by C. A. Gray
“That’s suicide!” cried Father Edwards. “The entire second group will be found by the control centers and eliminated, and the Potentate will surely shoot down the plane on the second pass!”
I had to agree with Father Edwards on this one. Most of the other refugees seemed to concur.
“Enough!” snapped the Crone, silencing the murmurs. “We will come up with a reasonable plan around this once we see the area near the barracks. Which brings us back to the original problem,” she said, glaring at Will again, “the military barracks. Where is it?” She thrust the highlighting pen in his direction.
Will hesitated, until Stone pointed the barrel of his gun at Will’s chest. I saw Jackson shift in his seat, again poised to move if necessary. But Will stood up resentfully and took the highlighter. Without a word, he marked an X on the map. Blood still trickled from the corner of his mouth. “Wouldn’t recommend that you attempt to travel through the heart of the Republic to get there, though.”
The Crone snatched the highlighter back from him. “That location will not be more than a thirty minute journey by bullet train, if we board the trains here.” She drew a circuitous route through the forest and the wilderness, avoiding the Republic except at the ghost town of Hampton, where she drew a straight line up to the very edges of the bullet train route. “Hampton should be safe enough if we move quickly. There’s not a lot of cover, and the control centers will find us if we dawdle. But this section is only three quarters of a mile. Even our feeblest should be able to manage that.”
“You can’t assume the bullet trains are safe anymore,” said Jackson. “After what happened in the caves, the Potentate has to know that’s how we got around. He’ll tighten security.”
“We will have to take our chances on that,” the Crone snapped.
Jacob cut in, “Even if we somehow did manage to use the bullet trains, you think we could get through Hampton, board the train, get off the train, find the barracks, find the plane, and get it in working order and ready for takeoff in under two hours? You think no agents are going to be wise to this, when they’re already looking for us in the forest? Isn’t it safer to just go on foot to the docks—even if it does take months?”
“Of course the agents will come eventually,” said the Crone. Then she looked straight at Jackson. “But it is my understanding that they do not, in fact, use real bullets.”
“And we do,” said Stone, opening the chamber of his gun to show us the round inside before clicking it back in place again.
“Given that,” said the Crone, narrowing her eyes at Jackson still, “I think we can hold them off for awhile.”
“There’s a difference between knowing the bullets aren’t real and believing it,” Jackson told her. “I told Kenny and Andrew that too. They knew. But they didn’t believe.”
“Then you will just have to train us all to believe,” said the Crone.
“It’s not that simple,” Jackson growled back. “I can teach you, but can’t make anyone believe anything. Your mind is your own responsibility.”
They stared each other down for a moment.
Alec broke the tension. “And let’s say this ridiculous plan doesn’t end in a fiery death for all of us, and we actually get to the harbor in one piece,” he said. “Which is a long shot. Then what? We force a captain to give us passage at gunpoint?”
“If we must,” said the Crone. “If he comes from New Estonia, he is likely to know my name, so that may not be necessary. But if not, he’ll have to have adequate incentive to leave his cargo behind and make room for the extra supplies required to sustain us on the journey.”
“Which you’ll also steal,” Nick muttered loud enough for all of us to hear.
“Oh, get off your high horse,” snapped Taylor, “as if you don’t steal all the time on your raids!”
“From abandoned houses, that’s different!” Jacob shot back.
“Gentlemen,” said the Crone in her most imperious voice, raising her hands to signal silence. Then she turned back to Stone to indicate that he had the floor.
“For now,” said Stone, looking at Nick, “The hunters will obtain and prepare enough food for the first leg of the journey to Hampton. We will not stop for two days. We will leave before daybreak, as soon as we have provisions.”
Alec snorted. “So you want us to hunt all night, and then walk for 48 hours straight?”
“The hunters are strong, and more than capable of such a task,” pronounced the Crone. “As for the rest of you—find a way to carry on your backs what is left of the food you’ve gathered today, and go to sleep. We will have to move quickly. You will need your strength.”
I glanced at Father Edwards, who had to be in his eighties. Then I glanced at Brittany, one of the women I’d met in the herb garden with Molly when I’d first arrived, and her two children, the youngest of which was barely two. Her husband had been killed in the explosions. She would need help carrying the kids. Brittany clutched her children to her chest and bit her lip, holding back tears. She saw me looking and turned, wide-eyed. I sent her a message as hard as I could.
It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.
Stone, Taylor, and the other Council members gestured with their weapons at the hunters.
“Up,” Stone demanded.
The hunters all got to their feet. I saw Jackson looking from Stone’s weapon to the Council, as if performing a calculation in his head.
“You too,” Taylor barked at Will, who remained seated.
“I can’t hunt without a gun,” said Will. “Never shot a bow and arrow or a slingshot in my life.”
“You’ll go with the hunters anyway,” ordered the Crone. “We’re not leaving a Council member behind just to watch you.”
“Pick up a weapon in the clearing,” Stone told the hunters, once he was out of earshot of the Crone. “Keep in mind that each of you has an automatic weapon pointed at his back at all times. Mutiny would be quite ill-advised.”
