I didn’t know what that made us, but that didn’t scare me anymore.
“Welcome to the other side,” I said.
He looked up at me, over Chase’s still body, mouth twisting in a small smile. Before I could think about it, I smiled back.
The plastic pillowcase cover beneath Chase’s head made a crinkling sound. He drew in a long, deep breath, blinking, and then turned his face to me. I waited out each torturous second as the confusion passed. There was much to tell him—about Jesse, about what I’d just heard coming from the radio—but we would talk about that later. For the first time in a long time, later felt like a real thing.
His hand, still in mine, rose to my cheek, an IV tube trailing after it.
“Welcome back,” I said. “We’re in a clinic. I’ll get the doctor.”
Tucker jumped up. “I’ll go.” He rubbed his hands on his sides as if not sure what to do with them, and then turned and left the room. His gun was left on the orange chair.
“I guess we made it.” Chase’s voice cracked, and he licked his chapped lips. “All of us.”
Hearing him speak made my heart clench, and a small yes was all I could manage.
His hand lowered down my neck, to the place on my collar where the shirt couldn’t cover the corner of white that stuck out from the V-neck. The heat of his palm pressed through the bandages, and I held it there, close to my heart.
“How’d you get your scars?” he asked.
The tears rose within me like a soft rain—quiet at first, dampening my face, making tracks down my chin to finally fall on my borrowed shirt. And then they came heavier, drenching my insides, muddying every memory into one painful pool and then finally washing me clean.
He pulled me closer and I curled up beside him on the bed, careful to stay clear of his wounds. He stroked my hair and kissed my brow, and I promised myself that nothing could ever come between us again.
A second later I heard the shot.
I bolted from the bed, instinctively dropping low. Behind me, Chase was trying to push himself up. The monitor beeped faster, catching up to my own jagged pulse. As a commotion in the hall raised, I snatched Tucker’s gun and flattened myself against the wall just within the door. Ears ringing, I glanced around the corner.
At first it looked as though Tucker was leaning against the wall, head drooped forward as if he was still nodding off, and for a split second I wondered if I’d made up the sound. But then Tucker’s hands, folded high on his chest, opened, and I saw then the dark red stains on his palms.
I ran toward him, following his shocked gaze down the hall to where Wallace stood, a team of men and women crowded behind him. They stared at him, as if waiting for orders.
Tucker fell forward, and his knuckles turned white as they gripped the metal bar against the wall behind him. I grabbed him just as he was sinking to the ground, the thin fabric of his borrowed scrubs ripping in my fists.
Wallace walked toward us.
“I should have listened to you from the beginning,” he said to me. “You told me he would turn us in. I didn’t listen.” There was a strange, absent quality to his voice, like all the life had been sucked out of him.
“Tucker?” I whispered.
I couldn’t hold his weight, and soon we were both on the ground. His head lay on my knees, his fingers scratched uselessly at his throat, as if an invisible hand were choking him.
“Tucker,” I said again.
He choked, sputtered, red blood brightening his lips. Then a shudder. Then a stillness, like a long sigh before falling asleep. When his eyes found mine I wasn’t sure what they saw, but he smiled, just a soft, subtle tilt of his lips.
“Guess I was too late,” he said.
And as the life left him, as his body went limp and his hands fell to the floor, I did what I never thought I’d do. I cried for him.
The doctor awaited Wallace’s approval before tentatively approaching. He pressed two fingers against Tucker’s neck, just for a few seconds, then shook his head.
I looked up at Wallace. “What have you done?”
His brows furrowed in confusion, as if the answer should have been obvious.
They took Tucker’s body to the back parking lot with the others who had died after reaching the clinic. Three had separated the area in two; on one side, the soldiers were thrown, their bodies discarded like sacks of garbage. On the other were the prisoners and members of Three who had fought to take down the Charlotte base. They were covered with sheets and laid side by side.
I didn’t know what would happen to either side, but I made the freed prisoners carry Tucker’s body to the side with the rebels. I wiped his face clean and covered him with a sheet myself. It was the least I could do after all we’d been through.
As I stood over him they brought out Dr. DeWitt, and laid him beside Tucker. One bad turned good, one good turned bad. In the end it didn’t matter. We were all the same.
Chase and I stayed through the following night. As the hours passed, the clinic was flooded with rebels who’d survived the battle. The hall was soon overwhelmed with injured fighters, some badly burned, some with broken bones, many—too many—with gunshot wounds. The hospital staff ran from patient to patient, and for a while I helped where I could: passing out bandages, holding people still while the nurses and doctors stitched them up or made them comfortable enough to pass without pain, all the while feeling that aching pressure inside of me to move on.
The doctor told us about an old woman who lived nearby who was friendly to the cause. Before dark on the second day, one of the orderlies helped me move Chase and three other injured rebels to her home, a nearby farm with a collection of hand-painted signs lining a privacy fence that stated: BEWARE OF DOG. For six nights we hid in her basement while Chase recovered. She brought us food and water, antibiotics the doctor could spare, and word on the resistance.
At night we listened to Faye Brown’s reports.
By the end of the first week, nine bases had been overrun by civilians. The soldiers that survived the riots had fled, were turned, or simply disappeared. And in every city where a base had fallen, hijacked Statute circulars were found, clutched in the fists of those who fought.
The old president came down from his hiding place in the mountains and began making speeches—Faye even got a special interview with him. The FBR’s days were numbered, he said. It was time they laid down their weapons and accepted the inevitable. Democracy would return to the United States. The Statutes were history. We would rebuild again. All things that sounded good, but had yet to happen. He didn’t condone the violence, but didn’t lie about knowing Three, either. He sounded a little different on the radio than the man who’d showed me his son’s favorite books. Stronger maybe. Not like an old man.
On the seventh day I was helping Chase into the passenger side of the MM van when a beat-up silver car pulled through the gate into the back of the farm. The man who unfolded himself from the driver’s seat looked to have aged ten years since the Charlotte base had fallen. His ratty hair was now clean, tied by a shoelace at the back of his neck, but more gray around the temples.
“I heard you’re leaving without saying good-bye,” said Wallace, leaning against the side of the blue van. His fingers tapped a rhythm against the metal beside his hip.
I wasn’t sure how he’d found us. In the past week I’d been careful not to use either of our names, nor give any information that might indicate who we were.
“We’re leaving,” I confirmed.
“Don’t suppose I can convince you to stay. There’s still a lot of work to be done.” He looked up to the sky, like someone might after feeling a raindrop.
“We can’t stay,” I said. Chase’s hand slid into mine, a move Wallace noticed.