From the Shadows

by Jacqueline Brown

  My breathing slowed.

  He moved his hand up and down my back and then lifted his hand away. I wondered if he knew that his touch was like a magic potion, calming me and giving me the strength to not give up.

  Blaise smiled at the closeness of our bodies. She was a romantic and wanted nothing more than for Jonah and me to be together. I told her we’d had a first kiss. She’d rolled her eyes and said a first kiss when one person was drugged was not an official first kiss. I agreed with her, but the memory of kissing Jonah—even though he was totally out of it—was still the best memory I had.

  I chewed a bite of turkey. My friends were silent. The girl watched me as she nibbled her food. She never ate as fast as the rest of us or as much. She was dainty and frail. Like an aristocratic child from long ago, whose life was spent on velvet settees, reading books that spoke of walking in gardens and playing pianofortes. Here in this place of campfires and rotting shacks, she didn’t fit.

  I wondered what her life before had been like, of her parents, of siblings. Had she been the daughter of someone wealthy and powerful, her life sheltered from dark realities? What must it have been like for her to be a slave in a world where she had once been a princess? This world was overwhelming for me, and though I’d been sheltered in many ways, I had experienced darkness before the light hit. I was sure this child never had. I understood why she didn’t speak. Why her mind would not allow it.

  “When do you want to leave?” Sara asked. The sun gone now, her features were lit only by the orange glow of the fire.

  East glanced first at me, as if trying to determine if I could handle what she was about to say. “As soon as the sun’s up,” she said, turning to Sara.

  I leaned back so the light from the flames could not show the others the fear I felt. The reality was my fear didn’t matter. We had already taken three weeks to accomplish what should have been done in one, and if it hadn’t been for me, we might have found Sara’s family by now.

  As Blaise and Josh stood, each carrying a log partially engulfed in flame, I stuffed the last of the turkey and greens into my mouth. Our time outside was over; now, to retreat to the relative safety of a crumbling shack where predators could not reach us. We rarely saw them, but we knew every night while we slept, they came, claiming ownership of even our small piece of land. Sometimes we heard them, sometimes we didn’t, but we always knew they were there, lurking in the shadows, waiting to attack any of us foolish enough to venture out alone.

  Three

  As the trees began to thin, our pace slowed. It was time to be more cautious. In front of us, an open field was bordered by a long, winding road on two sides and the forest we stood in. Past the field, the ground rose in a sort of gradual, welcoming way.

  “See the smoke?” East asked, pointing to the horizon.

  I stood, squinting toward the setting sun, its rays shining straight across the earth to where we stood.

  “That’s ‘the stones,’ ” Sara said, her voice giddy. “We used to take that road there, that climbed the hill. A parking lot’s about halfway up. There were some trails that Mom and Sage liked. That bare spot”—she moved her arm slightly—“is a large bolder. If you sit on it, you can see for miles.”

  “I get why they came here,” East said, glancing at Haz.

  He nodded. They often had conversations like this, where the rest of us didn’t know what was being said, yet they understood one another perfectly. Sometimes Jonah understood, sometimes not. But he was never part of head nods or exchanged glances of understanding; those were reserved for Haz and East.

  “Why?” I said, after enough time had passed that I realized they weren’t going to say more unless someone asked them.

  “It’s easy to defend,” Haz said.

  Sara asked, “What do you mean?”

  “It’s elevated, which is always an advantage,” Haz said.

  “Plus, the land below it is open and then the road encircles the hill, creating a sort of moat or at least a visual one,” Jonah added. “No one coming from the south, east, or west could sneak up on them. Maybe not the north, either.”

  “And the trees are thick,” East said, arms crossed, “which provides safety, fuel, and probably good hunting. The only thing it doesn’t have is water. I’m not sure what they do for that.”

  “It does,” Sara said.

  “What?” East asked.