Chapter 4: Jackson
Before I left the rest of the refugees, I took stock of what they’d left behind—anything that might be useful information.
The Crone and her bodyguards were the only Council members who remained; all the other Council members followed the hunters.
The women and children and elderly had gathered a lot of food; it would be a shame to leave that behind. But we could get more.
I saw Kate watching me, wide-eyed and pleading.
Don’t worry, I tried to tell her. But I saw her gaze shift to Will, marching in front of the barrel of Taylor’s gun, just as Stone trained his upon me.
I reached the pile of weapons before anyone else, and surveyed my options. There was a slingshot I had made myself, and a bloody cloth and length of rope we’d used to drag back the meat of the deer earlier that night. I grabbed this too.
“You don’t need that,” snapped Stone, “we can’t carry big game.”
“One person can’t, but we can if we cut it up and distribute it,” I told him. He seemed satisfied with this answer.
A few minutes later, as I made my way through the thick of the woods and away from the others, Stone said, suspicious, “I thought you hunted together. Stay with the others.”
I turned around and shook my head at him, sounding as exasperated as I could. “First, hunting in packs is too noisy. It scares off anything you might want to shoot, especially if you have to get close enough to it to shoot it with a slingshot. Second, you sound like a freaking water buffalo, so even going off on my own won’t do me any good if you keep making so much noise. And third, you’re talking, so anything that might have been in a several mile radius is now gone.”
I heard the click as Stone took the safety off of his gun. “I’m warning you, kid. You’re lucky the Crone considers you an integral part of her plan. But if you don’t start treating me with some respect, I just might have to teach you some.”
I turned my back on him, gritting my tee
th. Not too much further.
I kept on, moving deeper and deeper. I sensed that some kind of big game was in the area, up to my left about a quarter of a mile, but Stone didn’t know that. I kept going. One good crunch of Stone’s feet upon the ground, and the animal fled anyway.
We were probably far enough away now. None of the other Council members ought to be able to hear the struggle.
I stopped moving, waiting for Stone to catch up to me.
“What?” he whispered, the gun in my back. “Is there something here?”
I spun, one hand deflecting the angle of his gun while the other landed an uppercut to his jaw. Once I’d disarmed him, I kneed him in the groin, spun around and kicked him in the abdomen.
While he gasped on the ground, I clicked the safety back on the gun, took the length of rope and sliced it with a knife hanging from Stone’s belt. He started to struggle and swing at me, so I head butted him and he fell unconscious. I knew it wouldn’t last long, though.
I bound his hands behind him, and his feet next, and then sat him up and pressed his back to a tree, binding his shoulders to it. He’d be here awhile and it would be more comfortable for him, even though he didn’t deserve that.
Using Stone’s knife, I sliced off a piece of the fabric that was dirty but not bloody—it wasn’t my intention to kill him with an infection. I took the canteen of water from Stone’s pocket, and was just rinsing the cloth off as best I could when I saw him start to move his head, and his eyelids fluttered. I stuffed the cloth in his mouth, wrapping yet another length of rope around his head so that he couldn’t spit it out. He opened his eyes and snarled at me.
“I won’t leave you here to starve,” I told him. “Once those of us who want to escape are safe, I’ll make sure to send someone back for you.”
He began to shout, but the wet cloth did its job, so muffling the sound that only someone very nearby indeed would have heard it. I checked his belt one more time, to see if I could find anything else useful. Then I frisked his legs. I found something else strapped to one of his thighs, so I sliced his pants leg open with the knife and retrieved yet another semi-automatic weapon.
“Thanks,” I said. “You must all have more than one weapon on you since there are a lot more hunters than there are Council members at this point.”
Stone grunted and puffed, and sweat popped out on his forehead.
“Don’t strain yourself,” I told him. “You’re going to need your strength. I told you I wouldn’t leave you here to starve, but you’re still in for a long night.”
After arming myself and taking what remained of Stone’s water and of the rope and usable portions of the cloth, I glanced around, memorizing a few key landmarks so that I’d know how to direct the Crone or whoever else back to retrieve him. Then I set off in the direction in which we’d come.
I wasn’t sure if all the hunters had done as I had, leading their Council guards out into the woods and attempting escape, but I hoped not, since that would end in death for most of them. If they had stayed more or less together, and obedient, things would be much easier for me.
There. One hundred yards away. I wasn’t sure if it was a beast or a hunter and his captor yet, but—ah. Two creatures, of near equal size, though they weren’t moving much. Must be the latter.
I gained on them as I followed, a pebble fitted to my slingshot in case I needed it. Not big enough to kill, but big enough to stun.
I heard them whisper. They weren’t loud enough for me to make out what they’d said, but I recognized the voices: Will and Taylor.
I approached Taylor from behind and to the right. I was almost upon him when he heard me, and whirled to point the gun in my face. I knocked it away and punched him once. He slumped to the ground, unconscious.
Will looked at me, stunned.
“Help me tie him,” I said, thrusting the rope at Will along with the knife.
We bound and gagged Taylor before he ever woke. Will kept sneaking incredulous glances at me as we worked. “Why are you helping me?”
