by Jackie D
“Did you mean everything you said?” Johnson asked from his small seat in the middle. She hadn’t been expecting to hear his voice, and since the only thing he had projected until now was contempt, she was surprised by his earnest tone.
“Yes, every word,” she answered.
“What did you mean by,” he leaned in closer to whisper, as if he’d be in trouble for his thoughts, “he keeps us sedated?”
She answered him without hesitation, not to make him feel guilty or to rub it in his face, but because his question was a big step and probably difficult and scary to ask. “MacLeod adds sedatives to the water supply in Eden. He keeps your minds dull to help keep you in line.”
His face turned a ghostly white and then transformed into a red of fury. “That can’t be true.”
“Tell me something then. Do you feel different after being outside the wall for so long?” She made sure her tone was careful and comforting. She had no desire to be combative.
“Yes, but I thought it was because I’ve been here with all of you, eating different types of foods and being in and out of the weather bubbles.” He was pressing his thumb into his palm hard, almost as if he were trying to inflict pain. Or maybe he just wanted to be sure he wasn’t dreaming.
“All of the food you eat in Eden is provided by the farmers in the Resistance,” Macy added. “It’s the drug from the water wearing off that allows you some clarity.” Her voice was calm and sure.
“But why?” His voice cracked.
“To control you,” Macy said. “People under control are easier to spoon-feed propaganda to, and it’s easier to get them to fight for that propaganda.”
Arrow and Valor got back into the car. Kaelyn got a whiff of the soap on her skin as she sat down. She wondered if she’d ever been so attuned to the way a person smelled before. She’d put on a black hat for this part of the journey; it made her look even fiercer, stronger somehow. Kaelyn knew Arrow had probably done it for a pragmatic reason, but she didn’t care. She was going to enjoy it all the same.
Arrow adjusted her mirror. “You okay, Johnson?”
Johnson shifted in his seat, probably an unconscious action to help settle the information into his mind. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
Arrow caught Kaelyn’s eyes in the mirror while checking to see if Johnson was telling the truth. Kaelyn winked at her, and although she couldn’t see her mouth fully, she knew by her eyes that Arrow was smiling.
“We’ll be at the tunnels in about twenty minutes.” She finished pushing the buttons and the transport started moving.
Kaelyn turned and looked at the warehouse they had called home for a few short hours. Inside, people were busying themselves, preparing for battle. The fighting units were polishing their weapons and writing letters to anyone they were leaving behind. Kaelyn ruminated on the fact that no matter how many things changed, some things would always remain the same.
Twenty minutes later, Arrow slowed the transport until it came to a stop. There was another vehicle parked nearby. Arrow pulled out a set of binoculars from the console.
“Shit.” She handed the binoculars to Valor.
“They can’t be here waiting for us, can they?” he asked.
She shook her head. “They would’ve sent more than one transport if they knew we were heading here. But it’s probably a general search unit since they’re watching for us.”
Arrow turned in her seat and faced Macy. “Take the two of them and hide behind that wall over there. We’ll go take care of this. If they see the transport, it’s the first place they’ll head, and I don’t want you to be sitting ducks.”
Macy nodded and pulled a large gun from under the seat. “Let us know when it’s clear.”
Johnson looked panicked. “Can you undo these?” He put his bound wrists forward. “I can’t run very well like this.”
Valor and Arrow looked at each other and then Valor reached forward to undo the bindings. “One funny move and she’ll kill you.” He nodded at Macy.
Johnson nodded his understanding and rubbed his wrists as the mechanisms slid back off him. Macy opened her door and Kaelyn did the same.
She was about to follow Macy out of the transport when Kaelyn leaned forward and put her hand on Arrow’s shoulder. “Please be careful.”
Arrow smiled at her. “I’m always careful.”
Kaelyn wasn’t sure if that was true or not, but she had no choice but to believe her right now. She slipped out of the back seat and followed Macy to the wall alongside a building, long forgotten like most things in this world.
She thought it had taken them an eternity to get there, and the relief she felt when they rounded the corner was squelched when she peeked around and saw Arrow and Valor moving in tandem between abandoned vehicles. She heard movement from behind her and the sound of rocks rolling down a hill. Then, the definite sound of footsteps.
Macy turned with her gun trained on the direction the steps were coming from. She tapped Kaelyn on the shoulder, pointed to her eyes, and then to another wall. Kaelyn thought back to all the war movies she’d seen as a child, a favorite genre of her father’s and thanked him silently for that now. She held Johnson’s arm as they moved over to the adjacent wall together, Macy walking backward to protect them from whoever the footsteps belonged to.
Once at the wall, Macy pulled a thin pipe from her pocket, extended it, and turned the head of it around the corner. She attached it to a small device, and a moment later, a picture came into focus in a hologram in front of them. They could see the man inspecting their transport. He pulled open the doors and started tossing their bags onto the ground. He must have radioed for someone because a few moments later, another man came down over the hill.
Kaelyn felt her palms sweating and her neck flush. She wasn’t sure where Arrow and Valor were, but she hoped it was nearby and that they were witnessing this. Johnson shifted next to her.
