Children of the Uprising Collection Page 18

  Jude swayed beside Samara. She pulled him into an awkward side-hug.

  “That’s right,” answered Bristol, and he explained what had happened. Stephen and Denver listened, their light and airy faces growing longer, their eyes growing more centered, their lips tighter.

  “So what should we do?” asked Jude when Bristol had finished, still clearly a bit suspicious of these new additions.

  Stephen considered a moment. “There is an emergency plan. I don’t know whether it’s too early for it to have been implemented or not, though—but for our sake, the earlier, the better.

  “If what you’ve said is true and the network is being systemically destroyed, the emergency volunteers are called to drive on the roads with some sort of red insignia on the transport.”

  “Where on the transport?” asked Samara.

  “And what kind of transport?” asked Bristol.

  “It’s purposefully vague,” Stephen explained. “We just have to keep sharp, and look, and trust. It could be a car, or a motorbike, or a bus. It could have a driver, but it doesn’t have to. It could be a strip of tape on the hood, or a ribbon on the mirror, or the whole thing could be painted red.”

  A collective gulp.

  “We don’t have a chance,” Bristol said.

  “We do,” said Samara. “Stephen’s right. We’ve made it this far. We’ll know whether or not it’s right when we see it.”

  “We have to try,” added Jude.

  Bristol snickered. “Why?”

  “Because we’re here. We exist, we matter, we deserve to live.” With this, Samara reached inside her pocket for a folded piece of paper and put it inside Bristol’s hand. He recognized his sketch of her sitting hunched there in the candlelight, reading to her little friend.

  “We need to get to a road,” Denver said.

  They walked through the forest for a few hours, each moving back and forth between giving themselves internal speeches on the importance of going on and taking time to be thankful for the breath in their lungs and the blood in their bodies and the thoughts in their minds while they all were still present. Eventually they came to a road, a crumbling, ancient-looking one with no paint or lights.

  “What do we do now?” asked Jude.

  Stephen never took his eyes off the road. “Wait.”

  They waited. After several hours, they heard the sound of wind rushing around something moving fast. Two headlights, colored red, appeared in the distance. Stephen drew a breath and stepped out onto the road. The car slowed to a stop. There was no driver, but the doors were unlocked. Stephen opened a door and looked expectantly at the little group.

  Samara stepped inside first, into the back. Bristol laid his hands heavily on Jude’s shoulders, guiding the boy inside to sit between them in the back of the cab. Denver and Stephen slid into the front seat. Stephen closed the sliding door, and the car started again down the crumbling road, driving them forward—they hoped—to freedom.

  Long after the sun had set, Bristol’s eyes burned with exhaustion while they took in the dark shapes of trees and fields whipping by. If any of them felt confident about where they were headed, nobody said so. Stephen was straight-backed and focused on the road, though his arm rested on the seat and Denver rested her head on it, asleep. Jude was also asleep, with his face pointed up, his head straight back, and his mouth hanging open. Bristol and Samara stared out their respective windows. Bristol felt a staleness had set in. The time for hope and gratitude had passed, as had the time for anxiety. This was just a time for waiting.

  They waited hours until the car began to slow. Within seconds, Bristol noticed the change, though he suspected he was the last to do so. Stephen and Samara had already leaned forward and were looking from side to side.

  “What’s happening?” whispered Samara.

  “It’s running out of battery,” Stephen said.

  “What are we going to do?” asked Bristol.

  Stephen looked back at him. “I don’t know.”

  The car continued down the country road for just a few minutes more before puttering to a stop. The red headlights flickered and died. None of them had experienced the total blackness of the country night before. It woke Denver and Jude.

  “Car died,” explained Stephen, and he made a movement to leave.

  “You can’t see anything out there,” Denver said.

  “I’m going to go anyway. In fact, let’s all go. Our eyes can adjust to the light of the moon and stars eventually. Won’t be enough light to look at the car, but at least we can get off the road.”

