The Capture

by Tom Isbell

  I nodded dumbly. “I dream of her,” I stammered. “No, that’s not right. It’s that I remember her.” In stumbling sentences I told her how this woman had appeared to me for years. How the setting was always the same—the smoke-filled battlefield—but the words were different.

  You will lead the way.

  There you will go.

  You will do what’s right.

  Now.

  “So it’s you,” Goodwoman Marciniak said aloud—more to herself than me.

  “So it’s me what?” I asked.

  Before the white-haired librarian could respond, Flush charged in. “We got all the bodies dragged back!”

  “Good. Line up for the next attack.” I turned back to Goodwoman Marciniak. “So it’s me what?” I repeated.

  She looked me in the eye, her face serious. “She thought you might be able to save us, to save the country.”

  She had to be kidding. How was that even remotely possible? I was a Less Than—a prisoner in the Compound. I wasn’t even seventeen. Even if I wanted to, how could I possibly save the Republic of the True America?

  And how did this woman—this stranger—even know about me?

  Goodwoman Marciniak read my thoughts. “She’s not a stranger, Book. She’s your grandmother.”

  My knees went wobbly, and I had to sit. It felt like the walls were closing in.

  “Goodwoman Olvera did her best to keep you hidden,” Marciniak said. “But the Republic has ways of finding people.”

  Olvera. So that was her last name. But I wondered . . .

  “Was she my mom’s mom or my dad’s?”

  “Your mother’s.” She went on to explain. “Your mother died in childbirth. From what I understand, it was a miracle she was able to bring you to term.”

  I pointed to the still body of Goodwoman Olvera—my grandmother. Her eyes were closed, her breathing slow and jagged. “She raised me?”

  “Until the ambush at Chimney Creek. That’s when the Brown Shirts captured you. You must’ve been about four.”

  Her words meshed with my own fuzzy memory: the smoke, the soldiers, the whistling bullets. All this time I’d thought that was a dream.

  “How’d she escape?”

  “She let you get captured—that way they wouldn’t kill you.” Goodwoman Marciniak paused briefly. “She always said it was the hardest thing she ever did.”

  Just as I’d done with Cat.

  “And she founded the Skull People?”

  “Not long after that day. A way of rebelling against the new government.”

  There was more I wanted to ask—more I needed to know—but Flush came dashing in.

  “We gotta get out of here,” he said.

  I nodded, but all of a sudden I had no desire to leave. I’d just met my grandmother—my lone family member—and I was in no hurry to go.

  “Book!”

  I gave my head a shake. “I can’t leave,” I whispered.

  “Book!”

  “I mean it, Flush. I’ve got to stay.”

  Things were happening too fast. I’d waited a lifetime to find out I wasn’t an orphan—that I had family—and there was no way I was going to leave my grandmother now.

  “Your friend is right,” Goodwoman Marciniak said. “You need to go. You won’t survive if you stay.”

  “But my grandmother—”

  “Is too ill to even get out of bed.”

  “Then we could carry her. We’ve done it before. We know how to do it. I can’t leave without her—without all of you.” I was desperate, and the words came rattling out.

  Goodwoman Marciniak pursed her lips. “Go, Book. We’ll look after her.”

  “But I can’t—”

  “Go.”

  My shoulders slumped. “Okay. But we’ll come back for her—for all of you.” I looked up and met her eyes. “So how do we all get out of here?”

  “The Crazies have sealed off all the entrances, but there’s a rumor that we’ve been building an escape tunnel off the Wheel. The problem is it’s way on the other side of the Compound.”

  “I might have an idea about that,” I said.

  Perching on the edge of my grandmother’s bed, I took her hand and felt the coolness of her bony fingers. Her eyelids fluttered open.

  “You’re still here,” she said, her voice frail and tired.

  “Of course.”

  “Look at you. Your mother would be proud.”

  “Tell me about her. And my dad.”

  A smile creased her face. “He was a good man, treated Maria well.”

