Ember and Marco slept sitting up on a bench in the grimy, dingy bus station. We were deep in Minnesota, two days into our trip west, and we had a three-hour layover between buses.
It was well past two o’clock in the morning. Reid had wandered off to find a vending machine. I stood in front of the large map of the continent, staring at Wyoming and wishing I could teleport.
A thin, weary-eyed woman burst through the glass doors of the small station, followed by a desperate-looking man in overalls and a trucker cap. “Leave me alone, Daryl!”
“Lauren, please! We can work this out!”
“I’m done, Daryl. I’m through. Get out of my life.” She saw me watching her. “What are you looking at, you disgusting hippie?”
She stormed outside to argue in semi-privacy, away from the hippie woman who hadn’t showered in days. As she screamed at the man, her angry words formed little clouds of breath in the freezing air.
Minutes later, a bus arrived. She flipped him off, then disappeared inside. He stood on the curb and hung his head, then walked away into the darkness.
I turned away and sat down on an empty bench, across the little room from Ember and Marco. Though I was exhausted, I didn’t bother trying to sleep. I hadn’t slept a full hour since leaving Gabriela’s house, and I had a mind to ask Ember to guide me into another beautiful dream.
Reid hurried through the glass doors, two steaming paper cups in his hands and a plastic bag on his arm. “I couldn’t find any good vending machines, but there’s an all-night convenience store down the street. I got coffee for the two of us and food for everyone.”
He handed me a paper cup, and I gave him a grateful smile before I sipped my coffee.
The hot bitterness stirred up a happy memory. I closed my eyes and relived the day I’d met Benjamin, how he’d angled his body toward me on the loveseat in Café Stella, plying me with coffee and pastries.
I associated coffee with him, and all that he entailed: love, affection, gentle caresses, healing, and the hope of a happier life.
“Hey, what’s wrong?” Reid asked. “You look down.”
I stared at my battered boots. “The last thing I told Benjamin before… well, we argued. I told him to leave. I said I didn’t care where he went.” Reid set down his cup and put his arms around me while I hid my face in his shirt. “What if that’s the last thing I ever got to say to him?”
He gave me a reassuring squeeze. “Don’t even think like that. Benjamin loves you, and more importantly, he knows that you love him. We’ll find him, and Isabel, and you’ll get the chance to apologize. I bet he’s already forgotten the argument. I’m sure he just wants to see you.” Reid breathed a laugh. “He sure talks about you enough.”
“He does?”
“You have no idea. It drives Marco crazy.”
“But not you.”
Reid let go of me. “I know what it’s like to be in love.” He gazed lovingly at Ember. “I know what it’s like to find the person you want to spend the rest of your life with.”
I couldn’t help a smile. “You couldn’t have done better. And now that we’re not part of the camps anymore, you don’t have to get permission to marry. You can get married tomorrow, if you want. It would be my honor to bind your hands.” I leaned back against the tiled wall. “No more betrothals. Finally. What good were they, anyway?”
I pictured Matthew’s face as I’d broken his fingers. An animalistic side of me craved returning to Chattahoochee to finish what I’d started.
“I was betrothed once,” Reid murmured, his eyes unfocused. “I liked her.”
I sat up. “You were betrothed? When? To who?”
“I was betrothed when I was ten to Stephanie Begay.” His voice was soft. “I liked her, and I didn’t mind being betrothed.”
“What happened?”
“The Westerners happened.”
His cup shook so much that coffee sloshed on his hand. He didn’t seem to notice.
“They attacked the camp when we were thirteen. I don’t know what’s been going on in your camp, Jill, but they come to kill people at mine. They got their hands on Stephanie and stabbed her to death.” He dropped his head. “I found her body. I was so angry, I hunted down four of the Westerners as they fled and impaled them, just like that kid during the attack a few days ago.” Reid looked at me, a fierce glint in his eye. “I’ve killed more than two dozen Westerners since then.”