  Shuffling reluctantly, the five of them were soon out in the cool night air. Next to him, Samara gave a brief shiver and crossed her arms. Bristol wished he had a coat to offer. Stephen was saying something about a checkpoint being close, but Bristol no longer cared. They would get there or they wouldn’t. They would survive or they would die. At this point, he lived only in the now, and there was nothing he wanted more than to comfort Samara. He made a motion to put his arm around her waist.

  Without warning, the car’s headlights blazed a clear white color and it sped off far into the distance.

  They froze. Samara spoke first. “It’s a trap!”

  “It’s not,” Denver said.

  Before Samara could challenge her, she heard what Denver heard—music. With their eyes still blinded by oppressive darkness, they heard a group in the distance, singing:

  When Israel was in Egypt’s land:

  Let my people go,

  Oppress’d so hard they could not stand,

  Let my people go.

  Go down, Moses,

  Way down in Egypt’s land,

  Tell old Pharaoh,

  Let my people go.

  THE END

  Thank you for reading! Did you enjoy?

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  UNAFRAID

  Book 2

  Chapter One

  Denver Ray hugged herself against the harsh January wind. Even with her head down, it lashed at her face and forced tears from her eyes. But after a long shift of cooking for two hundred people inside the dining room of the monastery, it wasn’t unwelcome.

  It was a good place—and they’d been here for the past six months—but it never resembled any sort of home, either. Much too cold. When they’d stumbled upon the evening singing, Bristol, Samara, Jude, Denver, and Stephen could hardly believe it. The mostly-torched sign at the end of the dirt road read St Mary of the— but what exactly she was the saint of was cut off, the edges of the wood singed by a long-ago fire. Bristol joked that it was St. Mary of the Hopeless and Defeated, but Stephen said that couldn’t be right—after all, they were still alive.

  Inside, hundreds of people were hiding from the relocation, in just the same situation they were in themselves. None of the incumbent members seemed surprised to see the new little family band of outlaws. Denver and the others were shown around and drilled in the rules of the monastery. They were told they would be moving on to Canada soon, but they would be traveling all together. Once you were here, they said, that was the only way to get out—together. That notion was as close to togetherness as it got here—the people finding refuge were not keen to make friends. And as far as Denver could tell from the way the leaders spoke to the big group of them, there was still no flight plan.

  But it didn’t matter. The exit from Nan’s had taught them to be prepared, and they were. Denver and the others wore their backpacks under their coats and slept with their shoes on, ready to run at a moment’s notice. No one else had asked about it, even though they had to be curious. She hadn’t been asked about anything, except for food stock and storage, since she got here. No one else seemed as lucky as she’d been, being with her husband and finding her brother and his friends alive. She understood.

  Denver frowned and looked at the ground. Was that frost? They lived in fear of snow here, as they had no way of covering their footprints, but
the weather had been obliging so far. The leaders here were always hinting that they had some sort of plan worked out for all of these situations, but something inside her had cracked and broken—after a lifetime of trusting authority, she suddenly found it impossible to believe someone was looking out for her. Like a childish dream, though it’d seemed so real, it had vanished the moment she’d woken. There were only two people she could truly trust now—her husband, Stephen, and her brother, Bristol—and here, they were as powerless as she was.

  The girl’s dormitory was warmer, but only because of the lack of wind inside. Denver kept her coat on as she sat on her bed. She took off her shoes for a moment and massaged her feet. She’d been fantasizing of sitting down for hours. Samara, also tightly bundled in her winter wear, sat next to her.

  “Are you still looking for something to read?” asked Samara. “I just finished this one.”

  Denver leaned over and took the book from Samara’s mitten. “Great Expectations? What’s this?”

  “I think you’ll love it. It’s about a boy who—”

  “No, thank you, then,” said Denver. “I don’t like boy books.”

  Samara frowned and took the book back. “Okay. I’ll see if Jude wants to read it.”

