The Defectors (Defectors Trilogy)

by Benner, Tarah

  I took the toy gun, eyeing the two real ones with apprehension. Logan moved about with ease, gathering a box of BBs and some empty coffee cans sitting near the door. She looked like a bizarrely beautiful Annie Oakley with her blond hair pulled up and two guns slung over her shoulder.

  We walked down to a tree on the edge of the field with a clear view of the patch of woods I had run from the day before. There was the small shed we had been holed up in during the raid, not far from where Amory originally tackled me.

  Logan set down everything she was carrying except the guns, which she hung on my shoulder. I stood frozen as she dragged a sawhorse out of the shed and sat the coffee cans in a line. She stood back, squinting as though she were an artist scrutinizing her work, and then pulled me by the shoulders into position where she’d been standing.

  “Perfect,” she said, sounding immensely proud of herself.

  I exhaled audibly as she relieved me of the real shotguns. She kicked off her shoes and started to scrabble up the tree trunk like a squirrel. She climbed with staggering grace and ease, swinging her leg over one of the lower branches and turning to look down at me.

  I knew I would eventually need to learn how to defend myself living off the grid, but I hadn’t really thought about what it would be like to shoot a gun.

  Logan fished a piece of coffee cake out of her pocket and shoved it in her mouth. “Okay, go for it,” she said.

  I turned the BB gun in my hands, feeling the cold metal. Why is this a child’s toy? I thought. It seemed so strange. I raised it and moved my hand down the barrel, trying to find a comfortable grip.

  My hand found the trigger and I fired — looking but not really seeing my target. Unsurprisingly, I didn’t hear it make contact with any of the coffee cans.

  I tried again, this time really staring down one can in particular. It didn’t hit the one I’d wanted, but I heard the tinny sound of the BB hitting the can next to it.

  “You’re awful at this!” Logan heckled from the tree.

  “Some teacher,” I shot back. I felt like laughing, but I didn’t want her to think I wasn’t taking the lesson seriously.

  It took several more tries, but I finally hit the can I was aiming for. Two hours later, I could consistently hit each can, one after another.

  “All right, hot shot,” Logan called. “Let’s see how you do with the real thing.”

  She shimmied gracefully down the tree and unloaded the guns she had slung over her shoulder. “Hold these.” Even propped on the ground, the barrels felt heavy and cold against my fingers.

  Logan dashed back to the shed and emerged a moment later dragging a huge canvas sandbag behind her. It had a crude stickman painted on one side with Xs for eyes. I realized it was a makeshift shooting target. Huffing and puffing, she got it right side up against the sawhorse. The painted dummy was looking at me with its dead eyes — very appropriate for carrier target practice. As Logan turned to face me, I saw that her golden hair was falling out of her bun, and she was beaming with excitement.

  “Let’s see what you got!” She relieved me of one of the guns I was babysitting and backed away to stand under the tree.

  Holding the shotgun up to shoulder level, I realized how heavy it felt compared to the toy gun. It wasn’t the weight of the metal warming beneath my fingers; the gun was pregnant with terrible possibility and undeniable blame for things that hadn’t even happened.

  “Go on then!” said Logan.

  I’d seen enough movies to know I had to release the safety. I fumbled around until Logan helped me, muttering some incomprehensible directions under her breath.

  The butt of the gun pressed deeply into my shoulder. I squinted one eye, found my mark, and took a deep breath in and out.

  Bang.

  It was louder than I could ever have predicted, and it kicked back painfully against my shoulder. I was grounded where I stood, and the field was absolutely still.

  “Well, you missed,” said Logan, breaking the silence with a cheery voice. “Let me show you.”

  She pulled her shotgun off her shoulder as casually as if it were a purse. Standing beside me, she got into position, cocked her small chin, and took aim. Her intensity was frightening. She fired.

  The stickman on the canvas bag shuddered almost imperceptibly. I realized she had struck the dummy right between the eyes. Logan put her weapon down with a satisfied sigh.

