Broken Sky

by L. A. Weatherly

  “Do I really have to?” whispered Hal.

  Madame Josephine touched his arm. “I’ll spend as much time with you as I can,” she said. “So will your mother. It’ll be fine, you’ll—”

  A loud knocking echoed through the house.

  Ma’s eyes flew to Madame Josephine’s. The astrologer went pale; she shook her head. “I’m not expecting anyone just yet. Quick, get him in.”

  Ma seemed frozen. As Madame Josephine rushed from the room I clutched Hal’s arm. “Come on – I’ll go down with you.”

  I could see his relief. We clambered down the wooden ladder. The room felt claustrophobic; I could have touched both opposite walls at once. I found a lantern and lit it just as Ma closed the trapdoor above.

  A flapping noise as the carpet covered us – the muffled scrape of the trunk. Ma’s footsteps left the bedroom. I felt icy as I stared upwards, my pulse hammering. Strain as I might, I couldn’t hear anything. Had Madame Josephine betrayed us? Were Guns at the door right now?

  Or had Cain’s men found me?

  Hal stared at the ceiling too, his fists tight. I put my arms around him; he pressed against me. “Amity, I don’t want to be here,” he murmured.

  “I know. Shush, though.” I stroked his hair. Over his shoulder I could see a small shelf on the wall. Some of Hal’s books were on it, and a few of his model planes. How long had Ma been planning this?

  We started as footsteps entered the bedroom above like thunder. Only one pair – no, two. My heart rate trebled. I tightened my hold on my brother and thought again of my pistol. You will not take him, I vowed.

  The trunk was pulled away. “It’s only us,” hissed Ma’s voice.

  My muscles drooped. I let go of Hal just as light angled into the room from above; Ma’s face appeared in the sudden rectangle. “Hurry, Amity, you have to leave now. That was just the mailman, but Josephine has a client coming soon.”

  I hesitated. I could stay down here with Hal – hide out with him for however long it took. But Ma would suspect trouble; she might even guess that I was Wildcat. I couldn’t put her in more danger than she was already in.

  I gripped Hal’s shoulders. “Listen to me,” I whispered fiercely. “Collie was in the Central States; that’s why he could never write to us. He managed to escape – and if he were here right now, he’d tell you that this is worth it. Anything’s worth it to stay out of one of those camps. You’ve got to do everything that Ma and Josephine tell you. Okay?”

  “Collie was really in the Central States?” Hal said hoarsely.

  I nodded, unsure whether I was doing the right thing by telling him – knowing only that I had to give him something.

  Hal licked his lips and looked around him. Almost imperceptibly, his shoulders straightened. “Okay,” he said. “Tell Collie that…that I’m really glad he escaped. And that I won’t let myself get taken there.”

  Oh, how I hoped that he’d have any say in it. I hugged him hard. “I love you,” I said. “I’ve got to go.”

  “I love you, too. Amity!” Hal gripped my arm as I started for the ladder. His eyes searched mine. “Do you maybe want to take that wig Ma got for me?” he said in an undertone.

  And I knew that he’d guessed I was in danger.

  I tried to smile. “No, you might need it,” I whispered back. “But thanks.”

  Closing the trapdoor over my brother was one of the hardest things I’d ever done. I helped Ma flop the rug into place and drag the trunk over it. It felt as if we were burying Hal alive.

  Madame Josephine showed Ma and me a back door. “Take care,” she said, clasping my fingers. “I’ll see you soon, Rose,” she added.

  “Tomorrow?” asked Ma.

  The astrologer shook her head. “Better not, in case anyone saw you come in. Make it the next day.” She squeezed Ma’s hand, her gaze intense. “I’ll take good care of him.”

  Once we were out on the street, Ma sagged. “Oh, dear…oh, I hope this was the right thing,” she murmured.

  I hoped so too, but I didn’t say it. I took her arm and we started down the sidewalk, away from our own neighbourhood. All I could see were my brother’s eyes as I’d shut the trapdoor over him. It was too late now not to trust Madame Josephine.

