Strikers

by Ann Christy

  He winces when he pushes on it with a finger so I say, “Stop messing with it.”

  “I just wanted to make sure it was just a lump and not a soft spot,” he explains, but I’m relieved to see his hand drop away without any blood on it.

  Just then my father interrupts us by tossing a sack my way. It’s just a rough burlap sack like the ones used by everyone for almost everything: food, supplies, clothes and anything else that needs toting. This one isn’t patched all over like the ones I have, and it has the dark green stripe that identifies it as Army issue.

  “Pack those uniforms and then get him to the garage. We need to move out,” he says.

  “What about food? What about Mom?” I ask. Where before it felt like we were moving far too slowly, now it feels like everything is going too fast. I’m leaving too much, too soon.

  He sighs, gives a little shake of his head and says, “We can’t risk you seeing her, Karas. I hope you understand.”

  I nod, because he’s right even though he doesn’t understand what it's really like at home with her. But that isn’t why I need to go home. “My garden has stuff we can take, plus I have water carriers. There’s plenty of early spring stuff like carrots, beets…” I let the sentence trail off.

  The dry lands stand between us and the border and water may be hard to find. Food will be even scarcer. And I saw him come out of the break room with just three small canteens, the kind the soldiers carry on their belts. Those won’t last us half a day.

  It startles me to see him chew the inside of his cheek because it is exactly what I do when I’m indecisive or in a bind. It’s a terrible habit but one I’ve never been able to break entirely. For some reason, seeing him do the same makes me smile. It’s like a link between us, even though we are strangers.

  “Water’s not that hard to find. You’d be surprised how quickly the dry lands end once we head east. But food, that can be hard when you can’t stop to hunt.” He looks at me with a measuring gaze and asks, “How quickly can you get what you need?”

  “Fast enough,” I say. “Faster if I take Connor.”

  He sighs again, but not in a way that signals impatience or anything. It’s more like the sigh of someone who has to deal with an inevitable delay, so I know what he’s about to say.

  Connor comes back for another load by the time I’ve extricated myself and helped Jovan to his feet. Jovan sways for a moment, but quickly steadies and offers me a smile to let me know he’s fine. He takes Connor’s place at the pile of bags and says nothing as he loads himself up with all the remaining bags. For good or ill, he’s with us.

  Chapter Twelve

  The streets are dark and quiet. It feels like days instead of a scant hour since I set out with Connor for a final visit with my father. Everything has changed since then and it shows in how I see the dark buildings around us.

  I see them through eyes that are saying goodbye. Now the buildings seem shabbier, their fading paint gray in the darkness, the windows old, dusty and dark. As we jog the few blocks between the Courthouse and my home, the sounds of water in the canal across the street accompany us.

  The houses are all the same here, varying only in their color. Like everything else, the paint is old and faded to lackluster versions of the original shade. Pale blue that’s nearing gray, lilac where it was once purple and even a faded yellow so pale it glows white in the faint moonlight.

  At my house, we dip around to the back. Connor doesn’t need me to tell him what we need. We head straight for my garden shed and he heaves up the pile of sacks on my workbench, lifting a cloud of dust along with the rough burlap. I grab the snips and a small trowel for the garden.

  “I need some light,” I whisper. No one will hear us out here, but I find it difficult to speak normally while we’re being so stealthy.

  My only flashlight is in the house, but Connor pulls his out of one of his voluminous pockets and starts to wind it while we’re in the slight protection of the shed. It whines terribly and the sound makes me wince.

  “Let’s go,” he says when he’s done winding.

  “Wait,” I say and start pulling old containers and general junk off a pile in the back corner. When I get to my buckets, I fill up a couple of small bags with the best of my tumbled stones. Connor and I have spent days on end turning the handle on my tumbler to create each batch. These buckets represent years of intermittent labor. I’ve been hiding them here in the shed as a sort of savings account, meaning to sell them when I finally reached my eighteenth birthday and can get away from this house.