She looked at him and shook her head. “Don’t even think about it.”
She realized that he wasn’t shifting to run away; he was shielding her from the opposite side. She wanted to show her appreciation, but their time was up. Another man had appeared from a different direction and had his gun trained on the three of them.
“Stand up and put your hands against the wall.” The Eden soldier took another step forward.
Kaelyn glanced over at Macy, wanting to take her lead, and saw her push a button on the bracelet she was wearing before Macy turned and did as she was told. The small amount of relief that flushed through her system was short-lived as the soldier pressed the gun against her chest.
He called out to whoever was there with him. “I have prisoners!”
The word bristled against her senses. Prisoners. Is that what they would become if they couldn’t find a way out of these circumstances?
Johnson and Macy had put their hands against the wall while she stood eye-to-eye with a man who couldn’t have been more than nineteen years old. She’d always assumed in a situation like this her emotions would get the best of her and it would lead to tears. But that’s not what she felt now; she felt anger, the need to survive, and conviction pumped through her body.
“You’re making a huge mistake.” She searched for the right words to say, the ones that would create the gap they needed.
He pushed the gun into her chest harder. “Don’t make eye contact with me, female.”
Johnson spoke from beside her. “My name is Corporal Lawrence Johnson, I’m with the One Hundred and Third Division. I was transporting these two to Eden.”
“Bullshit!” the soldier practically yelled. “One female is armed. Who are you?”
He reached to turn Johnson around, and in doing so, broke contact with her chest for a second. But that was long enough. Kaelyn pushed the gun straight up and away from her. A single shot was fired, and as the soldier tried to reclaim his control of the weapon, Macy managed to hit him in the side of the head. He fell over backward, unconscious.
There was no
time to celebrate the small victory. The other two soldiers had closed the distance and had their guns aimed directly at them. The soldiers looked at their colleague on the ground and gripped the guns harder, seeming to aim at them with more focus.
Johnson put his hands forward, a sign of surrender. “Just put the guns down. We’ll go with you.”
The older looking of the two soldiers looked past Johnson.
“No one is going anywhere.”
Kaelyn saw Arrow before she heard her, but only by a second. She ran up behind the two soldiers, almost in a crouched position, and Kaelyn felt herself, once again, in awe of Arrow’s capabilities. As Arrow moved, she retrieved a knife from somewhere behind her back. Once she was within striking distance, she made her move, sliding the knife into the side of the soldier closest to the wall.
The other soldier, seeing the man next to him fall to the ground, turned his gun on Arrow. Arrow had already pulled her sidearm and they now stood face-to-face, weapons on each other.
Valor’s voice echoed from on top of the wall. “Drop your weapon. You’re surrounded.”
The soldier glanced up at the top of the wall and smiled. “That’s what you think.”
A gunshot from a building off in the distance rang out, and the dirt around Arrow’s feet fumed up in a cloud of dust. Another gunshot reverberated in her ears, and Valor pushed himself over the top of the wall and landed on the ground. Macy reached for her weapon on the ground, only a few feet away.
“Touch it and she dies,” the soldier said, moving closer to Arrow.
The chaos was closing in on the soldier. Sweat dripped down the side of his face in a long bead, and his hand was shaking. Valor was now behind Arrow with his back against the wall, gun drawn.
“You’re running out of options. Your sniper friend can’t get us all before we get you,” Arrow said.
Kaelyn did the mental math, and there was no way they got out of this alive with a sniper in an undisclosed location. She also knew that Arrow and Valor weren’t going to budge, which would lead to someone dying. The only way out was to do the unexpected, cause a distraction that would leave this soldier vulnerable.
Kaelyn pushed herself off the wall. “Take me. Trust me when I say I’m the one you want.”
The soldier didn’t take his eyes off Arrow. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m Phoenix One.” She took a step closer, her hands out in front of her. “Check your transmitter. Your government is looking for me.”
“Be quiet, Kaelyn.” Arrow’s voice calm, but her eyes were frantic.
The soldier must have noticed her reaction because he reached into his pocket and pulled out his transmitter. He pushed a few buttons and then dropped the piece of communication equipment on the ground.
He turned, gun aimed on Kaelyn. “By order of President MacLeod, you’re under arrest.”
Kaelyn put her wrists out in front of her. “I’ll go with you quietly, but I need to know that my friends will be safe. Call down the sniper.”
He took a step toward Kaelyn and then hesitated. His hand shook with more ferocity, and he blinked the sweat out of his eyes. “No.”
Arrow reached for her gun, and he moved closer to Kaelyn. “Make one more move and I’ll shoot her. I swear I will.”
Kaelyn got on her knees and put her hands behind her head. “You’ll be a hero. You have no idea what I mean to your president. Just call down your sniper and we can end all of this.”
The soldier only took another second to make up his mind. He pushed a button in his ear that Kaelyn couldn’t see. “Come down from your post.”
He tossed the restraints to Kaelyn and then turned his gun back on Arrow. “Put your weapons on the ground.”
