“Remembered?” I asked.
“I told him about this place—well, the safe house. You remember, nephew? I saw you in Chicago. I told you to come here if you got in trouble.” Jesse laughed.
I’d forgotten that was how Chase had originally learned of the safe house. He’d run into Jesse during his FBR training in Chicago. Later, Chase would try to convince me my mother was there waiting. If we’d made it there then, we might be dead now.
Chase’s front half was now covered with mud from Jesse’s clothes. Though his mouth cracked open, he had yet to say anything. For a brief moment, he met my gaze, and I was reminded of that same, weak smile he’d offered all those years ago, before Jesse had taken him away.
As if suddenly remembering, Chase fished something out of his pocket. I caught a glint of metal from the small silver ring a second before he stuffed it back inside.
“Who are you?” asked Billy, approaching from behind me.
Jesse sobered. “We were at the safe house.” He held his arms out wide. “We’re all that’s left.”
Immediately the night erupted with questions. More people came from the bushes. Men, women, even a few children. More than twenty of them.
“We were looking for you,” Chase croaked. “We followed your tracks.”
“Thought you were soldiers come to finish the job,” said Jesse. “Hence the warm welcome. Can’t see anything in this swamp.” When he grinned his teeth stood out in sharp contrast from his dirty skin.
“I told you guys,” said Billy.
“Ma?” called Jack, blood dripping down his leg as he hoisted himself to a stand. “Anyone know Sherri Sandoval?”
Billy began shoving through the crowd. “Wallace?”
While the others reunited, a man whose face was still half covered in mud approached me. The radio, or what was left of it, was cradled in his arms. He handed it to me in four separate pieces.
“Sorry,” he said. “I think some of it’s still back there in the grass.”
I looked at the shambles—the cord was severed, the microphone cover ripped off and the wires within sticking out in all directions. The transceiver box caved in at the middle, as though someone had stepped on it. I’d give it to Billy to see what he could do, but I already knew it wasn’t going to be fixed.
“Do you have a radio?” I asked the man.
He shook his head. “Everything went down with the safe house.”
The first resistance post our team was meeting was empty, Truck was missing, and Tucker was on his own. Why was it so impossible for more than one thing to go right at the same time?
I left Chase and Jesse to their reunion and turned toward the walkway. The moon reflected off the water and provided enough light to show the two figures out in the middle of the swamp. A girl with blond hair, wrapped in the arms of the boy who loved her.
Sean had finally found Rebecca.
* * *
WE built a fire that night in a large meadow west of the marsh where we’d made camp. The survivors had food—not a lot, but more than the three cans of peaches we had left. Accustomed to life in the Red Zone, they’d killed a boar in the woods during the storm. An old man with matted gray hair cleaned and cooked it.
In the dark and covered with mud it had been impossible to gauge who was present, but once the fire had been lit and the grime had been wiped clean, we were able to size each other up.
Twenty-three had survived the safe house’s demolition. Twenty-three out of nearly three hundred. Chase’s uncle was the only family member present, but two women matched the descriptions given to us by their brothers, back with the injured at the mini-mart.
The mood was somber now. Others shared what news they had, but Billy sat by himself away from the fire, using the excuse of fixing the CB radio as a reason to be alone. In a way I was glad I didn’t have to look for my mother. My hopes of meeting family on the coast had been laid to rest long ago.
“How’d it happen?” I heard Chase ask Jesse.
Jesse shook his head, his snake tattoo seeming to slither in the flames. I sat cross-legged on the ground a cautious distance away. Behind me, Rebecca laid across the grass, her head on Sean’s thigh. He combed her hair behind her ear, oblivious to all else.
“Don’t really know,” said Jesse. “I was out hunting when I heard it—a whistle, like those firecrackers we used to set off in the summer when I was a kid. And then it was like the War all over again. The shaking and the screaming…” He trailed off. “And then the quiet. You remember.”