  “You make it look easy,” I said.

  “It is easy.” And from her tone, I almost believed it. “You try.”

  Reluctantly, I got back into position, looking for her approval out of the corner of my eye.

  She squinted at me. “Your stance is all wrong. That’s why you miss.” She knocked my left foot forward with her own and pulled out my right elbow. “Try now.”

  I took a deep breath and pulled the trigger. This time, miraculously, I hit the edge of the bag.

  “Better.”

  Logan made me shoot several more times until I could hit the stickman about half the time. She could tell I was getting tired and not making much progress.

  “That’s enough for today,” she said. “We’ll keep working on it until you’re an expert markswoman.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  “We still have another hour on carrier watch.” She turned back toward the tree and climbed up with ease.

  I stared up at her. “I don’t think I can get up there,” I said with a laugh.

  “Come on. It’s easy.”

  I had never climbed a tree in my life. It took me about twenty minutes, but I found the footholds she pointed out and finally managed to swing myself up onto a thick lower branch.

  Logan rolled her eyes. “You can’t see shit from all the way down there.” She was roosting about ten feet up, perched precariously on a thinner branch.

  Stomach clenching uncomfortably, I picked my way up a few branches so I could see across the field and toward the trail.

  “So everyone takes turns on lookout for carriers?”

  “Yeah. We usually just trade off from dusk ’til midnight — go in groups of two. Carriers don’t often move in on settlements, but when they do, it’s almost always right around dark.”

  I shivered.

  “The element of surprise is their only advantage.” She looked at me with a grimace. “Sorry. Well, you know. Occasionally, we catch them poaching from our livestock when food is scarce. It’s gotten worse with the PMC making more frequent raids. Since we know they’re in the area, we’re being extra cautious.” She smiled grimly. “I doubt Roman will sleep at all tonight.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Probably close to the trail so he can give us more of a warning if they show up. We have surveillance equipment that alerts us when PMC choppers fly over like last night, but those are designed to pick up the signals transmitted by their radios. Carriers generally don’t put out a frequency.”

  I hesitated to voice aloud the question that had been plaguing me since my escape. “Why do you think they didn’t kill me?” I asked. “The carriers, I mean.”

  Logan stared off into the field. “No idea. That’s what made Amory so nervous.”

  “He thinks they’ve begun to organize?”

  Logan shrugged. “Could be. I mean, everyone’s hunting them. They only have their own kind. Most people would shoot them as soon as they looked at them.”

  “Like Roman?”

  She shook her head. “Amory can usually keep him from picking a fight with carriers. As long as they don’t try to move in on our land, we leave them alone. Ida doesn’t like us fighting them.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, for one thing, it’s dangerous when we’re outnumbered. Things can get out of control really fast. But she also doesn’t think it’s right. They didn’t choose this, you know? It’s a sickness. It just happened.”

  She smiled, but it didn’t quite meet her eyes. I felt as though she was studying me, searching for some sign I was infected. “I think Ida woul
d offer them a place to stay if they weren’t so bloodthirsty.”

  “Do people do that a lot?”

  “Not many people. It’s too dangerous. But there are a few wackos who think the virus is not contagious, or they think they’re immune. Now most people won’t even take in undocumented illegals, in case they’ve come across any carriers.”

  “Ida does, though. That’s why she has the sage on the door, right?”

  Logan nodded. “There are all sorts of signs to look for. Sage means travelers are welcome. White flowers are a symbol of passive resistance; those people are pretty harmless. But if you see rhododendrons, stay away. It means the house takes in carriers. Ida told me about a farmer a few towns over who opened up his barn to a gang of early-stage carriers. The virus advanced, and they murdered him and his wife in their bed.”

  The back of my neck prickled uncomfortably. I wondered if my mom had tried to kill my dad. The sun was beginning to sink beneath the trees, illuminating the sky with a faint golden light.

  “So someone’s standing guard all the time now?”

