Chapter 1

Danny stuck the needle in my arm, and the pinch was nothing compared to the burn. He was always apologetic while he killed me, like a doctor administering a vaccine to a child. Listen, kid, this hurts me more than you. But it wasn't a vaccine, and it didn't hurt him. He was the scientist. He had position and power; pumping poison into me and countless others secured that for him.

Danny hung the bag, connected the tube, and the fun began. Drip. Drip. Drip. My hands fisted; muscles twisted, as neon green snaked its way into my system. We didn't know what it was. We didn't know where it came from, or why the government wanted it tested. We just knew it hurt like hell: boiling blood, torching organs, devouring us like liquid gangrene. I'd done two bags the day before and barely made it home. It was only half full today, a kindness I'd pay dearly for later.

Six more women made up my group, all at various stages of deterioration. I'd been around longer than any of them. Danny kept me whole. The rest weren't so lucky. I watched them come and go, one after the other, healthy to half dead to replaced.

Lita, the girl in the next chair, was close to the final stage, and she'd noticed the favoritism I received. I avoided her gaze. I was an enemy, a traitor. I'd found a loophole and sold my soul to jump through it.

"Why does Willow only have half a bag?" It would be a miracle if she made it through the week. Festering sores coated her arms, her neck, her face. They filled the spaces where no hair covered her scalp. Angry, oozing craters marred her near translucent skin as if her body were a war zone. A war already finished. A war she'd lost. The fight should have been gone from her, but her question stole the moisture from my mouth. We didn't get to ask questions. We didn't get to say anything. I knew her rage. How it built over time, pressurized by the knowledge our world was fucked beyond repair. It was a dangerous mindset we all avoided. It didn't help. It only sped up the process.

The atmosphere charged as Danny stopped to stare at her.

Lita took a slow, rattling breath. "I have two kids who need me. I'm doing three bags. I'll barely be able to fill the ration tickets you give for this, let alone make it home and get them fed." Her voice broke and lifted. "They go to bed every night alone, with their mother passed out. I hear them trying to wake me, but I'm too weak to open my eyes. If I'm doing more, aren't I more necessary? Shouldn't I at least receive more tickets than she does?"

Danny shook his head. "These are trials. You knew that when you signed on. The amount we need to administer will vary, and the payment isn't based upon changes in the research."

"Bullshit!" She yanked against the straps binding her wrists. "Nobody chooses to do this; we have to!"

"Stop it," I hissed.

Her gaze met mine, wide and wild. She scanned the other women locked to identical chairs, their faces, their doses, as if it were her first time seeing. She shouldn't have opened her eyes. She shouldn't have let it sink in. Her heaving breaths quickened. "This isn't right," she said, scrutinizing the group again, pleading with the wrong people.

Heads lowered. Eyes averted. She was already dead, buried too deep to be heard.

"You just sit there," she said, shaking her head in disbelief. "We all just sit here!" Her gaze centered on Danny. "Undo my straps. I want to leave."

"For safety reasons, I cannot—"

"I want to leave!" Realization slackened her jaw, crumbled her features, because she knew it was over. She'd collapsed beneath the weight. Now the world would crush her, and the rubble would bury her children. She'd never make it home. She'd never get them fed. They'd never need to wake her again. "I want to leave. I want to leave." She seemed hypothermic. The way she shook. The way she stuttered.

Danny lifted a hand and started rattling off handbook jargon, policies and procedures, scripted and meaningless nothings meant to keep the cattle from stampeding.

When he continued to talk over her, Lita threw her head back and screamed. Then, she kept screaming, as if someone really might help. Like it would make a difference. Perhaps wake the rest of us. Lita wasn't the only one too weak to open their eyes.

Her shrieking sucked the oxygen from the room. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't cope. I sat frozen, doing what we all did, waiting for an end. Softer cries mingled with the noise. The newest girl sniffled and shook, and the woman next to her murmured a sharp command to be quiet. Like me, the rest were wiser. Lita made us invisible. All Danny saw was her. All anyone watching would see was her, but any move or noise could break the spell. Any reaction at all and we would become her: defiant, defective, in need of disposal.

