Breaking Point a5-2

by Kristen Simmons

I shifted my legs to the opposite side of the cot so that we could watch each other’s backs.

  “So, is it true?” he said, gaze roaming.

  He didn’t have to qualify it. I knew what he meant. My damp hands clasped, unclasped, clasped again.

  “Did he hurt you, Em?”

  “No,” I said quickly.

  Chase’s jaw twitched. He didn’t say anything.

  “It was the only way to steal his gun.” My voice was all but a whisper now. It was impossible to explain how logic changed in the face of death, but still I felt ashamed.

  After a moment, he touched my arm. It was a gentle move, a move of apology and support and question for what might become of us, and I stared down at his fingers, feeling my heart crack.

  “I wish Billy hadn’t messed up my shot,” he said.

  I wasn’t so sure I disagreed.

  I adjusted the mask and focused on the bag, careful not to showcase Chase’s old MM nightstick and radio against the back. The batteries were dead, but I thought we might have some cash left. It would be good to be able to follow any new developments in the nightly report. My hands wandered over our extra change of clothes, a toiletries kit. A worn copy of the novel Frankenstein filled with the letters I’d written to Chase during his training, all rubber-banded together.

  “Keep your head down.”

  At Chase’s order I froze. Down the row, in the direction of the cougher, was a soldier—the same one with the clipboard from across the street who’d been talking to the old man. He was shaking the sleepers and checking their faces.

  “There’s a hole in the fence we can fit through,” I whispered. I’d seen it when we came in. The soldier reached the family of four and poked the father’s shoulder with his baton.

  “Get up,” he said gruffly. “Look at these pictures.”

  The man blinked and rubbed his eyes. His wife woke their two children and pulled them behind her.

  “Stand up,” Chase breathed. I rose and zipped the bag, pretending to keep myself busy with the contents. He stayed seated but moved to the edge of the cot, ready to follow.

  A low beep cut through the coughing. The soldier’s radio.

  “Hold it,” said the soldier. For a second I thought he was talking to us and fought the urge to run. I adjusted the paper mask. My knee brushed against Chase’s.

  The soldier’s radio hissed, then clicked, then went clear as a woman’s voice came through.

  “All units be advised. Fire at 1020 Franklin Station Way, ten-story motel identified as the Wayland Inn. Emergency crews called to attend have found evidence of rebel activity. All units, including road patrols, reroute to Franklin Station Way immediately. Repeat, all units reroute to Franklin Station Way immediately.”

  CHAPTER

  9

  I HELD absolutely still, the breath locked in my chest, as the operator repeated her report.

  A fire in the Wayland Inn. Not a breach in Wallace and Chase’s imposed security, not an MM attack on the resistance stronghold, but a fire. Was it as simple as John the landlord failing to put out one of his cigarettes? It seemed entirely too coincidental that there should be a problem now, so near to the arrival of Tucker Morris.

  The soldier abandoned the family without a word of explanation and jogged to the main entrance of the compound. As soon as he was out of sight, Chase grabbed our bag and pulled me toward the hole in the fence.

  No one bothered looking up as we passed, or as we separated the chain links to sneak through. Halfway through the metal snagged my shirt and made a ripping sound as I jerked free.

  The thoughts raced through my mind. Sean was still at the motel. Had he made it out? What about Billy?

  It took only a few steps before I realized Chase was leading me in the wrong direction—toward East End Auto and Tubman’s checkpoint.

  “Stop!” I dug my heels in. “What are you doing? We have to go back!”

  “We can’t go back.” His expression was grim. When I whipped my hand out of his grasp, he blocked my way, steeling himself for a fight. His hands were down and loose, as if ready to yard me should I bolt.

  “They’re sending every unit that direction.” He gaze darted behind me, sharp and focused, before returning to my face. “Who do you think they’re hoping to find?”

  The sniper. They were looking for the same five people as the soldier who’d just been combing through the Red Cross Camp. They were looking for me.

  “They won’t find us,” I said, ignoring the dread sticking to my insides. “But they might find Sean and Billy and Wallace, even stupid Riggins if we don’t help.”

