by Anne Tibbets
“What about the guards?”
“At the gate. What happened to the guards at the gate?” she asked.
I blinked at her. Why did she want to know about them?
“All dead,” said Ric, with no hint of pride.
The woman looked stricken. A fat tear rolled from her left eye and she gripped the door to steady herself, dropping her head low. The baby on her hip held tight to her shirt to keep his balance and squalled again.
“Mandy?” a voice said.
Ric and I turned. An older man stood in the doorway of the apartment behind us. I suddenly felt very exposed, and intrusive. This was their home. We were barging in. We didn’t belong here.
We didn’t belong anywhere, really.
I ran my hands through my hair, trying to wake myself up. I was so exhausted my eyes had begun to blur. “This was a mistake,” I said to Ric.
He nodded and we turned to leave, back down the hallway and away from the young mother and neighbor.
“Mandy? What’s the matter?” I heard the man across the hall ask the young mother. “Who are these people?”
“They’re from Central,” the woman choked. “They said the guards at the gate are all dead.”
“What? Was Justen on duty today?”
“Yes. He was supposed to be home two hours ago. I had hoped he was stuck because of the power outage, but then I saw those people through my window—have you seen them? There’s hundreds of them. All moving toward the wall. And then those two were at my door, and I just knew.” She collapsed onto the floor and choked on a sob. “I just knew.”
The baby cried, bringing another neighbor into the hallway, a young woman. The neighbor went across and gathered up Mandy and her child. I couldn’t stay any longer.
We rushed down the hall. Ric and I went back out into the darkness of East, my insides turning to ash.
What were the odds? Of all the apartment buildings, we ended up in that one.
It was a sick and twisted world that the one door that was unlocked turned out to be the wife of one of the guards we’d helped murder.
I swiped tears of shame and anger from my cheeks with the back of my hand.
I’d killed two guards in Central too. Shot one straight through the head. I’d help plow a car through the gate, allowing the crowd to maul and stampede more.
The guards on the Line had abused and beaten me. I’d never thought twice about them, or their families, or that they were only doing their jobs, that maybe some of them were only working for Auberge to keep their families from starving.
Maybe they didn’t have a choice.
Maybe they were just like me.
Or, at least, maybe a few of them were.
I choked on my tears.
I’d never even considered them human, really. Just a part of Auberge.
The enemy.
Ric grabbed my hand. We made for the building across the street. Three doors in, we found an abandoned one-bedroom apartment; we could tell because the place had been packed up. The chest of drawers was open and disheveled, and the closet was wide open and empty. Either abandoned or looted. Either way, there was a bathroom and a cupboard full of canned goods. It must have belonged to a single man, given the beat-up shoes in his closet. The place smelled like sweaty socks and needed a good scrubbing, but at least it was warm and dry and away from any crying guard’s wife.
I sucked back my feelings and set about finding a can opener in the sticky kitchen while Ric locked all the windows and secured the door. We didn’t want to take the chance that anyone migrating toward the gate had the same idea we had, or if the owner decided to come home.
Given that there was no power, or running water, or gas for the oven, or electricity for the hot plate, we ate cold beans and mixed vegetables from cans with a dirty fork and sat at the kitchen table, the blinds drawn. We put one of the flashlights on end, shining a beacon of light onto the ceiling.
We sank into the single bed together, fully clothed, without a second thought. After only a few moments, I heard Ric breathing in rhythmic pulses. I rolled over onto my side, my back to him, listening as he snored softly. Exhausted as I was, I suddenly couldn’t sleep. My mind raced with thoughts of the crying mother across the street, of Shirel and the girls, Sonya and Bubbs. Minnie. Even Cat. Ric’s sister, Anj. Then I thought of Evie and the old woman she’d adopted as her grandmother. Where were they now?
Sitting in the dark of Central? Hiding?
I wondered if Evie and her grandmother were safe from that gang of men who roamed their neighborhood. Had they bust through the building door when the electricity had gone out?
I swallowed the knot in my throat.
Ric rolled toward me and rested his palm on my hip, mumbling something in his sleep I couldn’t understand.
I lay there, his fingers dormant on the curve of my body. His fingers felt hot and warmed me, relaxing the tired muscles underneath. Out of habit, I debated turning over, out of reach. But instead, a thought occurred to me, and I took his hand off my hip and pulled it toward my chest. Snuggling the heat of his arm between my breasts, his entire body nestled in length with mine. He moaned with sleepy satisfaction and snored again, his breath whispering the back of my hair and neck. I closed my eyes and felt my body relaxing, an inch at a time. Soon, I was asleep inside his warmth.
A first for me.
* * *
In the morning I awoke in the same position. Neither Ric nor I had moved.
Peeling myself from the bed, I stumbled into the bathroom and when I emerged, Ric was awake, sitting on the side of the mattress and putting on his boots.
There was a dim sunrise gleaming from the edges of the blinds, and I walked across the room to peel back the fabric.
