Inside

by Kyra Anderson

  I turned to Mark. He shrugged with one shoulder and nodded, giving some thought to the idea.

  “That could work really well,” I agreed. “We’ll have to do some more surveillance but we can definitely plan something. Thank you,” I grinned, hugging her.

  “I told you I wanted to help,” she said. “Let me help with this.”

  I turned to Mark again to see his reaction.

  “You have to get past the guard,” I teased. The leader of the Eight Group hesitated.

  “I don’t have to go to where you are, I would actually prefer not to,” she admitted. “I don’t want to know. The less I know about the technics, the better,” she laughed. “But, I do want to help in any way that I can. I wouldn’t mind getting out of this house more often.”

  My heart fell.

  “I’m sorry…” I murmured, hugging her again as Mark looked between the two of us, confused. Becca saw his expression and bluntly told him that her mother was having an affair and it was tearing the family apart. Once again, Mark got awkward. I laughed at how he was so nervous when he learned something personal about others. He wanted to help everyone who was in a bad situation, which was obvious by his concern and desire to understand why Becca was upset, but with how bluntly Becca had told him her two big secrets, he was immediately taken aback.

  “He’s adorable,” Becca chuckled.

  “Yes, he is,” I agreed. “Tell you what, we’re going to collect the food from Carolina Media on Monday, around ten at night,” I explained. “Meet us there and we’ll let you know if we need you to do anything.”

  “Sounds good,” she agreed. “This is kind of exciting.”

  “Right now,” I admitted. “But it might get really nasty.”

  “That’s okay,” Becca assured, her face turning serious. “I can handle it.”

  * *** *

  The information Becca had given us had been extremely helpful. That same night, eager for something to do, a group led by Griffin went to watch two of the camps while Tori took another group for reconnaissance on a third. Josh took the Eight Group to another two camps, Mark joining them, while I was left with Clark and most of the humans in the fort, waiting for them to return, watching Peter and the others slowly sort through the wreckage that was the medical room.

  A lot had been destroyed from the mishap with the tunnel. While Peter said he did not yet know what had survived, he told me there was no need to find more medical supplies. He wanted to make sure of what we still had.

  I decided anyway to take at least one case of medical supplies from each camp if we did decide to raid.

  Early in the morning, I went into the main bunker to see if any of the teams had returned. Hearing Griffin’s typical snoring from the side of the bunk room, I knew that at least they had made it back safely.

  Tori was in the strategy room with Mark and the rest of the Eight Group. They immediately filled me in on the different camps and where they thought would be best to raid first. The larger camps were the bigger targets, since they would have a greater number of supplies. I told them that we should take at least two cases of bullets from each camp and one case of emergency medical supplies. They agreed immediately and said that they would do reconnaissance on the final two camps that night.

  I stayed with them in the strategy room, pulling out a map of the city and putting Xs where the camps were to see if we could hit more than one camp in a night. After what had happened to the first camp, it would be foolish to wait between raids and give them time to prepare other camps.

  Griffin and Clark joined in the planning once they woke and we started talking about what camps we wanted to hit and how many people we would need to accomplish the raids.

  Refusing to sit out on the plan, Mark and I had another one-sided argument about whether I should be a part of the raids or not. I finally won, though I had to continuously tell Mark that what had happened last time was the result of an accident when the light tower fell on the tent. It was no fault on my part.

  However, I was outnumbered on the decision of my role in the raid.

  Monday, a small group went to collect the goods from Carolina Media around seven. I had felt bad about lying to Becca about the time to meet, but she was not someone I saw every day, and it was entirely possible that Dana or the Commission could meet with her and I would never know. Therefore, I told her to meet us three hours later to allow some time for us to get the food back to the fort.

  Mark and Clark stayed with me outside Carolina Media, hanging around in the back alley and waiting for Becca as it got colder.

  Poor Mark had a moment of panic when Clark said he was going to get coffee for us at the coffee shop down the street. The snow had disappeared from the streets, but the clear sky of early April left a chill in the in night air that bit to the bone. Mark was not sure if he should go with Clark or stay with me. Finally persuaded to stay with me when Clark told him that he would look strange at eight-thirty at night wearing sunglasses, Mark anxiously waited for Clark to return.

  The warm coffee did wonders, warming me up and making me more alert. I also felt better realizing that we had just gathered food for the revolution and that we were about to go through with another plan that I was sure was going to be successful.

  Becca showed up as promised around ten o’clock, peeking around the back of the Carolina Media building where we had been standing since loading the van with the food.

  “Hey,” she smiled, hugging me before hugging Clark as well. “I haven’t seen you in forever, how have you been?”

  “Not bad,” Clark smiled shyly.

  “Where is everyone else?”

  “They just left,” I lied.

  “Oh, okay. Do you have anything you want me to do?”

  “Yes.” I nodded. “Will you be available Wednesday starting at seven?”

  Thankfully, she was.

  Mark teaching me how to drive the van had proven to be unsuccessful and stressful for both of us, so Josh had to take over instruction, taking me on a few practice runs on bumpy dirt roads. I, by no means, felt comfortable driving the large van, but I put on a strong face, wanting to do my part.