I shuddered, remembering the collapsing tunnels when the resistance had been bombed in Chicago. The way the earth had nearly swallowed us.
“I remember,” said Chase.
“Found the others in the wreckage,” Jesse said. “A couple on the beach. A couple hiding out in the woods. That guy over there.” Jesse pointed to a man sitting alone, staring blankly into the flames. “He carried his dead wife around for half the day. Thought she was just knocked out.”
“Please,” hissed a woman, rocking a child. “Please, can’t you talk about something else?”
I’d had enough, too. I rose and wandered to the other side of the circle, passing a girl who sat with her back to the fire. She was draped in enormous clothes, her bare feet stretched out before her. I was so surprised by her pregnant belly that I nearly stumbled.
“Sarah?”
“Oh!” She shimmied up to her knees and grabbed my hands. “You made it!”
The last time I’d seen her in Knoxville her face had been bruised and swollen, and we’d been loading her into the back of the carrier’s truck to send her to safety. I tried to remember when that had been. It felt like months, but it had just been a couple of weeks. After finding what remained of the safe house, I’d been sure she was gone.
I smiled. The marks to her face had faded, leaving pretty dimples. Seeing her gave me hope.
“How did you…”
She motioned with her chin over her shoulder. “Jesse. I was out for a walk when it happened. He found me on the beach and brought me with him. He saved us.”
I looked back to Chase and his uncle, thinking I might have been too quick to judge him. It had been a long time ago that I’d met him, and this world had a way of changing people.
Billy stalked by on his way toward the food, but when he saw us talking he slowed. I motioned him over. To my surprise, he joined us.
“Nobody’s got a radio,” he said. “I thought I might be able to salvage parts and rig something strong enough to connect to the interior, but…” He shrugged.
Maybe it was better Tucker’s team couldn’t reach us. Since only twenty-three people had survived, it wasn’t like we had a lot of good news to share.
When I looked over at Sarah, she was straightening her sweater. Billy glanced up, then shoved aside his greasy hair.
I’d forgotten they’d never met. “Billy, this is Sarah.”
He waved awkwardly. Neither of them spoke.
“Okay,” I said, hiding a smile. “I’m going to check on the food.”
We didn’t have plates or utensils, but it hardly mattered. The old man who’d cooked the boar cut off chunks with a butterfly knife and handed me a piece on a broad, heart-shaped leaf. There was only enough for two grisly bites, but it was better than nothing. I took another piece for Chase.
He was still sitting on the grass with his arms draped loosely around his knees. His slumped posture and tapping heel made me tense. He took the food with an absent nod and scooted over to make room.
“Everything okay?” I whispered, sitting beside him.
Jesse jabbed into the fire with a stick and grinned. “My nephew and I were just talking about the good old days.”
“Oh?”
Chase stared into the fire. “Nothing important.”
“Come on,” said Jesse. “Tell her about that time you stuck up that guy inside the pharmacy.”
Chase glanced at me, then looked away.
Jesse lau
ghed. “He goes into the place shakin’ like a leaf, knife ripping a hole through his shirt pocket. First-time jitters had him so worked over.” Chase smirked, but his heel was digging into the dirt. I bit down on the inside of my cheek. “He came back outside, no meds, no knife. Nothing but a black eye the pharmacist gave him.” Jesse was doubled over now, wiping a tear from his eye. “Boy, were you soft back then.”
I knew Chase’s education during the War had been unique; he’d stolen cars and learned to fight—things that had kept us alive. But I’d never heard the details of how he’d learned. I didn’t think I wanted to hear them from Jesse’s perspective.
“Not soft anymore.” Chase slung a broken branch into the fire.
Jesse stalled, and leaned back against a felled tree trunk. The dried berries he flicked into the fire popped like tiny gunshots.
“Is that right,” he said quietly. “So you’re a man now.”
I didn’t understand what they were talking about at first, but the pain was coming off of Chase in waves, and it wasn’t hard to figure out he was thinking about Harper again, and what had happened in the hospital in Chicago.
