Marked (Sins of Our Ancestors Book 1)

by Bridget E. Baker

  A mile or so from the mainland, my foot punches through a hole and my entire body collapses toward the ground. The second my hand leaves Sam’s back he spins and grabs both my forearms, lifting me before I’ve even sunk all the way. We’re almost parallel to the guard station that shot at me, which sets my stomach churning, but our road has no light. We can see them, but I remind myself that they can’t see us. I wish I’d paid a little more attention to the details when I learned this principle.

  We pass the first guard house without incident, and then another. I figure we’re near the middle of the bridge when the road ends in front of us. If I squint, I can barely make it out. There’s a road . . . and then there isn’t.

  We’re screwed.

  We’re going to have to turn around and pick our way back. Trying again tomorrow’s our only option.

  Sam puts one hand over my mouth, and the other behind my head. He tilts my head to the side, toward a tower with a bridge reaching much higher, higher even than the Forty-five. The guard tower to our right casts a large pool of light on the main bridge parallel to our location.

  “How certain are you that they can’t see well around the guard towers?” he whispers faintly in my ear.

  I close my eyes to try and recall what I learned. I whisper back. “His eyes are using cones since he’s surrounded by a pool of light. He needs rods to see in low light, and they’ll be non-existent because they overlit their guard towers. It’s a security oversight.”

  Sam nods. He motions toward the tower at the edge of the road. It rises far above where we are, at least three flights of stairs above us. Sam shifts from the road portion, to the railroad tracks, and climbs over a concrete barricade, never releasing my hand. I let him help me over and stand at the base of what looks like a very unsound method of crossing. It’s almost like a giant ladder was tossed over the top of this old bridge, where a section broke and collapsed.

  “Was this on the map?” I ask, careful to keep my voice down.

  Sam shakes his head in the moonlight. “I don’t think so, but it was probably set up so when boats needed to pass through the channel, this section could lift up. This bridge sits much lower than the big one.”

  “But what about the road? Why does it disappear?”

  Sam shrugs. “Maybe by the time they had boats big enough to cause a problem, no cars used this anymore, so they only spliced the road for the railroad track.”

  It makes sense, but I don’t like it. I follow Sam up three slippery flights of stairs to the top of the bridge splice. The wind’s stronger here, and my hair whips my face where it has escaped my braid. The sea spray is warmer than the air near Port Gibson, but still cold enough to sting. The railroad tracks narrow, with large gaps between the iron beams we have to walk along. To make it even scarier, the entire thing’s slick with saltwater.

  I know I need to move, but I can’t quite do it. My hands shake, my heart pounds, and it’s hard to breathe. Sam whispers in my ear. “You’ve got this, and I’ve got you.”

  I slide one foot along the beam and my heart races. I force my eyes upward, focused on the beam in front of me, and Sam’s back. Not the drop. Not the drop. Besides, if I do fall, I can swim. I’ll be fine. That’s what I tell myself, anyway. I’ve barely taken twenty steps when my boot slips on a slick part, and I stumble forward, sure I’m about to nosedive into the gulf below. Sam’s hand wrenches my wrist, but he keeps me upright until I regain my footing.

  My heart leaps to my throat the second and third time I slip too, but I know Sam’s there, and I trust him. He never once missteps or even slides. I have no idea how he keeps his balance, let alone mine and his when I almost fall.

  I breathe a huge sigh of relief when we reach the other end. I practically slide down three flights of iron stairs to the barricade, my legs wobbly and my knees weak now that the adrenaline rush has ended. I practically leap across the concrete barrier to reach the corroded iron road again. That unstable metal road looks like the floor of my own room by comparison to that horrific metal beam in the sky. We creep past another guard station before we reach the end of the bridge. I glance over at where the Forty-five meets the island to the right of us. Sam continues to walk along quietly as we pass a huge guard tower, but I pause.

