A razor wire fence surrounds Port Gibson, and guards are stationed around the fields of crops too. They keep people from coming in, but they also make it hard to leave without permission. I could stay here and Path Science like my family wants.
Science among the Unmarked has two main tasks. Scientists create the hormonal suppressant for the kids who are Marked so they don’t undergo puberty. It keeps the Mark from progressing, but it doesn’t allow them to really live. They’re adults trapped in the bodies of pre-teens. It was a Band-Aid meant to be ripped off, only we never cured the underlying problem. The only other task for science is treatment of the population of the Unmarked. Pharmacists manufacture small batches of medicine, and physicians administer it. I don’t want to slap Band-Aids on the Unmarked, or the people of Port Gibson either.
I want to fix the real problem. I need to go after my aunt and uncle, but how can I catch them? My uncle would’ve taken one of the Defense trucks. I don’t know exactly what time they left, but I’ll never catch them without comparable transportation myself. Luckily I learned the basics about automobiles during my time in Defense: driving, maintenance and basic repairs. Now all I need to do is locate one to steal.
Uncle Dan should have the location of each Defense vehicle in Port Gibson written down somewhere. Defense protocol dictates they check and move them after every Marked attack since occasionally the Marked kids would find and hotwire one. Better to know it’s missing right away than need one and be without. In fact, if I find a truck and escape, Sam and his people will likely assume it was stolen by the attackers.
Of course, for my plan to work, I need to find the truck before the locations change. I run to my uncle’s desk in the shared office and rummage around. I don’t find anything in his drawers or file folders. The coordinates must be in the safe under the desk that’s bolted into the floor. I groan.
I try my uncle’s birthday. It doesn’t work. I try his anniversary. No go. I try my aunt’s birthday. Still no luck. I try Job and Rhonda’s birthday and the light still blinks red. I slam my hand against the top of the safe. My birthday, the year Job, Rhonda and me were all born in order, Dad’s birthday, Dad’s death date, the date of the acceleration of the government. None of them work. I should’ve woken up earlier. I should’ve paid more attention to my uncle.
I try the day we joined the Unmarked here in Port Gibson. When that works, I breathe a heavy sigh of relief. I pull out a stack of papers and shuffle through them until I find it. The list of cars. I scan it for an automatic truck. I learned to drive standard transmissions, but it’s been months since I’ve done it, and I sucked at shifting. I mark a map with the location of the closest automatic truck, and rummage around my uncle’s desk again until I find a map that shows all of Mississippi and Texas. I glance over the possible routes to Galveston from Port Gibson. There aren’t many, especially since the smaller roads have almost certainly become so overgrown they’ll take forever. I need to make up time to catch them, not lose it.
I dress for travel and start packing, tossing in anything that comes to mind. I head back downstairs to look for food. I empty out the last of the granola bars I made last week, wrap them in cheesecloth, and stuff them into my backpack. The rest of the pantry looks surprisingly bare, probably because Uncle Dan and Aunt Anne already raided it for food. I grab the end of the bread, a hunk of goat cheese, and a few packages of dried fruit.
I duck out back and grab my rabbit snares from the shed. I usually only use them in the spring and summer to keep the garden pest free, but they might come in handy if I can’t reach Aunt Anne and Uncle Dan quickly. I snag a handful of small herb sacks too, in case I get stuck eating rabbits on the way. I pull up some potatoes and carrots from the greenhouse and zip up my mostly empty bag. I’m rummaging around in the fridge when I hear it.
A knock at the front door.
I jump and hit my head on the shelf above me. I run through a list of possible visitors before deciding not to answer. None of them would know what was going on, except maybe Mr. Fairchild, and no adult in town will ever allow me to leave, including him. Luckily, no one could see me from the door where I’m crouched. We have a big window in the kitchen over the sink and another in the breakfast room, but as long as I stay down low, they can’t see me from them.
I turn back to the fridge and fish out a pack of batteries. Why keep batteries in the fridge? As far as I know, there’s no sensible science behind it. I bend back around to check the drawers at the bottom. A small early season tomato we picked before the freeze, and a single, shriveled bell pepper that survived the previously mild winter in the greenhouse. Rabbit stew’s looking more and more likely.