The flush hit my cheeks like a slap. “That doesn’t make you a man,” I said.
“It does in this world,” said Jesse. He sized me up with his gaze. “I saw you with that fork, neighbor. Would you have had the courage to stick it in my heart?”
I didn’t realize I was leaning forward until I felt my elbow bump Chase’s. “I got it in your leg, didn’t I?”
A slow, dangerous smile spread across Jesse’s face. It made me wonder what he’d done that had forced him to go into hiding.
I looked to Chase to back me up, but he was staring through the flames as though he wasn’t even listening. I placed my hand gently on his knee. He shuddered, as though waking from a dream, and wiped his palms on his jeans. Jesse watched us curiously.
Across the fire, Jack’s tall form stooped to talk to a small gathering of survivors. After a few moments, he rose and moved to Billy and Sarah. Billy stood and made his way to another group as Jack limped in our direction.
We stood. Jack picked at his teeth. What looked to be a T-shirt was tied around his leg.
“Rat’s gone missing,” he said. “A few of us are going back to the bridge to see if he’s there.”
It wasn’t until then that I remembered that Rat had raced past me in the attack. I’d assumed he’d returned once the fight was over, but apparently he had not.
“He went through the woods,” I said, leaving out the part that he’d been running scared. “I saw him during the fight.”
“Your uncle probably stabbed him. Accidently, of course.” Jack tightened the bandage around his leg, then spat into the fire. The flames hissed back at him.
“It was a mistake,” said Chase flatly.
“A mistake,” Jack repeated. “You choking back there, was that a mistake, too?”
I knew he was talking about the attack—I could still hear his call for Chase to shoot Jesse—but that didn’t explain the venom in his tone. My arms crossed over my chest.
“Something you want to say, Jack?” Chase took a step closer.
Jack’s lips drew back into a thin line. “If you’re not too busy with your family reunion, maybe you could look for our man.”
Chase’s fingers tapped against his thigh, and I reached for his forearm, feeling the muscles flex beneath my hold.
Jack looked to where we touched, and then back at Jesse. His eye twitched. Without a word, he stalked off toward the bridge. I tried to ignore the punch of sympathy when his shoulders sagged; not until that moment did I remember him calling for his ma—Sheri something. It wasn’t the first time I’d wondered why he hadn’t gone with the others from Chicago back to the resistance bases. I figured he’d been burned by the tunnel collapse, scared to go back to the cities, but now I realized he’d hoped someone would be waiting for him out here in the wilderness.
When I turned back, Chase had already torn a strip off his sleeve and tied it around the end of a stout branch to make a torch. He dipped it into the flames, and it crackled as it caught, creating a small glowing ring to light our way.
“Good luck,” said Jesse, hardly moving.
“Thanks,” muttered Chase.
The woods were dark, and even with the torch held high, the shade swallowed most of the light. We tracked north, cutting sideways through the brush, calling for Rat every few minutes. I stayed near Chase as the echoes of our voices distorted in the woods, coming back like the whispers of strangers, but whenever I got too close he pulled out of reach. I thought of Rebecca—the way she’d looked on that wobbly bridge, the straightness of her back as she’d walked away into the unknown, as if she’d never turn around. A chill shivered over my skin.
“Jack was right,” Chase said when we reached the stream. “I choked.”
I stepped closer into the halo of light, hating the doubt I saw in his face.
“It ended up being your uncle. It’s a good thing you didn’t shoot him.” I tried to sound convincing, but my lack of enthusiasm for Jesse was shining through.
“It won’t happen again,” he said. I wasn’t sure who he was trying to convince.
So you’re a man now, Jesse had said.
I stopped and snagged the back of his shirt before he could walk away.
“You didn’t buy all that stuff Jesse was saying, right?” I took a step closer. “I mean, I know he’s your uncle, but he doesn’t really know you.”
