by Annie Oldham
Chapter Twelve
Dave shakes me awake. I dreamed of guns and blood last night. Guns that felt like ice in my hands; blood that dripped from a ragged slash in a white arm. Waking up is a relief. The corner of the heavy drape weaves in the breeze, and the air cools my sweaty skin. Then I remember we are going to Seattle this morning, and I’m not sure if I want to sleep or wake. There is a coil of rope in my stomach that pulls tighter and tighter.
Breakfast is somber. Everyone looks at me. Everyone looks at Mary, Dave, Red, and Sam, the other boy who agreed to come. They look at us like they would a funeral procession. But Nell holds Red’s hand and pats his whiskered cheek. Tears shine in her eyes, but she smiles.
“Come back to me tomorrow,” she says. “I need help with the candles.”
His lips brush hers, and he pulls her fiercely against him.
“I’ll help you, Nellie girl. So don’t do it all without me.”
She lingers in his arms and then pulls back. Nell holds my hand and smiles, and I feel more lonely than I have since I’ve been here. I feel like she’s trying to say goodbye and good luck all at once.
The sky is still dark and we load into a sleek boat painted the same gray color as the water. Most of the settlement is on the rocky shore to see us off. They stand huddled up against the water's edge. No one speaks. Jack stands a few feet apart and waves once. A gun goes in for each of us, a pack of food, a gray blanket too huge for one person. I don’t try to ask what it’s for. I sit next to Mary, and I don’t want to look like I’m prying for secrets. Whatever she may think, I am not one of “them.”
Sam starts the motor and the boat lurches out into the sound. We need to get to Seattle before the sun bounces off the water, before someone watching will see our boat. We huddle under the blanket, and the blanket turns us the same color as the water. Only Sam stands above the itchy cloth.
“It’s a little more than five miles across the Sound,” Dave yells above the engine and the spray. “Get comfy, it’ll take a little while.”
I shiver. The morning is wet and cold. I was getting used to being so warm I sweated all the time here. Now I’m cold again, and the cold sharpens my mind and sharpens the fear. I try to think warm thoughts. I shove the blanket up tight around my chin.
Red rubs his right arm. The tracker lump moves under his fingers as he massages the skin.
“You get your tracker scanned to get supplies,” he says. “So one of us always goes to a supply drop. We spread it out as much as we can, so one person doesn’t get noticed.”
I nod. Even getting necessary medical supplies is a dangerous job. Everyone goes back to looking straight ahead as the skyline full of broken buildings like jagged teeth grows imperceptibly larger. Their silhouettes brighten as the dawn pushes forward.
Mary leans her head toward me. Her hair whips her face so she can’t look at me. “It doesn’t have to be this way.”
I shake my head. What is she talking about?
“I don’t know if I can trust you. I wish I could, but I can’t. When you’re used to being beaten for not stealing enough food, when you’re used to being locked up in a dark room all by yourself and hearing the agents searching all around you, well. Yeah, I don’t know if I can trust you. I’d like to. Dave obviously does.” She looks at him, and her eyes change. They are so full of longing I almost choke on it. Some of the softness lingers as she holds her hair back with one hand and turns to me.
“Terra, I’m sorry for everything. Really. I just can’t stand the thought of an outsider right now. Things are too precarious. Too carefully balanced and then wham! You come along and I’m afraid it’s all going to come crashing down.”
I want to put a hand on her arm. That’s what I would have done for Jessa. For any friend. But I can’t with her. She needs Dave to do it. But he won’t, either. Instead I say nothing and stare straight ahead. The wind stings my eyes.
We reach Seattle just as the sun peaks behind a building and the hazy beams glint off broken glass, splitting shards of light into a hundred directions. It would be beautiful if it weren’t skeletons of buildings that the sun shines on.
“Will we see anyone?” Dave asks. Mary shakes her head.
“No, we shouldn’t. Not until we’re closer to the drop site.” But she cranes her neck around anyway, scanning the streets that finger out toward the water from between buildings. I see no one.
An old, ruined pier floats crazily in front of us. Sam navigates the boat underneath the pier and stops against a wooden post closest to land. We knock against it a few times as he throws a line around and secures us. I carry my gun above my head like everyone else does. Sam stays with the boat, but the rest of us jump into the waist-deep water. I clench my teeth. I will be walking in these wet clothes all morning. I shiver and wade to shore.
