"Loring," she says. "Show our guests out."
"Should I blindfold 'em?" He puts a hand on his waist. I see the pipe now, shoved into his waistband.
"Hit her again," Nathan says. "I dare you."
"Just show them the door." Karsci waves a hand like she's tired of us. "Don't forget the other one."
"I got him, Lor," someone says. I see Nars come out of the darkness, draped over the shoulders of a boy with sun-bleached hair. His hands are untied. Nathan takes out his hunting knife and unties mine, too.
"You've had a knife with you this whole time?" I say. I remember now, with a blurriness, the way he cut off the hem of my slacks in the desert.
"I always have it," he says.
"Why didn't you use it on her?"
Nathan shrugs. "She hasn't given me a reason to use it. Yet."
My jaw gapes with disbelief. Nathan rubs a thumb over my wrists. There are ridges there, raw plaits that break through flesh.
I yank my hands away from his. He's got no business being nice to me now.
He hands me my yellow envelope. I snatch it out of his hands. “Cass,” he says, and his voice is a murmur.
“Save it,” I say. I think I might smack him, now that my wrists are untied.
We walk together, with the sun-bleached boy and Nars behind us and the Beard in front of us. I think, if he was conscious, Nars would link his elbow with mine or put his arm over my shoulder. Nathan does neither of these things. Not that I want him to.
We're in some sort of cave, I think, a series of chambers, a maze made of stone the color of asphalt. We make too many turns for me to keep track of where we're going. I think we’re moving upwards, but the slope of the ground is so slight, I can’t be sure.
Quite suddenly, the tunnels end. The Beard marches on with Nathan behind him but I'm stuck, staring out at them through a mouth made of jagged rock.
We've come to a pit, a crater in the earth. The walls curve up and over our heads, breaking away at the center, letting a ring of moonlight storm in. I feel like an ant staring out of an anthill. The walls are too tall and steep for us to ever surmount them.
The boy carrying Nars shoves me forward with his free hand. “Hey!” I say. I look up at Nathan, but he makes no remark. I’m not sure what I expected him to say. Perhaps I shouldn’t expect anything from him at all.
"Up and out," the Beard says. He's standing in the moonlight and I see a cord beside him, hanging down from the desert above us. "Whose first?" he says. He feeds the cord through an iron clamp and clips the looped edge of it to his belt with a carabiner.
"Go on, Cass," Nathan says. The Beard grins at me with his black teeth.
"Are you serious?" I say when the Beard wags a fingers at me.
"Just count to ten," Nathan says.
"I'm not counting to ten,” I say. "I'm not afraid of him."
It isn't true, but I say it just the same. I hope Nathan believes me. I want to march into the moonlight, into the lumpy shadow of the Beard, too cocksure to even be brave. But it's too much of a lie for me to muster. I take a little pause in between each step.
The Beard crams a series of curses together into one repugnant grumble. He yanks me forward. I can’t help myself; I yelp at the slimy tether of his hand. He lassos me around the waist with one arm and repels us upwards with the other.
I hold my breath. We all smell awful by now. The Beard doesn't smell that much worse than the rest of us, but I don't want to smell him. I don't want to breath in the same air as him.
When we get to the top of the crater, he gives me a little squeeze. I shove him off and he laughs. "Take care of that gash, sweetie pie," he says. He pinches my ear and comes away with blood on his fingertips.
Nars comes up next, as limp as a pair of wet socks on a clothes line. The sun-bleached boy shrugs him off, dropping his body haphazardly into the sand.
"Careful!" I say. Nars grunts and begins to blink. I sit down in the sand beside him. I cradle his head in my lap and stroke his hair.
The Beard tosses his belt into the pit. I hear Nathan strapping it on. I wonder how many times he's pulled himself out of this hole.
"Thirty days, asset," the Beard says when he's out. Nathan says nothing. He's looking at Nars and me. I pretend not to notice him. He can jump back into that hole, for all I care.
Karsci's lackeys disappear into the crater, the Beard first and then the boy. Nars sits up. He rubs his head.
"Are you alright?" he says.
"Are you?"
