I HELD absolutely still, the breath locked in my chest, as the operator repeated her report.
A fire in the Wayland Inn. Not a breach in Wallace and Chase’s imposed security, not an MM attack on the resistance stronghold, but a fire. Was it as simple as John the landlord failing to put out one of his cigarettes? It seemed entirely too coincidental that there should be a problem now, so near to the arrival of Tucker Morris.
The soldier abandoned the family without a word of explanation and jogged to the main entrance of the compound. As soon as he was out of sight, Chase grabbed our bag and pulled me toward the hole in the fence.
No one bothered looking up as we passed, or as we separated the chain links to sneak through. Halfway through the metal snagged my shirt and made a ripping sound as I jerked free.
The thoughts raced through my mind. Sean was still at the motel. Had he made it out? What about Billy?
It took only a few steps before I realized Chase was leading me in the wrong direction—toward East End Auto and Tubman’s checkpoint.
“Stop!” I dug my heels in. “What are you doing? We have to go back!”
“We can’t go back.” His expression was grim. When I whipped my hand out of his grasp, he blocked my way, steeling himself for a fight. His hands were down and loose, as if ready to yard me should I bolt.
“They’re sending every unit that direction.” He gaze darted behind me, sharp and focused, before returning to my face. “Who do you think they’re hoping to find?”
The sniper. They were looking for the same five people as the soldier who’d just been combing through the Red Cross Camp. They were looking for me.
“They won’t find us,” I said, ignoring the dread sticking to my insides. “But they might find Sean and Billy and Wallace, even stupid Riggins if we don’t help.”
He flinched.
“Tucker did this,” I said. “You know he did. We’re the only ones who know him. We’re the only ones who can stop him.”
I placed my palm on his chest, feeling his heart hammer beneath his threadbare sweater. Slowly, his fingers closed around my wrist, his thumb gently sliding over the sensitive skin covering my veins, before pushing it away.
“We stay together.”
I nodded.
We kept to the shadows when we could, avoiding the beggars and working girls in the alleyways. The warm day was humid enough from the week’s rain, and the sweat coated my skin and ran freely down my chest and back. We ran until we came to Church Avenue, a street still in use by the public, though not heavily trafficked.
An MM cruiser drove by with its lights on and siren blaring. My heart skipped a beat. I looked down and felt my hands grow clammy.
“Not for us,” Chase said.
We followed the smoke toward the Wayland Inn. People who had wandered from various areas of town had gathered on the surface streets surrounding the structure. Transients and drug dealers, unemployed scavengers, and even some curious workers from the west side of the city. They kept coming. With so little to occupy their days, a burning motel was prime entertainment.
Chase led the way through the crowd. As we came around the side of an old boarded-up Chinese restaurant we saw the flames, rising a hundred feet in the air, just below the line of windows on the tenth floor.
Instantly I became aware of the smell—sharp and suffocating. It made my eyes burn, even from my place across the street. A blast of sirens came from the two fire trucks parked in a V in front of the motel’s entry. The firemen had begun piping water from a nearby hydrant.
Soldiers arrived, marching in from the northern side of the street. Black, bulletproof vests covered their blue canvas uniforms, and Kevlar helmets shaded their eyes. They carried weapons—guns, nightsticks, and long plastic shields.
No rescue teams entered.
A man stumbled out the front door carrying a woman on his shoulders. They were both black with soot and coughing. No one I recognized. Three soldiers were on them immediately, and they were cuffed and led away.
A loud burst of gunfire elicited screams from the crowd. It sounded like fireworks; shots popping off one after another. My throat tightened, though not from the bitter smoke. I knew that sound was coming from the fourth floor.
“Ammunition caught fire,” Chase said, leaning close to my ear so that no one around us heard him. I searched in vain for Sean, but instead focused on a lone Sister of Salvation, speaking to a soldier near the front of the crowd. He gestured for her to back up with the others, and while he was distracted by another volley of gunfire, she slipped into the crowd, coming our direction.
Fearing she had recognized us, I backpedaled into Chase, and was just about to tell him we had to beat it when she appeared at my right side.
“Where’s everyone else?” I blinked and refocused on her blue eyes and the short, black hair that matched my own.
Cara. I couldn’t make sense of why she’d been talking to a soldier.