“Sam’s here until midnight,” Dave says. The others nod. This is obviously the plan for every time they’ve done this. Dave looks at me and his eyes cloud. I nod too. “At midnight he leaves. If someone isn’t here, he leaves. So get here by midnight.”
They tuck their guns into their waistbands under their shirts. I do too. Red wears an empty pack on his back—the biggest one we could scrounge up in the settlement. He leads the way through the streets. Mary is close behind him, whispering directions. Dave scans the streets, the rooftops, the windows in buildings. I’m not sure what he’s looking for, but it makes my skin crawl and I start looking, too.
We walk through the ghost streets and see no one. A rustle comes from a cross street and I whirl toward it, half wrenching my gun out. But a cat slinks from a door swinging open and closed and an empty can rolls out the door after it. My hand trembles as I try to shove my gun back under my shirt. Dave touches my arm to steady me.
“Calm down. It’s illegal to have guns. Keep it hidden unless absolutely necessary. Especially when we get closer.”
We reach a wide swathe of concrete that stretches as far as I can see north and south and looms below us like a moat. Cars with smashed glass line the bottom. The crumbling remains of a bridge jut out at our feet and from the other side of the road. An old metal sign dangles on the edge of the bridge, a faded white five on a blue insignia.
People gather on the other side, near a white brick building with a peaked roof and tall chimney. Several men dressed all in black and wearing helmets stand on the roof of the building. They each hold a gun, and the guns are pointed at the crowd. Red told me never to point my gun at someone unless I plan to shoot them. I bounce on my toes, ready to flee back down the street we came from.
But Red starts climbing down into the pit of cars. Surely he can’t go down alone, not without help. Why aren’t Dave and Mary following? I shove the rising panic back down my throat and start toward him, but Mary grabs my arm.
“No, he goes by himself from here. None of us have trackers. We’re illegal.” She pulls me behind an overgrown tree that shields the three of us from those on the other side. I crouch between two roots that raise canyons in the sidewalk.
Red shouldn’t be going down there. I can’t help thinking he’s too old to be doing it. He’s too kind. And he has Nell. Nell needs him. He’s too vulnerable down among the twisted metal and broken glass. Those sharp things could pierce him. I remember my dreams of blood. I squeeze my eyes closed and open them again. A few men on the other side notice him, and they laugh.
“Hey, grandpa!” one calls. He has black hair and a sickly pallor to his skin. His eyes are rimmed in dark circles. He jabs a friend in the ribs. “Don’t you think you should just stay down there with all the relics? We’ll get your supplies for you. Safer that way, don’t you think? No one comes from that side of the city unless I know about it.”
I bristle and the anger makes me brave for a single second. The one with black hair sneers. I don’t like the hungry look on his face. But Mary still holds my arm.
“Don’t say anything. They’re dangerous, all of them. Red has done this before. This isn’t the part we have t
o worry about.”
The guys jeer a little more, until a soldier comes over and jabs the barrel of his rifle right in the chest of the black-haired one. The sun glances off the soldier's visor, and I can barely make out features. I wonder if he’s even human. I can’t hear what the soldier says, but each one of the guys shows him their right forearms. The soldier waves over a young woman dressed in a suit. Her blond hair is pulled back so tightly at first I think she’s bald. As soon as she appears, one of them tries to disappear in the crowd, but another soldier standing by grabs him and wrenches his left arm behind his back. The other soldier squeezes his right forearm so tightly the skin bulges on either side of his glove.
The woman waves a small machine over their arms. Each one lights up a faint blue color, and she reads whatever information displays on the screen. But the one who tried to escape, his arm doesn’t glow blue. She swipes the machine over his arm one more time. His face is ashen. Then she flicks two fingers, and the soldiers throw him to the ground. One stomps a boot on his face and grinds his cheek into the pavement. I can’t turn away. I watch blood spurt out of his nose, and I can’t turn away.
