“We’ve got to get in the truck, Rebecca,” I said. “We’re going to take you somewhere safe. You won’t have to worry about the MM anymore.”
I hoped she couldn’t hear my doubt. I hadn’t been to the safe house. I didn’t know what it was like, or if we’d truly be protected. It was a place of hopes and dreams, and for all I knew, nothing but a fairy tale.
Neither of them moved.
“We have to go,” pressed Chase. “Sean.”
Sean’s hands gripped the seat in front of them. He looked at Chase for a long moment and nodded.
“Becca,” he said, without turning her direction. “Do you want me to take you back?”
What was he doing? We couldn’t go back now. We couldn’t stay in this town another second.
Rebecca didn’t answer.
“We’re not far,” he said. “If you want me to, I’ll take you back. But you need to know that I’m not going to leave you there alone. I’m not leaving you again.”
A soft whimpering came from Rebecca’s side of the car.
“I’ve got a brother, Becca. Matt. He was nine when I joined up. I never told you about him because I left him there, in St. Louis, in this two-man tent my dad got for us when we were kids.” Sean’s voice broke. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “He was sleeping when I left. My dad had been gone over a week, and I knew he wasn’t coming back this time, and I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t take care of him. So I enlisted. I went back once, but he was gone. A caseworker got him, is what the neighbors said. Put him in foster care. I told myself it was better than him dying with me, but that was a lie. He was my brother, and I left him, and I’m not going to make that mistake again.”
I felt Chase’s eyes on me.
“Just give me an answer,” said Sean. “We’ll go to a safe house together, or we’ll go back to the hospital together. Which is it going to be? Do you want to go back?”
He wasn’t kidding himself. He knew exactly what would happen if he went back to that hospital. But he didn’t care.
I felt a hot, guilty tear slide down my cheek.
“No,” whispered Rebecca.
Too quickly, Sean grabbed her, and pulled her into a hard embrace. She fought him, writhing within his grasp, but he didn’t release her, even when she punched his burned back. I meant to intercede, but Chase pulled me away from the car. His arms encircled my waist and I sagged back into him, hating that she was hurt and hating that I couldn’t fix it.
After a moment, the punching stopped. I glanced up hopefully, but saw that Rebecca had simply succumbed to exhaustion. Her head hung slack against Sean’s shoulder.
He took that moment to lift her in his arms, like a child who’d fallen asleep on the couch. He carried her to the truck and set her delicately on the tailgate. When he was inside he lifted her again, and carried her into the dark interior.
I looked around at the faces from Chicago, daring someone to laugh, even crack a smile, but nobody said a word. It could be any one of us, and they knew it.
There were no boxes to sit on inside, and the metal floor was serrated and unyielding. I sat close beside Rebecca, and Chase sat close beside me.
“Nighty night, ladies,” said Truck as he slammed the rolling door down.
Like when we’d traveled in the back of the Horizons delivery truck, I felt my brow dew with sweat and a sudden panic sear my lungs. But for the first time it wasn’t because I thought Tucker might attack me. There were now bigger things to worry about than my mother’s killer.
The truck jostled and bumped, and we all grabbed one another to keep from sliding. Someone was praying in Spanish. I could hear Jack mumbling that we shouldn’t go. There were still people in the tunnels. People we could save.
We had nothing. Not a change of clothes, not the letters I’d written Chase, or my mother’s magazine; they’d all been lost along the way. We would start a new life with only what we carried.
I felt through the dark for Rebecca’s hand, and then Chase’s, on the other side. My family.
And then Rebecca’s head fell to my shoulder, and I wept.
* * *
“YOU’RE going to love it, you know.” Mom zipped up my backpack, having checked to make sure my lunch pass was tucked safely in the inside pocket. “Seventh grade is a big deal.”
I wished she’d stop saying that. I knew it was a big deal. All new kids and all new teachers and a school I’d only been to once before. I shuffled my feet to the door when the knock came.