  “That was my mom’s name? Maria?”

  She nodded. “They were a hundred miles downwind from a blast site. They couldn’t escape the radiation. He lived about three and a half years after, then died right before you were born.”

  “So he never saw me?”

  She shook her head.

  “And my mom?”

  My grandmother’s face brightened. “She was a beauty. The boys were crazy about her. Me too, of course. And then . . . Omega.” She paused and took a painful swallow. “The spark went out of her, as it did for many of us. Only when she was pregnant with you did it come back. She knew that giving birth would probably kill her, but she didn’t care. You were the one thing she could pass on.”

  I realized I was barely breathing. To hear all this—to learn about my parents for the first time and how my mother gave up her life for me—was like plunging into a pool of icy water.

  “Did she?” I managed to ask. “Live long enough to see me?”

  “Just barely. She was weak and only half conscious, but she insisted on holding you. She died that way. The last thing she saw on earth was you.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “I took you. I knew once the Republic found out about you, how you had one leg shorter than the other, they would brand you a Less Than and lock you up. So I smuggled you out of the hospital and went into hiding. Just the two of us.”

  As she spoke, flashes of memory popped in my brain, illuminating for the briefest moment images from a dozen years earlier: tossing a ball beneath an apple tree, chasing chickens in a yard, being read to. How had I ever forgotten?

  Then she extended her hand. “Let me touch your face.”

  “What? I . . .”

  “To remember you.”

  I leaned forward, and she ran her fingers along my cheeks. It was like she was memorizing my face, one square inch at a time. “My beloved,” she whispered, “in whom I am well pleased.”

  My breathing was short and rapid, my heart fluttering.

  Then she said, “You have to leave.”

  “Okay, but we’re coming back for you.”

  “Don’t.”

  I recoiled in surprise. “But I have to.”

  “This is our home, Book. These are our friends. We can’t abandon either it or them.”

  I looked at Goodwoman Marciniak. She was nodding her head in agreement.

  “But we have to take you with us,” I pleaded.

  She smiled weakly and shook her head.

  Flush popped back in. “Book!” he called out.

  “Coming.”

  “They call you Book?” she asked.

  “That’s right.”

  She smiled. “It’s a good name.”

  I don’t think I was breathing. Tears were pressing against my eyes. My throat was tight and throbbing.

  “And you’re fighting the Brown Shirts, aren’t you?” she asked.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Good for you.” Then she said, “You need to keep fighting them.”

  While a part of me understood why she didn’t think she could go, why she insisted on staying, it didn’t make it any easier to accept. I couldn’t bear to think of these poor women taking on the Crazies.

  “Book!” Flush cried from the hallway.

  “Thank you,” I somehow managed to say to my grandmother. “For raising me. For guiding me all these years.”

  She gave
her head one last gentle shake. “I haven’t been guiding you, Book. You must be listening to your heart.”

  She shut her eyes, then lapsed into a series of slow, steady breaths. She was sound asleep. I leaned forward and kissed her on the forehead. I gave her hand a final squeeze, then rushed to join my comrades. As I ran into the hallway, ignoring the hot tears that scalded my cheeks, I realized I had neglected to ask my name. What was it my mom had called me? In the excitement of meeting my grandmother, I had forgotten to find out.

  But then again, maybe it didn’t matter. I was Book now, a Less Than—and would be until the day I died.

  38.

  GOODWOMAN MARCINIAK INSISTS THEY take the bows and arrows, and the Sisters and Less Thans hurry away. For Hope, it’s as if she’s in a fog. First the assault by Crazies, then the destruction of the Compound itself, and now Book’s encounter with his grandmother. Like she’s living out some bizarre dream.

  “You know where we’re going?” Cat asks.

  “I know where I want to go,” Book responds. His eyes are puffy from crying, but he seems more determined than ever.

  Twice they reach dead ends and have to double back. They hear an ear-shattering explosion, and Hope can only pray it isn’t Crazies firing more rocket-propelled grenades.

