SILENCE.
I tried to check his pulse. I didn’t know what I was doing.
There was little room to move in the cramped cell. I rolled Chase gently to his back while he remained unanimated, a rag doll. Like the man from the square. Frantically, I wedged myself against the wall, wrapping his heavy arm around my shoulders.
“Come on, Chase,” I prompted, frightened.
With all my strength, I hoisted him up onto the mattress. His upper torso and his hips made it, but his legs still hung over the edge. I laid him down as gently as I could and then pulled his knees up.
He groaned.
“Chase,” I said anxiously. His eyes were closed.
The consequent survey had my eyes blinking out of focus. A sharp breath raked my throat.
His face and neck were coated with dark black blood. The front of his shirt was drenched with it. My trembling hand reached for his cheek, stroking it gently. The heat from swelling mixed with the cool sticky residue on his skin.
“Chase, wake up. Please.”
Panic twisted inside of me. I thought about the little silver briefcase. The laundry carts. The execution that would surely ensue.
Everything had come together just to fall apart. I couldn’t escape with Chase in this condition, and I would not leave him this way.
“Why did you get caught?” I didn’t expect an answer.
I lifted his shirt. Several boot-sized contusions had begun to form over his ribs.
“It’s okay. This is okay. We just need to clean you up, that’s all.” It sounded like a different person’s voice coming out of my mouth. Someone calm, rational. Not me.
But that voice was right. I needed a task. I needed to focus on something.
I soaked a rag and ever so gently touched it to his face, mopping up the blood beside his nose. When it was soiled I shoved it beneath the bed and grabbed another. His raw lips, his ears, his neck. I whispered to him the whole time. Mostly gibberish.
I heard a rolling cart sliding down the hallway. Delilah was taking the soldier to the crematorium. My last chance at freedom was slipping out of the building. I couldn’t even feel regret. All I had room for was concern for Chase.
He didn’t stir until I moved to his forehead, where several cuts crossed over his scalp. When I reached a particularly nasty laceration, his eyes jolted open, irises dragging down into a sea of white. He blinked in confusion. His teeth bore down hard.
“Chase?”
I drew back and let him find my voice. I had learned from his nightmares that my hands on him while he roused would be too disorienting.
He swallowed before he was able to speak. His body shivered as if he were cold.
“Em?”
“Yes,” I cried, letting my tears rain down on his face. A tidal wave of relief crashed over me.
“I found you.” Though his voice crackled, he sounded satisfied.
A memory filtered back from long ago. I promise I’ll come back. No matter what happens. His words just before he’d been drafted. Yes, he had come back. Despite the costs.
“I’m sorry. I should have told you from the beginning,” he said.
I shushed him. “Not important.”
“Yes it is.” He coughed, and when he did so, his whole body ripped into a spasm that had him curling around his stomach.
“Breathe. It’s okay,” I soothed, stroking his back. But knowing he was hurting ripped my heart wide open.
It took him a full minute to breathe evenly. When he finally lay back, his eyes were dazed with pain.
“Don’t talk,” I whispered. It took a minute, but he shoved himself up.
“I can fix this. I’m going to get you out.”
I froze, my hand still on his cheek.
“You… turned yourself in?” My voice hitched. “Why did you do that?”
“I promised I wouldn’t let anything happen to you,” he said.
I knew what a promise meant to him. It was tearing him apart that he’d let my mother and me down.
“Sean’s waiting for you at a gas station in the Red Zone behind the base. He’ll help you.”
I knew the place. I’d seen its decrepit sign the first day I’d helped Delilah transport a body to the crematorium.
“Sean…” I looked at him quizzically. Sean and Chase had not been particularly fond of each other when I’d last seen them together.
“It’s on the western side. There’s an exit there. I’ll clear the gate for you and…”
“No.” I saw what he had envisioned: him fighting whomever it took to get me outside these gates. I could hardly breathe. He’d come here to rescue me knowing he was going to die.