  He flinched.

  “Tucker did this,” I said. “You know he did. We’re the only ones who know him. We’re the only ones who can stop him.”

  I placed my palm on his chest, feeling his heart hammer beneath his threadbare sweater. Slowly, his fingers closed around my wrist, his thumb gently sliding over the sensitive skin covering my veins, before pushing it away.

  “We stay together.”

  I nodded.

  We kept to the shadows when we could, avoiding the beggars and working girls in the alleyways. The warm day was humid enough from the week’s rain, and the sweat coated my skin and ran freely down my chest and back. We ran until we came to Church Avenue, a street still in use by the public, though not heavily trafficked.

  An MM cruiser drove by with its lights on and siren blaring. My heart skipped a beat. I looked down and felt my hands grow clammy.

  “Not for us,” Chase said.

  We followed the smoke toward the Wayland Inn. People who had wandered from various areas of town had gathered on the surface streets surrounding the structure. Transients and drug dealers, unemployed scavengers, and even some curious workers from the west side of the city. They kept coming. With so little to occupy their days, a burning motel was prime entertainment.

  Chase led the way through the crowd. As we came around the side of an old boarded-up Chinese restaurant we saw the flames, rising a hundred feet in the air, just below the line of windows on the tenth floor.

  Instantly I became aware of the smell—sharp and suffocating. It made my eyes burn, even from my place across the street. A blast of sirens came from the two fire trucks parked in a V in front of the motel’s entry. The firemen had begun piping water from a nearby hydrant.

  Soldiers arrived, marching in from the northern side of the street. Black, bulletproof vests covered their blue canvas uniforms, and Kevlar helmets shaded their eyes. They carried weapons—guns, nightsticks, and long plastic shields.

  No rescue teams entered.

  A man stumbled out the front door carrying a woman on his shoulders. They were both black with soot and coughing. No one I recognized. Three soldiers were on them immediately, and they were cuffed and led away.

  A loud burst of gunfire elicited screams from the crowd. It sounded like fireworks; shots popping off one after another. My throat tightened, though not from the bitter smoke. I knew that sound was coming from the fourth floor.

  “Ammunition caught fire,” Chase said, leaning close to my ear so that no one around us heard him. I searched in vain for Sean, but instead focused on a lone Sister of Salvation, speaking to a soldier near the front of the crowd. He gestured for her to back up with the others, and while he was distracted by another volley of gunfire, she slipped into the crowd, coming our direction.

  Fearing she had recognized us, I backpedaled into Chase, and was just about to tell him we had to beat it when she appeared at my right side.

  “Where’s everyone else?” I blinked and refocused on her blue eyes and the short, black hair that matched my own.

  Cara. I couldn’t make sense of why she’d been talking to a soldier.

  “What are you doing here?” A new dread washed over me as my mind flashed to Sarah and Tubman. Something had happened to the convoy.

  “Where is Wallace?” Her voice was raw.

  “Where is Tubman? Did he get caught?”

>   “I don’t know.”

  “What do you mean you don’t know?”

  “I don’t know!”

  Her cryptic answers stoked my irritation. Something had happened for them to separate, but there wasn’t time to ask now.

  A man I didn’t recognize was shouting from a third floor window. In only his boxer shorts, socks, and a dirty T-shirt, he attempted to climb out using only the moth-eaten curtains as a ladder. The top of them was already on fire.

  “Hey! There’s a guy up there!” shouted someone.

  “Help him!” begged a woman. None of the soldiers moved to assist.

  More gunfire from upstairs. My heart kept time with its tempo.

  This time the rear line of soldiers—those closest to the building—turned around and, as one unit, fired at the building. The discharge of weapons was muffled by the roaring spray of the hoses and the sirens; the bullets disappeared into the smoke. The man trying to escape through the window slipped in his surprise, and fell three feet before catching the tearing curtains.

  “We need to get out of here.” Cara’s voice wavered. She was backing away, face pale. “Out of town.”

