"Yes, hun, we know," she said, patting his arm.

Geez.

I jerked the mixed vial up so the light could penetrate it, seeing the portion that remained was only about a third.

I looked over at Jade, sleeping on the grass at Brett's feet. I wanted to know what she'd be like when she woke.

Would the antidote work? Would she hate me still? Then my gaze shifted to an unconscious Howie. Really, he was fragment. But we couldn't leave him.

He wasn't going to be awake for the ride, though. I searched the clothes of Joe Zondorae, Gary watching me with cold eyes. Finally, I found the sedative.

I walked over to Howie, glad that Jade was asleep. I looked at Clyde and he jerked Howie up by the pits, his head lolling to the side. Chief sidled over to him, putting the sharpest part of the tomahawk against the tender side of his neck.

"Master," he breathed out, his eyes energized by the possibility of murdering this one. My thoughts bare before him.

I couldn't hide anything I felt from the dead.

He knew of my naked hatred for Howie. He wanted that to come full circle.

If Howie were dead, he would not be of consequence any longer.

The simplicity of zombies. Sometimes I admired their logic.

It just couldn't be beat.

Instead, I said, "Wait."

He tensed, my command a literal evocation.

Clyde slapped Howie's face in a singular and brutal clap that rocked his head back and his eyes burst open.

I smiled at Clyde, he got shit done.

Howie opened his mouth to speak. I was sure it would have been something really final.

Like, Go Die.

Instead, Chief pressed the blade tightly against his neck and his eyes shifted to the zombie that had eyeballs that were sticky and wet in its sockets, the tongue a black snake in its mouth.

More than ready to strike.

Yes, indeedy.

"I want you to tell the brothers a little something," I began.

"Fuck you, Hart."

Imaginative guy.

Clyde glared at him.

Chief drew blood, the blade sinking into the flesh at his throat and Howie rose on his tiptoes to avoid it, straining away from the steel tip. Chief followed his lean expertly, effectively trapping Howie's motion. Clyde looked at Chief and then gave his full attention to Howie. He hissed out of a perfect mouth, the sound unnatural even to my ears.

He had nowhere to go. Howie met my eyes again.

"Ready?" I asked in a conversational tone.

He glared at me, saying nothing. I jerked my chin to the right, indicating the brothers.

My zombies-of-the-hour dragged the Manipulative to the brothers.

I whispered to Howie what I wanted him to tell them.

He jerked his head back. "No!"

"You can't do it?"

"I can... but I won't."

"Losin' your nerve?" I strode closer to him, grabbing and bunching his shirt in my fist. "Remember, you were gonna tap my girl? You were gonna bid on her?" I said in a voice that trembled with palpable rage. He was lucky I didn't have the zombies do a hack-fest on him. It was soundin' pretty good about now.

He saw it in my eyes, gulping.

"Do it," I said and Chief jerked him with one powerful shake, his head whipped back on the stem of his neck, a broken weed if he didn't cooperate.

Clyde tied Howie to the post, the Chief standing with the blade at the ready. When they were done I turned to Gary, Joe just starting to stir, a gruesome lump standing vigil on his forehead.

"Where's the adrenaline, pal?"

He looked at me blankly. I smiled and said, "There are some advantages to being a scientist's son. Where there's a sedative, there's a counter. I know you have it."

I laid my palm open before him. Zondorae made a disgusted noise in his throat. From out of the depths of one of his pockets, he extracted a collector, the tab to release the substance, red.

I knew it was what I needed.

"How long?" I asked.

He sighed. "Twenty-four hours, maybe slightly longer."

Perfect.

Howie's eyes widened. I came to him.

"What are you doing, Caleb?" John asked, dragging Elise and Tiff behind him. My friends gathered around me, Brett stayed where he was, Jade was still sleeping and his injuries made him slow.

Gramps hobbled over to my position.

I looked him over. "You need an organic."

"Yup." He looked at Howie. "Do your thing, Caleb."

I nodded. Turning, I slapped the dispenser on Howie's exposed arm, turning it in the opposite direction of collection.

He flinched as I watched the thing drain into his arm.

I had about one minute before he did the hyper jitter.

I thought about his words then I looked at the Chief, who pressed that blade back to the wounded position with relish. Howie hissed at the stinging pain, the metal biting at the rawness that lay there.

"Speak," I told Howie like he was a dog.

Jonesy caught on quick, his arm around a woozy Sophie, Tracker scowling at the pair. "Roll over, play dead, be your own best friend..." he said with a grin.

Bry barked out a laugh. "God Jones, you're killin' me!"

"I'm your man," he bowed and Archer rolled his eyes but he was smiling.

Howie looked at the Zondorae brothers. Resigned, he said, pegging them with all his attention, his power coming off him in waves. "Release all the females, fight anyone who resists," Howie turned and looked at me, then his face turned back to them, "until your death."

I watched as his will poured over the brothers. All their intellect, their determination and desire for power and control gone to the thing they had created.

Their monster had come to sit underneath their metaphorical beds.

They stood, Gary tucking his brother against them and they went to a far point in the field.

We followed.

I looked at the zombies who remained, their unwavering stare waited.

I gave them one of the last commands they'd ever hear.

They moved as one and surrounded Brett and Jade.

She slumbered like that princess from the fairy tale. The one that waits for her prince to wake her with a kiss.

I was that prince.

I would be back and with it, we'd be just like we were before.

My confidence was due to be shaken. I just didn't know it then. I was just beginning the battles of my life.