I shrugged. “You were the first one I came upon. And you’re on our side, aren't you?” I glanced at him. “Besides, we all owe you.”
He thought about this for a minute, and then nodded.
“That said, no offense, but you’re no hunter. You’ll give me away,” I told him. “Go back to camp if you can find your way, and hang out nearby, but not so near that you’ll be seen. I’m going after the rest of the hunters, and we’ll be back to get as many of the refugees as want to come.”
“Come where?” asked Will.
“Beckenshire,” I shrugged. “That’s what you suggested. Seemed like a good idea to me.”
Chapter 5: Kate
Minus the hunters and the other Council members, there were sixty-three of us left in the clearing where we’d had dinner—including children. We were all eerily silent except for the whimpers and occasional cries of the children, who were too young to understand what was happening. The Crone watched us with unblinking eyes, flanked by her two silent bodyguards.
Molly, Rachel, Brittany and I bundled up the berries and few root vegetables we’d been able to salvage that grew wild in the forest, but we had nothing but the clothes on our backs to use to transport them. I wore a faded long sleeve t-shirt beneath my threadbare flannel. I knew I’d need the flannel for warmth, so I stripped off the t-shirt, trying to ignore the leer from the Crone’s bodyguards as they watched me. I gritted my teeth, imagining his face after I’d smashed my elbow into his nose. I replaced and buttoned the flannel as quickly as I could. Then I tied off the bottom and the sleeves, so that the only opening was the neck, and hoped that my knots would hold. I could loop the sleeves around and suspend them from my neck, though that didn’t seem like it would be particularly comfortable while walking long distances.
Brittany took her two-year-old’s blanket, much to the little girl’s chagrin, and piled the center of it as high as she could and still tie it closed. Molly showed her how to create loops for her arms, so that she could wear it like a backpack, while the bulk of the food sunk down low enough that it wouldn’t spill out from the opening. Tears quietly streamed down Brittany’s face as she worked, and every now and then Rachel leaned over and squeezed her shoulder. Both of them had been widowed before the age of thirty. I couldn’t imagine.
Well, come to think of it, up until yesterday I thought I’d been essentially widowed too.
I think mostly Brittany was afraid of the journey—and I could hardly blame her. Passing through Hampton, getting on the bullet trains, fighting off agents, and getting on a decommissioned plane with a pilot who hadn’t flown in years, when many of us had never even seen a plane before. There were so many opportunities for things to go wrong. It was staggering. And then, half of us would get left behind, to hide from or fight off agents on our own, hoping that we could survive until Taylor came back for us. Assuming he ever did.
“I don’t know why we don’t just go through the forest on foot,” I murmured to Molly, filling my shirt with food. “I know it’ll take longer, but there are fewer opportunities to die. How likely is it that the army will find us in the forest if we just keep moving?”
“Apparently the Crone thinks faster is safer,” Molly whispered back to me. She’d taken off her bra beneath her shirt, and was filling the cups with food, sealing it somewhat inefficiently by tying the back strap in a knot. “Also, even if many of the group agrees with you, I don’t think they’d be willing to risk the journey on their own without the Crone.”
“Why? Does she know much about travel?” I whispered, trying on my makeshift pack full of food. Nope. It felt like I was choking. I tried the other way, hanging it to the front; functional, though it would give me a headache after not too long. I carried my tension in my shoulders as it was, and right now they felt like little rocks, even without the extra weight.
“She’s been our leader for years. She’s harsh, but that’s her way. It�
�s how she gains compliance. The people trust her,” Molly told me. “Also, I hadn’t been aware that she was a baroness, but I don’t doubt it. She carries herself that way. If that’s true, I don’t think we’d want to arrive in New Estonia without her. I suspect they consider us to be their enemies just as much as the Republic considers New Estonia to be ours.” As she said this, she sealed the bra cups together using a few safety pins that had previously held her ill-fitting wraparound skirt together; now it flapped immodestly in the breeze. She didn’t seem to mind. She tried on the finished the product like a backpack, though a few berries spilled out through the seams.
“Clever,” I whispered to her. She gave me a tight smile.
“Won’t be too comfortable walking without it,” she whispered back, indicating her ample breasts beneath her loose t-shirt. “But better than going hungry.”
I tried not to think about what was happening in the forest. The hunters, including both Will and Jackson, weren’t exactly known for their compliance, and guns against slingshots didn’t make for good odds.
But even if all of the hunters came back in one piece tonight, how long would that last? Molly might call the Crone ‘harsh,’ but I couldn’t purge the image of Uruguay Stone hitting Will and flashing his gun around. She might have admonished him for his unnecessary violence, but she didn’t keep him in check, that was for sure.
Jackson would fight the Council; that I knew. I saw it in his eyes as he went into the forest at the point of Uruguay Stone’s gun. Will would fight too. So would Molly, and Nick, and Alec, and probably most of the hunters. I looked around our little camp and counted the others whom I knew would stand with us.
Whatever her motivations, the Crone’s and the Council’s dictatorship would almost certainly end in more bloodshed. The only question was, whose?
“You could carry more food in that flannel of yours,” the Crone’s guard suggested, undressing me with his eyes. “Don’t want to leave anything behind.”