Through the dirty glass, I saw three trash bin fires with a group of people surrounding each, and at least four sets of citizens moving down the road, migrating in packs toward the laboratories and plants to the east. I took this to mean that the gate from Central was still open and that the guards hadn’t attempted to round up the displaced citizens.
The revolution, for what it was, wasn’t over yet.
“How’d you sleep?” I asked aloud. Had he noticed we’d slept in the same bed? Did he even realize the significance?
He shrugged, lacing his shoes. “Fine. You?”
I realized then that he didn’t grasp the importance. I wanted to cross the room and kiss him for his innocence, but I held back, still afraid of where it might lead.
Ric finished with his boots and shuffled toward the bathroom. Meanwhile, I rummaged around the pantry and came out with two cans of processed meat. When Ric reemerged and saw the open cans sitting on the kitchen counter, he had such a look of disgust on his face, I laughed.
“Gourmet!” I joked.
“Yummy.”
We ate the meat and drank the last of the water from the pitcher in the warm, tiny refrigerator. Then, Ric stuffed a few more cans of food into his satchel and we hitched our flashlights and handguns back into our waistbands.
“Ready?”
Ric frowned. “Let’s go.”
Chapter Thirteen
Outside, the morning felt crisp and cool. We headed east among the smattering of people marching in the same direction. I found it curious that the Auberge guards were nowhere to be seen. Hadn’t headquarters realized the gate had been breached? There should have been guards everywhere, but there weren’t. Had things gotten so crazy in Central that they were unable to afford the man power?
That idea would please the hell out of Sonya.
After a few hours we passed the power plant, the technology factory and the scientific laboratory. There were still no guards. The crowd ambled by without resounding conflict. It seemed we all had the same thought: Just get to the
wall.
By early afternoon we arrived. Hundreds of citizens were camped in the area. They were gathered in clusters on an open dirt field directly in front of the wall, grouped around small campfires and sleeping in makeshift tents. And then I realized where all the guards had gone.
As I’d feared, they’d congregated at and above the wall. The cement watchtowers were packed with armed guards, and at the base of the wall was a line of soldiers, shoulder-to-shoulder, creating a barrier of people. The crowd stood about twenty feet back, casting nasty glances at the guards, but none of the citizens moved any closer.
Wordlessly, Ric and I scanned the field, and after a half hour of meandering between campsites, we found Sonya and Bubbs. They were with a collection of other Centrals, closest to the wall. The group of them watched us approach with suspicious glares. Most looked away when Sonya greeted us.
“Well done, you two!”
“So much for a revolution,” Ric mumbled, loud enough for me alone to hear.
I shook my head in disappointment. We’d gotten no closer to breaching the wall than Ric had predicted. Given the extent of the armed guards, I failed to see how a group of several hundred starved citizens were going to breach the wall. But Sonya smiled happily as we approached. She fanned her hand out, indicating the crowd, and pursed her lips with satisfaction.
“Not bad, eh?” She grinned.
A few feet away, Bubbs poked a campfire with a stick and grunted at us. “Glad you could join us.”
“It’s a stalemate,” Ric said, and I watched as Sonya’s gleam of hope faded from her face.
“We’re just waiting for the right moment,” she said. “I wanted to blast through last night, but we were hoping more people would show up. Strength in numbers. And they just keep coming, don’t they? Were there more people behind you? Are more coming?”
Ric didn’t answer right away, so I did. “A few.”
“You may have the numbers,” Ric said, “but I don’t see any strength.”
“What’s the plan?” I asked, hoping to avoid a confrontation.
Sonya stepped closer to us. “We arm as many of the crowd as we can and clear a portion of the wall. Then Bubbs blasts through. And then, we charge.”
“Do any of these people know they’re headed for battle?” Ric grimaced. “You’ve got families here. Women and children. Not much of an army.”
“It’ll be enough,” Sonya said. I didn’t think she sounded convinced. “Bubbs and I have been making the rounds among the groups. I think we have about fifty men willing to fight.”
“That’s it?” Ric balked.
“What about the rest of the people?” I asked. “Shouldn’t they get back?” There had to be over two hundred people. Fifty hardly seemed enough, given the number of guards, which was at least three times that. And they all had weapons.
“How many guns did you bring?” Ric questioned, seeming to read my thoughts.
“Twenty.” Sonya’s eyes cast a look over her shoulder, as if the wall could hear us. “A few men picked up guns from the dead guards back in Central, so we have more than that. And if we tell all the women and children to get back, the guards will grow suspicious.”
“They have to suspect we’re planning something,” I said, stating what I thought was obvious. “They can’t think we marched all this way to have a campout.”
“Rushing the wall is a bad idea,” Ric said.
Sonya squinted at him.
“It’s suicide,” he blurted, and I didn’t disagree. “There has to be a better way. What if we threw the explosives at the wall? Make some sort of slingshot?”
Sonya’s mouth dropped into an angry frown. “With what? This is our only play. We have to try. We can’t lose this opportunity.”
“The opportunity is already lost,” he said. “The gate was different. There were only ten guards. But now?” He left the sentence unfinished. “And where are the rest of the people?”
