A Girl Called Fearless: A Novel (The Girl Called Fearless Series)

by Catherine Linka

  “Not at all. By the time you’re done, food’ll be ready.”

  I waited another minute, then got up. “Hi, I’m Avie.”

  “Nellie.”

  After hearing Nellie stand up to Rogan, I expected her to be tall, but she was tiny and lean in her overalls and flannel shirt. Her hair was pulled off her clean-scrubbed face like she didn’t have patience for unnecessary things.

  “Thanks for letting us stay here,” I said.

  She nodded. I rolled up the sleeping bags. “What should I…?”

  “Oh, just leave that. Come get something to eat.”

  Nellie’d set two places at the table. She slid a plate with eggs and sausage in front of me. I took a slice of bread, spread it thick with butter and cherry jam, and dug in.

  “This is delicious,” I said. Then I took a sip of milk. It wasn’t from a cow.

  Nellie eyed me. She was in her thirties, I guessed, a survivor. “You don’t seem fancy enough to be one of Maggie’s girls.”

  I didn’t look like a call girl, that’s what Nellie meant.

  “I’m not one of her girls.” I don’t know why I felt I had to stick up for Maggie. “You know, they’re not … the girls don’t have sex.”

  “A penthouse full of girls in a Las Vegas casino. What do they do?” Nellie said.

  I shrugged. “They’re like, I don’t know, entertainers. The guys just want to have fun and the girls play pool with them.”

  “So what are you doing with her?”

  “Maggie’s helping me. I ran away from home after my dad signed my Contract.”

  “You don’t like who your dad picked?”

  “He sold me to get money for his company.” I saw Nellie frown. “Besides,” I added, “I’m in love with someone else.”

  Nellie’s frown softened as she flipped the last sausage. “Is he coming here?”

  “No. He’s meeting me in Canada.”

  Nellie paused, and then said carefully, “So you’re not planning on staying?”

  A little warning bell triggered in my head. Maggie layered everything she did with secrets. One wrong word, and who knew what trouble I’d cause. “Maggie can explain better than I can.”

  “Explain what?” Maggie stood right behind me.

  “How you’re just visiting,” Nellie answered. “How you’re taking this girl to Canada.” She looked at Maggie like she was challenging her to lie.

  “That’s the goal,” Maggie said. She pulled out her chair, and her face transformed. She was Magda: smooth, cool, deceptive. “Mmm. Elk sausage and homemade bread. You’re an amazing cook, Nellie.”

  The door burst open, and a little boy about five or six ran in, followed by a girl a few years older swinging a pail. The boy threw himself at the table. “I’m Jonas,” he said to Maggie. “Who are you?”

  “Your Aunt Maggie.”

  “I don’t remember you.”

  “It’s been a while.”

  The girl, Sarah, put the pail on the floor. “Can I hug you, Aunt Maggie?”

  “That’s up to your mama to decide.”

  Nellie gave a nod, and Maggie drew in Sarah for a hug. The kids sat down with us at the table.

  “Our brother’s gone for a ride,” Sarah said. Maggie’s face paled, before she said, “When’s he coming back?”

  “Around suppertime.” Sarah looked at her mother. “Can Aunt Maggie come to supper?”

  Nellie froze, a plate in her hand. Maggie shook her head. “It’s too much, Nellie. I know that.”

  I saw Nellie nod, and Maggie turned to Jonas. “Tell me about your goats.” Jonas started talking nonstop about his favorite goats while I ate my food and listened.

  I wondered what Nellie was thinking. She knew Maggie and I were in enough trouble that Rogan and four other men drove off in the middle of the night to save us. But why would Nellie think for even an instant that Maggie and I intended to stay?

  And Luke, Maggie’s secret son? Things were going to get really interesting here around suppertime.

  68

  Sarah and Jonas wanted to give me a tour after breakfast, but Nellie told them they weren’t skipping school, and besides, Maggie already knew her way around.

  I stood on the porch, the snow so bright I had to squint to see. Besides the cabins I noticed the night before, trailers dotted the valley. There were windmills next to almost every house, but only one big barn. The black walls of the barn and church twinkled. They were covered in solarskin. Wind and solar power kept this place alive.

