Jenna nodded. “I can’t have you trying to take me back, Barker. I was planning on shooting you if you tried.”
He sighed, as if it didn’t matter one way or the other. “Please don’t shoot me.”
“Please don’t take me back.”
“I won’t. I swear. I won’t. Just help me get out of here.”
“How am I supposed to do that?”
“Throw me a rope? Tie it to something, and throw me the end. I’ll climb out.”
She paused. Now was her chance. She could run, knowing he’d never catch her. He’d get out on his own at some point, right?
But from the looks of him, he’d already tried and failed to scale the slippery wet walls. His boots and pants were covered in water, probably once shit-water that had been mostly cleared out by the rain over the past year.
“You’re taking a really long time to think about this. Please,” he said. “If you leave me here, I’ll die of starvation, alone in this hole. For the love of God—”
“Don’t bring God into this,” she snapped.
“I promise, once I’m out, I’ll leave you alone.”
“You have to swear.”
“I swear,” he said. But when she was silent, he said, “Last night was a huge set-up, huh.”
No.
“Shut up, Barker.”
“I get it. You’re doing what you have to do to survive. Well, now, so am I. You get me out of here and you can go do whatever you want. I won’t follow.”
“You have to swear you’ll go back to the camp, and tell them you found me dead. Or tell them I had a gun and shot at you, and you had to kill me yourself. I don’t want them coming after me.”
“Done. I swear.”
“How do I know that you won’t tell them the truth and come back after me with a whole crew of soldiers, huh?”
Could she trust him?
He looked so pathetic, down in that hole. If she left him there, his death would be on her conscience.
But then again, she’d been psyching herself up to kill him. Leaving him in the hole would be an easier way. She wouldn’t have to actually pull the trigger. Just walk away.
Fuck. She couldn’t do it. Not after last night. Not after the way he’d touched her, the way he’d made her feel like she was important.
Even the fact that he’d spanked her for calling herself a whore didn’t bother her anymore. In a weird, old-fashioned way, he was trying to show her that he cared.
“Hey Barker,” she said. “Never spank me again.”
“I’m really sorry about that. I don’t know what came over me.”
Jenna laughed. He sounded so sincere. Utterly confused by his own alpha-maleness.
She walked away and set down the pack, looking around for a something she could throw him.
“Jenna?” he called desperately. “Please, don’t leave me here to die. I’ve been thinking about what you said, and you’re right. They will kill you at the camp. So I won’t ever try to get you to go back. I know you’re right about that now, okay? Jenna?”
“I’m still here,” she said. “Just looking for something to throw you.”
“Thank God. I thought you’d left me again.”
Again? Oh. Right. Like this morning, when she’d stolen everything and run. She felt guilt creep up on her, and shoved it down. She’d save him now, and her conscience would be clear.
But there was nothing she could see anywhere that would work as a rope.
“Jenna. How about your shawl?”
She took the white tablecloth off from around her shoulders. It wasn’t very long, but if she cut it in half she could knot it together.
“Hang on.” She went into his pack and pulled out the switchblade.
It didn’t take long to split the cloth into two, and once she’d securely knotted it back together, it would do.
“I don’t know what to anchor it to,” she said. “What do I do?”
A pause from below. “How about the closest car?”
There was a stalled car a couple of feet away, so she tied the cloth to the inside door handle.
But the makeshift rope only reached to about a foot above his head when she dropped it in.
“It’s not long enough,” she said, feeling the panic rise into her voice.
“It's fine. It’ll do. Just stand back so you don’t fall in as well.”
With a grunt, he jumped and grabbed the rope with both hands, and pulled himself up until his arms were out of the hole, his elbows on the dirty pavement.
“Almost there,” she said. “You can do it!”
He yelled as he put all of his upper-body strength into it, and pulled himself out of the hole. The cloth tore most of the way, but he was out. He lay down in the middle of the road, panting from his exertion.
“You saved my life,” he said softly.
“You’re welcome.”
“Please, give me back my gun so I can bring it back to the camp. The story won’t make sense if I don’t have my stuff.”
“Say it all fell down the hole, and you managed to climb out but had to leave your stuff,” she said.
No way was she giving up supplies and a gun, not if she was going to be out on her own.
“They’ll send a rescue mission to get the gun. It’s not like anyone’s making more of them, you know that. It’s too valuable, and too dangerous in the hands of the wrong person.”
“I’m not giving you the gun, Barker,” she said quietly. “And if you try to take it from me, I’ll shoot you. I don’t want to, but I will.”
He cursed under his breath.
“What will I tell them?”
“That’s not my problem.”
“Don’t fool yourself. It is your problem. Because if Lanche doesn’t believe me that you’re dead—if he thinks I gave you my gun and gear and let you go—you can bet they’ll come looking for you.”
Fuck. He was right. But she still wasn’t giving him the gun.
“Let me think.”
What story would they believe?
“Tell them a gang attacked me and killed me, took your stuff, and left you for dead.”
