The Defectors (Defectors Trilogy)

by Benner, Tarah

  “Thanks,” I said, swallowing to clear my throat. “For everything.”

  I looked up at her, feeling as if anything I could possibly say would be inadequate. “This place is wonderful. I don’t know what would have happened to me if you hadn’t taken me in.”

  “It’s what I do, pumpkin.” She stroked my hair lightly, her weathered skin wrinkling into a smile. “It’s my pleasure.”

  Without thinking about it, I threw my arms around her. She returned the hug with motherly softness and intensity.

  “You be careful.” She pulled away, looking serious. “Just remember: your choices matter. Don’t let anyone take them away from you. We must make the choices that protect our freedom — even when they’re not easy.”

  I nodded, not sure exactly what this meant.

  The front screen door banged open, sending Magnus away hissing. Roman stalked out with a pack slung over his shoulder. He was dressed like Amory and Max: dark cargo pants, army coat, and a weapons holster around his chest.

  “You’re coming?” Logan asked without bothering to hide her distain.

  He shot her a look, which she seemed to take for confirmation.

  “Okay!” She threw up her hands in surrender, pulling me away from Ida. “Grab us the two seats farthest away from him. It’s a long drive to Sector X.”

  One by one, they said their goodbyes to Ida. She enveloped Logan in a bone-crushing embrace, pulling away teary eyed. Max hugged Ida so tightly she was lifted off the ground, and Amory escaped with a dignified kiss on the cheek and minimal motherly fussing. I never saw what kind of goodbye she gave Roman, but even he looked a little misty as he climbed up into the bed of the truck.

  “Gotta secure the cargo,” Godfrey grumbled in his low, gravelly voice.

  He climbed in, and Roman helped him strap the crates to the back wall so they would not shift during transport.

  While they worked, I took one last long look at the farm. Covered in a thin layer of frost that gleamed in the early morning sun, the farmhouse looked like a postcard. I could see Magnus curled up on the porch step, and I felt a pang of sadness as I imagined Ida walking into the now empty house to make a pot of tea.

  I could see the carrier lookout tree and across the frosty field. Although it didn’t seem likely we would ever return, I found myself thinking I was just saying goodbye for a little while.

  I had just waved at Ida one last time when Godfrey shut the door, throwing us into darkness.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The engine roared to life.

  The five of us sat facing each other in uncomfortable metal stadium seats that unfolded from the inside walls. I fumbled with the makeshift seat belt they had bolted to the wall and laid my head against the rough aluminum cargo shell. I immediately wished I hadn’t. When the truck lurched forward, the back of my head banged into the wall.

  Riding in the back of the truck was rough. The only light in the cargo area came from the cab window and the small holes dispersed every few inches near the top of the bed.

  Max spent the first hour perched on top of his foldout seat, peeking through the holes in the aluminum, relaying our course in breathless excitement, and falling off whenever Rulon hit a bump. After a while, I began to think Rulon was purposely driving over rough patches to keep the vision of a flailing Max out of his rearview mirror.

  Max’s descriptions of our course were unhelpfully vague, like “a lot of trees” and “now I see a soybean field.” By the sound of it, we were driving over rough gravel.

  “Still haven’t hit the main road,” said Max after an hour or so. It was difficult to gauge how much time had passed.

  Mariah let out a girlish laugh from the cab. “We can’t take the main roads. Honestly. With PMC officers everywhere?”

  “So back roads?”

  “You could say that,” said Mica.

  “In America, people believe the only way to travel from point A to point B is to take a predetermined course laid out by those in power,” said Rulon. “Roads were built to simplify traveling, but you don’t need to take a road if you know where you’re going.”

  Mica turned around in his seat to face us. “Even if you can avoid all the ID rovers, taking the interstate while hauling thousands of dollars’ worth of commodity goods —”

  “And plenty of stolen goods,” added Godfrey.

  “— isn’t in our best interest.”

  Logan shot me a nervous look. What had we gotten ourselves into? I didn’t know why I had been so quick to put my faith in people I didn’t know anything about. Now we were stuck, and there was nothing we could do.