  I also wanted Becca to do well. This was, in a sense, her initiation. Mark did not trust Becca, but he wanted to give her a chance. Wednesday was her chance.

  She met me at the motel where we had left the van. She looked around nervously. I was standing by the van, waiting, and called to her. She shuffled to me, nervous.

  “Why are we here?” she asked, looking around. “It’s really skeevey…”

  “It’s alright, we’re not staying,” I assured. “These are for you,” I said, handing her a batch of papers. “You’re riding shotgun.”

  She got into the van and I quickly moved around the front of the car, climbing into the driver’s seat as she blinked at me.

  “You’re driving?”

  “Yeah.”

  “But…you don’t have a license…” she told me, as though I had forgotten that fact.

  “We’re only going to be on the main roads for a while,” I assured, turning the car on and buckling my seatbelt. “Josh taught me the basics.”

  “The basics,” Becca repeated, her tone worried. “Great…”

  I tried not to let her know how nervous I was. I was not worried about the raids, since I would not be in the action. My job with Becca was to pick up the supplies from three camps before dropping the crates off where those who had stayed behind, organized by Clark, would take the boxes into the fort. My anxiety rested solely in the fact that I had to drive.

  I was tense the entire time, trying very hard not to go too fast or too slow while telling Becca to guide me.

  We made it onto the first dirt road with little trouble, stopping when we saw a person standing in the road. We had a longer line of people to the road, which kept me from driving too close to the camp. I put the car in park and opened the doors to load the supplies. When we were ready for the crates, I turned to Becca.
/>   “Okay, see the lines at the bottom of the map?” She glanced at the paper. “Those are for the supplies. Make sure we have one medical crate, four weapon crates, and seven ration crates. That’s how much we’re taking from each camp.”

  “Will all of that fit?” she asked skeptically. The seats had been taken out to fit as much as possible so that we could move quickly through each site.

  “We tested it.”

  “Lily!” Jake called, telling me that the supplies were starting to come forward. I stood by the side door and waited for the first crate, which I could see being passed from one person to the next toward us quickly. Once the group hit this spot, they had to move to another location. We were hitting three small and two large camps that night with two groups of people, which meant everyone had to move quickly to hit all targets before the sun came up.

  When Jake passed the crate to me, I turned it toward Becca so she could see the labeling. She squinted in the dark, crouching close.

  “Ammo.”

  “Weapon,” I said, climbing inside the van and putting the crate tightly against the driver’s seat. After coming out of the car, I waited only fifteen seconds before I saw the next crate.

  We had four weapons crates before long, and the food boxes followed shortly. Everyone moved smoothly, quietly, completely in sync and focused. We had to wait a little after the seventh food crate to get the medical supplies, since they had to be found in the tent before they were passed over the wall.

  “Do I even want to know how you guys are getting these things over the wall?” Becca asked during the short waiting period, her eyebrows high.

  “Let’s just say you don’t want to piss any of the experiments off,” I smiled. “They’re tossing them over.”

  “Of course they are,” Becca chuckled brokenly. “They are weapons made by the Commission, of course they have super-strength.”

  When Becca confirmed that we had the medical supplies, I loaded the box and the line of people darted into the trees, moving to the next location. Some were going to take public transportation if they were inconspicuous, while the others went back down the tunnels to move faster and out of sight.

  I climbed into the driver’s seat, backing down the path and into the parking lot, letting Becca swing the “No Trespassing” gate closed behind us.

  Reading the directions from the next map, we made it onto a deserted section of the old state highway, which was surrounded by trees and extremely dark. I saw one woman, Emilie, setting the final crate on the stack she had made on the side of the road. Pulling over, I scrambled out and opened the door. Becca did not need to be told what to do, using the lights of the car to read the sides of the crate and confirm that we had what we needed while Emilie disappeared into the woods to move to the next spot.

  I did not feel the same kind of excitement from previous times of raiding government establishments. Instead, there was a focused feeling of purpose.

  I was feeling a little more comfortable driving as we went to the third location, though I was still driving slowly in care of the crates in the back.

  The slope to get to the third location was bumpy from the abandoned asphalt that had cracked and sunken in over the years. Even with how slow we drove, we had to wait for the crates from the third location. By the time the crates made their way to the car it was already eleven at night, and we were running behind schedule. I was worried that we would not be able to hit all locations before the sky started to get light.

  Stacking everything in tightly, we barely managed to close the back doors of the vehicle.

  Then, it was a mad dash to the others waiting to unload the van and take everything to the fort. I did not drive as carefully, concerned with the sudden time-crunch I felt. Becca had to continuously remind me to slow down, worried about police pulling us over, since we were past curfew.

  I finally pulled up to the park where the group was waiting, Clark shivering in his jacket. I threw the car into park and clamored out.

  “I was getting worried,” Clark hissed.