*

I watched the women slip out of the small, temporary dwellings with surprised glances and looks they shared with one another. There weren't many older women.

In this society, once a woman could no longer be bred, she would be disposed of. I didn't even need to be told. It was on their faces.

Lifespan predicated on usefulness.

My friends huddled together, the girls staying close to the boys. Though Tiff came to stand next to me.

"Nice move with Howie, Hart," she said, giving me a guy clap on my back.

I nodded, I was happier than hell about it myself.

I glanced over my shoulder and saw bulging eyes and a stiff body in the distance. Howie's command as strong and enduring as when he first gave it. The adrenaline would keep it pumping into the brothers until it wore off. With that kind of head start, I was pretty sure that the females of this fragment would get a good lead.

A chance at freedom.

The brothers told the females through gritted teeth, "You're free. Go."

The males of the fragment came forward and the brothers said to them, "Do not interfere."

They moved back, confusion and indecision plain on their faces. To allow females, worth so much in trade, to roam free? To possibly be picked up by a wandering Band? Unthinkable.

My thoughts exactly, a huge grin overtaking my face.

The guys in the group grinned as the women packed a type of leather backpack with minimal supplies. I told John what I needed and he grinned.

"Not bad, Caleb."

I nodded. "I get to have a bright idea once in awhile, Terran."

He translated for the women what I'd asked him.

"Thanks," I said.

"No problem," John replied then looked at Elise. Her dark hair shone underneath the heat of the late day sun. Those midnight blue eyes painfully big.

Painfully astute.

"Caleb..." John began.

I swiftly looked at him. Then her.

Damn. John was crushing on the Organic.

"No man, you gotta leave her. She'll be alright."

He glared at me. "She may not be!" he said in a loud voice and Tiff raised her eyebrow at him.

He said in a quieter voice, "What if she can't find the clan?"

"Did you give her the right coordinates?"

He gave a hard eye roll and folded his lean arms against his chest. "You know I did," pissed.

"John..." I began.

"Hey man," Jonesy began slowly, "she's not a stray cat."

John's hands fisted.

Jonesy threw his hands in the air. "I'm right bro, think about it."

John did, looking at her as he did. She walked to him, her long skirt dragging slightly on the bright green grass. When she reached him she overcame her shyness and pushed a lock of deep red hair out of his eyes and I saw it then. John had found someone he liked. And it sucked hind tit that she was in this world. But she said it best when she spoke.

"John Terran," she began, pronouncing his last name oddly, like Ter-RAN, "I do not belong in this world of yours." She stroked his hair away again then let her hand trail down his arm, wrapping her fingers around his forearm, she looked up into his eyes and after a lengthy pause, he responded simply, "I know."

They gazed at each other for a full minute, the rest of us quiet.

Finally, he pulled her against him and rested his chin on the top of her head. "It does not lessen my desire to remain with you."

She stepped away and smiled. "This I know. And it has been one of my life's greatest gifts."

John smiled and in front of his friends, the Zondoraes and God, he kissed her like he was a starving man with the last piece of fruit before him.

Elise stood on tiptoe and received the first kiss of her life. Without abuse, without condition.

She received it for the gift it was, letting the stolen moment of passion overwhelm her.

For a long journey awaited her.

And the love that moved over her lips in a velvet press of eager and unsophisticated passion might be the last genuine thing she could hang onto.

As the young man pulled away, he jerked her heart out of her chest with his departure.

It lay in his capable hands, throbbing and pulsing with unrequited love.

I saw John's face ache as he pulled away from Elise. Their fingers parting after a kiss so long that it had swollen her lips. Finally, she and the other women made their way across the field and towards the Clan of Ohio. A place of safety.

A place that afforded them a new life.

Before Elise slipped into the forest she turned a final time and lifted her hand.

John lifted his in return. As I studied him, I saw something in his eyes.

I wasn't sure what it was but it looked a little bit like a promise.

Maybe John wasn't done here.

But I was.

Turning, I walked back from the field, never once glancing at the brothers. They would kill themselves in the end.

A justifiable death.

*

The zombies moved away like a sea parting from the bow of a swift moving boat and there Jade lay, high color where an ashen pallor had been before. Gramps stood, barely. He hung, partially suspended between Clyde and Gale, Parker holding up the rear.

Randi came forward, all traces of the sedative gone, her eyes bright.

Ready.

I looked at the broken fragment that littered and stirred on the ground. Many had lived when they had been thrown through the air like so much garbage.

We needed to go before they woke up or they would have to die. And I was getting tired of the war.

The killing.

But especially, the Graysheets.

Randi closed her eyes, Alex holding onto her hand protectively.

I looked at my zombies, bidding them their last command.

They fell away, and like ducks to water, they swam through the broken planks of the auction platform, like plaque into decaying teeth.

Home again.

The icy hotness encompassed the group as the strange inter-dimensional highway of Randi's power swarmed over our bodies. As it laid claim to Jade, her eyes opened and met mine.

I was never sure of their expression in that moment, blackness descended and we were hurtling through what lay between the dimensions.

My mind clung to what I had hoped I'd seen there.

Forgiveness.

CHAPTER 22

I drove at a frantic pace straight from the dump to the medical clinic. Gramps was in tough shape, his skin had a gray cast to it. And for him, he was feistier than ever.

"Gramps, don't be stubborn, you admitted to me when we were in the sphere world that you needed an Organic!" I half yelled at him, taking the corners too fast as the safety restraints snapped hard against our torsos.