My hands covered my mouth, and I collapsed on my knees beside the bed. So many feelings, all slamming together, all tearing through me. If I didn’t say it now, I wouldn’t be able to. My throat was already choking off.
“What happened… it’s not your fault,” I said, shaking.
I wanted to tell him I was sorry. That I forgave him. That I knew he loved me and that I loved him, too. I couldn’t. I fell apart, sobbing into my sleeves. His hands slipped around me, pulling me into his bruised body.
“You scared the hell out of me. I thought…” he sighed. “It doesn’t matter. You’re alive.”
A sound in the hallway extinguished my tears.
Cla-click, cla-click. Cla-click, cla-click.
The guard on rotation. Or Delilah, back from her gruesome task.
We froze, listening to the footsteps. They grew louder, then paused, just outside of Chase’s cell. I held my breath and watched the door.
A clatter against the outside wall. His chart. Someone was going to come in.
No!
Chase pushed me aside. In a laborious heave he stood, bracing against the wall for support. I jumped up behind him, wrapping my arms around his chest, half certain he was about to fall over, half ready to make the guards tear us apart.
“Lay down!” I whispered.
He didn’t listen. It was a good thing he was injured. I was stronger than him in his current condition. I shoved him back to the bed and pushed his head down. He looked like he might throw up. Somewhere in the back of my mind I registered this as a symptom of concussion.
A key fit into the lock, turned.
“Keep your eyes closed!” I said quietly.
Chase complied, but his hands curled into fists.
Delilah entered the room.
“He’s not up yet?” I could see the little red dots that had splattered across her blouse and the damp stains on her collar from where she’d been sweating. I tried not to picture what she’d seen in cell two.
“He was a second ago,” I said, feeling the solid shape of the gun against my skin. “Come look at his face,” I added, gently running my finger over a split on the bridge of his nose.
Chase stirred, ever so slightly. I willed him to be still.
She took another step forward, one hand still on the door.
“What’s wrong with it?”
“He got hit pretty hard.”
“Obviously,” she snorted. One more step inside.
I sprung, throwing the blanket off my shoulders and shoving her away from the door. A second later I’d pulled the gun from my dress and aimed it directly at her. I pushed the door back toward the jamb, careful not to let it lock.
“What the hell are you doing?” she cried.
“Shut up!” I ordered, praying no one had heard us. Chase was sitting up now, blinking rapidly. He still looked ill—and more shocked than Delilah.
“Here.” I shoved the gun into his hand. He aimed it at Delilah. She bared her teeth at him. I saw his hand tremble slightly but knew it wasn’t from physical pain. The last woman he’d held a gun to had been my mother.
“Sorry, Delilah,” I told her as I shoved a clean rag into her mouth. “But there is something out there for me.”
As quickly as I could, I tore the tattered rags to strips and fastened her wrists around the metal bed frame. She didn’t struggle, clear eyes glued on Chase. I slipped the key over her head and pressed it firmly in my fist. My heart felt as if it were going to explode in my chest. If it did, I hoped it killed me before the MM did.
Then I eased Chase back to the bed, away from Delilah, and returned the gun to its hiding place in my dress.
“I must have gotten hit harder than I thought,” Chase said, with the confusion of someone waking from a coma. “How did you get in here? Who is she? And where did that gun come from?” The heels of his hands were pressed against his temples.
“I’ll explain later. For right now, stay here.”
“I’m going with you,” he said.
I shook my head. His jaw tightened.
Don’t fight me, Chase.
I knew he felt as I had so many times on this journey. Completely out of control. Completely reliant. Maybe he realized how I felt now, too, because he didn’t argue, he didn’t fight. He just looked up at me and whispered, “Please be careful.”
A moment later the door locked behind me.
The hallway was eerily quiet, without even the shuffle of the guard around the far corner at the stairs. He was there, I knew, just silent. The guard on rotation would be coming around any second.
