“We’re car salesmen, not drivers,” said the female twin. The boy elbowed her.
I didn’t like her tone. Or the way she was staring at Chase.
“Do you know a carrier or not?” I asked.
“There’s one in Lewisburg that goes to Georgia and South—”
“Can’t go to Lewisburg,” Chase interrupted.
“Then Harrisonburg, but that’s farther.”
“Can’t go there, either,” Chase said flatly. I felt my jaw tighten.
“Bad boy,” clucked the girl. She grinned flirtatiously at Chase. I narrowed my eyes at her, and though it was cold out, I rolled up my sleeve to show off the ring on my left hand.
The small girl was whispering something to her boyfriend. When she turned to the side, she placed a hand on her distended abdomen. I felt suddenly sorry for them. She was only fifteen or sixteen—too young to be married—and certainly in violation of the Moral Statutes. That was probably why they were living in a truck.
“MM following you?” she asked.
Neither Chase nor I answered.
“You need Knoxville,” she continued. “Tennessee. You know it?”
My attention perked at this.
“What’s in Knoxville?” Chase asked.
“A carrier?” I clarified, feeling my breath begin to come faster.
“A whole underground system,” said the girl twin. “Lots of people have been heading there. That’s where half our cars have gone. Total liquidation.” She laughed.
“Knoxville,” I repeated. I felt Chase release a slow breath beside me.
We were back on track.
* * *
IT was a long day.
The new Red Zones, those cities evacuated from the War, and Yellow Zones, those areas entirely comprised of MM, were marked in bold corresponding colors on highway signs and called for multiple detours throughout Virginia and Northern Tennessee. For brief patches I dozed, never falling fully asleep. I lingered on edge, my heart always beating a little too fast, my mind filled with worries.
The girl twin occasionally popped up in my mind, and I found myself bitter when I thought of her. She’d insisted on a trade for the car, and since we had nothing they wanted, we’d had to pay them. One thousand dollars. Cash. For an item that wasn’t even theirs to begin with. But since they’d siphoned all the gasoline, our hands were tied.
Still, I didn’t regret the interaction.
A whole underground system, the girl had said. A whole resistance movement. My mind couldn’t wrap around what this might look like. People like us. On the run. Scheming against the MM. My fantasies seemed too unrealistic. All that mattered was that someone would take us to South Carolina.
As the day wound on, my chest began to squeeze with that familiar anxiety. My mother was just beyond our grasp, but now when I focused hard on her, I only saw fragmented images. Her short, accessorized hair. Her socked feet on the kitchen floor. I needed to find her soon, or I was afraid even more of her would disappear.
Finally, we came in range. As we closed in on the city of Knoxville, the MM presence on the highway increased. There were other cars as well. Not many, but enough for us to blend in. This fact didn’t ease our minds as the FBR cruisers began flying by with regularity.
Then we saw the sign. YELLOW ZONE. The western half of Knoxville had recently been closed to civilians to make way for an MM base.
“Think they lied?” I asked Chase nervously. “Do you think they sent us here because we didn’t give them enough money?”
“No,” Chase answered, though he didn’t sound very convincing. “I think the safest place is right in the enemy’s shadow. There’s resistance here.”
And so we went to hide beneath the belly of a monster.
He took a busy exit after crossing over the gray waters of the Holston River, and parked in a dark lot behind an outcropping of sandstone medical buildings that belonged to the city hospital. Outside we were flooded by the sounds and scents of a working city during rush hour. Even after just a couple days in the country, being around so many human bodies made me feel crowded and paranoid, like everyone was watching us. I could smell the sewers, the sweat, the smog filling the stagnant air. It did nothing but add to my sense of unease.
It was cool, but not cold. The sky hung low with humidity. Rain was coming. Chase grabbed the bag and rounded the car. He didn’t have to tell me not to leave anything. I already knew we wouldn’t be coming back.
