Three

by Kristen Simmons

  Sharp gravel dug into my feet as I stumbled through the cloud of dust in search of the prisoners. They were not far away, mixed in with soldiers strewn across the ground. Some stood, others toppled over or remained on their knees. Some—most—did not get up at all.

  “Chase!” I rasped.

  I picked my way through the bodies, finally finding him halfway buried beneath another body—a soldier, lifeless as a doll. In a surge of effort, I pushed him aside and to my relief Chase rose to his elbows and slapped a hand against the side of his head as if his ear was filled with water.

  “What…” He looked up and met my gaze.

  “We have to get out of here,” I said. I glanced up, only to find a gaping hole in the side of the building. Where the stories of soldiers had climbed skyward, now there was only a pile of rubble. Half the base had been blown away.

  “My uncle…”

  “We have to go,” I said.

  Chase’s face twisted in pain just for an instant before he packed it away with a curt nod.

  I helped him to a stand, but he staggered. There beside us, on the ground, was the soldier I’d pushed aside. His blank eyes stared upward, unseeing, and a trickle of blood ran from the corner of his mouth.

  “Billy?” I fell to all fours. I shook him, but he didn’t move.

  My mind struggled to make sense of what I was seeing. Billy was just here, just helping to free the others. He’d found the keys. He’d let me out of my cell. He could not be gone.

  “Billy!” I shouted.

  Chase’s arms surrounded my waist and hoisted me to a stand.

  “Can’t say I ever thought I’d see you two…” Wallace trailed off as he saw the boy lying on the ground.

  He crouched, and laid two fingers aside Billy’s neck. His head fell forward.

  “All right, kid,” he said. “You did real good back there.” He closed Billy’s eyes. “Real good.”

  The sob in my throat choked out. The tears stung my eyes, but cleared them. Cleared away all the distractions, all the departures from the one road we should have been following the whole time. The road that led us away from this.

  I looked at Chase and knew he felt the same.

  “We need to get out of here,” I said.

  As if nothing else in the world mattered, Wallace carefully removed the boy’s MM jacket, button by button, and gently placed it aside. I said his name, I begged him to come, but he acted as if he couldn’t hear me.

  The resistance leader who we thought had died on the rooftop of the Wayland Inn folded Billy’s hands over his chest.

  “That’s my boy,” he said. He straightened Billy’s undershirt. “That’s my boy,” he said again.

  An outcry came from the open side of the base, and we turned just in time to see the men and women, dressed in civilian clothing, cresting the wreckage. The MM regrouped, and orders to stand and fight brought on a hailstorm of bullets.

  Chase and I dove behind the stage, hearing the ping of bullets slap against its metal underbelly.

  Wallace stood slowly, the MM gun from Billy’s belt in his hand. He didn’t seek cover as the bullets flew.

  “We did it,” he said, staring blankly into the battle.

  Wallace was right. We had done it. Jesse had killed the Chief of Reformation, Three had broken into the Charlotte base. It should have felt like victory, but all I felt was loss and the gallop of my heartbeat repeating the same urgent message: get out, get out, get out.

  I took one final look at Billy, and Wallace walking calmly to join Three as they attacked the remainder of the soldiers in the courtyard. Those in uniforms fell around us, fell from the high remaining floors that were still intact. Some surrendered and were taken prisoner. Some were not offered that option.

  “Ember.” My name on Chase’s lips brought me back.

  Now came the point of decision: to join Three’s ranks and destroy the MM—to risk the chance at being destroyed ourselves—or to leave all of this devastation behind. Soon the choice would be made for us; a battle was underway and in a moment we were going to be caught in the middle of it.

  “Follow me,” I said.

  Keeping low, we picked our way through a path of debris greater than the wreckage we’d seen inside the Chicago tunnels. Away from the fighting. My chin lifted; I didn’t know if another bomb would come, but I wasn’t about to wait and find out.

  The two of us raced through the exit, down the hallway where I’d walked with the girls, toward the parking lot. As we neared the door, the patter of gunfire had us taking cover against the wall.