  “It does have water. At the top is a small lake encircled by smooth boulders that were perfect for sitting and watching tadpoles. It was one of my mom’s favorite things about this place,” she said, as if remembering a distant memory. “Did my mom know all of this? Did she realize this would be easy to defend and have what they would need to survive?” Sara asked, wonder in her voice.

  “She’s as brilliant as you, so I’m sure she did,” Blaise said, looping her arm through Sara’s.

  “Do you think they made it here?” Sara whispered.

  I slid my hand into hers. The wind that had been stirring the new green leaves above fell upon us, brushing the few loose strands of hair from my face. And as the fear of the unknown people started to build inside me, the wind blew harder, as if pushing away the fear, allowing a competing emotion to grow. Hope.

  “I think they did,” I whispered. “I can feel it.”

  “Thanks,” Sara said, squeezing my hand.

  Josh studied the landscape. “The challenge is going to be getting to the other side of this field without being seen,” he said.

  “That’s going to be impossible,” Blaise said from beside him. “They have enough people, I’m sure someone is always watching for intruders.”

  “We should split up,” Haz said. “Let me go first. If it’s safe, I’ll come back for the rest of you.”

  “I’ll go with you,” East said from beside him.

  “You know if you go, then so do I,” Jonah said.

  “And if you go, then Bria goes, and then Blaise and Sara and I and then the only one left behind is her,” Josh said, gesturing to the girl.

  Her eyes wide, she shook her head.

  “We’ll all go,” I said. “But we will have all our guns ready.” I made eye contact with the girl.

  Two days after we escaped the beltway, I saw the outline of a pistol against the hip of her baggy slave clothes. At first, I had wondered how she had gotten a gun, but then remembered Quint’s pistol had been missing from my pack. She had been in his apartment. Trent had demanded the slaves clean it when we went out. She must have gone through my bag and taken the gun.

  I said to her, “May we please have the gun you have in your bag?”

  The girl chewed on her lower lip, her eyes shifting from me to the ground. The others watched. They knew she carried a pistol. I’d told them. None of us had asked her for it before. She wasn’t a threat to us and we hadn’t needed it. We needed it now.

  I held out my hand and she slowly slid her bag from her back. She knelt in the dry earth as she unzipped the bag and gently pulled out Quint’s pistol that was wrapped in a shirt.

  I took the gun from her. “Thank you for taking it from my bag. If Tr—if he had found it, I don’t know if I would have survived.”

  She kept staring at the ground.

  “Here,” I said, handing it to Jonah. “Even with a broken arm you’re a better shot than the three of us.”

  “Hey, I’m not that bad,” Josh said.

  Blaise patted him on the back. He was actually worse than me and only slightly better than Sara.

  “Thanks, but you keep it. I’ll stick with this,” Jonah said, his grip tightening around the spear he’d made. This one didn’t have the jagged metal edge of a broken shovel, but it did have a sharpened point that was plenty sharp to kill the animals we ate.

  Only when hunting did Haz not mind Jonah’s presence. The two of them, plus East, had become fairly skilled with the spear, and though Jonah was using his left hand, he was still as accurate as Haz and almost equal to East. Haz had more power than either of
them, but his aim wasn’t as good. Blaise remained the best shot. However, bullets were limited. To use them for any reason other than to keep us alive was a waste. So the three guns, now four, were not used for hunting—only for protection.

  I opened the magazine. “Still three bullets,” I said.

  “Are we ready?” Sara asked, starting forward. Impatient to find her mom and sister.

  Haz placed his arm out to stop her. “If we’re all going, we need to wait for moonrise,” he said. “It will be a half moon, enough to see where our feet land, but not enough to be seen from their lookout.”

  Sara’s expression of hope faded.

  East slipped the pack from her back. “I agree, we wait until moonrise.” Then with kindness she added, “It won’t be long and it will be safer.”

  Sara nodded as she lowered herself to the base of a tree. Above her head a rusty barbed wire cut into the smooth bark. On the other side of the tree, a newer fence made of hog wire blocked the farm from the woods. It was designed to keep cows in or dogs out. Humans could go over it if they were determined enough, and we were.