Nerves chewed my insides and made my skin tingle. Every step I took felt like walking on a bed of nails. I figured I was losing my mind. It was the only reasonable explanation for my actions.
Before anything else, I grabbed the clipboard outside Chase’s cell. I ripped the pen from its hanging cord and in large letters scribbled what had been written on the other soldiers’ charts.
COMPLETE.
One steadying breath, to find that emotionless calm from before Chase had come, and I returned to my task.
I used Delilah’s key to open the storage room and rolled a cart into the hallway. One of the wheels rattled and flicked awkwardly to the side. I stared furiously at the defective piece, as though this would somehow silence it.
I had just reached Chase’s cell when I heard the clicking of footsteps again.
My body became paralyzed.
A guard with dark skin and a permanent frown came around the corner.
“Good morning,” I said too cheerily.
“What are you doing out?” He looked down the empty hallway.
“Delilah… she came early,” I stammered.
“Where is she?”
“Still cleaning up the suicide in cell two. She told me to wait here.”
“Why here?”
Several swear words tore through my brain.
“To take out the trash,” I answered, quoting Delilah.
The soldier looked at Chase’s chart. His furrowed brows smoothed.
“I guess they blew off the trial. Figures. He didn’t deserve one.”
“Oh no?” Please just leave!
“No. There are bad people in the world. He’s one of them.” He said this as though he were a father talking to his daughter about stranger danger. I thought about where I would shoot him if I pulled the gun.
I tried to look frightened. “Well, I’d better get to it.”
He turned on his heels without another word and did not look back.
Only thirty minutes until the next rotation.
My hands shook so hard I could barely fit the key in the lock. The doubt clawed at me, but I shoved it aside. I would not let Chase down.
I reopened his cell. He was standing inside, the stress still evident through his swollen features. I was careful to make sure the lock did not click behind me. Delilah’s cheeks were stained red with fury.
“Who was that?” Chase whispered.
“Just a guard.” I positioned the cart against the wall. “Get in.”
As I explained the plan, his countenance grew grim.
“And if you get caught? I can’t live with that.”
“You won’t have to for long,” I said morosely, glancing at Delilah, still bound and gagged. The guilt made my stomach burn. “It’s both of us or neither of us.”
His hand scratched through his hair.
“Don’t you see?” I argued. “We have to do something! So this doesn’t happen to anyone else!” He knew what I meant by this. What had happened to my mother. To us.
He swallowed. And very slowly nodded.
We were going to try to escape an MM base.
I didn’t think about it too long. If I did, the impossibility of it would overwhelm me.
I had to help Chase. He had difficulty bending; I suspected a few ribs may have been broken. He sat on the bottom of the cart, his knees pulled to his chest, his head locked down.
“If I hear things go south, I won’t stay hidden.”
I didn’t say anything and closed the lid over his head. One final nod to Delilah was all the time we could afford.
I shoved my shoulder into the cart, rocking it with effort until it rolled into the empty hallway. Every sense vigilant, I made for the elevator. I could hear my heart slamming in my eardrums and the screaming rattle of that stupid wheel as my trembling finger pressed the button. The freight elevator doors made a loud clanging noise as they opened. Did they always do that? I scanned the hallway. Still nothing.
Leaning into the cart, I pushed Chase inside.
The gears of the metal box squealed, then ground us inch by inch to the bottom floor. It took several steadying breaths to regain my focus.
The doors pulled open, revealing the dark, floor-level corridor where I had originally planned on leaving Delilah. Since this part of the building was not often used, the standardized power did not automatically kick on the lights here. I didn’t, either. I held my breath in the darkness, ignoring the frightening sounds and shapes I created in my mind, and took an immediate right. The utility door unlocked easily with my key. When the first breath of fresh air hit me, I felt renewed.
Yes. I could do this. I was doing this.
I had to plant my heels into the asphalt to push the cart down the narrow alley. Twenty more yards to the gate station. Fifteen. Ten.
