Bitter Falls

by Caine, Rachel

  Sam shudders and takes two huge, whooping gasps of air before he chokes out, “Connor. Get Connor!”

  Everything goes still inside me. I look at the lake, and I fall back into nightmare. I lock eyes with Javier, and see he’s shaken too. I can’t ask. I can’t. I’m so afraid of the answer.

  Javier says, “Sam, is Connor in the water?” Eerily calm, his voice. I’m screaming inside. Falling apart. If my son is in that water, I will die looking for him.

  Sam whispers, “No,” and I squeeze my eyes shut and cry harder. It’s relief, but it hurts in its intensity. I bend over and rest my hand on Sam’s shoulder to keep myself from falling. When I can open my eyes again, Sam’s looking at me. He looks ghastly—pallid, lips the color of lilac, shivering. But he’s alive. “They took him to the women’s quarters. He’ll be there. Go get him. I’m sorry I couldn’t—”

  I kiss him. My lips are cold and wet and trembling, but his are like kissing a glacier. But he’s there, and he’s alive, and I send him all the fierce, warming devotion I can through that press of our skin. I can taste the foul water on both of us. I don’t care. I’d drink the lake dry to save him.

  “I’m going to get him,” I tell Sam. “Javi, there should be a rope to get you back up the fence. J. B. was going to drop one. But he’ll need both of you to help him up.”

  “You’re not going by yourself,” Javi says. “Gwen—”

  I shake my head. Kez can’t manage Sam on her own; it’s a long way to the fence, and getting him up, safe, and warm will take two people. I can’t go.

  I need to find our son.

  I put the mask back on, and the regulator, and I plunge back into the lake before anyone can stop me.

  The fastest way to my son is on the other side.

  27

  CONNOR

  Aria’s a problem. And as she draws in breath to scream, I grab her and put my hand over her mouth. She’s small enough I can pick her up off the ground and hold her there while she struggles and squeals. The water’s still running, and Vee turns on even more taps, so I don’t think anybody else can hear the struggle over that. But someone’s going to come looking, fast.

  Vee rips down one of the stall curtains. It’s thin stuff, and she pulls out her own switchblade to cut long strips. One is a gag. The other two she uses to tie up Aria’s hands and ankles. We dump her in the corner of the bathroom stall as she wiggles and tries to scream.

  Sister Harmony pauses as a siren starts to wail somewhere outside. It sounds like a tornado alert. Then I hear Father Tom talking, but I don’t know what he’s saying over the running water. Sister Harmony must be able to understand it, because she grabs the lamp and charges out of the bathroom. Vee and I chase after the light.

  Sister Harmony’s not stopping for the screams and shouts of the other girls and women, or the crying children. She races down the aisle, and from behind she looks like a comet flying through the dark, with ghosts shouting and flailing all around her in their white nightgowns.

  I don’t know what Sister Harmony is going to do until she bangs on the locked door and shouts through it, “Help! Help, they’re in here! Save us! They’ll kill us all!” She shoves me back against the wall, and Vee realizes what she’s doing before I do, because I see the gleam of that knife in her hand. I don’t want to use mine. I pick up a table instead and hold it.

  There are other women coming toward us. I count five, plus a wispy blonde girl of about ten, and the babies and little kids. The other women are milling around, shouting. Some are kneeling and praying. Those are the ones Harmony can’t trust, I realize. The ones who won’t fight. Or who believe too much to try.

  Harmony smashes a plank on the floor with the heel of her shoe, and beneath it is a white sack. She pulls it out and dumps the contents on the floor. Kitchen knives. She must have taken them gradually, I guess. There aren’t enough for everyone.

  Vee’s turning her switchblade restlessly over and over in her hand. There’s a tense brilliance in her eyes that makes me worry she’s going to do something stupid. But I’m holding a table. Maybe I should use the knife instead.

  The door slams open before I decide, missing Sister Harmony, and as a man charges in with a gun she buries a kitchen knife in his forearm. The gun goes off, but it fires into the floorboards. I back up. I know I should be doing something, but I don’t know what; I just know that everything seems to slow down, that I feel hot and clumsy, and people are in my way.