  “Ma, what about you – will you be all right?” I said in a low voice. “The Guns might—”

  “They’ve already been to the house this morning. I told them Hal was at school. They’ll have gone there by now and found out he never showed up.”

  My veins chilled. “So they’ll come back and search.”

  “They won’t find anything,” she said tersely. “I’ll cry and act helpless and say he’s been threatening to run away for months.”

  I glanced at her in surprise and she gave a tight-lipped smile. “You’d be surprised how often men fall for that,” she said. “Even Guns, I bet.”

  As we kept walking I suddenly had the feeling that I hardly knew my mother. Would her ruse work? Or would they drag her in for questioning – or worse?

  I hated how powerless I felt. “Ma…” I started.

  She stopped at the streetcar stand. Without looking at me, she said, “Amity, you have a job to do, and so do I now. Don’t worry. I will not let them take my son.” Her voice quavered a fraction – yet I didn’t doubt her.

  My mother. My pretty, fluttery mother.

  My throat was tight. Dad was a fool to prefer Madeline to you, even for a second, I wanted to tell her. I swallowed hard and looked away. The streetcar was rattling towards us. I couldn’t take it; someone we knew might be on it.

  “I have to go,” I said. I hugged my mother blindly. “Ma…”

  “I know, darling,” she murmured, stroking my hair. “I know.”

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  I left Sacrament and hopped a train to Angeles, just thirty miles north of the Peacefighting complex. Though I felt leery about being so close to the base, Angeles was the largest city in the Western Seaboard: a seething, spiky mass of millions. With luck I could melt away into it.

  A day passed. Two. I hardly had any money left. I slept rough in doorways and abandoned buildings and scanned the papers feverishly. The headlines screamed daily about Wildcat – denouncing her for murder, keeping the public at fever pitch. The stories kept quoting “sources close to the base”: “She always seemed so trustworthy. I’d never have guessed what she was really like.”

  Those are not real quotes, I reminded myself harshly.

  There was no sign of Milt’s story.

  Every time I passed a payphone, I longed to call the base. But if Collie was still alive, he already knew he had to keep low. Anyone I called there would be at risk if the base guessed it was me.

  Collie, please be okay, I thought over and over. Please. Canary Cargo, remember?

  On the third morning I stood half-hidden in a doorway with my hands jammed in my coat pockets, staring out at the gloomy city street. The glow from the street lamps daubed at the shadows. In the downpour, the light itself looked streaked with damp.

  Distantly, I was aware of the emptiness in my stomach – a hollowed-out feeling as if someone had gouged away my insides. It was two days since I’d eaten, not that it mattered. If I could just get what I needed, I’d be fine.

  A light went on in the diner opposite. Five a.m. I could see a bleached-blonde waitress tying on her apron, and silver stools with red leatherette seats. My hands tightened in my pockets. It all seemed so ordinary.

  I was desperate to get in there and see a newspaper, but forced myself to wait until other people had drifted in: a postman, a woman who wore sensible shoes like a nurse, a few more. Then, my heart beating hard, I flipped up my coat collar and left the safety of the doorway. My boots splashed in the puddles as I jogged across the street, shattering reflected light with each footfall.

  My boots. They were regulation boots, nothing like the pretty shoes that most women wore. I prayed no one would notice and stepped into the diner.

  The sudden w
armth and dryness was an embrace. Conscious of how bedraggled I looked, I slipped onto the seat at the end of the counter – the one nearest the door, in case I needed to run.

  The waitress came over. Her upswept hair was in stylized curls. “Help you?” she said cheerfully, swiping at the counter with a damp rag. Betty, read her name tag, with a symbol beside the letters that looked like a lashing tail. I tore my gaze from it.

  “Just coffee, please,” I said.

  Gunshots rang out as I burst through the bathroom window. I landed on a scattered mess of wood, glass, trash from the alleyway. Pain – my hand was bleeding – I lunged to my feet and ran, pausing only to push over a trio of garbage cans and send them rolling in my wake. Panting, I veered out onto the sidewalk, my boots thudding against the concrete.

  By the time I heard distant sirens, I was over ten blocks away. I kept walking until I couldn’t hear them any more, until the only noises were the mundane ones of the city. The elevated train was up ahead. No one paid attention when I paused under its bridge. People passed by as the trains rumbled above, shaking the ground at our feet.