The guard at post stuck his head outside.
No! Ignore me! That’s what you did yesterday!
“Where’s the old lady?” he asked. He had a chubby face and a dimple in the center of his chin.
“Sick, I think,” I responded. I prayed no one had found her yet.
“That old bat’s never sick.”
I shrugged.
“Early this morning for that, isn’t it?”
“They did it last night.” Please let me pass. Please let me pass.
He pressed the button, and the gate buzzed before dragging open.
We passed through. My heart was racing. I rounded the corner and began straining up the hill. I had to keep my arms locked straight on the handlebar so that I wouldn’t topple backward.
“We did it,” I whispered giddily between labored breaths. I knew he couldn’t hear me. That was okay. He would know soon enough.
Step after step I pushed him up the hill.
Finally we reached the top. I pulled the cart off into a hidden area beside the awning and checked the driveway and hilltop for movement. We were alone.
The metal cover fell open with a clang, and Chase lifted his head.
“We did it!” I stifled a scream this time.
He didn’t smile until he’d seen for himself that the driveway was clear. After he was out, we pushed the cart over to the drop-off area at the crematorium. Behind the building was a wooded slope, which led to the subdivision and the gas station. This was where we would disappear.
“Come on.” Chase grabbed my hand.
But the skin on my neck prickled. Boots clacked across the pavement.
I spun around, my heart already leaping into my throat.
Tucker Morris was jogging up the hill, alone. It was too late to run, he had already seen us. He stopped three yards away, hands on his belt. His eyes were focused behind me, on Chase.
“So it’s true.” His voice was filled with both trepidation and disgust. “A soldier in sick bay told me you turned yourself in last night. I had to see for myself.” He laughed wryly. “The chart on the door said ‘Jennings,’ but she sure didn’t look like you.”
Delilah. “Did anyone else see her?” I asked, flattening the apprehension in my voice.
“Not yet,” he threatened.
It struck me as odd that Tucker hadn’t alerted the entire base to our escape, but then I realized he would likely get in trouble for it. He was trying to fix a mistake on his shift before his command found out what had happened.
Chase was still silent. Somehow, he’d placed himself between Tucker and me.
“You look surprised,” Tucker said to him. “You didn’t tell him I was here, Ember?” He used my first name just to get under Chase’s skin. He’d never called me that before.
“Don’t talk to her,” Chase growled. “Don’t even look at her.”
“Or what?”
“Or I’ll finish what I started and break your other arm.”
My pulse quickened.
“You can barely stand,” scoffed Tucker. But there was a cautious light in his eye.
“So it’ll be an even fight.”
“We’re leaving,” I told Tucker flatly.
“The hell you are.”
I felt my eyes twitch. Chase took a step forward, intending to make good on his threat. I grabbed his arm.
Tucker’s tone turned from vehemence to conceit.
“Have you told him yet? About how you gave it up in my office last night?” Tucker began walking purposefully toward us.
“Nothing happened.”
He grinned. “If I’d known you were that wild I’d have busted you out of reform school, too.”
“Go,” Chase told me under his breath.
“Not a chance,” I told him fiercely.
Tucker was still approaching. I knew if we turned our backs to him he’d reach for the radio at his belt and call for assistance. I couldn’t let that happen.
Chase was leaning forward, ready to pounce. Before I took another step, Tucker whipped the baton from his hip and lunged at us. Chase moved to intercept, but there was no need: Tucker’s advance had been cut short. He was frozen, the nightstick suspended over his shoulder. Surprised by the interruption, Chase glanced back at me. His eyes changed slightly when he registered the gun in my hands.
“You stole my weapon?” He seemed genuinely surprised for a brief moment—but then his bravado returned. “You’ve really screwed yourself now.”
The gun was light as a feather in my hands. The rush was kicking through my system. I’d aimed the gun at Delilah but never considered actually shooting her. I thought if Tucker took another step forward I might just pull the trigger.