  The black smoke grows thick and burns their lungs. The pops of semiautomatics echo off the limestone walls. The Compound has been transformed into a living, breathing hell.

  Finally, they come to a stop.

  “This?” Flush asks. It looks to be just another of the Compound’s cramped rooms.

  “The Chief Justice’s office,” Book says.

  “That’s great and all, but I don’t see—”

  “And that’s the largest fireplace in the Compound.”

  Scylla is the first to understand what Book is getting at. She grabs a torch and rushes to the hearth, scattering blackened logs. She sticks her head up the chimney, then gives an enthusiastic nod.

  “If that chimney can take all that smoke away,” Book explains, “it must be wide enough to climb. And where do chimneys lead?”

  Flush actually smiles. “Above ground.”

  They’re just preparing to begin their ascent when Diana appears from a back room . . . shoving a prisoner.

  “Look who I found,” she says, and Hope’s heart jolts to a stop.

  It’s the girl. Miranda. The one who kissed Book on the cheek.

  Her face is smudged, her hair disheveled. Although Hope’s first instinct is to slap her across the face, something prevents her. Maybe it’s the flicker in Book’s face—some vague expression she can’t quite place.

  “So it’s true?” he asks.

  “Of course,” Miranda says, defiant.

  “And the stuff about your mom dying and your dad being a lowly clerk?”

  “My mom did die . . . just maybe not how I described it.” Everyone waits for an explanation, but she doesn’t offer one.

  “Why?” Book asks.

  “Why do you think? To see if you were telling the truth. You think I meant all that?”

  Book looks like he’s just been punched. As angry as Hope is, she’s surprised that she feels a pang of pity for him as well. Miranda’s words are like a razor slicing across a soft patch of skin.

  “So what’d you find out?” Diana asks.

  “You’re not bright enough to be spies. I don’t know who or what you are, but you’re definitely not spies.”

  Diana jabs an elbow into Miranda’s side.

  “Oops,” Diana says. “My bad.”

  From down the hall they hear approaching footsteps. Time is running out. If they’re going to climb the chimney, they have to do it now.

  Book turns to the others. “She’s coming with us.”

  “Nuh-uh,” Diana says. “No way, nohow.”

  “We can’t leave her here. The Crazies’ll kill her for sure.”

  “Guess she shoulda thought of that when she was lying to you.” She raises her knife to Miranda’s throat. “Why don’t I just kill her now?”

  Hope gives her head a shake and takes a step forward. “We don’t do that anymore,” she whispers. It’s the first time she’s spoken since they left the cell.

  Everyone stares at her, surprised by her words. Diana lowers the knife and meets Hope’s eyes.

  “You sure about this?”

  Hope gives a nod. “I’m sure.”

  The footsteps outside the chamber grow louder.

  “Fine,” Diana says. “But one false move and she gets it.”

  Hope doesn’t disagree, and a part of her even wonders why she suggested sparing Miranda’s life in the first place. Probably something to do with the look on Book’s face and how he came to her defense against those two Crazies.

  One by one they begin hoisting themselves up the soot-covered chimney. Black powder rains down. The last to go are Hope and Book. He stops her just as she’s about to climb.

  “Are you all right?” he asks. They both know he’s talking about the Neanderthal back at the cell.

  She gives a subdued nod . . . then disappears up the shaft.

  Inching up blackened limestone, she reaches a horizontal part and joins the others at an intersection of passageways. Everyone is crouched beneath the three-foot high ceiling. Book is the last to join them.

  “What now?” Flush asks when everyone is there. “We’ll never make it through that thing.”

  His eyes are trained on an enormous fan fifty feet above them. It sucks up the air and discharges it into the night sky. But he’s right; there is no way they can climb the steep shaft, let alone crawl through a whirling fan without getting chopped to pieces.

  “There may be another option,” Book says, and turns to Miranda. “You know your way around up here?”