  A shard of glass glinted from the fleshy part of my thumb. I gritted my teeth and pulled it free, then found a handkerchief in my pocket and wrapped it tightly around the wound.

  The whole time, my thoughts were tumbling, screaming.

  I knew that I had not misread the story on page nine. But I pulled out the paper and read it again anyway:

  JOURNALIST KILLED IN AUTO CRASH

  Milton Fraser, 28, was found dead yesterday evening after he apparently lost control of his auto and broke through a safety rail, crashing over fifty feet into a canyon…

  I swallowed hard as another train rattled overhead and the trash whispered against my ankles in the breeze. They’d killed Milt, an ordinary journalist who they shouldn’t even have known about. How deep, how broad, did this whole thing go?

  Collie.

  My sore hand clenched its bandage. He had to still be alive; he had to be. And I had to get back to him, somehow – we both had to escape if we could—

  With the rain still drizzling down, I started to run.

  Finally, blocks later, I forced myself to slow to an unsteady walk. My hand pulsed with pain as I made my way down the city streets, listening for sirens. I felt dizzy. I’d existed on adrenalin for days. Now it had left me, and my knees had turned to cotton.

  Occasionally I glanced at the newspaper I still carried. The headline never changed: JOURNALIST KILLED IN AUTO CRASH. Milt had been so certain that his editor would be on our side.

  It looked as if he’d been wrong.

  The vision of Collie’s body sprawled on red grass flashed into my mind again. The paper crumpled in my grip. No. It couldn’t be true. Collie wouldn’t have flown after what happened to me. He’d have pretended to still be sick even if he wasn’t.

  The vision wouldn’t go away. I could see the drying blood in Collie’s sun-streaked hair. His eyes, open, as blue as the sky at which he stared.

  Russ was dead. Stan and Milt were dead.

  Collie was dead, too. I knew it.

  I heard a low moan – realized it had come from me. The sidewalk seemed to lurch. I stumbled as I wove through the steady stream of pedestrians.

  I’m just tired and hungry, I thought dazedly. Collie was not dead. I’d get back onto the base somehow. We’d leave together; we’d find a way to get the truth out to the world. It was the only thing now that could save Collie and Hal both.

  I kept trudging down the sidewalk. I’d held myself together for days, but now it was so hard to think. The base was over thirty miles away. The city’s bus stations would be crawling with police; motorists would have been told to watch out for me. I’d have to leave Angeles on foot, then hop a train. The city limits were ten miles from here, but I had to reach them.

  “Have to,” I mumbled. I looked at the paper again and froze.

  The headline read: COLLIE KILLED.

  Then the letters rearranged themselves. JOURNALIST KILLED.

  Journalist. Collie. Killed.

  “Miss, are you all right?”

  A man stood in front of me. “I’m fine,” I got out. “I just…” I couldn’t finish. I groped to steady myself against a wall. There was no wall. I staggered and the man grabbed my elbow.

  “Easy, sister! What’s the matter – haven’t had enough to eat? Pretty common these days…”

  He trailed off, frowning at my face. Then he looked down at my boots.

  My regulation boots.

  “Hey, wait a minute…” he breathed.

  Fear pierced through my daze. I jerked away and started to run.

  I heard thudding footsteps behind me, felt his fingers graze my parka. “Stop her! That’s Wildcat! Stop her!” he bellowed.

  In a blur, I saw passers-by turn my way, each face a moon of surprise. Shouts rang out. I put on a burst of speed, but bodies closed ranks in front of me. I tried to shove through – hands grabbed each of my arms.

  “That’s her! That’s her!”

  “No!” I gasped. “Let me go – you’ve got it wrong!”

  “Like hell!” shouted the first man, thrusting a newspaper at me. My face stared out from the front page. “Amity Vancour – that’s you!”

  “It’s not what you think – please – the WfP is corrupt; I was trying to expose it—”

  “How dare you!” yelled a woman. Her mouth looked wide, contorted; spittle flecked my cheeks. “You’ve got a nerve, blaming them!”

