by Astor Penn
My hand on the door, I look at him, waiting for his answer. The van is going far too fast for the condition of the road, and while we’re not bouncing up and down as badly as before, it’s still enough that pitching myself out might be an improvement despite whatever injuries I take.
“That won’t be necessary,” he says. He sounds amused, like we’ve been joking this entire time. It does nothing to quell the fire; I’m sure he’s making fun of me, but he has no idea what I’m capable of. I didn’t either—not until I met Raven. I think of a gun in my hand, a knife. A wire. Has Jackson ever killed? Maybe. Maybe not. I doubt he killed anyone at such a young age, either way.
“Where are we now?” I ask. The headlights don’t light enough of the otherwise pitch-dark road to give me any clues of which direction we’re heading. For all I know, he’s promising to take me one place and driving the completely opposite direction, and I won’t know for sure until daylight.
“We’re getting close to the refugee camp your friend is supposedly at.” I look sharply at him. He turns to give me a wink. “Twenty miles isn’t that far when you have a car.”
The feeling of gratitude sweeps anger away so forcefully I surely have tears in my eyes now; quickly, I face the windshield instead of his gaze.
“I don’t want you to get your hopes up. She might not even be there. For all we know, she is a lie they told you so you’d be compliant. But I’ll get you in there, if you want.”
He pauses again.
“It might not be so easy to get you out.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
He smiles; perhaps it is the weight of Invo lifting off his shoulders, but Jackson seems more human now than ever before. What he must have been before—a loving man—I see it now. He would have made a great father, just like Bryant. Maybe he still will one day.
“This is what we’ll have to do,” he says. “There will be gates, and to get you in I’ll have to cuff you. You need to stay silent, look ill, but not too ill.”
The way my stomach is roiling, it’s not a problem.
“Once we’re through the gate, I’ll have to drop you off at a rendezvous point. They’ll give you another exam and put you in isolation for the time being. It shouldn’t last longer than twenty-four hours, and after—”
I never get to hear what Jackson says after. I never get to hear Jackson speak ever again. It’s so shocking and unexpected I don’t understand what’s happening, except within a split second my ears are full of a mechanical cry, and my stomach is suddenly roiling in a completely different, uncomfortable way. The slight groan of the van turns into a deafening crash and crunch of metal and glass—glass is flying everywhere. Instinctively, I cover my face and head with my arms, but I’m screaming too, glass caught between my teeth.
For a long time I can’t understand anything over the noise and the rocking of the vehicle, but then it fades. It’s quiet. For only a moment. Then yelling. People yelling from a distance, getting closer. Even in shock, I can hear their anger.
Then I recall what Wyles told me—that the roads are different now. More dangerous. I open my eyes, trying to make out in the dark what’s happened. The van is somehow flipped over onto its roof. I’m hanging by the seat belt; it’s digging into my stomach and bad shoulder.
“Jackson?” I search, struggling with the belt. It’s jammed and won’t release me. “Jackson, are you all right?”
No reply. There’s barely any light from the dashboard, and one of the headlights is gone now. In the dark, I can barely distinguish Jackson’s facial features. I think his eyes are closed, mouth open. I freeze in my struggles.
“Jackson?” I whisper. There’s something about the way his head hangs from his neck. The van rocks slightly from back to front, momentum from the crash still moving us. His head sways almost separate from his body.
The collective sound of a rioting mass is getting closer. It’s too dark out to see them, but they must be coming from the trees around us, which are set back from the road about half a mile. Déjà vu strikes. There are crunching footsteps—there must be frost on the grass—and the voices are raised, not quite in a shout, but in a jumble of low whispers, almost like a sigh. Almost like a snake slithering its way closer to strike.
Tearing my eyes away from my driver, I look down, or up, to my seat belt buckle. Desperately, I jab at the button, but it doesn’t release me, no matter how violent I am with it. I curse and wiggle around in the tight hold; it must have gotten tighter during the collision. There’s almost enough room—if I can just get my hips out from under it—and if I had something to grab ahold of to pull myself with—but the van’s ceiling is smooth and unhelpful, except for the shattered glass lying there. I feel the sting of fresh cuts in addition to the old wound of my shoulder throbbing.
