by Annie Oldham
“Will we be closely watched?”
The man frowns. “I don’t know. We’ve always just worried about the drop part of it. We’ve never tried to go to the water. I don’t think very many people go over that way at the time of the drop, so you might stick out.”
“They could pretend to be workers,” Lana says, chewing on a strand of hair.
“Maybe.”
“There isn’t any other option that will get them to the water if someone sees them.” Lana looks at me, and her eyes are shining. “It’s so dangerous. Are you sure you want to do this?”
Nell looks at Red and then squeezes my hand. I nod. There’s no other choice. Jack hasn’t said so, but I really don’t think Red can get better on his own, not with the way things are now. He doesn’t stand a chance.
“Yes,” Red says in a raspy voice. He turns to me. “I trust you, Terra. I’ve trusted you since you first came to us. That’s not going to stop now.”
Tears fill my eyes. I’ve hurt so many people because of the lies I’ve had to tell on the Burn. But Nell and Red don’t care about where I come from. They just care about me.
Thank you.
“What time is your sub coming?”
No idea. Dread fills my gut. I have no idea. I look at my hands. Usually comes at midnight.
“You’ll have to find a place to hole away. The supply drop starts at noon and lasts until four or five. You can’t wait around after that, or the agents will take you into custody for loitering.”
Is there anything they don’t take you into custody for? But of course I don’t ask it. I don’t have to—they’re probably all thinking the exact same thing.
Nell smoothes her hair back away from her face and twists it into a neat bun at the nape of her neck. “Then we should probably go. Are you ready, Red?”
“As ready as I’ll ever be, I’m afraid.”
“We’re going to slow you down,” Jack says to the man. He puts a hand on the back of his neck as he watches the man and Nell lift Red up. “If anything goes wrong, I don’t want to be the one who got you into it.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” the man says, patting Red on the back. “We’re all in this together.”
We make our way through the building. Sunlight filters in through the windows and glints off the shards of glass littering the floor. The whole building seems to sparkle. How could something so run down seem so beautiful? I linger at a window and look over the city. Out there, though, the sun shines harshly and there’s litter in the street. People are starting to trickle out of the buildings. They look around them and scurry away like rats. The man said it was illegal to live in these buildings, so anyone in this part of the city must fear the agents.
When we make it to the bottom floor, the man opens the door, and the warm breeze sweeps over me. I can smell the ocean on it. I stand on tip-toe, waiting until he motions us out, and then we creep from the cover of the building and we’re back on the street. I feel exposed out here with all the windows watching us.
We inch along, and Red stumbles with us. He curses as he tries to get his legs moving one after another, step by step.
“What did you say?” Nell asks. She has a stern look on her face, and Red knows he’s in for a scolding.
“I said this is never going to work.”
“So help me, Red, if you say something like that again—”
He grips her hand. “I know, I know. I won’t.”
But I’m not convinced. I can see the round bowl of the stadium ahead of us. We’re not even halfway there yet, and his limbs are already trembling with exertion.
We come to an enormous metal fence topped with curls of barbed wire.
“It’s the border between where they want us to live and where we want to live,” the man says.
“Is it guarded?” Jack says.
“Not usually. Only when there’s been some kind of infraction and they want to make a point of it. Then we’re cut off from the rest of the city until it eases up a bit.”
“How long does that last?”
“Depends on the infraction. A month was the longest it’s ever gone.” The man looks down. “We lost a few of the old ones then. They gave up their rations to the kids.”
“If they know you’re here why even bother with the fence?” Jack asks. His face is troubled.
“I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve asked myself that. They don’t really see us as a threat, and I think they just like to see us suffer.”
Yup, sounds about right.
We near the fence, and the group in front of us stoops through a hole cut through the wire. All of us bunch up here, waiting our turn to funnel through. We come through in a steady stream, filing down the wide street. On this side of the fence, more people pour from the buildings. The difference in the buildings on this side of the fence is drastic. The windows are all intact, trees line the streets, and only an occasional scrap of trash skitters down the concrete on the breeze. The people are entirely different, too.
Most of them look like empty shells.
Every single person that we stayed with last night had determined faces and fierce eyes. But everyone filling in the gaps around us look like they’re on autopilot.
Loyalty serum? I ask Jack.
He shakes his head. “I have no idea.” He turns to the man. “Are they all like this?”
The man frowns and adjusts Red’s arm over his shoulder. Red opens his mouth to curse, but Nell glares at him.
“No, not all of them. But it seems like after a while they all get this way.”
“Why?”
Lana shrugs her shoulders. “All of these people work for the government. Nothing glamorous, of course. No ‘normal’ citizen gets a glamorous job. They’re street sweepers or shelf stockers or janitors or cafeteria workers. In exchange they get barely enough food at supply drops and an apartment the size of a postage stamp. They’re told their jobs are essential to the city and that they’re doing their country a great service. They either lap it up or completely snap. You can guess which ones these are.”
Lappers?
She nods. “I’ve seen a few completely snap. I’ve never seen them again.”