The woman speaks, her face disinterested and not looking at him, using a stylus on the screen of her little machine that decides his fate. He tries to speak, but he can’t with the boot pressed into his face. Then she nods and the soldiers drag him up. The crowd parts as the soldiers take him to a truck outside the mob of people. The guy’s head lolls on his shoulders. Everyone is silent as they watch him go. As soon as he is inside the back of the truck and the doors close, they resume. Like they were on pause for three seconds and then real life starts again.
I turn to Dave. He’s pale, and his eyes flash with so many emotions I couldn’t even begin to name them. Mary’s eyes are stony. She’s lived among them. She’s probably seen this many times. I look at her arm. She has a jagged scar that’s still pink and puckered. She had a tracker too, and like Nell, she must have cut hers out.
Getting hauled away is a risk we all take.
Red is up on the other side of the interstate now. The man without a tracker created enough of a distraction that no one else notices him arrive. He hovers on the edges of the crowd.
A huge truck with rows of wheels pulls up, beeping. People slowly move out of the way, and more soldiers appear to form a perimeter around the truck. They jab at the crowd and the crowd falls back.
The back of the truck swings open. The inside is lined with rows and rows of boxes on shelves, and a man in a suit almost identical to the woman’s sits in a wheeled chair behind a desk. Two young men in gray jumpsuits stand behind him with their hands behind their backs. The woman stands on the ground in front of the desk, flanked by two soldiers.
An amplified voice speaks. “Welcome, citizens of New America, to your monthly supply replenishment. This month, we provide you with medicine and first-aid supplies. Remember, if you or someone you know is critically ill, bring them to the free clinic behind Town Hall.”
Mary snorts. “Yeah, and you’ll never see them again.”
“Show your personal identification chip to the verifier. Then you will receive your supply box. Once you receive your box, please leave the premises. If anyone tries to obtain supplies illegally, you will be detained.”
“Permanently,” Mary whispers.
I wonder again why I’m here. Dave watches Red’s every move. Will he burst from our cover if something happens to him? Could we even do anything to save him? None of us have trackers, and from what I’ve seen, that marks you. Fatally.
But Red knows what he’s doing. People shove to get closer to the front. A soldier steps in and breaks things up with a quick swipe of a rifle barrel. Then they fall in a line, and it’s mostly orderly. Red stays around the fringes, looking down, not meeting anyone’s eyes. It’s like he’s not there at all. No one else without a tracker is found.
When a young woman with a bruise covering the whole left side of her face gets a supply box, her eyes flick around and she slinks away down a street darkened by tall buildings. Once in the alley, I see a shadow kick her legs out from under her, swipe the box, and disappear into the darkness. She falls on her face and sobs. But she is out of sight from the soldiers, and there’s nothing she can do.
For the first time since I came here, I want to go back to the colony. I can deal with the stuff I hated. It might eat me up inside, but I can do it. I want to live where Mr. Klein can get me some aloe without having to assault anyone. Where the corridors are well-lit and I don’t cower from shadows. Where I don’t look over my shoulder while I’m walking into the Juice Deck.
I want to be safe.
Then Mary grips my arm. She doesn’t realize she’s doing it. I look up, and Red stands in front of the woman. He holds out his arm, and she scans it. His arm flashes blue. She studies the screen, glancing at Red. She asks him a question. He shrugs. A long moment passes. What are they doing up there? I scrape my palms along my pants. The soldier next to Red takes a shuffle step and I almost burst from the tree and hurl myself across the interstate. But Dave keeps his hand firmly on my shoulder. Then the woman hands the screen to the man at the desk. He taps his lips and speaks. Red answers. The two in gray jumpsuits turn and get supply boxes off the shelves. They hand them to Red. He puts the boxes in the pack and slings it on his back.
The black-haired guy watches him, the red mouth in his sickly face twitching. Red turns, nudging through the thinning crowd and keeping his head down as he saunters away from the violence of the supply drop. But he doesn’t come back over the interstate. He turns down another street.
“He’s got it,” Dave says. “Let’s go. Mary, keep your eyes on him. Terra, follow me.”
We stay low and dart from tree to tree along the interstate, parallel to the path Red takes. Mary keeps one hand on the gun at her back and watches Red make his way down the street. But I still feel too far from him. Broken concrete litters the sidewalk. I jump over it as best I can, but my boots weigh me down and I’m clumsy. Red doesn’t glance at us at all. We aren’t together.