Another knock, harder this time. Who would be this persistent? Gemette wondering what I’m Pathing? Job or Rhonda would walk through the door, not knock.
“Ruby!”
A voice I know. It’s Sam, of course it is. Uncle Dan probably asked him to look in on me since he sees me as a sister. Kids need checking on, after all. Ugh. Maybe if I stay the course, he’ll think I’m sleeping and go away.
“You may as well answer, Ruby. I hear you moving around.”
He’s lying. He can’t possibly hear me rummaging in the fridge from across the room, through a solid wooden door. Nice try, but no way. I check the last drawer. A handful of mushy strawberries and a squishy onion. I grab the berries and leave the onion, push the drawer closed, and shut the fridge.
“Ruby, you’re digging around in your icebox. Answer the door.”
I drop the berries. How could he possibly know that?
He knocks again, harder this time. “Ruby. Door. Now.”
Or what? No way I’m listening to some lecture. I suspect most of the adults in town would try to stop me from leaving, but I know Sam will. He’s trained to notice small details. If he comes in, he’ll notice my backpack, probably try to preempt my trip, and dump me in some kind of daycare prison. ‘For my own good.’
I think about it. He may have guessed right, but he can’t have heard me, not really. I’m not afraid of him—he’s not going to stop me. I duck behind the island in the kitchen, prepared to wait him out.
CRASH.
What was that? When I peek around the corner of the island, Sam’s glowering at me from our entryway, the oak door hanging askew behind him.
I hop up without thinking. “You broke our door down? What’s wrong with you? Why didn’t you just go away like a normal person?”
“I’m abnormal?” Sam asks. “You’re hiding behind the island, holding . . . what is that?”
“A honey pot, not that it’s any of your business.” I brandish it at him, which isn’t the best idea. Honey spills over and drips down my arm.
“What would you do right now,” he asks, “if I meant you harm? Pray I had a honey allergy?”
He steps toward me and he doesn’t look happy.
“Do you mean me harm?” I put the honey pot down and put my hands on my hips, forgetting my right hand’s sticky. Drat. “Oh, stop glaring at me. I’m not the one who just broke into someone’s home, destroying his boss’s property in the process.” I look more closely at our front door. “You splintered the hinges right out of the wall!”
“Sorry,” he says.
“You’re sorry? What about offering to fix it? Apologizing profusely might help.”
“I said sorry.”
“You should be.” I narrow my eyes at him. “You will be, actually. I fully intend to tattle on you.”
Sam rolls his eyes. “It’ll take like two minutes to fix. I’ll replace the hinges.”
I look at the door again. Chunks were torn from the wall. Think again, Sam. This is a major repair, you big ox.
“You never answered me.” I huff for emphasis, and lift my chin in the air defiantly. “Why are you even here? What do you want?”
“Your uncle sent me.”
“When?” I ask. “My uncle’s gone, so he couldn’t have sent anyone.”
“He asked me to look
in on you today. Before he left last night.”
“Wait.” I put my hands on my hips. “You saw him after the attack? You knew he was leaving?”
“Yes.”
“Enough with the vague responses. What’s going on?”
“Last night, after they released us and you ran away, your uncle came by. He made me promise to take care of you while they’re gone.”
I stomp my foot. “I’m an adult.”
“Not for a few more days you aren’t. And you aren’t going anywhere.”
“Why would you think I’m going somewhere?” I kick my backpack around the edge of the island, covering the sound with a snort.
“Why, indeed.” He strides past me into the kitchen and leans over, muscles in his back rippling visibly under his t-shirt. He picks up my backpack and dangles it from his index finger. “You usually pack a bag with,” he pokes around in the bag with his big ham hands, “garden snares, potatoes, and dried herbs for no reason? Maybe you meant to carry them up to your room. Are you planting a window garden or dealing with a rodent problem up there?”
