Rebel Nation

by Shaunta Grimes

“Of course you’re not.” Bennett had a natural swagger in his voice that belayed his physical sketchiness. “What possible threat could you be to me?”

  “I’m going to give you the chance to turn around and walk back to your car and leave Virginia City. Either I’m telling you the truth and I’m alone, or I’m lying and someone has a shotgun trained on you right now.”

  Jude flung one arm toward the multitude of windows dotting the side of the schoolhouse, emphasizing his point.

  “I’m not leaving here without Clover Donovan.”

  “You are, one way or the other.” Jude was grateful the words came out strong, because his insides were quickly turning to liquid. Either Clover was still in the schoolhouse, or she’d managed to get half a dozen kids out of it without making a noise. He didn’t want Bennett forcing his way in to find out.

  Bennett didn’t look well. Jude didn’t know what his normal look was, but his face was flushed and he had suitcase-sized bags under his watery, over-dilated eyes. He was shaking; his hands clenched and unclenched against his thighs. He moved faster than he looked like he should have been able to, though. Before Jude could react, Bennett had him by the throat with a gun pressed against his temple.

  “I don’t want to hurt anyone else,” Bennett said. Jude’s knees nearly gave out at the “anyone else.” “But I will burn this fucking town to the ground if you do not produce Clover Donovan in the next thirty seconds.”

  Jude opened his mouth to respond, but all that came out was a strangled, pathetic squeak. Bennett must have realized that Jude couldn’t actually produce anyone for him if his neck was broken, because he yanked his hand back.

  “She’s—”

  “I’m here.”

  Jude felt the blood drain out of his face as he turned, and the whole world slowed to half speed. Clover was standing in the schoolhouse doorway. None of them spoke; the silence was heavy and thick.

  “Clover Donovan.” Bennett said her name slowly, softly, as he took a step away from Jude toward her. “Do you know the problems you’ve caused me?”

  Clover didn’t answer.

  “Your city needs you, Clover. Your country needs you,” Bennett said. “It wasn’t so bad being a Messenger, was it?”

  Where was everyone? Had West, and Isaiah, and James all hidden so well that they didn’t know this was happening? Jude finally made himself turn all the way to Clover. She was holding on, but just barely. Her arms were wrapped around her body and she rocked, heel-toe, heel-toe. Jude, somehow sure that Bennett wouldn’t shoot him in the back, went to her, but he couldn’t help her.

  Bennett wasn’t in a rush. He came toward them at a maddeningly slow pace, a step at a time. “Come back to the city with me, Clover. It’s the right thing to do.”

  “And what about everyone else?” she asked. Jude wondered if Bennett could see how tight she was holding herself. How close she was to melting down. “What happens to them?”

  Bennett lifted one shoulder, like the people in Virginia City couldn’t have mattered less to him. “They can stay here through the winter. Come with me now, and you have my word they’ll be safe.”

  “Nothing bad will happen to them. Not to any of them, even West.”

  “Clover—”

  Bennett held a hand out. Something passed across his face that Jude couldn’t quite make out. “It’s okay, I know about West. I know that he’s alive. And you have my word, Clover, if you come back to the city, if you come back to do what’s right, then your brother will be left alone.”

  “Back up,” Jude said when Bennett started moving toward them again.

  Bennett raised the gun he’d just pointed at Jude’s head only moments before. “Or what? I’m here on official business. You will—”

  A shot rang out. Jude’s heart stopped, and it took him several breaths to realize that he hadn’t been killed. Even as he turned to Clover, sick with fear that she was the one who had been shot, he processed that the noise hadn’t come from Bennett.

  Clover had her hands over her ears, and when Jude looked at her she screamed like he’d done something to hurt her. He closed the distance between them, wrapped his arms around her, and she fought, but he bullied her up the stairs to the schoolhouse’s door.