I see a waver of movement from a window two stories up. A girl is there, watching us. She might be twelve. Her brown hair hangs limp around her face. She waves someone else to the window. A man joins her, and they look down at Red. One of them puts a walkie-talkie to his mouth. I point to them.
“They’re watching him,” Dave says. Mary nods and her hands turn white as they tighten around her gun. I glance back the way we came. We’ve already gone a block. There’s no one behind us, but the black-haired man is a ways behind Red, walking casually with his hands in his pockets. He kicks a chunk of broken concrete. It skitters across the sidewalk and onto the road, and he never looks away from Red. He doesn’t care about us—we don’t have supply boxes. I can’t tell if Red knows he’s there, but his face is drawn and his eyes are wide. He looks about to catch us out of the corner of his eyes, but he doesn’t let himself.
“He’s going to panic,” Mary says.
Dave keeps walking. “He’s fine. He’s done this before. He’ll be fine.” He prods me along. The worry is overwhelming, but I can’t look at Red. We’re not together.
“Turn south here and the building is just on the corner,” Mary hisses.
A rendezvous point. The bridge over the interstate is passable here. We duck behind an awning and wait. Mary stands next to me. Dave looks past the corner. My heart slams against my ribs as I watch Red walk alone across the bridge. The black-haired man doesn’t close the gap. The path we’ve chosen is too exposed, and he’s making sure we’re well enough away from the supply drop before he attacks. He slinks along like a panther.
I shudder the length of my body. My hands shake so badly I take them off the gun in my waistband. I can’t be trusted with a weapon. I barely know how to use it. The violence of half an hour ago catches up with me, and the sweat pours down my face even though I feel cold. Small pings of light hover around the edges of my vision. I put a hand out to steady myse
lf.
“Dave, I don’t know if she can make it.” Mary actually looks concerned. Dave glances back at me. He puts both hands on my shoulders and stoops down to look in my face.
“You okay, Terra?”
I almost scream when he touches me, and I smack a hand over my mouth. I shake my head. I am far from okay.
“Why’d I listen to him? I knew it was too much too soon.”
Mary peers around the corner. “Red’s across. On our side of the street now. Time to move.”
I can’t look away from Dave’s eyes. They draw me in. There has to be some calm there I can borrow. He doesn’t blink but stares at me. My heart slows in my chest and I try to breathe deeply. Don’t look away from me, I beg silently. But he can’t look at me forever. He tears his eyes from mine to follow Red. My breath hitches again.
“We have to move now, Terra.” Dave slips his hands off my shoulders. He grabs my hand too hard and pulls me away from the building. My fingers ache but I don’t want him to loosen his grip. It helps hold me together. My legs follow him, but I can’t feel them. My whole body is going numb.
We’re in a canyon of buildings so tall the clouds look small above them. All the windows are blown out and some of the roofs are ragged. Glass crunches under our feet. Red walks two hundred feet behind us, but I can’t see the black-haired man anywhere. Then Mary nods and we hunch through a broken hole in a door and wait. A minute later, Red crawls through.
He’s sweaty and a little pale, but fine. Scared, though. Just like me.
“I forgot how intense it is,” he says as he slips the pack from his shoulders and slumps to the floor. He holds his head in his hands. Mary offers him her canteen and he takes a drink. I hear him swallow. The quiet around us is suffocating. Dim light shines through windows and lights squares across the floor littered with glass and boards as far as I can see.
“How long we staying?” Red asks.
“Until dark,” Dave says.
Mary takes the canteen back. “They won’t be able to see us as easily. Hopefully we can slip away before they find us.” Mary looks down and scuffs the floor with her shoe. “Med drop is always rough—worse than any other. People care more about drugs than they do about food. I didn’t like the look of that dark-haired guy. You could tell he’s been on it for a while. He’s the dangerous one. Terra, did you see him following us?”
I nod frantically. My body is still laced with adrenaline and I can’t do anything small.
“Where?”
I open her hand. I saw him until we hid the first time.
“He might not know we’re here,” she says. “But I doubt it. Always doubt it. We’ll need to keep watch at the door. This is obviously some kind of territory for him. He’ll know it better than we do.”