“Tucker, please let us go.” My words were icy.
“Begging?” He spat on the ground. “You sound like your mother did. Right before I shot her.”
My world stopped.
Tucker’s words sliced through my brain. Again and again.
Right before I shot her.
“You?” I asked weakly. I had assumed it was the CO that had killed her, but I was wrong. It was Tucker. That was why Chase had broken his arm. That was why Tucker had been promoted. I felt like I was going to be ill.
My blood was running cold. My mother’s killer was faceless no longer. I could see him holding the gun up, just behind Chase. See him shooting her.
“I thought you told her,” Tucker said to Chase. Chase said nothing.
“You killed her,” I said softly. My hands were wobbling.
“Ember.” I barely registered Chase saying my name.
“How could you?” Tucker was an inconceivable monster.
“I’m a damn good soldier. I did what needed to be done.”
His words hit me like a freight train.
“What needed to be done?” I repeated. The murder of an innocent woman was now necessary?
I focused on the gun. I would show him what needed to be done.
“Like you even know what to do with that,” mocked Tucker.
I glanced down, flicking the safety off.
“It’s a nine millimeter, isn’t it? I just pull back the slide, aim, and fire.”
With a steady hand I chambered the first round. Click.
Tucker faltered, his face blotching with crimson, his mouth hard and set. I couldn’t stop the images. Tucker lifting the weapon. The sound the gun must have made when it fired. The fear in her eyes. The death in her eyes.
“Em,” Chase whispered. I barely heard him.
I saw her. I saw her mischievous smile. The clips in her hair. She sang songs from back before the War, and we danced in the living room. She made me hot chocolate. She gave away her space in line at the soup kitchen.
She’d forgiven Chase for the overhaul. Thank God you’re here, she’d said to him in the cell. She’d forgiven Roy for hurting her. Me for making him leave. She would blame the MM for Tucker’s corruption.
She would be ashamed of me if I killed him. Because of that single fact, I knew I could not take his life.
But I wanted to.
Chase was still watching me. His eyes were filled with understanding. I knew he would have supported me, regardless of my decision.
“Get the gun from her, man,” said Tucker to Chase. He was trying to revive their old friendship. His words jolted me back.
“If I do, I’m shooting you myself,” Chase responded darkly. I knew that if I asked him to, Chase would kill Tucker. Part of me wanted him to, needed him to. But I focused on my mother’s face. She had loved Chase, too. She wouldn’t want his soul any more compromised than it had already been.
Tucker shifted. “Think about what this will mean for you. You’ll never be able to stop running.” Fear laced through his voice.
“I’ve thought about it.” Last chance, I told myself. But my mind was made up. “We’re leaving, Tucker. Walk away. Or I will shoot you.”
I ignored the hammering of my pulse against my temple. I felt no fear, no anger. The grief, too, was gone. My whole body focused on the completion of this single task: securing our safety.
How like Chase I had become.
“What am I supposed to tell my command?” Tucker’s voice cracked.
“You tell them that Chase is dead. He didn’t make it to his trial. His chart is ‘completed.’ You tell them that he was taken to the crematorium. You tell them that I stole the key from Delilah by force, and when she confessed, you had me ‘completed’ too.”
Yesterday, I’d thought it pitiful that Tucker had threatened Delilah into silence. Now I was banking on it. I hoped this would save the sad old woman from the same fate as my mother.
“And if I say no?”
“You can always tell them that two criminals escaped on your shift, right in front of you. Though I doubt that would bode well for that career plan of yours.”
Several long beats of silence.
Tucker swore.
“All right. All right!”
Something cracked inside of me. I knew I was on the verge of breaking now.
Hold it together!
“Give me my gun back. I’ll be busted down for that.” Tucker held his hand out.
“I’m not that stupid. You walk back down to the check station. Once I see you there, I’m going to throw it down the hill into those bushes. I hope you can find it.”
“And what’s to stop me from shooting you when I do?”
