The Child Thief 5: Ghost Towns

by Forrest, Bella

  Right when exhaustion set in and I had finally drifted off, Jace was gently shaking me back awake.

  I rubbed my eyes groggily.

  “Are we in Ironfield?” I asked dumbly, the smell of the putrid mud wafting up to me and reminding me why I was in such a bad mood to begin with.

  “Even better,” Jace replied.

  I sat up and took stock of my surroundings. We were grounded now, and I could see an expanse of forest through the windshield. It was much greener forest than we had seen in Millville. The sun was starting to go down outside, and the sky was a darkening blue above us.

  Jace popped the airship hatch.

  “Follow me,” he said as he walked out of the airship.

  I stood up and tried to shake off the sleepy confusion. What were we doing? Was this Ironfield? I realized suddenly that Jace hadn’t been wearing a mask before he walked out of the airship. Surely he knew better than to risk being seen in Ironfield undisguised.

  “Jace,” I hissed at him, somewhat annoyed. Where were we?

  I peeked out into the cool dusk, and a clean, fresh smell greeted me. It was the smell of wet bark and dewy grass. It was the smell of thick, healthy woods. I felt instantly relieved. It certainly beat the smell of Millville’s pollution.

  But why was Ironfield so much nicer? It was a similar factory town.

  “Over here,” Jace called to me from the other side of the airship. I walked around and saw him, and my eyes widened, my breath hitching in my throat.

  He was standing beside a clear and babbling stream. It ran gently over a rocky streambed, varying in depth from inches to what looked like a few feet on either side. Jace stood, smiling sweetly beside it, and stared at me expectantly.

  I exhaled deeply, my shoulders lowering as tension drained out of me.

  “Oh, Jace,” I said, pausing and then smiling broadly. “This is beautiful. But where are we?”

  “About half an hour outside of Ironfield. I’ve been flying low for a while trying to find something like this,” he said, looking over his shoulder back to the stream. “I knew I had to find it before it got too dark. A dip will make you feel a lot better.”

  A dip. It sounded perfect. I couldn’t wait to feel clean and refreshed again.

  We quickly threw off our clothes until we were only clad in our second-skin suits. The horrible mud stuck tight to every article of clothing and most of our exposed skin, but soon it would be washed away in the clear, streaming water, and that changed everything.

  “Mind helping me with my zipper again?” Jace asked, turning his back to me.

  My previous modesty seemed like a luxury that I could no longer afford. There was no time to be coy and intimidated when we both stank like water buffalo. I was just excited to get into the water.

  I unzipped Jace down to his waist, pausing only momentarily to gaze at his muscular back again, and then turned my back toward him in turn, wordlessly pulling my hair to the side. I was perfectly capable of reaching my own zipper, but I wanted to get into the water as quickly as possible. Jace unzipped me achingly slowly, his fingers traveling down my spine as he worked it downward, and stopped at my lower back.

  I turned to face him. His gaze was soft and warm, conveying a longing that I knew all too well. He looked down at me, then raised his right hand to rest on my shoulder. I knew he wanted to step closer to me, maybe even pull me in tight for a kiss. And I wanted that, too. But it could wait.

  “Water first,” I said, with a smile and a wink. Then I stepped out of my second-skin suit, feeling the fresh air on my bare skin, and bounded past Jace clad only in my underthings. I splashed into the water, Jace close behind me.

  The chilly water started melting away the thick layer of mud that had hardened on my skin, and I leaned back to wash dirt out of my hair and off my face. It felt invigorating to be so clean and weightless in the fresh water of the stream.

  Beside me, Jace was scrubbing the dry mud off himself as well. The mud was so heavy that it quickly sank to the streambed to leave the water around us relatively clear and clean. I looked over at Jace as he rubbed his strong forearms clean in the water. His wet hair was pushed back behind his ears, amplifying the strength of his facial features: his strong jawline, his high cheekbones, and his broad brow. I remembered being so struck by his handsomeness and grace in his fancy tux back at the Edgewood formal dance, but this felt more like the real Jace. He was wild and untamed and totally in his element out here in these woods.