  I sat and pulled Jonah’s seminary sweatshirt from my bag. Blaise had cleaned it as best she could, but the blood stains remained. I folded it beneath my head. Despite the emotion it raised, it was still my favorite pillow. The image of Trent flashed in my mind, but the pain from the wound he’d inflicted made his image fade.

  I touched the back of my head. The scab was gone. In its place was tender pink skin, or so I was told. I hadn’t been able to see it. The hair in the back was now even, thanks to Sara and Blaise, and almost long enough to not be prickly. My friends insisted they re-cut my hair as soon as they found a pair of scissors. When I objected and said it didn’t matter, Haz shook his head and said it really did. I shot back that he was one to talk, with his matted, dirt-soaked beard and dreads. He stormed off before I could say I was sorry. I felt bad. I was joking, but he didn’t think it was funny.

  When he came back, the mud was gone, though the knots remained. At times I saw him gazing at me, or, more specifically, at my hair that was now long enough in the front to tuck behind my ears, and I wondered why. I knew there was a story to his mats and that it went beyond the light. The pictures of him in the house with his parents showed a boy, and then a man with hair cut close to his scalp. His hair didn’t get this long in a few months. There was much to him I didn’t understand, and I wondered if I ever would. He had shared almost nothing with us about who he was or what his life had been like. I knew he was a cop and his profession had defined him in the best of possible ways.

  Once, when he thought no one was around, he pulled something from his pocket. Possessions are rare now and are kept for only two reasons—survival and extreme sentiment. He flipped open what I thought was a wallet, but when the sun hit it I saw the glint of metal and realized it was a badge. From behind that, he pulled something … a piece of paper or perhaps a picture. A moment later he was stuffing it behind the badge and the badge into the pocket of his found cargo pants, zipping the pocket.

  His eyes were on me now, as I lay curled beside Jonah’s sitting form, our bodies touching. Haz worried about me, worried I was making the same mistake with Jonah that I’d made with Trent. Part of me worried about that too, but only Jonah could chase Trent from dreams.

  ***

  “Wake up.” Jonah’s voice was gentle and near. “The moon is up. We’re going to ‘the stones.’ ”

  I sat, groggy and exhausted. I needed more sleep, but I wouldn’t get it. The air was cool. A light mist had formed, covering the goose bumps on my arms with a thin layer of moisture. I pulled the sweatshirt over the T-shirt I wore.

  Jonah held my hand and helped me climb the fence. I struggled to put one foot in front of the other. My body and brain needed more time of peace and slow paces to heal. But I said nothing to my friends; they had been patient long enough.

  “What is it?” Blaise asked, as Haz and East slowed.

  The long grass abruptly ended. Haz knelt, his hand touching the ground. East walked around the edge of a large barren spot. A graveled section with an abandoned car pointed to an area of earth where there was nothing: no grass, no weeds, no gravel, no cement, only a few metal cylinders or pipes reaching out a few inches from the earth toward the sky. Far beyond the car stood a tall pole that carried power lines up and down the deserted road. On the pole, a line hung limp, moving toward us whenever the wind blew.

  “Was there a house here?” Josh asked, confusion evident in his voice.

  I saw with new eyes. The graveled section was a driveway. The bare spot, where the house had been, a few pipes sticking up out of the ground.

  I continued to scan the area. Toward the grass, two mounds were filled with electronics, a microwave, a television, the base of a blender, and larger objects that no longer resembled the objects they had once been. Perhaps the back of an oven or dishwasher covered in circuitry.

  “It’s like the house disappeared and only the electronics are left,” I said to the night, and for the briefest of moments I couldn’t stop myself from remembering the alien movies where entire towns were sucked up into spaceships.

  Sara went toward the pile and pushed a screen of some kind to the side with her toe. She turned to the middle of the barren ground, where most of the pipes lay.

  “Did they disassemble an entire house?” she asked.

