“I’m fine. . . . I mean, I knew Doc wasn’t going to win any father-of-the-year awards.”
He’s hiding his hurt, and for now I let him. We need to get back to his cell and wait for Ken. I charge forward, into the exercise yard—into chaos. People are running around wildly, trampling through tents and cardboard boxes.
“What’s going on?” I ask Jacks, but he looks just as confused as I am.
“I don’t—”
A woman runs at us, her hands scraped and bloodied. “It’s here!” she screams. “It’s inside!”
Jacks catches her and holds her arms. “What is it? What’s inside?”
“A Florae!” She wriggles from his grasp. “Run!” she screeches before disappearing into a sea of panic.
Chapter Twenty
I immediately reach for my gun with one hand and pull on my hood with the other, then push Jacks against the wall. My Guardian training kicks in, and I scan the yard for any signs of nearby Floraes, but all I can see are frightened people, some running around without direction, a few too terrified to even move. One man sits on the ground, sobbing into his hands. A woman is knocked to the hard concrete but manages to regain her footing before she’s trampled.
“Do you have a weapon?” I ask Jacks.
He shakes his head. “I’ve never needed one.”
I grab the knife I keep on my left thigh and hand it to him. “If there’s a Florae, you’ll need this.”
I’m surprised when I look at him—his eyes have gone glassy with fear. “Don’t think about it. Just go for the neck or try to stab the brain through the eye.” I take a step away from the wall.
“Where are you going?” he asks, desperation in his voice.
“I’m going to find the Florae and kill it.”
“Are you crazy? You’re going to die.”
“I’ll be fine,” I call over my shoulder. “I’ve done it before. Trust me. Go back inside the wall.”
When he doesn’t respond, I stop and look back at him. He holds the knife limply at his side, his face slack. I can’t just leave him there. He’s petrified, and I have no idea if he’ll be able to defend himself. But I can find the Florae and kill it before an outbreak occurs. I could save hundreds of lives.
I go to him and pull up my hood just far enough for him to see my eyes. “Jacks. Go back inside the wall. Circle around to the cellblock and close the door. I’ll meet you at our cell. You’ll be okay in there.”
He focuses on me, shaking his head. “But it’s a Florae.”
“That doesn’t matter. If you see one, don’t think about what it is. Think about what you need to do to survive.”
Jacks nods, steeling his face. “Will you be okay?”
“I’m trained for this.” I put my hood back down. “You may know Fort Black, but I know Floraes.”
“Good luck,” he tells me, starting to sound like his old self. “I’ll meet you at home.”
Home. The word sounds so foreign to me, but I nod. He turns and disappears inside the wall.
I wade into the chaos of the crowd, searching for a flash of green, listening for the creature’s distinctive snarl. It’s next to impossible to move through the mass of people struggling to escape without the slightest idea where to go.
“There!” someone shouts off to my left. “He’s changing!”
I fight through the tide of people fleeing the area and find a group of men beating another man. He’s unconscious and bloodied, but doesn’t look like he has begun to change, or even like he’s been bitten. I try to step in to stop them, but I’m knocked to the ground and someone steps on my arm.
I roll to the side and up to my feet and again try to stop them, but there’s no reasoning with the mob. Then another man is accused—one of the men who’d been beating the man on the ground. “His hand! His hand!” someone is screaming. I see only knuckles bloody from beating the first man, but the crowd sees a Florae bite, and they’re immediately upon him.
I leave the fighting men behind, trying to focus on finding the Florae. There could be dozens of them by now, but I can’t find a single one. I make my way across the exercise yard, the tents and cardboard homes mostly trampled under the feet of the panicked masses.
Through the chaos, I still can’t find a Florae. Did one really get inside? Someone must have seen it to sound the alarm, but then where is it? Feeding somewhere? It could still be consuming its first victim. I scan the exercise yard to see if there is a particular area that people are running away from, but everyone is fleeing without direction.