“Bank the fires,” Sykes yelled from the folding card table where she and Apostle Ames stood reviewing a topography map. “Ten minutes to lights-out!” There was still a tremor in Gabi’s knees from the shock of the scene in the temple, but she forced herself to march over to the Apostles.
“Apostle Ames, sir?” Gabi said, hating the high pitch of her voice as her throat constricted. She could almost look him straight in the eye, but the menace he radiated made her want to crawl under the card table. Sykes took one look at his face and excused herself to her tent. Gabi waited for an invitation to speak, but none was forthcoming. Ames was too busy trying to incinerate her with his eyes.
“Um, sir?”
“Speak,” he growled. “What do you want me to do, hand you a script? Is there anything you can do for yourself, Lowell?”
“I just wanted to say that I don’t need any special treatment. I’ve been sick, but I’m not anymore. I know my father must have spoken to you—”
“Your father,” Ames spat, “is a bureaucrat. He knows nothing about the work we do in the field and prefers to keep his hands clean when it comes to the real work of the fellowship. The only reason you’re here is as a special favor to Ben Nystrom. He and my father were Witnesses together when Alder was no more than a struggling outpost, so don’t think your daddy means piss-all to me.”
The mention of Messenger Nystrom’s name baffled Gabi. What investment could he possibly have in getting Gabi on a team, unless it was as a favor to her father? Not that it mattered. All that mattered now was proving herself to Ames so the other Witnesses could focus on keeping themselves alive.
“I’m not asking for special treatment,” Gabi persisted. “I’m just asking to be treated like everyone else. I didn’t come here to be a burden.”
Ames took a step toward her, the stiff leather of his boots creaking in complaint. “Isn’t that refreshing,” he said silkily, his face so close to hers that her eyes nearly crossed in an effort to meet his. “A Lowell who doesn’t expect the world to throw rose petals at their feet. You want to be treated like everyone else? Do I have your official permission to do my job, Miss Lowell? Because that would be my very great pleasure.” Burton Ames stepped back and raised his voice several decibels. “Now get out of my sight and do not speak to me again unless spoken to, do you understand?” What Gabi understood was that she may have gotten what she wanted, but she’d be lucky to survive the victory.
MIDWAY THROUGH another day of driving, both vehicles pulled onto a pockmarked plain of asphalt in front of a concrete bunker. By the building was a sign reading “Unitas Border Security, Entering Unincorporated Territories.” There were at least a dozen other vans in the lot, some of which were smashed and dented and had bullet holes ventilating the sides. Two men in full armor emerged from the building as the vans pulled to a stop, speaking into handheld radios as they strode toward the convoy. When Apostle Ames emerged from his van, the men stopped in their tracks and allowed their radios to fall squawking at their sides.
“Sir, it is a real honor,” said one of the guards, his spine ramrod straight. “We were told you’d be coming our way. I trust you’ve had an uneventful journey?”
“We’ve gotten an eyeful but no action,” Ames replied. “I wasn’t expecting to hit the border for another day. Why are they keeping you two posted way out here?”
The talkative one cleared his throat. “The advance teams were able to run most of the Lilim back toward Babylon, but some of the border Tribes we’ve been working with for years have started driving Witnesses out. It’s getting a little dicey west of here, so the council decided to push the border back until we could secure the area.”
“Does that mean we foot it from here?” Ames asked, squinting westward across the windswept valley.
“It does, sir. We’ve got some extra rations here if you need ’em, since it will be a longer trek than you expected.”
Ames raised a hand. “My teams are adequately supplied, thank you. This isn’t my first rodeo, boys.”
The three men laughed and strolled toward the building to confer. After a bathroom break, Sykes ordered the Witnesses to organize their packs. Each load already topped fifty pounds before they were supplemented with the extra provisions Ames had put aside in the event of an emergency. When Gabi tried to raise her pack into an upright position after stuffing an extra water filter and additional envelopes of food into it, it refused to budge.