“They’ll go looking for the gang.”
“Tell them it’s a huge, armed gang.”
“They’ll look even harder.” He sat up and looked at the pack. “I need water.”
Shaking her head, she handed him the canteen. “You smell.”
He laughed. “I know. Wish I could change clothes. Actually—there are more clothes in the pack. May I?”
“This is my stuff now. It’s all I have.”
“Jenna, come on. Let me change into something clean and dry, and we’ll go sit somewhere and figure this out, together.”
“And then you’ll leave me alone.”
“Yeah.”
She opened the pack and pulled out fresh clothes and tossed them a few feet away from him.
“Thank you.” He took off his boots and set them aside, and stripped off his clothing.
Damn, that man had an amazing body. All those muscles . . . all that nice man-stuff going on. She averted her gaze while he changed. No sense in getting all worked up when they were going to be parting ways soon, permanently.
“Falling asleep with you last night, in that bed,” he said, “it was the best night I’ve had since the Pulse.”
“Me too.” God, it really had been.
“So . . . thank you for that, even if it was all just a ploy to get my gun.”
“You know what? Fuck you, Barker. You think I don’t have feelings? It might have started out that way, but last night meant something to me too. All right?”
“It didn’t just ‘start out that way,’ ” he argued. “It ended that way too. When you stole my shit and left.”
“Guess so.”
&nb
sp; “I’m an idiot.”
“No . . . you’re not an idiot,” she said. “Just too trusting. Just like how you trusted the Colonel when he said he’d only question me.”
“I know better now.”
He was dressed again, and smelling a million times better.
“Do you?” she asked. “Prove to me you’re awake, and not just pretending to be.”
Barker paused. “When the Colonel first approached me to find you, he told me it was because you were a murderer who needed to be brought to justice. That’s Lanche-speak for executed.” He sighed. “It wasn’t until he realized I’d never bring you in to be killed that he changed tactics. Convince me he cared about your well-being, and that you were probably innocent, and in grave danger by being out here alone.”
“I’m in more danger in Grand Central than I am out here.”
“I realize that. I wanted to believe him then, but now I can’t. He’s a liar. He’s lying to everyone about that radio, even. We know it exists, or existed, at least—and yet now there’s a death penalty attached to even talking about it.”
“Yeah,” she whispered. “It’s fucked up.”
“Come on,” he said, walking toward her. “Now you know I’m . . . awake.”
She aimed the rifle at him. “Don’t come any closer.”
Barker put his hands in the air. “Don’t aim that thing at me if you don’t intend to kill me. You don’t trust me, still? After all this? If I wanted to grab the gun I’d have it by now.”
Maybe he was right. He was a lot bigger than her, and stronger. Knew more about fighting. If he’d wanted to simply knock her out and steal it he could have.
She lowered the gun.
* * *
They sat side by side in the back seat of the unlocked car Jenna had used as an anchor. The seats were luxuriously comfortable compared to what Barker was used to sitting on.
It meant something that she’d saved his life. She could have kept walking, but she didn’t. She really was a good person, with a good heart. At least his instincts last night weren’t completely fucked up in that regard.
And now he had to get the Colonel off her back, forever.
“You need to tell them that it was lost,” she said, indicating his rifle, still slung protectively around her chest.
“I’m telling you, they’ll go out to look for it.”
“And they won’t find it. Tell them it fell in the Hudson River and got washed away.”
He thought about it and nodded. “That could work. They won’t try to retrieve a gun from the river. It would be a waste of time.”
“Great.” She leaned back, her beautiful blonde hair cascading around her shoulders.
“But what was I doing in the river?”
“You saw my dead body floating by. You weren’t sure I was dead, so you waded in to save me and lost your gear, lost your gun, and almost drowned yourself.”
“But I got out, minus the gun and gear, and realized you were completely dead . . . and floating away.”
Jenna smiled. “No Jenna, no gear, no gun. Just you, safe and sound back at the camp, with your report.”
He took a deep breath and exhaled. “All right. I can do that. I’ll tell Lanche.”
“Or . . .” She took his hand in hers, and looked him in the eye. “Or you could forget about them. Stay with me. Leave with me.”
He wanted to. He did. The Jenna he’d come to know was nothing like the murdering whore Lanche had convinced him she was. And if the camp was as bad as she believed
(as bad as it was)
if things were so terrible there . . . did he even want to go back and be part of the system that had broken her, and all those civilians, down?
“I have to go back, Jenna. If I don’t, they’ll look for me. For us. I have to tell them you’re dead, like you said.”
Jenna made a face, as if she’d tasted something disgusting. “And then you’re just going to get a new gun and follow orders and eat your rations and pretend the women on the Tracks aren’t being used on a nightly basis.”
“Fuck, Jenna. I don’t know how I can do that now. But no matter what, I have to go back there.”
“I’m leaving now,” she said. “You better start walking, and don’t look back. I don’t want you knowing where I’m headed, in case they try to ‘question’ it out of you.”