I don’t have much time until those people reach the van, and I don’t know what they’ll do when they find me. Desperation is a welcome friend; before I nearly drowned in it. Now, it fuels me. Makes me stronger. My feet kick until they find purchase to push, and with my arms I push from the armrests. I’m still small, even with the weight I put back on, and inch by inch I work my way free. Eventually, gravity does the rest of the work for me. I crash to the ceiling, or floor, in a noisy protest of debris.
I flip myself upright and immediately crawl to Jackson, his hanging head eye level with me while I’m on all fours. I look up and freeze; his eyes aren’t closed. They’re wide open. And glassy.
Even with the dull roar of approaching danger, and despite knowing the answer already, I reach up and press two fingers to the juncture of skin under Jackson’s throat. The skin is still warm, but with a quickly approaching coolness, like midnight on earth and water.
“I’m sorry.” He’ll never hear it, but I am. I close his eyes and press my palm to his chest, right over where his beating heart should be. My moment of mourning has to be brief, however, and the first thing I know I need is a coat. The only coat in the van I can see is his.
Wrestling his arms out of the coat is almost as difficult as getting myself out of the seat belt; it takes more time than I have, but I won’t last long out in the cold without it. When I have it and slip my arms through the huge sleeves, before I can zip it up I notice something in the pocket. Two things, actually.
The first item, I know exactly what it is; it’s something I’ve thought about often and wished I had time to grab before leaving my dorm room at school. Despite my longing for it, I don’t want to see Jackson’s. I pull it out anyway. It’s a photograph of his wife, whose name he never told me, and him. It’s several years old, or at least Jackson looks like he’s aged a lot since the photo was taken. I imagine I probably look twice as old as I once did too. He’s got his arms around her from the back, and they’re standing in front of a Christmas tree, both with Santa hats on. It’s impossible to reconcile this Jackson with the one I knew.
I repocket the photo and pull out the other item, easily recognizable at first. It’s a small pill bottle—the old-fashioned kind, orange with a white top. There’s no label—there clearly used to be one, but it’s long gone now, scratched off or faded away. Inside, there are just two pills.
They’re oval-shaped and brown, rather innocuous looking, but I have my suspicions. A pill you only need one or two of, with a brown coat, most likely of rubber-based protection. It had to be some kind of kill-pill. Cyanide, maybe. He didn’t carry a gun on him like Bryant did; there was always a reserve bullet there, even if we didn’t let ourselves ever say it out loud, and I guess Jackson had to have his out too.
I can’t stand to look at him again, but I wonder if he ever planned on traveling far with me. Maybe he wanted to dump me somewhere, the camp even. Maybe he just wanted to find a nice quiet place to die. He never used the word “we” the entire time we spoke of our next moves; I had noticed. Were the supplies all for me?
I pocket the pills too.
Crawling through the cramped gap between the cab and the back, I look around, grab
bing a backpack and hurriedly cramming in blankets—two, this time—and as much food and water as possible. There’s a flashlight and candles and other things I never had the luxury of before. Soap, some clothes, a new lighter. A notepad, full of paper—but I prefer leather for documenting.
Backpack on my back, the last thing I grab is the bag of weapons. Every move I make is noisy—glass cracking, the metal groaning, and the hammering of my heart. There’s a bunk-like shelf with a bed in the back, bare except for the dangling straps with silver buckles. Without losing momentum, grabbing things as I go, I hit the back doors with a clang. The sound dies in the noise of the crowd, now fully descended on the van.
The back door won’t give, no matter how much I force it. It must be something that has to be opened from outside. Leaning back onto my palms, I kick at it with all my strength. Nothing.