  “It looks that way,” East said.

  “Why would someone do that?” Josh asked, kneeling to examine the dirt beside where Blaise stood.

  “Because it couldn’t be protected here, but up there it could be,” Jonah said, nodding to the darkness, where the hill rose above the plain.

  Nothing was left, nothing that could be used, only electronics, and even those had been sifted through with care.

  Josh stood. “Someone seriously took apart an entire house and moved it somewhere else?”

  “I’d say many someones,” Haz said. His attention shifted from the missing house to our destination. A place where people went, and lived, with intention. A place unlike any other we had been since leaving home.

  “We need to keep moving to make it there before dawn.” His voice was determined, like that of a general marching his troops forward.

  My sweatshirt became heavy in the thick mist, my steps slowed by the dampness of my shoes. The cold seeped from my toes throughout my body. I shivered, and instead of thinking about Sara and her mom and Sage or even fear of the people who took apart a house, I could think only about wanting to be home. In front of a warm fire, wrapped in a thick blanket, sleeping peacefully while JP played chess with my father, and Jonah taught Quinn how to read. I imagined Haz and the girl there with us. Haz would be talking over logistics with East and Quint. Nonie and Charlotte would be doting over the girl, and she would know she was safe. She would be safe; we all would.

  My foot slipped and my knees fell to the cool damp earth. A tear fell from my eye before I could stop it.

  Jonah reached around my torso, helping me to stand.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, his voice soft and low.

  “I want to go home,” I whispered so only he could hear. It was a selfish desire, one I wouldn’t tell the others, but it was pointless to try and lie to him.

  I felt his hand in mine, the warmth spreading up my arm, offering some semblance of comfort. “Me too,” he whispered beside me.

  I squeezed his hand as another tear fell.

  Four

  Sprinting across the road, we dodged what had once been four cars. Now each was stripped of tires, hood, doors, and trunks. Whoever these people were, they were resourceful. As we reached the other side of the asphalt, the hill began rising. Our feet shuffled through thick, untamed vegetation. The small spring leaves, which I was sure shone bright green beneath the sun, glowed silver beneath the moon. We climbed steadily forward.

  “This is quite an incline,” Blaise said, her voice showing signs of fatigue.

  “We nev
er came this way.” Sara huffed between words. “The road loops around. We drove to the top. I don’t think Mom would’ve liked it so much if we had to climb the mountain to get to it.”

  The wind blowing down the small mountain brought with it the smell of what waited ahead.

  “I can smell the smoke from their fires,” East said.

  Haz nodded as the two of them led the rest of us forward.

  “Do you really think we can just walk into the middle of their settlement?” I asked, trying to hide the growing fear and fatigue. Any feelings of peace I may have had earlier in the evening were long gone.

  “No,” Haz whispered. “We’ll stop about halfway up and reassess.”

  “Stop?” Sara whispered. “My mom and sister might be there.”

  “And they might not,” Haz said in a tone that left no room for debate. “We’ll stop and wait, watching to understand what this place is and who the inhabitants are.”

  As he spoke, metal clanked and dogs began to bark in the distance. Fear rose within me.

  “I don’t think we’re going to have that option,” Jonah said.

  The barking became louder—followed by humans crashing through bushes, feet and voices amplified every second.

  “Hide,” Haz hissed as he pulled East behind a clump of trees.

  Jonah pulled me, and I pulled the girl toward a tree surrounded by a bush.

  “How did they know we were here?” I asked, my heart racing and my head pounding so intensely that my vision would blur if it didn’t slow down soon. I tried to fight the fear, to calm the hammering.

  The girl pointed to a thin wire pulled between two trees. Above my head hung two metal cans and a larger piece of metal that must have come from a car engine. They were tied to the wire. If the wire moved, so did the metal. Haz or East must have hit the trap without knowing it.

  “What are we going to do?” I asked.

  “Pray and wait. Be sure that’s loaded,” Jonah answered.