The Hound of Justice

by Claire O'Dell

  “Are these definite plans, or maybe ones?” I asked.

  “Maybe ones. Fluid, remember?”

  We lingered in that Waffle House, drinking pots of coffee and eating more biscuits and gravy than was good for us. I’d forgotten about biscuits down south. Forgotten about the special flour that made them so light, as if we were gobbling down sunshine. Maybe once Sara and I were back in DC, we could order the right flour and make biscuits of our own.

  Around six thirty P.M., Micha vanished again to make another phone call or two. Apparently, her friends had agreed to terms and conditions, because when she returned to our booth, she said, “All clear.”

  Twilight was falling as we reached the Mississippi border. Micha turned onto a muddy road labeled as West Acres Farm. Five miles in, we took a right onto another dirt road, this one without any sign. Micha turned off our headlamps and guided the truck carefully over ruts and puddles. At some point, we had passed into Arkansas. Around three A.M. we reached DeWitt, where we parked behind a Walmart and slept a couple hours before Micha shook me awake.

  “Wake up, sunshine,” she said. “I want to run a few errands before we head off.”

  I groaned and rubbed the sleep from my eyes. My face felt sticky, and I wanted nothing more than to find the nearest Comfort Inn, where I could sleep the next ten hours. “Coffee?” I croaked.

  “Coffee and breakfast, just as soon as we get to Pine Bluff.”

  She urged me awake and when that didn’t work, she pressed a handful of damp wipes into my right hand. I scrubbed my face with the wipes, then accepted the cup of lukewarm coffee that she had produced from somewhere. We each made a trip into the weeds to relieve ourselves, then cleaned up with more wipes and headed on our way.

  Over the course of the morning, Micha stopped by five different ATMs and used a different card at each one, collecting an impressive stack of twenty-dollar bills. A deposit for our new friends, she told me.

  At Pine Bluff, we stopped for breakfast and the long-promised coffee. Hot and strong and able to scald the bitter taste from my mouth. Micha waited until halfway through our breakfast before she ducked outside for another phone call.

  “Are we okay?” I asked when she came back.

  “Yes. No. I don’t know yet. They want a couple conditions I’m not happy with. Don’t worry. I’ve already set a few other plans in motion. Fluid, girl, always fluid.”

  After Little Rock, we meandered along back roads. Stopped twice for gas and a restroom. Bought a truly awful pizza from a roadside truck. Every time we passed a military truck—and that happened more the closer we got to the border—I couldn’t help ducking my head and freezing.

  On the far side of Hot Springs, Micha pulled into a junkyard, on a side road off another side road. The truck’s clock read ten till midnight. Micha went to work at once, unscrewing the panels on both sides of the truck. We retrieved my supplies for Lazarus, the cache of money, and from a second compartment on the passenger side, several small-caliber handguns. Security measures, Micha called them. Clearly illegal, is what I thought.

  “Do you know anything about guns?” Micha said. “Be honest.”

  “I passed the basic military training,” I said. “Enough to hit a slow-moving target. I can’t guarantee more.”

  “Good enough.” She handed me the smaller gun. It had a clip loaded and the safety on. “Shoot if you need to. Don’t wait for my command.”

  At her orders, I removed the inflatable cast that had tormented me the past two days and pulled on a pair of leather work gloves. Meanwhile, my companion screwed the door panels back in place. She divided the cash into two bundles and gave one to me before she stuffed the vinyl bag under her shirt.

  We’d just finished these preparations when we heard the crunch of tires over gravel. Micha tucked her gun into her pocket. I froze a moment before I did the same.

  A dusty white van lurched over the hill and stopped a few feet away. Two men climbed out, both of them blinking in the glare of our headlamps. One black man, one white. Both wore faded overalls, work boots, and OmaHogs baseball caps. They also carried guns.

  “Cut the lights,” the black man snapped. “Unless you want the police to stop by and ask a few questions. Mr. Jack won’t like that.”

  “As you wish.” Micha switched off the headlamps. Now we only had the moon and the stars to illuminate the clearing. “So, tell me,” she said, “what can Mr. Jack do for me and my friend?”

