“This is the last checkpoint,” the soldier informs me. “Then we’re heading straight to the Commander. Your dad, I mean.”
My dad, a commander. I shouldn’t be so surprised. If anyone was going to survive the war and find a way to thrive in spite of it, it was going to be my dad.
I’m surprised to see the tips of trees above me as the truck crawls past the final fence. I’d become so accustomed to the barren desert landscape that the sight of green leaves is shocking. Then, I’m certain in the distance I can hear the sound of running water.
“How do you have trees?” I say. “And water?”
The soldier smiles. “The Commander has turned this place into Eden,” she explains. “We’re completely self-sufficient.”
As I absorb her words, my first feeling is relief. If they’re self-sufficient here then there’s no need for scavenging, no dangerous hunting trips out into the wild.
“Do you take in survivors?” I ask.
The soldier looks at me kindly. “Brooke, I know you have a lot of questions. But I don’t want you to tire yourself out. Why don’t you rest and gather your strength for when you see your dad?”
I know she’s right but I can’t help myself. The sensations inside of me are too great. They all vie for my attention, mixing around in my stomach and making me nauseous. My exhausted body is telling me to rest and recuperate, but my frantic mind is racing through a million thoughts. I’m filled with excitement, but at the same time I’m nervous. I haven’t forgotten the sound of my dad’s hand as he slapped my mom’s cheek the night he left us, voluntarily, to join a war that went on to obliterate everything. Is he even still the same man I remember?
Just then, the truck jolts to a halt.
“We’re here,” the soldier says.
She stands and starts unlatching the flap at the back of the truck. I’m suddenly overcome with fear. What if my dad isn’t the person I want him to be? What if he’s been traumatized by the last four and a half years? He said he would always love me no matter what, but that was before the slaverunners and the arenas and the crazies. That was before the nuclear bombs and the fighter jets.
“Are you having trouble standing?” the soldier asks.
I am, but not in the way she thinks. She thinks I’ve been weakened by my ordeal out in the desert. In reality, my legs seem to have turned to jelly beneath me. My whole body trembles as she helps me to my feet, guiding me by my elbow down onto a step, then down again onto the ground.
I’m standing on paving slabs with moss growing up between them. I can smell grass and vegetation, and hear the sound of running water in the distance. The air is cool, not like the painful, sweltering heat of the Texan desert I’ve just come from.
I feel the soldier put gentle pressure on my shoulder, and I can feel that she’s urging me on. Another truck has pulled up beside me, and Bree is being led down to the ground, trembling in much the same way as me. When she sees me, her eyes brim with tears. I know Dad always told me not to cry, but the sight of her alive makes me well up. I can still hear her screams in my head as she begged me not to give up back in the desert, to keep moving. I couldn’t do it for her. I’m only here by a miracle. But if she holds any resentment toward me because of it, she doesn’t show it. She rushes over and throws herself into my arms. She’s been patched up well by the soldier she rode with, and is no longer as feeble as she was back in the desert.
“Did they tell you?” she says through her sobs. “Dad is alive.”
“They told me,” I gasp, stroking her hair beneath my fingers.
“You were right, Brooke. You were right all along.”
I was. But people still died because of me. I will have to live with that guilt for the rest of my life.
Finally, Bree lets me go. I can see the other trucks pulling up behind us, and see Ben emerge from one. He looks as frail as he did when we first got to know each other back in the prisons of Arena 1. But he has transformed since then. He is leaner, more muscular, and the sensitivity I could always see in his eyes seems to have hardened. Like me, survival has taken its toll on him.
Bree slips her hand in mine, pulling me back to the moment. I turn away from the trucks. As much as I want to see each of our friends arrive safely, I know my dad is waiting for me. I can’t prolong this anymore. It’s time to face him.
The soldier who’d been riding with me gestures past some palm trees.
“He’s over there,” she says.
Bree and I squeeze one another’s hands as we take small steps along the paving slabs. The vegetation grows thicker and lusher as we go, forming a thick canopy above that plunges us into cooling shadows. Then all at once, I see a figure.
We stop dead. There is a man down the path. He’s wearing a military uniform. His hair is completely gray. He stands with his hands resting just lightly behind his back. I know the stance. “At ease.” It is my dad.
I can’t get the words out. I try to call to him but the only noise that comes from my throat is a croak.
It’s enough for him to hear. He spins to face us. There is no denying it; though time has aged him considerably, the man standing before me is my dad.
“Brooke,” he gasps, staring at me like he can’t believe what he is seeing. “Bree.”
And then we’re running, both of us, full speed, finding reserves of energy from deep within our weakened bodies. Dad spreads his arms wide and we run into them. He sweeps us tightly into him. He feels so solid, so real. This is not the man in my dreams; this is my real dad, alive and strong.
I don’t want to show my weakness in front of him, but Bree is sobbing uncontrollably, and I just cannot hold back anymore. My tears begin to fall.
We’re all shaking with emotion. I clutch onto Bree and nestle my head into the crook of my dad’s neck, letting my tears drop onto his uniform one by one. It is then that I realize, for the first time in my entire life, my dad is crying too.
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
We stay like that for a long time, holding one another and weeping. It is like we never want to let go.
“You’ve both grown so much,” Dad says finally, drawing back to look at us. He looks Bree up and down. “Eleven years old,” he says, shaking his head as though in disbelief. She was seven last time he saw her. Then he looks at me. “Seventeen.”
I nod. I wish he could have seen us back when we were in Fort Noix. We were healthy then, our muscles stronger, our hair and bodies clean. He would have been able to see firsthand how well I’ve looked after Bree. Instead, she looks more like a mangy cat.
“You’ve changed too,” I say.
He laughs, sadly, and points to his gray hair. “I look older.”
It’s been four years since we last saw each other, but Dad seems to have aged so much more. The stress of war has taken its toll on him.
He reaches up to wipe a strand of hair tenderly from off my face. “I didn’t think I’d ever see you again, Brooke,” he says. “But I never gave up hope. I thought of you, both of you, every single day.”
Tears blur my vision.
“How long has the camp been here?” I ask. “Is it yours? Did you build it?”
I know I sound like an eager child, but I want to know everything that has happened to him over the last four and a half years. How he came to defect from the army and create this place.
But Dad puts a finger to his lips to quiet me, and smiles. “We can talk about everything later. But first I think you should go to the hospital for health checks.”