  He didn’t look back at Bennett until Clover was just inside the door, collapsed on the floor and curled into herself as though she were a turtle and her back was her shell against the world.

  Bennett wasn’t shot either. He still had his gun pointed toward the schoolhouse, but his attention was riveted to the restaurant across the street. It finally occurred to Jude that the shot had come from there. Who was in the restaurant?

  James’s voice rang out. It carried in the still, cold, dry air. “Leave, Bennett. My next shot won’t miss.”

  Bennett straightened. “I’m not leaving here without Clover Donovan.”

  “There is not a world where you leave this town with my daughter.”

  James’s voice was steady and deadly calm, the exact opposite of the liquid turmoil going on in Jude. It felt as though his insides swirled around a solid core of determination that this man was not going to get to Clover. Bennett would not take another person that mattered to Jude, if he had to rip his eyes out with his fingers.

  “James Donovan,” Bennett said, slowly, turning fully toward the restaurant. “How disappointing.”

  “Leave, Bennett. Just walk back to your car.”

  Clover cried out behind Jude and he finally tore his eyes away from Bennett. West was there, gathering his sister into his arms. She went stiff, and Jude started to go to help him, but West shook his head and tipped it back to Bennett.

  Jude was torn until Clover finally relaxed enough to bend when West lifted her.

  “You’ll be followed all the way back to your car, so don’t think about trying anything,” James said. Jude turned back to Bennett, who had moved into the street between the schoolhouse and the restaurant. “It would be so much easier for us if we just killed you. That isn’t something you want to tempt.”

  “This isn’t over.” Bennett wasn’t used to backing down. He was the second most powerful man in the entire world. Jude suddenly wished he had a gun himself. He’d kill the man who’d threatened Clover and murdered Waverly and Geena. Bennett was the reason Jude had lost Oscar.

  Jude tensed to launch himself down the stairs. He’d kill Bennett with his bare hands. As he took his first step, West grabbed him around the ribs and pulled him into the schoolhouse instead.

  “What in the hell?” Jude pushed West away. “Why doesn’t your dad kill him? Why doesn’t he—”

  “That’s Langston Bennett,” West said, keeping his voice low, but firm. “You think that we can kill him and just stay here—or anywhere?”

  There was another shot and Jude’s heart stopped, then restarted painfully. He and West both went to the window beside the door and looked out, standing side by side.

  Bennett still stood in the middle of the street, but he’d lost some of his confident posture.

  “That’s your last warning,” James called out. “Start walking.”

  Bennett slid his gun back into his coat pocket and held both hands up. “You have twenty-four hours to produce Clover Donovan at the city gate. You do that, and you can stay here. There won’t even be a reprisal for this appalling lack of judgment. I give my word, your group will be safe through the winter in Virginia City.”

  Jude nearly came out of his skin when he heard a gasp just behind him. Clover had recovered enough to join them, although she still looked pale and shaky.

  I will soon cease to be a servant and will become a sovereign.

  —JAMES K. POLK, DIARY ENTRY, FEBRUARY 13, 1849

  “You should have killed him.”

  James agreed with Marta, but he said, “I couldn’t.”

  “He killed my sister.”
/>   “I know he did.”

  “He’s right.” Christopher stepped back from Marta when she turned on him. “Think about what would happen if we offed Bennett. Wouldn’t just be the guard on us. It would be the whole world. This is bigger than us, baby. James did the right thing.”

  Marta clearly didn’t agree, but she didn’t say anything else.

  “Tim and Eric saw him leave in a car.” West pinched the bridge of his nose. He had a good bruise coming up under his left eye where Clover caught him with her elbow during her struggling earlier. “We need to go. We should already be gone.”

  James looked around the room where every person in Virginia City over the age of ten was gathered. Except for Bethany, who was with the littler kids. His children and the kids from Foster City, Leanne and Isaiah and Adam Kingston, and a dozen that had come from New Boulder. None of them argued with West.