  By midmorning, the temperature in the back had risen considerably. There was very little air circulation where we sat, and the moisture from our breath produced an odd mugginess. Combined with the relative darkness, looking across the bed to Amory and Roman felt a lot like peering through a hot spring cave.

  I knew that since we were heading toward Illinois, we would have to cross the Mississippi River soon. The rebels wouldn’t be able to drive across the river — even if they did have an aversion to real roads.

  “I can see the highway!” yelled Max from his perch.

  Since standing on his folding seat proved difficult, he had co-opted a pallet of ammunition crates to serve as his lookout point. He shifted to get a better view, and I ducked as his scuffed black Converse swung toward my head.

  “We’ll be taking the interstate bridge across the river,” said Rulon.

  Amory, Logan, and I exchanged confused looks. Rulon was not in the habit of explaining his plans, so it was useless to question him.

  Gripping Logan’s shoulder to balance myself, I climbed up onto my seat to see. Sure enough, a silvery-gray ribbon of water was just visible through the trees.

  Rulon’s sudden jerk of the wheel made me lose my balance. My foot slipped off the edge of the seat, and I flew back across the truck bed. I saw spots of black on the edge of my vision as the back of my head cracked against the aluminum floor. Max had fallen into a disheveled heap behind his crates.

  “Jesus!”

  I felt strong hands grip under my arms and hoist me up against the wall. Roman.

  Amory was already on his knees in front of me, looking concerned.

  A long groan came from Max’s corner, and Mariah twisted in her seat to glare at us.

  “Sorry. That was stupid,” I blurted out.

  Amory nodded reluctantly and ran his fingers through the hair on the back of my head without any awkwardness or embarrassment. He was in full doctor mode, searching for a bump.

  “Are you dizzy or anything?” he asked in a low voice.

  “No, I’m fine,” I said — although, really, I felt like an idiot.

  Amory bent in close to my face, searching my eyes.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Just checking your pupil dilation.”

  “Hey, shut the fuck up back there,” said Rulon.

  I knew we must be merging onto the highway. Sure enough, the ride smoothed out, and all we could hear was the dull roar of the wind against the sides of the truck.

  It occurred to me that the rebels had probably made this trip more than once and that they chose this stretch of highway to merge into traffic for its lack of rovers and PMC checkpoints.

  We all sat still, barely breathing, until we felt the bumpiness of the old bridge. I waited, counting to ten until the road evened out and I knew we were in Illinois.

  Nobody spoke again until the bumpy ride told us we had exited the highway and were once again moving east off the main road — probably through some farmer’s abandoned cornfield.

  Around noon, we stopped for lunch. Godfrey threw the door open, and we all shielded our eyes at the sudden brightness and the jarring chill of the open air. We had pulled over in a field.

  The five of us scrambled out of the truck like stampeding wildebeests to go to the bathroom. Of course, Logan had thought to bring toilet paper. Never again would I question her ob
session with proper toiletries.

  Pulling out some crates to sit on, we ate a hasty lunch of fresh bread and beef jerky. We wanted to eat Max’s bread before it went stale, but everyone was too lazy to look for the peanut butter we had packed away.

  Amory chewed wordlessly, looking more depressed than I’d ever seen him, and Logan looked less than enthused about sharing a meal with the rebels. After my days of near starvation in the woods, I ate the bizarre lunch happily and drank in the fresh air. Max didn’t seem to notice what he was eating; he was too busy chatting away at an irritated Godfrey about the merits of using old cooking oil instead of diesel for fuel.

  We climbed reluctantly back into the truck and continued on our journey. Before I nodded off against the cold aluminum wall of the truck, I sent a mental telegram to Greyson, willing my thoughts to reach him wherever he was: I’m on my way.

  We drove for another twelve hours, stopping only to barter for gas at roadside stands and eat a hurried dinner of lukewarm soup and bread. This time, even Max wrinkled his nose at the meal, but he didn’t say anything. I wasn’t sure when — or even if — we would stop to sleep for the night. The truck rolled on and on through the darkness, and we had all lost any concept of where we might be.