  And then everything focuses and there’s an opening. I swing my table and connect with the side of his head; he staggers. I drop the table and shove him, and he stumbles, off balance. Vee trips him, and I watch him crash to the floor. He looked angry when he came in the door, but now it’s turned to shock. And as he realizes what’s really happening, he’s scared. He’s down on his stomach, squirming to get up.

  I should get something to tie him up, I think, and I look around, but before I can find anything Sister Harmony’s dropped down on his back as he tries to rise, and with one quick thrust, she puts her kitchen knife in the back of his neck. I see it happen, and I don’t really understand it for a second, not until he goes still. It’s fast and clean, and I only realize that he’s dead a few slow seconds later. I don’t know how I feel. I only know that she’s crying, and she says—not to us, to him—“This time you’re the one who’s culled.”

  Sister Harmony scoops up the gun before Vee can make a try for it, and the older woman raises it, covering the open doorway. “Vera, Connor, take the sisters and children to the RV, and find a way out of here.”

  “Aren’t you coming?” I ask her. I know I should be afraid of her. Horrified, too; she just killed someone. But she’s like Mom, a warrior, protecting those she loves. I grab a little kid who’s crying by the hand, then pick him up. He’s heavier than I expected. Warmer.

  Sister Harmony shakes her head. That heavy golden braid hisses like a snake against the fabric of her shirt. “I’ll bring the rest. As many as I can,” she says. “Just go. Don’t wait. Once they realize we’re loose, they’ll come for us.”

  I stop and look at her. She’s never held a gun before, I can tell; her hands are shaking worse than mine. “You were supposed to kill all of them, weren’t you?”

  She drags in a heavy breath and nods. “Day of reckoning,” she says. “I was supposed to burn the Garden and let no one live. Go, boy. And don’t stop!”

  Vee yells at the other women and children to link hands, and she goes to the back of the line. I’m up in the front, with a dark-haired woman almost Harmony’s age. I remember someone saying her name: Sister Rose. She says, “We’ll need to run. I know where to go. I’ll lead.” She’s holding a knife, and she looks scared to the bone, but determined too. She holds out her hand, and I take it. Most of the kids are being carried. The little boy I’m holding has his arms around my neck, and all of a sudden I realize how dangerous this is, how he could be hurt if I fall or if somebody comes at us, and I’m not scared for myself anymore. I have to make sure he’s okay.

  We run.

  Toward the gate there are men clustered and guns booming, but they’re focused on whoever’s outside the gates. FBI. Mom. Mom could be out there.

  I need to get Sam, but first I need to get this little boy who’s got his arms around me to safety. That’s most important. So we run, pulling each other along, and when Sister Rose stumbles I help her up, and we keep running. A man runs toward us to try to stop us, but when Sister Rose screams and raises the knife she’s holding, he stumbles back in surprise. He’s got a gun, though. One of those assault rifles. And as he backs up, he raises it, and I feel a pulse of ice cold go through me. I can’t do anything. Not with the kid in my arms.

  Sister Rose lets go of my hand and launches herself at him, screaming. He stumbles again, and then she’s on him. When she gets up, she’s got the gun and there’s blood on her shirt. She takes off running again, and I follow, yanking the line along with me. I can’t look back. I’m scared that Vee’s in t
rouble at the rear, or that more men are coming after us. All I can do is keep chasing Sister Rose.

  There’s Father Tom’s cabin on the far side of the church, all lit up. The barn beyond it is on fire.

  And the RV is sitting right next to Tom’s cabin.

  When we get there, I turn and look back, and they’re all still there. Vee’s at the end of the line, and she’s carrying a baby in one arm. She pushes up next to me. Sister Rose is pulling on the RV’s door, but it isn’t opening.

  Locked.

  There’s so much gunfire now. It sounds like the men are fighting a war. I don’t know where Caleb is, or Father Tom, but as long as they aren’t here, it doesn’t matter.

  Dad. I need to find Dad. But first I have to get everybody in this RV.

  “There’s a skylight up top!” I yell, and hand the little boy I’m holding to Rose. I scramble up the ladder at the back, kick at the skylight until the lock gives, and drop down inside to open the door for the rest of them. “I don’t have the keys!” I yell to Vee as she gets aboard at the end of the line and slams the door shut. The kids are screaming and crying, and the women crowd in around the bucket chairs.

