Rebel Nation

by Shaunta Grimes

The arguments for the execution program came flooding into him and collided with visions of Cassidy Golightly, of the feeling of his finger squeezing the trigger while he aimed at an innocent girl. “I don’t know what you think I can do.”

  “You can help me. For the first time in your life, you can help me. I have all of these kids and they’re depending on me. And I can’t do this by myself.”

  That hurt, but James forced himself not to get defensive. “What kids?”

  “Does it matter, Dad?” West stood up and went to the door. “I should have known better. I’ll do this myself.”

  Rebellion. That was what Leanne called it. And West was at the forefront. West, alive and breathing and standing right in front of him, asking for his help. Help him. Help your son. James could almost hear Jane urging him. Haven’t you done enough damage?

  Maybe this was why he’d been spared from the virus. “I’ll get her.”

  “You know where she is?” West asked, pacing in front of the locked door. “Where is she?”

  “No,” he said, then shook his head. “I mean, yes, I know where she must be. But I’ll get her, by myself. You need to get out of here. Get back out of the city. You need to get back to your sister.”

  West froze, his body tense. He looked so tired. Much older than twenty years. “I’m not leaving here without her.”

  “Clover needs you.” That was true. He’d lost the right for his daughter to need him, years ago, but she needed her brother. “I’ll get Leanne and we’ll come to you. Where are you?”

  West looked at him for a long moment. “You get her. She’ll know.” And then he was gone. James stood staring at the door as it swung shut.

  Leanne would be in a holding cell, with any luck. If she’d already been brought before a judge, he’d never be able to get to her.

  Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in that grey twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.

  —THEODORE ROOSEVELT,

  SPEECH BEFORE THE HAMILTON CLUB, APRIL 10, 1899

  The train was almost as good as driving. Maybe even better, because watching out the big windows didn’t make Clover’s stomach do flip-flops like being in the van sometimes did.

  She and Jude were in the only passenger car on the train—the one they used to transport prisoners to Reno and the country’s only execution center. Since they were headed east, it was empty. Melissa was in the engine car with her father, shoveling coal into the fire, and that was just fine with Clover.

  “You know, West might be right,” Jude said, quietly. For a second, Clover tried to pretend she hadn’t heard him. The train swayed under her and the wide-open desert sped past, already so different from what she was used to.

  “We need the book,” she said.

  “You know that Waverly wasn’t in his right mind, don’t you? He was crazy, Clover. He’d lost something—”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “So then you need to be prepared. This might be another wild-goose chase. I don’t mind getting you away from Bennett—putting the whole country between him and you is fine with me—but I’m not going to let you put yourself in real danger for something that might not even be there.”

  She turned away from the window and sat back in her seat, facing him in his. He fiddled with the green watch on his wrist, the one that had belonged to his brother. Bennett had taken Oscar from him, years before. “I’ve been in real danger ever since Kingston sent me away from the Academy and I don’t need you to protect me.”

  He exhaled, then moved to the seat next to her, his longer legs stretching out alongside hers. Mango stirred where he lay on a seat across the aisle.

  She liked when he was close to her, enough that she was willing to breathe through the initial scream from her brain that he was too close. He waited, arm on the rest between them, palm up, until she slipped her hand into his.

  “The book is important to the rebellion,” she said.

  “So are we. We’ll see where this goes, but if it gets too dangerous, we’re out. Please, Clover.”

  She thought he was asking, not telling, so she nodded. He reached down on the aisle side of his seat and pulled the lever that reclined his seat and lifted a footrest. “Good,” he said. “Let’s try to get some sleep while we can.”

  She turned back to the window without taking her hand out of Jude’s. The trees around Reno were gone, replaced by low, shrubby sagebrush. The mountains were farther away. She thought about the Veronica, and how she floated under the water of Lake Tahoe, the way the train floated through the dry, cool desert air.

  She finally reached down between her seat and the train wall and pulled the lever. Her seat eased back, the footrest coming up at the same time. Jude let go of her hand and lifted his arm around her so that she could curl against him, her back to Nevada as the train sped toward Utah.

  —

  “It isn’t much.” Melissa handed them each an apple and half of a sandwich wrapped in paper when the train stopped outside of Salt Lake City.

  It reminded Clover of the lunches they served in the primary school cafeteria. She opened the sandwich and pulled up the top piece of dense, brown bread. Peanut butter. She could live with that. “Thank you.”

  “Dad thinks we should keep you guys a secret, even from the people who would be on our side,” Melissa said, instead of leaving like Clover expected her to. “Just in case, you know?”

  Melissa sat next to Jude with her own sandwich. She had only half a sandwich as well, and it was obvious that she and her father had split their already meager rations with their stowaways. Clover felt a pang of guilt. She and Jude were just riding. Melissa and her father were doing the heavy labor of keeping a steam engine chugging through the mountains toward Denver.

  Melissa must have seen Clover’s concern. She took a bite of her sandwich and waved her other hand before speaking. “Don’t worry, we’ll be fine. We’ll get some extra food in Cheyenne. We have family there and they always give us some of their garden things to take home with us, since we can’t grow our own.”