“Here,” Jordan offered, “I’ll lift it, and you can just back into it and buckle up.” He’d recovered somewhat from the trauma of the day before, but the circles under his eyes attested to a sleepless night. He grabbed the nylon strap across the top of Gabi’s pack in preparation for lifting it, offering her an encouraging smile.
“Okay,” Gabi said, looking to make sure Ames was still safely inside the bunker with the guards before nodding to Jordan. She didn’t want him to see her getting help with her pack. “Ready.” Jordan hefted the pack with a grunt as she slid her arms into the straps and buckled the waist belt. The bag’s rigid embrace caused a flash of panic, and when Jordan released his grip, Gabi needed all her attention to stay on her feet. The weight of the pack threatened to buckle her knees, but she found that by leaning forward at the waist and keeping a bend in her legs, she could stay upright as long as she kept moving forward. It was more like falling and catching herself with each step, but with Marnie in front to grab on to if she tipped and Jordan behind to boost the pack from underneath, she was able to keep up. The “breaks” were another matter entirely.
After every three hours of marching down the shattered asphalt highway that bisected the valley floor, Ames called them to a halt. The day was clear, and the valley warmed quickly in the late afternoon sun. There were only a few scaly patches of snow left to traverse, but the glare was still punishing, requiring the use of the UV sunglasses and ugly flapped hats they’d been issued. The actual resting part of the breaks only lasted as long as it took for the Witnesses to drop their packs and relieve themselves behind whatever cover they could find. After reassembling, Ames and Sykes led the Witnesses through a grueling series of squats, push-ups, lunges, and core exercises until they were all gasping on their backs. Ames insisted the conditioning sessions were necessary given how short, and in some cases nonexistent, their training had been.
Even Marnie, who kept pace with the veterans during the calisthenics, began to flag after the second break, her lean cheeks streaked with sweat and salt grime. The temperature couldn’t have been much higher than fifty degrees, but they all stripped down to the black-and-gray all-weather suit they’d all changed into before leaving the guard station. As for Gabi, by the start of the first conditioning session, she was long gone. When Ames commanded them to drop and give him twenty, Gabi slipped through the hatch in her mind and stayed there, right up until they stopped to make camp for the night. The fact she was still moving after nine hours of hiking, three conditioning sessions, and the exertion of setting up all the tents on her own—Ames was gleefully taking her at her word—was miraculous.
Mathew was still giving her the silent treatment, though she didn’t notice it until they got to their campsite on the first night of the trek. Talking during the day was discouraged, and no one had the energy for it anyway, but she had felt her brother’s eyes on her the entire time. Gabi was grateful for the ugly hats they all wore, as the flaps hid her agony until darkness could shield her. She had no energy to put on a brave face for anyone, even Mathew. Everywhere the backpack touched Gabi’s body was raw meat, especially the crests of her hipbones, which were bleeding and bruised from taking so much of the weight. Her chest felt like someone was hacking away at her sternum and trying to pry her ribs open. Her legs had disappeared on her just as they had during the cross-country course. They became two scrawny pistons, terminating in the blistered stumps of her feet. The back of her neck ached from leaning forward against the pull of her pack, but the sides were the worst.
Up until t
hat day, she’d accepted the new aching sensation along the column of her neck as a bizarre but harmless side effect of getting off the pills. During the physical portion of the Witness exam, the ache had peaked just before she passed out on the course, but she refused to give her body the option of oblivion now. The only things that made it better were the few deep breaths she was able to steal during bathroom breaks, but even then the oxygen slammed up against that same brick wall midway down in her lungs. The farther the teams traveled, the giddier Gabi got on her stunted ration of air, and the more she noticed the oxygen-starved blue of her fingertips.
By the end of the first day of their trek, they’d reached the swells and dips that signaled the proximity of the Cascades. Their route, which veered from the paved road onto rutted tracks, didn’t take them directly to any of the Tribal settlements in the area. Relations had been stable in that region for some time, but the Lilim had begun using the border communities as staging areas for their attacks. Tired as they were, Gabi, Marnie, and Jordan spent what little time they had between dinner and lights-out trying to make sense of what they were about to face.