  The harder I looked, the more I saw what wasn’t there—like mailboxes or satellite dishes. No store or school or post office.

  The door banged open behind me. “You ready to see the Bunker?”

  I turned, and Maggie tossed me my duffle and sleeping bag. “Sure.”

  We walked toward the church, lugging our bags. By almost every house, chickens the color of maple syrup perched in the open doors of coops while one or two brave ones tried out the snow. In one yard, red and blue plaid shirts rocked like sheets of cardboard pinned to a clothesline.

  “Our luck’s improving,” Maggie said. “It’s going to snow tonight.”

  More snow didn’t sound lucky when we were headed for the border in the next couple days. “Why’s that good?” I said.

  “Barnabas and John—they were the ones driving the other truck last night—they’ll be back in a few hours. The snow’ll cover their tracks. We can sit tight for a week and hope the guys following us decide we’ve left the state.”

  I could feel myself wanting to believe Maggie’s fantasy about how the snow would save us, but so far things hadn’t been that magical. “The feds know who you are. They know you have a brother. I can’t believe you think they won’t find us.”

  “Avie, this place, these people, they’re off the grid. They got rid of IDs, credit cards. They don’t take salaries or pay taxes or do anything else to clue the government into their existence.” Maggie opened a door on the side of the church.

  “I thought we were going to the Bunker,” I said.

  “Almost there,” Maggie answered.

  “Did you grow up here?”

  “No, a few hundred miles away. I stayed here, though, several years ago when I decided to take a break from law and revisit my life choices.”

  I was dying to ask, What life choices, but I knew Maggie’d never answer that. “What kind of law did you practice?”

  “Civil rights.”

  I felt like every new thing Maggie told me turned my thoughts about her inside out.

  Sunlight poured into the church even though the windows were narrow slits in the three-foot-thick walls. A skinny balcony circled the church hall. We walked up the main aisle through rows of long wooden tables and benches. Up on the wall in front, a simple cross hung between a Star of David and a yin and yang.

  “I’ve never seen a church like this,” I said.

  “It’s not just a church. It’s also the school and community center.”

  Behind the dais, a staircase led up to the balcony. Maggie punched a code into a panel on the wall and the door in front of us unlatched. I unzipped my jacket.

  “You might want to keep that on,” Maggie said.

  I left my jacket open. “How long has Salvation been around?”

  “Hmm. Forty years, maybe. It started with army veterans like Rogan.”

  When Maggie opened the door, I saw four rough wood steps before the rest disappeared in a black hole. She reached for a lantern just inside the door and lit it. I followed her down. “Was Rogan in the Middle East?” I asked.

  “Saudi Arabia, then Iraq, then Afghanistan. He returned with a healthy distrust of authority and a hatred for Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and other oppressors of the human soul.”

  At the bottom of the steps, Maggie held up the lantern and said, “Ah, the Bunker. Our home away from home.”

  I dropped my bags. My breath clouded in the light and I zipped my jacket back up. The room was huge, bigger than the ch
urch hall overhead. The walls and ceiling and floor were all flat, dead grey.

  The corner closest to us was set up like a kitchen with a sink and camp stoves. Folded canvas cots were piled to one side. Maggie carried her duffel bag over to a padlocked cabinet at the far end as I walked along the shelves that ran the length of the walls. They were loaded with jars of hand-canned cherries, pears, and tomatoes, and stacked with gallon cans labeled water, flour, oats, powdered milk. Sacks of beans and rice were piled as high as my waist.

  This wasn’t just a storeroom. No wonder they called this the Bunker. These people were ready for a catastrophe.

  Maggie pointed to a walled-off corner. “Chemical toilets. Sorry. No shower. But I know a few women here who might take pity on us and lend us theirs.”

  “There are other women?”

  “Forty, forty-five, depending on who’s still here since the last time I visited.”