  He yanks me along, no apology, no backward glance. Probably because the sun will be up soon, and when that happens we’ll be in trouble. We walk along the bridge, hovering above land for a few hundred feet before the metal beneath us finally gives way to concrete. By the time my boots strike land, my neck and thigh muscles are cramping and my stomach aches with hunger. My fingers and toes throb with cold.

  Sam pulls me against him and squeezes my shoulder. “You did great. Can you make it a little further?”

  I nod, and we jog toward a few dozen metal railroad cars stopped on the tracks just past the water. As the sun’s first rays light the sky, Sam lifts me into an old rusty railroad car and slides the door closed behind us. We startle a fox and I insist on moving down to the next car. Sam kills a few bugs before laying down in silence and pulling my head onto his chest. We chew on the last of Sam’s jerky before collapsing into a pile to sleep.

  Sam shakes me awake in the middle of a great dream.

  I start to say, “What’s going on—” but Sam puts a hand over my mouth. He helps me stand, and I follow him out of the train car. My eyes fly wide at the sight of three men slumped on the ground outside. I glance at Sam, but he shakes his head and keeps walking. I stare long enough to confirm their chests still rise and fall.

  The sun sits low on the horizon, which means we slept for a while. I try not to think about how Sam handled those men, or what might’ve happened. If he wanted to tell me, he would have. We jog along the railroad line, but it isn’t too long before I lag behind.

  “I don’t see anyone around,” I say. “Can we take it easy? We aren’t being chased, right?”

  Sam slows slightly and speaks softly. “I was going easy. I forget how small you are sometimes.”

  “What’s the rush?”

  “This train track runs until Thirty-Seventh Street before cutting to the north, unless my map’s outdated. We need to turn and head south on Thirty-seventh to make it down south. It only gets us about halfway there. Those three men were looking for whoever left footprints off Highway Seventy-Five. When they wake up, they’ll go for backup, and be after us again.”

  “Why didn’t you kill them?” I can’t help asking.

  “I wouldn’t have felt guilty shooting them if that’s your question. I probably should have.” He stares at me for a moment, looking for judgment. He won’t find it this time. “If we get caught, it’ll be way worse for us if we’ve killed their people. If we keep moving, get in and get out, hopefully it won’t matter. People I knock out tend to stay that way for a good while.”

  “Why are we following the train track?”

  “It’s clearly not in use.” He points at several busted tie plates. No train could traverse that. “Also, there aren’t any houses on the map for the length of the tracks, probably because of noise when it ran. Unless WPN’s changed that, it makes this an easy way to create no footprints, and avoid people.”

  “How far does it run?”

  Sam grunts. “Looks like about eight miles.”

  Eight miles, and that’s only half way. Ugh. I’m really starting to hate my size, or maybe it’s that I’m out of shape. I don’t ask any other questions, and I try to jog as fast as I can, but I’m depressed. My feet hurt, I’m dirty and stinky, and I’m tired of traveling. The Palisade Palms looked much closer on the map. The sun sets as we reach the end of the track at Thirty-Seventh Street. The signs have been replaced, the white lettering bright and easy to read.

  We continue walking briskly along Church Street, past a park, a few houses, an abandoned brewery. The roads have been maintained here, and vegetation doesn’t engulf everything. Unlike the surrounding area, none of these buildings appear abandoned.

  We make good
time and don’t attract much attention, until we reach Twenty-Fifth Street. Sam stops and eyes the road sign like it’s a viper about to strike. People come and go through storefront doors on both sides of the street now. Street lights click on while we walk past.

  “This is where it gets tricky,” he whispers. “I’m guessing we’ll be surrounded by people from here on out.”

  “Please don’t kill anyone,” I say.

  Sam nods but he doesn’t make any promises. Although he doesn’t have a gun in his hand, I can see the signs of weapons on him, bristling here and there like the spines of an angry porcupine. The outline of his holsters, the tip of a knife on his belt. At least his Rambo cartridge carrier is tucked beneath his jacket.

  He reaches over to casually take my hand, and I realize he’s passing me a small black firearm. I glance at the safety, which is on, and slide it into the waistband of my pants. Without my holster, I don’t have many choices. By the time I’ve stowed my new weapon, the outlines of weapons on Sam are gone. It’s an astonishing and impressive transformation, and I wonder how he hid them all so well.