“I thought the Lilim were Tribe,” Jordan puzzled. “Why would the Tribe need to defend themselves against the Lilim?”
“There are no Tribes, Jordan,” Marnie said as she reached her fingers toward her toe tips to stretch her abused hamstrings and calves. “That’s just something the fellowship made up to lump everyone into one category of sinners who need to be saved or eliminated. The Lilim are Tribe in the eyes of the fellowship because they don’t belong to Unitas, that’s all. The Tribes are just people trying to hold on to a life that isn’t dictated by religious fanatics. No offense, Lowell.”
“None taken,” Gabi replied, too exhausted to be indignant. Remaining upright long enough to finish the mystery meat on her plate was as much of a challenge as she could rise to at the moment. They’d each been given two bright pink anti-inflammatory pills with their dinner ration and promised two more the next morning with breakfast. Despite Gabi’s distrust of anything in pill form, when she saw Ames and Sykes gulp the medicine down, she quickly followed suit. If her recovery from the Witness exam was any indication, whatever pain she was experiencing now would be exponentially worse the next morning when Sykes roused them for a predawn start.
“I don’t know about this whole Lilim threat,” Marnie continued. “Doesn’t it seem strange that Unitas was just on the verge of converting the last of the un-Returned, and then the next thing we know they’re busing refugees into the central branches and deploying armed Witness teams? We’re definitely not getting the whole story, not that I’m surprised. I’ve read a million false reports about Willow in the bulletins. Christ, I’d sell either one of you for a cigarette right now.” Marnie had already chewed all her fingernails down to ragged nubs and taken to gnawing stripped twigs to ease her cravings.
“Then why did the people around here turn against the fellowship?” Jordan asked. “If the locals wanted protection, why did they kick out all the Witnesses? Who are we supposed to be fighting, them or the Lilim?”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” Marnie sighed, leaning against a rotted stump and kneading her back against the furrowed bark. “Does it really matter? The three of us aren’t here to fight, anyway.” They all grew silent at the reminder. Jordan’s objective to feed his family was now a moot point since, if they’d survived the attack in Spruce, they were now receiving refugee rations at a resettlement center. Now his focus was on finding his sister, who had been assigned to patrolling the border for the past four months. She could be anywhere within five hundred square miles, but Jordan was convinced that somehow their paths would cross. Marnie’s plan of getting to Willow had been scrapped the moment Beth’s betrayal disqualified her from the exam, but she still meant to escape the fellowship. As for Gabi, every day brought her closer to finding someone who could help her stop the atrocities being carried out on D Wing, but those horrors paled in comparison to what she’d seen at the temple in Spruce. Now she wondered if finding an ally who was both powerful and trustworthy would even be possible.
As Gabi made to rise and wash her plate, a wave of water hit her back, drenching her from neck to feet in dirty dishwater. “I am sooo sorry,” Bradley gasped theatrically from behind her. “This big old heavy bucket just slipped right out of my hands, but maybe you should thank me. I’ve been gagging on your BO all day long.”
Marnie and Jordan were on their feet in a flash, towering angrily behind her as Mathew hurried toward them. But Gabi only turned her throbbing neck to look over her shoulder at her nemesis. The water was disgusting, but she had no fear of Bradley now that Apostle Ames had taken up his role as her bully. Bradley was a kitten compared to him.
“Thanks, Bradley, I was just wishing for a good rinse. I’m sure Apostle Ames won’t mind that you just chucked our whole dishwater ration onto the ground before everybody’s finished cleaning up. He might mind all of these food bits everywhere, though. Kind of a flashing sign letting the Lilim know we’re here, isn’t it? Aren’t we supposed to be filtering it before we dump it now?” The effort of keeping her voice light cost her her last dribs of strength, but the fear on Bradley’s face as he dropped to his knees and began plucking chewed gristle and carrot chunks from the mud was worth it. Mathew halted halfway across the clearing and looked Gabi in the eyes for the first time since their fight. He didn’t smile, but he’d betrayed his brotherly concern in front of everyone, and that was enough. As Gabi hobbled to her tent to change, she overheard Marnie “helping” Bradley clean up the incriminating mess.
