If I hadn’t wanted it to be true so badly, I might have agreed with him. But since we’d been inside, the guards had holstered their weapons and were trailing the group, joking with one another as if we weren’t there at all.
Finally we approached a wide, one-story brick building that stretched back from a simple white stone foyer. A cement pillar rose on each side of the entranceway. They’d once been part of an arch, but now were the connecting points for long clotheslines from which hung drying wildflowers and braided strings of withered vegetables. Over a boarded front door was painted one word: LODGE. Far to the right a crooked metal pole emerging from the ground had been bolted to the side of the building. It stretched ten feet above the roof.
“This was a school,” said Dr. DeWitt. I got the impression that he’d been talking for a while, but I’d been too awestruck to hear anything. “Now we call it the Lodge. We eat here, store food and supplies. Most everything we grow ourselves.”
He held the door, and with an impressed glance at each other, Chase and I followed the crowd inside.
It was much like the elementary school I’d gone to—a long hall with classrooms lining the right side and big windows on the left. Their mismatched shutters were cast open and the breeze that entered was tinged with the scent of the livestock across the pasture. The walls—decorated with charcoal drawings of stick figures and houses—were bathed in sunlight.
The sound of children’s voices floated down the corridor, easing the remaining tension in my chest. We came to an open door, and the classroom inside was bright and colorful. There were children of all ages sitting in plastic chairs attached to L-shaped desks like I’d used in school. The older ones, probably near twelve or thirteen, helped the younger ones, who wore just the straw-colored tunics that exposed their little legs. In the back, one boy sat alone, staring at us with a sour look on his face.
On the walls were clusters of water-wrinkled magazine photos. Cityscapes, smiling women wearing the tight clothes of the old days, and even pictures from the War—crushed buildings, yellow smoke, and people running. The images chilled me—a reminder of our bloody past, viewed from a failing television in my old living room.
I was reminded again of my mother. You wouldn’t believe the stuff they used to write in these things. I almost smirked, thinking of her story in one. She would have liked that. And even if only one person read it, and it made them stop and think, or maybe even fight back, it would have been worth it.
A woman with a short crop of black hair and skin the color of coffee wrote on a chalkboard at the front of the room.
“That’s Ms. Rita,” said Dr. DeWitt. “She’s on the council. Her daughter Jana’s next door with the infants.” He smiled at Sarah.
“What’s the council?” Chase asked.
The doctor looked at him for the first time since he’d recognized us in the grove.
“The council is made up of members who vote on the direction of Endurance. Van Pelt, he works the fields. Panda’s our head cook, and Patch Connor trains the fighters.”
“And what do you do?” asked Jesse a bit rudely.
DeWitt took a slow breath. “Whatever I can to help the cause.”
My heart beat faster. I was certain now that the rumors of Three’s presence at the safe house had been false. This was their base, and clearly, DeWitt was someone of importance here. It appeared our luck had finally turned.
I was just about to move on when I saw the words Ms. Rita had written across the board: “Article 3.”
The class recited in unison, “Whole families are to be considered one man, one woman, and children.”
Instantly I was back in reform school, sitting in a stiff wooden chair, wearing an itchy wool uniform. The scars on my hands I’d been given there throbbed, and I fought back the urge to march into that classroom and tear up the Statute circulars I now saw in the hands of each one of the children.
“She’s teaching the Statutes?” I asked.
“We need to know our enemies,” answered DeWitt.
“They’re kids,” I tried to reason. “They should be reading books and learning, I don’t know, spelling. History.”
Jesse gave me an odd look. “This is their history.”
I flexed my hands from their tight fists. In public school I’d learned math and science; I’d read novels and poems. And then my sophomore year they’d taken the Bill of Rights from the curriculum as if it never existed and posted the Statutes in the hallways and told us that if there was ever a hope our country could rebuild after the War, we needed to comply. Now I doubted there was anyone left who didn’t know what the Moral Statutes were.
“Things have changed since I went to school,” I said.
Jesse snorted. “And you’re young. How do you think I feel?”
As he limped ahead of me, I couldn’t help but feel a little bad for sticking the fork in his leg.
We stopped at the cafeteria, but the hallway continued on around the bend. Two guards, like those that had hidden in the trees, blocked that path.
DeWitt stood before them. “The north wing is off-limits except by permission of the council. If you all will find a seat in the cafeteria, I’m sure I can talk our cook into throwing together something for you to eat.”
“What’s in the north wing?” asked Billy.
“Weapons depository,” answered DeWitt. I had a feeling guns and ammunition weren’t the only things these guards were protecting.
“But we get our own weapons back,” prompted Billy.
DeWitt smiled, but didn’t answer.
“Sir, our injured made camp near the safe house wreckage,” said Chase. “They’ll be running out of supplies soon.”
In my admiration of the compound, I’d completely forgotten about the rest of the group, fending for themselves at the mini-mart. The guilt settled between my shoulder blades as I awaited DeWitt’s response.
DeWitt continued through the threshold into the cafeteria. “We’ll look into it,” he said.
“We also need a radio,” I said. “Ours was damaged, and part of our group is supposed to make contact sometime around sunset.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“Thank you,” I said. “The last we heard, some of our people might be missing.” For some reason, I stopped myself before telling him Tucker’s team had found the first resistance post abandoned.
DeWitt nodded. “Eat,” he said. “Everything else can wait.” With that, he departed, leaving Chase and I exchanging skeptical looks.
A HALF hour later we were in the cafeteria, crowded around a long table fixed with green circular stools attached to its base, like we’d had in my middle school. As it was, most of the men either sat on the table itself or faced away so they could stretch out their long legs. Rebecca and I crammed next to each other, and for an instant my heart felt like it was being twisted, because I remembered how Beth and I used to swap our lunches in a place like this.
Behind the cafeteria was a playground, and through the open door a few children played on the old rusted equipment. Beyond them, six mismatched ovens were visible—they’d been gutted, their insides filled with fires. A dozen people bustled around these stoves while two others managed a central fire pit. I didn’t know what they were cooking, but it smelled so delicious my stomach growled.
Across the table, a few seats down, Chase was talking to Jesse. Though Jesse’s hair was long, and his scruffy beard fuller, the similarities between them were eerie. The way they sat, facing out with their elbows on their knees, and how their eyes moved over everything, always vigilant, even if you could never see it in their expressions. Jesse leaned back and scratched a hand over his skull, something I’d seen Chase do a hundred times.