“What are you doing here?” A new dread washed over me as my mind flashed to Sarah and Tubman. Something had happened to the convoy.
“Where is Wallace?” Her voice was raw.
“Where is Tubman? Did he get caught?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean you don’t know?”
“I don’t know!”
Her cryptic answers stoked my irritation. Something had happened for them to separate, but there wasn’t time to ask now.
A man I didn’t recognize was shouting from a third floor window. In only his boxer shorts, socks, and a dirty T-shirt, he attempted to climb out using only the moth-eaten curtains as a ladder. The top of them was already on fire.
“Hey! There’s a guy up there!” shouted someone.
“Help him!” begged a woman. None of the soldiers moved to assist.
More gunfire from upstairs. My heart kept time with its tempo.
This time the rear line of soldiers—those closest to the building—turned around and, as one unit, fired at the building. The discharge of weapons was muffled by the roaring spray of the hoses and the sirens; the bullets disappeared into the smoke. The man trying to escape through the window slipped in his surprise, and fell three feet before catching the tearing curtains.
“We need to get out of here.” Cara’s voice wavered. She was backing away, face pale. “Out of town.”
I grabbed her arm. “We don’t know if they’re still alive!”
Her gaze landed on mine. “All units are called in to contain the fire. Every head is turned this direction. This is our chance.”
A chill zipped through me. “How are we supposed to get out?” The highways were still blocked.
It started from the back, a wave of bodies shoving one another into the front line of soldiers. The soldiers pushed them back with their shields. Cara bumped into me, but when I tried to pull back she held on.
“The other truck at the checkpoint. If you’re not there in an hour, I’m leaving without you.”
Before I could respond, she’d disappeared into the crowd.
Chase’s grip tightened around my hand.
“Over there!” He pointed at a man in a singed sweater on his hands and knees at the corner of the building, by the Dumpsters. He’d somehow avoided the main entrance and the fire escapes.
“John!”
We shoved through the crowd toward the motel manager. His eyes were bloodshot and his teeth stained gray, like he’d been eating smoke.
“Guess I… don’t need a cigarette… now,” he huffed as I helped him up.
“Did you see if anyone got out?” I asked urgently.
“Heard ’em leave… through the west exit.”
My mind flashed to the blueprint of the building posted above the couch in Wallace’s room. There were several marked exits. The MM had covered the front, the fire escapes, and the two back doors. The side route was thirty feet behind the Dumpster, tucked within the building’s maintenance area. It was blocked by the looming stone office building Chase and Sean had searched. The alley between them was only wide enough for one person to sneak through at a time.
I ran in that direction, toward the Dumpster, behind which waited the narrow leaf-carpeted alleyway. Leaning against the outside of the entrance, a black cat tucked under his arm, was Billy.
“You’re okay!” I shouted, grateful that he was alive.
He nodded weakly, wiping his mouth on his shirtsleeve. His face was beet red from the heat. “I think Gypsy’s dead.” He lifted the cat, and I nearly vomited. Her head was indented, as if something had smashed it.
“The others?” asked Chase, helping Billy lay Gypsy on the ground. “Billy!”
The boy shook his head, propping his dead cat against the side of the building, where she wouldn’t be stepped on. “Most are out. Wallace and Riggins went back for Houston and Lincoln. No one could find them.”
“And Sean?”
“He’s… he was right behind me!”
I froze.
For one instant I saw Sean as he had been, in those woods behind the reformatory, hiding my intent to escape from the guards who had caught me, who meant to kill me. I felt the shudder tear through my body when he’d shielded me from the blows that had hit him instead.
No. Sean could not be left in this building to burn.
There were no more thoughts. I pushed past Billy and ran down the narrow alley. Someone grasped my shirt, but I slipped away.
“Stop!” shouted Chase.
But I didn’t stop. I ran until I passed the broken water heaters and the metallic switchboards, until the alley opened to reveal a cement patio and a side door below an emergency exit sign.
No soldiers. Not yet anyway.
I placed my hand on the handle. Immediately it singed my palm. A putrid smell filled my nostrils—my own charred flesh.
I swore, gripping the hot doorknob with my shirt and turning it. It pulled out, revealing a great tidal wave of smoke that nearly bowled me over.