  Finally, the truck slowed to a crawl, crunching gravel under its tires. Rulon killed the engine, which clicked tiredly for a few seconds. This time, it was Mariah who opened up the back gate. She shot us a look as if we were lucky to be free — like a bunch of dogs fenced in the backyard all day. We clambered out, much less enthusiastically than before, and stared up at an old abandoned house that looked haunted.

  “Well, it ain’t no Holiday Inn,” said Godfrey. “But nobody’s lived here for a while, by the looks of things.”

  We all grabbed our packs and shuffled up the creaking porch steps.

  Inside, the house smelled of rotting wood, rodent excrement, and dead leaves. The electricity had been shut off long ago, so we relied on the light of Roman’s lantern. I almost wished it were completely dark; the curtains were ripped and torn, there were leaves and sticks brought in by the wind or wild animals, and spiderwebs hung like streamers from one end of the room to the other.

  We found a couple old mattresses to cushion our sleeping bags and dragged them to the middle of the living room. The wind rattled loose shingles on the roof, and I felt glad not to be sleeping out in the elements.

  I awoke in the middle of the night with hunger pangs gnawing at the inside of my stomach. Disoriented, it took several seconds for me to remember where I was. Overhead, the old wooden floorboards creaked in the wind.

  They creaked loudly — too loudly to be the natural movement of an old house. Someone was upstairs. My heart thudded against my sternum. Then I heard what sounded like a groan carried in on the wind that whistled through the cracks in the walls.

  I sat up and took a quick headcount. Logan lay curled against Max’s side, her long hair twined between his fingers. Amory’s arm hung over the side of the sagging mattress behind me, and Roman was a heap of blankets far off in the corner. Godfrey snored loudly near the door, and Mica lay as still as a corpse on his left.

  Rulon and Mariah were gone.

  Careful not to make a sound, I got to my feet and tiptoed cautiously over to the dilapidated staircase. The flowered carving was the only distinguishable feature in the rotted wood banister, and I carefully tested my weight on the first step. I envisioned the entire staircase collapsing as soon as I reached the top. I would never be able to rescue Greyson with two broken legs, but I had an odd feeling in my gut.

  Despite my better judgment, I carefully picked my way up the stairs one step at a time. I heard another moan, and this time I knew I wasn’t imagining it. The last step let out a mournful groan loud enough to wake everyone sleeping below. I looked down anxiously at Logan — a notoriously light sleeper. Seeing her still curled up contentedly in the crook of Max’s arm, I let out a long breath of relief.

  Reaching the landing, I moved down the hallway toward the source of the noise. The door at the end was hanging half off its hinges, carelessly propped over the doorframe. I peered through the crack between the door and the wall and saw an enormous four-poster bed in what had been the master bedroom.

  The canopy was half-collapsed, and the bedclothes looked moth-eaten. Under the wreckage lay Rulon with a naked Mariah writhing on top of him.

  Her stringy hair fell halfway down her back, and I realized she was the source of the creaking I’d heard. In the pale night light shining through the broken window, Mariah looked waxy and pale gyrating against Rulon’s dark, heavily muscled frame. Maybe I was imagining it, but she looked even more emaciated than she had on the farm.

  I tore my eyes away from the scene and half ran down the hallway. Forgetting to worry about the stability of the stairs, I flew down as quietly as I could and stepped over Amory to my pallet. I laid down and pulled the blanket over myself.

  A few minutes later, Mariah stalked over to her spot and sat down cross-legged, stinking of sex and fresh sweat. Rulon followed, flopping down on his bed across the room without saying a word. I focused on breathing deeply, pretending to be asleep, until I heard both of them lie down.

  The next morning, I could feel and hear movement all around me before I even opened my eyes.

  “Rise and shine, kitty cat!”

  I felt a sudden rush of cold as my blanket was whipped off me.

  I cringed, opening my eyes to see Max and Amory grinning down at me.

  “Does she snore?” Max asked, turning to Amory.