Chase shoved his free hand in his pocket. “He knows me better than you think.”
“Because he taught you how to steal? Because, why?” I swallowed the lump in my throat. “He shot someone, too?”
Chase exhaled through his teeth.
“Because he knows what it’s like digging food out of Dumpsters,” he said. “And because he was there when the bombs hit Chicago, and when people went crazy and started looting and fighting and things you don’t even want to know.”
I forced my eyes to stay on his. “How do you know I don’t? You never talk about it.”
“I’m more like him than I’m like you,” he said, faster now. “I was stealing cars when you were sitting in high school, do you know that? You think the FBR was the first beating I ever took? Or ever gave?”
“So you’re big and bad, is that it?” The toes of my boots bumped his as I stepped into his shadow. “You don’t scare me, Chase, so stop trying to.”
He made a sound of disgust and took a step back, staggering and then catching his balance at the last moment. We were standing on an embankment, and when he dropped the torch it extinguished in the water below with a hiss. He stared after it into the darkness.
“I shot Harper,” he said. “He almost came with us and I shot him.”
“I was there.” I saw that hole in the soldier’s chest, saw the blood pooling on the floor. “He never would have come.”
“Is that what you tell yourself?” he asked. “You know what I tell myself? That he fired first. That it was self-defense.” He screwed his thumb into his temple as if to dislodge the memory.
“It was self-defense.”
“I don’t understand you,” he said, suddenly quiet. “Everyone else gets it. Jesse got it. My parents. Even Tucker got it.”
The hurt slashed through me. “Everyone else gets what?”
“That it’s me.” He looked as if he’d finally figured out what everyone else had known all along. “I screw up everything.”
I stood in shocked silence, the air between us thick enough to cut.
“You don’t mean that.”
He didn’t say anything. I would have rather him been angry.
I lifted my hands to hold his face, to make him meet my eyes, but he twisted away. My arms fell slack at my sides.
“I’m not scared of you,” I said. “No matter what you say.”
I turned, the tears blurring my vision. It was too dark anyway without the torch, and not more than three steps l
ater I slipped, and slid down the embankment into the streambed, rolling once I hit the bottom.
Cold water needled my sensitive skin. The rocks scraped my knees but my chest landed on something soft. My fingers fanned over thin, soaked material, and as I pushed myself up my elbow grazed a patch of hair.
All the air in the world seemed to disappear.
“Ember!”
I rolled to the side and grasped Chase’s outstretched hand, jolting out of the water, clawing into the mud and roots below the stream’s high bank. The bile rose, sharp and biting in my throat.
“Hey!” Chase sloshed back into the stream and flipped over the body. He crouched, feeling for a pulse, but there was none. I’d already known there wouldn’t be.
“Who…”
“Rat.” Chase stood, swore. “He must have fallen off the bank. Hit his head.”
Without a light he could have tripped over the tree roots and plunged the three feet straight down into the stream. Now his skin was bloated and blue in the starlight, and his eyes were dull and blank and lifeless.
He’d died alone. And as I looked at Chase, I saw fear come to life. He stared at the body, frozen, dark stains of water climbing up his pant legs as he stayed ankle deep in the stream.
He’d lost everyone and everything. And if I let him, he would push me away just so he wouldn’t have to wait to lose me, too.
“We have to move him,” I said. “I’ll help you.”
CHAPTER
6
I SHIVERED by the fire, knees locked to my chest. The humid air had taken a bitter edge, and my wet clothes clung to my skin. Chase nudged my boots closer to the flames with his toe, watching Jack pace back and forth on the opposite side. Thirty feet behind him, in the woods, they’d buried Rat in a shallow grave.
“Sean said I’d find you over here.” Rebecca eased herself down beside me, falling the last six inches with a huff of breath. She placed her braces between us, a solid silver line.
The damp wood crackled. I stared at it, wishing it would stave off the chill inside me.
“Was it awful?” she whispered after a while. “Being the one to find him?”