  Sam takes my hand and whistles as we turn to walk down the street. Just a guy and a girl strolling along. We amble casually until Nineteenth Street, where the business district ends.

  “We’re going to stand out worse soon,” Sam whispers. “Try to smile.”

  I glance at his mouth. If that’s his attempt at a smile, he needs practice. People will think his foot’s stuck in a mousetrap. “Maybe drop the smile.”

  “Why?”

  “It looks a little creepy.”

  He shoots me a hurt look but drops the rictus of pain in favor of his normal scanning gaze. “Only eighteen blocks between us and Beach Drive. We might pull this off.”

  On the first block, a girl walks a yellow dog.

  On the second block, an elderly couple pushes a small child in a stroller. The little boy stuffs his face with popcorn, and points at Sam.

  On the third block, an old woman planting flowers turns and stares at us. She drops her spade.

  On the fourth block, a small dog barks and barks. The man who comes to retrieve it smiles at me, but scowls at Sam.

  On the fifth block, faces press against windows in at least four homes. No one leaves the house, and no one waves.

  By the sixth block, Sam grips my hand tightly and our brisk walk graduates to a jog.

  On the seventh block, men in black gear pour out of an alley and drop to a knee. I duck behind a tree, but Sam pulls me along. “Keep moving. Targets in motion are almost impossible to hit.”

  On the eighth block, Sam fires four times. Three men drop and another limps.

  On the ninth block, a huge black van turns the corner behind us, peeling out in a mad rush toward us. Sam fires one shot and it spins into a palm tree, metal crunching, men shouting.

  On the tenth block, Sam shoots a fire hydrant and the spray slams into the men closest to us. He shoots three more men, and they all collapse.

  On the eleventh block, Sam changes magazines. He does it so fast I don’t even see the old one. He shoves me under a car while he clears the men behind us, and then we run another fifty yards.

  On the twelfth block, Sam slings me on his back and runs. I stupidly assumed he was kidding before. We move twice as fast this way. Sam holds a gun in each hand. A guy pops up from the left side, and Sam clips his shoulder so he drops his gun. Sam fires a second shot a millisecond later and a man on the second floor of a beach house screams.

  I’ve never seen anyone fire dozens of shots and not miss a single one. In the dark, while moving, and carrying someone. Not even the movies from Before depict anything quite so unbelievable. Except, I witness it with my own eyes.

  Three clips later, we’re only a few blocks away, but behind one of the men Sam shoots, a little girl crouches near a tree. She’s sucking on her thumb and holding a yellow blanket. Sam might be able to do this forever, and we might even reach the Palisade Palms, but how many will die? If I allow him to carve a path there, who are we?

  I’m not willing to risk lives like my dad. Sam’s good enough not to shoot children, but is shooting her dad, or her brother or her grandpa any better?

  I slide off Sam’s back and hold up my hands. I shout the words. “We surrender.”

  Sam’s eyes bulge. “We do not surrender.” He has a gun in each hand, and he glances right to left. “I can take you all down, one by one. Back off, or I’ll do it.”

  I reach out and put my hand on his chiseled arm, running my fingers over the veins popping out of his forearm. “At what cost, Sam? Civilians are everywhere.” I shake my head.

  He lowers his arms slowly, like it pains him.

  Three men in black gear rush toward us. Sam drops his guns to the ground, and the men grab them. They shove Sam up against a nearby car and handcuff his hands behind his back. They barely even notice I’m there.

  My gun’s still tucked into my waistband, and my hands aren’t cuffed when they march us back along Church Street, the same way we came. Along the way, the people Sam shot are being treated. Arm wounds bound. Leg wounds cleaned and splinted. Not a single body bag.

  “Were you aiming to incapacitate?” I whisper.

  Sam doesn’t look me in the eye, but he says, “You asked me not to kill.”