  I grabbed her arm. “We don’t know if they’re still alive!”

  Her gaze landed on mine. “All units are called in to contain the fire. Every head is turned this direction. This is our chance.”

  A chill zipped through me. “How are we supposed to get out?” The highways were still blocked.

  It started from the back, a wave of bodies shoving one another into the front line of soldiers. The soldiers pushed them back with their shields. Cara bumped into me, but when I tried to pull back she held on.

  “The other truck at the checkpoint. If you’re not there in an hour, I’m leaving without you.”

  Before I could respond, she’d disappeared into the crowd.

  Chase’s grip tightened around my hand.

  “Over there!” He pointed at a man in a singed sweater on his hands and knees at the corner of the building, by the Dumpsters. He’d somehow avoided the main entrance and the fire escapes.

  “John!”

  We shoved through the crowd toward the motel manager. His eyes were bloodshot and his teeth stained gray, like he’d been eating smoke.

  “Guess I… don’t need a cigarette… now,” he huffed as I helped him up.

  “Did you see if anyone got out?” I asked urgently.

  “Heard ’em leave… through the west exit.”

  My mind flashed to the blueprint of the building posted above the couch in Wallace’s room. There were several marked exits. The MM had covered the front, the fire escapes, and the two back doors. The side route was thirty feet behind the Dumpster, tucked within the building’s maintenance area. It was blocked by the looming stone office building Chase and Sean had searched. The alley between them was only wide enough for one person to sneak through at a time.

  I ran in that direction, toward the Dumpster, behind which waited the narrow leaf-carpeted alleyway. Leaning against the outside of the entrance, a black cat tucked under his arm, was Billy.

  “You’re okay!” I shouted, grateful that he was alive.

  He nodded weakly, wiping his mouth on his shirtsleeve. His face was beet red from the heat. “I think Gypsy’s dead.” He lifted the cat, and I nearly vomited. Her head was indented, as if something had smashed it.

  “The others?” asked Chase, helping Billy lay Gypsy on the ground. “Billy!”

  The boy shook his head, propping his dead cat against the side of the building, where she wouldn’t be stepped on. “Most are out. Wallace and Riggins went back for Houston and Lincoln. No one could find them.”

  “And Sean?”

  “He’s… he was right behind me!”

  I froze.

  For one instant I saw Sean as he had been, in those woods behind the reformatory, hiding my intent to escape from the guards who had caught me, who meant to kill me. I felt the shudder tear through my body when he’d shielded me from the blows that had hit him instead.

  No. Sean could not be left in this building to burn.

  There were no more thoughts. I pushed past Billy and ran down the narrow alley. Someone grasped my shirt, but I slipped away.

  “Stop!” shouted Chase.

  But I didn’t stop. I ran until I passed the broken water heaters and the metallic switchboards, until the alley opened to reveal a cement patio and a side door below an emergency exit sign.

  No soldiers. Not yet anyway.

  I placed my hand on the handle. Immediately it singed my palm. A putrid smell filled my nostrils—my own charred flesh.

  I swore, gripping the hot doorknob with my shirt and turning it. It pulled out, revealing a great tidal wave of smoke that nearly bowled me over.

  I sputtered. The poison siphoned down my throat and grasped my lungs. I covered my mouth with my hand and ducked, trying to remember what I’d learned in elementary school about stop, drop, and roll. I had to stay low.

  Sure enough, the first onslaught of smoke left a thick cloud grazing over the ceiling. It was a petrifying sight—swirling like the vortex of a building tornado. I kicked a rock into the jamb, kept my body hunched down, and pushed inside.

  “Sean!” I shouted. Then coughed. I breathed in through my teeth, as though they might serve as a filter. “SEAN!”

  I’d entered into the stairway. Where we’d first been searched by CJ, the guard posing as a homeless man in the lobby just outside the door. I glanced up the metal steps, but the white plumes wound up in a spiral, disappearing into the next floor. It was so hot; sweat immediately began to drip from every pore in my body.

  Something broke upstairs. A wooden crack, a faint explosion, and then the building groaned so loudly I was sure it was going to topple down over me.