  I heard her spin a lock and watched her open the cabinet. She held the door, blocking me from seeing what she was doing, but I caught a glimpse of what she pulled out of her duffel and stuffed in there: the wall hangings with their secrets. Stitch-coded names, dates, and details that could blow a hole in Congress.

  She snapped the lock back on.

  “Are there more places like Salvation?” I said.

  “I’m convinced there are. Half the men in Rogan’s platoon vowed they were going rogue once they got back to the States.”

  I looked over at the camp cots, thinking I should pick one out and set it up, but all I wanted was to get the hell out of there. The way that cold, grey ceiling curved over us, I felt like I was in a coffin.

  I blew on my hands. “It’s freezing down here.”

  “Yeah, we could use some long johns.”

  I hauled a cot out of the pile and unfolded the aluminum frame, dropping my duffel onto the faded khaki fabric.

  Pipes squealed as Maggie tried the faucet in the kitchen. “Well, we’ve got plenty of cold water,” she said.

  “How long are we going to stay in Salvation?”

  “Until things cool off. Those agents aren’t going to leave Idaho until they think we have.”

  I stuffed my freezing hands into my pockets, thinking about them prowling around like wolves, trying to sniff us out while the U.S. cut off our escape. “But we’ve got to get out of here before the border’s closed.”

  “There are other ways out of the country,” Maggie said.

  I was just about to ask how when a voice called out, “Who’s down there?”

  A woman in a red down vest stood on the stairs with her arms crossed. She looked ten years older than Maggie. With her short spiky hair and round glasses, she looked like one of those tiny, endangered owls.

  “Is that you, Beattie?” Maggie rushed forward as the woman clambered down the steps.

  “Maggie! I heard Rogan came and got you.” They hugged with their eyes closed, whispering to each other in a way that made me nervous. Maybe Nellie didn’t know what Maggie was really up to, but I was sure Beattie did.

  When they broke apart, Beattie turned to me. “Who’s this?”

  “I’m Avie. I’m—”

  “She’s traveling with me,” Maggie said.

  Beattie pursed her lips like she was trying hard to keep her questions to herself. Instead, she ran her eyes over my cot and said, “This is wrong. You can’t stay here.”

  Maggie shrugged, but Beattie reached for my sleeping bag. “You’ll stay with us.”

  “Thanks, but don’t you think you should ask your partner first?” Maggie said.

  “Cecelia’s not here.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “We haven’t broken up. She’s at a med school in Honduras until May, teaching and picking up some new skills.”

  “Keisha won’t mind company?”

  “I think our daughter will be happy to have company, especially someone from Outside.”

  “Fine,” Maggie said. “Lead the way.”

  I followed them out, feeling like I’d crossed another border. Outside Salvation, women couldn’t marry each other. The Paternalists didn’t mind if two men married—less competition. But women who didn’t want men were lucky to be left alone. More than one had been raped to “teach them a lesson.”

  The sun blinded me as we went outside. I shaded my eyes as boys in leather boots and long jackets and girls wearing prairie dresses over their pants ran past us, yelling, “Mornin’, Pastor Beattie.”

  Beattie wasn’t just a Survivor, she was a Servant of God. I’d never thought any place could be stranger than Vegas.

  69

  Sunlight bounced off the snow so Beattie’s bathroom glowed pink. I stood under the shower, hot water raining down, loosening up the muscles in my back. A big purple bruise on my knee ached, and I found two more thumb-sized ones on my hip, but other than that, I was fine.

  The soap dish cradled a block of handmade soap. I brushed my finger over the rose petal floating under its cloudy surface, remembering how Nana Stephie sometimes had soap like this. I held the bar up to my nose, and breathed.

  I’m okay.

  I made it to Idaho.

  Maybe everything will work out.

  I ran the creamy soap over my skin. Maggie had hidden us up in the mountains far off any main road. If Salvation wasn’t on any map or in any government database then maybe we really were safe.

  And the border was just a couple hundred miles from here. A couple hundred miles to Canada, and if we were careful and lucky, Yates and I might even find each other there.