  I hand one bag to Connor and tuck the other into my coat pocket along with my handful of steel balls and my slingshot. It’s a weak weapon, but useful against rats, and it’s the most common one around, given how costly gun ammunition is.

  “You’ve got yours, right?” I ask. He knows I mean his slingshot and nods.

  Most of the yard is just weeds struggling to find purchase after our dry winter and spring, but the far corner holds the neat rows of my garden. We depend on that food and I feel bad for taking it, but the truth is that my mother will simply let it die. Not because she’s lazy, because she’s not, but because she won’t think of it before a lack of water takes its toll.

  Between the two of us we harvest all the beets, radishes and most of the carrots. They aren’t large but they’re big enough to be worth it. We snip greens until I have an entire sack of kale and chard. Not much else is ready for harvest, and I regret that we’ve got to leave the rest.

  “Is this it?” Connor asks, and I can see he’s calculating how long this will last five full-grown people.

  “I have dried food inside,” I offer.

  “We need it,” he says and lets the implication hang. I risk waking my mom if I go inside and start rummaging around in the cabinets.

  I pluck up an empty sack before running to the back door. This door doesn’t creak. I’ve been careful to grease the hinges since I’m the only one who uses this door. The front door is the opposite. It squeaks terribly so that I’ll always know when my mother enters or leaves the house.

  The kitchen seems like something from another life. It’s the same, but different. The dishes from dinner are still in the sink but otherwise it’s neat and clean. I sniff and find the distinct scent of grain alcohol lingering in the air. There’s no time to muck about with things, so I grab two tin canisters of grain from the cupboard along with two of dried fruit.

  I’m tempted to grab more, but I can’t leave my mother without anything. It will take her days to figure out how to take care of things for herself as it is. If I weren’t so sure there will be soldiers here demanding to know where I am within hours, I’d be inclined to say that it might take her days to realize that I’m well and truly gone.

  Something won’t let me leave yet. I need to see her again, make sure she isn’t lying on her back so she won’t choke if she gets sick, make sure there’s nothing amiss and that she hasn’t kicked her covers off.

  I tiptoe on careful feet into the living room, avoiding the boards I know will creak. There’s just one light on—a dim one that doesn’t use a great deal of energy—powered by the small turbine on the roof. It doesn’t stay lit all the time, because there must be at least some wind for it to work, but tonight it casts shadows around the room.

  One of those shadows is my mother and it doesn’t look like she’s moved much since I left. Lying on the couch with a blanket drawn up tight around her chin, she’s quiet. On the floor is a half-empty bottle of grain spirits. It’s a small bottle, but the alcohol inside is very strong and it doesn’t take much. She had nothing but empty bottles when I left for the parade, so this one must have been newly filled. Based on the level remaining, I figure she’s out for the night. Her heavy breathing bears this out.

  Slipping past her, I duck up the stairs and into my room to grab my pack. In it go the necessities of a new life. Mostly, that includes underwear, socks and my two best shirts. My room is almost bare of things I can take and
that suddenly seems sad to me.

  I never really noticed it before. I think of this house as the place I’ll escape from when the time comes to start a new life, rather than the place I call home. The walls are water-stained where the increasingly uncommon rain leaks in around the windows. There’s a straw-filled mattress on a bed of creaky springs, and an old dresser missing two of its four drawers. That’s all I have to show for my life to date.

  Everything important I own is hidden from view to keep it safe. My three big buckets of laboriously tumbled stones, the ones I was saving to sell when I turned eighteen and could leave. I have so little else.

  That’s it aside from my memory box, and that’s such a small thing. My few photos and valueless odds and ends are all it contains. I pull out the floorboard under my bed and take it, the last thing I need from my childhood home.

  Back in the living room, I check to be sure she hasn’t stirred but all seems the same. I creep forward and look down at her. Like this, with her face softened in sleep, she looks younger and far less angry than when she’s awake. The lines on her face are smoothed by the dim light and lack of expression.

