The Wanted (The Woodlands Series Book 4)

by Lauren Nicolle Taylor

  He was electrified, bouncing up and down, peppering Desh with questions about the mechanisms behind the technology. He was nervous. I started to wish I were going with him, if only to keep him safe for her.

  “So… let’s get down to the nitty gritty,” he said.

  “The what?” Desh didn’t understand what Pelo was talking about, so I stepped in.

  I slung my arm over Pelo’s bony shoulders. “Pelo, all you need to know is how to set off the bomb and where to place the video disc. Do you know those two things?” I held two fingers in front of his eyes.

  He nodded jerkily.

  “And where to find your parents!” he exclaimed, his finger pointing to the ceiling.

  “Yes, if you have time. Please, Pelo, don’t risk your life for them. I know them, and once that bomb goes off, they’ll find their way out all on their own.”

  Pelo slowed to a sway, his head bowed over his clasped hands.

  “I’ll find Esther and the baby first, then your parents. I… I just want to do her proud.”

  I pushed through my uncomfortableness and said, “You will. You have already, Pelo.”

  He seemed to accept this and started rousing the others.

  Gus was crouched at the entrance, quietly. His hand braced against the wall. I shuffled towards him and his shoulder tensed as I approached. Quickly, he grabbed his handheld and sent a message.

  “What’s going on?” I asked as I squatted down beside him.

  “What do you suppose they’re looking for?” Gus whispered, pointing through the trees. I froze, my face caught between the lighthearted grin of before and the panic rising up my throat. Fanned out, scanning the forest, were ten Woodlands’ soldiers, their gun butts pressed to their chests, swinging back and forth.

  I didn’t need to answer, but I did. “They’re looking for us.”

  Gus nodded slowly. “Tell everyone to arm themselves swiftly and quietly.”

  I cursed internally. “Wait, what are you going to do?”

  “What I have to,” he muttered from one corner of his dry, bristly lips.

  I told the others and soon the cave entrance was crowded with gun tips.

  Olga leaned over the men and whispered worriedly. “Can’t we just let them pass? They may not notice us if we’re quiet. Gus, you can’t kill all those men!” Her voice was high with panic.

  He ignored her and took aim. “Who said anything about killing them?” he grumbled.

  She shook his shoulder just as he pulled the trigger, the shot hitting the dirt in front of one of the soldiers. They scattered and took cover.

  Gus swung around, his gun still loaded, and leaned in on Olga. “Damn it, woman! Why did you do that? I was aiming for shoulders and legs. Disabling shots, not kill shots.”

  Olga’s pale face turned anemic. Her lips trembled. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want you to… I was worried you would…”

  As I watched, everything rolled into place, and I understood why Olga tried to stop Gus. I could see it plainly on her shiny, white face.

  Shots fired and chipped the rocks around us as we backed further into the cave. Olga slid along, her hands creeping backwards, but there was nowhere to go.

  “How did they know we were here?” I demanded as shots pinged around the cave entrance.

  She took way too long to answer. “I… I don’t know.”

  Gus pressed the rifle to her chest right over her stuttering heart, and she gasped.

  “We’ve disabled three of them,” someone shouted from the front. “The others are too well hidden.”

  Gus swore. “Take this,” he said, pushing the rifle into my arms as he returned to the entrance to help the others, pulling a handgun from his waistband.

  My hand shook and slipped over the black plastic.

  Olga blinked up at me. “Let me go and maybe I can negotiate with them to get Rosa back.”

  Don’t trust her.

  “I can’t believe you betrayed us, Olga,” I stammered, my finger grazing the trigger. I was so glad Rosa wasn’t here to see this.

  She narrowed her beady eyes and smiled, revealing nubs of teeth. “Are you even sure you’re on the right side?” I paused. She was just messing with my head. “I can find her for you, Joseph. I can help you.” Her voice sounded strange, hissing like a snake.

  I considered her as another shot clipped the rock above me, and I ducked.

  Rash crept up beside me and snatched the gun from my hands, turning it around and smashing Olga in the side of the head, knocking her unconscious.