I sputtered. The poison siphoned down my throat and grasped my lungs. I covered my mouth with my hand and ducked, trying to remember what I’d learned in elementary school about stop, drop, and roll. I had to stay low.
Sure enough, the first onslaught of smoke left a thick cloud grazing over the ceiling. It was a petrifying sight—swirling like the vortex of a building tornado. I kicked a rock into the jamb, kept my body hunched down, and pushed inside.
“Sean!” I shouted. Then coughed. I breathed in through my teeth, as though they might serve as a filter. “SEAN!”
I’d entered into the stairway. Where we’d first been searched by CJ, the guard posing as a homeless man in the lobby just outside the door. I glanced up the metal steps, but the white plumes wound up in a spiral, disappearing into the next floor. It was so hot; sweat immediately began to drip from every pore in my body.
Something broke upstairs. A wooden crack, a faint explosion, and then the building groaned so loudly I was sure it was going to topple down over me.
A hand smothered my face. Through the haze I saw Chase, squinting, eyes red. He was wearing just his T-shirt, his sweater overtop now ripped in two and held against both our faces. Billy was right behind him, the sleeve of his shirt tied around his nose and mouth.
“Get out of here!” Chase shouted above the crackling. “There’s no time!”
I didn’t know if he meant until the MM took the building, or until the building took us all, but I wasn’t about to wait around and find out. I took the stairs two at a time to the second floor, feeling his grip slide off my sweat-slicked arm.
No sign of Sean.
“Sean!” I tried again, but my shouts were getting progressively weaker. The urgency made me tremble. Sean had risked his life to help me at the reformatory. I owed it to him to return the favor.
The smoke took on an orange hue. It became so thick I could barely see right in front of me. My boots began to stick, like I was walking on gum. In horror, I realized that they were beginning to melt on the stairs. We were running out of time.
“Over there!” Chase shouted, sprinting past me to the top of the third floor. Sean was lying on his back on the landing; someone was desperately trying to hoist him up. The smoke made him weak, and he fumbled around like a drunk.
As I got closer, I saw that the person trying to help was Tucker.
My temples throbbed from the smoke and surprise. He had started the fire, I was sure of it, so what was he still doing here?
“Help me get him up!” shouted Tucker, struggling to grab Sean with the cast on his arm. His words spurred us back into motion. Chase pulled Sean’s arm over his shoulders and began lugging him down the stairs. Sean’s head hung limply; his feet dragged behind. The fear began to take over. Sean couldn’t be dead. Not here. Not like this.
On the second floor, Tucker lost his footing and dove into the wall. Without thinking, I grabbed his arm to steady him. We locked eyes for one short moment.
Don’t help him!
But the larger voice inside yelled we have to get out! And somehow right then “we” included Tucker Morris, too.
“Chase! Soldiers!” cried Billy, coughing with his mask lowered. He was standing in the stairwell, pointing out the blackened window. Soot couldn’t hide the fear blanketing his features.
Chase was beside him, scraping a clear spot in the glass to check.
“Exit’s blocked!” I could barely hear him. He turned fast, sweat streaming off his face. “Up to the roof! Go! Go!”
Billy went up first. Then Chase heaving Sean. I tried to help, but he wouldn’t let me. “Go!” he kept yelling. Tucker was right on my heels.
We were halfway up the seventh set of stairs when another eruption of gunfire came from just below. I braced reactively, and as I did, a piece of flaming drywall came crashing down from the ceiling and landed at my feet. My body twisted backward, slipping on my sticky soles. Tucker caught me beneath the arms; I could feel the sweat soaking through his shirt. In horror, I looked up, hypnotized by the fiery board on the steps that now separated us from the others. Sparks and burning ashes exploded from it, pinching my bare arms and neck in a dozen different places.
Tucker returned the cloth to my nose and mouth.
“We have to jump!” he yelled.
It was at least four steps up, and my muscles were burning. The fire was suffocating my strength from the inside out.
“Chase!”
He stopped at my voice and turned, terror lighting his face.
Balancing Sean on one shoulder he held his other arm out toward me, urging me to jump the four steps up to him. It wasn’t far, but it could have been miles. Sweat and smoke blocked my vision. The roar of the fire muted whatever words he shouted. I trembled, seized by fear.
“Jump!” Tucker ordered. I took a step back in order to shove off from a lower step. A sob raked my throat.