I chewed the inside of my lip. “Reid, maybe it would be better if you lead this mission.” I tried to keep the sadness out of my voice. I loved leading, but Reid clearly knew our enemy better. I trusted Reid with my life—stepping aside wouldn’t be difficult.
“No.”
His firm reply hinted at deeper feelings.
“Why?” I asked, careful to not sound suspicious.
“I don’t deserve to lead. I lost that right a long time ago.”
“That’s rid—”
“It’s not,” he growled. “You always see the best in us, but I’m not perfect. Stephanie died because I was shirking off on watch that night, giving the Westerners a chance to sneak in. I vowed to be the best superhero I could be after that to make up for it, and where did that get me? I watched Patrick abuse all of you, knowing full well that he was outside of his rights but not wanting to question my leader. And then…”
He covered his eyes with his hand. “And then when I pulled Patrick off of Ember, he actually looked surprised, Jill. He was surprised that I’d defend my teammate against him even as he was trying to rape her.” He looked at me. “I do not deserve leadership. You do. You always defended us against him. You always had a backbone. You’re the kind of person I want to follow into battle.”
A large bus pulled up outside of the bus station just then, its front displaying the destination: Buffalo, WY.
I gave a small smile to Reid and went to wake up Marco and Ember. They yawned and blinked, and we prepared to begin the final leg of our journey.
I settled into my seat next to Marco and tried to sleep, but whenever I drifted off I dreamed of Matthew’s skin on mine.
“You guys take care, now.” The chatty old man in camouflage hunting gear gave us a little wave as we shouldered our backpacks and tightened our scarves and shawls around ourselves.
“We will, Mr. Rose,” I said. “Um, namaste.” That was a word Gabriela had taught me.
“And thank you for all the local gossip,” Marco said, smirking. “That was fascinating.”
Ember elbowed him.
Mr. Rose leaned out the window of his truck. “Remember what I said—be careful around here. There’s been some funny business in the hills for a while now. A couple years back a man disappeared in the night, left his pregnant wife behind. Of course, she’s fine because she ran off with that hotshot sheriff’s deputy, but you all need to get inside before sundown.”
The man, Mr. Rose, had tried to talk the four of us out of our “vision quest” as he drove us down Tipperary Road. We’d arrived in Buffalo with less than ten dollars, so we couldn’t afford a taxi. Hitchhiking was the only option.
“Be blessed, sir,” Reid said.
Mr. Rose shook his head and pulled back onto the road, disappearing over the hill and leaving us at the edge of the vast emptiness of the Wyoming countryside.
The freezing wind whipped my skirts around my legs as I took in the barren expanse ahead of us. Snow dusted the ground in places, crunchy and dry, blowing around like sand. Two miles distant, past Crazy Woman Creek, the tree line began at the foot of the hills.
Nestled somewhere in those hills was the lake for which we were looking, and if we were lucky, the Westerners.
“We’ll walk until half an hour before sundown,” I said, tightening my thick shawl around my shoulders and tucking the ends of my sleeves into my gloves. “Nobody uses powers unless I say so.”
Ember’s body trembled with shivers. She’d always been the thinnest of us, and now the wind was cutting through her.
I untied one of my shawls and handed it to her, immediately feeling the effect of the wind. “Let’s get moving. It’ll keep us warm.”
Reid pulled out the map of the area I’d printed out in Gabriela’s warm living room and pointed the way toward the lake, struggling to hold the flapping piece of paper still.
We began to walk.
19
I stretched out my aching fingers toward the fire, shivering uncontrollably.
Marco had collected some fallen branches from the nearby forest and ignited a crackling fire, but the heat could not reach my icy core. I huddled in front of the fire and hugged my knees, willing my muscles to still.
We’d considered stopping for the night inside the tree line, which would act as a wind break, but we wanted to be as visible as possible. Every few minutes I considered asking Reid to make a shelter for us, but then reminded myself that no civilian would have the ability to do that.
Reid unwrapped a granola bar and gave it to me. “Eat something. Tomorrow is going to be much harder if you’re cold and hungry.”