“There won’t be any bullets. You can ask the guards at the post, but that will mean a whole messy explanation. I recommend you come back later for it.”
He kicked the ground and finally nodded. “Get out of here.”
I swallowed a deep breath.
“Don’t shoot me in the back,” he added with repugnance.
“I’m not making any promises.”
Tucker turned and strode down the hill.
The gun grew heavier in my hands, as if I were holding a bucket filling with water. By the time Tucker had disappeared around the curve of the hill, I could barely lift my arms.
Chase gently placed his hand on my shoulder, sliding it down my bicep to my wrist. He pried the gun from my grasp. My ears were ringing.
I watched as he removed the magazine from the handle and stuffed it in his pocket. Then he tossed the handgun into a neat hedge wall, close enough so that Tucker would have to climb back up the hill to find it. If indeed he could find it at all.
“We need to go,” Chase said.
I led him back behind the crematorium, to where the asphalt met the woods. The brush thickened immediately, grabbing onto the fabric of my skirt and ripping little holes in it. Some of the branches nicked at my legs, too. I noticed this objectively, as though I were an outsider watching my body from above.
My mind was still reeling with the events of the last five minutes. I could think of nothing but my mother’s killer.
Should I have killed Tucker? Should Chase have? Tucker could hurt so many others now. There was no right answer.
The trail declined, leading us into the subdivision. We would have to be careful going between the houses; it was important to stay out of view from the hilltop behind the base.
We rested in a tight alleyway. Chase was struggling to breathe and squeezing his head between the heels of his hands. I wished I could take his pain away.
I searched for soldiers but found no evidence we were being followed.
“We need to keep moving.” I slid under his arm for support. He didn’t object, which worried me. The concussion seemed severe. We needed to find a doctor.
It was midmorning when we reached our destination. The parking lot was empty but for a thin, ex-reform-school guard roaming around near the Dumpster.
Sean stared at us, mouth open.
“You actually pulled it off,” he said in awe.
Chase squeezed my hand. “She pulled it off. I did nothing—”
“—but get your butt kicked,” Sean finished.
To my surprise, Chase smirked.
It appeared they were friends now. I thought maybe Sean and I could be friends one day, too. I didn’t blame him anymore for not telling me about my mother; people would do almost anything to protect someone they loved. If anyone knew that, it was us.
I walked straight up to Sean and gave him a hug.
“Thanks for waiting,” I told him.
“I’ve gotta say, Miller, I didn’t think I’d see you again.” His shocked expression morphed into one of concern.
“They moved Rebecca,” I said, before he could ask.
His eyes widened. “Where?”
“A rehabilitation center in Chicago.”
“A… what? How do you—”
“Doesn’t matter. That’s where she is,” I said. Chase glanced over at me but didn’t ask any questions.
Later, when we were safe, I would tell him what had happened with Tucker in his office, and how, now that I knew what Tucker had done, my actions revolted me even more. There would be time to talk about how I’d orchestrated our escape, and what I had seen in the MM base. But for now, we had to hide.
“Make the call,” Chase told Sean. I glanced at him, confused.
Sean took a step back. After a moment, he shook his head, focusing on the present, and removed a radio from his belt. It was like the one Chase had in the MM but smaller, and it clicked rapidly when he turned it on.
“Package ready for pickup,” Sean said. He had to clear his throat. An array of emotions was flying across his face.
Nearly a minute passed with no response from the radio.
While we waited, I caught Chase watching me. His gaze held no more secrets but was clear and honest and deep as a lake. I traced my fingertips over his high cheekbones and saw how the lines between his brows melted as the pounding in his head subsided. Finally finding peace, he closed his eyes.
“One hour,” came the response, making me jump. I recognized the voice. It belonged to a wiry man with greasy, peppered hair and a mustache.
Chase nodded his approval. He’d asked Wallace to help us. We were going back to the Wayland Inn.
We were going back to the resistance.