  I’ve always liked looking at her when she’s like this, though I know she would be angry if she knew I did it. Sometimes, when I know she’s deeply passed out, I talk to her. Then, when I know it’s safe, I talk to her about my day or my worries or just tell her that I love her.

  I do none of that now. I dare not chance waking her by touching her or smoothing back the lock of dark blond hair that has fallen over her eyes. Instead, I walk back the way I came and leave my house for the last time.

  Connor and I make it back to the Courthouse without any fuss, each of us doing our best not to let the bulky bags slap against our legs and bruise the contents within. The small door to the garage, next to the big bay doors for the vehicles, is cracked open and leaking weak light into the street. We step in and find them all waiting for us, even Cassi. Her face is drawn and pale in the light, full of trepidation.

  “Cassi! Why are you here? No one saw you. Go home!” I exclaim, handing my bags off to Maddix.

  Her curls shake along with her head as she says, “I can’t. They’ll come asking and then what will I do?”

  She’s right. Cassi is sweet and kind and never thinks poorly of anyone. I can almost see it. Soldiers with grim faces, maybe even an officer, will come and bang on her family’s door, asking what she knows about her two closest friends. They’ll ask her about yesterday’s meeting with all of us on the side of the canal, in full view of the world. No, Cassi can’t go home.

  “Oh, Cassi,” I say. It’s all I can say.

  The tears run down her freckled face and her chin shakes, but even so, she is resolute. She hugs me tightly and whispers, “It’s worth it. We saved all of them, right?”

  My father comes around the side of the vehicle. His tiny nod says it’s time to go. We pile in except for Maddix, who tries to lift the garage door as silently as possible. Jovan slides in with my father in the front, the rest of us climb into the rear seat.

  The cargo area in back behind us is roomy, as it must be for a prairie jumper meant to take patrols and all the supplies they will need at remote outposts. Right now it’s depressingly empty, our paltry number of sacks barely making a dent in the available space.

  We are utterly silent when my father starts the big vehicle. The only sign that it’s running is the panel of tiny lights populating the dash. That’s one good thing about the electric vehicles. My father eases the jumper out of the garage and Maddix closes the garage door as quietly as he can. Then he jumps in, squeezing Jovan to the middle of the front seat.

  We start along the dark main street, the reverse of the path the prisoners walked just the day before. Everyone is silent, doubtless wrapped up in their own thoughts about what they are leaving behind, what they’re going toward and how things are about to change. Cassi takes my hand and we twine our fingers together, her grip tight and desperate for comfort.

  On my other side, Connor sits still and silent, looking out of the window at the darkened buildings as we sail past and out into the night. I find his hand lying limply on his leg, and grip it in mine.

  He turns from the window and says, “I guess we’re Strikers now, too.” Then he smiles, but his smile doesn’t reach his eyes.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The tires whine beneath us on the road and we leave the town behind us. It disappears into a smudge of light and then into nothing quite quickly. Our town isn’t large but it’s all I’ve ever known.

  I’ve never been more than a day’s walk from it in my life. To the west, a few hours’ hike has brought me past the last of anything truly green and into the dry lands. I’ve camped out there many times with Connor and Cassi, watching the stars and listening to the wind through the scrubby brush. The ruins of Carolton, a place that always seems to be crawling with soldiers for reasons I can’t determine, is the furthest I’ve ever gone west. Connor and I collect stones for our tumblers there.

  To the east, the grazing lands stretch endlessly, as flat as a piece of paper. In spring and summer it’s beautiful, with endless grasses waving in the constant breezes. Out there, there’s only the shriek of a hawk or the lowing of cattle to break the wind’s mellow song. South of Bailar, I’ve been limited to a couple of trips to the lake. Beyond that are the bigger cities and only the very wealthy can get permits to go there. Even for them, a permit like that is a rare thing.