  Samara walked away, and Denver leaned back against her thin pillow. Maybe this time she’d get the point. It wasn’t that Denver didn’t appreciate everything Samara had done to help—she was sure Jude wouldn’t be here without her, and he was fine, she guessed—it was just that Bristol would have done just fine without Samara, and now that she was here, they were stuck with her. There were too many things about her that seemed suspect. Why would she put herself at risk to save a little prisoner boy? Why did she find it so easy to leave her parents, her job, her life in Metrics? Whatever she was hiding, Denver wasn’t interested in becoming involved. Once we get to Canada, she thought, we can get rid of her.

  She couldn’t help thinking thoughts that began with “once we get to Canada.” Denver prided herself on her pragmatism, and she knew that pessimism and suspicion would not serve her on this issue. For the sake of her sanity, she had to believe they were getting to Canada one day.

  Denver closed her eyes and dug her thumbs into the arch of her foot. There was a rhythmic knock at the door, and Denver slid her shoes back on to go answer it.

  Bristol stood on the little stoop with his hands wrapped around a thermos. Denver pulled the top of her coat around her throat. “Are you here to see me or her?”

  Bristol seemed to miss any leftover resentment in Denver’s tone. He smiled and leaned in. “You. I got some hot cocoa.”

  “Shh!” Denver stepped outside and closed the door behind her. “Where?”

  “I’ll tell you in a second. Let’s go to the Spot.”

  The Spot was actually a tiny chapel in the valley. It was one of the unspoken places where people could go to have a private conversation, and it was truly amazing how well it was respected. If someone else was in the Spot when you wanted to go, you just walked around until it was empty again. There was no scheduling, but no fighting over it either. The ten-by-ten cinderblock room with a wide table along one wall was always clean, though many seemed to use it for what might be called dirty activities. Denver had been there with Stephen more than once.

  Today, she and Bristol sat on the outside of it, on what would have been the sunny side if the sun had been out. The wind knocked against the opposite side and whistled around them. Bristol poured some cocoa into the cup and handed it to Denver, who wrapped her hands around the sides. Bristol did the same with the thermos. “It’s not really a secret or anything. It’s a reward for being a good little boy.”

  “You found something on watch today?”

  Bristol nodded. “I don’t think it’s significant. I just saw Metrics patrol pull a car over.”

  “What color?”

  “Red.”

  Denver lowered the cup and locked her eyes on her brother’s. “Then of course it’s significant.”

  Red was how they recognized fellow runaways traveling along their path: the Red Sea. The group itself was loose and unofficial, but there were unwritten and widely-known rules. One was that anyone traveling in a transport with the color red somewhere on it was bound for a camp like this.

  “I think,” said Bristol, “that’s exactly what makes it insignificant. At most, it means that Metrics has figured out what color we mark things with. But no one in the Red Sea uses transports actually painted red; it would be too conspicuous. They usually go with little flags or ribbons tied to the grilles, something that can be easily removed.”

  “Red bulbs in the headlights.”

  “Mm-hmm. So now we just switch to some other color, some other signal.”

  “Did you tell the leaders that?”

  Bristol groaned and took a swig of hot chocolate. “I did.”

  “Let me guess. You reported, they threw open the door, tossed you out, slammed the door, then opened it again and pelted this thermos at your head.”

  “Basically.” Bristol leaned over his knees and looked out to the thick woods on the other side of the baseball field. “I get that they don’t trust anyone else to be involved—we’re all so paranoid in here after what we’ve all been through—but at a certain point, it seems like we all might kill each other out of loneliness. It’s not natural.”

  Denver sucked on her chapped lips a moment, then cupped her hands together and warmed them with her breath. “Got any more in there?”

  “Yeah, but I’m saving it.”

  “For her.”

  “Yes.” Bristol’s eyebrows shot toward his hairline. “Denver, what did I just say?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You do. Samara has done nothing but help you. What’s your deal with her?”

  “I just don’t like her. Just a feeling.” Denver loved saying that. No one would question any opinion, no matter how unpopular, if the reason for it was “just a feeling.” People loved to believe in the power of feelings, even the data-obsessed people of Metrics. It was something she’d picked up from reality TV shows when she was small, and the phrase had worked wonders ever since.