We entered the street and were immediately surrounded by pedestrians. Some rushing, fortunate enough to be wearing their work clothes and therefore employed. Some homeless, begging off to the side with their cardboard signs. Some twitching, scratching, talking to unseen hallucinations. High or mentally ill. The Reformation Act had eliminated treatment programs to fund the FBR.
There was hardly enough room to walk here. Chase came close, and though his expression was dark, I knew he was more comfortable than me. After Chicago had been bombed, he’d survived in places like this. Places where people had congregated after being displaced from the major cities.
“Watch your back,” he warned me. “And mine, while you’re at it,” he added, tightening the straps of the pack. He’d moved the money to his front pocket.
“Where do we start?” I asked. This was the biggest city I’d ever seen. No matter how large the resistance here, we were searching for a needle in a haystack.
“Follow people in dirty clothes,” he said. “They’ll lead us to food, and where there’s food, there’s people talking.”
He was right. We walked for several city blocks, finding ourselves part of a massive stream of hungry people. Every telephone pole, fence, or door displayed a prominent posting of the Moral Statutes. We crossed the train tracks and came to a place called Market Square, a long cement strip lined by flat-faced brick buildings that might once have been shops but were now hostels, medical stations, and abandoned buildings.
The crowd grew denser toward the back of the square. Thousands of people were here for food or shelter. Sisters, too, in their navy skirts and knotted handkerchiefs, bustling around the temporary cots of the Red Cross camp. I swallowed thickly, realizing this could have been me.
A dose of adrenaline shot into my veins when I caught a uniform from the corner of my eye. The clean, neatly pressed blue stuck out amid a sea of shabby garments.
Soldiers.
My eyes lingered, and I saw two more, standing behind an unmarked moving truck, unloading wooden crates of food. Their setup was positioned on the right side of a bottleneck, leading to the open space of the square. They didn’t try to hide their weapons; they were all armed and ready to fire upon anyone who might try to steal.
Chase had seen them, too. He lowered his head, trying not to look so tall. I scanned the crowd. Too many people were shuffling into the square; no one was going out. If we ran now, we’d cause a commotion and our way would be impeded by bodies. Besides, if the MM wanted to pursue us, they had guns. People would get out of their way a lot faster than they’d get out of ours.
We needed to get to the kitchen. Chase thought we’d be safe asking some discreet questions about the carrier there, and the only way to get there was to walk by the soldiers. We wouldn’t be locked in once we passed—there were exits in the back of the square that I could see from my vantage point—but it would be a tremendous risk. The soldiers would only be ten feet away.
I reached for Chase’s hand, and a quick squeeze asked the question I didn’t dare speak aloud. With only the briefest of hesitations, he squeezed mine back. We were going to pass them.
“Pull your collar up,” Chase commanded. I did so quickly. We shuffled forward, bodies bumping against us on all sides as we entered the bottleneck.
Please don’t look this way. I concentrated all my energy on the two soldiers.
“Eyes forward.” Chase’s voice was low enough that only I could hear. “Don’t stop.”
Sweat rained down my face, so contrary to the fir
m gust of cool evening air that blasted over the crowded square. A vice squeezed my temples.
Keep walking, I told myself.
I saw the soldiers in my peripheral vision, only ten feet away. One of the guards turned quickly, a radio glued to his ear. From the back I caught a glimpse of his light brown hair and narrow build, and an odd sense of familiarity crept over me.
Keep walking.
We passed by the crates of food and the soldiers and headed toward the open area of the square.
I fought the urge to turn around. Chase strode faster, pulling me around the corner on the damp sidewalk, out of the stream of pedestrians. It was quieter here, and I breathed for what felt like the first time in minutes.
“What are they doing here?” I asked. The MM provided the food for the soup kitchens at home but relied on volunteers to deliver it to the sites. I always thought this was because it was below them to mingle with poor people they didn’t have reason to arrest.
“The city must be on a supply crunch.”
“That explains the guns,” I commented wryly. The sooner we could get out of here the better.
