Strikers

by Ann Christy

  Maddix swigs some water, a loud sigh following as his thirst is quenched. He shakes his head and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, leaving a smear of dirt across the faint yellow bruises on his face.

  “No, Jordan told me this was put up to try to keep the river out a long time ago, but it didn’t work. That’s why there’s no one here. We still have to get across the river to reach the border wall.” He waves at the top far above our heads. “This is nothing. Wait till you see.”

  He seems to have a thought, shoving the water carrier at me and walking down the wall toward the nearest pile of rubble. That one apparently doesn’t suit him, because he rushes past us going the other way and I hear him give a satisfied grunt at the next pile. His leg has healed up well, but it’s not a good idea for him to climb, yet that’s exactly what he does.

  It looks like he’s climbing the wall itself, so we hustle over to join him.

  “Be careful!” Jovan says harshly. “Someone will see you, and then what will we do?”

  Maddix looks down and grins. “No one’s going to see through the trees. Just a minute.”

  Then he’s off again. Where the wall has crumbled, there are gaps in the concrete that make for handy footholds. Thin white plastic pipes run along the interior of the wall and leave almost perfect circles of empty space for the entire height. I can also see that the wall is tapered at the top. They must have tried to use less concrete in building the wall, either to do it faster or to decrease the weight at the top. I look at the piles of rubble that were once wall and decide that probably wasn’t the right decision.

  We see the seat of Maddix’s filthy jeans as he settles himself onto the top of the wall. He scoots further down, making room, then looks down at us with a wide grin and waves us up. Cassi and Connor go next. There are low exclamations as they see whatever it is Maddix wants to show us, but Cassi’s face shows trepidation in it when she peers over the side at me.

  Jovan motions for me to go next and gives me a boost to get me started. The rusty rebar sticking out of the concrete makes for great hand and footholds, but touching anything rusty makes me nervous. I wipe my hands on my jeans before touching the first one. I’m so concerned with not letting any part of me get cut by the rebar—I have a fear of tetanus that is far beyond normal for such an uncommon disease—that I don’t see what they are looking at until my butt makes safe contact with the top of the wall.

  But then I do see it and I am amazed. There are enough trees between us and the river so that we don’t stand out, but not so many that we can’t see through to what lies beyond. It’s almost beyond description. The slope toward the river is mild and the banks of it are wide and red-brown with silt and mud.

  It’s incredibly wide, the far bank perhaps a quarter of a mile from the near bank. The waters seem placid enough on its gray surface until I spot a floating branch racing along. The current must be immensely strong.

  I don’t know much about rivers, but I know I won’t be swimming across that. Or using a pole to guide a raft, for that matter. If we’re going to get across it, we’ll need a bridge or a sturdy boat. Better yet, a boat with someone who knows what they are doing at the helm.

  Jovan scrambles up next to me but there’s little room left, so he squeezes in. We’re pressed so tightly together that we can’t even put our arms to our sides, so we awkwardly rest our hands on our knees. I try not to turn my head toward him because we’re so close, but it seems rude, so I do it anyway.

  He’s smiling at me, of course. He looks like a kid just told he’s getting a bonus day off school or something. He’s close enough that I can see the grime ground into his skin and the clean spot on his upper lip where he’s been licking them. His eyes are that hypnotizing golden color they take on when he’s in sunlight.

  Basically, he takes my breath away and I’d like nothing more than to move that hand on his knee over to mine, but I don’t and I won’t. Whatever it is between us, I won’t know if it’s real until there’s no pressure on us and we have time. Time for what specifically, I don’t know.

  I just hope that time eventually comes and we get the chance to figure it out.

  I look away, back toward the river, and finally see what Maddix really meant to show us. Across the river, behind an obscuring screen of trees, there’s a gap where the trees have been cleared, though I can only see that by the absence of their green crowns.

  Beyond that is a wall unlike anything I’ve ever seen. It makes this one look like a neighborhood fence. While the trees are shorter here close to the river, they are still a good thirty or forty feet high. Yet, I can see the top of the wall above the tops.

  I think it’s concrete, like this one, but not consistently so. There are notches and holes in it at staggered points along its length. From here they look small, almost like little mouse holes in baseboards, but it’s an illusion made by the distance.

  “How do we get across that?” I ask.

  Maddix leans forward enough that it makes me nervous. He looks up and down the river, uncertainty stamped on his features. He shrugs a little and says, “When I went across, I asked at places along the way and wound up at a crossing. When I came back with Jordan, we took an elevated crossing, a sort of carriage that goes across one of the broken bridges. It’s hard to explain. But I don’t think we’re anywhere close to that.”

  We all peer both ways down the river, hoping against hope to see something that might save the day. There’s nothing and I really didn’t expect there to be. Jovan leans forward and then finally scares me half to death by getting up to stand on the wall, exposing his full profile to anyone who might be looking. His eyes shielded by his hand, he looks downstream for a long moment.

  “What?” Maddix asks finally.

  “You said a bridge? Was it a huge bridge, like really tall? Tall like those buildings in the city?” he asks without taking his eyes from whatever it is he’s looking at.