I hesitated.
Tucker rammed into me hard, sending me careening up the steps and into Chase’s chest. He grasped my shirt, pulling me the rest of the way. I screamed—for a moment I thought my pant legs were on fire, but they were only scorched at the bottom.
“Keep going!” Chase said. Billy ran ahead, disappearing into the mist.
A second later Tucker came colliding into the three of us. The door was three feet away. Tucker shoved past and kicked the door, once, twice. It burst open, and he disappeared outside.
Chase grabbed me around the waist and threw me after Tucker, into a day turned dark by black smoke. Sean’s limp form followed. Just outside the exit, Chase fell to his hands and knees. Billy was before me, shaking his head, as though waking from a dream.
The world spun. The clean air seemed just as poisonous as the smoke. I collapsed into the lip of the roof, hacking up black ooze, sliding down to where Chase had dumped Sean.
“Sean!” I croaked, eyes streaming. He was breathing, however shallowly, and in a burst of movement, he rolled on his side and vomited violently. I sobbed with relief.
And then Chase’s hands were on my face, my hair, my shoulders and legs.
He swore sharply, snatching away the hot St. Michael medallion from my skin. It stuck, but when I tried to cry out, I coughed again. Exhaustion made my vision waver. My eyes streamed with tears.
“What were you thinking?” he shouted furiously. The world behind him spun. I felt another urge to be sick. “You could have been killed! You never listen!”
“So what!” I was drained and scared and burning everywhere. I didn’t care what happened to me.
“So what?” he repeated, as if I’d struck him. He looked like he didn’t recognize me.
“Take it easy,” said someone behind me. Tucker.
Chase rounded on him fast, and instantly the teams shifted. Not the resistance against the MM. Not Chase against me. But us against my mother’s killer.
He hit Tucker square in the jaw before he ever saw it coming. Tucker flew back, spitting blood on the deck. The exertion toppled Chase, too, and he fell forward.
“You two are still trying to kill each other?”
I looked up. A lanky man with long, peppered hair was pulling Tucker off the ground.
“Wallace!” croaked Billy.
Wallace’s face was smudged with smoke and sweat. He crouched beside Billy, first slapping him on the back and then pulling him into a tight embrace. “You’re all right,” he said several times. “Just a little smoke is all.”
Chase swore, and I followed his eye line to a crowd of our people—Houston and the brothers and Riggins included—all gathered around the bench where I’d sat with Chase yesterday.
All gathered around a body, lying still upon it.
Lincoln.
“Gone,” I heard Wallace say grimly. “Gone when the boys found him.”
Choking. Coughing. My beaten heart twisting. Think about it later. We had to get out of here.
I knelt, glancing over the edge. The riot below had grown, and the soldiers were trying to contain it. The line closest to the building was waiting for us.
“We’re done,” said Riggins, hands on his glistening head. “We’re done.”
“You did this! They came here for you!” Houston approached behind him, eyes red, but not from the fire.
I couldn’t answer, lost to another coughing fit. Me? If Wallace had only listened! But then again, Tucker wouldn’t be beside us if he’d turned us in.
“We’re not done,” said Wallace. There was a crazy light in his eyes when he stood from Billy’s side. He removed a gun from his waistband—the black pistol he carried—and chambered a round. It was then that I noticed the crate he’d left when he’d found Billy. It was filled with ammunition and firearms.
My burning eyes widened.
“Think!” said Chase. “Fire escapes are blocked. Boiler exit is blocked. Front and rear doors are out.”
“No!” Wallace shouted. The others had left Lincoln now, and were gathered in a tight half circle around those of us still on the ground. Eight from the resistance had made it to the roof before us, Wallace included.
“We’ve lost!” shouted Chase.
“We’ve lost when I say we’ve lost!” Knoxville’s leader roared back. “We have rules, Jennings! We don’t abandon our brothers! We don’t abandon our home! This is our chance to take a stand—”
“We can’t fight if we don’t live!” Chase yelled.
“This is the fight,” Wallace said with finality. “This is the only fight that matters. The one we fight today.”
Then he grabbed a pistol out of the crate and shoved it into Billy’s trembling hands. Still weak, the boy wavered when he stood. He stared at the gun in his hands and said, “Wallace?”
A whir and a crack as a bullet flew by. They’d seen us on the roof and were attacking.