  “Come to New Boulder,” a boy West’s age said. Xavier, James remembered. The train engineer’s son.

  “We can’t,” Jude said. “It’s too dangerous for you. It’s important to keep the independent communities safe.”

  “It’ll be fine for a day or two. Just until you decide your next move.”

  “We have to go south,” Clover said. She was sitting behind one of the desks with Mango at her side. He hadn’t left her since Bethany brought him back to her. “To California.”

  “Southern California is uninhabitable,” James said.

  The exact words West had said a few days before. The exact words that her teacher Mr. Wendell had used. They were parroting what they’d been taught. Why were they all told something that so obviously couldn’t be true? She shook her head. “Impossible. Southern California is a massive place. There’s no way that it’s entirely—”

  “East is safer,” Xavier said, cutting her off. “There are rebels all the way to the Atlantic Ocean. You’ll have support.”

  “Maybe in the spring, but without a permanent place, and stores for the winter, we need to be where it’s warm and we have a chance of finding enough food and water.”

  “We have to go back.” Alex sounded genuinely sorry to say that. He looked at Maggie, then at Xavier, and finally said, “Come with us. Please.”

  James felt a strange swell of pride when every head in the room turned to West for an answer. There was no easy solution, though. Technically, Bennett should already have known that he’d fail when he came alone to collect Clover from Virginia City. He should have been able to tell himself, using the portal. Everything James thought he knew about the world had unraveled since the day he fired his gun at the red X on Cassidy Golightly’s chest. He looked at the girl now, standing on the outside edge of the circle of people with the sister she’d done so much to protect. She’d been a monster to him two months ago. Now she reminded him of everything that was wrong with the past sixteen years. He had to do what he could to support West and Clover.

  “Clover’s right. They can’t look everywhere for us. They’re going to look east. There isn’t anything south of here for them to think we might go in that direction,” West said.

  “We’re trying to do this too fast,” Isaiah said. “We need time to think. Why don’t we wait until morning at least—” Several people started to talk at once—and loudly. James saw Clover wince and put her hands to her ears, and Jude moved closer to her, whispered something, then guided her by the elbow out of the room.

  Clover had always turned to West for support, before it ever occurred to her to look for her father. Now there was Jude. James had done this to himself. The distance between himself and his children couldn’t be blamed on anyone or anything else. But he could start to close it.

  But he’d kept Bennett from taking her today, even though it meant verifying that he’d gone against the Company. And that was something. It had to be.

  —

  “I’m fine,” Clover said. “You should go back in and see what they’re saying.”

  Jude sat next to her on the third step of the staircase leading up to the schoolhouse’s second floor. “I’m not letting you out of my sight until we’re out of here.”

  Clover twisted Jude’s watch around her wrist. He hadn’t asked for it back yet. It gave her some sense of calm, so she hadn’t offered it yet either. “What do you think is going to happen to me in the hallway? I’ll listen at the door.”

  Jude went to the door and leaned against the wall next to it. “We both will.”

  “Jude.”

  She could hear her brother speaking but was too far away to hear what he said. All of this back-and-forth was useless. As long as she was with them, they wouldn’t be safe anywhere. Langston Bennett gave “long arm of the law” a whole new meaning.

  Clover closed her eyes and brought up an image she’d seen once, an ad in an old magazine. It was a drawing of a girl hugging the earth in an effort to sell organic eggs. Bennett’s hold on the planet was far less benign.

  “I know what you’re planning,” Jude said, and she opened her eyes again. He didn’t look alarmed or worried. He thought he’d be able to stop her, then, if he really did know. “You think you’re going to leave here and go back to the city on your own. You think that will let the rest of us stay here, but you’re wrong.”

  He was only half right. She knew, just like everyone else did, that staying in Virginia City—as perfect a place as it was for them—was out of the question. They had to leave, and the sooner the better. Bennett was unstable and there was no guessing what he might do next.