"I'm fine." He peers up at Nathan. "Your buddies don't have the best manners, Nate," he says.
"We've got to move," Nathan says. "We've got a half hour before the sun comes up."
He walks with a long gait, beating us by a yard, never looking over his shoulder, never checking on us.
"He's so sure we'll follow him," Nars says.
"We are following him," I say.
"Should we though?" Nars is right next to me, but he's speaking so quietly, I have to bend my ear close to him to hear what he says. "Maybe we should go back."
"Go back? Where, to the bunker?" I say. "We won't make it that far before sunrise. And Nathan wouldn’t let me leave, anyway."
"Let you leave." Nars scoffs. "He can't stand up against the both of us."
"I'm not so sure," I say.
Nars stops, so I stop too. Nathan keeps on ahead of us, never breaking his stride.
"Maybe we should go back to the crater," Nars says.
"Are you crazy?" I say. "They're murderers, Nars."
"Maybe," he says. "Maybe they're just doing what they have to do to survive."
"Killing people for clothes?" I say.
"I'm sure it was for more than just clothes." He rolls his eyes like I'm the one whose being thick. "Do you really think you'll be any safer with him?" he says.
I peer after Nathan. He advances at a steady pace, as if the desert sand is solid and flat. His body is like a parade. His shoulders and knees fall into place with rhythmic precision, and I can’t convince myself to look away.
I don’t know if I should defend Nathan, if I should trust him. But I’m sure that the desert is safer than the caves. Nathan isn’t a murderer, as far as I know. But Karsci spoke about killing with a happy light in her eyes.
"Nathan just wants to get back to the Reservation," I say. I think I’ll say anything to keep Nars at my side. "That's his home."
"Well this is my home," Nars says. "And yours. And Adrienne's. Don't you want to stay here, with us?"
"Adrienne's not with us," I say. I wish she was. She'd knock some sense into him.
"We can go back for her. We can bust her out of the bunker. We can live in the crater, or...or anywhere, Cassidy!"
"Hey!" Nathan says. He's far enough ahead of us now that he has to shout. I see two black lumps in the sand and I know it's the dead bodies of those men, those men Karsci and her cave-dwelling posse killed.
Farther ahead, there's a pair of yellow lights. A car! A real car that drives and everything. I remember seeing cars whiz up and down the road when I was very young. I never thought I'd see one again.
"Look, Nars!" I say, forgetting how angry I am. But when I reach for his hand it's not there. He's not beside me anymore. He's backing away. "Nars," I say. "Don't leave me."
"You're leaving me," he says.
"I don't have a choice," I say. "They gave me a ticket. They picked me."
"We always have choices, Cassidy. Come on."
I look at Nathan. The yellow lights are getting bigger. When I turn back around, Nars is much farther away from me, but he's still watching me, he's still walking backwards.
"Those people...they aren't good people," I say. "Narcisse, they're bad people."
"They're outsiders," Nars says. "I'm an outsider, too." And suddenly, he's running. The night swallows him up and I want to tear after him, but I just stand still. I watch him run, and when I turn around, Nathan is watching me. I wonder if he thought I would run, too.
&n
bsp; Chapter Sixteen
Two men dismount from the jeep and approach us. They have guns at their sides, like the one Karsci pointed at me. There's a dog trotting at their heels. I think he's the same dog from earlier, but I can't be sure. Maybe all working dogs look the same.
The men wear slacks and long-sleeved shirts like Nathan, like me. All of their clothes are the color of sand. The jeep is khaki-colored, too. I don't think we would've seen it beneath the white light of the sun.
Their hair is cut short, like Nathan's, like the dead men’s hair. Nathan pulls up his sleeves and I realize I haven't seen his bare arms before. I haven't seen any of his body before. He's been covered up from ankle to wrist all this time.
There's a tattoo inked on each of his forearms, a series of dashes. A bar code, like the bar code I saw on my ticket. He folds his hands behind his head. I cross my arms over my heart and hug my chest.
"Squatters?" one of the officers says. He's speaking to Nathan like they might know each other. The dog bumps his nose against the boots of the dead men and whines.
