When I looked down, his eyes were wide with horror, staring up into the dark. Tears ran across his cheeks.
“James?”
“… I didn’t know it was him.”
26
More than a month later, I stepped out into what used to be Camp Kestrel.
It was a bright day and hot, dusty from the dried mud kicked up by the Fed vehicles tearing through the streets. I gathered my things and left the barracks I had been staying in since Nat helped convince the Fed MPs that James and I weren’t a threat to national security.
I walked through the camp toward the infirmary, watching the Fed soldiers. Some went about the work of packing for the push south diligently, but most lounged on hillsides and across the hoods of vehicles. They smoked cigarettes and laughed. Their uniforms were ragged. The officers tried to keep order but few listened.
Path tents lay in molding piles of canvas all around the camp, but the command buildings still stood, gutted of intelligence and repurposed. Fed drone crews now sat in the place of their Path counterparts.
I paused by a blighted rectangle of ash and trampled grass. The Lighthouse had been the first thing the Feds destroyed, torching it to the cheers of their men. The altar was now a pile of scorched wood. The Path insignia had fallen and was facedown in the dirt, black and twisted. Soldiers still gathered to have their pictures taken with it, thumbs up and grinning. I knew I shouldn’t have cared, but for some reason, I was glad I hadn’t been there to see its destruction.
When I arrived at the infirmary, an orderly was pushing James’s wheelchair out into the sun. James looked as much like a ghost as Kestrel did. His skin was a waxy gray and all the weight he had lost gave him a skeletal look. His deep-set eyes seemed to stay permanently fixed to the ground. He’d barely spoken since we arrived.
“You ready?”
James said nothing. I passed the orderly a small wad of cash and he gave me a bag of medicine that I tucked into my backpack. After he left I reached for the back of the wheelchair, but James waved me away.
“James…”
“I can walk on my own.”
He planted his hands on the wheelchair’s armrests and pushed, his face white with strain. He wavered once but he closed his eyes for a moment and it passed. I led him around the infirmary and pulled open the door of a rust-and-blue hatchback. James dropped into the backseat and I shut the door.
“Nice of them to give you a new cast.”
Nat was standing on the other side of the car in a swirl of dust. I had only seen her a few times since we’d arrived at Kestrel. Each time was from a distance, as she tried to talk her way into companies of Marines heading south to pursue the Path.
“Yeah,” I said, holding up the clean white plaster. “The old one had seen better days, I guess. They say I still have a few weeks with this one, though.”
I came around the front of the car and saw the backpack on the ground next to her. Behind her a group of soldiers were loading supplies into a trio of Humvees.
“They finally let you sign up?”
Nat shook her head. “They’re dropping me off at home on their way to California. Figured I could help with the rebuilding for a couple years until I can enlist.”
“President Burke says it’ll all be over by then.”
“Yeah,” she said with a roll of her eyes. “I heard that too. If he thinks this guy who took Hill’s place is going to fold, he’s crazy or stupid.”
“I’m betting on stupid.”
I threw my pack into the front passenger seat and shut the door. Nat peered into the car where James sat staring out the back window at the base.
“How is he?”
“Fine,” I said quickly. “It’ll take some time, I guess.”
“They should give him a medal.”
“Captain Assad tried,” I said, spreading my arms wide to present the rattletrap hatchback. “But I said we wanted this instead.”
Nat’s laugh was small and reluctant, but it was good to hear. “So you’re headed home too.”
I nodded. “Assad slipped us enough cash to get there and not eat MREs for a while too. We should be okay.”
There was a clap behind her as the soldiers closed the Humvee’s hatch.
“Nat.”
She looked back at one of the men and nodded.
“Well, I guess I better…”
“Yeah.”
Nat started to go but then she jumped forward and threw her arms around me. She pulled me close and her head fell to my shoulder. Everything seemed to go very still around us. I lifted my arms to her back and held her, breathing in the dusty heat that clung to us. I closed my eyes.
“Thank you,” she breathed into my ear.
“Whitacker!” one of the soldiers called. “Let’s move!”
Nat stepped back, her amber eyes shining, the sun lightening her brown hair. She slipped a piece of paper into my hand and then ran to catch her ride. I stood by the car, watching as she slung her pack over her shoulder and jumped into a Humvee. Her door slammed and they pulled out, joining the long line of vehicles waiting at the main gate.
The car door opened with a rusty squeak. I got in and unfolded the piece of paper. On it was a phone number and an address in Wyoming. I stared at it a moment before putting it into my pocket and checking the rearview.
James was watching the line of departing Fed transports as they pulled through the gate and then vanished in a cloud of dust. Sitting closed on his lap was a small green book, stained with faded blood. His hands lay on it as if he was warming them over a fire. The gold leaf of the title, torn and dull, said The Glorious Path.
Time, I thought, pushing past the sick feeling in my gut. That’s all he needs. All any of us need.
I cranked the ignition and guided us away.
We spent the morning driving through a landscape struggling to return to normal. A steady stream of refugee traffic surrounded us, moving north past bombed-out restaurants that sat next to gas stations that were open and lit in neon.
A detour brought us directly through DC, where we saw the worst of it. Even though the government had moved out years before, the Path had hit it with a vengeance. The roads were rubble-strewn and pitted, and most of the gleaming white government buildings we could see were covered in black scorch marks. The White House and the Capitol were ruins of white marble.
Only the ivory needle of the Washington Monument stood nearly pristine. A tent city had sprung up on the mall around it and along the edge of the reflecting pool. Refugees milled about in tattered clothes beneath a ring of American flags.
The signs of war became less frequent as we moved up into Maryland. For miles at a time it was possible to forget the last six years except for the occasional checkpoints staffed by bored-looking privates in lightly armored Humvees.
Once we crossed the border into Pennsylvania, I sat up straighter and gripped the steering wheel. I counted the miles, sure I could feel the bright line of the next border in the distance. One hundred. Fifty. Twenty.
My pulse raced. Even James was sitting up now, peering out the windshield, The Glorious Path on the seat next to him.
“Look!”
A sign appeared at the side of the road, green and white, just beyond the line of trees. The car’s engine gave a wheezy complaint when I stood on the gas, but I didn’t care. The sign grew larger by the second and then we were on it.
I held my breath as we blew past it, and New York surrounded us. And this wasn’t the ugly glass and steel of New York City, this was trees and grass and the rolling hills. This was small towns and snaking rivers and crumbling barns. We passed Binghamton and then Whitney Point, turning west onto 79 for the final stretch that brought us through the dense green of state parks. The side of the road teemed with ferns and white oak and maple trees. I rolled the window down and let the wind blow around us. It smelled of damp leaves and grass warmed by the sun.