  Logan nodded. “During the day, when we’re on alert like this, we take it in turns one at a time.”

  My stomach flipped. I wasn’t really pulling my own weight yet if I was just tagging along with Logan.

  “At night, it’s more dangerous; we go in pairs, and one person sleeps for a few hours while the other stands watch.”

  “Who was standing guard last night if we were all at dinner?”

  “Nobody.” She rolled her eyes. “That’s why Amory was being such an ass. Ida says that family dinner stops for no man or carrier. He was probably out of his mind thinking we were going to be attacked any minute.”

  “Is he always like that?”

  She smiled sadly. “He’s not usually so on edge, but he’s got this darkness in him. He’s a good guy, though.” Logan paused, looking thoughtful. “It was weird how Amory fought for you to stay,” she said, giving me a sideways grin. “You must have really thrown him off his game.”

  I felt my face getting hot, and I wanted to change the topic.

  Logan continued. “He’s maybe the least trustful person I’ve ever met, apart from Roman.”

  “Roman hates me.”

  “He’s mostly all talk. He just really hates carriers, and he hates being wrong. He’s actually a good guy. He’s just . . .” she scrunched her nose, “intense . . . and less friendly than Amory.”

  “Max isn’t like that,” I observed, watching her closely.

  Logan’s smile broadened, and she made a sound like choking on a deep laugh. “No. He’s never too bent out of shape about anything.”

  “Are you two, like, together?” I asked.

  “Oh, god no.” Now it was her turn to blush. “I mean, we live in the same house. It would be weird for everyone.”

  I bit down hard on my lip, trying to hold back my smile. “I think he worships you.”

  Logan’s face was now astonishingly red, but she looked very pleased despite her best efforts. I was surprised that a girl who exuded her effortless beauty and confidence could blush such a funny shade of crimson. “I . . . no, that’s ridiculous.”

  I smiled to myself. It was nice to see something as normal as two people with a crush when everything else had changed so much.

  The boys I used to like seemed so far away now. Even when I had dated early in college, it had always been under the dark cloud of a world spinning out of control. And after the Collapse, things like crushes and dating and getting married seemed like silly preoccupations at best, costly distractions from daily survival at worst.

  “I’m sorry I was so hard on you when you arrived, by the way,” Logan said. “I was just so scared because I thought the PMC would be right behind you, and I —” She broke off. “If the PMC ever found me here . . .”

  Logan closed her eyes, as if bracing herself for what she was about to tell me. “Haven, if I ever got caught, they would shoot me on the spot. They wouldn’t even bother sending me to Sector X.”

  “Why?”

  She hesitated, big green eyes wide. “I was documented. Just like you.”

  I glanced at her forearm. She was running her fingers over the tiny white square scar visible beneath her rolled-up sleeve.

  “How are you —” I began.

  A look of disgust crossed her face. “I was permanently deactivated.”

  “They wiped your ID?”

  She nodded. “I did something that made the PMC angry. They wiped my identification so my parents would never know what happened to me. I think it was meant to intimidate them.” She looked away. “The only thing worse than being dead is becoming invisible.”

  “Is that why you stay here?”

  She nodded.

  “I’m a defector now, too. Well, technically I don’t exist.”

  “But why did they do it? What did you do that made them go after you?”

  “In the view of the PMC, the only thing worse than resisting identification is when you are documented and you betray the government. I’m not proud of what I did, but sometimes you don’t have other options.”

  She still hadn’t answered my question, but I felt as though pressing her further would put a strain on our new friendship. What didn’t make sense was how she thought anyone on the farm would judge her for acting against the PMC. Maybe the reason Logan was so attuned to the darkness in Amory was because she saw in him what she carried inside herself.

  “Do you ever wonder what it’s like up north?” Logan asked out of nowhere.

  “Sometimes,” I admitted.

  “There are days I wish I went when I had the chance.”

  “I guess.”

  Logan looked excited. “Do you think it’s like the old days up there? You think they have everything at the grocery store for cheap and people, like, go to parties on the weekends?”