"Not like squatters to take more than guns and reservoir packs," Nathan says. "But who else could it be, way out here?"
I wrinkle my brow. Nathan knows who did this. Why is he pretending to be so unsure? Am I safe with Nathan? What do I know about him, really? That it’s his job to bring me to the Reservation? That he runs errands for murderers? Maybe Nars was right to be leery of him.
"Cargo?" one of the officers says, nodding at me.
"I have a name," I say.
"She has a name."
The officers exchange a glance and a grin. I don't think we should be grinning when there's men decomposing not two feet in front of us.
"How about a ticket?”
I take out my yellow envelope. I know they're teasing me. I don't like them, and I don't like Nathan right now either. Maybe I should've run back to the crater with Nars.
The officer closest to me takes the envelope. He waves me on towards the jeep with a flourish. "After you," he says. I don't budge. "You got any Ace in that pack?" he says, and Nathan shrugs.
"You think I have any left?" he says. "She's a spitfire."
The three of them laugh. I haven't heard Nathan laugh before. I don't like the fact that he's laughing at me.
"Go on," Nathan says. He nudges my hip with his hand.
The sky is lighter now; it fades to yellow by degrees. Day is coming, and with it, the heat. I wonder if Nars will make it back to the caves before the sun comes up.
I know that Nars said I have choices, but he was wrong. There's nothing I can do at this moment but get into the backseat of the jeep. It's either that, or stay in the desert and die.
Nathan sits down beside me. The dog runs alongside the jeep as we drive. He's impossibly fast. His legs are just a blur of gold, blending in with the sand beneath his paws.
"What's Ace?" I say. The wind whips up my hair. It slaps away my words.
Nathan puts his mouth against my ear. His voice is hollow. His lips are warm.
"Acepromazine," he says. "It's a sedative."
"When did you sedate me?"
His brow is flat. He looks at me like I must be very dumb. His eyes flash gray in the dark, a shade of gray I’ve never seen before. I think that mine must be red.
"Don't believe everything I say," he says. I can feel his breath on my neck now. It makes me shiver.
We come to a crawl, rolling along. I'm beginning to worry that the jeep might be out of gas, that we might be stuck out here in the desert sun after all.
A chirping sound erupts from beneath the jeep and we stop. My body rocks forward and snaps back at the impact of the brake.
We start to stall. The beeping continues. I glance up at Nathan. He's got a bored look on his face like he's been in this exact situation before.
"What is that?" I whisper.
"Sensor," he says. He points down, past our knees, towards the floor mats and the sand below.
The beeping stops, and then, abruptly, the desert floor breaks open like a sinkhole. We're parked on a platform, I realize, and we're descending straight down through a chute in the earth.
I fold my hands together in my lap, squeezing them even though it makes a stabbing pain. I pretend Nars or Adrienne is here, holding onto me. Nathan taps a finger against my thigh. I count the taps in my head. One, two, three Mississippi, four.
The chute is cylindrical. It wraps around us like a tin can. My ears pop as the platform plunges us deeper and deeper into the earth.
We hit the ground floor with a jolt. One of the officers leans out of his seat, through the glassless face of his window. He dials a code into a keypad adhered to the wall.
A curved steel door lifts up in front of us. We drive through it, inching along again. We're in a wide expanse made of poured concrete. It's a garage, I think. It's got square edges and steel walls like the bunker, but it's so shiny and big. I think I could fit the bunker twice in just this room.
There's people milling about in here, but none of them pays us any mind. We stop at a second gate. This one's made of iron. There are jeeps just like ours parked on the opposite side of the bars.
An officer approaches us from the inside. Our driver rattles off a long password. He's speaking a language I don't understand. It sounds like whatever language Nathan used with the dog.
Do they all speak another language down here? I wonder. Will I have to learn a new language when I get to the Reservation?
The gate lifts. The man inside the garage says, "Kemne," and we roll through.
"It's Czech," Nathan says to me.
"Oh," I say. I haven't heard of Czech before. Maybe it's a southern language. But why speak a dead language here in Nouvelle France?