As we resumed our path, I became acutely aware of how clean, how well fed, we looked. Single floaters loitering near the sidewalk stared resentfully at us like we were royalty. From their famished condition, I guessed that Chase was right about the supply crunch: There clearly wasn’t enough food to go around in this large city.
We passed a homeless man leaning against a loud generator outside a community restroom with a sign that read “anything helps.” He was emaciated. Ragged, stained clothing hung from his bony frame. Paper-thin skin lidded his deeply set eyes, and his face was masked by the olive-colored blotches of starvation.
Chase paused in front of this man, and for a moment I thought that he was going to give him some money. His generosity scared me. If Chase took out his wallet, these starving people would be on us like a pack of wolves.
An instant later Chase straightened and reached for my hand again, pulling me beside him.
“Stay close,” he said.
I jumped when I heard the scuffle behind us, and turned back, expecting to have to defend myself. My mouth dropped open. The pack of wolves had indeed descended, but they weren’t coming after us, they were closing in upon the man. The starving, homeless man. My anxiety rebounded, ten times more intensely than before, when I realized they intended to rob him. The palms of my hands dewed with sweat, but Chase’s grip held fast.
A man and a woman with sunken cheeks stole the man’s change cup and his cardboard sign. Another took his shoes. Another his soiled sweatshirt. When it was jerked off his body, folded Statute circulars fluttered into the air. He’d been lining his clothing with paper to keep warm.
The crumpled victim’s bare, ashen chest was revealed. His sticklike limbs were bent at awkward, contorted angles, but he remained as supple as a rag doll. Someone had probably knocked him unconscious, or he had been simply too weak to fight back.
“We have to help!” My voice was high with distress. This crime was intolerable. How would the man survive without the warmth of his clothing?
“There’s nothing we can do. If we stay, we’ll be next.” He urged me forward.
“Chase!” I yelped. I dug my heels in but could not pull him to a stop.
“It’s too late,” he said in a hard voice. At once, I knew what he meant.
The man was dead.
How long had he sat there, with no one checking on him, no one noticing how many days had passed since his last meal? A day? Two? A week? How cold and foreign this city seemed, that even death could pass unnoticed.
And where were the soldiers now? Weren’t they meant to stop this?
The answer was all too clear. No. The MM would do nothing. They wanted the poor and unfortunate to kill themselves off. Less work for them that way.
An image of Katelyn Meadows filled my mind. What had the guards at the reformatory done to her body? Had she been taken back to her parents? Were her parents even still alive? I suddenly felt old, far beyond my years.
Chase pulled me through the skirmish. I felt as if I were floating. Like my feet barely touched the ground. I wanted to go to sleep and wake up in my bedroom at home, with my mother singing in the other room. I wanted to go over to Beth’s house to do homework and talk about anything and everything and nothing important. I wanted things that were impossible.
Someone shoved into us, knocked undoubtedly by someone else. Chase’s hand was ripped from mine and I was tossed to the side. I didn’t fall. There were too many people buffering my stumble.
But Chase was gone. Swallowed by the crowd.
My ears rang. The blood pumped through my veins.
“Ch— Jacob!” I screamed, hoping he would respond to his middle name. People were shouting, shoving, pushing now. Were they still moving toward the dead man? Or something else? Chase did not respond.
“Jacob!” It was like shouting under water. No one heard me. A hard slap to my back had me jolting forward, toward the concrete, but I bounced off a body in my path. Someone grasped my arm hard and nearly jerked it out of the socket trying to hold himself up. A sea of chaos took me, flinging my upper half one way while my legs went the other, and then the crunch, the sick, soft feel of flesh and bones beneath my boots.
“Food!” I heard someone yell. “Over there!”
They couldn’t be talking about the soup kitchen: That was at the other end of the square. And the dead man only had so much to steal. It had to be the truck we’d passed earlier. What I couldn’t imagine was how these people expected to break through the barrier of armed soldiers.