  “I don’t need ’em!” she shouts back, and shoves her way through the crowd of ladies to get to the driver’s seat. She drops into it, leans over, and starts yanking wires out. I guess she knows what she’s doing, because about thirty seconds later she’s got the engine going, and she flashes me a brilliant grin as she slips into the driver’s seat. “How you like me now?”

  “I like you a lot,” I say. “I need to get Dad!”

  “Boy, you ain’t going anywhere,” she yells, but I’m already moving back to the locked cabinet where Caleb kept the Tasers. I pry it open and take one of the Tasers that’s sitting in a charging cradle. I put it in my jacket pocket, and then I find what I need in the corner of the cabinet: bolt cutters.

  When I turn around, Sister Rose is in my way. “Move!” I tell her. “I need to get Sam!”

  She shakes her head and blocks my path to the door. I want to scream at her. Hit her. “You can’t go,” she says.

  “Let me out! Vee!” I take the Taser out of my pocket. “I need to let him out of that cell!”

  Vee’s got the RV in gear now. “Don’t be stupid, Connor. You get yourself killed for him, how do you think he’d feel? Besides, your momma’s comin’ for him.” She grins. “Wouldn’t want to get in the way of that. You! Can you drive?” She points at Sister Rose. “I need to make sure he doesn’t jump out and do something stupid.”

  Sister Rose changes places with Vee in the driver’s seat. Vee grabs my arm as I lunge for the door.

  Rose hits the gas. “Everybody hold on!”

  I still want to get Sam, and it burns in the pit of my stomach that Vee’s right, that Sam would tell me to stay here. And the RV’s moving now. I grab the Taser from the floor and hold on to it, and brace a girl standing next to me as the RV lurches into a long turn.

  Rose accelerates the camper as it straightens up again. I see the church over to our right. The men’s quarters. The Garden’s on the other side, but she doesn’t slow down for it; nobody’s waiting to be picked up outside. Harmony isn’t there.

  Rose lays on the horn, and it echoes like a high-pitched scream as she jams the pedal to the floor and heads for the gate.

  “Everybody hold on!” I yell, and brace myself.

  But we don’t get to ram our way out.

  The men shoot our tires out, and Rose loses control and instead of hitting the gates head-on, we slide sideways and slam into them at an angle; the gates sway, but it isn’t a hard-enough impact to force them open.

  The jolt knocks me into window glass, and I’m dazed for a second. That’s long enough for someone to yank open Rose’s driver’s-side door and drag her out, screaming. They’ve got the other door open, too, and men are coming on board and pulling the women off, and they’re fighting back with knives and fists and screaming defiance. It’s chaos.

  My head aches, and I feel clumsy, but I get over it fast, because we’re going to have to fight now. And I expected to be afraid, to want to run, but I feel a weird peace come sliding down through my body like cool water. There’s nowhere to run. I’m not scared. I’m not mad. I just take the Taser and fire it at the first man I see; I remember I have to keep the trigger down, and I watch him scream and collapse, twitching. I don’t know if I can use it again, and I don’t care. I swing the bolt cutters at the next man who comes on board, and hit him in the guts. He topples backward.

  The next one has a gun, and he lunges in and aims it at someone fighting near me. One of the older women. I grab his wrist and shove it up, and his shot goes into the ceiling instead of her face. I can’t use the bolt cutters; there’s no room to swing them. I punch him instead, and it hurts all the way up my arm, like I’m breaking every bone, but I don’t care, I can’t. I just need to stop him, and I don’t care how.

  But he’s bigger and stronger than me, and when he punches back, I go down. It doesn’t hurt so much as just make everything white out for a second, and when I blink that away he’s standing over me, pointing the gun at me, and I realize I’m going to die. Now I’m scared, my whole body catching cold with it, and at the same time I bare my teeth and yell and I wish I’d gone for Sam, I wish he were here, I want Mom, but it’s all too late.