Lita wrenched and roared, bucking hard against the straps. The brackets holding the chair down rattled, and the pole that held her dosage tipped.

Danny lunged and caught it before it hit the ground.

"Danny," I urged. For what, I didn't know. To save her? To make a deal?

He righted the pole and spoke from the side of his mouth. "They already saw."

To prove his words, three officials rushed into the room.

Wait!  The sound locked at the base of my throat. One word. A humane word. An insane word. A word that would have sealed my fate with hers.

"There is no greater good!" Lita wailed. "There's no humanity left to save!"

The men unbuckled Lita's flailing limbs, ignored her haunting screams, and dragged her away with no remorse. No pause. She'd committed the crime of being human. Human responses got you noticed. Being noticed got you listed. Being listed meant you were unworthy of inhabiting Earth.

A poster of Josef Arogander hung on the inside of the door, and the moment it swung shut behind them, he smiled at us. Approving. Blasting his message even there, even then. Deplete the population. Keep the balance between humanity and nature. Save the planet.

For the greater good.

* * *

I pushed through the front door and dropped two grocery bags into Merle's recliner. "Julia!"

She stepped into view, drying her hands with a dish towel too cheery for my mood; bright yellow baby chicks, smiling cows, and big red barns. Old. Normal.

"They stopped taking ration tickets for the produce," I said, motioning toward the bags. "All we can get is that god-awful gelatin shit they push on us." I kicked off my shoes and hurried for the sofa. The room spun, and my stomach churned, but it could have been worse. Danny had gone easy on me, and guilt about Lita gnawed at my insides. She'd been right. It hadn't been fair, and if she'd known the truth about Danny and me, she'd have been even more outraged. Her kids were alone now, and, tomorrow morning, they'd be no more.

I'd carry the blame.

Julia dropped the towel onto the counter, then stepped over to Merle's chair and peeked inside one of the bags. She grimaced. "I can't cook this shit."

Despite my thoughts, my mouth quirked up at one side. She always managed to draw a smile from me when I had no smiles to give. Then again, you didn't see too many sixty-five year-old women who sported hot pink skinny jeans, lime green tank tops, and spoke like Julia. "It's a good thing you don't have to cook it. It's ready to eat. I hear the ham flavor is to die for." Literally.

Her jaw clenched. "Yeah? Well, then, we'll just let the supreme leader have at it, because there ain't no way in hell I'm going to eat ham-flavored fucking jello!" She kicked the chair and turned back to the kitchen. "You can tell Josef Arogander that my squash grew in just fine, and if he wants a plate, he can meet me over on Kiss-my-wrinkled-ass Blvd."

I grinned. "Where's Merle?"

"Where the hell do you think?" She banged pots and pans as she worked to prepare a meal that had nothing to do with what I'd brought home.

I stood, and the neon green was a raging sea with waves large enough to sink me. I waded through the swells and found Merle in his usual spot inside the shed, working in secret. Gas-powered vehicles had been outlawed for years, but they'd have to kill Merle before he gave up his Camaro. Cherry red on the outside, chrome and love on the inside. He'd swapped the vin number with one on a junker when they started the round up, and low and behold, his baby had been hidden away, safe and secure for years.

When I stepped inside, he lifted his head. "Come here, Little Bit."

Little Bit. He'd been calling me that since the first day we met, and I'd hated it in the beginning. Men always started off with a little bit, then a little more, and more still. I'd have sooner expected to be struck by lightning than meet a man who wanted nothing from me. But then there was Merle, rare as rocking-horse shit, and treating me like his long-lost daughter. I'd been eighteen, just aged out of the system, when I stepped into him and Julia's diner, asking for a job. They'd given me that and so much more. They'd given me a home, a family, and proof that not all men were the same. So, when the diner got shut down with all the others deemed menaces to Mother Nature, producers of too much waste, I made my deal with Danny. To keep them alive, and I'd do it again because they were worth more than the entirety of The Greater Good.

I peeked inside the trunk: duffel bags, a hand saw, a box of nails, a hammer, a flashlight. "What's this?"