  “Jesus, Clover, I can see your wheels turning right through your skull. You’re not leaving here until we all do, and you’re not going back to the city. Do you hear me?”

  “Of course I hear you,” she said. “There’s nothing wrong with my aural faculties.”

  He smiled, which was what she was going for, then fought it back. “No. I’m not kidding.”

  The rest of the group started pouring out of the classroom. Jude stopped Tim. “What’s going on?”

  “We’re packing up the trailers.” Tim was distracted, walking away even as he spoke. “Come help.”

  “We’ll be right there.”

  Jude turned back to Clover. She just stood there, against a wall, with Mango pressing against her legs, waiting for the crowd to thin out. “We’re not done talking about this,” he said.

  “I know.”

  West came out of the room after the tide had stemmed. “Clover, I need you to go help Marta pack up the kitchen. We need to take as much food with us as we can.”

  “I’ll help, too,” Jude said.

  “No, I need you to supervise getting the water barrels filled.”

  Jude’s eyebrows shot up. “We’re taking those? They’re so bulky.”

  “Priorities. Food, water, warmth, suppressant. We don’t know when we’ll be near potable water again.”

  Jude looked at her for a long moment. West didn’t wait around for an answer. He took off after Bethany when he saw her taking the smaller kids outside.

  “It’s okay,” Clover said. “Go help with the water.”

  Jude took her face in his hands and kissed her, pressing his mouth against hers with an urgency that froze her, and then melted her.

  “Promise me that I’m not going to regret letting you out of my sight,” he said, still holding her face, his thumbs moving over her cheeks.

  “I promise I’ll be here when you’re done helping with the water.”

  They both knew it was a promise with a short shelf life, but Jude finally let her go and walked away.

  An hour later, Clover and Marta had packed up as much food as they could into boxes to take with them. They had the jars of fruits and vegetables from the ranch, fresh apples and pears that they’d picked from trees around Virginia City, and the rest of the preserved elk meat.

  It would be enough, Clover thought. It
had to be. They just had to make it south without getting caught. There would be game to hunt and more fruit trees and other food they could gather in the warmer climate.

  “We need to remember to bring the books.” They had a little library in the schoolhouse that would help with food gathering and planting. “We’ll need them.”

  “I can finish up here,” Marta said. “Go on and get them. I think we’re leaving soon.”

  There was a sense of urgency that permeated the air. Jude must have finished with his job at the water pump, because she saw him walking toward her from the direction of the Bucket of Blood with a palpable look of relief on his face.

  “You really were worried I’d just walk away, weren’t you?” she asked when he reached her.

  He bent and petted Mango. “I know you, Clover Donovan. And I know what you’re planning.”

  His calm was a little unnerving. “Aren’t you going to try to talk me out of it?”

  He frowned a little and shook his head. “It wouldn’t work.”

  Yeah. The calm thing freaked her out. She was prepared to fight, or to just leave when everyone else was asleep tonight—but his total acceptance of the idea of her going back to the city? “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going with you.”

  Do you want to make a point or do you want to make a change? Do you want to get something off your chest, or do you want to get something done?

  —RICHARD NIXON, CAMPAIGN SPEECH, 1968

  West felt like he was running through molasses. He could have easily been in six places at any given time, and it was frustrating to think about all the things that were happening without him. He had to trust other people to help make sure they left Virginia City with some hope of surviving the winter wherever they wound up.

  “Breathe.” Leanne ran a hand up his arm. “One step at a time. That’s all we can do.”

  “Where’s Clover?”

  “With Jude, saying good-bye to the people who are going back to New Boulder.”

  Christ. There had been discussion about the entire group from New Boulder coming with them, but in the end Alex wanted his pregnant wife to go home. Two of the men, including Xavier, and one woman were staying though, to travel south, and that might make the difference between life and death. The three of them had been self-sufficient, instead of spending their whole lives dependent on the Company.