I nibbled on the dry granola bar, but it felt like sawdust in my parched mouth. “Thirsty,” I mumbled.
Ember pushed a half-empty water bottle toward me. “Here, have the rest of mine.”
I shook my head.
The distant whinnying of a horse made me lift my head and peer at one of the far hills. It was so dark, even I struggled to make out distinct shapes at the distance, but I could see that the horse that had whinnied was one of many. An enormous herd of wild horses ambled over a hill about two miles away.
I pointed a shaking finger at the hill. “Ember, can you talk to the horses over there? They might know where humans live around here.”
Ember rubbed her forehead and squinted in the direction of the horses. “I… hmm, that’s odd. I can’t contact them. I guess they’re too far away.”
I raised an eyebrow. Ember was an extremely powerful telepath. She’d once controlled a dog from across the city, and had later reached out to me from the same distance. Two miles was a small distance for her.
Still, I wasn’t in the mood to argue about what she could or couldn’t do. I let the subject drop. “We should get to the lake tomorrow.”
“What’s the plan when we’re there?” Reid asked. “How long are we going to wait around for the Westerners? We have supplies for maybe thirty-six hours.”
I hugged my knees tighter. “We’ll talk about that then.”
Eventually the four of us laid down under the blankets we’d brought, clinging to each other for warmth.
A light snow began to fall, stinging our cheeks and lips, and the wind howled in the tops of the trees, mixing with the whinnies of the horses.
Reid’s warning had been correct—the second day was significantly more difficult to endure than the first.
Though I’d fallen asleep for an hour or two in the night, I’d had no real rest because of the cold. While we stomped out the fire after daybreak, I struggled to keep my eyes open. Every bone and joint in my body ached as though I’d been thrown into a wall—a feeling I knew well—and the sensation in my stomach swung wildly between a hollow ache and mind-consuming hunger.
Around midday, I noticed that though the cold bit at my exposed skin, I was no longer shivering.
I slowly looked around at Reid and Ember and saw that beneath their hippie clothes, they didn’t shiver, either. I checked my digital watch, which had a thermometer. It was ten degrees. Marco, however, shivered with such force that I could hear his teeth chatter.
I stumbled many times, my feet fumbling in my too-long skirts as we slipped and tripped up looming hills and down into small valleys with frozen creeks at the bottom. The forest thinned in some places, offering occasional views of the countryside.
The herd of horses remained on the far hill, but I couldn’t hear them anymore unless we were downwind of them.
We reached the large lake an hour before sunset.
Marco built another fire on the banks, which we crowded around in silence. As the heat washed over me, I began to shiver again. These shivers weren’t like normal trembles, but instead were uncontrollable, violent shaking.
Beneath the fog of cold and hunger, I remembered something I’d learned from a health textbook recently: hypothermia was when a person’s core temperature dipped too low. If hypothermia worsened, the sufferer stopped shivering and lost coordination.
“No more hiking. We’re not leaving this fire,” I said through chattering teeth. “Marco, make it bigger.”
Reid clambered to his feet. “I’ll help you pick wood that’s best for burning.”
Marco and Reid retrieved more wood from the tree line and dropped it into the blaze, which flared up. I dropped my head on my knees, drowsy and empty.
We were doomed. Benjamin and Isabel were doomed. We’d freeze to death on the banks of some dumb lake, chasing in vain after a cold trail for people who’d probably been killed days ago.
A lone horse’s whinny mixed with the wind, much nearer than normal, possibly under a mile. Ember and Reid sat together, holding each other tight under their blanket. I turned to ask Marco to sit next to me so I could benefit from his natural warmth, but before I could, he slowly stood up.
“There’s something moving in the trees.”
The rest of us turned our heads and followed where Marco was looking. Sure enough, three shadowy figures approached us. Their general shape and height indicated that they were men.
We all got to our feet. For the first time since yesterday morning, I felt clear-headed. “Everyone, remember the story,” I murmured through stiff, bleeding lips. They all made little noises of assent.