Chase stood outside, skinny as a pole and almost a foot taller than he had been at the start of the summer. His black hair had grown shaggy again, and he pushed it back with one hand. Though he was starting high school today, he didn’t look nervous at all. He never looked nervous.
They said their good mornings, and Mom told him he looked handsome in his new shirt, which I was pretty sure she did just to embarrass me. I couldn’t even look at him after that.
“You’ll walk her all the way to the front doors?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Chase said seriously. We were meeting Beth at the corner; she and I could handle walking to school ourselves. But for some reason I didn’t tell them so.
Mom leaned down and kissed me on the forehead. I hugged her then, for a long time. After school seemed a long ways away. But when we separated, she smiled, and it wasn’t so hard to say good-bye.
“I’m proud of you, baby. I’ll be here when you get home.”
* * *
WE stopped at a checkpoint in Indiana, a small farm, where we reconvened with the remaining Chicago resistance. The elderly couple that ran the place greeted us with buckets of fresh scrambled eggs and canned meat, which we passed around in famished silence. I tried not to think about the fact that if they were caught, they’d be executed for an Article 9 violation alongside us.
Rebecca was still wearing the yellow scrubs from the hospital, but had finally agreed to place her braces on beneath them. They allowed her to walk independently, though she relied heavily on the two canes, not yet accustomed to the spacing and weight distribution of each step.
She denied my assistance at every turn. It was better than her despair, but it made me feel useless. When I told Sean this he just smiled.
“That’s Becca,” he said. “Only worry if she starts asking for help.”
I began to object, but he said, “We got her out, Ember. The worst of it’s over.”
I hoped he was right. Before we could talk more, Rebecca stumbled on her way to the food line and he jumped up to give her a hand. When she shot him down the same as she’d done to me—with a glare and a sharp “I’m fine”—he turned back to me and winked, and I couldn’t help but feel encouraged.
We weren’t there long before help arrived. It was a smaller truck, less than twenty feet long, but blue like its brother, with the FBR logo painted on the side. I choked on my water when I saw the carrier greet Truck like an old friend.
Tubman wasn’t wearing his loud Hawaiian shirt—he was still in the uniform Riggins had traded him back at East End Auto. The puckered scar on his right cheek drew my gaze from ten feet away. The last time I’d seen him, he and Cara were leaving the Knoxville checkpoint for the safe house.
“Well, well, well,” he said, giving me a devilish smile as he approached. “Sounds like you been up to some trouble.”
From out of the back of his truck jumped a lanky teenager with a greasy mat of hair hanging in front of his eyes. A laugh bubbled up as I pushed by the carrier.
“Billy!” We collided, my arms wrapping around his bony shoulders. “You made it.”
“Marco and Polo took me to another checkpoint to see Tubman,” he said. He backed up a step, scratching his head when he saw Tucker. “He didn’t turn us in?”
“No,” I said, watching Tucker interact with a few of the Chicago guys. “He’s … all right.” I couldn’t believe what I was saying.
Billy looked confused, but let it go. “You haven’t heard anything about Wallac
e?”
I shook my head.
A grin spread from ear to ear. “He’s at the safe house then. He has to be.”
I didn’t disagree, because maybe he was right, maybe we would find Wallace. If we could pull Rebecca out of rehab, and find Billy after all we’d been through, anything was possible.
We loaded the trucks—a tighter fit even with Tubman’s storage capacity—and moved on toward the Red Zone.
* * *
WE drove through the night.
Truck’s compartment, which had seated only ten before, now held almost thirty, with the back area dedicated to Rebecca, the medic, and the other injured soldiers. The rest of us took turns standing and sitting, sleeping, and passing around water and bland cookies the woman had baked us. We smelled wretched, like body odor and antiseptic.
In the darkness it was impossible not to think about the tunnels, and the crushing weight of the landslide that had buried me under the table. Claustrophobia tightened our anxiety. Tensions rose, like the mercury on a thermometer, and then returned the speculations about the bombings: who had been followed? Who, as some were brave enough to mutter, betrayed us?