Dave offers first watch. He stands at the door and with the light streaming in, I can’t see anything more than his black silhouette. I lean my head back against a cinderblock wall. I want to cry. My longing for the colony overwhelms me. Mary sits down beside me. I wish she were Jessa.
She looks at her hands. “I don’t know where you’re from, but it’s obviously different than here. You act like you’ve never seen anyone beaten, never seen anyone killed. But you had your tongue hacked out. I guess we’ve all been brutalized no matter where we’re from. I’m not sure what’s worse, losing your tongue or being used to seeing people get hurt like that.”
She lays her gun across her knees. “My family—why do I still call them that?—the people I stayed with here, they would lock me in a janitor’s closet. My job was to steal other people’s supplies. I was pretty, I was small. I guess they thought I’d be good at it. I couldn’t bring myself to hurt other people, so I’d beg. I’d never bring back enough to please them. So they’d lock me in the closet. It was one building over from where they lived, and it was abandoned. They cut out my tracker not long after I started. They didn’t want an agent to find me and be able to trace me back to them. So they hacked it out of me and stitched me up.”
She runs her fingers over the lumpy scar. I can’t help staring at it. I was wrong about her tracker. Had they used anesthetic? Had they pinned her down?
She glances quickly at Dave. “The closet was always dark. The building would groan, and I would sit crouched in the corner thinking it would crash down on me at any second. Then I would hear the footsteps outside. Heavy boots and the click of high heels. Agents were out there. I knew if they found me, they would take me away and no one would ever see me again. I couldn’t cry because I didn’t want to make noise. I thought of Dave every day.”
Her eyes glisten, but she brings the neck of her shirt up to her face before the tears spill over. I sit awkwardly next to her and put a hand on her arm. I don’t touch the scar. I feel ashamed for having thought badly of her. Of course she doesn’t trust me; she’s hard-wired not to. And then she came back to the settlement only to find Dave wasn’t there when she needed him. How messed up all our lives are.
I can’t make out the details of him as he stands darkened by the light behind him, but I trace the profile with my eyes. The firm jaw, broad shoulders. The longish hair and straight nose. He is strong. No wonder she leaned on him. But what changed for him? Why does he push her away? And again I feel hopeful. He lets me lean on him. That knowledge will have to be enough to bury the thoughts of the colony. It will have to be, or I might not make it out of Seattle alive.
The light shifts across the floor as the sun sets. The day was quiet. Two people had passed the door, but neither of them had been the black-haired man, and they hadn’t shown any interest.
As dusk creeps on, we stand up and stretch. Dave offers us some old bread from the pack. We each take a swig from the canteen. Then as soon as the sun is completely down and the street is more shadow than light, Dave sticks his head out the door. The street is violet gray and barren.
“Quiet now,” Mary says. “We’re out after curfew.”
I don’t want to know what the punishment is if we’re caught.
We file out. This time, they take out their guns and make no show of hiding them. I reach for mine, and my hands tremble as I take it out and hold it at my side.We stick to the sides of buildings where awnings and overhangs hide us occasionally. Not enough to make me comfortable. Clouds blanket the moon, but it still feels too bright. Every so often we pause, listening for footsteps. None come.
Then I hear the whirring chop of a helicopter. My feet freeze to the ground, unable to move. The others hear it, and urge me forward. A helicopter bursts over the top of a building with a single beam of light swinging across the street.
“We can’t stop now, Terra!” Dave pushes me forward. He’s rough but I know the urgency behind it. There are agents up there, looking for people just like us. My bare arm almost glows in the night. It’s unblemished. What would they think of that? I’ve never even had a tracker. There are a few people like that at the settlement, and I know they will never be asked to go to a supply drop.
We are almost to the pier and we jog faster. The helicopter retreats back away from the water. Red pants next to me, the pack tugging on his shoulders. Dave leads. Mary comes behind us, turning every few seconds to glance behind. We cut over on the next north-south street to go back where we started, and I see the long dark line of pier slice into the water. Dark shadows rise up were the pier meets the street.
“Thought you’d come back this way,” drawls the black-haired man. His face is rugged with shadows, carving deep lines into his cheeks. “It’s been a while since I’ve seen someone come across the water for a drop. Wonder if you’re part of the same group. You have some camp across the sound? I’d be interested in that.”
