The Release

by Tom Isbell

  They sit atop their horses and take it all in. Just knowing that Chancellor Maddox is down there somewhere makes Hope’s blood run fast.

  “What’re we waiting for?” she says impatiently. “Let’s get going.”

  “Hold on a sec, Annie Oakley,” Dougherty says. “Before we go stormin’ in there, guns a-blazin’, let’s remember we’ve got two weeks till the inauguration. It might be worth coming up with a strategy.”

  Hope sighs noisily but knows he’s right.

  After an hour of conversation and debate, it’s decided that she, Book, and Cat will sneak into the capital. The rest will wait out of sight.

  “You sure about this?” Dougherty asks. “You might need another hand.”

  She’s insistent that it’s just the three of them. “You being a Skully and all, they’d take you for the enemy right off. Besides, less noticeable if there’s just a handful of us.” What she doesn’t say is, This is my battle. My fight.

  “Any final words of advice?” Book asks Goodman Dougherty.

  “Yeah, don’t piss anyone off.”

  As the three ease down the muddy slope, Hope silently promises to sacrifice her own life if that’s what it takes to end the lives of Maddox and Gallingham. That realization strikes a chord of emotion.

  She runs a hand through her hair and pushes feelings to the side. No time for those now.

  Live today, tears tomorrow.

  Assuming there is a tomorrow.

  They creep to the edge of the makeshift city, hiding behind tents. If their first impression of New Washington was like looking down at a muddy ocean, now they’re in the midst of its swelling seas. There are people everywhere—squishing through the mud, rolling carts, selling goods, yelling, trading, bartering. A swarm of humanity going about their daily lives and tramping through the muck like it’s the most normal thing in the world.

  But there’s something else that Hope notices—a quality she’s not witnessed before. Despite the mud and dreary appearance, the people project a kind of contentment. Like they’ve survived the worst of it and now they’re looking boldly to the future. Hope’s never seen that kind of optimism before.

  If only the people knew the truth about their new leader.

  The trio figure it’s in their best interest to remain “invisible,” so when they actually enter the city, they walk separately, hands thrust into pockets, each person concealed by the shadows of hats or hoodies.

  They pass through the residential section of New Washington, where the people sleep and eat, cooking up their meals atop the small campfires before their tents. Next they come to an enormous field set aside for soldiers. Brown Shirts drill, perform calisthenics, practice with guns—going through the motions of becoming better soldiers.

  Finally they reach the business section of town—open-air markets, blacksmiths, laundry services. A chaos of activity. Hope doesn’t know what she was expecting when she pictured the nation’s capital, but it definitely wasn’t this. It seems so temporary. So primitive. So muddy.

  What they don’t see and can’t find is the president’s headquarters. Their hope is to speak to him, just as Book had a private conversation with the Chief Justice at the Compound. But how do they ask to speak to the leader of the Republic without calling attention to themselves?

  Hope notices a tent where an older woman with a ratty cardigan sells soap. The woman has only one good eye; the other veers off blankly toward the sky.

  “Yes?” the woman asks when Hope approaches her. There is a certain wariness in the woman’s voice, and Hope can’t blame her. The last time Hope encountered soap was months ago, when they all doused themselves with car wash shampoo.

  “I’m wondering if you can help me out,” Hope says. Even though there’s a swarm of humanity just outside the tent, Hope keeps her voice lowered.

  “Depends,” the woman says.

  “I want to know where the president’s office is.”

  “The president?”

  “That’s right.”

  “The president of the Republic of the True America?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You want to talk to him or somethin’?”

  Yes, Hope wants to say. That’s exactly what I want. Instead, her face burns red and she lowers her eyes.

  “If you could just point me in that direction, I’d really appreciate it.”

  “What is this, a prank?” the woman says.

  “No, ma’am.”

  “You really want to know where the president is?”

  “I do.”

  “Well, twenty years ago I wanted to date Channing Tatum, but it wasn’t gonna happen.” The soap seller breaks into a fit of laughter. “The president,” she says. “That’s a good one.”

  Hope realizes there’s no point staying there, so she quickly backs out of the tent, even as the soap seller turns to a woman in an adjoining tent.

  “This girl wants to talk to the president!”

  “Who, her?”

  And then there are two women laughing, filling the air with their husky cackles.

  Hope hurries away, with Book and Cat keeping their distance but trailing behind her. The three zigzag through the maze of tents until they’re far from the one-eyed soap seller. They march to the top of a small knoll and find a scraggly elm tree. Cat has no difficulty climbing it, even with just one good arm. He makes it up several branches and points, taking Hope’s gaze to a sprawling collection of adjoining tents, all surrounded by flagpoles.

  They start making their way in that direction.

  What no one says is how they’re going to get access to the president, because no one knows that answer. But the woman’s laughter made it obvious: Why will the president agree to see the three of them?

  32.

  FINDING THE PRESIDENT’S HEADQUARTERS was the easy part. Getting inside was another story. Just outside the entrance to the front tent stood four guards armed with automatic weapons. Still more soldiers walked the perimeter, making sure no one got within fifty feet. It became instantly clear that three mud-splattered teens wearing threadbare clothes would never be allowed a private conversation with the president.