Only Sean, Tucker, and I knew the truth: that someone had sold out the resistance. Someone internal had tipped off the MM. I wondered if he’d already been completed in some jail cell, or if he, like Mags and so many others, had died in the tunnels.
Or if he were in this truck right now.
Some broke the pressure by talking about the safe house. A few of them had been there, and nearly everyone had sent family that direction.
“If every other person’s mama lives there,” asked someone from the other side of the compartment. “How big is this place?”
“Big,” said someone.
“Real big,” said another.
“It’s a town, man. They’ve taken over a whole town.”
At first I struggled, trying to place something like the Wayland Inn or the tunnels in the context of a beachfront property. But then my mind relaxed, and I saw houses on stilts, like I’d seen in pictures long ago. Homes filled with people, bustling with life. A soup kitchen line, like at home, where rations were given out. Yellow sand and the ocean, deep and everlasting.
Marco and Polo had suspected it wasn’t just refugees that inhabited the safe house, but the mysterious Three as well. Would their presence make us safer? Or put us in more danger? Finally the vehicle jostled to a stop, and we all braced for what might wait outside.
Trees. That was what I saw first. Tall and leafy, overgrown with ivy and spindly webs that reflected the face of the moon. The air seeped into my pores, so much fresher than the suffocating interior of the truck. My whole body lifted. We were going to be safe at last.
I listened as hard as I could, but couldn’t hear the waves. Some of the people from Chicago had talked about that—hearing the ocean, smelling the salt. But I couldn’t.
I couldn’t hear soldiers either. We were far away from the road, far away from any bases or patrol cars. Miles and miles from the FBR.
We were free.
Truck helped me down, carting me from the tailgate like I weighed no more than a small child. Up close I could see that his eyes were sunken with fatigue, and his huge muscular neck was the same width as his jaw.
“Where’s the ocean?” I asked, frowning.
“Six miles east,” he said, his face falling into shadow. “Usually there’s a scout here to lead us into camp. I tried to radio ahead to them we were coming, but the lines are down.”
I frowned, and he play-punched my arm. “No worries,” he said. “They probably just ran out of batteries. I know the way in.”
The injured were carried, or loaded on stretchers made from blankets. Though Rebecca had tried to walk unassisted, the soft, mossy soil was too uneven for her dragging feet, and she reluctantly agreed to let Sean carry her piggyback.
Truck led us on a narrow path through the darkness. With my good arm, I carried a bucket of medical supplies that had been salvaged from the tunnels, and Chase hauled a flat of ammunition. Despite the added weight, the weariness lifted off my shoulders and my body hummed with excitement.
We stopped at a stream to rest the injured and refill our canteens. My worries about Tucker, about Harper, about the rat who’d sold out the Chicago resistance, drifted downstream with the current. I let the cool water wash over my hands and my sore wrist and my face, and breathed in deeply.
When I opened my eyes, I found Chase watching me. His face was momentarily void of the worry he’d been carrying since the hospital, his eyes clear of the horror we’d seen there. Now a small smile lifted his mouth, and he settled back on his heels. It took me a full beat to realize that he looked relieved.
I don’t know what it was, the fresh air, or the freedom of movement after hours in a cattle car. Maybe it was that we finally knew Rebecca was safe and that we were so close to security, or just the way he looked at me, with all the secrets stripped away. Whatever it was tipped something inside, and I splashed him, soaking the front of his shirt and his shins. His mouth fell open in shock.
Then, just like when we were kids, I ran.
I raced away from the group, darting around trees and over bushes, hearing his footsteps hot on my heels. His hand grasped at my waist once, but I evaded him with a stifled scream and ran on. We were in a Red Zone, off the road, close to the safe house—we would not be less in danger than we were right now.
He caught me before the lights from the stream had disappeared. His strong arms closed around my waist and hoisted me up and I kicked through the air and giggled. He smiled into my neck, and I smiled, too, because this, this was joy. This, at last, was the leap beyond escape, beyond the shaking threshold of survival.