  Clover had moved across from Jude when she woke up from her nap so that they could both have a window seat to watch their mountains turn into Utah’s much larger range. Reno was green and brown and the central Nevada desert was dusty beige and sage. This area outside Salt Lake City felt outsized to Clover: bright red mountains, massive trees, sagebrush, boulders combined with perfectly smooth salt flats.

  She kind of wished she’d stayed next to Jude, though. Melissa was sitting with her leg against his, eating and talking, reaching her free hand out every once in a while to touch his shoulder or his arm. He was listening intently, but Clover kept tuning her out. Melissa was covered in soot and was wearing what looked like a pair of her father’s overalls cut down and cinched in to fit her, and she was still one of the prettiest girls Clover had ever seen.

  Jude turned to lean against the window, so his leg was pressed even closer to Melissa’s and he could face her completely. He laughed in all the right places—the places that didn’t hit Clover until a beat too late. Melissa’s red hair was pulled back into two buns that were messy, but still managed to look right. Clover ran a hand through her own black hair and felt the staggered, rough layers where she’d cut it without thinking about how it looked.

  “Clover, wait until you see Wyoming. Sometimes we see buffalo and antelope.” Melissa leaned forward, the remains of her sandwich still in her coal-stained hand. She turned back to Jude. “Did you even know that there still were buffalo? Isn’t that wild?”

  “Of course he knew,” Clover said, the words snapping off like twigs. “He’s not stupid.”

  “Oh,” Melissa said. “Oh, yeah, I know that.”

  Jude shot Clover a look. “I
hope we see some.”

  Clover wanted, badly, not to care. But she wanted to see them, too. Whatever Utah and Wyoming and Colorado, and the states farther east, had to show them, she wanted to see. She felt like she’d somehow found a way to jump into the books she’d read all her life. Anything that wasn’t Reno or the area around Lake Tahoe was new and exciting and made her blood sing through her veins.

  Melissa finished her sandwich and stood up. She was nearly six feet tall, and even in her weird overalls, it was clear she had an athlete’s strength, from years of working on the train with her father, and a body like the models in the old magazines Clover sometimes pored over in the library.

  “We’re taking off again in ten minutes.” She smiled at Jude and then Clover. If she was put off by Clover snapping at her, it didn’t show. “I’m so excited you guys are riding with us.”

  When she was gone, Jude sat up straighter in his seat. “Why are you so rude to her?”

  “I’m not,” Clover said, but then stopped, because it wasn’t true. She was rude. And it didn’t make any sense. Melissa had never been anything but nice, more than nice, to her. “I don’t know.”

  “She wants to be our friend. We aren’t really in a position to turn away friendship, you know. Not from the people who are sneaking us thousands of miles from home.”

  I don’t want her to be your friend. Clover put her fingers over her mouth to make sure that didn’t slip out. It wasn’t even true. What was wrong with her? “I’m sorry,” she finally said.

  Jude looked at his watch. “I wonder if the time has changed yet.”

  “We’re in Mountain Time. I’m going to take Mango out.”

  Clover stood up and walked away from him, toward the open door to the train car. Mango followed, and Jude stayed. That was fine with her. Between his warnings about this whole thing being a wild-goose chase and the way Melissa flirted with him, she needed a minute to herself.

  The air smelled different here, she decided as Mango walked off, exploring some rabbit trail he’d picked up. It was drier and somehow dustier, like she could feel the desert sliding into her lungs. It wasn’t a bad feeling.

  It was strange to be so far away from Reno. Stranger even than being at the ranch had felt at first. There, she was close enough that she could have been back in the city within an hour. Now she was hundreds of miles away from the only places she’d ever been before, and it left her feeling oddly disjointed. Like the tethers that held her to her world had been cut.

  She looked up at the shadow of the almost-full moon just visible in the afternoon sky and thought she was so far from home, she might as well be sitting there, looking down on the earth.

  “Clover?”

  She startled when Frank said her name just behind her. “You scared me.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.”

  “It’s okay. Is it time to go?” She turned to look for Mango. “Mango!”

  “Almost. Beautiful out here, isn’t it?”

  She looked out again, at the mountains that were somehow more than the mountains that she was so used to. Their angles were more extreme, their colors more vivid. “Yes.”

  “I’m going to introduce you to my son Xavier when we get near Denver. He’ll be able to put you and Jude up for a day or two, and then you’ll take the train to St. Louis. It gets harder after that. My contacts are more removed that far east. I’ll be headed back west three days after we get to Denver, if you change your mind.”

  They wouldn’t. They couldn’t, but Clover didn’t say that. “Thank you, Frank. For everything.”

  “Doctor Waverly saved my son’s life. I wouldn’t be able to look myself in the mirror if I didn’t do what I could.”

  There is far more danger of harm than there is hope of good in any radical changes.