  The buzz of the lights flickered on and off, grating on my raw nerves. Two shots embedded into the wall above us, then a third. Over it all, the siren screamed, constant and demanding. Outside came a cry of victory from the men and women of Three.

  “You hear that?” shouted Chase. “That’s the sound of you losing. If you don’t want to die today, I suggest you get out of here fast.”

  A few seconds later we heard the clatter of retreating footsteps.

  I kept close behind Chase as we exited the building. The parking lot lights had gone dark from the blast; some of the poles had been knocked over. Cars were crushed beneath them.

  “There!” I pointed to the exit, but even as I spoke the terror punched me in the gut. The retreating MM troops had used this lot to regroup. A hundred or more soldiers gathered near the perimeter fence, their dark uniforms only degrees of shadow in the moonlight. They saw us at the same time we saw them, and instantly raised their weapons.

  “Get back!” Chase shouted. We tried to return to the building, but now the retreating troops were pouring from the exit. When they saw their fellow soldiers they skidded to a halt, making one last play against the rebels fighting their way through the building.

  We were caught in the middle.

  “Under the car!” Grabbing Chase’s sleeve, I dove behind the nearest van, furious at myself for not having grabbed a weapon from one of the fallen soldiers within the courtyard.

  The sound of gunfire came from all sides. The interior of the base was on fire now and the smoke was tinged with electricity and something sweet. To the left of the base came the sounds of battle—the scrape of metal and a chorus of angry voices, yelling.

  “The prison,” said Chase, a grim look on his face.

  Bullets sprayed around my feet and I tucked them close to my body, shaking with adrenaline, with fear, with anger that we were so close to freedom only to be pinned in place as target practice.

  “I love you,” I said to Chase.

  He turned to me, a hard look on his face.

  “Don’t you give up.” With that he stood, and disappeared around the corner of the van. I screamed as another shot embedded in the sliding door over my head. The MM had surrounded us. It was just a matter of time before we were discovered.

  A great roar came from the direction of the prison—this one closer, shaking through my bones. I mustered the courage to peek around the side of the van, ready for the onslaught of soldiers, but instead found a wave of gray charging through the darkness.

  Leading them was DeWitt. He carried a stick in one arm, raised high above his head. As he came closer I recognized the long pole with the looped leash.

  It seemed possible then that DeWitt had planned to be here, now, to lead this wave of the attack. Somehow the prisoners had overpowered the guards. In the chaos I’d forgotten that Billy had freed them.

  “Nice job, Billy,” I whispered to the sky.

  As I watched, half of the first line of prisoners fell. DeWitt crumpled, slowed, but then ran on again, urging the others to follow. Within seconds the clash of bodies and metal echoed against what remained of the stone base. I scrambled up, searching frantically for Chase. Eventually I caught sight of him, his prison uniform standing out in the night, running toward me from the now open gate.

  Hope flooded through me. We were going to make it. We were going to live.

  I didn’t even hear the men beh
ind me until it was too late.

  The grip on my arm took me by surprise, and with a short scream I toppled backward.

  “Stand up!” shouted New Guy. “Up on your feet!”

  He wrapped his arm around my throat, using my body as a shield. Something cold and hard pressed against my temple, and without a doubt I knew it was the barrel of a gun.

  Chase didn’t slow; he ran at both of us like a freight train. We crashed to the ground, gravel scraping the palms of my hands as I tried to shove myself out of the way. From close by came the sound of a blunted shot, then a pained cry in my right ear. I finally succeeded in breaking away from between the two men.

  New Guy, his nose still busted, and now with a scrape down his pale jaw, jolted up, leaving Chase facedown on the pavement. For one stunned moment none of us moved.

  “Get up.” Chase’s leg was closest and I shook his calf. “Chase, get up!”

  His arms bent at his sides as he attempted something that looked like a push up before collapsing back down on his stomach.

  He’s okay, I told myself. He took a hard hit. Got the wind knocked out of him. I crawled to his side and helped him roll over, watched as his dark eyes focused behind me, on the moon. Saw the dark liquid seep from his right side, just above his rib cage.

