observation period, Ma’am. I assure you, she’s perfectly well looked after. The procedure went just as planned. But you can’t stay here with her, I’m sorry.”

  “What procedure?!”

  A solid door in the back of the room opened with a whoosh of air, and a woman stepped in, wearing a white lab coat. She carried something in her hand that she quickly tucked into one of her pockets before approaching. “Riley. You really shouldn’t be in here,” she said.

  “F
ern, Fern…what’s happened to Kris? Is she okay?” I’d left Fern to care for Lily, and now she was hanging out in an unmarked medical room, dressed as a doctor, overseeing my unconscious charge. Confused wasn’t even the word for the emotions going through me.

  The male nurse lifted his tray without another word and crossed the room. He set the tray at the foot of another bed, where a girl barely in her teen years slept. I watched him pull the sheet back and lift her arms out. He began to carefully sponge bathe her from the fingers to the shoulder, being mindful to keep her upper body covered modestly. But even with the bedding still mostly in place, it was plain to see the slender girl had a bump around her midsection. She was pregnant.

  “Walk with me, dear,” Fern said, touching my elbow.

  “I’m not leaving her,” I warned, and stepped closer to Kris’ bed.

  “This isn’t the time to have this discussion. In fact, you shouldn’t even know of this place. Have you been snooping around the halls?” Though she smiled, there was a glint of something in her eyes that was new for Fern: malice. “I told them they needed to install a lock on these doors. Silly me, they said. Who would care about the bowels of this building?”

  I shrank back from her. My trust in the older, wiser woman was fleeing with every word she spoke. “I don’t understand.” I glanced once at the doors, afraid that Mickey would be discovered. “I…I was looking for Drake.”

  “No need to lie, honey. There are cameras everywhere.” She pointed up at the low ceiling and quietly stood still while I searched the room till I found one. A small lens protruded from one of the curved corners, facing the hospital beds and their patients. Well, I thought, then she already knew Mickey had led me there.

  “Don’t hurt the boy. He’s…he’s confused.”

  “The boy?” Fern tilted her head to the side, questioning my statement, then a look of understanding came over her face. “Oh, the boy. You mean that snotty brat of a kid who wanders around here, whining about his rich grand-daddy? I should have guessed it was only a matter of time before you saw him. His sister already made her appearance your first day. Do you remember her? Precious little Blossom. That urchin won’t leave me alone. Every day I work the gardens, she follows me around like my second shadow. I guess one would call it penance. If you were religious. Which you aren’t, are you?”

  The room felt smaller. The air thinner. I collapsed against Kris’ bed, afraid that Fern would touch me and somehow infect me with the evil I saw coursing through her shining eyes. “I don’t understand what you’re saying…”

  She waved a hand in the air. “Such sordid details to chat about now, aren’t they? But really, Riley. That old man would have kept this entire compound to himself. He was only going to allow his own family, the few that made it this far anyway, live here. Do you understand? The potential of this place, the community just waiting to be born - he would have wasted it on only half a dozen people. How can you start over with so few? Old fart just wanted a place to hide away from the plague. Good riddance to him, I say. We need real leaders of the future. Not just survivors, Riley, dear.”

  “So, what are you telling me…that you killed an entire family for this place?”

  “Me? Well, of course not by myself. The other leaders all had a hand in helping jump start this place.” Fern pushed a section of her frizzy brown hair back and played with one of the buttons on her white coat. When she saw the shock on my face, she scowled like a child. “They really left us no choice. He told us to leave. Fed us and let us stay one night, then said we had to go.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Because you are like me, Riley. A kindred spirit. I could tell the first time we met.”

  With my hands out, I pleaded with her to stop. “I don’t want to hear anymore. We are nothing alike. You killed innocent people. You’re hurting innocent people here.”

  “No one is innocent, Riley, no one. Not you, not these girls.” She flicked her hand around the room. “Most of them aren’t even virgins, even though they said so on their forms! Little liars! Did they think we wouldn’t be able to tell?”

  “Then why do you have them here?!” I screamed at Fern, and struck the bed where Kris slept with my fist.

  “Survival of the fittest. That’s really all you need to know about…this.” She waved her hand again, in equal parts pride and disgust.

  “Fuck. You.” I squared my shoulders. “I’m not leaving without you telling me what’s going on. Why you brought Kris here. Is she…sick? Tell me!” To demonstrate my resolve, I reached down and grabbed a handful of the wires plugged into Kris and lifted them an inch or so. “I’ll pull them out and drag her back to our dorm if I have to, I swear to God.”