“I was going on a hike.” I huff. “I thought I’d set some snares while I was out to supplement my meals here for a while. I happen to love rabbit stew. The granola bars are in case I get hungry while I’m outside laying snares.” I reach toward him to take the backpack, noting he isn’t wearing gloves. He has enormous hands, which makes sense. Every part of Sam’s oversized. He doesn’t resist when I yank it back. I pull it open and shake the contents around as though he hadn’t just rifled through them. “Six granola bars, some water bottles, carrots and potatoes to lure the rabbits, and a snare. Hardly provisions for a long trip.”
“Rabbits eat a lot of potatoes these days?” He cocks his head sideways and narrows his eyes at me. Intelligent eyes, eyes I can’t quite pin down as green or gold.
“They do. They’ll eat most anything.”
Sam rolls his eyes. “Or maybe your aunt and uncle cleared out your pantry when they left and that’s all you could find.”
I sit down and throw my hands up in the air. “Fine, you caught me. I was about to make the most pathetic attempt ever to follow them. How could you possibly have known that? I didn’t decide myself until this morning.”
“I’ve known you for more than ten years.”
“Wait, you talked to my uncle. Did he say which direction they’re heading?”
He raises one eyebrow. “Why would I tell you?”
“You’re saying you knew me so well that you knew I’d try to follow them?”
He shrugs. “I came to remind you that your Path choice is due today.”
“Excuse me?” I stand up and put my hands on my hips. “I don’t need reminders. I’m not ten years old.”
“You only have an hour and a half left.”
I scowl. “I’m not a child.”
“You are for three more days,” Sam says.
I scowl at him mightily, but he doesn’t budge. I walk across the room and snatch my Path form off the entry table. I scrawl “Science” in the box and hand it to him. “Here. If you care so much, you can go drop it off.”
Sam glances down at the form and both his eyebrows rise.
“What? You expected me to stay in Sanitation?”
He shrugs. “None of my business.” He folds up the paper and tucks it into his pocket.
“No,” I say, “it isn’t.”
He walks out the door and down the road. He glances back once, and I hurriedly duck, but not before he sees me looking and smiles. Once I’m sure he’s out of sight, I can leave. Rhonda or Job could come check on me next, and they won’t be as easy to redirect.
I pull a knit cap down over my head and wrap a scarf around my neck and over the bottom half of my face. I don’t think anyone else will be looking for me, but covering up my most recognizable feature, my curly blonde mop, seems like a good plan just in case.
I sneak out of the house, watching for Sam. He’s smarter than I thought, and if he only pretended to leave . . . but when I don’t see any sign of him, I take off at a jog. My uncle always had the emergency trucks moved from the closest in to town outward as a simple matter of expediency. The least likely truck to have been moved would be the one farthest away, which happens to be an automatic. I’d normally walk right through town to get to the northwest side, but today all the seventeen-year-olds have the day off and most of them are hanging out or celebrating. I’m surprised Gemette hasn’t come over, actually. It’ll be hard to explain my large backpack if I run into one of them, so I need to avoid that.
An enormous wall surrounds Port Gibson, from McComb Avenue on the south side up to Bayou Pierre on the north. The Bayou isn’t walled off as consistently, because it’s used to water the crops, but guards are posted along every section with a gap, and the water itself forms a natural barrier. The wall runs along the outside of Bridewell Lane down from Bayou Pierre; on the west it runs down behind the middle school.
The wall itself consists of a ten foot wooden fence, topped with razor wire. Behind that, on the Port Gibson side, there’s a second fence of chain link. I think that went up first, but then Mayor Fairchild didn’t want the Marked kids to be able to see what was going on, or where crops and buildings were located. We worked on the fencing by sections for years, and now we maintain it the same way.
The easiest way to get down to Galveston would be to take a truck south out of Port Gibson and hop on Highway Sixty-one, but since I’m not approved to go and I’m basically stealing a truck, I need to avoid the Unmarked and the Marked. I also need the truck to still be where Uncle Dan last logged its location, which means I’m hiking way past the fence.