“Come on,” Chase said, taking my hand. “We’re close. I can hear the water.” We’d come back for the supplies we’d left at the creek.
I listened, but I couldn’t hear what he had yet. Still, I raced after him, faster and faster in the direction of the coast.
The smell hit us first. Pungent wood smoke, oil and dust. Something metallic, too, overriding the salt in the air. I heard it then, the sound of the ocean. The waves. But everything within me had clamped down, and excitement could not penetrate the foreboding sense of danger.
The trees cleared, and the grass grew long, almost to my shoulders. We shoved through, cresting a sand dune.
My heart tripped in my chest.
“No,” Chase said weakly.
There before us were the remains of a town. Houses were burned to the ground; some still smoking. Black and charred like the night. Brick and concrete had been blown away, decimated, like the buildings in Chicago. Piles of fresh rubble, yet untouched by moss and weeds, blocked out whole city streets. The hood of a car rested on the ground near us, warped and bent by the explosion that had catapulted it thirty feet away from its overturned body. Beyond it all lapped the silver ocean, constant and deep, unable to voice the horrors that had taken place here.
My knees weakened, and I pitched forward, succumbing to the weight of our hope as it crashed down upon us.
The safe house had been destroyed.
CHAPTER
21
THE ashes clung to my boots, to the legs of my pants. To my arms and my hair, to the sweat of my neck. To the empty cavity in my chest, where joy and hope had both been carved away.
Fifty warm bodies within fifty yards of one another; that was what Sprewell had said. There had been more than fifty people at the safe house, all gathered close for their mutual protection. Heat-seeking missiles had leveled them. LDEDs. That was the only explanation; soldiers on foot would have needed an evacuation route, and there was simply too much demolition to be anything but bombs.
When we’d mobilized enough strength to return to the group, I’d told Jack and Truck this, and Sean and Tucker, intent to see the damage for themselves, had been brought in to corroborate what we’d learned in the rehab hospital. Those still with their wits abou
t them were immediately tasked with rounding up the group for a roll call. With chaos erupting and fear running rampant, this was no easy task, but after a while they fell in line.
There were forty-seven of us in all, counting Rebecca, the Knoxville contingency, and Tubman. Not fifty, but close enough.
Chase was the one to suggest we split up to survey the damage. Rebecca and the others injured in the tunnels were assisted back into the cover of the woods by Sean, the medic, and three other soldiers. There was a wildlife station in the marshes, a dingy shack filled with mosquitoes and stagnant pond water, but it had a roof, and could hold ten bodies laid out on the concrete floor.
Truck and Tubman, our drivers, formed another team.
“Someone’s got to warn the other branches,” said Truck. “Quick. So they don’t send anyone else out this way.” It was something I imagined Three would have done, but if they still existed, they would leave no directions for the carriers here.
“I’ll go.”
I turned sharply to find Tucker Morris. His face, cast downward, was stripped of all emotion.
“I don’t know all your bases, but I know where the FBR will be. I can keep us off their radar.”
I had to remind myself that he’d proven his loyalties.
Chase said nothing, but the corner of his eye twitched. He hadn’t said it, but I knew he wanted to stay and look for signs of his uncle.
If he was staying, I was staying.
Truck’s team left without hesitation, promising to return as soon as they’d found a safe place for us to hide. Tucker and I did not say good-bye, and as I watched his back as he disappeared through the tall grass, it occurred to me that I should have felt relieved to finally be rid of him, but maybe there was no room left for such a thing.
The rest of us drew what weapons we had, and sorted through the smoke and the wood and the glass. We overturned doors and crumbled stones and pieces of drywall. And we found bodies. Burned to black. Burned so badly, you couldn’t even tell they were human.
Someone who knew of this place had done this. Had pointed the MM in the right direction, had sent those long-distance explosive devices flying through the air, and killed our families and friends. Our chance at peace.
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