Blood Moon by Gwendolyn Harper (books for students to read .TXT) 📕

reached back blindly, awkwardly fondling what she thought was an abdomen. “This is Booker.”

Time was a cruel, sluggish thing, stretching each moment to the point of agony.

Nathaniel dropped his arms, taking half a step back. “You’re…”

He didn’t finish the statement.

She tried to find some words of explanation or comfort but nothing came.

Two women off to the side began whispering to each other, hiding their grins behind their hands.

Apparently, mortification survived the apocalypse.

Taking another couple of steps forward, Booker extended his hand.

“Nathaniel, right?” He said with a nod. “It’s good t’meet you.”

In a daze, Nathaniel blinked. “Uh, yeah. Good to… meet you too.”

Caitlin barely registered Nicole’s red hair as she scooted around her, greeting Nathaniel with a hug and a kiss on the cheek.

“Smooth, Meadows,” Booker whispered. “Real, real smooth.”

She’d never wished for a sinkhole to swallow her up faster than right that second.

“On a scale from one to ten, how awful was that?”

Booker tsked, cocking his head. “Generous estimate? ‘Bout a seventeen.”

“Oh God,” she muttered, desperately wanting to cover her face and hide.

“Sorry to interrupt,” Max said, wincing as he approached. “But Luna and Trish would like to speak with you. Nathaniel, are you joining us?”

“Joining?” Caitlin repeated, stare volleying between the two men.

Max nodded. “Well, yes. Nathaniel’s one of our elected officials.”

Looking to the sky, Caitlin swore that if there was a merciful God, He’d rain Geeks down on her and prevent her from having to sit through another minute of this unbearable reunion.

The tent flap was pushed to the side and Max motioned for them to enter.

And no Geeks came to end her misery.

Chapter Twelve

After weeks of searching, they’d found the mysterious Rejects whose reputation had preceded them across several state lines.

They were all so much more normal than Caitlin was expecting.

Sitting on overturned milk crates in a circle inside the tent, the elected officials’ portion of the group consisted of three men and three women. Luna, a woman in her late thirties with jet black curly hair and deeply tanned skin, sat directly across from Caitlin and smiled.

“So, Max tells us you’ve been looking for us for a while,” she said.

Caitlin faltered. How much should they tell these people? Could all of them be trusted?

“Yes, ma’am,” Booker said, nodding.

Luna chuckled. “Haven’t been called ‘ma’am’ in a while.”

“He says ‘darlin’ a lot too,” Nicole commented. “Takes some getting used to.”

“And what exactly was it about our group that piqued your interest?”

Caitlin shifted slightly on her borrowed crate-seat. “We first heard about you in Arkansas.”

“We haven’t been there in almost a month.”

“Well clearly you made an impression,” she said. “We were looking for people who might know something about an Ark camp.”

Luna opened her mouth, but Caitlin lifted her hand to stop her.

“We know, they don’t take new people,” she continued. “But if our theory is correct, they have someone important inside. And we need to find them.”

For the first time since taking a seat, Nathaniel looked up. “You mean Scott?”

Nicole pitched forward, elbows catching on her thighs. “Do you know where he is?”

Nathaniel jerked his chin. “Yeah. Well… I did. I think I still do.”

“What do you mean?”

Folding his hands in front of him, he said, “Scott and I were in the same Ark camp in New York. When the rotter population got too big, they were worried about the camp getting overrun, so they started shipping people out. We landed in Ohio first, then Kentucky.”

“Scott’s in Kentucky?” Nicole asked.

“No, not anymore.”

Caitlin frowned. “Wait, what do you mean you were in an Ark camp together? You left?”

“More like I was banished,” he said with a scowl. “We all were.”

Glancing around the tent, she searched everyone’s faces.

“You were all kicked out of an Ark camp?”

“Different ones,” Luna said. “It was within the first two weeks, when the people running things were still pretending to be humane.”

Trish leaned in, adjusting her glasses as she said, “It’s how our group got its name. We were all rejected.”

“I don’t understand,” Nicole said, shaking her head. “Why would they take you in just to force you out two weeks later?”

“A couple days after arriving, they had everyone submit to a blood test,” Nathaniel started. “We all just thought it was to check us for infection. Then the north east started to fall—there were just too many rotters and not enough people to fight them. So, we got transferred, and we got checked again. And then a third time. But then one morning before breakfast they started calling out names, telling us we needed to have a meeting. Since Scott’s a doctor, he was assigned a work detail pretty quickly. I just thought they’d finally gotten around to giving us jobs too.” He sneered, staring at his hands. “That is until we were being shoved onto a bus without warning and taken out into the middle of nowhere.”

“They just… left you?” Caitlin murmured.

“My group was dropped in the center of a hot zone,” Trish said. “I guess they figured the rotters would take care of us so they wouldn’t have to.”

“Exterminators,” Booker growled under his breath.

Nicole inched to the very edge of her seat, looking ready to stand, leave, run.

“Nathaniel, where’s Scott?” Her voice frayed on her husband’s name.

“The day we were exiled, the Kentucky camp it…” Nathaniel’s gaze fell to the dirt floor. “It didn’t get overrun, but something was going on. I noticed even before we were getting bussed out of there. The organizers were acting a little frantic. That morning Scott mentioned something about the medical team needing a useable lab, not just a triage area like they had. When I was being led out, I heard one of the camp coordinators say