Rise An Eve Novel

nineteen



“I GOT IT!” SARAH YELLED AS SHE CROSSED THE DOORWAY INTO the motel lobby. “I win!” Three girls darted after her, realizing they were a second too late. Sarah held the stuffed mouse in the air. It had only one eye, its red shorts missing a yellow button. The other girls tried to grab it out of her hands, but she stood on her tiptoes, holding it above their heads.

“They’re in better spirits,” Beatrice whispered to me. She folded a few of the shirts we’d found, pressing them into a duffel bag. “I don’t think I can take much more of that screaming, though.”

“Why don’t you guys call it a night,” I said, glancing outside. The sky was already a deep reddish pink, the sun sinking low behind the mountains. “You’ve got about fifteen more minutes of light. You should get your beds set up.”

Sarah wandered down the hall, some of the girls following her, leaving to retrieve the blankets from the room where Helene slept. We’d been at the motel in Stovepipe Wells for four days, staying in the back section of the building that was set off from the road. The girls had made up a game that involved kidnapping, then hiding, a tattered stuffed animal they’d found. The first one to cross through the front door with it in her hand won. What exactly the prize was never was clear.

Clara stood behind the front desk, lining up a row of glass bottles on the counter. “There’s ten in all,” she said. “Should we leave some in case more people pass through?”

I went beside her, peering into the cabinets below the front desk. We’d found the supplies the rebels had left. There were bottles of water, dried fruit and nuts, and some clean towels and bandages. It couldn’t have been more than three or four weeks since they’d stopped here on their way to the City. There were little signs of them still. Fresh footprints in the dirt, trailing around to the back houses. Someone had left a comb by an old mirror in the hall, the plastic clear of all dust. There was a gold locket I’d discovered, tangled in one of the towels, a tiny piece of red paper folded inside, my love to carry scrawled across it. I kept it with me, the chain rattling in my pocket. I couldn’t stop wondering whose it was, where they were now, if they had been killed inside the City.

“Two bottles and some of the dried food,” I said. “Now that the siege is over, I doubt anyone will use this stop. But better to leave some just in case.”

Sarah and a few of the girls came back into the lobby, dusty blankets in their arms. They threw some down on the old couches, the cushions sunken in. Lena, a quiet girl with scratched black glasses, lay down on one, pulling the blanket over her legs. She reached for the plastic container of wrinkled pamphlets labeled HIKING IN DEATH VALLEY and WELCOME TO STOVEPIPE WELLS. She always read them before she went to sleep.

Bette pulled Helene along in the sled, moving a little too quickly through the narrow hall. “Careful,” I called out. “Watch her leg.”

Bette glared at me. “I am watching,” she muttered. She helped Helene up, resting her bad leg on the piles of flattened pillows at the end of the couch. The swelling had gone down, but the skin was still bright pink. The bruising made everything look worse. Purple welts covered one shoulder. The side of her face was swollen, the gash on her forehead still raw.

“Do we have to leave tomorrow?” Helene asked, wincing as she lowered herself onto the couch.

Beatrice set down the folded clothes and pressed her palm to Helene’s forehead. “You’ll be thankful when we’re finally in Califia. You’ll have a real bed to sleep on and can rest all you like.” She turned to me and nodded, as she had each time she’d checked Helene. These last few days she’d done it every few hours, making sure she hadn’t gotten a fever, that the leg hadn’t swelled any further, that there were no signs of infection. We were hopeful that the worst had passed.

“She’s not ready to go,” Bette said. “Why can’t you see that?”

“We have to,” I said. “It’s not worth arguing. Out here we’re still exposed. If anyone passes through we could be discovered. We have to keep moving.”

Bette shook her head. As the rest of the girls spread out their blankets and pillows on the floor, curling up beside one another, she turned down one of the side halls. Clara came over to me, her hand resting on my arm as we watched her go. “If it makes you feel any better, she hasn’t spoken to me either,” she said. “She’ll be better once we get to Califia. She’ll see you were right.”

“I hope so,” I said. I stepped away from the others, gesturing for Clara to follow. I grabbed the tattered map from my belt and spread it out, pointing to the route I’d marked in pencil. Clara studied it in the last of the day’s light. “If we go north there’s water along the way. A guaranteed supply every three days or so. Owens Lake, Fish Springs reservoir, Mesa Lake, Lake Crowley . . . see? All the way up.”

“Lake Tahoe?” Clara asked. “Wasn’t that where the dugout was?” She traced her finger over the fork in the road, moving up, past the line I’d drawn. I’d thought about Silas and Benny after I’d left. Moss had sent messages to the dugout when I’d first arrived in the City, stating that I was alive, that Caleb and I were together. We hadn’t heard anything back, and it was impossible to confirm they’d gotten word. As much as I wanted to know if they were all right, part of me didn’t want to suffer the reality if they weren’t. What if we found the dugout abandoned? What if they’d gone to the siege, if they were among the bodies strewn in the road those first few days? And if they were alive, if they were there, I didn’t know if I wanted to revisit it all—that time, that place. Caleb. Leif. I’d purposely had us go west before we reached the boys’ camp.

