Three

by Kristen Simmons

  I didn’t know what he was doing, but it seemed kind, and for some reason that made me nervous.

  “How was your date?” I whispered. Chase stretched his long arms overhead.

  Jesse’s head lifted.

  “It’s time to go,” he said.

  We followed him around the block to where a large city trash truck was parked. It stunk, even from a distance, and when I saw the man outside leaning against the door, I stopped.

  “Where’s the truck?” asked Chase.

  “Traded it to the ladies,” said Jesse. “Meet August. He’s our new set of wheels.”

  August smiled, revealing a couple of crooked teeth. He was average height, not heavy, but not too lean. His hair was thin up top and he stood a little hunched over. It occurred to me that he had no distinguishing features; I’d probably never give him a second look if I didn’t know him.

  “You’re a carrier?” I asked. He nodded. A closer view revealed his gray city worker’s uniform. “And the Statutes?” The women in Chattanooga had only taken a third of the boxes.

  “Already loaded up.” August motioned to a ladder alongside the green metal Dumpster. “You’ll have more air in the bucket at the top. Sorry about the smell, but at least I don’t get searched a lot.”

  My stomach churned.

  “You’ve been busy,” I told Jesse. He looked surprised that I had expected any differently.

  Chase snorted.

  The three of us climbed into the bucket and laid across the dirty steel. It didn’t even smell that bad once we started moving, and we had a great view of the sunrise.

  We stayed in Dalton, Georgia, for no longer than it took to pass along the Statutes. The man who worked there said he knew some other printers in the North who would also be willing to support the cause, and would pass along the message as soon as he could. I couldn’t help but feel the glimmer of excitement growing within me. This was actually working.

  We stopped to stretch our legs and practice fighting. Chase was perfectly willing to spar, especially when we ended up tangled on the ground, but was more wary of helping me work the handgun, another side effect of Harper’s death. Jesse took over, teaching me to take it apart, clean the small pieces, and put it back together. By the end of our first session I could load a cartridge and switch off the safety gage by feel. It wasn’t a skill I was particularly glad to have, but it was a necessary one, all the same.

  Calhoun. Rome. A roadblock sent us on a detour through Fort Payne, and we spent the night in Gadsden with some Sisters running a safe house for reform school runaways. By then word of our trip had gotten out and we met carriers who drove as far as Columbus, Ohio, and Northern Texas, all willing to spread the word about the Statutes.

  Taking the back roads took time, and ten days after we’d left Endurance, we reached Birmingham. Like most of the others, they were cagey, but when they’d heard our report, and seen that we’d come to deliver the Statutes personally, they held a potluck dinner at the refectory of an old church. Some of the men even cleaned out the bucket atop of the trash truck for us.

  We reached the outskirts of Atlanta at dusk the next day, and spent the night under the stars at an old rest stop. The next morning we entered the city, Chase and Jesse dressed as soldiers, me in my Sisters of Salvation uniform. Despite the MM’s heavy presence there, our spirits were high. The carrier, August, drove us right downtown, where we were released outside an old theater near a large factory. It must have been doing well enough; half a dozen civilian cars were pulling into its parking lot. We tried to play it cool, but so many potential witnesses made me nervous.

  We entered through the back doors and found ourselves on a wooden stage, a heavy burgundy curtain marred by moth holes sweeping at an angle from the ceiling. The auditorium was silent, rows of dusty red velvet seats empty and broken, and the air was cold and stale. I shivered. It felt like we were preparing to give a performance to ghosts.

  Hard-soled boots clicked across the stage, and the curtain was pulled back to reveal a man in clean slacks and a button-down shirt with a snow-white, handlebar moustache. I stood back reluctantly; he didn’t look like resistance.

  “It’s been awhile since we’ve seen you, August,” said the man to the carrier as they shook hands. He had a thick, buttery accent.

  “Stopped up,” said August bluntly. “These folks, they’ll tell you more.”