  “Don’t listen to that bitch,” he said, flashing me a worn-out grin.

  He was right. She couldn’t be trusted and I was never going to betray my friends, no matter what promises she made.

  I crawled towards the entrance just in time to see the last shot fired.

  Some of the Survivors had already jumped down to remove the soldier’s weapons. Most were writhing around in the dirt with shots to the legs and arms. Matt pumped his hand a couple of times. “I’m going to administer some quick first aid,” he said as he jumped down.

  Elise skidded down the rocks from the other cave, and I joined them to help.

  “Why are you helping us?” a soldier spluttered as I put a pressure bandage on his arm.

  “I’m a Survivor,” I answered proudly. He grimaced at my answer. He didn’t understand.

  We tied the men to trees and promised to return later. Their eyes betrayed how confused this situation made them.

  We gathered, away from the soldiers, to discuss what we should do.

  “The video is out of the question,” Matt said. I’d expected it to be Gus. “It’s too dangerous. I’m not even sure we can plant the bomb. Obviously, they know we’re coming.” Matt’s sad eyes went to the cave, where his friend Olga lay unconscious. “I can’t believe she…” He hung his head in sorrow.

  Pelo sounded crushed when he said, “You mean I can’t go in?”

  Gus stared at the sky, counting the clouds. “I’m sorry.”

  We decided to get closer and assess. But just a small team—me, because I begged, Pelo, Rash, and Gus.

  We followed the rocks until they petered out, the huge turbines suddenly shooting into the sky before us.

  A noise we’d heard before pulsed through the sky.

  We stopped and hugged the large pillars of the turbines as a single chopper flew overhead, its spinning blades mixing with the turbine shadows and looking like a giant star on the forest floor.

  Gus eyed it like prey. The rest of us cowered. We moved closer, hiding behind the one clump of bushes.

  The chopper flew to the center of Pau and slipped out of view. Minutes later, it rose and flew to the outer wall. It hovered close and landed carefully in a small clearing, its nose nearly touching the outer wall. We retreated into the scrub, our eyes trained on the small man who clambered awkwardly from the chopper, holding a silver case in one hand. He scurried to the front of the chopper and suddenly disappeared.

  “Where’d the little guy go?” Rash exclaimed.

  I knew from when Rosa and I had entered the Superiors’ compound that the man had gone underground.

  “He’s entered the tunnels beneath the town,” I muttered, still grasping the ends of a branch and pulling the leaves off stressfully.

  We waited anxiously for him to reappear or for the chopper to leave for about twenty minutes when an agitated Rash sprung up and said, “To hell with this! I’m getting us a chopper!”

  Before we could stop him, he was stealing closer to the back end of the craft confidently like he knew what he was doing. But I knew he didn’t have a clue, so I followed him. Letting Rosa’s best friend get killed was not going to help my situation.

  ROSA

  The earth rocked beneath my feet, even though it hadn’t started yet. My body was anticipating the scramble, the fight against whatever Grant had planned. My mother. I had to find my mother.

  The chopper rose and peeled away from the center circle. I wh
ipped my head towards the others. A flash of Orry, a tight grip on an image of Joseph waiting for me on the other side of the wall. They were photos scrunched in my hand as I uttered, “We have to run.”

  They both nodded and we took off together with me in the lead, leaving the bloodstained bricks behind. I hurdled the low wall and headed for the first gate, all the while whispering, “Please open, please open.”

  I skidded up to the gate and stuck my shaking wrist under the scanner. The infrared line wobbled over my wrist tattoo, and the lock clicked. I shook my head realizing that, of course it worked. Grant knew that was where I would head, to rescue my mother. He was counting on it. The gate creaked open, and Gwen and I stepped through. Denis faltered. I didn’t have time for this.

  “What are you doing?” I panted, my breath cloudy like smoke, my head clear as the sky.

  “If I go in there, I’ll probably die.” He wrapped his hand around the bars, holding it open, though it strained against him.

