I managed to sleep a little bit of sleep that night, no longer overwhelmed by the sudden reality of leaving the country. Therefore the next day, I felt more able to keep up with Mark, even though my legs were quite sore from the previous day and there were angry blisters on my feet.
We carefully picked through the wilderness, skirting rural areas of the small towns that surround Central. Our group passed through pastures of farms, getting strange looks from cows and livestock as we interrupted their grazing. There was only one time that we had to frantically duck into an irrigation ravine to avoid being seen by a farmer on a tractor. Thankfully, we were able to sneak around him without being spotted by crawling through the muddy irrigation ditch.
After three days of walking and taking shift sleeping in short blocks, we managed to get to the first safe house.
It was also in a rural area, surrounded by large plots of land planted with produce and hay. Mark found a grove of trees growing around a creek flowing out of a nearby reservoir and had us stop for a few hours. From his vantage point crouching among the trees, Mark watched the small, dilapidated farmhouse that was supposed to be our safe house. Even though we had heard from the other groups that had gone to that same save house that everything was fine, Mark’s paranoid nature made him take the time to observe the little house with peeling white paint, just to be sure that it was safe to approach.
He remained unconvinced until dusk began to descend over the land. It was then that he turned to Jeff and motion for him to talk to the owners of the house. I could tell from the hesitant look on Mark’s face that he was anxious about giving up control. However, his damage vocal chords and inability to communicate would make it impossible for him to confirm with the house owners that we were welcome as refugees in their home.
Jeff approach the back door, glancing over his shoulder toward to our location before lifting his hand and knocking on the back door. I was also surprisingly anxious, worried that it would be us—the last group—that would run into trouble with the safe houses.
The door opened and an older woman greeted Jeff. They spoke for a few moments, Jeff motioning over his shoulder, before shaking the woman’s hand. She nodded once, breaking the handshake to lift her hand into the air and motion us forward.
Mark insistently pushed everybody out of the trees, being sure he was the last one. With shaking legs, I crossed the manicured lawn to the back door where Jeff was thanking the older woman. When all five of us were standing at the back door, the woman smiled and stepped aside.
“Please come in,” she invited.
We stepped into the old farmhouse, the floorboards creaking under our feet. The house smelled old, as though it had been standing for a long time and had developed its very own scent that was not quite rot, or dust, or food, but some unique combination of all smells. The house was also a bit cold, since there were fewer windows in the old farmhouse than a modern home. My gaze passed over the peeling wallpaper, faded from the years and adorned with old pictures of the generations that had lived in the house.
“You must be starving,” the old woman said with a gentle smile. “My daughter is just starting to make dinner, but if you’re hungry, I can make you something quickly to tide you over.”
“No, we wouldn’t want to be any more of an inconvenience,” Jennifer insisted. “You’re already doing so much for us.”
“It is nothing,” the woman assured. “My name is Anita, and my daughter’s name is Natalie,” Anita introduced. “Normally my son-in-law and two grandchildren are also here, but he’s taken the boys on a fishing trip and won’t be back for a few days.”
“Thank you so much for opening your home to us,” Clark said sincerely as we walked further into the house, finally coming upon the faded furniture in the living room. “We know it is at great personal risk.”
“Everything in life is a risk,” Anita said with a laugh. “Good thing that I have a high risk tolerance.”
She motioned for us to sit around the living room and we eagerly dropped our heavy bags to the wooden floor and sunk into the old, but soft, sofas and chairs. Anita snapped her fingers.
“I will get you all some water!”
She left the living room as we all looked at one another.
I was surprised at how at ease Anita seemed with the strangers in her home. I supposed after over twenty groups had already come through her house in the last few months, she was already accustomed to the Central Angels that were fleeing the capital. Her gentle demeanor helped put me at ease as well, even though I still felt as though I was intruding on her home.
I gulped down the water that she brought for all of us and it appeared we were all thirsty as she laughed and said she would bring us a pitcher for us to refill our glasses.
When she returned with the pitcher, she sat with us in the living room.
“So, how many more of you are there?”
“We’re the last ones, ma’am,” Jeff said quietly.
“The last ones? There certainly weren’t as many of you as I thought there would be,” she said with a musing tone.
“What do you mean?” Clark asked.
“It’s just that the way your group is discussed on the news, and with how much you stirred up in the capital, it seemed like there had to be more of you,” Anita said, shaking her head. “But I suppose having more brain is better than having more brawn.”
“We had hoped it would do more,” I muttered.
“You did a lot,” Anita insisted. “It seems like there was at least one of you in each group that felt ashamed for giving up after everything that happened, but you certainly caused most of us to think more about the Commission of the People. You had some very compelling evidence against them. I’ve heard a lot of friends talk over dinners about what you revealed about the Commission, and what they’re likely doing with the people that they capture. And let me tell you, if you can get country folk to start talking about politics, you’ve done a good job planting the seed of doubt in the entirety of the American people.“
The statement was oddly comforting.