  None of us spoke.

  The man smiled. “Let me guess, I’m not what you expected?”

  “Not exactly,” said Chase.

  “Well set your mind at ease, son,” said the man. “I dress this way to keep my day job. I keep my day job because it helps feed the folks of this city.”

  “And your work, what would that be?” asked Jesse.

  “Food,” said the man. “Boxed food. Atlanta’s home to Horizons national distribution warehouse.”

  This made me feel minutely better.

  “Awfully trusting to come alone, unarmed,” said Jesse.

  The man smiled again, his blue eyes twinkling. “Now what makes you think I’d do a thing like that?”

  He snapped his fingers over his head, and suddenly three more men stepped out from behind the curtain, all with guns in their hands. Chase turned, and when I followed, another four were behind us. There was even a woman in a theater box lifting a hand from her rifle to send us a friendly wave.

  For some reason, this calmed my nerves considerably.

  Chase and I fell into our report while Jesse continued to assess our guards.

  “You people responsible for that new sniper shooting?”

  “The one near the Red Zone?” I asked, remembering what the woman had told me in the Smokys.

  “Sure, that one. And the one last week in Chattanooga. Shot up four soldiers on a patrol. Report said there was a big one, two, three carved into the cruiser’s hood.” He held up his fingers to accentuate the point. “Reinhardt put down four more of his prisoners in retaliation according to the radio last night. Poor souls.” He smoothed down his moustache with one hand.

  I froze. “We were just there and didn’t hear anything…”

  Beside me Chase had stilled. Jesse found something fascinating to stare at on the ceiling.

  “Excuse me a moment,” Moustache said when one of the guards behind him turned up the volume on his radio. As he turned back to convene with the three men behind him, Chase closed our small circle, boxing out August the carrier.

  “Was that you?” The lines of Chase’s neck were pulled taut.

  Jesse picked at something in his teeth.

  He was going to act as if it were nothing. As if he hadn’t potentially compromised our mission and taunted the MM to come and find us.

  “The prisoners,” I said. “Reinhardt killed more of our people because of you.”

  “Once they hit that prison they were already lost,” said Jesse.

  Not according to Billy, who might now have been among them.

  “You should have told us,” said Chase.

  “You should have told those women,” I said, the fury overridden by a sudden dose of fear. “What do you think the MM is going to do to their people now?”

  “I did tell those women. Well, the one at least. Felicity.” Jesse sounded out the name and flashed a dangerous smile. “I have a better question. What do you think the civilians in town will do with that push?”

  “That’s what the Statutes were for!” I shook my head, swallowing the growl.

  Jesse leaned down until we were the same height.

  “Are you sure you’re cut out for this, neighbor?” he asked. “War is ugly. Sometimes you’ve got to do things you don’t like and hope they’re better for everyone in the long run.”

  “Like keep a man in a cage?” asked Chase.

  Jesse lifted his chin. The tension hummed between them.

  “Better if you don’t think of them as men,” he said finally.

  Chase scoffed and turned away.

  “Easier,
you mean,” I whispered. It would have been easier to live with Harper’s death had he not been flesh and blood. Easier, but not right.

  The three cuts on my chest stung.

  “Might want to take a listen, friends,” called Moustache. He motioned us over to where the other guards were now gathering.

  A radio report was playing on the handheld, and the voice I recognized all too well.

  “In what the chief has called a momentous victory in the fight against terrorism, Doctor Aiden DeWitt was captured this morning during an FBR raid. DeWitt, leader of the rebel organization known as Three, has confessed to the sniper shootings throughout Virginia and Tennessee in the last three months, including the attack on the FBR draft in Knoxville. His sentencing, as determined by the Chief of Reformation, has yet to be decided. With more to come on this story, this is Felicity Bridewell.”

  My gut plummeted through the floor.

  DeWitt had been captured. The report didn’t say where, or if they’d found Endurance, but the cold snaking through my veins said that Rebecca, Will, the children, and the rest who remained in Endurance were in trouble.