  —CALVIN COOLIDGE,

  SPEECH ON THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE, 1926

  The suicidal bravado that had brought West into the city had abandoned him. He didn’t have the nerve to try to walk back out the way he’d come in, so he walked to the place where the wall bridged the river instead. He was acutely aware of every second that brought dawn closer. Every noise, even the smells that wafted past him as he walked made his heart beat in his throat and his palms sweat. By the time he got there, he knew he’d made a mistake. Going out of the city through the river was a bad idea. And an even worse idea than risking the gates. He still didn’t know if Bennett knew that was how Clover got out the second time, or whether the bastard had broken Leanne. The van was at least five miles from the river, and he was going to have to walk it soaking wet and freezing cold. Even if he didn’t get caught, he risked death by hypothermia. And for what? Leanne Wood—

  Leanne Wood had saved his sister. She’d risked her life to warn Clover. Because Leanne had been brave, Clover was out of Bennett’s reach, at least for now.

  What ate at West was the fear that he might not ever see his sister again. If she was caught, she would just be gone. He wouldn’t even know until it was too late. If he was caught and Clover did manage to make it back to Virginia City, it would be as if he’d just disappeared. Gone ghost like Jude’s brother, Phire’s brother. He hadn’t even bothered to tell anyone where he was going or why.

  Leanne still hadn’t talked. That much was clear when West got to the river and found no guards. The tight ball of tension in his chest began to unravel. West believed he was safe right up until the moment a light flashed on him and a man somewhere behind him yelled, “Stop, right there!”

  “Oh, my God.” West’s heart fell into his stomach, like a rock falling into the river, and he had to fight a terrifying urge to obey. He’d been conditioned his entire life to be obedient to authority.

  He actually turned toward the voice. The man shining his flashlight at West held his other hand on his hip. On a gun. The river was ten feet to the right. What were the chances that there was another guard on the outside?

  Anger at his own hesitation rose up like bile. He was about to take his chances, to die running for the river instead of standing there like an idiot, when the light on his face dropped to his feet. The guard fell with a dull thud to the ground.

  “Run!” Isaiah came from behind the guard. “Jesus, West—go!”

  West turned and ran the last few steps to the river. He’d planned on taking off his shoes and his clothes before fighting the cold current so that he’d have something at least mostly dry to put on when he climbed out again. He didn’t stop. He skittered down the rocky bank and into the frigid water fully dressed.

  The water felt even colder than the first time he’d done this. It seemed to run faster, too, against him. Aware that Isaiah was right behind him, but too preoccupied to think about it, West made his way to the bridge and the deep dark under it. The moon was nearly full, but its light did not reach under the wall.

  Coming out on the other side, outside the city for the second time, gave West the strange, uncomfortable feeling of being born. As soon as he cleared the wall, he threw himself at the bank, stinging his palms and his knees as he climbed out.

  “Don’t stop,” Isaiah said from somewhere above him. Someone’s teeth were chattering audibly. West was too numb to be able to tell if they were his or Isaiah’s. “Keep moving.”

  West looked up from where he’d landed on his back over a rock that had retained none of the sun that it must have soaked up during the day. “Shut up.”

  “Get your ass up!” Isaiah grabbed his arm and yanked until West came to his feet. He was cold to his core. Cold to the point of biting, aching pain. “Where’s your car?”

  “It’s by the gate. What in the hell are you doing here?”

  “Saving you, moron. Why did you park by the gate? That’s ten miles.”

  “It’s only five. I came in through the gate. Where’s Bridget?”

  Isaiah took off, m
oving fast and taking his answers with him. He walked along the wall without looking back. “Move before you freeze to death.”

  The temptation to refuse was strong, but Isaiah was already too far away to be argued with. And, damn it, West needed to know about Bridget. And if he was totally honest, after a night of making stupid choices, he didn’t really want to die.

  “Where is Bridget?” he asked again as he caught up with Isaiah.

  “Probably warm in her bed.”

  West trudged on. It felt as though every thorn and sharp shard of dry leaf and grain of stinging sand along the way were attracted to his wet legs.

  “She told her father,” Isaiah said. “About the ranch. You have to get those kids out of there.”

  “Yeah, it’s a little late to start worrying about us now.”

  “Bridget hasn’t said anything about you. At least, not that I know of. I don’t think you’re on anyone’s radar.”

  Walking kept West’s heart rate up, and that kept him marginally warmer than he’d been when he was lying on the riverbank. “You can’t know that. Not for sure. Bridget—”

  “It wasn’t her fault,” Isaiah said. “I wouldn’t let her leave the city. She was ready to go to you, and I kept her with me.”

  West wanted to believe Isaiah, but he didn’t. “Was it your idea to send her and her father to our ranch, to give us up?”

  That seemed to genuinely shake Isaiah up. He stopped walking and West finally caught up to him. “What are you talking about?”

  “Please. Please, just don’t, okay?”

  “Are you telling me that she left the city?”

  “Are you telling me you didn’t know?” West didn’t believe that any more than he believed that Bridget didn’t have a say in staying in the city. Isaiah paced forward a few steps, then came back, flapping his arms at his sides in a way that made West think so strongly of Clover that his heart clenched.

  “She told him she didn’t know where the ranch was.”

  “You went with her to her father.”