“Out of curiosity,” Clark started, “how many people do you help escape the country in a typical year?”
“It varies from year-to-year,” Anita answered. “In the last two years, the numbers have gone up. But in years before, I would be surprised if we saw more than twenty people find the safe house route and take it to the southern border.“
“Do you help just anybody cross the border into Mexico?” Jennifer pressed.
“We don’t help people across the border to Mexico,” Anita corrected. “What we do is provide people who need help with a safe place to sleep, a hot meal in their belly, and a little rest from whatever journey it is that they’re taking.”
I saw Mark smile out of the corner of my eye.
“Everyone’s got something they’re running away from,” Anita continued. “It’s none of my business what people are running from, but I’ll be damned if I don’t help someone in their journey to better their life, no matter what that means for them.”
I was smiling, too. Anita felt like a grandmother I had never had. Warm and understanding, wise, yet also tough.
“We thank you for everything that you do,” Jennifer said.
“If you don’t mind my asking,” I started. “How did you even get started doing this?”
“Well…” Anita started slowly, her eyes going to the hardwood floor. “I sort of fell into it.” She took a deep breath, her eyes still remaining downward. “See, when I was young, maybe about fifteen years old, there was a lot of turmoil in Central. The Coalition was making all sorts of fuss, trying to wage war against the Commission of the People, not unlike what you tried to do. There were protests and demonstrations all over the place. Every day it sounded like there was some new act of violence, or some riot from the Coalition. My mother and father were heavily against what the Coalition was doing, and constantly told me that it was wrong to oppose Central in any way.
&nbs
p; “And then one day, a good friend of mine was labeled as a Commission criminal,” Anita continued. “Poor thing had been in a horrible living situation. Her father was an abusive man, and often paid off his debts by forcing my friend to do sexual favors for money. When that was discovered, she was being investigated for illegal prostitution, even though she had been the victim the whole time. She became frantic, not wanting to go be arrested by the Commission of the People. She believed in what the Coalition was saying about it, that it was evil. She began asking around and, before I knew it, she said that she had found a member of the Coalition.”
“Is the Coalition still around?” Clark asked.
“Not as it once was,” Anita answered. “But there are still some old members that want to see a revival in the group and bring down the Commission, even now.” She sighed heavily and leaned back in her chair, rubbing the back of her neck tiredly. “My friend managed to get out of her house, and even manage to get away from her sentence as a Commission criminal with the help of the Coalition. However, one day she found herself in a gun fight and several of the Coalition members had been shot. She didn’t know where else to turn, or where would be safe, so she brought three of the wounded members to my house. We hid them in the old sheep barn, and I helped treat their wounds with vet supplies.” Anita laughed lightly, shaking her head.
“A lot of the members of the Coalition were very young,” she said. “And they could be very charismatic. I confess, I even thought about running away from home and joining them. But one of their leaders insisted that I remain at home, and asked if I would be willing to help aid people in escaping their fate with the Commission. It was an easy transition for me.”
“And you’ve been doing it ever since?” Jeff asked.
“No,” she admitted with a heavy sigh. “When I married and had my children, I was worried about them being in danger for my actions. So, I stopped. But over time, when the children were grown and my husband had passed away, I felt the call to do it once more. I don’t know, it felt like there was a part of me missing when I stopped helping people. Once the kids moved out, I tried to reconnect with my old Coalition contacts. We somehow managed to get a network that was expansive enough to help people, even though we’re only a fraction of what we were before.”
“And your daughter knows about all this?” Clark asked nervously.
“Yes, she knows,” Anita assured. “This big, old property is tough for me to manage on my own, particularly after my husband died. My daughter agreed to move back home, but only after I told her what was going on with the refugees that we housed. I told her that I did something that the government would consider illegal, and if she didn’t want to help me in that endeavor, then it was best for her not to move back home. But she agrees that the Commission is a dangerous institution. She has been helping me for nearly twelve years now.”
“Well, I cannot tell you how thankful I am that there are some who are willing to help people like us. We know it’s a great risk. Not many would reach out to help domestic terrorists,” I said.
“Domestic terrorists…” she laughed, shaking her head. “I don’t care what Central has labeled anybody. Labels are the reason the Commission became as powerful as it is. I don’t care what labels you have, I only care that you’re trying to make your life better, and that you’re not hurting anybody. Beyond that, nothing else matters.”
The statement was both a shock and a revelation. Considering how quickly the public had turned on us after Chris had attacked Central, I was certain that we would always be labeled as dangerous domestic terrorists. Instead, there were those who saw that we were just trying to change our country for the better.
Anita talked lightly with us about what to expect from the other save houses we would encounter along the way, but she did not dwell too heavily on our journey to Mexico. Instead, she talked easily with us about her family and her own encounters with previous refugees.