No. We couldn’t die here.
“Line up,” Wallace told us.
“Wallace, please,” I begged him. Chase was dragging me away from the ledge, teeth bared.
“Line up!” Wallace demanded. The other guys faltered, ducking low beneath the ledge for protection. Fearful glances were passed among them. A temporary break in the smoke brought a hailstone of more bullets. Riggins, swearing profusely, grabbed a gun and kneeled behind the barrier, aiming down toward the line of soldiers. Two others followed. Houston’s hands were cupped over his ears, but though his lips moved he made no sound.
“Crazy bastards,” muttered Tucker.
A jet of flames burst from the stairway and then was sucked back inside. The roof beneath our feet trembled with the strength of an earthquake. Had I a voice, I might have screamed.
A weak voice came from behind me. “Through the other building.” I turned, surprised to find Sean sitting upright.
Yes. The office building adjacent to the Wayland Inn was abandoned. The space between them was narrow, maybe three feet. We might be able to jump in through a parallel window.
An instant later Chase and Tucker were running toward the bench where poor Lincoln lay.
They lowered his limp body to the ground, and I had the sudden revolting memory of the base, transporting the dead prisoners in laundry carts to the crematorium. I hadn’t known those people, but Lincoln was not a stranger. I knew what his laugh sounded like. I knew how tall he was when I stood next to him. That was when I realized—really realized—he was dead.
Tucker and Chase each took an end of the wooden bench. They carried it around the stairway exit, toward the side of the roof that interfaced the office building. I helped Sean up, and we ran to follow. There was a shattered window down a few feet across the gap. I watched as they leveled the bench between the roof’s ledge and the windowsill, making a slide into the darkened room below. The curtain of jagged glass above made for an ominous entrance.
When I glanced back four more of the men were gone, maybe back through the smoke-filled stairway. Wallace was shouting, gesturing in wild motions with his arms, and forcing Billy to his knees before the ledge. When Billy tried to get up, Wallace pushed him down.
He’d lost his mind. Billy was like a son to him, and here he was, preparing to sacrifice them both for a fight we’d never win.
Billy was coming with us, and Wallace and the others too, if I could make them.
But as I approached, it hit him, an invisible bullet, slicing through the smoke. It ripped through Wallace’s shoulder and threw him to the ground, flat on his back.
I ducked low, hearing Chase bellow my name. I kept going.
“Wallace!” I pulled him up, and then Billy was there, and Wallace, groaning, was seated, blood flowing freely from the blackened shirt just below his collarbone. “We have to go,” I said desperately. “Come on! Now!”
“Wait, wait a second,” Billy was saying. “Wallace?”
Wallace was shaking his head, regripping the pistol that he’d dropped.
“Billy is going to die,” I said flatly. “You are going to kill him.”
He met my eyes, and I saw the infection, the fever of insanity circling the whites around his irises. I summoned all my strength to burn clarity through my gaze, and after a moment, he blinked.
“Get to the safe house,” he said, voice scratchy. “We’ll meet you there. All units are pulled in. You have to get on the road now.”
My thoughts turned to Cara, waiting at the checkpoint. How much time had passed?
“Take Billy,” Wallace said quietly.
My stomach dropped.
“No!” shouted Billy, grasping his shirt like a child. “You’ll burn—”
“Take him!” shouted Wallace, and in a burst of strength stood and shoved Billy at me. Chase was suddenly by my side. He grabbed a struggling Billy around the shoulders, locking his arms down.
“Wallace!” Billy was crying. Wallace shoved his handgun into Billy’s pocket.
“Exhale when you pull the trigger, just like we talked about.” His voice cracked, though not from the fire. “You saved my life, kid. Remember that.”
And with that Wallace collapsed to his knees. He crawled to the crate and grabbed another gun, loading it with shaking hands.
“Go.” It was Riggins who broke the trance, pushing me away. “You have to get out of here.” He blocked my view of Wallace and smirked. “The sniper. I should have seen it earlier. I wouldn’t have given you such a hard time.”
I couldn’t make sense of what he meant, or why he was now pushing me away from the ledge. He knelt beside Wallace and the only two other remaining resistance members at the Wayland Inn. And then we were running, back toward the bench and the neighboring building, a blazing inferno just beneath our feet.