  The white man laughed. “Ain’t nothing Mr. Jack can’t do. You want over the border, right? Easy. What else?”

  “Take care of the truck, please. Make certain it’s not traceable, however you or Mr. Jack decide to handle that matter. What’s most important is, we need to get over the border tonight.”

  Both men glanced at each other. “Tonight?” the black man said. “Well, okay. That costs more.”

  The back of my neck prickled at the tone of his voice. Micha, however, seemed undismayed. “Tell me the price. Then I can tell you if it’s worth the cost.” She spoke as easily as if she were having a chat about the weather.

  White man grunted. Black man gave us an easy smile, like a flash of moonlight. “Sure. No problem, ladies.”

  He pointed his gun at Micha. “The price? Lessee. The price be all the pretty cash you’re carrying. Credit cards, too. If you got any bank cards, we want those too. Just hand everything over to my friend. Jimmy Ray, you might want to check them for weapons. Don’t want any accidents.”

  My stomach twisted into a sharp knot. This . . . this could not be happening. Micha was the ingenious one. The one Sara trusted to layer plans upon plans in a matter of minutes. Micha, however, had gone still and quiet. No glance toward me. No reassurance a new plan was under way.

  Jimmy Ray patted us down, confiscated our guns plus a hunting knife I hadn’t realized Micha possessed. Micha handed over her share of the cash and the vinyl pouch. “I gather we won’t be making that drive across the border.”

  “Nah, we are,” Jimmy Ray said. “Sam and me, we’d like to meet your friend. Mr. Jack says you can show us the way.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” said a familiar voice.

  Sara?

  Sam dropped to his knees and fired in the direction of the voice. At the same time, Micha drove a kick into Jimmy Ray’s kneecap. He doubled over. She snatched up the nearest of our guns and shot him in the face.

  I flung myself to the ground and scrabbled underneath the truck. My stomach heaved. I was not dead—not yet—but my left shoulder burned, and the stink of blood filled the air. All I could see was the rebel soldiers, swarming over the medical unit, every one of them armed with knives and machine guns, their eyes blank as they killed and killed.

  More bullets riddled the truck. With a gasp, I yanked myself out of the nightmare that had been Alton, Illinois, and dragged myself farther away from the gunfire. I was bleeding, and my head felt light. One of the bullets must have grazed my arm. My ghost arm ached ferociously. My metal arm twitched and shivered.

  A thick silence had settled over the junkyard, broken only by my ragged breath and the thunder of my pulse.

  Now what?

  Micha already had one of our guns. The other lay a few yards away from the truck. I wriggled around the side of the truck, teeth gritted against the burning pain in my shoulder. Jimmy Ray was a dark lump in the center of the clearing. If he still breathed, I couldn’t tell.

  I stretched out a hand toward the gun.

  Immediately, gunfire broke out.

  I snatched my hand back and tucked myself behind the closest wheel. From a short distance away, I heard Micha’s laugh. “You’re doing fine, my friend,” she said softly.

  One more bullet punched into the truck. I bit my tongue to keep from crying out.

  “Your friend is dead,” Sara called from her vantage point above.

  Sara. She lived. I wanted to laugh with relief.

  “Goddamn you, bitch.” That was Sam, evidently alive and furious.
/>
  “Damn straight. Are you going to let three bitches take you down?”

  More gunfire rang out, this time from all directions. My heart stopped, then stuttered forward. Someone was whimpering. Me, apparently. Farther off, a man cried out piteously. Then a final shot split the night, and all was still.

  Oh god. Oh god.

  “Sara. So glad you could join us. I was afraid my message went astray.”

  That was Micha, her voice breathless.

  “I came as quickly as I could,” Sara replied. “You brought me a surgeon, yes?”

  “I did. And if she hasn’t expired from terror, she might join us in this most joyous reunion.”

  I crawled out from underneath the truck and staggered to my feet. My head felt unnaturally light. Blood loss? Pure terror? But I managed to steady myself against the passenger door while I took in the scene.

  Jimmy Ray lay dead a few feet before the truck. Sam was nowhere in sight. Micha and Sara still clasped each other by the arms. “My love.” Sara turned to me. “You came.”

