My heart lifted. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” she said.
THAT night we stayed at a checkpoint within the city. An old abandoned apartment in a rough neighborhood, where the growls of stray dogs and the drunken laughter from the drug houses penetrated the plastic covering the windows. In the living room was a metal trash can where a fire had been lit, and Chase and I gathered around it, neither of us mentioning the difference between this night and the last.
Jesse came into the room after dark, pulling the hood of a sweatshirt over his head.
“I’m going out,” he said.
“Where?” I asked.
“Uh…” Jesse smirked. “To visit a friend.”
“A friend you made earlier today?” asked Chase flatly, and I remembered the way Felicity had looked at him in the garage.
“We should stay together,” I said.
“You’re welcome to come,” offered Jesse, spreading his arms wide. When I rolled my eyes, he shrugged. “Your call, neighbor. I’ll be back before dawn.”
“Fine,” I said.
Chase and I sat and ate with a few more people awaiting a transport that might never come. After dark I told them about reform school, and then Chase and I recounted the story of our escape from the Knoxville base. It sounded different than it ever had before that night. There was a layer of separation that hadn’t been there before, as if we were talking about two other people entirely.
I fell asleep leaning against the wall, on a crinkly trash bag that separated my thin layer of clothes from the dirty, shredded carpet. I didn’t stay out long. Sometime in the middle of the night I woke to find Jesse kneeling before a still sleeping Chase. As I watched, Jesse adjusted the tattered blanket that had fallen off his nephew’s shoulder. His lips were moving, but no sound came out. Then his head bowed, and he scraped a hand over his skull.
I didn’t know what he was doing, but it seemed kind, and for some reason that made me nervous.
“How was your date?” I whispered. Chase stretched his long arms overhead.
Jesse’s head lifted.
“It’s time to go,” he said.
We followed him around the block to where a large city trash truck was parked. It stunk, even from a distance, and when I saw the man outside leaning against the door, I stopped.
“Where’s the truck?” asked Chase.
“Traded it to the ladies,” said Jesse. “Meet August. He’s our new set of wheels.”
August smiled, revealing a couple of crooked teeth. He was average height, not heavy, but not too lean. His hair was thin up top and he stood a little hunched over. It occurred to me that he had no distinguishing features; I’d probably never give him a second look if I didn’t know him.
“You’re a carrier?” I asked. He nodded. A closer view revealed his gray city worker’s uniform. “And the Statutes?” The women in Chattanooga had only taken a third of the boxes.
“Already loaded up.” August motioned to a ladder alongside the green metal Dumpster. “You’ll have more air in the bucket at the top. Sorry about the smell, but at least I don’t get searched a lot.”
My stomach churned.
“You’ve been busy,” I told Jesse. He looked surprised that I had expected any differently.
Chase snorted.
The three of us climbed into the bucket and laid across the dirty steel. It didn’t even smell that bad once we started moving, and we had a great view of the sunrise.
We stayed in Dalton, Georgia, for no longer than it took to pass along the Statutes. The man who worked there said he knew some other printers in the North who would also be willing to support the cause, and would pass along the message as soon as he could. I couldn’t help but feel the glimmer of excitement growing within me. This was actually working.
We stopped to stretch our legs and practice fighting. Chase was perfectly willing to spar, especially when we ended up tangled on the ground, but was more wary of helping me work the handgun, another side effect of Harper’s death. Jesse took over, teaching me to take it apart, clean the small pieces, and put it back together. By the end of our first session I could load a cartridge and switch off the safety gage by feel. It wasn’t a skill I was particularly glad to have, but it was a necessary one, all the same.
Calhoun. Rome. A roadblock sent us on a detour through Fort Payne, and we spent the night in Gadsden with some Sisters running a safe house for reform school runaways. By then word of our trip had gotten out and we met carriers who drove as far as Columbus, Ohio, and Northern Texas, all willing to spread the word about the Statutes.
Taking the back roads took time, and ten days after we’d left Endurance, we reached Birmingham. Like most of the others, they were cagey, but when they’d heard our report, and seen that we’d come to deliver the Statutes personally, they held a potluck dinner at the refectory of an old church. Some of the men even cleaned out the bucket atop of the trash truck for us.
We reached the outskirts of Atlanta at dusk the next day, and spent the night under the stars at an old rest stop. The next morning we entered the city, Chase and Jesse dressed as soldiers, me in my Sisters of Salvation uniform. Despite the MM’s heavy presence there, our spirits were high. The carrier, August, drove us right downtown, where we were released outside an old theater near a large factory. It must have been doing well enough; half a dozen civilian cars were pulling into its parking lot. We tried to play it cool, but so many potential witnesses made me nervous.
We entered through the back doors and found ourselves on a wooden stage, a heavy burgundy curtain marred by moth holes sweeping at an angle from the ceiling. The auditorium was silent, rows of dusty red velvet seats empty and broken, and the air was cold and stale. I shivered. It felt like we were preparing to give a performance to ghosts.
Hard-soled boots clicked across the stage, and the curtain was pulled back to reveal a man in clean slacks and a button-down shirt with a snow-white, handlebar moustache. I stood back reluctantly; he didn’t look like resistance.
“It’s been awhile since we’ve seen you, August,” said the man to the carrier as they shook hands. He had a thick, buttery accent.
“Stopped up,” said August bluntly. “These folks, they’ll tell you more.”
None of us spoke.
The man smiled. “Let me guess, I’m not what you expected?”
“Not exactly,” said Chase.
“Well set your mind at ease, son,” said the man. “I dress this way to keep my day job. I keep my day job because it helps feed the folks of this city.”
“And your work, what would that be?” asked Jesse.
“Food,” said the man. “Boxed food. Atlanta’s home to Horizons national distribution warehouse.”
This made me feel minutely better.
“Awfully trusting to come alone, unarmed,” said Jesse.
The man smiled again, his blue eyes twinkling. “Now what makes you think I’d do a thing like that?”
He snapped his fingers over his head, and suddenly three more men stepped out from behind the curtain, all with guns in their hands. Chase turned, and when I followed, another four were behind us. There was even a woman in a theater box lifting a hand from her rifle to send us a friendly wave.
For some reason, this calmed my nerves considerably.
Chase and I fell into our report while Jesse continued to assess our guards.
“You people responsible for that new sniper shooting?”
“The one near the Red Zone?” I asked, remembering what the woman had told me in the Smokys.
“Sure, that one. And the one last week in Chattanooga. Shot up four soldiers on a patrol. Report said there was a big one, two, three carved into the cruiser’s hood.” He held up his fingers to accentuate the point. “Reinhardt put down four more of his prisoners in retaliation according to the radio last night. Poor souls.” He smoothed down his moustache with one hand.