Johnson moved so quickly, Kaelyn didn’t have time to string the movements together. Johnson tackled the soldier from the side. There were punches and billows of dirt. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Valor go back up and over the wall. Then three gunshots were fired. Two were very close and another was far away. Macy was on top of her a moment later, shielding Kaelyn with her body. She could taste dirt and sweat mixed together as she tried to breathe. Kaelyn wasn’t sure if it was fear or the granulated mixture in her mouth that was impeding her efforts. She wasn’t sure who was alive and who was dead. She closed her eyes and prayed to whatever God existed that it wasn’t Arrow, while asking for forgiveness that by doing so, she hoped it was someone else.
Chapter Twenty-three
Arrow turned Johnson over. There were tears streaking his cheeks, leaving a clean wake through the dirt that covered his face. He wasn’t going to make it; the soldier had shot him in the gut after he was tackled. The blood loss was already too severe. So she did the only thing she could, she held his hand.
“I’m here with you, Johnson.”
“Is Kaelyn okay?” He choked, blood bubbling at his lips.
“Yes, thanks to you,” she said.
His body was shivering from the blood loss and his voice was cracked from the pain. “I’m sorry.”
She gripped his hand tighter. “You have nothing to be sorry for. We’re still here because of you.”
“You have my information. Please, find my parents and tell them I did the right thing.”
“I promise.” She put her other hand on his shoulder. “I’ll make sure they’re okay, and I’ll take care of them.”
His eyes closed and his chest stopped moving. She sat there for a second longer, making sure to tuck away in her heart the promise she made. She pulled one of the Guardian patches off her shoulder and put it in Johnson’s hand, closing his lifeless fingers around it.
Valor appeared a moment later, a body draped over his shoulders. “We’re all clear.”
“I’ll go grab some shovels. We need to bury Johnson.” She didn’t know if Valor agreed and she didn’t care. Johnson had given his life to protect them, and as far as she was concerned he was as good of a Guardian as any of the people she’d trained with.
It wasn’t until the last bit of dirt covered Johnson that she allowed herself to make eye contact with Kaelyn. Kaelyn looked on, her arms crossed and tears on her cheeks.
Arrow hadn’t known until Kaelyn had stepped forward and volunteered herself that she’d never experienced true fear before. The sensation was crippling, and even now, the last remnants were working their way out of her system.
“Don’t ever do that again,” she said to Kaelyn.
Kaelyn took a step forward and buried her head into Arrow’s chest. “I had to do something. I did the mental math, and the only plausible solution was to do something that no one expected. When the unexpected arises, people don’t know how to react, so they improvise. It leaves them vulnerable.”
Arrow instinctively put her arms around her. “You could’ve gotten yourself killed.”
Kaelyn sniffed. “Better than getting us all killed.”
Arrow wondered if Kaelyn could hear her heart slamming against her chest with those words. “Promise me you won’t ever do something like that again.”
Kaelyn looked up at her now. Her bright green eyes reminded her of fresh grass. The way it felt to be a child, rolling down hills without a care in the world. But the innocence of childhood wasn’t what stared back. Her eyes were tinted with desire and need.
“I promise,” Kaelyn said in a breath.
But even as she said it, Arrow knew Kaelyn would do whatever necessary if the situation presented itself. Arrow marveled at the lies she and Kaelyn continued to exchange. Promises to always be there and to stay out of harm’s way, lies they told to extinguish the pain in the moment.
Her mother’s voice pulled at her, bringing her back to reality. “We need to get going. It won’t be long before they realize there are soldiers missing.”
All Arrow wanted to do was stay beside Kaelyn, but her mother was right. Time wasn’t on their side, and giving in to her desire for Kaelyn wasn’t her choice to make. It wasn’t fair to the Resistance to risk it all on feelin
gs. Who would she be if she gave in to such selfish desires?
She stepped back from Kaelyn. “Let’s get going.”
Kaelyn nodded her agreement. “Okay, let’s go.”
They found the entrance for emergency vehicles within a few minutes. It wasn’t very well hidden, but that was part of the idea of placing one of the entrances within the confines of an airport. Arrow pulled the car up and hopped out. She found the small screen on the outside of the heavy door and hooked her transmitter into it. Within a few seconds, it isolated the code and the door slid open.
Once the transport was inside the lift, the door slid shut behind them, and the lift automatically started moving down. When it reached the bottom level, the overhead fluorescent lights started turning on in sequence, lighting the way into the darkness ahead. Arrow hesitated; the tunnel was only big enough for the transport plus a person on each side. There would be nowhere to go if they were to encounter soldiers from Eden anywhere along the way.
“What’s wrong?” Valor asked from the seat next to her.
“There’s no turning back once we get in here. I’m just running through it one more time in my head.”
Valor opened the paper map and measured their distance for the fourth time since they devised their plan. “It’s four hundred and fifty-five miles to Hutchinson, Kansas. That’s the closest entry or exit point. Chances are, if anyone is coming, they’re going to start here. The sooner we get moving, the sooner we can reevaluate at the next point.”
Arrow knew the numbers, and she had all the routes memorized. “I’m programming the cruising speed for ninety-two miles per hour. That’s the fastest speed we can safely travel through the tunnel. It should take us four hours and fifty-six minutes.”
Valor folded the map. “Then we better get going.”