  “I think that’s what the government wants you to think. But I don’t imagine there’s any more food or cheaper gas. It’s just more stable, and the PMC knows where you are and what you’re doing every second of the day.”

  “I just feel like I can’t let myself hope that good things will happen again,” she said, and I knew she wasn’t talking about life up north anymore. “I don’t see the point.”

  “You never know. I doubt things will be different tomorrow or a year from now, but they could be better someday.” I sat back and put my hands behind my head. “I think things have to change, the way they’re going now.”

  Logan fiddled with the strap on her shotgun. “It just makes me sad because I remember what it was like.”

  I swallowed, not sure if I should ask the question that was burning on my tongue. “What happened to your family?”

  “My parents both got laid off right after the Collapse, and we didn’t have the money to go north and start over. I got a job down here so they could afford to take my little brother and move.”

  “What’s his name?”

  Logan broke into a smile, but I couldn’t tell if it was a happy one. “Sebastian.”

  A pang in my stomach reminded me of my own family and Greyson. “You’ll see them again.”

  Even as I said it, I knew none of us could be sure if we would be with our loved ones again. I realized that maybe the uncertainty was even worse than loss. You could adapt to loss, and over time, the pain would dull. When you didn’t know if your family was alive or dead, the possibility of happiness was just enough hope to be painful. The cut was always just as fresh.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Life off the grid was not easy. Even after five days, I was still not used to the daily toll the farm labor took on my muscles. These were different aches than I got from running; it was as if I were discovering muscles I had never used before to hoist hay bales, till dirt, and push wheelbarrows full of compost through the mud. It was tough, but it felt good to be of use.

  Although the farm was almost entirely self-sustaining, it couldn’t survive without everyone working a
ll day to keep it going. I helped Logan dig up potatoes, stir the compost heap, and sweep out the chicken coop. By midmorning, by back was aching, and my shirt was soaked through with sweat.

  The work followed the seasons, and even though the harvest was nearly over, everyone was consumed with preparing the farm for the winter. It was remarkable that the five of them managed all the tasks that needed to be completed each day. There were animals to be fed, coops that needed sweeping, canning, candle making, tilling, watering, harvesting, baking, and milking. Not to mention that someone had to be on carrier lookout nearly every hour.

  Ida kept chickens, turkeys, goats, and two dairy cows, so there was always a fresh supply of milk and eggs. Max roasted a full bird almost once a week, but according to Logan, their flock was the constant prey of passing carriers. Beef and pork were rare luxuries. The nearest farmer who kept cows and pigs for meat lived several miles away, but those on the farm still got meat much more than city dwellers. When prices skyrocketed after the Collapse, I hadn’t been able to afford beef at the supermarket, and then it stopped coming altogether.

  At the Exchange, Ida traded their more abundant crops for things like flour, beans, rice, salt, and coffee, although imported items like coffee were becoming much harder to come by since so many other countries embargoed the U.S. When she went over the weekend, she bought me two pairs of pants, several shirts, underwear, and a warm jacket.

  For Logan, the hardest part of living off the grid was the lack of proper toiletries. What Ida couldn’t buy at the Exchange, she bought at the grocery store. But since her CID indicated that she was a widow with no children, she had to be careful that her purchase activity did not reflect a multiperson household. Her splurges were mostly for the odd tropical fruit that made it to the store or rare treats like peanut butter. The house usually went without things like shampoo, soap, and lotion.

  Despite the inconvenience of living without shampoo, the real problem on the farm was electricity. All utility lines were linked to Citizen IDs, and after the Collapse, all energy usage was meticulously monitored. A shortage of fossil fuels meant that every household was allotted a specific number of energy credits. Using the quantity of energy needed for five people instead of the one documented citizen who was legally supposed to live there would be a red flag. Not only would Ida be in trouble for surpassing her energy allotment, but she would also be under PMC investigation for harboring illegals.