  She folded me into a tight embrace. She smelled of gun smoke and sweat and cloves. God, I had not realized how much I missed her. “How did you find us so quickly?”

  Sara gave a low throaty chuckle. “Ah, that. Let me introduce you to my own friends. Dane!” she called out. “All clear!”

  A flashlight blinked on. I flung a hand over my eyes, half-blinded. I could just make out a tall figure striding toward us. A woman, a black woman, dressed in fatigues and carrying an automatic rifle.

  “Dane, these are my friends,” Sara said. “My cousin and the surgeon I told you about. My cousin, my friend, this is Dane. As in Great Dane. She’s from the Resistance.”

  18

  “Pleased you meet you,” Dane said.

  Her voice was cool and light, her age impossible to determine. She was at least four inches taller than me, taller even than Sara Holmes, dark as a moonless night and whipcord thin. She gripped my right hand and smiled—a thin sliver of white against her dark brown face.

  Dane, as in Great Dane.

  “Does everyone in the Resistance have a code name?” I asked.

  Dane’s grip tightened a fraction. “Maybe. Do you have a problem with that?”

  “Ah, no.” A breathless laugh escaped me. At some point, my body would recall it was exhausted and wounded, but not yet. “Pleased to meet you, Dane. More than you could possibly imagine.”

  Her smile widened. “Likewise. Hound tells me you are the key to our mission.”

  She released my hand. I flexed my fingers and wondered exactly what Sara had said about me.

  Now Dane and Micha faced each other. They studied each other warily.

  “And what shall we call you?” Dane said. “Puppy? Bunny? Chipmunk?”

  Micha’s mouth tucked into a smile. “Ferret will do.”

  “Hmmm. Good choice from what Hound tells me. Ferret you shall be.”

  They shook hands. Micha tilted her head back, hesitated a moment. “I . . . I believe I remember you, though you went by another name in those days. Aren’t you the one who brought Hound back to our family? Twenty years ago, wasn’t it?”

  “More like twenty-five,” Sara said dryly. “To my regret and dismay, not to say Grandmamma’s.” She did not specify whether the regret was for the number of years or that she’d returned to her family. “My love,” she said to me. “You are looking more pained than usual.”

  Now I remembered how often I wanted to smack her with a heavy, blunt object. “Oh, don’t mind me. Just a matter of a stray bullet. Please don’t let me interrupt the reunion.”

  Micha snorted. Sara rolled her eyes.

  Dane herself was grinning. “She bites. And with good reason. Hound, there’s a first-aid kit in the glove box. It should have antiseptic and bandages. Will that do for now?” she asked me.

  I shrugged. It wasn’t as though I could summon a proper medical kit just by wishing. And I’d dealt with less-than-adequate field conditions before. “For now, yes. At some point, I’d like to have antibiotics on hand.”

  “We can see about that later,” Sara said. “Come with me, Doc.”

  She lit the way with her flashlight through the junkyard, to a section of chain-link fence that had been cut and peeled back. On the other side, almost invisible in the high grass, was a rusted gray Buick with Arkansas plates. She swung the rear door open. “Let’s take a look, my friend.”

  I dropped onto the seat, suddenly dizzy as the adrenaline vanished. Sara held me upright while she extracted me from my jacket. She left me long enough to fetch the first-aid kit and a jug of water.

  “No veins nicked,” I said. “Otherwise I’d be dead. And they missed Lazarus.”

  “Who might Lazarus be?”

  “My new arm. Risen from the dead. Will it need a new name too?”

  I’d begun to babble, whether from exhaustion, or the strain of these past few weeks, or even the relief I was alive. Meanwhile, Sara tended me competently, as though she’d done this many times. She poured water over the wound, then used wipes from the kit to clean away the blood. It was just as I thought, she told me. The bullet had grazed my arm, nothing more. Once she had picked out the cloth fragments—another operation that left me sweating—she covered the wound with gauze and nagged me until I drank from the water jug.

  In the meantime, Dane and Micha had transported all our belongings from the truck. “Let’s get away from here,” Dane said. “Ferret, you drive the truck. I’ll make a few calls farther down the road. We can get someone to tie up our loose ends, while we head over the border.”