  A scene played out before my eyes, of Sean and Jack reaching the safe house wreckage, finding Tucker, and bringing him back to Endurance. Of the MM following them, attacking, taking DeWitt.

  Rebecca wouldn’t even be able to run.

  Chase was watching me, the same horror I felt mirrored on his face.

  One of the guards with Moustache suddenly bolted toward the front of the stage, his previously silent shoes now slapping up the center aisle. He disappeared behind the auditorium door, leaving a strained silence behind him.

  For several seconds no one moved. Then two shots rang out, magnified off the theater’s high ceiling. My heart slammed into my throat. I backed against the nearest wall, my gun drawn. Chase and August hid behind the curtain.

  “Soldiers?” Chase whispered to August.

  “It’s time to go,” said August. “Someone was followed.”

  Jesse crouched on the opposite side of the stage behind a false wall painted with orange and red flames. If it was us, the MM could have found the trash truck, still packed with boxes of hijacked Statutes.

  Moustache crawled toward us. He slapped a set of keys into Chase’s outstretched hand.

  “Silver sedan around the southeast corner of the building,” he said. “It’s time you three hit the road.”

  “The Statutes,” I hissed.

  “We’ll take care of it, just go!”

  He led us to another exit, this one emerging below the sidewalk, where Jesse joined us. Carefully we surveyed the street, and finding it empty, climbed the steps and made a dash for the nearest cover—an old bus stop awning. Chase led the way and Jesse took the rear, smashing me between their backs when we came to a sudden stop.

  “See anything?” As soon as Chase asked, a volley of shots came from the front of the building, followed by a man’s sharp cry of pain. I clenched my teeth.

  We should have helped, but we couldn’t risk capture, not with the Statutes out in circulation and not if DeWitt was really gone. We needed to get back to Endurance to find out what had happened.

  “There’s the car,” said Chase, pointing across the street with his weapon. He removed the keys from his pocket and rolled back his shoulders, ready to run.

  “We’ve got you covered,” said Jesse.

  “Go,” I said. “Now!”

  Chase took off toward the car, just as another shot rang out. I glanced around the metal siding of the bus stop and searched for any signs of movement.

  Seconds after Chase made it to the car, the engine sputtered, then revved. An eerie silence punctuated the firefight at the front of the building, and in it I knew they were coming for us. The seconds ticked down.

  I ran for the car, sliding into the backseat, Jesse just after me. Chase hit the gas and the tires squealed against the pavement. We stayed low, out of view from the windows.

  As soon as he was out of range Chase slowed our speed, trying to make us appear inconspicuous, like the other cars passing through this part of the city. After a while I peeled my cheek off the leather seat and chanced a quick look around. We hadn’t been followed. Yet.

  “We have to go back to Endurance,” I said.

  “If DeWitt’s gone, Endurance is gone,” said Jesse. He stared out the side window, a blank expression on his face.

  “He could have been captured somewhere else,” said Chase. “They told us Endurance was protected. Off the MM’s radar.”

  I hoped he was right.

  CHAPTER

  18

  BY late afternoon we’d crossed into the Red Zone by way of an obscure dirt road that cut through the woods. Jesse had learned of the route from DeWitt before we’d left, and it was a good thing he had, because the radio in the sedan’s glove compartment picked up a signal that indicated the MM had increased their border patrol. It left me with a bad feeling that they’d already reached Endurance.

  We parked under a highway two miles away and hiked in through a cement ditch that led to a junkyard behind the compound. The gate we’d left through three days earlier was open, and as far as I could tell there weren’t any guards lurking in the old oak trees that ran along the sides of the barricade.

  “What are the chances everyone went to Charlotte?” I asked.

  Slim. Chase had already told me on our drive here that the last shift of fighters would have left yesterday, but that a core group would be left behind to guard the compound. There were children here, and too many secrets.

  At least there had been.