  Time stopped.

  We were a girl and a boy exploring a haunted house.

  A kiss in the woods.

  A ride on a motorcycle.

  We were walking to school. Whispering across the space between our houses. Pulling hay from each other’s hair.

  We were pieces of the same puzzle.

  But he was the boy from my dream, bleeding from a hole in his chest.

  I couldn’t move.

  There was only my breath, too hard, and his, too strained. He cringed against the pain, and I filled his wound with my hands and my tears.

  The fighting around us returned in a rush, blasting my eardrums. The soldier who had shot him, who had turned us in at Greeneville, was getting closer. I could feel his presence in the way the hair on my neck stood on end.

  Without thinking I spread my body over Chase’s, covering him, wishing I was made of steel and could stop a bullet. Two shots came fast. I closed my eyes, waiting to feel them enter my body, bracing against the fire they would bring to my flesh.

  But when I opened them, Tucker was beside me, and New Guy was on the ground, motionless.

  Lowering to a crouch, Tucker sheathed his gun and clenched a fist around Chase’s shoulder.

  “Shake it off, Jennings. It’s just a flesh wound.”

  Around us, the battle raged on.

  Chase opened his eyes fully, focusing on Tucker. And then in a surge of strength he sat up, and shoved me to the side.

  “Get … away … from us…” he whispered.

  “I saved her,” Tucker explained.

  You killed my mother, and all those people in Chicago and the safe house.

  “He let me go,” I said, placing my arms beneath Chase’s. Tucker had woken something inside of me. I could still save him, but we needed to get out of here.

  Chase weakly shoved his old partner, who fell helplessly back on his heels. He looked shocked, like he couldn’t believe that Chase didn’t believe him.

  “Help me!” I told Tucker. “He needs a doctor.”

  Tucker wound Chase’s arm over his shoulders and, with a grunt, he stood. The noise Chase made was enough to make my whole body clench, but he didn’t have the strength to object.

  “There’s a clinic north of here,” said Tucker. “It’s where they take soldiers who need more than the base medic.”

  I opened the sliding side door of the van. Tucker backed in, dragging Chase across the floor.

  I jumped into the driver’s seat, searched the center console. I threw a map over my shoulder, shoved aside a pack of batteries. Nearby, a man yelled out in pain.

  “Keys,” I said.

  “In the visor,” said Tucker from behind me. “The drivers leave them there when they’re on base.”

  I ripped down the visor and snatched the key ring as it slid toward me.

  “Hold on, man.” Tucker had removed his uniform jacket and was trying to convince Chase to hold it over the wound.

  “Let’s go!” I shouted. As Tucker emerged I slapped the keys into his hand, then ducked in the back to kneel beside Chase.

  Around us Three’s soldiers fought side by side with the prisoners, defeating the MM troops. Their cries of victory sliced through me; they cheered for the deaths of others just as the soldiers had cheered the death of our men in the ring.

  It was what we’d been fighting for. What we’d always wanted.

  I slammed the van’s sliding door and pressed down on the jacket over Chase’s stomach. He groaned; the sound almost broke me. I couldn’t stand him hurting like this. I couldn’t do anything to fix it. The harder I pressed on the bandage, the more pain it seemed to put him in, but I didn’t know what else to do.

  The tires squealed. I glanced up as we cut through the parking lot. Tucker was carving a straight line toward the exit. Soldiers and rebels alike dove out of our way.

  The gate was unlatched, but not wide enough for the van.

  “Tucker?”

  “Hang on,” he said. The engine revved, then jolted forward, ramming hard into the side of another car sticking out in our path.

  “Hold on!” I shouted to Chase as we punched through the opening.

  Outside, on the road, men in uniforms were retreating, gunned down by the prisoners that chased them. A bullet pierced the back window, likely from one of the rebels—I’d forgotten we were in an MM transport—but though we swerved, we didn’t slow.

  Tucker had said there was a clinic north of here. I hoped it wasn’t hard to find.