Nathan doesn't help me out of the jeep. Maybe he's beyond helping me. I've refused him so many times. Good, I think, I don't need his help. I'm just a ticket to him. I'm his cargo.
I wonder why he didn't just sedate me and drag me here if he's had drugs in that satchel all along. I'm not that heavy. Maybe he thought my dead weight would slow him down.
Well, I slowed him down anyway, I think. I put him a day behind, a day and a half if you count the extra eleven hours he gave me at the bunker. And Karsci and the Beard set us back, too.
A man moves towards us wearing the same beige uniform as everyone else. He's got a chevron pattern on his sleeve and a couple of pins tacked to his lapel. Not everyone has those.
"We were starting to worry about you," he says. I breathe a sigh of relief. Maybe I won't have to learn a new language after all.
He's got a file in his hand and he flips it open. "Cassidy Hartinger," he says. I nod. I think he must be much older than me. He's got a long face, flat cheeks like slabs of meat and straight teeth in a crooked smile. His age makes deep pleats in his neck and underneath his eyes. His skin is pale, like mine used to be. Now I'm brown and red with freckles I've never seen before. My hands are wrapped in gauze and the rest of me is wrapped up in the sun.
It's been a long time since I've heard my last name. Hearing it makes my cheeks flush. It's so formal, it sounds so grown up. "I'm Officer Moreau," he says. "Have you got your ticket?"
"I..." I put my hand on my pocket, but it's empty. "I gave it to the driver," I say.
He's driven off now. I look for him, but every jeep and every stranger in this garage looks exactly the same. Everything is khaki, everyone's in uniform. I can't believe no one's staring at us. Nathan and I must stick out like a sore thumb.
"Ah, very well," Moreau says. "I'll retrieve it for you. It's a nice souvenir. Now, then." He claps his hands. "Let's get you decontaminated and screened. If everything checks out, you'll remain with us till T-U-18 departs."
"T-U-18?" Nathan says. "I'm scheduled for T-U-11."
"You've missed your train," Moreau says.
"My contingency hasn't expired."
"Recent disturbances have prevented us from honoring contingencies," Moreau says. "If our transporters do
n't return at the designated time, we can't be certain they'll return at all. We can't delay a scheduled departure indefinitely."
"Two days," Nathan says. "We're two days behind."
"What can I do, Nate?" Moreau is holding onto his smile now, and it pains him. "The train is gone. I can't make it reappear. T-U-18 departs in the fall. You'll wait here until then." He shuts my file with a slap.
"Yes, sir." Nathan straightens his shoulders, straightens his back and his jaw. I remember my own posture and straighten up, too.
"We'll speak again," Moreau says, "after you've arranged for your cargo. It's very nice meeting you, Miss Hartinger," he says to me. "Welcome to the launch station."
"Thank you," I say. I feel a lump in my throat. I don't know why it's there.
Behind us, there's a shrill creak. I turn and watch as the steel door lowers, sealing off the chute. A loud humming sound starts up and quickly softens to nothing. Probably the platform shooting back up to the desert floor.
"Let's go," Nathan says. He moves off ahead of me and I follow him. Moreau watches us leave. He's still holding my file. I wonder what else it says about me in there.
Nathan takes me through a door at the far end of the garage. It seems like every door we go through requires a code.
We walk single file down a short, narrow hallway. "You'll get undressed and showered in the next room," Nathan says, dialing another series of numbers into yet another keypad. "There's a drop chute on the wall to your right, just inside the door. Put your clothes through there. All of them."
"Are they going to get washed?" I say. I'm desperate to feel clean. My skin feels like slime. My hair is brittle and dry.
"They'll be incinerated," Nathan says. "Once you've showered, move on into the next room."
"Naked?"
"Yep," Nathan says.
"What if somebody sees me?"
He pauses. I see that dimple in his cheek again, but it's gone in an instant. "No one will see you," he says. He holds open the door.
For a split-second, I think he might mean to join me. My cheeks burn at the notion. My body stiffens up like a board. But then he shuts the door between us and I'm alone.
Cargo (The Reservation Trilogy Book 1) Page 9