  I looked back down at myself through the clear water. I was practically naked beside him. But I didn’t feel vulnerable and nervous like I thought I would. In fact, I was feeling uncharacteristically bold. I wanted to pull him close to me and forget all the worries and fears that were plaguing me. And when he looked up and met my gaze, I felt like maybe he did, too.

  But we had things to do. I splashed him playfully and then pulled myself through the water back to the bank, stepping up onto the dry silt for my muddy clothes. Then I sat beside the stream and began to wash the dirt off my suit.

  Jace came and sat beside me with his suit in his hand.

  “Thanks for bringing me here,” I said softly. The cool air had begun to cause goose bumps all over my arms and legs, and I wanted to press against him for warmth and to feel safe in his arms, but I let him speak first.

  “Reminds me of home,” he said. His hands were working the dirt out of his suit, but his gaze lingered absentmindedly ahead, on the other side of the riverbank. “The sound of the river, the smell of the pines, and the feeling of being isolated but not lonely. It all reminds me so much of where I grew up.”

  “Sounds like heaven,” I said. Sometimes I forgot how foreign this new life must’ve been to him. He’d gone from living in deep wilderness to crowded, polluted factory towns almost overnight, and it couldn’t have been easy.

  He stopped cleaning his suit, then, his face beginning to transform in the dim light. He didn’t look like he was enjoying himself out here anymore; rather, he looked pained and contemplative.

  I reached over and grabbed his hand.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  He nodded. “It’s just a bittersweet memory,” he said quietly.

  He turned to face me, a rim of water quivering below his honey-colored eyes, and I put my suit down and scooted closer to him.

  Jace didn’t just lose his home. He lost his family, too. He lost everyone he knew and loved, with the exception of a small band of survivors who were now safely back in Edgewood. And if these woods reminded him of home, then they probably brought back a lot of those memories. I had spent so much time considering my own losses, and planning for my reconciliations, that I hadn’t adequately considered what it must’ve been like for Jace to know that he couldn’t get his parents or some of his friends back. The government had taken them for good.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. I leaned my forehead against his.

  Jace placed his strong hand behind my head and brought me even closer. His lips touched mine softly, sending new waves of goose bumps down my torso and over my limbs. Then he wrapped his arms around me and pulled me against him until we were entirely pressed together. I held him as tightly as he held me.

  The stream was reflecting the starry canopy of the night sky above us, now, and the gentle water babbled softly beside us. In any other world, I might’ve wanted to stay with Jace forever in those woods. We could make a life for ourselves out here, far away from the Ministry and the CRAS and the government.

  But I couldn’t give up on Edgewood. I couldn’t give up on Juno or Culver. And I definitely couldn’t give up on Hope.

  I knew Jace felt the same way about Rhea and his friends back at Edgewood.

  We slowly pulled ourselves away and then stood with our suits.

  “We can make camp here,” Jace said. “We’re far enough from Ironfield and any other city that no one will bump into us.”

  I agreed. We would rest tonight in paradise. Then tomorrow we’d go back to the
real world.

  Jace and I walked back to the airship, where we pulled the passenger seats in the back of the ship down and together to form a bed. Our underthings had dried enough that we could sleep comfortably in them. Even so, there was very little fabric between us. I chewed my lip at the sight of Jace lying back, tan and muscular, with so little on.

  “Would you rather I slept on the floor? You can sleep on the bed alone if you’d like,” he offered, propping himself up on an elbow.

  “Don’t be silly,” I demurred. “This isn’t the first time we’ve been in cramped quarters.”

  But it did feel a little alien to lie beside Jace. Maybe it was because we were still so guarded with our emotions. Or maybe it was because it had been so long since I had felt that type of attraction to someone. Or it might’ve been simply because I was scared and confused after our brush with the government back in Millville.