  I imagined standing on tiptoes in a crowd, triple-checking my phone and counting down the agonizing minutes until Yates came through the airport arrivals gate. He appears and I yell, “Yates!” People open a path between us as he rushes to me and I leap into his arms.

  The water suddenly went cold and I hurried to turn it off. I reached for a towel and heard Maggie and Beattie through the door, their voices hushed and tense. I crept over and cracked the door open.

  “You think it’s a death squad?” Beattie said.

  I held my breath and Maggie mumbled a reply.

  “Your brother’s name’s not on anything,” Beattie said. “I don’t see how they would track you here.”

  I missed Maggie’s answer.

  “Even if the border’s closing, you can’t leave now. They know there are only two routes you can take.”

  I shut the door and sank onto the stool by the tub. The night flashed back to me: speedometer ticking ninety, the steel box sailing like a deadly butterfly, Maggie screaming, “Hold on!,” the rain of rocks on the windshield.

  My clothes lay across the toilet. I slipped my phone out of my jeans and turned it on. The reception was zero and the battery barely holding on.

  I’d be in Canada right now if it weren’t for this.

  I muted the phone and scrolled through my files. Sparrow’s messages were still there, including FOR MAGDA’S EARS ONLY.

  It was begging me to open it. Right, like I don’t have enough trouble, I need more? I tapped on the first message Sparrow sent me from the Capitol steps.

  Seconds away from torching herself, and there she was smiling, her eyes alive with a weird, almost religious ecstasy like some arrow-riddled saint right out of a Renaissance painting. She raised the bottle, and her final words played in my head. “See you in heaven.”

  “Why’d you do it?” I whispered. Why’d you kill yourself and leave me with this mess?

  I saw us back at Masterson, Sparrow tinkering with one of her little inventions and muttering under her breath while Ms. A shared Congress’s latest indignity to women. I had been close enough to hear Sparrow say that the world would close its eyes until blood ran down the Capitol steps.

  And I remembered thinking, she’d do it. Sparrow would waste them all. Maybe Sparrow had always been unbalanced, or what happened with the boy she loved who’d destroyed her, but I didn’t want to end up like her.

  I don’t want to die for th
e cause. Well, maybe I should have thought of that yesterday before I blew my cover and everyone else’s.

  Maggie rapped on the bathroom door. “Can I get in there?”

  “Just a sec.” I stuffed the phone back in my jeans and pawed around for my underpants.

  “Great. The sky’s clear, so after I shower, I’ll take you out for a shooting lesson.”

  I lost hold of my towel and had to grab for it. “Today?”

  “You have other plans?” she said.

  I hated how smug she was, saying that. “No.”

  “Okay, then.”

  I pulled on my jeans. Learning to shoot another human being wasn’t okay. It would never be okay, but I couldn’t escape the fact that I needed to defend myself.

  When I came out, Beattie was sitting by the woodstove, jotting notes from the Challenge of Faith. “I left a hat on the table,” she said. “I doubt you’re used to this cold.” The hat looked like it was brought back from the Andes with llamas circling the crown, and two long skinny ties, made from the same heathery brown wool as the rugs covering the couch and floor.

  I waited by the window, holding the hat, and twisting and untwisting the ties around it.

  “Nervous?” Beattie said.

  “I hate guns.” My fingers wouldn’t stop moving. “You don’t believe in guns, right?”

  “Personally, I wish guns were only used for hunting. But I’m forced to admit that we’re perilously close to TEOTWAWKI.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The End Of The World As We Know It.” Beattie’s voice quieted like she was quoting a religious text. ‘When the government collapses and anarchy reigns, we must protect ourselves from those who would do us harm.’ It’s the reason Salvation exists.”

  Beattie seemed so rational. “You really believe in The End Of The World As We Know It?” I asked.

  She peeled off her glasses and folded them tenderly. “You lived through the chaos. Is your world anything like it used to be?”

  I choked back the rush of tears. Life as I knew it ended the day Mom died. “No.”

  “Avie, knowing how to do something is different from using that knowledge. Buddha and Jesus are my guides, but if my life’s on the line, I’m calling on Smith & Wesson.”