Then the great clash of noise isn’t just upon me, but everywhere. All around me. Footsteps trampling against the top of the van deafen me. I flinch—there’s nowhere to run now.
“Get the doors off now!” someone yells, the voice slightly distorted. Behind me, hands reach through the driver’s side window where the glass is already knocked out. The glass on the passenger side where I was is broken out by kicking feet. I cover my face with the jacket.
When I peek through my cover, I see Jackson’s body violently ripped out of the van by people I still cannot see; I cry out, muffling it with his massive sleeve.
“Get the gas before it leaks, all of it.” The same voice? Maybe. “And open the back.”
There is barely time for his words to register before the great hulk of the van splits open like a mouth, guts and all pouring out. When I look up, there are blazing torches, like the mob is looking for a witch to set on fire. I am the witch—the one with all the power in this scenario, and I know when I see them that they will burn me alive.
It’s strange—I’ve never seen a group so militarized before. The men are lean but still muscular under their coats, and their guns aren’t the little handguns I’m used to. Their faces are hardened—Wyles was right—because they look at me, and maybe they see a girl, but they see the enemy first. Their guns are on me, and I have nowhere to go.
“Stop. Stop!” Another voice comes from behind where I can’t see. It’s a man with no fire, no gun. It’s impossible to tell until someone flashes a torch over his face—but yes, he’s quite young. Maybe younger than I am. “Look at her clothes. Under the jacket.”
The man in front, a clear leader by the way he holds himself in front of everyone, impatiently peers at me, stepping closer. I flinch when glass cracks under his foot, barely protected by an old tennis shoe wrapped in duct tape. Slowly, hopefully without attracting any more attention to myself, I push the knife sticking out of the weapons bag back in and zip it shut to keep their prying eyes off it.
It’s fortunate because the leader reaches forward—this time I don’t flinch—and drags me to my feet by the cuff of my shirt. My thin hospital issued shirt, I realize, and the group of them see it and collectively soften, their stances relaxing, their mouths losing their hard edge. The shirt tears a bit in his grip.
“What were you doing in the vehicle?” Leader asks. He still hasn’t let go of me, the bag of weapons at my feet.
“He was taking me to the camp.” It’s the truth, and it’s exactly what they expect to hear.
“Lucky for you we stopped him, then,” he says coldly.
“You almost killed me.” I keep the heat out of my voice, but judging by his face, he feels it all the same.
“Better dead on the road than dead in a camp.” While I may have never explicitly said the words before, I used to believe them. I do believe them.
Do I? I can’t turn to see Jackson hanging from his seat anymore—where did they take him?—but I think of his kindness; and Wyles, who might have wanted to keep me locked in that building, but he wasn’t malevolent, just misguided; or Barlett, who may have been cold, but never actively wished me dead.
These strangers, my self-professed liberators, can’t say the same.
“Get out of the vehicle,” Leader says but tosses me out before I can move. The backpack is still firmly around my shoulders, and I drag along the weapons bag with my foot.
“Clear it out, gentlemen.” And then they’re looters, not just murderers. Murderers. Are there such things anymore? I didn’t think so before, but now, stepping into the thick cold, I peer nervously around the side of the van.
The wheels are still spinning. The front end under the bumper is completely crumpled in—like it was mauled by a huge animal. Gashes run along the side—huge ones, all ragged edges, like claws ran down it. I can’t see anything on the road in front of us, and I have no idea how they managed to inflict this kind of damage.
Then I see it—him. His body, lying on the frosted earth, just feet away from the van. There’s a guard standing over him—a guard. What for? He’s dead. I know it, and they know it. Behind me, I can see a couple of men hovering around me. My very own guards.
“Did you attack the van because you’re looking for supplies or because you were hoping to hurt people?”
There’s a long moment of silence when I assume no one will answer me.
“Supplies, of course.” It’s the younger boy answering, someone I know not at all but know already. He’s the one who will answer because he thinks he knows, and that makes him the least qualified to. He’s only alive because of the group, and the bitter part of me wishes he could get cut off, just for a while, to see how well he fends for himself and whether or not he’d hurt people if he had to.