  “Are you kidding?” she answers. “I’ve never been up here in my life.”

  “So where’re we headed, Book?” Diana asks.

  Everyone looks to him and waits.

  “The Wheel,” he says.

  “What’s that?”

  “Either our ticket out of here or our last stand.”

  On hands and knees he pushes past the others and scrambles down a narrow passage.

  As Hope struggles to keep up, she knows that time is running out, and her many feelings for Book—hurt, jealousy, anger, love—won’t matter a single bit if they can’t get away from the Crazies and escape the Compound.

  39.

  LIKE RATS IN A maze, we tried one passage after another, the shafts so narrow they scraped the skin right off our hips and shoulders. When we finally reached the Wheel, we lowered ourselves into the construction site: filthy, exhausted, covered in a black paste of soot and sweat.

  There wasn’t a soul in sight, but we knew it was only a matter of time before the Crazies found us. We had to hurry.

  “Which way?” Flush asked.

  There were dozens of tunnels, some of which I knew were miles long. If we chose the wrong one, we’d have to double back and start all over again, and by then the Crazies would have reached the Wheel. There was no time for a wrong choice. We got one shot at this.

  I turned to Miranda. “Do you know?”

  She shrugged and shook her head. For some reason I believed her.

  Since I was the only one who’d been there before, it was up to me. I pivoted in place. A handful of guttering torches threw flickering light against the walls. The lingering aroma of their burning oil drifted to where we stood.

  “Grab those torches,” I said, “and go stand in front of the entryways.”

  My command was greeted with puzzled expressions.

  “Book, there’s not time to look in all the tunnels,” Flush said.

  “We’re not looking in the tunnels. We’re looking at the flames.”

  Scylla, Diana, and Flush each took a torch, yanking them from their sconces. They ran from one tunnel to the next, standing at the entrance and watching the torch’s fire. Did the flames burn straight up, or did th
ey bend with a breeze?

  In the meantime, my eyes landed on a wooden trunk off to one side. The explosives trunk, if I wasn’t mistaken. I jimmied open the lock, revealing stacks of dynamite and C-4. There was a canvas knapsack nearby, and I began stuffing them inside. Who knew when some explosives just might come in handy?

  Miranda drifted to my side.

  “You’re wrong about one thing,” she said. I didn’t look up. “My father gave me the assignment of befriending you, and it’s true, I didn’t want it—”

  “You made that clear already, thank you.”

  “—but it was for the safety of the Compound. We can’t have spies.”

  I didn’t bother to respond. I knew if I opened my mouth, I’d just say something sarcastic or mean. I piled coils of fuses into the canvas knapsack.

  “What I didn’t expect,” she went on, “was that I’d like you. That wasn’t an act.”

  I gave her a hard look. Frankly, I didn’t know what to believe anymore.

  “That’s all fine and good,” I said, “but you missed the spy right under your nose: Goodman Nellitch. We saw him in a town, meeting with Hunters and Crazies.”

  “That’s not possible. . . .”

  “So while you were writing me cute little notes, you missed the biggest danger of all.”

  Miranda’s eyes widened in shock. “If that’s true,” she said, “then I’ve got to tell my father. Now.”

  “I already told him, and he didn’t believe me. Too bad too, ’cause I bet Nellitch is the one who let the Crazies in.”

  As if on cue, muffled gunfire echoed through the tunnels. The Crazies were nearly to the Wheel.

  “I’m sorry,” Mandy said suddenly.

  “For what?”

  “For what happened between us.”

  “Nothing happened between us,” I shot back, and started to walk away.

  Then she reached beneath her shirt and pulled out a flat, square object. When she unfolded it and spread it out on the stone floor, I nearly lost my breath: it was the map of the western Republic.

  “What, you’re going to frame us again?” I asked.

  She placed the tip of her index finger on the map—on a thin ribbon of blue in a vast expanse of nothingness. “Here’s where we are. And here”—she traced her finger along the winding river—“is Camp Liberty.”