“For me?” I asked. “Or for him?” I pictured her again, hobbling down the walkway over the murky swamp. If she had fallen in we may not have been able to reach her in time. I had a bad feeling she’d known that when she’d started.
She acted as though she hadn’t heard me, but I knew she had. She picked at the grass, one blade at a time, tearing it into little pieces, and I stared at her, fighting the image of her small body lying motionless in the water as Rat’s had been. Of her hair, silver in the moonlight, fanning around her head.
I wanted to ask why? And how could you? And to tell her never, ever to do anything like that again. But I couldn’t, because I knew why she had, and that scared me just as much.
“At dawn we’re going back to the mini-mart,” Jack announced, breaking my train of thought. I turned back to where he’d paused, his face shadowed and dangerous in the red glow of the embers. “We told them we’d be back in five days; tomorrow our time’s up.”
There was no way we’d make it back in one day. Two maybe, if we didn’t break for sleep, but probably three.
“You go back then,” said the old man who’d cooked the boar. His silver hair feathered out below his ears and he patted it down anxiously. “I’m not going back there. Not ever.”
“What about my brother?” asked one of the people from Jesse’s group, a lanky girl who believed her brother was laid up in the mini-mart.
“Well we can’t stay here.” Sean came to stand beside Chase. “What’re we going to do? Build tree houses? Live off the land?” Rebecca shifted.
“We’ve been doing all right that way,” objected another man from the safe house. His clothes were covered in grime; he must have been in the party that attacked us. He looked to Chase’s uncle, as if expecting backup, but received none.
It struck me that Jesse’s seniority hadn’t been determined by age; several people here were older than him. He was younger than Chase’s mother, maybe only thirty-five. Based on the way he was kicked back against a felled log like this was nothing more than a camping trip, I wasn’t sure how he’d been made their leader. He didn’t look like the type who wanted to be in charge of the big decisions.
“Looks like you’ve been doing just great,” said Jack. “Least Rat cut out before hearing his folks were part of the ash stuck to the bottom of his boots.”
Several people voiced their disapproval.
“He made his choice,” said Jesse. The others quieted. “Don’t put that on us.”
“Maybe I was just putting it on you,” Jack said, pointing across the flames.
Jesse took a slow breath. “It wouldn’t be the first time someone did.”
I rose to my feet. Jack snorted in disbelief, staring coldly at Chase’s uncle.
“What is your plan?” Curious eyes turned my way.
Jesse stoked the fire, casual as ever. “You’re looking at it.” He didn’t even glance up.
“We can’t keep running—eventually we’ll run out of land. I learned at least that much in school,” Sean said.
“There are lots of empty towns around here. We’ll just start over. Build a new safe house,” said a woman.
Billy snorted. “You don’t have any protection. You tried to take us out with a couple guns and a few kitchen knives. The soldiers have bombs, in case you forgot.”
“Forgot?” Sarah asked, pushing herself off the ground. “How could we forget?” She stalked away from him and he watched her go, scratching his head.
“We’ll make them pay for it,” Billy added. That strange look came over him again, like in the woods when he’d fired the gun into the air. As if the answer was clear as day, and he couldn’t understand why no one else understood.
I did understand, though I wasn’t sure it helped anything. As much as I tried to focus on our current situation, I wanted the MM to pay. For the safe house. For my mother. For every Statute that had shoved the lot of us out into the wilderness.
“That’s the spirit.” Jesse laughed mockingly, causing Billy to hunch over his knees. “I’ll tell you what, kid. You find a way to rally the people, I’ll be right behind you.”
“We need a permanent location,” interrupted Chase. “Regroup. Refuel. We can’t bring our hurt people here.”
“What we need is to send a team back,” pressed Jack.
“Spread us thin, you mean,” said the old man. “Take the strongest of us and leave the rest to fend for themselves. We got kids here, you know.” He jabbed a thumb over his shoulder to where three children slept in the grass.
The tension built steadily, each person that spoke up trying to pull the group their way, then biting back at those who disagreed. Their voices rose, waking a little girl, who began to cry. Soon, others were standing, shoving each other and threatening more. All but Jesse, who continued to stare into the fire, unfazed.
“What about Three?” I called, loudly enough that those closest could hear. A few stopped, eyeing me suspiciously, but the boys from Chicago grumbled.
“Forget about it already,” said Jack.
“Quiet.” Jesse’s voice boomed in the night. “What about Three, neighbor?”
Chase glanced back at me and nodded slightly. He was thinking, as was I, of the house in the town we’d passed, and the guarded supplies within.
My palms grew damp. I wasn’t chilled at all anymore; the pressure of their stares warmed me considerably.
“Three what?” asked one of the survivors.
This struck me as odd: the rumors we’d heard of Three were that they were based at the safe house, yet none of the survivors apart from Jesse seemed to have any clue what I was talking about.
If Three’s base was somewhere else, they might still be out there. They might still be able to fight back. For a moment, the gaping hole I felt in my chest whenever I thought of the safe house seemed to close a little. Alone, we could only scratch at the MM’s defenses, but with Three, I felt like we had a real chance of getting their attention.
“We found supplies in the last town,” I started uncertainly. “I—we—thought that maybe someone else could have put them there. Someone who survived the blast.”
Jesse’s gaze was heavy, and unconsciously I moved closer to Chase.
“No one else survived,” said Sarah bleakly.
“There are rumors of a settlement down the coast,” said Jesse finally.
Stunned silence.
“It’s old,” continued Jesse. “I’m not sure it’s even still there.” He stared forward, as if mesmerized by the flames. “Tomorrow we’ll head further south. If we don’t find them in two days, you’re free to take your team back to the safe house. Or what’s left of it.”
“We’re free to?” snorted Jack. “What makes you think—”
“Two days?” interrupted the girl whose brother was still missing. “What about the people you left behind? My brother needs—”
“What do you think?” I whispered to Chase while the others began to argue again. “We’re supposed to be back by then.”
He nodded, rubbing a crease between his brows with his thumb. “But if we find a settlement, that could mean food, medical supplies…”
“Three,” I said. He nodded.
“Maybe Three.”
As guilty as I felt about stranding the injured, the prospect of finding Three was too big to pass up.
“Just two days,” I said. “If we haven’t found a radio by then, we go back. Agreed?”
Jesse’s eyes traveled from Jack to Chase and lastly to me. He didn’t look to his people; maybe he already knew they’d follow his lead.
“Fine,” said Jack.
“Agreed,” said Jesse.
WE left at dawn.
The morning was much like the days before, only now we weren’t looking for empty cans or footprints, we were looking for signs of a permanent settlement, and there weren’t just nine of us, there were twenty-six. We could spread out, cover ground faster. With so many to offer protection, we even took our chances on the highway that ran down the coast toward Charleston, South Carolina. There Rebecca and Sarah could walk with more ease, and Jack, nursing the knife wound in his thigh, could hobble slowly behind them.