Two other men stand behind him. They hold long objects in their hands. I pray they aren’t guns. One of them slaps his against a palm. Clubs, then.
We stop, and Dave raises his gun in front of him, aimed right at Black Hair’s chest. The smile slips off his face. They hadn’t seen our guns.
“Wh
ere’d you get that? Not included in the standard supply drops. I could report you to an agent, you know. You’d all be dead by morning.” He isn’t smiling any more, but he isn’t falling back, either.
Then Mary steps next to Dave and points her gun as well. The men step back.
“It’s a regular army, isn’t it?” Black Hair sneers, but stands aside.
“He’ll report us,” Mary whispers. “He’ll report us and then they’ll come.”
“A risk we’ll take,” Dave says. “I’m not risking gunshots so close to the city. Not unless they attack us.”
Dave walks stiffly and we follow. We make a wide berth around the three men. Dave never takes his gun off Black Hair. We walk down under the pier and slip into the water. Sam breathes a heavy sigh when he sees us, and heaves us into the boat. I never noticed how young he is—than me. How long has he been down here hiding while Black Hair stood up there waiting? Sam starts the motor and guns it out from under the pier and into the deep water.
As soon as we’re free from the pier, Black Hair bolts and jumps down into the water. What is he doing? Then I hear the roar of another motor. The boat pulls alongside him, and he pulls himself in. This boat isn’t dull gray like ours, it’s silver and all reflections.
“They’re following!” Sam shouts.
“Just drive! But stay close to the city. He still doesn’t know what direction we came from. I don’t want them thinking we’re escaping west,” Dave says above the motor. “We’ll take care of them.”
Red and Mary both have rifles out and steadied on the side of the boat. I can’t even grip my gun properly. I hunker down against the side, put my gun next to me, and cover my ears. It’s all too loud: the motors, the sea spray, the gun fire as it explodes across the water. I jar against the side of the boat as we lurch across the waves. I’ll have bruises in a few hours.
Then comes a whir faster than I can breathe and I see a bullet hole in the side of the boat where one hadn’t been before. Right next to my head.
“You okay?” Dave shouts. I can’t answer. I could be bleeding and I’d have no idea. He turns from me and shoots back at the boat that comes closer and closer as we bob and weave along the shoreline.
The silver boat is right behind us and Sam panics. He turns the wheel too sharply. Red, Dave, and Mary are all thrown into the middle of the boat, a tangle of limbs and no one can reach a gun. I look back, and in the darkness I’m sure the shadow standing in the other boat is Black Hair with a rifle pointed right at Sam’s back.
I fight back the nausea and pick up my gun. My hands shake so badly I can’t even aim straight. All I want to do is close my eyes and fall asleep. Wake up in my white, sterile bed in my temperature-controlled quarters. To forget this ever happened. Aiming a gun at someone’s chest is so wrong, I can’t even breathe.
“Shoot him!” Red bellows, still grappling for his gun. “Terra, just shoot him! Pretend he’s a bag hanging in a tree.”
But pretending this man in front of me is a bag hanging in a tree is even more wrong than aiming the gun at him. How did I get here?
Then my finger brushes against the trigger and all is silent around me. I hear only the motor from the other boat and the water lapping the sides of mine. My finger arches against the trigger and I’m about to let out my breath one more time and squeeze when a shaft of light brighter than a comet tail shines down on the silver boat. I shield my eyes and look up. A helicopter.
Instinctively I drop down, and I’m covered with the gray blanket. Sam has cut the motor and we drift away, rolling across the swells, all of us breathing heavily under the cloth. I peek from under an edge.
“Lower your weapons.” It’s the same amplified voice as at the supply drop. Does it always sound the same?
Black Hair and the others point their guns at the helicopter and fire. It’s a death wish, but I guess being out on the water at night, guns in hand, already doomed them. A machine gun lets out a spattering of firework pops and they all fall away. Soon their boat falls away as well.
The helicopter hovers for a few minutes more, watching the boat sink beneath the water. Then it turns toward the city and the chopping whir fades into the night. The water and sky all around us are silent and dark. All I can see are the helicopters circling the city in the night, their lights searching for more death.