  I searched nearby, found a rock, and wedged it in the gap.

  “You have a chance to save people today, to do something good,” I said, challenging his dark blue eyes, squished almost shut on one side from the beating.

  I didn’t wait to see if he followed, I spun around, and Gwen and I ran. I shouted over my head, “Warn as many people as you can.”

  When I hit the main street of Ring Two, the smell of cut grass and bleeding sap made me pause. It was Sunday. People were maintaining their gardens. A woman walked passed me with an armful of groceries, staring so hard she tripped on a crack in the pavement. I caught her elbow, and she snatched it back like my skin stung her. “You need to get out of Ring Two, Ma’am. Something bad is about to happen.” She huffed and walked away, paying me no attention at all.

  No one was going to listen to me.

  Denis jogged into the street and headed to the first home, knocking on the door impatiently. No answer.

  Gwen shook her head, her dimples looking like little frowns under her dark eyes. “They’re not going to listen. Look at us,” she said, motioning to her bare feet, prison clothes, and my taffeta frock.

  She was right.

  I pressed back on my heels and pushed forward, heading for my mother’s house, cursing the fact that her home was so far from the gate.

  Pau Brazil trees capped with ice rustled in the freezing breeze. Wide eyes followed us, mouths hung open. One barefoot girl in pajamas and one in a shredded taffeta gown, decorated with mud speckles streaming down the street was probably the weirdest thing any of them had seen in their whole, controlled existence.

  As I ran, I wondered what I could say, how I could get people to at least come out of their homes, to give them a fighting chance. I rounded the bend and my elbow clipped a letterbox. The man shouted abuse at me from his yard.

  “Sorry,” I shouted, my stupid shoes skidding on the icy bitumen.

  Gwen yelled happily, “Superior Grant is dead! Superior Grant is dead!” The man dropped his shovel with an empty clang and followed us a few meters.

  I joined in screaming, “Superior Grant is dead! Superior Grant is dead!”

  Doors creaked and slammed as curious and alarmed people poked their heads out of their homes, following our noise.

  In front, a plain house with cardboard-thin walls leaned towards me. Yellow and purple curtains waved at me like the finishing flag, but we were far from finished. They were tied back for once. My reflection blurred across the yard like a different person, a crazed, wild person, running towards the house, torn taffeta spilling behind me in ribbons.

  We kept screaming.

  We kept running.

  We had about fifteen minutes.

  I caught a flash of my face as I ran up my mother’s driveway. This girl with bleached hair and wide, underfed eyes. I stalled at the door as I attempted to smooth my hair down, to look less insane.

  “Rosa, darling, get away from the door. You’ve been told before about playing with the locks.” My mother’s voice sounded calm, sweet, and it open-palm slapped me, stinging my cheeks.

  Gwen turned to me, her face muddled. “This is your house, right?” she said as she bent over purple feet to catch her breath.

  My own breath was gone. My nerves frayed to a million points of nothingness. What was on the other side of that door? My birth. My death. My future.

  I raised a hand to knock, holding my breath. The door swung open, and a child collided with my leg. A dark face framed in strips of taffeta glanced up at me from my knees.

  “Rosa!” My mother’s face was smacked of color, her eyes round with disbelief. She grabbed the collar of the small girl and pulled her back inside the door, stepping back herself.

  The little girl looked up at her mother, my mother, and grasped at the woman’s waist, digging her chubby fingers into her skirt’s waistband, begging to be picked up.

  Gwen and I followed her in and shut the door behind us. “I don’t have any time to explain,” I said, walking closer until my mother’s back was pressed against the kitchen counter. She pulled the child into her arms, and tears formed for all three of us.

  “Rosa. It’s so good to see you. I thought you were dead.” She shook her silvering head in shock, and my head rattled with it too. Good to see me? Last time I saw her, she’d pushed me away. She’d said no. She reached out to take my hand, and I let her grasp it briefly. It felt… odd.

  “Mother, there’s no time. The Superiors are planning to destroy Ring Two. We need to get out of here now!”