  Maddix gets to his feet as well and looks in that direction. He bursts out laughing and says, “It’s a bridge alright! I can’t be sure it’s the same one, but it’s big enough that it must have good crossings. Which means boats. Lots and lots of boats.”

  I wish I could see it, but I’m not about to stand up like they are. Twenty feet is a long way to fall and this wall has to be at least that, given the slope of the ground below. Maddix teeters a little and sits down in a hurry, so I tug on Jovan’s pant leg—which I notice is just as filthy as mine—to get him to do the same.

  He does, practically landing in my lap, but he apologizes at my grunt and slides off onto the wall again.

  “What about people over there?” I ask, nodding toward the wall. I’ve figured out that the holes and dark smudges are probably sentry posts, which means sentries.

  “Don’t worry about them. They aren’t interested in people here unless they try to bring their problems to the border. That’s the place people are trying to get to. Once you show them your pendant and tell them who you are, they’ll let you through. I’m already registered so Connor and I are good, too.”

  He doesn’t seem to register the looks on Cassi and Jovan’s faces or the fact that he’s left them out of the equation.

  “What about me? Or Jovan?” Cassi asks before I get a chance to.

  Maddix starts at that and then looks at me. “Aren’t you going to sponsor them? You’re a land-owner,” he says. The way he says it makes it seem like I should know this and that irritates me.

  “And how exactly am I that?” I ask sharply.

  He nods toward the pendant and then his face clears as he realizes I have no idea what he’s talking about.

  “Dang. I thought Jordan would have had a chance to tell you, to explain,” he says.

  “Explain?”

  “You’re his daughter. That makes you and his other kid land-owners along with him. Now, well, you’re his heirs. That makes you a land-owner in your own right. Or, it will until you figure out how things will go with you and the kid,” he s
ays.

  It’s all very matter of fact, like there’s no missing father and no boy who will never see his father again in the equation. It hurts to hear it said like that. I’ve been doing my best not to think about Jordan because all that will do is slow me down. But when it comes up, like right now when I can’t avoid it, it feels like my chest hollows out just a little. Like my heart is shrinking.

  Everyone looks uncomfortable. While that’s almost as effective as sympathy at making me want to cry, we’ve got no time for it.

  “So, you’re saying that I can sponsor them in? How?” I ask.

  “Well, it isn’t quite that easy. They kept me hanging around for days while they waited for an answer from Jordan when I told them where I was from. But you’ve got the pendant and I was with him when he left. He left a message before we went through the border,” Maddix says.

  “And this is that border crossing? You’re sure?” Jovan asks. He looks as confused as I am. I clearly didn’t ask the right questions when I had the chance.

  Cassi breaks in with a frustrated sigh and says, “Can we get down first before someone falls and breaks something? I’m just about over this view.”

  Getting down turns out to be considerably more difficult than getting up, but no one breaks anything so I figure we’re good. There’s no possibility of a fire or anything like that so we get as comfortable as we can leaning against the cool concrete wall. The shade on this side makes it even cooler, but we’ve sweated enough during today’s trek to make it feel nice.

  “Maddix, just tell me everything you know. We’ll go from there,” I say.

  He looks uncomfortable for a moment, perhaps because he knows more about my father than I do. It’s not like we didn’t talk, because we did. But when we spoke it wasn’t about official things. He wanted to know things about me, mundane things, like how I liked rosemary the best of all the plants in the garden and how it made me feel like I could fly when I ran across the rooftops in my neighborhood.

  And when I asked him things, I asked about Quinton and what it was like where he lived and what he did with his days. The questions I had for him were the ones that helped me form pictures of his life in my mind.

  The things we didn’t say were almost as important as the things we did. I thought I would have time with him, time to get comfortable with each other and talk about all the things we wanted to. I’d built up a future with him in my mind and now, there will be none. Now I have to find out what I need to know from someone else.

  I prompt him with a wave of my hand and a smile that feels false on my face, but it seems to work.

  “As to your question, Jovan, no. I have no idea if that’s the same one. I wouldn’t know till I got close since the stations are numbered. But it doesn’t matter. What one station knows, they can all find out. They have phones,” he says.

  I’ve never used a phone but I know what they are. We have them in the Courthouse, the school and any other place where officials talk to each other. I’ve seen one used while I waited to have my strike tattooed onto my neck.

  I’ve heard they have them down south in the cities, but I have a hard time imagining that much wire being used for something like that. What could people have to talk about on a phone? The very idea of not seeing a person’s face when you talk to them seems odd. But in the case of a long border, I guess it makes perfect sense. They’d need to be in touch.

  “And as for them knowing, when Jordan left the territory he signed out and made sure the border knew he was coming to get you, his daughter. He made sure it was logged. And I’m logged as a resident so I can get back in,” he explains.

  “How does that help these two? You said I can sponsor them?” I ask, still not sure how they’ll take my word for anything. I could be anybody. I could have stolen the pendants and killed Jordan. I can’t see why any territory cautious enough to have that huge wall and all those manned stations would believe me, with my marked neck and dirty clothes.