  A hand smothered my face. Through the haze I saw Chase, squinting, eyes red. He was wearing just his T-shirt, his sweater overtop now ripped in two and held against both our faces. Billy was right behind him, the sleeve of his shirt tied around his nose and mouth.

  “Get out of here!” Chase shouted above the crackling. “There’s no time!”

  I didn’t know if he meant until the MM took the building, or until the building took us all, but I wasn’t about to wait around and find out. I took the stairs two at a time to the second floor, feeling his grip slide off my sweat-slicked arm.

  No sign of Sean.

  “Sean!” I tried again, but my shouts were getting progressively weaker. The urgency made me tremble. Sean had risked his life to help me at the reformatory. I owed it to him to return the favor.

  The smoke took on an orange hue. It became so thick I could barely see right in front of me. My boots began to stick, like I was walking on gum. In horror, I realized that they were beginning to melt on the stairs. We were running out of time.

  “Over there!” Chase shouted, sprinting past me to the top of the third floor. Sean was lying on his back on the landing; someone was desperately trying to hoist him up. The smoke made him weak, and he fumbled around like a drunk.

  As I got closer, I saw that the person trying to help was Tucker.

  My temples throbbed from the smoke and surprise. He had started the fire, I was sure of it, so what was he still doing here?

  “Help me get him up!” shouted Tucker, struggling to grab Sean with the cast on his arm. His words spurred us back into motion. Chase pulled Sean’s arm over his shoulders and began lugging him down the stairs. Sean’s head hung limply; his feet dragged behind. The fear began to take over. Sean couldn’t be dead. Not here. Not like this.

  On the second floor, Tucker lost his footing and dove into the wall. Without thinking, I grabbed his arm to steady him. We locked eyes for one short moment.

  Don’t help him!

  But the larger voice inside yelled we have to get out! And somehow right then “we” included Tucker Morris, too.

  “Chase! Soldiers!” cried Billy, coughing with his mask lowered. He was standing in the stairwe
ll, pointing out the blackened window. Soot couldn’t hide the fear blanketing his features.

  Chase was beside him, scraping a clear spot in the glass to check.

  “Exit’s blocked!” I could barely hear him. He turned fast, sweat streaming off his face. “Up to the roof! Go! Go!”

  Billy went up first. Then Chase heaving Sean. I tried to help, but he wouldn’t let me. “Go!” he kept yelling. Tucker was right on my heels.

  We were halfway up the seventh set of stairs when another eruption of gunfire came from just below. I braced reactively, and as I did, a piece of flaming drywall came crashing down from the ceiling and landed at my feet. My body twisted backward, slipping on my sticky soles. Tucker caught me beneath the arms; I could feel the sweat soaking through his shirt. In horror, I looked up, hypnotized by the fiery board on the steps that now separated us from the others. Sparks and burning ashes exploded from it, pinching my bare arms and neck in a dozen different places.

  Tucker returned the cloth to my nose and mouth.

  “We have to jump!” he yelled.

  It was at least four steps up, and my muscles were burning. The fire was suffocating my strength from the inside out.

  “Chase!”

  He stopped at my voice and turned, terror lighting his face.

  Balancing Sean on one shoulder he held his other arm out toward me, urging me to jump the four steps up to him. It wasn’t far, but it could have been miles. Sweat and smoke blocked my vision. The roar of the fire muted whatever words he shouted. I trembled, seized by fear.

  “Jump!” Tucker ordered. I took a step back in order to shove off from a lower step. A sob raked my throat.

  I hesitated.

  Tucker rammed into me hard, sending me careening up the steps and into Chase’s chest. He grasped my shirt, pulling me the rest of the way. I screamed—for a moment I thought my pant legs were on fire, but they were only scorched at the bottom.

  “Keep going!” Chase said. Billy ran ahead, disappearing into the mist.

  A second later Tucker came colliding into the three of us. The door was three feet away. Tucker shoved past and kicked the door, once, twice. It burst open, and he disappeared outside.