The men came into sharper view. They were dressed in dark clothes, perhaps military surplus, and wore black neck gaiters that were pulled up over their noses. Their heavy boots crunched on the gravel lake shore.
Each one wore an M-16 slung on his back. Ember grabbed Reid’s hand.
They’re Supers, and they want us gone. I don’t see Benjamin and Isabel in their surface thoughts.
When they were in talking distance, I worked my face into a gauzy smile and put my hands together as if I were praying. “Namaste, brothers.”
“You’re on our land,” the middle one growled. “Leave. Now.”
“The earth is our home,” I insisted, airy. “We’re just poor travelers exploring Mother Earth. My name is Rainbow. These are my spirit siblings, Eagle and his wife, Feather. This is Sunshine,” I said, gesturing to Marco. “We’re looking for more people like us to begin a community built on—”
“I don’t care what you’re here for. We said leave.” The man on the right took off his glove.
The middle one held up a hand. “Hold it. You’re homeless?”
We got ‘em. Ember smiled pleasantly at the men. “The earth is our home. But some people might call us homeless, yes. We reject the unnatural idea of property.”
The man in the middle pulled down his neck gaiter, revealing a scarred, humorless face. “It’s cold out here. How about the four of you come back to our campsite and warm up. We’ve got food and bedding. I’m sure your… religion will let you eat and sleep in comfort.”
I made an awkward bow. “Mother Earth will surely reward your generosity. Eagle, Feather, Sunshine, let’s get our things.”
They nodded and grabbed our few supplies, shooting glances at me. Ember rubbed her forehead, clearly concentrating deeply.
The middle one is named Bruce. He’s the head of the guard. The other two are Charles and Adam. They’re going to take us back to their camp for ‘sorting,’ but I can’t get many details. They’re worried about something, but… I can’t…
She rubbed her forehead again, then looked at me expectantly. We were walking in the woods now, a few paces behind the men. She nudged me and gave me a strange look.
I tapped my temple, the usual sign for her to speak telepathically.
She mouthed something at me. “I am.”
Our eyes widened at the same time. Her telepathy had stopped working.
I stifled real fear as the men lead us through the trees. We relied on Ember in situations with unknown variables, and I hadn’t planned on going into a Westerner camp without her abilities.
Ahead of us, the muffled sounds of human activity grew more distinct. I heard many voices, all male, all tense and angry. Behind us, not far off, horses continued to whinny.
I saw at once why they’d hidden themselves so well from my senses—the camp was sheltered by the terrain, obscured until we were in it. Canvas tents bore woven sticks, twigs, and leaves, disguising them well against the background of the forest.
The only non-tent structure was a metal shipping container that had been retrofitted with a door. A small generator by the shipping container hummed, providing electricity for small lamps.
I counted about two dozen men, but no women or children. Either the camp was non-permanent, military-purposed, or both.
“Get Boone,” Bruce told Charles.
Charles ducked into a larger tent on the far side of the camp, then reappeared with an older man who also wore military surplus clothes and an M-16. Unlike the first three, he also had a handgun in a holster at his hip.
Boone wrinkled his nose when he saw my team. “What is this supposed to be?”
“They’re homeless,” Bruce said. “And barely out of their teens. We offered them food and bedding for the night.”
Something in his tone conveyed much more information than what was said, but without Ember’s telepathy, I could only guess at his true meaning.
Boone circled us, studying us as one might a car before buying it. “You,” he said to Ember. “Are you healthy?”
“Yes. We all are.”
“Do any of you have military training? Fighting skills? Anything like that?”
I gasped. “No. We’re peaceful people. Fighting is against our beliefs.” I pointed to a small bird that was perching on a low branch nearby. “We’re like songbirds, harming none, yearning only to bring beauty to the world.”
Boone smirked. “That’s just fine.” He gestured to the shipping container. “My assistants will show you to your lodgings for the night and bring you some food. We’ll talk in the morning about how we’ll go forward.”
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