"A plan." He pulled the lid shut and turned to face me. "An old buddy of mine told me about a couple of 'uninhabitable' spots marked by the government."

I stared at him. "And?"

"We should go there."

I snorted. He was joking. Of course he was joking, but the longer I stood waiting for him to laugh, the more apparent it became that Merle was, in fact, not joking at all. "You know we can't actually do that, right? If it's uninhabitable, that means you can't inhabit it."

"That's the thing." He pulled a folded map from his jean pocket and smoothed it out onto the rear of the car. "There's two of them that they know of." He pointed to the first spot, circled in red grease pencil, then followed a line drawn down the river and into the canals where another circle had been marked. "Him and his gang are already living in this one," he said, thumping the page.

I raised an eyebrow. It was no secret Merle had been involved in some less than wholesome activities in his past. Hell, even now, he looked ready to hop on a Harley and live free or die.

"They saw the same signs marking this other while scavenging for supplies. It's not that far from us."

"It's not close either," I said. "How do you propose we get there? Get in our flying machine? We can't drive this car. They'd stop us within five minutes and take us all to the recycling bin."

Now he laughed. "With what? Those little fucking electric soapboxes they beep around in? Only way they'll stop me is if I choose to stop. No. We just go, haul fucking ass. From what Tex tells me—"

"Tex?"

He chuffed a breath, then glanced over with a stern jaw and crinkled eyes. "Yeah, his name's Tex. What's wrong with that?"

"We're taking advice about a place that may or may not exist, that apparently isn't inhabitable, from a man named Tex?"

"Look here, Little Bit. Men with names like Tex will be the only mother fuckers alive after this shit show is over. Now—" he turned back to the map "—from what Tex tells me, all we have to do is make it inside and the officials won't follow. They're dumping shit in these remote locations, and whatever it is, they're scared to death of it. Won't even go in with a hazmat suit on."

Men like Tex were probably already lying dead in a puddle of neon green. "What does that tell you?"

Merle turned and gripped my shoulder. "It tells me we've got a chance there. You think we'll last here? What about when your teeth fall out like all the other lab rats? They call you necessary, but they aren't skipping this house during the raids because they need you alive. They skip this house because you're already letting them kill you."

I swallowed hard. My argument dead in the face of his honesty. They were killing me. I could feel it. I'd seen it happen to the other girls. It had happened today. My thoughts drifted back to Lita. I thought about her children, orphaned. I knew how that felt. Home alone. Waiting. Already condemned to be rounded up and executed. Unworthy. Unnecessary.

Unless...

I could save them, make it right, fix one thing about this ugly world. "One condition," I said, heart accelerating even at the thought of such a massive decision. It was absurd. It was suicide. But there were worse fates than death on my terms. My choice, not theirs. Then at least I wouldn't be dragged away, thrown onto some inhuman heap, and forgotten. At least I'd die having done something. "We'd have to leave tonight."

Merle's lips thinned; one eye squinted. The expression he made anytime there was bad news. "Why the sudden rush? Did something happen?"

"They took a woman from the lab today. She has two kids somewhere." I paused. My fault. My deal with Danny pushed her over the edge. She'd pleaded for an ally, and I'd said nothing. I'd watched, unblinking, as she was carted away to slaughter. Her kids were alone because of me. They would die because of me. "We bring them with us."

Merle barked a laugh. "There's that fuck-the-government attitude I was looking for!" He ruffled my hair and pulled me into a tight hug. "Can you find them?"

I sighed and nodded slowly. "I think so. I can ask Danny to check her chart and give me the address."

His smile faded, eyes dulled. Reality was a shadow even Merle's light couldn't survive. "Be careful. Don't trust anyone who works for them. If at any point it feels like things are off, you hightail it out of there and get your ass home. I'll get Julia tied up to make it easier to leave." He winked.

I laughed, but it was hollow. I had a bad feeling. It was risky, and risky equaled stupid, but I didn't have a choice. I had to do something. Something human. I had to do something sane before I lost what little sanity I had left.

My time was running out.