“Sir,” he said, pushing more cans aside. “Sir, there are more sows—”
Otis grabbed the gun from his belt and fired it into Richard’s side. The soldier fell, pulling the shelf on top of him. He clutched at his shoulder, where the bullet had ripped through his shirt.
As Otis threw himself into Calverton, Marjorie turned to us. “Go!” she yelled, pointing behind us to the tunnel that snaked into darkness. “Now!”
Calverton slammed Otis into the wall, knocking the weapon from his grasp. He wiped off his uniform where Otis had grabbed him, smoothing down the puckered cloth. Then he lowered his gun.
“No! Stop!” Marjorie yelled. Her hands reached out, strained, trying to close the gap between them. It happened too fast. One shot, then another, burying themselves in Otis’s chest. He was dead before he hit the ground.
Lark rushed into the tunnel and Arden followed, dragging me behind. But my feet were heavy, sadness already overtaking me. I kept my head turned, watching as Marjorie kneed the soldier, hard, in the side. It barely slowed him down. He raised his gun again and struck Marjorie across her cheek. She fell on top of Otis, her arms holding him still, as the soldier lowered his gun again and fired one last blast.
Chapter Twenty-eight
ARDEN TUGGED AT MY ARM, BUT I STOOD FROZEN, watching the scene as if it were playing on the wall above the fireplace. Richards squeezing his eyes in pain, the spatter of blood against his pale cheek, Marjorie slumped over, her white braid slowly turning red.
Calverton lunged toward us, but I couldn’t move. After a moment, Arden yanked me hard, sending me stumbling forward.
We ran through the tunnel, our steps pounding out a constant rhythm as we traveled farther into the blackness. My mind felt clouded from the unreality of it all. Marjorie and Otis had been shot. They were dead. It was my fault. As much as I repeated these facts, they didn’t make any sense.
When we finally reached the end of the tunnel, we hit a set of stairs. A thin strip of light streamed in from a long crack in the ceiling. Lark threw herself up against the trapdoor, but the metal didn’t give. “It’s stuck,” she cried, beating on it with her fists. Finally the door raised an inch, revealing a thick tree branch that had fallen over it, barring it shut.
Behind us, cans clinked together as the soldier plunged through the cabinet. Lark stepped back into the darkness, letting us wedge our way between the stairs and the door. The soldiers were just around the corner when a shot sounded.
“Don’t fire at her—we need her alive!” Calverton yelled.
“Push harder!” Arden cried, pressing her palms to the door.
“Stop! By order of the King of the New America!” Richards’s voice called through the tunnel.
Arden and I rushed at the door again, throwing our hands against it so hard it hurt. In one gratifying crack the branch broke, the bark splintering down on us as the doors flung apart, revealing the white morning light.
Arden sprang into the open air. I paused on the steps, turning quickly to help Lark. But she was slumped at the bottom of the stairs. Blood slicked her hair and pooled, a purplish red, around her skull.
“No!” I reached down and grabbed her, feeling the warmth of the puddle through my shoes. The shot had buried itself in the back of her neck. “Lark!”
“We have to go,” Arden said from up above. She pointed to the woods. “I don’t want to but we—”
Before she could finish, the soldiers turned the corner, their guns raised. Richards’s arm was bandaged with Marjorie’s purple scarf.
I ran furiously beside Arden, kicking the metal door shut behind me, Lark’s body locked beneath it. The sun was unforgiving, beating on the scorched lawn and lightening the shadows beneath the charred trees. Giant red rocks spread out over the landscape, creating an impenetrable wall. The shrubs were shorter, the sand hot, the next house a tiny square on the horizon. Even outside, there was nowhere to hide.
The door clattered open behind us. Calverton moved steadily across the grass as he reloaded his gun.
“Come on,” I said, darting right, away from the charred forest we had come through that night with Fletcher. We made our way in and out of the trees, the thick shrubs ripping at my calves. Far beyond Marjorie’s house, over dunes and past the tree line, a cracked road opened into a neighborhood.
A bullet hit a tree in front of Arden, burrowing into the wood. “They’re trying to kill me,” she yelled, as she jumped a rotten log. I kept running, and for a moment the soldiers disappeared behind a stretch of tall brush.
“There,” I said, pointing to a house overgrown with grass. We took off behind it, pushing through the battered gate.