I nodded. “It would add days to the journey, though. I thought—”

“I didn’t mean we should go there,” Clara said, turning to me. Her expression was apologetic. “I wouldn’t want you to. I wouldn’t want any of us to—not after what happened to you.”

A few of the girls fell asleep, offering one another Good nights, while Sarah and Kit went to retrieve more supplies from one of the bedrooms. Clara knelt down beside the duffel bag, rooting through it until she found the radio. “I was thinking . . .” she said, holding it up. “Is there any way we could send her a message? Just to let her know I made it out of the City. That I’m safe—that I’m with you. She’s probably a mess, thinking I was killed in the Outlands, wondering if I was taken by the rebels.”

I turned the radio over in my hands, wondering who inside the Palace would be able to decode the message. I knew it was improbable that any of the rebels who still worked in the tower would risk revealing themselves to Rose—not now, and especially not to tell her that Clara, who for all anyone knew supported my father, was alive. I’d thought about it anyway, noticing how Clara’s mood had changed over the past week, the way she’d bring up her mother, or the City, wanting to know if there were any dispatches about the Palace. “Of course we can,” I said. “I just have to warn you—it’s likely she won’t get it. Now that Moss is dead, I don’t think any of the rebels would decode it and pass it along.”

Clara rested her back against the wall, pressing her face into her hands. “We’ll go back eventually,” she said, not really directing it at me. “Eventually she’ll know I’m all right. I’m sure she’s figured out what happened.”

“She must’ve,” I said. “We’ll have more resources once we reach Califia. Once you’re there we’ll have a better sense of what to do.”

The last of the day’s sun came in through the door, catching Clara’s blue-gray eyes, lighting up their depths. “I shouldn’t have just left,” she said. “It was like I was trying to punish her or something.”

“You didn’t have much time to decide,” I said.

“It was always just us.” Clara worked at a knot in her thick gold hair, pulling at the tangle until it came undone. “Ever since the plague, ever since my father and Evan died. There have been so many times that I’ve just wanted to be free of her.”

“You can’t blame yourself for leaving. What if my father had found out that you’d helped me that day? What then?”

We were both quiet. I wanted to tell her that she’d be able to go back to the City, that we could both return, but as the days passed that seemed less likely. I’d noticed a change even in the time since we’d set up camp. The nausea had lifted. Beatrice had said it was normal, that now that I’d made it to three months I wouldn’t experience the morning sickness as I had before. My midsection felt swollen and full, and my clothes fit differently—even if it was noticeable only to me. Once we arrived in Califia I wondered if I’d ever leave or if I’d be bound there, indefinitely, unable to go anywhere else. How long did I have before my father found me again?

Sarah and Kit passed, their arms filled with two more stacks of blankets. Clara wiped the skin beneath her eyes and stood, plucking a musty felt one from the top. I knelt down, about to tuck the radio back into the bag, where I’d kept it hidden, when Kit stopped by the door. She was staring at me, her face just visible in the late light. “What are you doing with that?” she asked.

Clara clutched the blanket to her chest. “What do you mean?” she said. “It’s a radio, Kit. You’ve never—”

“I know what it is.” Kit pulled at her long ponytail, wrapping it around her fingers. “But I thought that was Bette’s.”

I scanned the lobby, at the girls curled up on the couches and floor. I could barely see them in the shadows, so far from the windows and the road. “Why would you think that?”

Kit shrugged. “She told me she’d found it in the gas station, that it was hers. She was using it two nights ago.”

I could feel Clara’s eyes on me. I pushed past her, into the room. “Where’s Bette?” I reached down and squeezed Helene’s shoulder, startling her awake. “Did you know about the radio? Did you know she was using it?” I looked at a few of the girls who were curled up on the floor, catching glimpses of their shadowy faces, trying to distinguish one from the next. I didn’t see Bette anywhere.

Helene shook her head. “I don’t know where she is,” she said. But she clasped her hands together, her face tense. “I don’t . . .”

“What was she doing with it?” I asked. “Tell me.”

Helene brushed her braids away from her face. “She said she was going to get me help. She promised me.”

I took off down the dark hallway, past the old motel rooms. Some of the beds were turned over on their side. There were dusty suitcases filled with clothes, rotting ceiling tiles, a pile of toys that had been abandoned by people who’d left in a hurry. I spotted a figure in the broken mirror at the end of the hall. I tensed, taking a moment to realize it was my own reflection.

Standing there in the dim hall, I listened to each one of my breaths, trying to figure out when Bette had seen me with the radio. She had to have gone through our bags, searching for it. How long had she been trying to send out a message? Who did she possibly think would come?

Far away, beyond the shattered windows, I heard a small voice calling out, the words indistinguishable. I turned down the hall, not stopping until I was outside, rounding the back of the building. I darted past the parking lot, filled with rotting cars, and when I cleared the corner I finally saw her. She was just a black silhouette against the purple sky. She was waving her hands frantically, back and forth, a pathetic signal fire by her feet.

It took me a moment to see what she was looking at. My hands went cold. Coming up the ridgeline, only a half mile away, was a motorcycle, its headlamp a small pinprick of light.