  “We’re running a little behind, but nothing is wrong,” I assured, jogging to the back of the car. Everyone flooded forward and I started rapidly pulling out the crates, handing them to whatever hands were nearby. “Just stack these somewhere, we really need to get moving,” I ordered.

  We had the back of the van emptied in three minutes. Half of the people were helping me get crates out of the car while the other half were moving them out of sight of the road.

  When the van was empty, Becca turned to Clark.

  “Are you okay handling everything from here?”

  “Yes,” he affirmed. “We’ll see you in a couple hours.”

  The next location was the furthest camp from town and the biggest one we were going to hit. That meant both teams were meeting at that particular site, though a few individuals were moving on to be sure that the other forts had not been alerted to the raids.

  It took me and Becca forty-five minutes to get to the place in the road where we were supposed to stop.

  “It’s here,” she said, looking at the map.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I’m sure,” she said, looking up at the road and then back down to the map. “Stop, stop…” she whispered.

  I slowed the car, looking around the dirt road, not seeing anything distinguishable. I saw no one from our group, worrying me that we were in the wrong spot.

  “Let me see the map.” I glanced over the papers, turning the lights of the van off. “It looks like there should be a lot…”

  Becca looked around and then pointed at the map.

  “I was following the bends in the road, and we came to here.”

  “But there’s some kind of…space here,” I said, pointing next to the X that marked where we were supposed to be. “I don’t see one here.”

  “If we go any further up, we’re going to get closer to the camp.”

  “Okay, let’s get out and see if we can find the lot.”

  “Why don’t we wait to see if someone will find us?”

  “We don’t have a lot of time. I want to be in the right place so that we can get moving. If they’re not here in a half hour, we have reason to worry and we’ll need to book it out of here.”

  We got out of the van, but never wandered out of sight of it.

  “Lily,” Becca hissed further down the road after we had been searching for three minutes. “Over here.”

  I turned down the slope and walked to her. I saw a dirt lot that could barely fit the van and a large ditch between that and the road.

  “I think this is it,” she said.

  “I hope not,” I grumbled, looking at the ditch. “I don’t know if the van can make it through that.”

  “It should be fine.”

  “Let me see the map.”

  After debating with each other for a few minutes in the cold, trying to keep quiet as we deliberated, I finally gave in and assumed Becca was right, going to the car and letting it roll down the hill before turning it to the lot. Becca guided me between the two massive trees that almost clipped the side mirrors as I grumbled irritably, knowing she could not hear me.

  The van gave a jolt when it went into the ditch, and I pressed my foot on the accelerator, causing the engine to roar as it heaved over the other side of the ditch, barely clipping the back bumper on the road as the back tires descended heavily.

  But I managed to clear the ditch, even though my hands were shaking with fear that the van had been stuck.

  Becca climbed into the car and smiled.

  “See?”

  We sat in silence for a few minutes before Becca struck up conversation, both of us watching the surrounding trees for the others of the raid.

  “So…Dana Christenson…you said he was totally crazy,” Becca started quietly.

  “Completely.”

  “And Leader Simon is too afraid of him to do anything?”

  “Right.”

  “Then, why didn�
��t you just…kill him when you were down in the Commission?” she asked. I sighed heavily and shook my head.

  “Apparently, it’s not that simple,” I murmured. “Mark tried it once and it cost him his voice. We needed to find a way to take him down from outside. Inside the Commission…it’s like you’ve walked into another dimension. Everything is so…”

  “So?” she prompted when I trailed off.

  “This is going to sound stupid, but amoral…primitive, maybe even decadent. There is only one rule, and that’s to obey Dana. Otherwise…everyone is having affairs, sleeping around…enjoying the torture and mutilation of people…”

  “No one says anything?” she whispered, horrified.

  “What can we say? Dana changes people. He even turned my mother against the family. She almost broke some of my bones before I got out of the house.”

  “Why?”

  “I spoke out against Dana,” I told her with a shrug, keeping my eyes away from hers. “Everyone is so loyal to him. They act like he’s God…”

  Becca fell silent.

  “Maybe, in a way…he is God,” I hissed, keeping my eyes in the trees. “He has the whole world in the palm of his hand…”

  There were ten seconds of silence before I saw a figure moving in the trees.

  “Finally, they’re here.” Becca followed me out of the car.

  Jake called to me quietly when he got closer.

  “You didn’t have to pull into the lot,” he chuckled.

  “Told you!” I hissed at Becca, though I was smiling.

  Even after Jake made it to his spot and the others had formed the line, there was still a long wait in the cold before we had crates to stack in the van. I used the time to ask Jake how everyone was doing.

  “Fine,” he assured. “I’m starting to think the Eight Group are literal ninjas,” he chuckled. “They are moving so quickly from each location.”

  “The Eight Group?” Becca whispered, nudging me for an answer.

  “Mark’s group of friends.”

  “Why are they called the Eight Group?”

  “Kind of a long story,” I evaded. I did not want to spend my time discussing the rankings in the wards of the experiments, or the other Asians who had become a part of the Eight Group. I did not want to reveal too much since they were so vital to our intelligence, even though they no longer had inside information on the Commission of the People.