  Shouts filled my ears – pounded through my brain.

  “Murderer!”

  “Traitor!”

  “Call the police!”

  I was jostled back and forth as the crowd struggled to get at me. “The world trusted you!” screamed the woman. She lunged forward and clawed at my cheek.

  I cried out as her nails raked down my face; someone else yanked my hair. The jostling turned to shoving. I stumbled and fell to the sidewalk and they were on me – kicking me, hitting me.

  “Bitch!”

  “We trusted you!”

  “Traitorous bitch!”

  Somebody kicked me in the ribs. The sidewalk felt cold and grainy against my bleeding cheek. With a whimper, I curled into a ball as their blows rained against my body.

  The wail of sirens.

  “All right, break it up, break it up!” The order sounded distant. Gradually, the blows became fewer. Someone got in a final kick and was jerked away.

  “Get up,” ordered a voice.

  My chest was heaving; one hand clutched at the sidewalk. I didn’t move.

  “Get up.” Someone grabbed me by the elbow and hauled me to my feet. I staggered as pain burst from every inch. The crowd stood staring, their faces hard with hatred and satisfaction. A policeman held my arm. Another stood just in front of me, his gaze oddly sympathetic.

  “Yeah, that’s her – even with those nice new decorations on her face,” he said. “Let’s take her in.”

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  They left me alone in a cell for what seemed like hours. I lay on a hard cement slab and stared at the wall. They’d taken my pistol from me. There was no mattress, no pillow. My bruises throbbed, but to my amazement, I must have slept. The next thing I knew, I was drowsily raising my head from my arms and there was someone standing at the door of my cell.

  It was the black policeman who’d said to take me in. His face was ageless; his eyes looked as if they’d seen centuries pass. With a jingle of keys, he unlocked my cell and swung open the door.

  “Come with me,” he said.

  Sleep had sharpened my senses again. Warily, I got up and followed him to a small room with grimy walls and a wooden table. Two chairs faced each other across its scarred surface.

  “Sit,” he said.

  I sat.

  He took the chair opposite and studied me for a moment. “Messed you up pretty good, didn’t they, Miss Vancour?”

  “I’ll heal,” I said.

  �
�If you have time. Know what the punishment is for treason?”

  “If I’m found guilty, they’ll shoot me.” My voice stayed level.

  A clock ticked on the wall, measuring out the seconds. The policeman nodded slowly. “I’m Officer Page,” he said. “I’ve got some questions for you.”

  “No.”

  “You’re refusing?”

  “I haven’t eaten in two days. If I don’t get food, then yes, I’m refusing.”

  Officer Page raised a dark eyebrow. For a few beats I had no idea what he would do. Then he reached for a squat black phone on the table; he dialled and spoke briefly into it. “Sally, bring sandwiches and coffee for our guest.” He gave the last word an ironic twist.

  He hung up and leaned back in his chair, his expression unreadable. The clock ticked some more.

  “They look like warpaint,” he said finally.

  I looked at him.

  “Those scratches on your face,” he added.

  It seemed the non sequitur of the century. “I wouldn’t know,” I said. “My amenities didn’t come with a mirror.”

  He snorted. “Feisty, huh? Well, I sure do hate it when women fight. That crowd was out of control. Can’t really blame them, but—”

  “I wasn’t fighting.”

  “Oh, no, you were just on the run after evading arrest, weren’t you?”

  The door opened. A woman entered with a plate of sandwiches and a pot of hot coffee. Suddenly my hands were shaking. I fell onto the food greedily, wolfing it down. The sandwiches were egg salad, which I hated. Nothing had ever tasted so good.

  Officer Page waited until I finished the last bite and had poured myself some coffee. “Comfy now?” he asked.

  The coffee was strong and bitter. It cleared my head. “Am I allowed to make a phone call?” I said.

  “No, you are not. The rules are different for Peacefighters, as I think you know. You’re not under our jurisdiction. We’re just holding you for your own security force to come deal with. They can decide if you get a phone call or not.”

  Collie. I squelched the thought harshly. If he were still alive, I couldn’t have called him anyway.