  Whatever it was, the moment I lay down in Jace’s open, strong arms, it all began to melt away. Jace tightened his grip around me, and I felt comfortable and safe. I fell asleep almost instantly.

  I woke up the next morning by myself.

  I looked around anxiously for Jace. Had he stepped outside of the airship and been captured? Had something happened to him? I sat up quickly to scan the entire cabin, panicking… and then spotted him in his pilot chair and breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Why didn’t you wake me?” I asked, standing up and walking to the back of the airship where our clothes were. Jace was already dressed, and I felt exposed and vulnerable again in just my underclothes.

  Jace turned back to look at me with a loving smile. “You were sleeping so soundly,” he said.

  I slipped into my second-skin suit and then walked back to the front of the airship, took my seat beside him, and glanced through the glass.

  We were already in the air. It looked like a bright and beautiful morning outside, and there was a sweet mineral smell in the air from the stream water in our hair and clothes. The map on the dash showed that we were almost right on top of Ironfield.

  “Thanks for flying us,” I said.

  It was nice to fly with someone so skilled that he could start the airship and get us into the air without even waking me up. It made me feel safe and confident. Jace’s skills had gotten us safely into the air back in Millville, too. I wasn’t sure I would’ve been able to do that.

  “You can fly us back home when it’s all said and done,” Jace replied playfully.

  I smiled, but I still felt an undercurrent of unease. We had been spotted in the last town, and now we were headed into another. If there was a trap laid for us there, we might not even make it back to Edgewood.

  “We need to call Jackie and tell them about the agents,” I said. It had somehow slipped my mind in the tumult of yesterday’s escape, but it felt important to let them know. We needed to be on high alert from here on out.

  “I called this morning while you were asleep,” Jace replied. “They’ll be keeping a close eye out for us, and they’ve sent additional scouts to monitor the roads leading in and out of Ironfield. I sent her the picture of the poster, too. They’re searching in the government systems today to try to find out more about Helping Hands.”

  I thought back to the picture in question: a poster hanging up in the factory in Millville. Employees were urged to register with Helping Hands to receive unemployment benefits. And then all of those employees had just disappeared. Was Helping Hands responsible for that? If so, why?

  “Strap yourself in,” Jace said, interrupting my thoughts. “Who knows what the landing will be like in Ironfield.”

  We were quickly dropping in elevation as we flew over Ironfield. I looked at my GPS watch—still no enemies. But like Jace had said, that hadn’t meant much back in Millville. Agents could pop up quickly and unexpectedly, which made the watches less than foolproof. And now that we had been spotted once, I was anxious about the possibility of walking into a trap. Maybe the agents were one step ahead of us and had gotten positioned for our arrival before our teams on the ground or back in Edgewood had the chance to scope out the area.

  “This place looks bigger than Millville,” Jace said.

  I looked at Ironfield through the broad windshield of the airship. It did look substantially bigger. It was a larger town with more streets, an additional apartment complex, and a few more buildings that appeared to be a small hospital and a train station. But the train station looked like it must have been deserted even before the city had been abandoned. There were several broken-looking trains just sitting on the tracks.

  So far, that was something the abandoned towns had in common: a lack of connection to the outside world.

  “Looks like it’ll be easier to land here,” I said hopefully.

  There were woods around Ironfield, much like Millville, but they seemed slightly less twisted and sick. And there was grass growing in Ironfield. It could’ve been that these woods were just more resilient than the ones around Millville, maybe comprised of sturdier types of trees. Or maybe the factory here made less pollution. Either way, unlike Millville, a few open meadows presented themselves as suitable landing spots.

  Jace chose a scraggly meadow beside a strip of woods that led up to the back of a large building that looked like a block of apartments. He deftly maneuvered the controls to hover gently over the grass, barely disturbing the meadow, and then deployed the landing gear. We touched down softly.

  We walked to the back of the ship for our gear, Jace pulling out our hoods and tossing mine to me.