Jack looks askance at an older woman next to him whose eyes stare straight ahead. Her hair is combed stick-straight and her clothes are neatly pressed. She actually looks like she could be right at home in the colony. Except for the blank expression on her face. At least in the colony everyone looked alive.
“I wonder if they have the loyalty serum here?” Jack whispers.
Nell’s eyes harden. “If they’re subjecting these poor people to that awful stuff. . .” She pauses for a long moment. “I don’t know if I can go to the sub with you, Terra.”
What? I’m sure she can see the shock all over my face.
“What are you saying, Nell?” Red says, straining to lean toward her.
“Look at them all.” She waves her hand at them. “We can’t just run away. We have to help them.”
We will help them, I write to her. Let’s get to the colony first.
“So you’re coming with us?”
I hadn’t really thought about it. In my mind I had only gotten as far as the sub. What happens after that is nebulous. I just assumed it would be what happened after any other sub rendezvous: the nomads get on, and I disappear again. But the more I do think about it, the more it’s the only way for this to work. Nell’s right—we have to help these people, and to do that, we have to get rid of the serum. But that’s not something I can do by myself. I don’t know if it’s something this man or this woman can do.
I don’t think a handful of nomads would have the resources I need—but the colony might. I think I have to ask my father for help. The idea makes my stomach churn. I shake my head to clear the fear away. My mouth is dry.
“Will you come with us?” Nell asks again.
I can feel Jack’s eyes on me. He has a vested interest in my decision. I know he’ll follow me, and that’s not
something I take lightly. Taking him back to the colony would keep him safer. But then when I come back to the Burn—because I will come back to the Burn, there’s no question about that—I’ll be throwing him right back into it again. I have a headache coming on.
“Terra?”
Finally, I nod. My decision takes away a burden but adds a hundred more.
“I’m glad for that,” Nell says, looking forward again. We’re almost to the stadium. “I don’t know if I could go down to this colony of yours if you weren’t coming with us.”
Red chuckles. “An odd thought, isn’t it? Going to an ocean colony? If we had ever had children, Nellie girl, that would have been one bedtime story I would have loved to tell.
Nell has a wistful look on her face. “We’ll see.”
We’re still half a block away, and now there are people pressing in on us from all sides. Most of them have the ghost look, but some of them have watchful eyes. When our eyes meet, they linger and then flick away, always wary. There are soldiers standing at attention around the stadium, and an agent with a scanner. He waves the machine over people’s forearms as they come in. As I watch, the agent scans someone’s arm. The scanner lights up red. The agent motions, and two soldiers pounce on a middle-aged man. He kicks and screams as they drag him to an unmarked black truck.
“We can’t go that way,” Jack says.
“No trackers?” Lana asks.
I shake my head. Not a chance.
“What about them?” the man asks, nodding to Nell and Red.
“Yes,” they both say in unison. Of course. That would have been one of the first things the government did when they were captured.
“That makes it trickier. There’s scanners and soldiers all over this place. We could cut them out.”
“We don’t have the right supplies,” Jack says.
“Don’t need to,” the man says, and Jack makes a horrified face.
“We’ll make it work,” Jack says. He drifts to the edge of the surge of bodies, so slowly no one would notice it. We’re pressed up against the front of a building. A red-and-white-striped awning shades us, and the window is crystal clear. There are books lined up inside. Every book is exactly the same, but still—a bookstore? I had no idea such a thing existed here.
The man cranes his head. “There’s an alley that runs between this building and the next. It leads to the next street over and we can bypass the stadium that way. It might be watched, though, so we’ll need to be careful.”
Lana looks over her shoulder. “They’re not looking this way,” she whispers.
We move as quickly as we can into the alley. Red’s jaw is set and I see the pain in his eyes. He clenches Jack’s hand until his knuckles are white. I can’t imagine how hard this is for him. Sweat drips down his face and his cheeks are pale, but still he doesn’t say a word.
The alley is half in sunlight and half in shadow. Doorways lead off on either side, and a few windows sparkle further up the sides of the buildings. There’s nothing else here but us, and the flash of glass on a black scanner at the other end of the alley. Jack hisses in a breath.
How far to water? I ask Lana.
“Two blocks.”
I look at Jack, and he knows what I’m thinking. How much time do we have until those scanners relay their information back to someone who will do something about it? The hospital knows by now that Nell and Red are gone. I doubt they think they’re in San Diego, but once someone figures it out, when will the soldiers leave the stadium and come after us instead?
How long to midnight?
Lana frowns and checks her watch. “It’s only twelve o’clock right now. You still have a long time.”
This is never going to work. There are too many scanners, too many soldiers, and too many things that could go wrong. I feel Nell’s and Red’s eyes on me, and I’d like nothing more than to crawl into a hole. Taking those nomads I had never even met before to the sub was so different from this. I feel the weight of this pressing on my shoulders, because these are people I love. They’re family. I close my eyes and put my fingertips to my temples. The headache that’s been threatening is coming on hard now.
Nell puts a hand to my cheek. “Terra.”
I can’t look at her. If I look at her, I’m afraid all I’m going to see is death.