“You’re bleeding.” He steps closer to me, still in the dark, but I see his hand reaching for my head. I smack it away with little thought. He gasps.
“Don’t touch me.” My head injury isn’t severe enough to worry about; it’ll bleed for a long time despite being a relatively shallow cut, but it’ll heal on its own.
“Take whatever she has.” The leader walks out of the back of the van and stomps down the road past me.
“Hey!” I grab the weapons bag the same time as another man does. It creaks between us, like we’re fighting for the last scrap of food. “These are mine!”
“Nothing is yours anymore, little girl.” The man struggling with me is missing a front tooth and a few molars. I eye him for a moment, shift my weight back onto my left foot, then kick out with the right. He doesn’t stumble enough to let go, but enough I can swing the bag toward him suddenly, colliding with his face.
He lets go, his nose bleeding. Maybe even broken. Gathering the bag to my chest, I step away from the men, one hand reaching inside for a weapon. Any weapon.
“These are my bags. I had them when he picked me up, about forty miles west of here,” I say, but immediately I wish I hadn’t. The bags look too new yet. I wish I could drop them a few times to roll some dust onto them, but too late.
“You’re lying.” Leader steps forward, and a synchronization of steps fall behind him. “Those kind of supplies don’t exist anymore, and they certainly don’t exist in the hands of one person. They’re from the corporations.”
He takes a step forward; I take a step back. Even if I thought I might disable him enough to run for it, there are too many of them. Now that they’ve all assembled, I count nine able-bodied men.
“We don’t mean you any harm—”
“Any more harm, you mean.”
“—but we have rules. We don’t hurt our kind. We’ll let you come with us if you want, or you can go your own way after this.”
I can’t help but glance at the young boy, who looks sharply at Leader when he says this. Sending me on my own is a deathtrap. That’s what they all think. They think they are merciful, but they would have me march blindly in the dark and cold and call that mercy.
“You just have to split those supplies with us first.”
Then I remember. I remember a time when I had all the supplies and power and people asked me for the same th
ing. I ultimately helped them, didn’t I? Shared until I could help them recover their own. It seems like another lifetime ago replaying in front of me, except these men are not helpless. They have guns and clearly have been eating well enough to sustain some muscle.
“Fine. We split the supplies, then I walk away.”
Leader nods; most of the men behind him look bored already, except for the young boy, who looks distraught at what must seem like my imminent death. I hate him for his kindness but mostly for his naivety.
“The knives are mine.” I drop the weapons bag, then the backpack. Leader approaches me, guard down. A fool, then, and his men the biggest fools of them all for following his lead.
To their credit, they split the supplies fairly. While I repack my backpack with everything I’ll take—still a lot of food, a couple changes of clothes, the flashlight, a gun and ammunition, water and supplies to sanitize running water, one blanket, and of course, a small collection of knives. I place one bodily on me, the one closest to what I was used to throwing before. It’s a little heavier than the one I picked up from the early days, so for practice, I square my feet and give it a throw.
It just happens to hit the van a foot to the right of where I was aiming, closer to one of the guys’ heads than I intended. When he looks at me, startled, the knife solidly embedded in the metal, I shrug.
Leader smiles. “Guess you don’t need our help after all.”
The entire van groans and shifts when I pull the knife back out. I glance at the blade—still perfect. “Never said I did.”
Lifting my backpack again, I am rendered complete. I am no longer encumbered by a second bag and the pleasant weight of a weapon sits on my lower back. It’s more than I had before. The men are finished with the van, having stripped it of everything, even the insulation and the leather of the seats.
Then they chuck the gasoline they drained from the tank all over its ruined remains. I know why—they don’t want the suits to come and find it, use it again. But I wonder why they don’t use it themselves—I was never tempted to steal a car because it drew too much attention to me, but they’re a group. An armed, organized group. They might survive a little attention if they drove a caravan about.