by Anna Carey
Page 39
Arden pulled me closer. My legs were wobbly beneath me, but Arden gripped my side, holding me up. “We’re doing no such thing,” Otis said. “When will you leave us alone? We’re just trying to survive, like everyone else. ”
Richards worked his way through the cardboard boxes, ripping them open and peering inside. He stomped through the cellar, opening a door beneath the staircase, patting down the tattered couch, and rapping on the walls behind a pile of old machines. “Do we have to go through this every time?” Marjorie asked, crossing her arms.
Otis came down the last steps on his bad leg. He leaned against the wall, his arm clutched to his side, concealing the gun beneath his elbow. “You won’t find anything,” he said, his breaths short.
“Something tells me you’re lying,” Calverton said. Then he pointed to the cupboard doors. My heart kept on, its steady rhythm reminding me that for now, I was still alive. Arden pushed me down behind the bunk beds, then pulled Lark close. We huddled together, slowing our breaths to quiet them, as the younger soldier opened the doors.
From behind the bars of the bunks I could see his legs. I could hear the cans clinking together on the top shelf. He moved down, over the second shelf, sliding against the wood. Then the cans covering the passageway moved. Lark whimpered as light poured into the narrow room. I looked up, my eyes locking with the soldier’s.
“Sir,” he said, pushing more cans aside. “Sir, there are more sows—”
Otis grabbed the gun from his belt and fired it into Richard’s side. The soldier fell, pulling the shelf on top of him. He clutched at his shoulder, where the bullet had ripped through his shirt.
As Otis threw himself into Calverton, Marjorie turned to us. “Go!” she yelled, pointing behind us to the tunnel that snaked into darkness. “Now!”
Calverton slammed Otis into the wall, knocking the weapon from his grasp. He wiped off his uniform where Otis had grabbed him, smoothing down the puckered cloth. Then he lowered his gun.
“No! Stop!” Marjorie yelled. Her hands reached out, strained, trying to close the gap between them. It happened too fast. One shot, then another, burying themselves in Otis’s chest. He was dead before he hit the ground.
Lark rushed into the tunnel and Arden followed, dragging me behind. But my feet were heavy, sadness already overtaking me. I kept my head turned, watching as Marjorie kneed the soldier, hard, in the side. It barely slowed him down. He raised his gun again and struck Marjorie across her cheek. She fell on top of Otis, her arms holding him still, as the soldier lowered his gun again and fired one last blast.
Chapter Twenty-eight
ARDEN TUGGED AT MY ARM, BUT I STOOD FROZEN, watching the scene as if it were playing on the wall above the fireplace. Richards squeezing his eyes in pain, the spatter of blood against his pale cheek, Marjorie slumped over, her white braid slowly turning red.
Calverton lunged toward us, but I couldn’t move. After a moment, Arden yanked me hard, sending me stumbling forward.
We ran through the tunnel, our steps pounding out a constant rhythm as we traveled farther into the blackness. My mind felt clouded from the unreality of it all. Marjorie and Otis had been shot. They were dead. It was my fault. As much as I repeated these facts, they didn’t make any sense.
When we finally reached the end of the tunnel, we hit a set of stairs. A thin strip of light streamed in from a long crack in the ceiling. Lark threw herself up against the trapdoor, but the metal didn’t give. “It’s stuck,” she cried, beating on it with her fists. Finally the door raised an inch, revealing a thick tree branch that had fallen over it, barring it shut.
Behind us, cans clinked together as the soldier plunged through the cabinet. Lark stepped back into the darkness, letting us wedge our way between the stairs and the door. The soldiers were just around the corner when a shot sounded.
“Don’t fire at her—we need her alive!” Calverton yelled.
“Push harder!” Arden cried, pressing her palms to the door.
“Stop! By order of the King of the New America!” Richards’s voice called through the tunnel.
Arden and I rushed at the door again, throwing our hands against it so hard it hurt. In one gratifying crack the branch broke, the bark splintering down on us as the doors flung apart, revealing the white morning light.
Arden sprang into the open air. I paused on the steps, turning quickly to help Lark. But she was slumped at the bottom of the stairs. Blood slicked her hair and pooled, a purplish red, around her skull.
“No!” I reached down and grabbed her, feeling the warmth of the puddle through my shoes. The shot had buried itself in the back of her neck. “Lark!”
“We have to go,” Arden said from up above. She pointed to the woods. “I don’t want to but we—”
Before she could finish, the soldiers turned the corner, their guns raised. Richards’s arm was bandaged with Marjorie’s purple scarf.
I ran furiously beside Arden, kicking the metal door shut behind me, Lark’s body locked beneath it. The sun was unforgiving, beating on the scorched lawn and lightening the shadows beneath the charred trees. Giant red rocks spread out over the landscape, creating an impenetrable wall. The shrubs were shorter, the sand hot, the next house a tiny square on the horizon. Even outside, there was nowhere to hide.
The door clattered open behind us. Calverton moved steadily across the grass as he reloaded his gun.
“Come on,” I said, darting right, away from the charred forest we had come through that night with Fletcher. We made our way in and out of the trees, the thick shrubs ripping at my calves. Far beyond Marjorie’s house, over dunes and past the tree line, a cracked road opened into a neighborhood.
A bullet hit a tree in front of Arden, burrowing into the wood. “They’re trying to kill me,” she yelled, as she jumped a rotten log. I kept running, and for a moment the soldiers disappeared behind a stretch of tall brush.
“There,” I said, pointing to a house overgrown with grass. We took off behind it, pushing through the battered gate.
In the middle of the yard was an empty pool, the skeleton of a dog resting at its bottom. Lining the house was a collapsed deck with overturned chairs. A wood shack sat in the corner, its white paint peeling off in sheets. Surrounding all of it, nearly eight feet high, stood a yellow fence.
Arden ran at it, landing her heel into its side. It wouldn’t give. Beyond the gate the soldiers’ steps drew nearer. Arden kicked the fence again, turning her foot to the side, putting all her weight into it. Her eyes watered from the effort. “No, this can’t be happening. No!”
There was no entrance or exit around the other side of the house. There were no breaks in the wall, nothing we could use to climb. Only one way in and one way out.
“We’re trapped. ” My hands shook with the realization.
Arden pulled me around the shack. We crouched low, her hand slippery inside mine, as we watched through its broken window. The soldiers came in, their guns drawn, and circled the pool. Calverton raised his finger to his mouth, as if to say Shhhh.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered into Arden’s ear, my words barely audible. I had sent out the message, calling the soldiers to Marjorie’s house. Now I had led us to our capture. I had chosen the wrong way.
Richards pulled a flashlight from his belt and searched under the broken deck. Arden’s eyes locked on the overturned chairs, stacked together near the back door of the house. She pointed to them. “You can use one to get over. You’ll go out the back. ”