  “All right,” he said, zipping on his hood. “I saw some huts from the air in this part of the woods. I say we start there again and then approach the first apartment building from behind.”

  I held my remaining latex disk up to my face and allowed it to grab hold of my skin.

  “Okay,” I replied once the mask had printed and I was able to see again. “And then the factory.”

  Jace nodded.

  He popped the hatch on the airship, and suddenly I could see the brightness of the late morning sun being reflected off the grass. But the smell of the air was more reminiscent of Millville than of the little stretch of paradise we had experienced the night before.

  Jace stepped out first. I took a moment to adjust the plasticky hair that was falling into my face before I followed Jace. These masks were bulky and uncomfortable, but it was better to wear them than to risk being seen without a disguise. I looked down to be sure that the second-skin suit wasn’t visible and then stepped out of the airship into the bright day.

  I had only taken a couple of steps when I bumped directly into Jace.

  “Watch out,” I shot at him playfully.

  But he thrust his hand up into the air wordlessly, a clear cue for me to be silent.

  My heart leapt into my throat. Had he heard something? Had he seen something? I looked around quickly and quietly but didn’t see anything except empty huts in the woods in front of us.

  Jace was perfectly still and silent, his eyes wide and alarmed.

  “Back to the ship,” he whispered throatily.

  But before I could turn around, I heard a sickening sound that paralyzed me with fear.

  I heard a shotgun pumping.

  20

  I stayed perfectly still while the sound echoed in my ears. I would know that noise anywhere. It was definitely the mechanical chk-chk of someone pumping a shotgun, and it sounded like it was very close.

  Jace stood a few inches ahead of me, as motionless as I was. I wondered if we should turn and run back into the airship. We were only a few feet away from the open hatch, and if we hurried, we might both make it in.

  But these suits weren’t bulletproof. And a blast from a shotgun, and from as close as it had sounded, would make short work of them.

  “Hands up,” a croaking female voice said from directly in front of us.

  I scanned the tree line. I could see empty huts and lean-tos that reminded me of the shantytown back in Mill
ville. I could see the back of the apartment building through the strip of woods on the edge of the meadow. But I didn’t see an agent, or any other person. Nonetheless, my hands began to slowly rise into the air. Not seeing our captor made her even more dangerous.

  Jace’s hands rose as well. He was staring intently at a point in the trees slightly to our right, and I craned my neck to follow his gaze.

  An old woman was standing beside a hut, brandishing a shotgun. No wonder we didn’t see her at first. She was draped in a dirty brown shawl that was flecked with twigs and leaves like homemade camouflage. Her bare hands and face were tanned a deep brown that matched the tree bark around her. Her hair was a graying and tattered nest all around her face. She looked very old and very frail.

  But she was holding the shotgun straight and steady.

  I looked to Jace for guidance. Was he going to try to make it back to the ship? Were we going to run? But Jace was still and quiet.

  When the silence was broken again, it was the old woman’s rasping voice.

  “I’m not going anywhere with you,” she growled, her shotgun still aimed squarely at us.

  I furrowed my brow. What did that mean?

  “We’re not here to take you anywhere,” Jace said in a calm and gentle tone.

  The old woman’s aim swung at him as he spoke. She narrowed her eyes and studied him.

  When my brain began to process again, I started to understand what she was accusing us of.

  “We’re not agents,” I said in a small, weak voice. It was all I could muster through my fear.

  The shotgun swayed to point at me. I couldn’t help but stare down the double barrels and imagine the destruction they could cause.

  The old woman’s stare was sharp and unforgiving as she looked me over.

  “So they’re just handing invisible ships out to citizens, then?” she asked bitingly.

  She had seen us exit the airship. I couldn’t blame her for assuming that we were working for the government. I would’ve thought the same thing if two strangers walked out of an invisible airship in an abandoned town. And after our close call in Millville, we knew that agents were returning to these towns to look for people who had been left behind. She may have been evading them regularly.