  Sister Harmony stabs him. She’s bloody, wounded, limping, but he doesn’t see her coming. She screams as she puts her blade in the back of his neck. She twists it, and I see the whole light go out in his eyes. He falls forward on top of me, and I shove him off like he’s on fire. I’m shuddering and clumsy again and gasping, and everything in my chest feels too tight, but I’m already looking past the dead man, looking at the door where the next one’s going to come for us.

  Harmony yanks the blade free and snaps, “Get the gun, boy,” and I think about the verses she’s had to stare at every day, for years, written on the walls of her prison.

  Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection.

  She learned better than Father Tom ever expected.

  There’s another man coming on board now. Thin and young, maybe twenty or so. I grab the gun. It’s heavy and too big for me, but I point it at him, and he freezes. Sister Harmony shakes her head and pushes my arm down. She takes the gun and hands it to the new guy. “No, he’s with us,” she says. “Remy! Watch the door!”

  Remy. “My mom’s been looking for you,” I tell him. He glances at me. He’s more scared than I am, but the gun’s steady in his hand. “You’re Remy Landry.”

  “I used to be,” he says. “We live through this, maybe I still am. Harmony! We have to go!”

  “Not without my sisters!” She plunges off the RV again, bloody knife in her hand. Remy follows, and so does Vee.

  So do I. I grab up the bolt cutters as I go. They’re bulky and heavy, but I tell myself that I can get to Sam, I can, and Sam can help us get out of here. We can all get out. Everyone.

  But when we come out of the RV’s door, it’s worse than I thought.

  Rose, two other women, and several of the little kids are backed up against the fence. All three of the women have knives, but they’re all hurt too. Rose’s left arm hangs limp and bloody. She’s pale as chalk, but still standing. The kids are crowded in behind the three of them, and they’re facing two men with assault rifles. “Give us the children,” one says. “We won’t hurt them.”

  “Liar!” Rose screams and rushes him. He’s going to kill her, I realize, and I can’t stop it. All I have is a switchblade and these bolt cutters, and that’s not enough. I’m not fast enough. I’m not close enough.

  Harmony is fast. She kills him the same way she did the one in the RV, quick and lethal, and ducks as the other man swings his gun toward her. Rose tackles him and sends him sprawling. She grabs his gun and points it at him, panting, wild. When he laughs, she shoots him. She misses, and shoots again, and he stops laughing. I know I ought to be curled up in a ball no
w, like I was back in school. Gunfire. Screams. The smell of blood in the air.

  But that was fake. This is real. And I’m afraid, but I’m focused on two things: staying alive and getting to my dad. I can get him out. I will.

  But we’re pinned between the RV and the fence. There are at least twenty men with guns around us, but most aren’t paying attention to us; they’re firing through holes in the fence at the FBI outside the gates. And the FBI are now firing back. I see what look like grenades come launching over the wall and hit the ground on our side, and for a second I think we’re about to blow up like in the movies, but then they let out a pulsing white fog and I can’t breathe. My eyes are burning, I’m choking and coughing and gagging, and it tastes like burning paper at the back of my throat. I can see Vee, who’s bent over gasping, and I grab her and hold on.

  “Side gate!” she croaks. Her eyes are streaming tears, and they’re red as fire. Mine probably are, too—they’re blurry and aching, and I’m disoriented. I don’t know where I am. Guns are still firing. “That way!” She shoves me, and we slide along the fence. I shove the switchblade in my pocket and grab blindly for a coughing little kid. Vee grabs someone else. Harmony, who’s holding on to Remy. Rose, staggering and nearly falling.

  We can’t get everybody. But we have to open that gate.

  We reach it and there’s a man in front of it, but he’s slumped over against the fence, and when Harmony shoves him, he falls limply. Dead.

  The gate’s got two sliding metal bars across it. Both are secured with combination locks, like I have on my locker at school.

  Like the one I’d planned to cut off my dad’s cell.

  It doesn’t make sense, but I feel like I’m making a choice here. Like if I cut these locks, I can’t cut Dad’s. I have to choose him, or the people who are helpless here at the gate.

  And I know what he’d want me to do.

  I use all my strength to cut through the first lock, then the second, and Remy slams the metal bars back, and he starts to charge through the open gate.