We drift for a while. None of us wants to start the motor. We lie in the bottom of the boat, all of us lined next to each other like fish on a platter, and none of us wants to move. Every time I close my eyes, I see the burst of light from gunfire. It burns my eyes.
After an eternity, after my back has ached for so long it’s numb, Sam finally pulls back the blanket. Seattle is small on the horizon. The lights from the helicopters still circle the sky, but they are too far away. The motor roars to life and we sprint for home.
Dawn just turns the sky gray when we bump into the shore. Jack is asleep on the ground, wrapped in a blanket. As soon as the boat scuds on the rocks, his eyes fly open and he stands up, rushing forward. Red laughs. Now that we can laugh.
“Easy there, son.”
Jack laughs too, embarrassed. But then he hollers. “Nell, he’s back!”
Nell appears and races to Red’s arms. She buries her face in his shirt and he holds her so tightly I think they might never come apart again. He nestles his cheek into her silver hair. Then he cries.
I didn’t know Red could cry. But now he does. Now that we’re away from the city and the agents and the people and we’re safe and there’s time for crying. Dave and Mary turn away to give them some privacy. Dave hands Jack the supply pack.
“I hope it’s all in there. We should go in and catalog it and put it away.”
“Yes, first thing. Then you need to talk about a hunting trip. Everyone in there is about to go insane with worry. A hunting trip is a distraction. They all need that right now.”
Dave nods and walks with Jack into the school. I’m left with Mary. She no longer looks at me with cold fury. She is merely wary.
“Come on, let’s go in. I’m starved.”
Breakfast isn’t ready yet, but someone scrounges each of us up a plate. Stale bread, over-ripe strawberries, and salted fish, and I can only taste the ghosts of flavors. The five of us who went on the supply drop sit at a table and eat, while everyone else grabs a chair and circles us. They all want the story.
Between bites, the others take turns telling. I just look at my plate and eat one mechanical bite after another. My stomach clenches, and I’m glad I can’t taste the food. I shiver when Red tells them his version—when he was across the impossibly wide chasm of ruined cars, and we wouldn’t be able to get to him in time if something went wrong. The rest feels like a dream to my too tired body. An ugly dream. But I feel the ache in my spine, the bruises on my shoulders, and I know it is not.
I am shaken from my stupor by laughter. How had this started? I didn’t even notice the mood had shifted.
Dave stands before all of us, mock-holding a rifle, aiming along its invisible barrel. Jack runs the length of the room, and then Dave makes a shooting noise and Jack falls.
I am horrified. What are they playing at?
“That was how I got that grizzly on the last trip. Sure he was a small one, but it was a grizzly. Who’s coming tomorrow?”
Hunting. Not murder. I sigh. I need to go somewhere quiet for a few hours and clear my head. I leave the cafeteria and the laughter, the hunt planning, the hugs, and the relief that is so strong I can touch it with my hands.
I climb the stairs, and I think I might collapse before I make it to the top. So I slump onto the landing and sit, looking back at the cafeteria doors and the light that spills through them and the voices that echo up to me on the stairs.
I lean my head back on the railing, and finally the tears slip out. I am safe, I am fed, and now I can cry. I’m about to lie down when the door swings open. Jack sees me.
“Mind if I join you?”
I wipe my face hard wi
th my hand and shake my head. I don’t really want to be alone. The last thing I need is to be alone where all I see is a black boot smashing a face, a girl crying in an alley, and Red walking all alone under the watching buildings.
Jack sits next to me and props his hands on his knees.
“I’ve never been on a supply drop. I know I’d be no good.” He says it matter-of-factly, like he doesn’t even mind if I don’t ask him why.
“You’ve never seen anything like that before, have you?”
I shake my head and the tears fall harder. A sob catches in my throat. Jack puts a tentative hand on my shoulder.
“It never gets easy. And that’s a good thing.”
I lean my head on his hand and cry for a while longer. When the tears have dried up and the gasps between sobs have subsided, he stands and offers his hand. “Come on, I’ll help you up to bed.”
I’m grateful for him as he guides me up the stairs and into Dave’s room.
“There’s still an hour or so before the sun’s up. Try to sleep.”
But I can’t. I am afraid of the dreams. Afraid to even close my eyes.