Just as I regained my footing, a hand latched hard around my elbow.
“Oh, thank God!” I cried, and turned to see the back of a man with clean-cut brown hair and a navy blue collar. He was dragging me out of the riot.
Not Chase. A soldier.
“No! Wait, please!” I tried, planting my feet and jerking back. “There’s been a mistake.”
“Keep moving, Miller,” I heard him call over his shoulder.
Dread punched through me. This soldier knew who I was. They’d found me. Chase had to run. He was in more danger than I was if he was caught. He could still get to my mother.
It took all my power not to shout Chase’s name at the top of my lungs. But I knew that if I did, and if he came, he was as good as dead.
“I’m not … I don’t know who Miller is!” I said, pulling back with both hands now. No one noticed me. There was too much commotion. Too much chaos.
“Help!” I yelled finally. “Help!”
But even if they heard, they didn’t react. I clutched a man’s coat as the soldier yanked me toward a black alleyway. He shrugged me off. I grabbed a woman’s hair. She punched my shoulder, and my fist returned with loose strands.
The world became suddenly silent. It was as though we’d stepped through some invisible force field. The roar of the crowd remained in the square, but the alley was absolutely still, apart from a few rats scurrying behind an overflowing Dumpster. I saw one or two people glance after us as I was dragged inside, but though their eyes widened, they looked away in fright.
I was alone with the soldier.
CHAPTER
13
PANIC seized me.
I struggled, my hair a curtain blocking my vision. I refused to stand, forcing the soldier to carry me. I saw flashes of his uniform. The bloused navy pants over black boots. The belt. The gun. A gold name badge—WAGNER. Dusk had come, and back here in the shadows I couldn’t get a clear view of his face.
“Stop!” the soldier demanded. I swallowed my fear and swung my fist at his head, well aware that such an action was either going to land me in prison or get me killed.
“Stop!” he yelled again. “Look at me!”
In a heave, he rammed my body against the alley wall. My head smacked hard against the brick. All of my organs reverberated inside of me, and I gasped, seeing stars.
But I stopped, and that was when I saw his face. Strong, handsome features. Blue eyes, no longer vacant. Sandy brown hair. This was the soldier I had glimpsed by the truck guarding the food. The one who had given me a funny feeling.
“Sean?” I said, shocked. Sean Banks. Not Wagner. Who was Wagner?
I didn’t have time to ask. A second later we were thrown to the ground as some large object was propelled from the side and slammed into Sean.
Not an object. Chase.
I scrambled to clear the fray. There was a thudding sound, then a grunt as the air expelled from someone’s lungs. They wrestled for just a few seconds before Chase pinned Sean, facedown in the cement, holding his arm awkwardly behind his back. He ripped away the gun and thrust it none too gently into the back of Sean’s head.
“Ember.” Chase was too distraught to use my alias. He was asking if I was injured, and I knew immediately that my answer would determine how he would punish my assailant.
“Chase, that’s Sean! I know him!” I said. “It’s okay! I’m okay!”
“What I saw didn’t look okay,” he answered.
“Man, let me up!” Sean’s voice was muffled by the filthy alley floor. He cried out as his shoulder popped. “I’m not FBR!”
“I know,” said Chase. “Your weapon isn’t standard issue.” He turned the gun to look at it. I looked at it too. It was black, whereas Chase’s had been silver.
I realized what Chase must have thought when he’d seen me pressed against the wall. It was the same thing he’d feared when Rick and Stan had told me to get in the car with them.
“Chase, let him up.” I was shaking.
“I was just trying to tell her it was me!” Sean pleaded. “She almost knocked my head off!”
“That’s what happened,” I agreed quickly.
Chase looked my way, reading my eyes for truth. After a moment he nodded, but he didn’t look happy about releasing his captive.
“Don’t touch her,” he warned Sean. His fury did not immediately abate, and he did not release the gun. “Why’d you start the riot?”