  But north is a direction I’ve not gone before at all. Bailar territory is close to the Texas border. Beyond are the contentious areas where the wild lands begin, and the places where the wars were fought generations ago. There is one additional smaller town, more of an outpost really, to the north. I’ve met those that live there because they come to Bailar to trade and shop for food.

  Perhaps it’s because I’ve always wondered what lies beyond Bailar that my curiosity is warring with my terror at leaving everything I’ve ever known behind. There is a certain excitement to it all that I can’t deny, but I feel guilty for it when Cassi squeezes my hand again.

  “How far will we get on this much charge?” Maddix asks.

  Both Jovan and my father start to answer, but my father stops and gestures for Jovan to go on.

  “This one is little over half-charged so we’ll get about sixty miles, no more.”

  “We should have taken one of the smaller vehicles,” Connor complains.

  Jovan turns as much as he can in his seat to look back at us. He looks well enough to me. His color is normal as far as I can see in the glow of the dashboard, and his eyes are tracking fine.

  “All the batteries are sized according to the size of the vehicle. All of them get about the same number of miles per charge,” he answers.

  Connor grumps and then leans on his arm against the window, looking outside like he didn’t hear what Jovan said. I’ve no idea why he’s so upset. He got his brother back and a ready escape from his parents and the future strikes they would surely earn for him. And he gets to escape with friends and family to support him, rather than running for his life alone. He should be happy, or at least not angry. But Connor is not a fan of change in general, so I put it down to that.

  “That will get us to Wicha but from there we’ll be on foot,” my father says.

  I’d like to answer that with more questions but I’m hesitant. Not because I don’t want to ask or am shy, but because I don’t know what to call him. I know I called him “Dad” before, when I wasn’t thinking about it, but that was an accident.

  When speaking of him or thinking of him, I’ve always thought of him as Dad. “Father” is a pretentious word that is purposefully distant. “Dad” is a familiar word full of affection, but can that possibly be the right name to call someone who has never been more than a name and an image in a few fading photographs? What do I call him? Jordan? Perhaps that’s safer. No matter if he did come back for me, as it seems he has—he’s still a stranger.

&
nbsp; “Jordan,” I say tentatively and wait for a clue as to how this will be received. His eyes flick up in the rearview mirror but nothing in his quick glance tells me one way or another.

  “You got a question?” he asks, when I say nothing more.

  “Isn’t Wicha dangerous?” I ask.

  Wicha is the source of many stories and none of them are good. It’s very close to the border and took a great deal of damage in the war for freedom. Supposedly, it isn’t inhabited, at least officially. Unofficially, it is said that people who come near it are often not heard from again. Even patrols are careful in the ruins of Wicha.

  “It is, but mostly from the falling buildings and such. There are people there, and they’re technically Texans, but who really knows? They could be Wilders who came over and settled there,” he says and shrugs like it’s irrelevant.

  Jovan tries to turn again, but he’s squeezed between the other two and can’t really manage it, so he turns to the side and speaks upward, like he’s chatting with the roof of the prairie jumper. “We just need to be sure we’re in shelter by daylight and we don’t go into any claimed territory. It’s pretty straightforward. They don’t like soldiers, but don’t mind Strikers or anyone else not in a position to arrest them. So I’ll need to be sure I’m not wearing these.”

  He means his cadet uniform. He’s lucky because one of the bags in the back is from his locker at the Courthouse and has a change of clothes in it. Otherwise, he’d be limited to wearing burlap sacks if uniforms are a problem. Jordan is nodding in agreement while he watches the dark road ahead of us.

  The road is so bumpy it feels like we’re driving over a giant washboard. The bounces are coming so fast it makes all our speech sound funny. From my perch in the middle, I can see the dashboard lights over Jovan’s shoulder. One of the lights on the charge meter has just gone out and we’re down to four already. Half a charge doesn’t last long.