“I think you missed one over there, Fiske. Is that beef or pork, do you think? Hard to tell when it’s all chewed up like that. Kinda looks like it came out the other end, if you know what I mean.” It was the first time Gabi had felt like laughing since Spruce.
Chapter EIGHTEEN
THE NEXT three days were composed of more hiking, more drills, and more pain. The terrain was getting rougher, the trails snow-packed or washed out and harder to navigate. The days were clear and cold, the sun hidden above the forest canopy, while a bright, milky scythe of moon kept the all-night watch rotations company. Team members alternated four-hour shifts throughout the night, standing lookout as the group trudged closer to the frosted peaks of the Cascades.
The advance Witness teams were supposed to have left caches of scouting information and situation updates in weather-tight canisters along the way, but each time Ames halted the group at one of the prearranged coordinates, there was nothing to be found. Occasionally they came across empty traps or snares and the subtle indents of snow-covered footprints, yet the Witnesses didn’t see so much as a wisp of smoke indicating a campfire or hear any sound at all besides birdsong and the whomp of snow surrendering its hold on the upper boughs. Moving through the quiet landscape felt like traveling backward in time. The few Tribal settlements they passed were either razed to the ground or looked as though their inhabitants had halted in the midst of their day-to-day activities, banked their fires, and walked away without a backward glance. Ames, who grew less communicative as the days wore on, had instructed the Witnesses to keep their guns in their thigh holsters rather than their packs. The friendly Tribal settlements Ames and Sykes expected to use as resupply stations along the way turned out to be nothing more than piles of debris, with no signs of life beyond a few stray dogs. Neither of the Apostles had to communicate that things were much worse than they’d expected.
As the Witnesses climbed up out of the valley, evidence of conflict grew more frequent. Buildings shot into sieves, congealed puddles of blood, and smoldering fires attested to struggle, though nothing like what they’d encountered in Spruce. There were no mangled bodies—just enough mayhem to make having a loaded firearm close at hand a very good idea. The new Witnesses had been given a quick tutorial on gun safety, and every drill session now incorporated target practice using empty food envelopes strung from trees as targets. Despite her exhaustion a
nd the black menace radiating from her weapon, Gabi was a decent shot. She hit half of what she aimed for even when a breeze sent the envelope swinging, not that this impressed Ames one bit. His latest trick was to force Gabi to stand with gun aimed while everyone else took their shots, until lightning bolts of pain shot from her shoulders to her fingertips. Once the last echoes of gunshot had faded from the others’ practice, then Gabi was allowed to shoot, then collect the remnants of all of the food envelopes before catching up to the others on the trail.
As the vegetation grew more abundant, so did signs of game. The Witnesses were encouraged to shoot at whatever wildlife crossed their path, which included pheasant, rabbits, deer, and the occasional raccoon. Many of them had never seen a live pheasant or raccoon before, though rabbits were bred for meat in some of the branches. The excitement of the hunt and fresh food for their meals added badly needed variety to the monotony of each day. Though signs of human life were scarce, Ames warned them that they were surely being tracked by Tribal scouts. When a Junior Witness named Briana, a serious girl from Madrone, asked if the Lilim may be tracking them as well, Sykes assured her that if the Lilim knew where the Witnesses were, they would be dead already. Briana kept her questions to herself after that.
AS THEY moved along the trail, each preoccupied with their own thoughts of what lay ahead, Gabi took in the charged, crystalline quality of the day. The silence on this, their sixth day of the trek, was total, as if even the trees were holding their breath. Gabi had the distinct sensation that several pairs of eyes were on them as they passed. When she traded glances with Marnie and Jordan during their breaks, her two friends looked tense as if preparing for a blow from behind. Ames and Sykes led their teams in separate groupings, but that day Gabi noticed Mathew working his way closer to her as they hiked, allowing his teammates to pass him on the trail so he could keep her in view. She wondered if he sensed the change in the air too, or perhaps he was finally ready to forgive her.
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