He had a point.
When the gate was breached, thousands had entered East from Central, yet only a few hundred came to the wall. Where were the rest? Hiding inside East, waiting for us to do the dirty work?
Probably.
Bubbs grunted again and stood from the fire. He put his enormous hands on his hips and glared at us. “It’ll be enough if we do it right.”
“And how will that work?” Ric pressed.
Sonya stepped closer still and whispered to us, “We clear a section of the wall. All we need is a five-foot opening. Bubbs gets in, sets the explosives, then we blow a hole. It’s not complicated.”
“What about the people next to the blast? And the guards in the tower? We’ll be target practice down here in the open,” I pointed out.
Sonya nodded at a smattering of cars parked and abandoned along the perimeter of the clearing. They were older cars, some of them rusted straight through. I hadn’t noticed before, but each one was surrounded by five to ten men. They were planning on using the cars as shields, as we’d done at the gate through Central to East.
Would the same plan work twice? I doubted it. Especially since there were so many more guards. And guns. And these cars were barely a shell. Most didn’t even have tires.
“It’s not going to work,” I said aloud.
Sonya’s nostrils flared. “What do you propose we do? Go back to Central and wait for HQ to clear the virus from their systems? We have to do this now. It’s our only shot.”
“It’s a shot, alright,” Ric mused. “At getting us all slaughtered.”
The word had a violent effect on Sonya and she spun on her heel, away from us. Stalking back over to the fire, she whispered something to Bubbs, who nodded in agreement. Then they both turned to us and glowered, as if we’d betrayed them with our justifiable doubt.
“Look,” I said to her. “I’m not saying we don’t get through the wall. I’m just saying there has to be a better way. This feels rash.”
Sonya shook her head with what looked like angry disappointment.
“Why did you even come then?” Bubbs barked.
“Fine. Stay behind for all I care,” Sonya fumed. “Just give us your guns and we’ll give them to people who will actually use them.” She held out her palm like an angry mother, as if our weapons were confiscated toys.
I balked, but Ric called her bluff. He shrugged and dug into his leather satchel, producing the weapon.
Sonya’s eyes shot even wider and she heaved forward, covering up the gun with her body and blocking those above and behind us from seeing it. “Are you insane?” She twisted him in the opposite direction, turning him away from the wall. “Don’t let them see it!”
Ric smirked. “I’m only giving you what you asked for.”
Sonya released him and gave him a little push. “Asshole.” She walked over to Bubbs and they whispered again. When she turned back to us, she had a look of finality on her face. “We’re doing this now. Just stay close and let Bubbs and me do our job.”
“Your job?” balked Ric.
I felt my insides turn over. “I thought you were waiting for more people to arrive.”
“We’re done waiting. Once we blast the wall, you two run through. Got it? Just keep running.”
My heart skipped a beat. Those words felt too familiar. Tym had said almost the exact same thing before he’d been shot and killed, defending me.
Without waiting for our response, Sonya and Bubbs moved toward the first car. At seeing them go, groups of people started to shuffle from their campgrounds.
Ric grabbed my hand, and I squeezed his fingers between mine.
“What do we do?” I asked him, my fear mounting.
He looked around the field as his face drained of blood. We were at the edge of the clearing, only meters away from the wall. If Sonya and Bubbs started the
battle now, we’d either get run over by the crowd or shot by the guards as we tried to get away.
We were trapped.
It struck me then that whether we liked it or not, we were going to be a part of Sonya’s plans. She had probably already figured that out. It was up to us if we were in the middle of it, or collateral damage. I didn’t think she cared one way or the other. She’d started something, and she was going to finish it, no matter the cost.
Even if it cost us.
A part of me understood her logic—strike now, ask questions later. But the chance of success seemed so farfetched I couldn’t accept the concept of all-or-nothing. There had to be another way. But Sonya wasn’t up for discussion. She had decided she was getting through that wall. Nothing was going to stop her from trying. Even logic.
As Ric and I stood there, frozen in indecision, women and children from the field behind us gathered their packs and meager belongings and traveled backward, away from the wall. The guards could have perceived it as a sign of retreat. I took one look at the soldiers, lined up and ready for action, and saw many looking nervous. They had to know what was coming. Or at least they suspected it.
I knew we couldn’t stand there, Ric and me, without drawing attention to ourselves. So, I tugged his hand, pulling him back, but then I stopped myself.
I’d known this battle was coming. Why was I running?
When I’d agreed to help Sonya in the first place, I’d said that if I died, at least Shirel and the girls would have a chance to be free. I had been willing to die before. What had changed?
Here was my chance to prove it. The moment had arrived. It was do or die. Or, do and die.
I was a coward and it sickened me.
When news reached my daughters about my fate, I wanted them to hear how bravely their mother had died running toward battle. Not away.
Ric gave my hand a tug, and I realized we were still standing at the edge of the field. Neither of us had moved, both lost in our internal debates.
I glanced around, looking for Sonya and Bubbs, but they had walked off toward the men surrounding the cars. I could only assume they were giving the order to begin the charge.