  “No one could be sure of where they hit anyone else in the dark, not firing that fast. You shot and shot without looking.”

  “I’m always sure.”

  I think back to our lessons, to the awards he’s won. I can hardly believe it.

  “Did you kill anyone?”

  “Not if they have competent medical care.”

  The men shove us both against the wall and pat us down. They find my gun, and eight other firearms, four knives and two throwing stars on Sam. Throwing stars? Really? Sam still won’t meet my eye when they shove us into a small empty storage room in an office building to wait. I wish I knew what we were waiting for.

  “Are you ever going to look at me again?” I ask. “I’m sorry I surrendered, okay? I didn’t know what else to do. I saw that little kid with the blanket, and I couldn’t. What if she got hurt? Or another little kid?”

  “What about all the Marked kids who are dying?” Sam asks. “Rhonda? Or Wesley? What about all of them? They’ll all die now.”

  I sigh. “Unless we get a chance to explain.”

  “That’s why we’re here. Someone in charge will question us.”

  “Oh, good. Maybe they’ll let us—”

  Sam grabs my arm and pulls me close. He whispers, “Let me do the talking. I know I failed you out there, but I have a lot more experience with this than you do. I also have a fallback.”

  “Wait, how did you fail me?”

  Sam looks away.

  “Are you being so weird because you think this is your fault? That you lost somehow?” I laugh, even though I know it isn’t funny. Nothing’s funny right now, but for some reason I can’t help it. “Sam, no one on earth could’ve gotten us closer than you just did. You might’ve made it all the way if I’d let you, unless you ran out of bullets. I have no idea how you did what you just did.”

  “It wasn’t enough.”

  I try to hug him then. I can’t because, handcuffs, so I sort of lean against him and squish my face against his. I hope he knows what I’m trying to do.

  A small grin surfaces on Sam’s lips and I take it as a win. Sam obviously had a terrible childhood if he thinks what he just did wasn’t enough. “That was the single most amazing thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life.”

  He doesn’t have time to respond before the door swings open. The man who walks in holds a gun trained, not on Sam, but on me. Five more men follow the first man inside. They all hold guns aimed at my head.

  A young man with blonde hair and sparkling, light blue eyes enters the room last. His face is young, not much older than me. Maybe the same age as Sam.

  “Who are you?” he asks Sam. “And why are you here?”
<
br />   “I won’t talk to you,” Sam says. “I’ll only talk to Solomon.”

  “King Solomon’s quite busy, and you don’t get to make demands.” The tall man’s wearing a grey uniform, with some kind of star on the lapel. “If you make any more, I’ll shoot your friend.”

  Sam doesn’t flinch. “That’s not how this works. I’ll give you a piece of information, and then you’ll scurry off to get your boss.”

  The man scowls. “What piece of information are you going to give me that will save her, now that you’ve pissed me off?”

  “My name,” Sam says.

  “Why should I care about your name?”

  Sam cocks one eyebrow. “Because I’m Samuel Roth. You’ll believe me because you’ll actually get information on what just happened before you interrogate me again. I shot seventy-nine people out there while on the move, and not a single one died. No one you know could do that. The five men you have holding guns on my friend wouldn’t be enough to stop me from killing you, if you did something stupid like shooting her.”

  The tall young man blanches, and leaves the room for a few minutes. When he returns, he’s much more deferential. “Mr. Roth, we’ve notified King Solomon. He’ll be here shortly.”

  A very thin man in a black suit enters with a tray. It holds a pitcher of water and two glasses. He sets it on the floor and the men all file out quietly after him.

  “What was that about?” I ask.

  “My dad leads the Unmarked,” Sam says. “Solomon knows that, and he’s probably heard some of the things I can do. In case he didn’t believe the person he’s holding really was Samuel Roth, now he has reasonable evidence. I’m pretty sure Dad’s been communicating with Solomon, at least a little bit, for years.”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  Sam clenches his jaw. “I wish. I saw a letter from a David Solomon to my dad last Christmas. He wouldn’t give me any information and seemed angry that I mentioned it at all.”