“Look at me, dear.” She gently pries my hands from my face. “You’re so young. Sometimes I forget that. How old are you? Seventeen, eighteen?”
Seventeen.
Nell smiles and wraps her arms around me. I lean into her, into the comfort she offers me. “I don’t want you to feel responsible for Red and me.”
I laugh, and it’s choked.
“I mean it, Terra. You’ve done so much already just getting us out of that hospital, letting me see Red again when those . . . people . . . might have taken him away forever.”
I glance over at Red, and his chest is heaving. Nell gently turns my face back.
“I love you. You should know that. I know that makes things both easier and harder. But you should also know that because I love you, I know you’ll do your best, and anything bad that happens won’t be your fault, and I won’t blame you.”
Nell looks at me expectantly, but I’m not sure what she wants me to say. The alleyway feels much too stuffy for this conversation. Sweat pours into my eyes and I brush it away.
“I won’t blame you,” Nell whispers again, and she starts walking toward the scanner.
“Nell!” Red hisses, and the man, Jack, and Red start after her. “What are you doing?”
“Someone had to get started. Poor Terra feels the weight of the world on her shoulders, and all the rest of you can do is stand around and stare.”
We’re halfway down the alley, and I can already hear the faint whir of machinery in the scanner. It makes me cold all over. It’ll be able to scan Nell’s and Red’s trackers soon.
“Where do we go once we’re out of the alley?” Jack asks.
“We either go to the high-rise just south of us, or we go to the industrial area,” the man says, eyeing the scanner. Its glass face glints as it rotates toward us. “I say you get as close as you can to the water and hide.”
“You’re not coming?” Jack says.
The man shakes his head. “Lana and I still have trackers too. And if our tracker info is sent along with your friends’ here, the government will probably assume we were together, and I don’t want to be caught with some escapees. They’ll hunt us down and there’ll be no way we can help anyone else find you again.”
I nod.
“Thanks, Terra,” Lana says. She shakes my hand.
I try to smile, but I’m shaking so hard it probably looks warped on my face. Then Lana and the man turn abruptly and follow the alley, disappearing around the corner. The four of us stand still for a moment. Then Red reaches for me, and he drapes his other arm over my shoulder.
“Might as well get it over with,” he says.
I laugh loudly, and this time the laugh booms out of me, and all of my worry is expressed with it. It feels like a relief to let it out.
“Let’s go,” Jack says.
We make our way down the alley, and our progress is painfully slow. Each step toward the scanner makes my stomach lurch, but Nell steps in beside me, and with Nell, Red, and Jack surrounding me, I feel like we just might be able to do this. It seems improbable with Nell’s and Red’s medical condition, but I don’t pause to dwell on that.
We’re twenty feet from the scanner when I hear the faint beep of a tracker being scanned. Then another.
“Now we hurry,” Jack says.
We shuffle along, turn the corner, and I blink to keep the sun out of my eyes. We’re out in the open, the wide expanse of street leading the way past a tall building on our right and toward the industrial area. It’s a series of low buildings, and on either side of each one, I see a patch of blue. We’re so close. I keep expecting to hear the pounding of boots on the pavement, the bark of a soldier’
s command, or the snide laughter of an agent, but there’s nothing but the blazing sun and the occasional call of a seagull.
Our feet scrape against the concrete, and Red is getting heavier and heavier on my shoulder.
“Do you need to stop, Terra?” he asks. He breath comes out ragged.
I shake my head, forcing my legs to keep plowing ahead.
“We need to get as close to water as we can,” Jack says.
“Not at the expense of all of us,” Nell says, worry written all over her face.
“Keep going.” Jack puts one foot in front of the other, and Red’s feet are dragging, but he moves them and tries to keep up.
We pass the high-rise and cross another street toward one of the work buildings. There’s no one around, and the streets are eerie in their silence. We come to a gate that’s been left open as everyone has made their way to the stadium for the med drop. A beep to the left stops me dead in my tracks. Another scanner.
“Now they know we’ve been here, too. Keep going.” Jack leads us through the gate.
“We can’t hide inside, Jack,” Nell says. “Not when they know we’ve been through this gate.”
“We’re not going to hide inside.”
He pulls, and Red and I follow him around the building. Nell is close behind, her hands fluttering and her face turned away, watching our backs. Still nothing but the sound of our feet on pavement. Nothing but footsteps, seagulls, and the ripple of water. The lack of sound is pressing on me, and soon I can hear my heartbeat thrumming and the sound beats down on me. The tall buildings loom a block away, and all the reflecting windows are watchful eyes, and I’m sure there’s someone in there telling an agent exactly where we’re going. My palms are sweating, but there’s nothing to be done for it now.
“Where are we going?” Red asks in a croak. His lips are dry and he licks them, but it doesn’t help.
Jack grunts. “To the water.”
“We can’t stay there all day long, can we?” Nell asks. She puts a hand on my back as she once more turns over her shoulder. “I thought I saw something.”
I look back, but the sweat drips into my eyes, and I can’t be sure of anything I see. There’s still no sound, and everything behind us looks the same.