  How naive could we have been, thinking we could just waltz into town and speak to the ruler of the Republic?

  We kept on walking until we reached the woods. There, we sat on stumps and picked the mud from our clothes. None of us bothered to hide our disappointment.

  “Now what?” Hope asked.

  Her question hung in the air like the layer of wood smoke that hovered above the city. We’d come all this way, but we weren’t allowed to share what we knew with the one person who could do something about it.

  “Maybe we don’t need to see the president,” I suggested. “Maybe there’s someone else we could talk to.”

  “The problem’s the same,” Cat said. “Look at us.”

  He tugged at his T-shirt, which was more holes than fabric. His jeans were encrusted with mud, blackened from campfires. We looked like something you’d scrape off the bottom of a boot.

  “So maybe instead of trying to cover up what we look like, we take advantage of it,” I said.

  “What’re you thinking?”

  I didn’t have a definite answer to that, but I did have one idea.

  We staked out the president’s headquarters, sitting in the shadow of a shoe repair tent, pretending to wait for our boots to be fixed. A number of people came and went to see the president—but not, thank goodness, Chancellor Maddox. We had yet to lay eyes on her. It was possible she hadn’t yet arrived.

  Our attention went to a middle-aged black gentleman with white hair and matching white goatee. He entered and exited the headquarters several times a day, and the fact that he was always accompanied by two Brown Shirts convinced us he was someone important.

  One morning, three days after we’d been in New Washington, Cat ventured out into the street, leaning on a walking stick. As the man approached the headquarters, the stick slipped and Cat fel
l headfirst into the slop. His artificial arm went flying.

  “I got him, mister,” I said, running forward. The older man stopped in the middle of the road, not knowing what to make of a mud-soaked, one-armed Cat lying in the muck.

  “Are you all right, son?” he asked.

  “Fine,” Cat said with a grimace, taking all the time in the world to raise himself to a standing position. “Just can’t seem to get the hang of this thing.” He swiped angrily at the prosthetic.

  “I can imagine it would take time. Well, if you’re all right—”

  “Course, some of my fellow soldiers have it worse.”

  The man studied Cat as though he hadn’t really seen him before. “You were in the service?”

  “Yes, sir. Western Federation.”

  “You’re young.”

  “Twenty,” he lied. “But never too young to fight the Crazies. They’re the ones who did this.” He slapped the stump of his arm.

  “Yes, well,” the man said, “thank you for your service.”

  He turned and started to go. I had no choice but to blurt out, “We sure would like to talk to the president. Thank him for everything he’s done.”

  The man’s smile was kind but tight-lipped. “I wish that were possible. He’s a very busy man, what with the Conclave and all. Why don’t you write him a letter and I’ll see that he gets it?”

  He started to pivot away, but before he did, I thrust out my hand. A grimy envelope dangled between my fingers. “I already have; it’s right here.”

  The man studied me, studied the envelope, then reluctantly plucked it from my hand. “I’ll see that he gets it,” he said.

  “We’re staying down at the stables if he’d like to talk to us.”

  He grunted and was gone, slipping past the guards and behind the flaps of the presidential headquarters, his bodyguards right behind him.

  Cat and I returned to the stables, where we joined back up with Hope.

  “You really think it’ll work?” she asked.

  “It better,” I said.

  “What’s Plan B?”

  “That’s just it. We don’t have one.”

  Inside the envelope was a letter detailing all the murderous acts we’d seen Chancellor Maddox commit the last year. For good measure, we threw in the pictures of Faith and Hope when they’d first been admitted to Camp Freedom, shaved and tattooed. If that didn’t get the president’s attention, we didn’t know what would.

  33.

  WHILE THEY WAIT, THEY work for food—grooming horses in exchange for a loaf of bread, chopping wood for a bowl of soup—but one of the three always remains at the stables. Just in case someone from the president’s office should pop by for a visit.

  No one does.

  Which means either no one read the letter, or they did but didn’t believe it, or the president is too busy planning the Conclave to focus on anything else. And each day that passes is another day closer to Chancellor Maddox’s inauguration.

  On the third afternoon after delivering the letter, as Hope is returning to the stables, she notices the townspeople are nearly ecstatic as they prepare for the upcoming inauguration. Shops seem to be doing record business, people stop and talk and laugh, and in the distance, music plays: some combination of banjos and fiddles. Celebrations both planned and spontaneous pop up everywhere.

  Their joy only increases Hope’s frustration. She and Cat and Book know what Chancellor Maddox is capable of, and yet no one wants to listen to what they have to say.

  She veers away from the main avenue and loses herself in the backstreets of New Washington, walking with her head lowered, her hoodie pulled tight, her thoughts swirling. She passes a massive tent that is so large, it’s less a tent and more a warehouse. She is nearly beyond it when something draws her back. She retraces her steps until she can read the simple, unadorned sign out front.

  RTA Dept. of Records

  She stands there a moment, thinking.