She was so open and honest with us that I felt like we were a part of her family.
Natalie had cooked several steaks for us and we ravenously dug in. It had been a long time since any of us had had a full meal, which meant the dinner table was silent, as we were too busy stuffing our faces with the home-cooked meal. Neither Anita nor Natalie seem surprised or concerned, though. Instead, they continued to offer us more food, assuring us that there was plenty to go around.
With full bellies and after months of living in the fort, the stress of everything that had happened with our revolution, and the trek to the first safe house, all of us were exhausted by the time we had finished our meal.
Even though it was still early, Antia agreed to show us to where we would be staying. She let us outside to one of the barns on the rural property. Once inside, she led us to a separate room off the back of the structure before opening a rather inconspicuous looking wooden door. On the other side we found a staircase, a single lightbulb hanging at the top landing. She pulled the string to turn the light on, and then led us further down to a large cellar that had been converted to a refuge for anyone she harbored running from the Commission of the People.
She walked over to several dressers that lined the side of the room, all of different shapes, sizes, and ages. She tapped one of them.
“There are more blankets, towels, and clothes that you are welcome to. A lot of the clothes are old clothes of ours, or donated to us by other farms cleaning out their storage. You can take any of them with you if you need them. You are welcome to use the shower in the house in the morning, but wait until one of us comes to get you before leaving this room. There’s a lot of farmers that get up with the sun, and could see you walking from the barn to the house. We’ll come to get you when we know it safe.”
“Thank you so much, Anita,” I said, extending my hand to her. She smiled and stepped forward, giving me a warm, tight hug.
“You are very welcome. And don’t you worry,” she added, pulling away from the hug and taking my shoulders gently, “your life can only get better from here.”
With another quick hug, and a hug to everyone else in the cellar, Anita left us for the night, turning off the light at the top of the stairs and closing the door.
That night, I slept better than I had in months.
Chapter Seventy-Seven
The first week was the hardest. While I wasn’t necessarily out of shape, I was not used to hiking for twelve hours a day—nor was anyone else. Mark was the only one who did not struggle with the trekking.
After leaving Anita’s, we continued on the same route that we had outlined for many others, going to three different save houses every couple days.
Travel was most difficult on the days between the safe houses. Each shelter gave us a little bit of food to tide us over until we were able to reach the next one in the network, but with all of the walking and hiking we were doing, the food was almost never enough. Hungry, tired, irritable, and sore, it was difficult not to get on one another’s nerves during the night shifts when we were no longer moving.
We got used to going to the safe houses and putting up with whatever conditions that they had for us to sleep in. All the safe houses offered food, a shower, and freshwater for us to fill up our canteens. However, some had the beds set up in basements, which were cold and dark and damp. Others housed us in outbuildings where we had to pile blankets on top of ourselves and huddle close together to stay warm in the cold nights. One safe house even had their lodgings in the attic, which was unbearably hot as we waited there through the day before leaving at night, since we were closer to a suburban area and had to be more careful about being spotted.
But we continued on steadily, Mark always keeping a watchful eye on the entire group, sleeping the least out of all of us and being sure to give up rations or water when one of us were running low.
Clark and I ended up at the back of the group most of the time. Mark did not like us in the back of the group, but he could hardly lead us from the back, so he was constantly glancing
over his shoulder at the two of us. Clark and I would share looks with one another, forcing smiles to our faces in a pathetic attempt to assure the other one that things were going to be better from here on out. I did believe that we could live a somewhat-normal life if we could get to Mexico and disappear among the masses. But there was still lingering worrying me that Dana would somehow find us and haul us back into the Commission to become experiments.
I could tell from the way the Clark’s eyes studied the ground as he walked that there were times he was thinking the same thing.
On our second week of trekking, we ended up at a very large safe house, which was actually a ranch resort with an entire guest house dedicated to the refugees that they could harbor. The man who put us up was very kind and offered us different types of fresh fruit and vegetable to take with us. He also said that we could stay for more than one night if we needed to rest and recuperate.
At first, Mark was hesitant to stay more than one night, wanting to get out of the country as soon as possible. However, on the day that we were going to leave, he saw the way we were all dragging our feet and begrudgingly agreed to stay one more night.
Everyone was visibly relieved by the statement.
For most of the morning everyone fell in and out of consciousness, resting are exhausted bodies.
The rustic little cabin did not provide much comfort, and it wasn’t very aesthetically pleasing, since there was one window in the entire one-room shack. But we still felt secure enough to turn on the television in the afternoon and catch up on current events. I was against watching the news, since every station had done nothing but bring me anxiety for months. However, as lunchtime was approaching, the owner of the rustic resort ranch came to see what if we were still there.
When Jeff opened the door, Mark just behind the door with his hand on his gun, Jeff relaxed and smiled inviting the heavyset cowboy inside.
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