A few seconds later we heard the clatter of retreating footsteps.
I kept close behind Chase as we exited the building. The parking lot lights had gone dark from the blast; some of the poles had been knocked over. Cars were crushed beneath them.
“There!” I pointed to the exit, but even as I spoke the terror punched me in the gut. The retreating MM troops had used this lot to regroup. A hundred or more soldiers gathered near the perimeter fence, their dark uniforms only degrees of shadow in the moonlight. They saw us at the same time we saw them, and instantly raised their weapons.
“Get back!” Chase shouted. We tried to return to the building, but now the retreating troops were pouring from the exit. When they saw their fellow soldiers they skidded to a halt, making one last play against the rebels fighting their way through the building.
We were caught in the middle.
“Under the car!” Grabbing Chase’s sleeve, I dove behind the nearest van, furious at myself for not having grabbed a weapon from one of the fallen soldiers within the courtyard.
The sound of gunfire came from all sides. The interior of the base was on fire now and the smoke was tinged with electricity and something sweet. To the left of the base came the sounds of battle—the scrape of metal and a chorus of angry voices, yelling.
“The prison,” said Chase, a grim look on his face.
Bullets sprayed around my feet and I tucked them close to my body, shaking with adrenaline, with fear, with anger that we were so close to freedom only to be pinned in place as target practice.
“I love you,” I said to Chase.
He turned to me, a hard look on his face.
“Don’t you give up.” With that he stood, and disappeared around the corner of the van. I screamed as another shot embedded in the sliding door over my head. The MM had surrounded us. It was just a matter of time before we were discovered.
A great roar came from the direction of the prison—this one closer, shaking through my bones. I mustered the courage to peek around the side of the van, ready for the onslaught of soldiers, but instead found a wave of gray charging through the darkness.
Leading them was DeWitt. He carried a stick in one arm, raised high above his head. As he came closer I recognized the long pole with the looped leash.
It seemed possible then that DeWitt had planned to be here, now, to lead this wave of the attack. Somehow the prisoners had overpowered the guards. In the chaos I’d forgotten that Billy had freed them.
“Nice job, Billy,” I whispered to the sky.
As I watched, half of the first line of prisoners fell. DeWitt crumpled, slowed, but then ran on again, urging the others to follow. Within seconds the clash of bodies and metal echoed against what remained of the stone base. I scrambled up, searching frantically for Chase. Eventually I caught sight of him, his prison uniform standing out in the night, running toward me from the now open gate.
Hope flooded through me. We were going to make it. We were going to live.
I didn’t even hear the men behind me until it was too late.
The grip on my arm took me by surprise, and with a short scream I toppled backward.
“Stand up!” shouted New Guy. “Up on your feet!”
He wrapped his arm around my throat, using my body as a shield. Something cold and hard pressed against my temple, and without a doubt I knew it was the barrel of a gun.
Chase didn’t slow; he ran at both of us like a freight train. We crashed to the ground, gravel scraping the palms of my hands as I tried to shove myself out of the way. From close by came the sound of a blunted shot, then a pained cry in my right ear. I finally succeeded in breaking away from between the two men.
New Guy, his nose still busted, and now with a scrape down his pale jaw, jolted up, leaving Chase facedown on the pavement. For one stunned moment none of us moved.
“Get up.” Chase’s leg was closest and I shook his calf. “Chase, get up!”
His arms bent at his sides as he attempted something that looked like a push up before collapsing back down on his stomach.
He’s okay, I told myself. He took a hard hit. Got the wind knocked out of him. I crawled to his side and helped him roll over, watched as his dark eyes focused behind me, on the moon. Saw the dark liquid seep from his right side, just above his rib cage.
Time stopped.
We were a girl and a boy exploring a haunted house.
A kiss in the woods.
A ride on a motorcycle.
We were walking to school. Whispering across the space between our houses. Pulling hay from each other’s hair.
We were pieces of the same puzzle.
But he was the boy from my dream, bleeding from a hole in his chest.
I couldn’t move.
There was only my breath, too hard, and his, too strained. He cringed against the pain, and I filled his wound with my hands and my tears.
The fighting around us returned in a rush, blasting my eardrums. The soldier who had shot him, who had turned us in at Greeneville, was getting closer. I could feel his presence in the way the hair on my neck stood on end.
Without thinking I spread my body over Chase’s, covering him, wishing I was made of steel and could stop a bullet. Two shots came fast. I closed my eyes, waiting to feel them enter my body, bracing against the fire they would bring to my flesh.
But when I opened them, Tucker was beside me, and New Guy was on the ground, motionless.
Lowering to a crouch, Tucker sheathed his gun and clenched a fist around Chase’s shoulder.
“Shake it off, Jennings. It’s just a flesh wound.”
Around us, the battle raged on.
Chase opened his eyes fully, focusing on Tucker. And then in a surge of strength he sat up, and shoved me to the side.
“Get … away … from us…” he whispered.
“I saved her,” Tucker explained.
You killed my mother, and all those people in Chicago and the safe house.
“He let me go,” I said, placing my arms beneath Chase’s. Tucker had woken something inside of me. I could still save him, but we needed to get out of here.
Chase weakly shoved his old partner, who fell helplessly back on his heels. He looked shocked, like he couldn’t believe that Chase didn’t believe him.
“Help me!” I told Tucker. “He needs a doctor.”
Tucker wound Chase’s arm over his shoulders and, with a grunt, he stood. The noise Chase made was enough to make my whole body clench, but he didn’t have the strength to object.
“There’s a clinic north of here,” said Tucker. “It’s where they take soldiers who need more than the base medic.”
I opened the sliding side door of the van. Tucker backed in, dragging Chase across the floor.
I jumped into the driver’s seat, searched the center console. I threw a map over my shoulder, shoved aside a pack of batteries. Nearby, a man yelled out in pain.
“Keys,” I said.
“In the visor,” said Tucker from behind me. “The drivers leave them there when they’re on base.”
I ripped down the visor and snatched the key ring as it slid toward me.
“Hold on, man.” Tucker had removed his uniform jacket and was trying to convince Chase to hold it over the wound.
“Let’s go!” I shouted. As Tucker emerged I slapped the keys into his hand, then ducked in the back to kneel beside Chase.
Around us Three’s soldiers fought side by side with the prisoners, defeating the MM troops. Their cries of victory sliced through me; they cheered for the deaths of others just as the soldiers had cheered the death of our men in the ring.
It was what we’d been fighting for. What we’d always wanted.
I slammed the van’s sliding door and pressed down on the jacket over Chase’s stomach. He groaned; the sound almost broke me. I couldn’t stand him hurting like this. I couldn’t do anything to fix it. The harder I pressed on the bandage, the more pain it seemed to put him in, but I didn’t know what else to do.