  She spoke easily, as though this were an everyday task, but I knew we were ninety miles from the border and less than twenty from the militarized zone. I told myself they’d made the crossing once already. That had to count for something, right?

  Sara pressed two pills into my hand and guided them to my mouth. Aspirin, she told me. She stood over me until I’d choked down the pills and finished off the rest of the water jug. Then she eased me onto the backseat and covered me with a blanket. “Sleep well, my love.”

  I tried to argue, but my tongue felt thick and clumsy. Goddamn you, I thought. You drugged me again.

  Not for the first time, not for the last, I thought I heard her whisper.

  ***

  I woke briefly when the Buick pulled off the road and Micha joined me in the backseat. The skies were dark, except for a sprinkling of stars. Two signs were just visible in the red glow of the Buick’s brake lights. Mile marker 63. A larger one that read Y CITY 27 MILES. LAST EXIT FOR CIVILIANS. Micha settled next to me, and I fell back to sleep.

  Another stop, another brief waking. Still night, but the skies now a dark blue along the horizon. The engine hissed softly. Dane leaned against the car, talking on her cell. Micha snored faintly next to me. Sara was a featureless silhouette against the dashboard lights.

  ***

  “Wake, wake, my love. For we must fly.”

  I flinched and grabbed hold of the hand on my arm. My fingers locked, hard. Sara waited, still and silent, until the fog cleared from my brain. Slowly I unlocked my fingers and levered myself upright. We were parked on the side of a dirt road, in the middle of a forest. The air had a clean fresh scent, of pine needles and damp earth.

  “Sorry,” I muttered.

  “We all have our little habits,” she said lightly.

  Only Sara would call my panic a habit. I rubbed the sleep from my eyes. “Where are we?”

  “In a maze of twisty passages all alike. Drink. Take a piss. Beware the dwarf with an axe. Or if you need a more precise answer, we are in the middle of what was a national forest, may she rest in peace. But no more questions. Drink. Arise. We can eat as we walk.”

  Sara handed me a thermos. Coffee, from the smell of it.

  The coffee was cold and stale and strong. I drank it down, along with two aspirin—genuine ones this time. By now Micha was awake and grumbling and gulping down her own coffee. Dane and
Sara stood off a distance, heads close. Both wore baggy trousers in a camouflage pattern. Sara’s elegant locs were covered by a brown scarf. In the sunlight, I could see the thin sharp lines, more pronounced than ever, around her eyes and mouth.

  I stumbled into the brush to relieve myself. From above, a blue jay called out a warning; another farther off replied. The closest jay took off in a flurry of noise and feathers, its shrill cry echoing between the trees.

  Christ. Might as well send up a signal flare to the enemy.

  Leaves rustled off to my left. My breath froze. Images of soldiers with machine guns, charging over open muddy ground, flickered across my mind’s eye. I dropped to my knees, expecting any moment to feel the bullets ripping through my flesh.

  Silence settled over the land. No gunfire. No explosions. No soldiers. Just the intermittent birdsong of early morning, and from farther off, the murmur of conversation between my companions.

  I expelled a breath. Reached hard for my quiet place. Panic, hah, what a fucking inadequate word. Yes, I’d expected to be afraid. Yes, I knew—thought I knew—all the implications a journey across the border had for me and my not-quite-healed self. No matter that we were miles away from the border. Alton had been well away from the border too.

  Eventually my pulse slowed. I cycled through the drills Faith Bellaume had taught me. Drills aren’t magical, she’d told me more than once. But sometimes they’re all we have.

  When I returned to the car, Sara and the others had already unpacked the Buick and divided everything into four backpacks. Dane handed out sandwiches of stale white bread, grilled sausage, and mustard. “Thirty miles to the end of the rainbow,” she said. “We eat as we march. Are you up to that, Doc?”

  I nodded. “I am.”

  She studied me with an assessing gaze, as if to say, Are you going to be our weak link? And if I were, I had no doubt she would leave me behind, this instant, no matter what Sara Holmes said.

  But I must have passed inspection, because Dane nodded briskly. “Well, then. Let’s go.”