  “Come on,” I said.

  The sky was clear and quiet, and the air smelled vaguely metallic, like blood and electricity. We stayed low and kept together, and crept closer.

  Just outside the gate we paused, hiding behind the rusted body of a van that had been propped up on cinder blocks. Chase threw a rock over the hood, and it skidded through the open gate before coming to a stop.

  Nothing happened.

  “Evacuated?” asked Chase.

  “Maybe they’re up at the lodge,” I said.

  “I’ll go take a look,” said Jesse. He jogged toward the open entrance while Chase and I kept our eyes open and mouths closed, struggling to hear if anyone was coming.

  I slipped the ring Chase had given me over my finger and then slid it back off. It didn’t feel right to wear it yet, not when that someday we’d talked about wasn’t today. In the meantime I would keep it safe, and hold on to a future where things were different. Normal, like Sean had said.

  Chase was watching me; I felt his gaze before I looked up. He had a streak of dirt down the side of his cheek, and I wiped it away slowly with my thumb. His breath quickened. I had the urge to lean closer, to bring my fingertips to his lips and feel the soft curve of them, but instead I lowered my hand and listened.

  Long minutes passed, and when Jesse didn’t return, Chase stretched his legs.

  “It’s been too long,” he said.

  I nodded. If this was a trap, it was an awfully quiet one. Jesse was probably still searching, or had already found the others, but that didn’t mean we could take any chances.

  “Stay out of the open,” I said. “We’ll go around the woods through the cemetery. Keep the wall on our side.” It was longer than taking the road that cut straight through the middle of the compound, but it wasn’t worth the risk of exposure.

  The corner of his mouth quirked. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “What?” Silently, I cursed the heavy Sisters of Salvation skirt I still wore and tied the excess in a knot around my thighs.

  “Nothing.” He grinned fully as he checked the chamber of his gun. “I’d take orders from you anytime.”

  The laugh bubbled out of my throat. I covered my mouth to lock it down, but that didn’t stop the tingling in my belly.

  “I’ll take point.” His dark, amused eyes met mine. “If that’s okay with you.”

  “By all means.
” I gestured for him to lead the way.

  Before he stood fully he ran the back of his finger up my calf. The heat raced through my veins.

  “You might run faster if you lose the skirt.”

  Before I could respond, he was off, running for the gate with his gun pointed at the ground. I raced after him thinking he was probably right; it would have been a lot easier to move without this stupid uniform.

  The back fields where the army had trained were empty—the fire pits had been covered as if they’d never been lit, and the storage sheds were cleaned out. In the parking lot only a large yellow bulldozer, a car, and a white moving truck remained. None of them bore MM emblems.

  Jesse was nowhere to be seen.

  Without speaking, we moved on, staying close to the barricade as we entered the woods. We came to the cemetery and found the shed unguarded and the door open. I cringed, remembering how we’d found Jesse inside with the caged soldier. We searched it quickly, finding not only the cage empty, but the entire room stripped. The bright lights that had hung on the ceiling were gone. It looked like it hadn’t been occupied in years.

  We moved faster now, climbing the hill along the perimeter. My heart was pumping by the time the trees began to clear, and the sweat was flowing freely down my brow. Finally, the dorms came into view, but only one person could be seen. A man, standing outside the back entrance of the lodge’s cafeteria.

  Jesse.

  The panic swelled and broke inside of me. I abandoned the fence and forced myself to walk toward him, coming to a stop beside the swing set. It was broken now, the chains lying across the ground like dead snakes.

  What I’d come to recognize as Endurance looked nothing like the fully functioning compound I’d left just days before. Outside, the lodge was in ruins. The north wing had been demolished; all that remained was a heap of concrete and broken wood. Though the smoke had died away, the air still smelled charred and acidic, as if there’d recently been a mechanical fire. Over the wreckage I saw that the barn had been torn down, and the gardens, once a jungle of green living things, had been torn up by a car’s tires.