  Fern shook her head and smiled. “God? He’s not here. Left this miserable race a long time ago. And no, you won’t. Not if you want what’s best for her, dear. She’s in a coma. Medically induced, so she’s just fine the way she is.”

  My mouth fell open. “Why would you do that to her?” I looked past Fern around the room again, at the young girl receiving her sponge bath, then to the other beds. Only two of the nine had flat stomachs, like Kris. The rest all showed belly bumps of various sizes.

  “What is this place?” I squeaked. My hand tightened on the lines and I glanced down quickly at Kris, where my eyes hovered over her midsection.

  Fern’s toothy smile stretched from ear to ear. “The Maternity Ward.”

  When I looked up with a jolt, Fern straightened, making her already taller stature even higher than mine. “Riley. How else do you expect a population to expand without controlled and purposeful reproductive involvement? Each of these healthy young women are helping us grow as a community…they’ll be the mothers of the new world. This is how they’ll serve to become the most important members of the Ark.” Fern smiled and leaned down to rub Kris’ leg.

  “Don’t touch her!” I smacked her hand away, disgusted. “She’s just a kid! There’s no way she would have volunteered for this!”

  “You’re right there. None of them did. That’s what the questionnaires are for, dear. You would have been considered yourself, but, alas, you can’t have children.” Her smile faltered.

  “I…we all…trusted you.”

  All those personal medical questions made sense to me then. The one that asked if we’d had children, which I left blank. And the other that asked if we could have children, which I’d answered NO. It might have been the only thing on that form I truly answered with honesty, since I’d had a tubal ligation after my son was born. They were screening the men and women for reproductive purposes, not for fear of spreading the plague. They wanted babies, and were playing God to make that happen.

  As I looked around, I had no doubt each of the young girls and women had gone ‘missing’ from the Ark. Easily excused as having left the compound on their own, but here they were, right there beside Kris. Perhaps it was Fern that was responsible for the other women’s deaths.

  “You’re crazy. Certifiable.”

  “Every mastermind has a brilliant idea. This one happens to be mine,” Fern said sweetly.

  “I’m taking her out of here,” I said. With a flick, I pulled back the top sheet and tried to determine which line to yank out of Kris’ body first.

  Fern moved beside me and grabbed hold of my wrist. “You can’t do that, Riley. The first few days after insemination are the most important. We shouldn’t move her. She needs to rest. They all do.”

  “After insemination? You’ve already done it?! Oh my God.” The room began to shrink again; the walls slid closer and the ceiling dropped down on top of me. My lungs forgot how to breathe. “What have you done?” I gasped. “What have you done…”

  “She’s a viable subject, Riley. A smart girl, healthy in all the right ways. Colton has become quite the recruiter - he was right about her - and if all goes well, she’ll help us produce wonderful new additions for the Ark. In time she will come to see how important she is. You should be ha
ppy for Kris, for all of us, really. This is our future survival right here, in this room,” Fern said, spinning quickly in a circle.

  My hand struck out, connecting hard across her cheek. The blow sent Fern stumbling back a step and instantly the nurse-maid in scrubs was at her side. Already, the perfect impression of my hand had begun to redden into a welt on her skin, and it was her shock that I took advantage of. With a hard shove, I pushed Fern into the equally startled nurse and ran from the room. If it was true what she said, that Kris was being kept unconscious, I would need help to move her. And then I’d take Kris the hell away from the Ark.

  But not before getting my hands around Colton’s neck and squeezing till he turned blue. That son-of-a-bitch wasn’t going to live to see another tomorrow.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  M ickey had gone off to wherever it was he spent his time when he wasn’t wandering the grounds as an unhappy ghostly spirit. He’d seemed so real. So alive. I didn’t have time to think about him, and if what Fern said was true. That he was dead, just like his sister. His grand-parents. His mother and father, probably buried somewhere on the property, or stuffed inside another compost bin. Fern’s way of thinking… it was ludicrous.

  I moved quickly through the medical unit and kept my head down after reaching the hall. A couple stood chatting by the elevator, so I turned and followed the curve of the lobby to the stairway door. Once on the staircase, only two others crossed my path before reaching Jacks and Lily’s floor. In a run, I flew down the hall and burst into their room. Jacks had Lily in his arms, flailing about and sucking on a wet washcloth. Her cheeks were flushed a healthy pink and when she saw me, she drooled a noisy hello and waved her hands in the air.

  “Riley, the bath helped! She’s so much better, look! Still has a bit of a fever, but it’s not as bad-” Jacks stopped talking when he saw my face.