  Her eyes widened, and she tightened her grip on the little girl sitting on her hip. My sister.

  I thought I’d have to fight, convince her, but all she said was, “Thank you for coming back for us.”

  I couldn’t respond; we’d wasted too much time already. I grabbed her arm, and she shivered.

  “Rosa, your fingers are like ice!” Her voice was a bruise that couldn’t heal. Her life was in my hands. She reached up and retrieved a coat from the rack by the door. My grey, wool coat. “Put this on,” she ordered quietly. “And this young lady needs shoes,” she said in a pitch strings higher than usual, her calm hanging off the precipice with the rest of us. I sighed, exasperated, somehow already falling into a pattern that was years old. I pulled the coat on, my hands brushing over the rust stains at the elbows while she fetched shoes for Gwen and threw her own coat over Gwen’s shoulders. I danced from foot to foot and shouted impatiently, “Mother! We have to go,” and then I yanked her out of the door.

  The child started crying. “Sh, Rosa-May, it’s all right. We’ll be all right.” My mother smoothed the little girl’s hair from her forehead.

  She named her baby after me. My heart swelled in my chest and I laughed, while Gwen and Mother gave me concerned sideways glances. That must have killed Paulo!

  We took off for the gate to Ring Three, which was closest. Denis caught up with us, a group of about thirty people at his heels.

  “We need to run faster,” I wheezed. My mother struggled to keep up, her tiny legs tangling in her long skirt.

  “Take Rosa-May, please. I can’t keep up,” she urged, handing the child to me. I grasped at the child with desperate fingers while running and secured her to my hip, her weight immediately slowing me down. Gwen grabbed my sleeve and towed me along. We were all attached, moving towards the gate like a blob of fear, knocking each other’s shoulders and scooping each other up when we stumbled.

  As we ran, I kept thinking of the things I wanted to tell my mother. But I’d have time. After this was over, I would sit down with her, and we’d have time.

  Right now, the second hand was beating down on us.

  JOSEPH

  We ducked low and crept towards the dark machine. Our camouflage stood out against the shiny, reflective plastic of the chopper. My reflection looked enormous, and I tried to make myself smaller. An impossible task. Through the clear windows, I could see the pilot sitting with his legs up, staring blankly at the concrete wall in front of him.
He seemed too relaxed for the current situation. Rash put his hands on the back of the craft, waiting for me to catch up.

  I took a breath, ready to talk him out of it, but before I could say anything, he gave me a sideways grin and slammed his palms down on the lightweight panel, making a loud thwack and sending vibrations through the chopper.

  The door rolled open. “What the hell was that?” a male voice asked.

  “Could’ve been a bird, calm down,” a low female voice replied dismissively.

  Rash whispered to me, “You take those two. I’m going for the pilot.”

  I shook my head vehemently. “I can’t take two armed soldiers,” I said as I snatched a quick glance of them venturing away from the chopper and searching the tree line.

  “Uh, yes you can,” he stated, and left me standing there.

  Gus was creeping silently towards us but I couldn’t wait for him, Rash was already at the pilot door. He flicked his fingers behind him, one, two, three, and we moved together but in opposite directions.

  I jumped out from behind the rear of the chopper and yelled, “Hey!” My gun out in front, raised and shaking like I had nerve damage. They spun around, and I shot the gun at their feet. The imprint of the trigger burned my finger.

  “Drop your weapons!” I demanded, my voice booming, sounding strong like it didn’t come out of my mouth.

  The man dropped his gun on the ground as if it were too hot to hold. The woman was less eager, and she stepped towards me threateningly. Gus ran up behind me, his weapon ready. She raised her eyebrow. With two guns trained on her, she lost her bravado and crouched down carefully, placing her weapon neatly on the ground and standing back up with her hands in the air.

  “Good decision,” Gus said.

  It was too easy.

  The sound of Rash’s scuffling shoes preceded him dragging a pilot by his twisted arm towards the other two soldiers.

  Much too easy.

  “I don’t get it. That was too easy. And the soldiers from before…” I said.