  We finally hit a straightaway. Our speed increased. Chase forced himself up on one elbow despite my efforts to hold him down. His face was pale in the dark van, and gleaming with sweat.

  He was staring at Tucker.

  “He was in on it,” he said between clenched teeth. “At the mini-mart. He knew.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “Did he really let you go?”

  “Yes.” I waited a beat, then pressed him back down. “Chase, keep talking.”

  “Why?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. I think…” Tucker swerved up onto the highway, following a sign with a white H for hospital. “I think maybe he’s trying to make things right.”

  Silence.

  “Chase?”

  His eyes rolled back. Closed.

  “Chase!” I screamed.

  CHAPTER

  26

  I PACED through the small hospital room, ignoring the wet hair that dripped onto my borrowed scrubs. Tucker leaned back in an orange padded chair against the wall, his eyes drifting shut. Every time his head fell to the side, he jolted awake and rubbed his eyes.

  “The doc come back?” He asked this every time he woke up.

  I shook my head. For the twentieth time, I retied the waistband of my oversized pants. They were huge and wouldn’t stay up.

  Five hours had passed since we’d burst into triage of the small medical clinic demanding care. Four hours since the doctor on call, a man about Jesse’s age with thinning hair and serious eyes, had performed surgery. I’d stayed in the room the entire time, convinced they might try to hurt him. Convinced they would just let him die. Even after the doctor showed me the three parallel scars on his shoulder.

  Two hours ago they told me Chase would pull through and placed him in a recovery room. I’d finally agreed to take their clothes, clean myself off in the sink, and let a nurse dress my wounds. The doctor had given me a shot of penicillin in case any of them got infected. I’d never left Chase’s side.

  The rebels had taken over the clinic. Men and women I recognized from Endurance kept guard around the perimeter, while many of the prisoners kept watch inside. Tucker told me the staff was patching up MM officers—men Three
would later make prisoners and use as collateral. He stayed close after that; he’d traded his uniform for scrubs and thrown the jacket in the trash. I thought maybe he’d make a run for it, but he hadn’t.

  DeWitt had yet to show up. Neither had Wallace. I wasn’t hopeful either had made it.

  While I watched Chase sleep, the slow, consistent beep of the monitors measured his heart rate. I kept one ear tuned to the hall, and when footsteps pattered by our room I tiptoed to the cracked door. Four rebels—the doctor who had completed Chase’s surgery included—were gathered around an old black box radio in front of a window, where outside the sun was just beginning to rise.

  I lingered in the background, ready to unhook Chase and move us on if I had to.

  “Rumors of a massive explosion at the Chicago base have been confirmed,” reported the familiar voice of a woman who liked to annunciate her words. “The detonations, which occurred just after midnight, were originally claimed as accidents—a misfiring from the base’s weapons storage—but soon after, the prison and rehabilitation hospital also reported explosions, leading our sources to believe that this was in fact the work of rebels. The base has since been overrun with people carrying what look to be the Moral Statutes. The same is said to be happening at the FBR base in Knoxville, Tennessee, which fell less than an hour later.”

  I leaned back against the wall, mouth agape. Civilians overtaking the bases. Carrying Statute circulars. My story had reached people in time.

  Jesse’s words returned to me from Endurance: “When a government becomes destructive, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it.” It may have been my name on those Statutes, but it was the people who took action. A revolution had begun, and for the first time I finally felt as if my part in it was over.

  “Since the attacks, former president Matthew Stark and members of his administration have released a statement calling for current political leaders to relinquish their power so that it may be rightfully returned to the citizens. He demands that officials explain their stance on the Expungement Initiative, a government protocol intended to reduce noncompliance by the execution of innocent civilians imprisoned for Article violations. President Scarboro has yet to comment on these accusations, or the recent claims that the late Chief of Reformation, Chancellor Reinhardt, offered bribe money to the insurgents during the War in exchange for acts of terrorism. Stark asks that citizens demonstrate tolerance and patience during this precarious time until peace can be established. With more on these stories as details emerge, this is Faye Browne.”