“You think they’d torture me for information, one of their own soldiers? This is still America, damn it.”
“You can’t be as dumb as you pretend to be, Barker.” She sighed. “Or maybe you are. Dumb and cute.”
“Bye, Jenna.” He got out of the car and started the trek back to Grand Central.
Grand Central Terminal, New York City
Barker stood silently in the Operations Control Center, or the OCC, as everyone called it, where the Colonel paced in front of him.
The Colonel looked different to him than he had even a few days earlier. Leaner, more unkempt. A day’s worth of stubble covered his cheeks.
And he didn’t look happy.
“Tell me again,” Lanche ordered. “Tell me what you saw. How do you know she was dead? Why did you go after her in the Hudson if she was definitely dead?”
Keep it simple, keep it straight. The only way to tell a lie was to not compound it with details.
Barker took a deep breath and tried to tell the story the same way he had told it before, the last two times. “I saw a woman with blonde hair in the water, so I went in after her. At that point I couldn’t confirm or deny it was Jenna, or that the woman was dead.”
“How did Jenna get in the water? What was she doing that she got herself drowned?” Lanche interrupted.
“There’s no way of having that intel, sir.” Barker paused. “I miscalculated the strength of the current, and I had to voluntarily lose the gear or risk drowning. The blonde woman floated by, clearly deceased, clearly Jenna. And when I got out of the water, the gun was gone. I looked up and down the river for it, but it’s gone, sir.”
“You know what, Private Barker? If I had to choose, I would have chosen the gun and the gear over your life. Because you are one of many, and weapons—weapons are priceless. Without guns we can’t control the people. It would be anarchy.”
“It’s a good thing the people don’t have their own guns, then, sir.” Stop talking.
“Get the fuck out.”
Barker saluted and turned to leave.
“Wait. Barker. Go tell whoever’s on guard in storage to give you another gun. But if you lose this one . . .”
The Colonel didn’t finish his sentence. He didn’t have to. Whatever the Colonel planned to do to punish him for losing another weapon, it wasn’t going to be good.
“Sir.”
Barker walked out of the OCC, holding in his sigh of relief until he was out of earshot.
“Excuse me,” a woman whispered.
The soft female voice behind him startled him, and he spun around. It was the redhead, Clarissa something-or-other. Her pretty hair made her almost as easy to see in a crowd as Jenna had been.
Her hands flew to the necklace around her pale neck, as if checking to make sure it was still there.
“Sir?” she whispered again, looking back at the OCC door. “I need to talk to you.”
“Go ahead, ma’am,” he said, immediately returning to his soldier demeanor.
“No.” She looked behind her again, fear crossing her face. “In private. On the Tracks. Please.”
She reached out her hand to him, and to his surprise, he took it. She led him down to the subway entrance, down the stairs, where the only light came from burning garbage fires.
The subway cars had their doors open, women milling about everywhere. One was naked, lazily washing herself with an old rag and a bucket of gray-looking water. He averted his eyes.
Clarissa laughed, a light tinkling sound. “Yeah, okay. Come on.” She tugged his hand, urging him to follow her.
When they got to her subway car, she pulled him inside.
“This is Annie,” she said, pointing to a girl lying across the orange plastic seats, with her leg elevated. It appeared to be wrapped in a makeshift splint.
“Hello, Annie. Are you injured?” He stepped toward the girl and she cowered. “Hey, hey,” he said soothingly. “I’m not going to hurt you.” He looked at Clarissa. “What happened?”
She waved her hand dismissively. “Some asshole pushed her out of his way, and she fell down onto the Tracks. Broke her leg. That was over a month ago, though.”
“It’s still not healed,” Annie said. Her voice was older than he expected, and when he looked closer he realized that she was, in fact, a grown woman, albeit a small one.
“Do you need me to take you to the infirmary?” he asked. “I can carry you.”
“They didn’t do much there the first time,” Clarissa said, anger flashing in her eyes. “I had to take her back here to make sure she got all of her rations. People kept stealing hers when they knew she couldn’t fight back.”
Barker cursed under his breath.
“I don’t think I even want to know why she was scared of me,” he muttered.
“Because you know why, soldier.” Clarissa shook her head, saying the word like it was a curse. “I’m sorry. I know you’re not like the others. And I know . . . I know you went after our friend.”
“You’re friends with Jenna?” he asked.
Annie nodded, so did Clarissa.
“We weren’t there that night,” Clarissa said quickly. “We didn’t see anything.”
Barker doubted that was true. But he nodded.
“Please, Private Barker . . .” Clarissa took his hand again. “What happened?”
“Jenna was wanted for questioning regarding her part in Private Andrews’s murder. She ran away, and I was sent to find her.”
“We know,” Clarissa said. “Everyone knows that. But I didn’t see you come back with her. Is she gone?”
“I’m sorry, she’s dead. Drowned in the Hudson.” He said the lines without emotion, played his part.
The Escape Page 6