Page 71 of Chaos

Instead of being stuck in a waterfall, maybe I can tunnel my way through a vent. It won’t make us bullets, or fix the garbage food or the angry Thorney, but it might solve something else.

The army is unhappy. They have no reason to be loyal to this place. Nor do the people who came from town. We’re not unified. We’re just a bunch of people stuffed together in a fancy resort, like Shasta said. We’re cave people with nothing to believe in.

I’ll finally make Yorke’s birthday cake, and I’ll plan a holiday, and I’ll fill Thornewood with beauty and hope again if it kills me. Maybe deserves that. And so do Yorke and Auden and Shasta and Shane.

All of us.

“Come on.” I grab Shasta’s hand and head straight for Tani.

I’m done riding the waterfall and sitting in the wings, being played like a pawn to other players with more agency.

Colleen’s not going to trade Ben away. He’s not going to live to come back and hurt my family.

Because I’m going to kill him.

And Tani is going to help me do it.

16 |That pregnancy glow?

YORKE

A NEW MAP is spread under the big windows in the War Room, draped over the tables, painted in shades of greens and blues. The only red is on the painted lumps of bullets that represent the sites of each of our battles with the Gray Caps during the month Frankie was gone, plus one to represent Hebron, the neighborhood with the solar panels where I was shot.

All are within four miles of each other.

Four miles. That can’t be a coincidence.

A railroad, denoted as a thick purple double line, runs a diagonal right through it, directly behind the cluster of housesthat are topped with solar panels, and the warehouse behind them.

We’ve had recon crews go in through the woods and confirm that the people guarding that warehouse are Gray Caps, and there are fifty or sixty there at any given time, guarding it and working inside.

They’ve added roadblocks made of felled trees and brush piles disguised to look natural, maybe hoping we don’t know what we saw that night?

Admittedly, I’m not sure what we saw.

But instinct says it matters.

It could be the solution to our biggest problem—bullets. If we had bullets, we wouldn’t have to worry about the Gray Caps. If we had bullets, we wouldn’t have to worry about Roanoke either.

Shane’s leaning over the map next to me, and Wendell’s perched on the edge of his chair, his injured leg stretched under the table as he studies the map.

“Tell me what she said again,” he says.

I suppress a yawn as Shane repeats his conversation with Ephie. The wording doesn’t change. He uses the same intonation, the same inflection. “‘Because the zombie queen wanted Yorke, and Ben wanted to hand him over, and Renata didn’t want to.’”

Shane whispers it again.

And fuck if I don’t think Ephie told him the truth. It fits with what Scraggle said.

Lavinia Hope is looking for you.

Translated to teenager, is she the zombie queen?

Is that where the pigeons go? Is Hope coming here?

Before Wendell can make Shane repeat it again, Rey, Jacquetta, and Church enter the War Room and join us.

“It’s too far for us to take it and keep it,” Church says heavily. “We’ve been over the plans fifty times.”

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