  “Hmm.”

  Denver could tell he wasn’t buying it, but the thought of another conversation about Samara exhausted her. Maybe Bristol was right: all this distrust was toxic. And, come to think of it, she’d also been wrong about Stephen when they were first married. Before he’d told her about his work with the Red Sea, she’d seen him as a loser, wasting every evening on video games. It hadn’t been until later, when he’d told her that he’d disguised his work to make it appear as if he were playing games, that she’d seen him for what he had been. But that had been different. She was wiser now.

  “Look,” said Bristol, gesturing toward the sky.

  Snow. Just barely there, one whispy-white fleck that might have been an optical illusion until a second one appeared in Denver’s peripheral vision.

  A woman’s head appeared around the corner, already looking cross at Denver and Bristol. Karale, one of the leaders here, apparently had patrol duties that evening. “Come on, break it up,” she said. “You know you’re not allowed over here.” Denver also knew Karale’s reaction would have been way more severe if her husband, Stephen, were here with her instead of Bristol. She wasn’t totally sure if Karale knew they were brother and sister, but anyone could guess—both siblings had their mother’s features: the same wide eyebrows, the same thick eyelashes, the same ebony eyes.

  Denver stood up so much faster than Bristol that she finally took his elbow to help him. He handed the thermos to her. A jolt of joy leapt inside her before he said, “Take this to Samara?”

  She snatched it, wrapping both hands around the stainless steel. “Sure.”

  “Thank you.”

  “See you tomorrow.”

  Of course, she could drain it before she got back. It wouldn’t take long to get out of Bristol’s sight, and even if
he did see her, she didn’t particularly care. He knew her feelings toward Little Miss Screw-Up. He probably didn’t expect the luxury to make it all the way to her side of the dorm anyway. And Screw-Up herself would never know.

  Denver’s hand had to leave the warmth of the thermos for only a second to open the door to the girls’ dormitory. Then she walked to Samara’s bed and deposited it at her feet. Samara looked up from her book. It seemed easy for her to do—that book was probably boring as hell. “That’s from Bristol,” Denver said, and immediately turned and walked away. This mayhem that was her new life had changed her in a lot of ways, but there were still a few things she refused to let it touch.

  Chapter Two

  Jude Reeder couldn’t believe his luck. Last night, Miss Shepherd had come in with a new book for him, and today, they were snowed in—none of them were even allowed to go to breakfast this morning—and the way the leaders were talking, maybe not even lunch. It was no big deal for him, since he had snacks in his backpack if he needed them. He would just have to find a way of eating those without anyone else noticing. He told himself he wasn’t really hungry yet anyway, so he didn’t have to work that out just yet.

  He preferred reading all day to eating in the crowded mess hall, but he especially preferred it to working. Just like prison, there were no days off, no time to rest and do exactly what you wanted. All day, he helped do laundry for the compound, including gathering water from the nearby lake and scrubbing sheets and shirts and other men’s underwear before hanging it to dry in the meeting hall. It was a little more difficult with only one hand, but he tried his best to keep pace with the rest of the laundry crew. Besides, the extra challenge helped keep his mind from growing too uncharitable—but people were such pigs. How hard was it to keep sauce off your shirt when you ate? There had been no deodorant among them for a long time—why was other people’s sweat so much more nauseating than his own? Why were women, just women, so clumsy? He was seriously alarmed when he saw the first streak of blood on a pair of panties and called out to his supervisor that someone had been hurt. The supervisor, a thin woman who had once been heavy, put a kind hand on his shoulder and told him how often women fall down and hurt themselves. She told him it didn’t hurt that bad because they were all so used to it. She had that tone that adults sometimes used when speaking to a young child, which, at twelve, Jude was not, and so he distrusted her answer. But then another streak came in, and another, and Jude had no choice but to believe that the ladies had serious balance issues. He needed a break from panties.