“Yeah,” said Wallace. “Well, if you change your mind, you’ll always be welcome in my camp.”
I almost asked where that would be, but guessed that he probably didn’t even know yet. He was the last remaining leader of Three, a soldier of the cause, something I now realized I might never truly understand. I did know this, though: the blood on his hands—Tucker’s blood, and Billy’s, too—would never wash away. He would carry it the rest of his days, and maybe for that reason alone he could never stop fighting. It was the only thing left that could make his actions make sense.
I stepped toward him and shook his hand. He pulled me into a hug and I patted him awkwardly on the back.
“Take my car,” he said gruffly, placing a tarnished silver key in the palm of my hand. He scratched the back of his neck, refusing to meet my gaze. “There’s two full cans of fuel in the back. Not much food, but enough water to get you through a couple of days at least. And there’s a map in the glove box. The border patrol in South Carolina has all been pulled in to support the existing bases. You should be able to get into the Red Zone without too much trouble, though I’d still stick to low-traffic routes.” He hesitated. “Consider it payback for kicking you out of the Wayland Inn. Not one of my brighter moves, I guess.”
I blinked, unsure how to respond as he reached out his hand to take Chase’s.
“Your uncle was a good man,” he said.
Chase tilted his head. “You knew him?”
“I knew him,” Wallace said with a smile. “I knew him a long time ago, before the War.” He looked like he might say more, but didn’t.
There was still a lot I had to tell Chase about Jesse. We had a long drive ahead of us, miles and miles to talk.
“What was he like back then?” he asked.
“Young and stupid.” Wallace laughed. “The most reckless of the three of us. He’d start a fight, and I’d go in after him, and then Aiden had to bail us all out.”
Chase glanced at me. “Aiden DeWitt?”
I squeezed his hand.
“If Jesse didn’t like something, he’d fix it. Fix the whole world if he could have. In the end, I guess he did. You should be proud of that, son.”
I closed my eyes, thinking of the way he’d risen, broken and bloody, to stab the knife I’d passed him into the heart of the Chief of Reformation.
“I am,” said Chase.
Wallace scuffed his heel on the ground. “You remind me of him. Once you get your mind set on something, you take it to the very end.”
My lips turned up in a smile for the first time in a week.
“Good luck to you both,” said Wallace. “Maybe we’ll see each other again sometime.”
But as he walked away, I knew we wouldn’t.
EPILOGUE
SUMMER in the south wasn’t as hot as I thought it would be. Each morning, the breeze came in off the ocean, and each afternoon the thunderclouds built overhead and cracked open for a short time before stretching thin and melting into the evening sky. Just before dark, the world seemed to bound back: the air smelled like fresh soil and the birds broke their silence—a last reminder before the dark of the life that surrounded us.
But early morning was my favorite time. The quiet before the day, just after the rise of the sun. In worn-out sneakers, cutoff shorts, and one of Chase’s T-shirts, I walked down the beach, keeping to the crunchy sand left over from the high tide.
The docks would be quiet today. Most people stayed at the compound—an old Air Force base that had steadily grown over the past months. The runways had been bombed during the War, but the rows of housing were still intact, and now served as an evacuation center for those still fleeing from the interior. Sanctuary, it was called. An entirely self-sufficient community, complete with its own hydraulic power station, water desalination plant, and school. More than a few Lost Boys went there.
After the bases had fallen, the MM had destroyed all existing long-distance explosive devices. Uncertain who to trust within their ranks, they erred on the side of safety, assuring that their people, and ours, were no longer at threat of an aerial assault. In the last three months President Scarboro had received countless death threats and more than one attempt on his life. This, along with the death of his Chief of Reformation, had apparently been enough to force a treaty with Matthew Stark’s camp—at least that was what we heard on Faye Brown’s news report broadcasted nightly at Sanctuary.
I would believe it when I saw it.
It wasn’t long before I came to the docks. Along the bank opposite the clear blue water, a grove of Cyprus trees appeared beneath the high overarching palms. I walked beneath the heavy boughs, the sound of the ocean growing faint behind me. The air grew rich with a sweet, heady scent, and the thin branches that had fallen crackled beneath my feet.
I made my way to the center tree, glancing beyond it, just for a minute, to where an old road broke off before bridging across the bay. Turning my attention back to the tree, I slid my hands around the smooth gray bark until I reached the indentations.
LORI WHITMAN, it said. Already the wood had puckered and accepted its new tattoos. Looking up, I saw a new ribbon had been tied around the lowest branch, a token from the last visitor.
“Hi, Mom,” I said quietly, letting the breeze blow through my hair. I didn’t feel her loss as sharply as I did before. The pain was still there, though more of a dull ache, a sadness.
My fingers traced the letters, then came to rest on the silver ring with the small black stone hanging around my neck. My someday promise. Laying beside it, the Saint Michael’s medallion—for luck.
I traveled to the next tree, tracing another name: Jesse Waite, and below it, three hash marks that Chase had carved there.
I moved from tree to tree. Billy. Marco and Polo, back together on one stout branch. Lincoln and Riggins from Knoxville. A soldier named Harper in Chicago.
Tucker Morris.
I stopped there, as I always did, unsure what to feel. Maybe someday I would come to peace with the role he had played in my life. I might accept what he’d done and his twisted logic behind it. The anger and the pity and the questions would all die down, and I would know him as a boy who’d been hurt by his family, who’d found a new family in the FBR, and who’d done what he thought he had to do in order to survive.
Perhaps he’d been right when he’d said we weren’t that different.
From behind came the low groan of a motor, and with one final good-bye, I turned and made my way toward the water. The sand gave way to a cracked concrete walkway, which rose above the lowering beach and stretched twenty feet out into the waves. In the distance, a boat approached, its silver hull gleaming in the sun. A smile tugged at my lips, and soon I was jogging toward it.
He was standing at the front of the boat, his hair shaggy past his ears, his skin darker than I’d ever seen it. As the boat slowed and drew closer, he moved to the side and grabbed a pile of rope from the deck, flinging it across the divide to where I waited.
“Take your time, why don’t you,” I said. It had only been four days since Chase had left, but might as well have been weeks.
“You miss me?” A grin turned up the right side of his mouth, and as the engine went dead, he tied off his side of the rope using only his right hand.
It had only been three months since the gunshot that had almost taken his life, and though the medic at Sanctuary had given him a clean bill of health, I still worried at the way he favored his left arm.
I finished knotting the first rope to its anchor on the dock the way Sal, the carrier to Mexico, had taught me. From the back of the boat, a short, shirtless man hopped over the siding and finished the task in half the time it had taken us.