  Instead of returning to the stables, she finds a spot between two tents just across the road and studies the warehouse-like tent, taking note of people entering and exiting through a security check.

  Darkness can’t come soon enough.

  Stars pop from a velvet sky. After timing the guards all afternoon, Hope knows just the right moment to make her move. She tiptoes across the road and down a muddy alley. Taking out her knife, she slices through the thick canvas, creating a small flap in the side of the tent. She slips inside.

  Not so difficult, but then again, who would want to break into here? It’s just files and records. Dusty archives.

  She fumbles for a match, strikes it, and then spies a hurricane lantern. When she lights it, she can make out her surroundings. The place is huge—a vast cavern of metal shelving stacked floor to ceiling with cardboard boxes. Needles in haystacks are more easily found than what she’s looking for.

  The milky light from the lantern leads her forward. The floor is a series of wobbly boards placed atop the mud. She glides down the length of the building, noting the markers at the ends of aisles. Things like Historical Archives and Congressional Records and Presidential Papers. And one that reads Government Employees. That’s the row she chooses to explore.

  She works her way down the long aisle, trailing through the alphabet until she reaches Sa–Sc. She pulls out a damp cardboard box and rifles through its contents. Buried in the very middle is a file with a label that makes her heart leap.

  Samadi, Uzair.

  She removes the thick folder and places it in her lap. Her fingers tremble as they peel away the top sheets. She begins to read.

  Biography. Terms of Employment. RTA Contract. Past Employment Record. All of it.

  Hope reads quickly, greedily, hungrily. Some of this she knows; some she has never heard before. Like the fact that her father grew up in Chicago and went to a school called Yale and was employed by an organization called the Mayo Clinic. That’s all new to her. After Omega happened, things get vague.

  She flips quickly through the pages, looking for something else, anything.

  One page grabs her attention most—a Letter of Agreement between Dr. Uzair Samadi and Dr. Joseph Gallingham, signed by Chancellor Cynthia Maddox. Hope is both eager and afraid to read it. She forces herself to go through it, slowly, carefully.

  Among other things, it lists her father’s title—research scientist—but at the bottom of the document there’s a space marked Duties, and it’s been left blank. There’s nothing there that tells her what he actually did. She is about to turn the page when something catches her eye. Hope brings the lantern closer … and she sees the space wasn’t always blank. There used to be text there. Someone, for some reason, marked over it with a kind of white glop. All that’s left is a faint indication of typed letters—a gauzy dream of alphabet.

  But what was it that it said? And who covered it up?

  She places the document in front of the lantern to study it further when the sound of a scraping foot stops her cold. She hastily stuffs the paper in a pocket and extinguishes the lantern’s flame. Her fingers wrap themselves around the handle of her knife, and her breath goes short, even as the footsteps grow closer and closer.

  34.

  THE GLOW OF LANTERN beams startled us awake.

  “You the boys who wrote the note?” a voice asked.

  “Yes,” I said, shielding my eyes from the sudden brightness.

  “We’d like to talk with you.”

  I was sitting up now. Cat, too. For some reason, Hope’s bed was empty.

  A figure emerged, stepping forward until he stood directly between the soldiers and us. Lantern light silhouetted his body from behind.

  “My name is James Heywood,” he said. “I’m one of President Vasquez’s aides. We spoke the other day.”

  “I remember.”

  “The president read your letter and asked that we talk with you. Are you free now?”

  “In the middle of the night?” I asked.

  �
��If that’s convenient.”

  “Uh, sure.”

  It was kind of a silly question. Of course we were free; the man had just found us sleeping. Besides, it didn’t really matter if it was convenient or not. This was why we had traveled here—to talk to the president of the Republic of the True America. Still, this man’s kindness was just the opposite of our overseers back in Camp Liberty, who usually woke us with a shriek of whistles.

  “We could wait until morning,” Heywood went on, “but based on everything you wrote, I imagine you would prefer to speak sooner rather than later.”

  “Yes, sir. That’s right.”

  “Good—that’s what we think, too. Then we’ll let you get dressed and you can join us outside.”

  Cat and I threw on clothes, exited the stables, and joined Heywood and his soldiers. They led us through the dark and empty streets to the presidential compound, a dizzying array of tents in various heights and configurations. When we reached the entrance, the guards gestured for us to spread our arms and legs.

  “Sorry,” Heywood said. “Merely a precaution.”

  The soldiers frisked us and discovered our knives. “We’ll hold them here,” one soldier said, removing them from our scabbards and placing them in a box. “You’ll get them back when you leave.”

  We followed Heywood through the checkpoint. Much to our surprise, the first person we laid eyes on was Hope, sitting on a bench, elbows resting on knees.

  “What’re you doing here?” I asked.

  “Same thing as you,” she answered. “Finally getting the chance to tell our story.”

  35.

  HOPE AND THE TWO Less Thans are led down a series of hallways, passing from one official-looking tent to another. Although there are soldiers everywhere, there’s a difference between these Brown Shirts and the ones from her past. They may brandish the same weapons, but these soldiers seem somehow less vindictive. A couple of them actually smile.