That leaves me heading northwest, which incidentally means I didn’t lie to Sam. I am going for a hike. At least it’s all on the Unmarked side of things. Most Marked kids don’t seem hostile, the attack last night notwithstanding. They usually keep West of the Mississippi, at least down until Baton Rouge when they sprawl all over. They’d already staked the claim on Baton Rouge when the Unmarked asked for the east of the Mississippi.
The roads around Port Gibson stay clear to allow travel to the other Unmarked cities. I think Oil Mill to Grand Gulf, followed by Sixty-one to Natchez Trace will work. Then I can circle around Port Gibson so I’m not stopped. It’ll eat up a lot of gasoline, and I’m not sure how much each truck has. I bite my lip, because there’s nothing I can do about that.
I hike along the edge of town until I reach the first gap, where Bayou Pierre meets the wall. I pull my boots off and roll my pants up, then I wait in the bushes until shift change. As soon as Mark leaves, I sneak around the edge of the wall, sinking into the Bayou up to my knees. So much for rolling my pants up.
Gah, the water’s freezing. I only pass undetected because they train us to watch for ingress, not departure. Once I’m through, I run to the closest thicket, wincing when I step on sharp twigs and rocks. I hide long enough to wipe my feet as clean as possible, and put my socks and boots back on. I can’t help my pants being soaked, or the fact that they’re now dripping annoyingly into my boots. I move up Oil Mill Road until I pass the abandoned Addison Elementary school. Weeds fill the grounds, and vines climb the walls. A deer bounds across the playground, startled by my presence.
I spot the section of forest past the school where the truck’s supposed to be hidden, and I’m moving toward it when I hear a crackle somewhere behind me. Probably the snapping of a twig, but from what? I jump and spin around.
“Who’s there?” I ask.
Sam steps out behind me and grins. “You look just like that deer. The question is, can you run as fast?”
“How long have you been following me?” I’m beginning to wonder whether he snapped that twig on purpose, so I’d know he was here.
He shakes his head. “If I were following you, I’d have wet pants too.” He looks pointedly at my dripping jeans. “I came over the wall, not through the Bayou. I’m here on official business.”
H
e’s moving the truck I’m headed for. Dangit.
“My aunt and uncle left alone, but they’re gonna need me,” I say. “I need to go to Galveston.”
Sam shakes his head. “Not in one of my trucks, and certainly not alone. It’s not safe right now, Ruby. The Marked are acting almost as crazy as you.”
I clench my fists and refrain from biting down on my lip so I won’t scream at him. This is already a long shot, and yelling won’t help my case. “You don’t need to watch me. This isn’t your problem. Just let me go. You can report that the truck was already gone. You said yourself you’ve known me for ten years. Do me one favor. Please.”
Sam shakes his head. “I’m done talking about this. We’re going back. If I have to tie you up to keep you there, I will.”
I square my shoulders and plant my boots shoulder width apart. “I know what I need to do and I’m going to do it.”
Sam laughs, steps closer to me, and lowers his voice. “Look Ruby, I get that you want to help, but you need to let the adults handle it. People are getting Marked out there. Stay here.”
I want to scream. “I am an adult, Sam. I won’t just sit here in Port Gibson while my aunt and uncle go alone. They need me.”
Sam rolls his eyes. “Before your uncle left he made me swear an oath to keep you safe.”
“Then come with me,” I say.
Muscles work in Sam’s jaw. He seems to be weighing something and I wonder what. “What is it? Tell me.”
“Your uncle left abruptly for a reason.”
My stomach drops. “Don’t you mean my aunt and uncle left abruptly?”
“Your aunt was Marked last night. She’s in quarantine.”
No. “Why didn’t they tell us?”
Sam shakes his head, but I already know. Because without my aunt, my uncle needs me to get into the safe. He knew I’d insist on going.
“Where did my uncle go, Sam?”
Sam sighs. “Your aunt needs the cure, but she made him promise not to tell you. She wants to keep you safe. Your uncle went to ask my dad for help. He thinks WPN will listen to my dad in a way they won’t if we just show up at the bridge.”
Marked (Sins of Our Ancestors Book 1) Page 9