  He laughed. “No. She talks in her sleep, though.”

  “Juicy. What did she say?”

  I made a grab for my blanket since the two seemed to be ignoring me, but Max whipped it over his shoulder out of reach.

  “I couldn’t really tell. Were you having a bad dream?” he asked me.

  “Yes,” I grumbled. “I dreamt I woke up and the two of you were there.”

  “Hmm, not very friendly,” Max mused.

  “I see you got an equally rude wake-up call,” said Logan in a raspy, early-morning voice. Her usually smooth hair was still disheveled, and she looked grouchy.

  “I had no idea you were such a morning person,” said Max, wrapping his arms tightly around her shoulders and whipping her around like a rag doll.

  The rebels were already huddled around a fire outside, cooking up an appetite-killing breakfast of beans and potatoes. Roman was there, too, watching Mica cook with a look of revulsion.

  I approached them, and I could see Rulon, Godfrey, and Mariah hovering over a map that was marked up with a black pen.

  “. . . don’t think that’s a smart idea,” said Godfrey in his low voice.

  Rulon sighed. “Maybe we should wait until we have confirmation.”

  “Confirmation of what?” Mariah snapped. “We have all the confirmation we need!”

  Rulon opened his mouth to protest, but Mariah shot him a look, and he closed it.

  “What wouldn’t you do in the name of freedom?” she asked.

  “What you’re suggesting would result in complete anarchy,” said Godfrey.

  Mariah started to speak again but stopped when she saw me approaching. I forced a half smile and scooped up a bowlful of beans and some potatoes. I sat apart from the rebels with Logan on the front steps of the house, forcing down the lumpy breakfast sludge.

  “Something’s not right,” I muttered so only she could hear. “They’re planning something. Something big.”

  Her eyes widened, but she didn’t say anything. She was thinking the same thing I was: whatever they were planning, it was too late to do anything about it.

  I wanted to tell Logan what I had seen the night before — tell her we had leverage against Mariah and that she didn’t have to worry about her secret being revealed — but that would have meant telling her I overheard their conversation. The longer the secret festered between us, the harder it became to tell her I knew.

 
It was slowgoing driving the truck over uneven gravel roads and through decimated cornfields, sparse woods, and across dry creek beds. There were no people or livestock around, as far as I knew. Those who hadn’t already fled north were hiding away inside, peering out of frosted windows whenever they heard us coming. They probably worried we were the PMC coming to round up the infected family member sleeping in their barn.

  We stopped as infrequently as the day before, and the meals seemed to be getting worse. By lunchtime, Max managed to elbow his way past Mica to the pan over the fire — trying to bring a little gourmet finesse to beans on toast — but there was very little that could be done for the meals we had packed.

  We finally stopped driving to get some sleep around ten o’clock, pulling off a gravel road and into the cover of some trees that flanked an open meadow. Snow fell lightly through the thin canopy above us. Mica started the fire, and Max began fishing through the supplies for something edible.

  We were only hidden a few yards back in the trees, and I could see across the moonlit field to what looked like an old farmhouse in the distance. Whoever lived there was either gone or in hiding.

  “We could raid the house,” said Mariah.

  “That could attract the wrong kind of attention if the house is occupied,” said Godfrey. He gave her a look that said he would not be challenged on the subject.

  She let it drop.

  I jumped out of the truck and made my way over to Mica, who was nearly scorching his sleeve running his fingers through the tips of crackling flames.

  Max brought over some potatoes and canned vegetables from Ida’s pantry, which we cooked over the fire. There wasn’t butter or salt, but I was so hungry I devoured the meal without really tasting anything. Roman grudgingly passed me a loaf of bread, and I broke off a section happily. I knew it was only a matter of time before these comforts from the farm would be gone.

  After we had our fill, Max hauled out a case of beer and a bottle of amber liquor he had smuggled onto the truck. Rulon looked stony, but everyone else cheered and took a can. I was surprised Max had managed to get his hands on alcohol — beer and liquor commanded a high price at the Exchange — but perhaps Ida had bought it for him as a going-away present.