I was just barely able to keep up as Nat moved from empty streets and crumbling homes into an industrial area of boarded-up shops and abandoned warehouses.
There was a lull in the fighting at the front but there were signs of old battles all around me. Fast-food restaurants bombed into barely recognizable ruins, pitted streets, and the charred husks of destroyed vehicles. We weren’t alone now, either. Here and there other refugees — whoever hadn’t been swept up in the Path’s net as they ground forward — skulked about in the thin moonlight, scavenging for whatever they could find. They were all horrifyingly thin, with sunken eyes and wasted limbs, little different than the packs of stray dogs that emerged from every alley and shop I passed, their old tags chiming. I tried not to linger over the dogs’ matted fur and too-prominent ribs. Their mournful whimpers as I passed were like fingers probing a raw wound.
Nat stopped at a street corner by a string of warehouses. I thought she was taking her bearings in preparation for moving on again, but she backed into a dark doorway and didn’t emerge for some time. What was she doing? Was this as far as her escape plan had taken her? If so, I was safely away from the base. I could press on alone from here — keep moving north and hope to find a weak point in the Fed line.
I was about to start down the street again when the faint rumble of an engine rose behind me. I pressed myself into a doorway as a civilian pickup truck appeared on the street. Its lights were off and it moved slow, navigating around the craters and piles of debris in the roadway. When it came up alongside me, I saw there were two men inside.
Nat didn’t wait for the truck to stop; she emerged from the shadows and climbed into the bed as it rolled past her. Once she was in, the truck turned a corner and was gone.
Even better, I thought. If Nat had hooked up with Feds who were helping to move refugees across the border, then all I had to do was follow along. I shadowed the truck as it weaved through the streets, ducking into an alleyway when it came to a stop in the parking lot of a warehouse. Two men stepped out and, after scanning the buildings and street around them, knocked on the side of the truck’s bed. Nat emerged and the three of them crossed the parking lot and went inside. I stood in the quiet dark, watching the building. The front was a few miles to the north. What were they doing here?
A rusty-looking set of stairs was bolted to the side of the building, leading up to a second-floor entrance. I made it across the street and started up it, freezing at every creak and rattle of the old metal. At the top was a landing and a door with a narrow window set above the handle. I peered through it and saw a faint glimmer of light coming from the first floor, but there was no trace of Nat or the men.
I eased my shoulder into the door and stepped inside, finding myself on a narrow catwalk high over the warehouse floor. Below were empty boxes and wooden pallets lit by the beams of flashlights. I stole along the length of the catwalk until I came to another staircase, then flattened myself against the deck.
Nat was standing below with her back to me, facing the two men from the truck and another two who held the flashlights. The men were all in civilian clothes, old jeans and flannel shirts, but each of them moved with what I recognized as military precision.
One of the men took a hammer from a bag on the floor and carefully pulled the nails from the top of a wooden crate that sat in front of Nat. He lifted off the lid and reached inside. It was hard to tell what it was he pulled out at first. All I saw were canvas straps and lengths of white material. Nat held her arms up over her head, and the man lowered it over her body.
It looked like a bulletproof vest except it was larger and the fabric was far too thin. The man circled Nat, tightening straps until the vest fit snug against her body. When he was satisfied, he reached into the crate and set another box at Nat’s feet.
When he pulled out what was inside, a sick chill ran through me. I understood what it was that Nat was wearing.
The gray bricks he took out of the box looked like blocks of modeling clay, but the explosive power in each one of those slabs of C-4 was enough to demolish a small car.
He fit the bricks of explosive into slots that had been sewn into the canvas vest Nat was wearing. Two in front, two in back, and one on each side under her arms. Then he took a small battery out of the crate and ran wires from it to each of the bricks. The wires were gathered into one cable and concealed in a channel built into the vest. At the end of the cable he attached a trigger that was about the size of a small lighter.
Once Nat was wired up, the rest of the men moved around her, critiquing the bomb maker’s work and making adjustments. When they were done, the vest hugged her body so tightly that her companion’s robe was sure to conceal it. No one would notice what she was wearing until she pressed the trigger.
The men gathered into a circle while Nat stood before them. They murmured among themselves, then returned to Nat, slowly removing the vest and packing it into an ordinary-looking backpack. Nat slung the pack over her shoulder and was led out of the warehouse by the two men who had brought her.
The men with the flashlights spoke for a moment more, then went their separate ways. A door below opened and then whispered shut. The warehouse was perfectly dark and silent.
I lay on the edge of the catwalk, a dull buzz in my head, too stunned to move. It wasn’t possible. Surely I hadn’t seen what I thought I just did. Nat would never—
An engine cranked outside, shocking me out of my daze. I scrambled up the catwalk and to the door, stepping onto the landing just as the truck pulled away, retracing its steps back to Kestrel.
The ground trembled as the nightly barrage of artillery fire began. I turned toward the front, imagining soldiers on both sides of the border running in a hundred different directions with a hundred different concerns — certainly the least of them would be one raggedy-looking kid slipping across the border. Every muscle in my body was taut with anticipation, ready to run, but the image of Nat standing in that warehouse — motionless as those men dressed her — wouldn’t fade.
Far up the road the pickup truck accelerated, turning deeper into the warren of crumbling buildings. In seconds it would be gone. I took a last look at the front and then followed.
Nat slid out of the pickup’s bed at the same corner as before and set off through the streets, the backpack around her shoulders.
She took a different route back, veering from the warehouses into a winding suburb of abandoned houses. She dipped in and out of patches of moonlight through overgrown yards and cracked driveways. I trailed her around the fenced-off edge of a drained swimming pool, but when I came around to the other side, she had vanished.
I stood panting amid a wall of hedges and scanned a trio of houses across the street, trying to see into the woods behind them. Nothing. Everything was gray and still. My heart was pumping hard, on high alert. Where did you go, Nat? Where — A branch cracked near the middle house. I took off after it but the second I passed the row of hedges, I knew I had made a mistake.
Something slammed into my back, knocking the wind out of me and sending me sprawling to the ground. My cast hit an exposed root and I nearly screamed from the pain. Nat emerged from the bushes, a thick branch cocked over her shoulder like a bat.
“Nat, wait — it’s me!”
She paused, her face lost in the darkness. The branch didn’t move.