  Maddix shrugs and says, “Truth be told, I’m not sure how they do it, but they can find out if you’re the person who is keyed to that pendant. And they have a policy about Strikers anyway. Takes longer, but they usually let them in. Or so I’m told.”

  He must mean my DNA. They must have a way of checking that. I can only hope it actually does key to me and everything works out. Otherwise, I have no idea what I’ll do.

  Connor’s been quiet and thinking this whole time, turning to watch each of us as we speak. He breaks in while we’re all trying to sort out the information and asks, “Yeah. That’s all fine and dandy, but how do we get across the dang river in the first place?”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Our plan is shaky, at best. That would be the optimistic assessment.

  Jovan takes a trip to scout in the afternoon and reports back that the bridge is not a bridge, per se. It’s an old railroad bridge and it’s missing a big chunk in the middle. The disappointment is almost crushing when he breaks the news. The wall, the border and something that might be safety are just on the other side of that water. How many times will we have to take yet another turn, wake up in fear or fight for our lives before we get there?

  On the upside, there is a thriving settlement of at least a few hundred people near the bridge and a whole slew of barges and boats of all sizes tied up there. He saw horses, but not Creedy’s horses, in the paddock. He thinks we might be able to steal one of those boats if we’re careful.

  As night falls and the moon rises, we take once more to the trees. With that first step I commit to myself that I will not do this again. Even if I have to swim, I will get across that river and through that border and I won’t look back.

  My confidence lasts right up until we hear the whinny of horses ahead of us. I freeze, holding out a hand for the others behind me in case they didn’t hear. They must have because the small sounds of our footsteps on the leaf litter stop abruptly and a single hiss of a frightened indrawn breath escapes behind me.

  The moon is full and I can see Jovan’s face sketched in the silver light. His brow is furrowed and I know he’s thinking the same thing I am. That was the whinny of a horse in pain—like one with a burn in need of tending that isn’t because she’s still being used too hard.

  Two careful steps is all I need to get next to Jovan. I pull his head down so that my lips almost touch his ear and breathe, “You said the horses were down below, by the village.”

  He pulls back enough to see my face and nods, his eyes wide, the whites gleaming in the moonlight.

  I mouth, “Creedy?”

  He nods and shrugs at the same time, but motions us backward just the same. The minutes it takes to retrace back far enough to get out of earshot are eternal ones, fraught with the convincing notion that someone is going to hear us and that will be the end of us.

  “The people at the river had their horses in a paddock near their village, not in the woods. There’s a road somewhere around there, though. I saw a sort of main street ending at the banks of the river. Either those are travelers waiting out the night, or it’s Creedy,” Jovan says.

  “How would he know to come here?” I hiss, fear making me angry. It’s hard to believe that he found this spot right when we arrived at it. It makes no sense unless we’ve been seen somewhere recently. Given that crossing spots aren’t exactly common along the river, maybe this was the closest one.

  “The fish!” Maddix whispers harshly.

  Of course. The fish that Jovan stole. They probably reported it and maybe got word to Creedy. He would have gone to the nearest spot along our very stupidly direct path east. Why bother searching for us fruitlessly in an endless wood when he can stop us at the nearest crossing?

  There’s dead silence in the group, each of us processing that possibility in our own way. I’m angry. The theft was an impulsive act that may wind up trapping us on this side of the river or force us to sneak further north before we can cross. My anger is dampened only by reminding myself that his impulsive act wa
s borne out of a genuine desire to help us and provide Connor and me with something we’d never been able to experience. He meant it to be kind.

  With that thought, I pull in a deep breath and think about how we can get past this. Maddix is healing well, but he can’t run for long, or quickly, before his breathing sounds like a bull in rut. Cassi is quick and agile, but she’s not aggressive and can’t force herself to be. Connor can be aggressive, but he might be of more use in getting those two to safety. That leaves Jovan and me.

  If there were any proof needed regarding Jovan’s ability to get his hands dirty, it’s been amply provided already. He didn’t hesitate to reach down through the hole in the ceiling and shoot someone in the head. In truth, he has more cause to doubt my ability to do the same. I have no such qualms. I don’t have to sit down for a heart-to-heart with Creedy to understand what our situation is. I know it’s a grim one.

  If he, as the trusted and ruthless right hand of Jovan’s father, is supposed to bring Jovan back into the family fold, there is only one way to do it safety. There’s exactly one way to be sure there’s no other story except the one they choose to tell, and that’s to be sure there’s no one left to tell a different one. If there is a confrontation with Creedy, I know he won’t hesitate to end my life.

  That makes the situation rather easy for me. I have no choice. And left with no choice, I’m left with no qualms either. I know I won’t hesitate. This isn’t like the Courthouse. There, it was us who brought the danger into the Courthouse and the soldiers merely doing their jobs. Taking their lives would have been wrong. Creedy isn’t giving us options so there’s nothing to feel bad or guilty about.

  Even so, I’d rather simply get away from him. He’s a ranch foreman with lots of experience with firearms. The only person here that even knows how to properly use a gun is Jovan, and he’s only had a little practice as a Cadet. Unless we catch him sleeping I can’t be sure we would win against him.